The Story of Salvation: An Easter Vigil Homily
We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
This week I’ve been diving into old books on atonement theories, the kind that I picked up at a library book sale at seminary for 50 cents a piece. I’ve been doing this because as time goes on I have more and more questions about what it means to be saved. What is salvation? How does Jesus’ death and resurrection so many years ago really mean for us today?
You’d think that a priest would be quite comfortable with and have a good answer for this, but the truth is that the more I read the Bible, the more I dive into theological scholarship, the more questions I have. It’s like any good subject worthy of our attention, the more I dig in, the more there is to piece together. There has never been a single unifying theory, there are multiple theories of how God attains at-one-ment with us, how God brings us into unity with Christ and creation. These theories have shifted with time and world events. The German scholarship that led conversations in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s was largely dropped after the rise of Hitler, instead the conversation in the Western world shifted to England and the United States, and that had a profound impact on how we view God’s saving work on the cross. The popular image of the cross being laid down to span the chasm between humanity and God, providing a bridge over hell and into heaven, is a relatively new image popularized during the time of this shift. Still other theories of how we become at one with God are ignored in the United States, as they come from other nations. Eastern Orthodox Churches have different views from those that came out of Western Christianity. Africa, Asia, and South America all have their own unique lenses with which to view these questions about salvation. If we want a simple answer for how we are saved, there is one, it is through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but the question of what that means is something we can spend the rest of our lives exploring.
But tonight we spend time with the salvation narrative. We take the time to live into these questions. We start at the very beginning, with creation. We know that God created this world and called it good. Unlike other creation stories, where gods created the world for their own exploitation, our God created this world because God delights in the act of creating. The pinnacle of God’s creation was humanity, and God delights greatly in us. God calls us good. But God also gave us freedom that is unimaginable, the ability to choose whether or not to follow God.
The people of Israel did follow God in the past, our vigil stories highlight these actions, the faithfulness of a people diligently seeking their God. They went through much suffering, they questioned God’s abilities to help them, yet they lived and grew in their knowledge of their Creator. Even when it seemed that all had turned away from God, there was always a faithful remnant, a people devoted to God. We read today about those people, faithful, humble, and willing to suffer for the cause of the LORD their God. They were willing to endure hardship because they believed that God was faithful to them and would be with them through everything. God was on their side.
But there were also many who struggled to see God at work in the world. It was, is and remains, a place of contradiction and danger. Those who serve God sometimes get killed for what they do. There is a cruelty that is hard to ignore. Pain leads to more pain, suffering leads to more suffering. Where is God in all of that?
That’s where we find Jesus, both fully God and fully human, born not into a place of power and prestige, but born into a poor and humble family that didn’t have much of anything. He did not seek political power. He did not try to take over the temple. He ate with the outcast and the oppressed, those who experienced the most pain and suffering. He challenged those in authority and he was crucified under the false charge of trying to create an uprising against the Roman empire. He was not trying to usurp the emperor’s power, he was giving people who needed it the feeling of their own value and worth. He was sharing how beloved we all are to God, even those we cast aside or consider less than.
Others may disagree with me, but I believe that Jesus had it within his power to avoid or come down off the cross. I believe that scripture makes it clear that he had the ability to defend himself adequately against the charges brought against him. The charges against him were weak, but even if they crucified him anyway, as was almost inevitable, Jesus could have saved himself from the cross. He could have called down angels to remove him from the cross. There are even heretical stories of Jesus avoiding the cross or not really dying, just appearing to die. These were all condemned as false by the councils of the Church. Jesus could have avoided the cross, but he didn’t. He really died. His body was really laid in the tomb. The Messiah, the savior of the world, was really and truly dead for three days.
How does that help us? How does that impact our lives thousands of years later? We say that Jesus died for our sins, but what does that really mean?
As I’ve said before, I don’t think Jesus had my individual sins on his mind when he was on the cross. He was on the cross because of the collective sins of the community. Their self interest got in the way of God’s interests and they chose crucifixion rather than listening to Jesus’ challenges to their systems, both political and religious.
Jesus continually showed them that their systems were harming the oppressed, that their ways were not in line with God’s desires for the world, but they did not listen. Power and control were enticing and seductive. It won the day. Today we see power and control holding their seductive sway over our nations and our churches. Our political and religious authorities don’t uphold the dignity and honor of the poor and oppressed as they should. We don’t listen to the will of God as much as we listen to the desires of people. It would seem that if Jesus died to overhaul these systems, Jesus failed. Even after millenia, we struggle to see those without power as fully human and full of dignity. The world has gotten better in some ways and worse in others.
But what did Jesus actually do? He didn’t lead a revolution against Rome. While he overturned tables in the temple, he didn’t try to usurp the power of the high priest. All this he could have done. Satan tempted him with this in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry. All this could have been his. But instead of doing that, Jesus planted the seed of God’s Kingdom on earth. He became like one of the prophets, calling people to diligently seek God, leading the faithful remnant in their devotion to God. He expanded the understanding of who was in and who was out, who counted as followers. Now it did not matter your nationality, it did not matter if you worshiped in the Temple, as Jesus did, or not. God’s Holy Spirit was available to everyone. Anyone could follow. This wasn’t a new idea, but it did something radical, it broke down lines of power. If you didn’t have to be a priest to enter the Holy of Holies, if you could indeed encounter the Spirit of God anywhere, there was no need for temple structure and hierarchy. Everyone had access.
Jesus planted the seed of God’s Kingdom through his death. He told his disciples that unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it can never produce a plant. It is through death that life happens. He took on the death of the most despised, he fell to the earth and died, to produce the plant of God’s reign. When Jesus rose, God’s Spirit was gifted to the disciples in ways that are truly remarkable. They now had Christ within them. He wasn’t the singular person of Jesus, he lived in them. His Spirit was present in their lives. They were the wheat that was birthed through Jesus’s death. When disciples were killed for their devotion to Jesus, rather than eliminating the movement, it grew. Their seeds of the Kingdom were planted and more disciples rose up in their place. The movement could not be tamped down. They were seeds. Their lives are risen with Christ just as our lives are today.
When evil, when pain, when suffering, come to us, as it most surely will, we have two options. We can try to control it, try to make ourselves more powerful than we are, try to push it back and deny it, or we can learn to live into our new lives as they have been shaped by it. That doesn’t mean that evil or pain or suffering is okay or a gift. It still has the power to crucify us. That kind of death is not of God. But God can give us new life out of the crucifying moments. God can help us live in new ways. God can give us the Holy Spirit to radically change and redirect our lives. God’s Kingdom can be born in us, even after the most painful moments. We can become alive again even though we suffered. We can rise anew.
Because the cross was not the death of God, because Christ rose from the grave, we can rise again too. We have the power of resurrection within us. Within the sacraments of the Church, we take Christ into ourselves, our souls and bodies. We are the seeds of the Kingdom of God, being planted into the world and born into new life. The world is not perfect. Our religious institutions are far from perfect. But we have within us the power of the resurrection. We have the germ of life in Christ that is unstoppable. New life is not only possible, it is assured. Because Christ rose from the dead, we have the power of resurrection too. May we use this power to build up the Kingdom of God on earth. Amen.
