Reconciling Opposites

The scriptures referred to are Colossians 1:11-20 and Luke 23:33-43.

In today's lectionary readings we have two very different pictures of Jesus. In Colossians he is the cosmic Christ, the image of the invisible God, who holds all things together. In Luke he is one of 3 criminals, all condemned by the legal authorities, being executed. How did this man, nailed to a simple wooden structure, as helpless as a butterfly pinned to a card by a collector, inspire anyone to see him as the Lord of all life? It is one of the major paradoxes of our faith.

And it starts with one universal psychological turnoff: we don't like our heroes to die. This becomes even more problematic, oddly enough, for those skeptics who think Christ was made up. Because we literally immortalize fictional heroes. Sherlock Holmes was thought to die wrestling with Professor Moriarty as they both topple into the maelstrom below the Reichenbach Falls. But Watson erroneously deduced the detective's death. In the book You Only Live Twice, when James Bond blows up Blofeld's suicide garden and castle, the superspy escapes in a balloon and falls into the sea. As with Holmes, the world only thinks he's dead. All Bond loses is his memory...temporarily. But Jesus actually dies.

And he doesn't die heroically, in battle. Beowulf dies slaying a dragon. All the Norse gods die fighting at Ragnorak. Harry Potter's uncle, Sirius Black, dies battling Voldemort's Deatheaters. In fact, most of the characters who die in the Harry Potter series go down fighting. The only one who willingly lets himself be killed is Harry. He goes unarmed to Voldemort, knowing he will die, because that is the only way to make Voldemort mortal and save his friends. J.K. Rowling did this deliberately because, to the consternation of fundamentalists everywhere, she intended Harry to be a Christ figure, as Aslan is in the Narnia Chronicles.

Jesus, the real life model for Harry and Aslan, actually forbade his disciples to fight for his life and let the authorities arrest and execute him to save the world. He died on a cross, a shameful, painful, public method of execution usually reserved for slaves and traitors. This was no fate for a hero, and especially not for a god. As Paul said, “...but we preach about a crucified Christ, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” (1 Corinthians 1:23) What good is a disgraced and dead Messiah?

And that was precisely what was on the mind of the disciples Friday, Saturday and a good deal of the Sunday of what we call Holy Week. Jesus was supposed to be God's anointed king. But now he was rotting in a tomb. They were wrong about him. The whole 3 years of his ministry were a waste. Now what should they do? Besides lay low from the authorities, that is?

That's why the resurrection was so unexpected. Sure, Jesus raised people from the dead. But who was going to raise him? As Martha said of her brother Lazarus, “I know that he will come back to life again in the resurrection at the last day.” (John 11:24) The doctrine of a general resurrection before a final judgment goes back to Daniel. (Daniel 12:2) But the idea that a single person would be raised to life before that was unheard of. When Jesus rose, it was unprecedented.

Today, of course, superheroes tend to die and come back to life over and over again. But that is because you can't make more money if Batman, or Superman, or Spiderman stay dead. In the case of Harry and Aslan, they only come back because their stories are based on that of Jesus. Contrary to what James Fraser wrote in The Golden Bough, there were no dying and rising gods before Jesus. Pagans gods were not necessarily immortal and if a god died, like Osiris, Quetzalcoatl, the Hawaiian deities, Baldr and the rest of the Norse pantheon, they stayed dead. Their bodies may fertilize the earth and cause spring plants to grow, or bits of them may be used to create humans, but they don't come back as themselves. Jesus is unique. He comes back as himself, down to the wounds from his crucifixion.

It is the extraordinary resurrection of Jesus that made the disciples rethink what they thought they knew about him. They knew he was a prophet. They knew he could do things no other human could. They thought he was the Messiah, God's anointed agent in bringing about his divine kingdom. Though Peter calls him the Son of God, he could be using it in the traditional sense as a royal title for the King of Israel. But after his resurrection, they realize the title is literally true. Jesus, though obviously a human being who eats, gets tired, and can be killed, is more than merely a man. His resurrection changes their perceptions so much that these monotheistic Jews now see him to be God incarnate.

But why did he die? And why in that way? The God of the Old Testament is a warrior. Moses and Joshua and David were warriors. Jesus was not. Was there more to God than the fierce Lord of Hosts the Jews saw him as? Was there more to God than the angry righteous judge who condemns the wicked? Was God more than simply the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? Was he really the God of all peoples?

Our passage in Luke is instructive. First Jesus asks God to forgive those in the process of killing him. But what they are doing is supremely sinful. Why does he not ask God to smite them? A couple of well placed lightening bolts would bring the whole thing to a halt. Could it be that God is more merciful than we thought? Can he even forgive what we would see as unforgivable?

And while Jesus was probably praying as well for the religious leaders who were mocking him and who pushed for Pilate to execute him, the people actually driving the nails through his limbs were Roman soldiers. They didn't conquer the known world by being nice guys. When Jesus was a boy, and the capital city of Galilee, Sepphoris, rebelled against Rome upon the death of Herod the Great, the Roman governor had the city burned and all the men, thousands of them, crucified. When Jesus was an apprentice to Joseph, they probably sought work there during its rebuilding by Herod Antipas. Nazareth was only 4 miles away. And so Jesus may very well have passed by the thousands of uprights left from those crosses everyday. Jesus knew that what the Romans were doing to him wasn't an aberration. They weren't innocent and they weren't Jews. But Jesus asked God to forgive them.

Again one of the criminals rebukes the other for taunting Jesus. He admits that they deserve death. Something in Jesus tells him that he is innocent. Then he asks Jesus simply to remember him. And Jesus tells him something he tells no one else: “Today you will be with me in paradise.” But the criminal is dying. He can do nothing to atone for his crimes, which probably included murder. The Greek word used to describe the two—robbers or brigands—is the same word used to describe Barabbas, who led an insurrection in Jerusalem and killed people. (Mark 15:7, 27; John 18:40) Had he not been released instead of Jesus, Barabbas would have been crucified that day, alongside what were undoubtedly his fellow revolutionaries. So this man is most likely a murderer. And he can do nothing at this point to show he has changed. He merely recognizes that Jesus probably is the Messiah and will rule God's kingdom. How? I doubt the rebel knew exactly. But he put his trust in Jesus. And Jesus accepted it as reason enough for the man to join him in paradise.

So if Jesus is God, God is merciful and forgiving. He cares about those who aren't his people. He accepts faith in him as sufficient to save the worst of sinners, even without any good works. This is a side of God rarely seen in the Hebrew Bible. But these overlooked aspects of God are on full display in Jesus at a time when most people undergoing such torture would be focused on their own pain and shame. This is superhuman goodness. It is divine grace.

And it was Jesus' post-resurrection appearance to Paul that changed his way of thinking about this man he had thought was justly crucified for blasphemy. And Paul also had blood on his hands. He was responsible for the deaths of Christians. Not only was Paul complicit in the stoning of Stephen, but as he says before Herod Agrippa, “On the authority of the chief priests I put many of the saints in prison, and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them.” (Acts 6:10) So he was just one step removed from doing what the rebel on the cross did. And what he did to Christians was counted as doing it to Christ. Jesus says to Paul on the road to Damascus, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4) Not “why are you persecuting my followers” but “why are you persecuting me?”

But again Jesus is forgiving and gracious. And Paul doesn't forget what Jesus did. In recounting Jesus' resurrection appearances he adds himself last and says, “For I am the least of the apostles and do not deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” (1 Corinthians 15:9) He also says, “Although I am less than the least of all God's people, this grace was given to me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things.” (Ephesians 3:8-9) This echoes what Jesus said about the woman who washed his feet: that the person who is forgiven many sins loves God more than the one forgiven a few sins. (Luke 7:36-48)

But it is one thing for untutored fishermen to make the leap from Jesus being the Messiah to his being God; it is quite another for an educated Pharisee and disciple of the great rabbi Gamaliel to see Jesus as God among us. For Paul it seems to have been the result of 3 factors. First, of course, was the resurrected Jesus appearing to Paul. Secondly, it was what happened to him immediately after that. Blinded, he prayed for three days. He saw a vision of the man Jesus would send to restore his sight. In 2 Corinthians he speaks of having visions, plural, including one in which he is caught up into the third heaven or paradise. (2 Corinthians 12:2-3) Was it one of these visions that revealed to him Jesus' divine nature?

Thirdly, Paul was aware of how God's wisdom is personified in the Book of Proverbs. And indeed he calls Jesus the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24, 30; Colossians 2:3) Proverbs says that wisdom existed before the creation of anything else and that Wisdom was alongside God during the process of creation. (Proverbs 8:22-31) We find that echoed here in Colossians.

And you may notice similarities between what Paul writes in Colossians and the preface to John's gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made...” (John 1:1-3) The Word or, in Greek logos, was a popular concept at the time, found in both Jewish theology and Greek philosophy. Jewish philosopher Philo used it to mean the organizing principle of and reason for creation, which, as you can see, ties in nicely with the picture of Wisdom in the Bible.

Again what is unique is the idea that God's Wisdom, the logos behind creation and the reason for everything, is a person, Jesus of Nazareth. That he was the Christ, God's anointed prophet, priest and king, was something people who encountered him were willing to accept. But that he was God made flesh was harder to swallow.

And yet the church came to that conclusion fairly early. In 1 Thessalonians, the oldest book in the New Testament, God and the Lord Jesus are treated as equals. Grace and peace come from them both. It is the church of both God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It is Jesus who saves people and gives life (1 Thessalonians 1:1, 10, 5:9-10). C.S. Lewis died 56 years ago this week. He was good and wise yet I don't think I could convince anyone he was God incarnate. But the letters to the Thessalonians, written just 20 years after the resurrection, show that those who met and knew Jesus accepted it and were preaching it.

And they had no problem accepting that the reason and principle behind creation was the same person who died on the cross. The God who gives life underwent death. The God who gave the Law forgave lawbreakers. The God who is Love remained loving to those who acted out of hate. They did their worst to him. He turned it into the greatest boon given to humanity.

Jesus Christ is the reason behind all things. He is the reason why natural laws control the universe from the largest galaxy to the smallest sub-atomic particles. He is the reason why monkeys and babies have a inborn sense of justice. He is the reason we have mirror neurons that make emotions contagious and foster empathy for others. He is the reason a mother will face off with a larger animal or a predator to save her offspring, even if it kills her. He is the reason why even scientists recognize love as the secret of life and happiness.

He who made the stars made you. There are an estimated 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe and 86 billion neurons in your brain. And unlike the other animals, humans have the capability of understanding most of the universe around us. But the hardest thing to understand is the love of God. He didn't have to become one of us. He didn't have to die for us. And he shouldn't forgive those who crucified him nor those who deserved to be crucified. But he did.

And he should have stayed dead. That's what all real life heroes do eventually. No one lives forever. Here again the God who is love defies our expectations. Jesus rose again as himself but better, without our limitations. And if we put our trust in him, he will raise us to a new and better life as well.

Sometimes the universe seems vast and cold. But Jesus reveals that at its heart is the fire of God's boundless love. Some scientists estimate the universe has only 5 billion years left. But Jesus reveals that there is no such end for those who choose life in him. Our imaginary heroes, like Doctor Who and the Avengers, save the world. But they leave it the same world: rife with war and racism and rape and murder and oppression. Jesus reveals a new creation is coming, where God lives among us and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain and where he will wipe away every tear from our eyes. It's hard to imagine the one who made the universe doing that, but when we remember that he is also the one who became one of us and who healed the sick and who fed the hungry and who knows what pain and death are from experience, it is easy to see him doing that. And knowing all that Jesus did for us, we know we can trust him to get us through whatever trials we encounter.