Getting Closer to God: The Gift You Didn't Know You Needed

The scriptures referred to are in the text. Most of the quotations are from the NET.

In Psalm 90, it says, “The number of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years...” (Psalm 90:10) Which would make it sound as if life expectancy back then was almost what it is now: 70 or 80 years. Yet actual life expectancy for most people was half that. Because life expectancy is the average for an entire population and, of course, averages bring down the highs and bring up the lows. The reason for the discrepancy between the Biblical numbers and life expectancy then is that the psalmist is talking about the maximum lifespan of an individual. And those who could expect to live to those ages tended to be rich. Whereas the life expectancy for working class people was in their mid-thirties, due to accidents, poor hygiene, lack of medical care and, for women, childbirth. But what really brought the average down was that a lot of children never grew up. About 50% of children did not make it to the age of 5. And much of that is because of infant mortality. A third of children died in the first year of life alone. If you made it to age 10 your personal life expectancy got much better. And between the years 1200 and 1745, records show that if you made it to 21, you were likely to live to between 62 and 70 years of age. Unless you were a woman. Only if you survived the childbearing years were you likely to see another 20 years of life.

A major reason that life expectancy has risen in the last century is that we vaccinate our infants. That has essentially doubled our life expectancy. The problem is, for kids, they don't know that the pain they are getting from having a doctor or nurse stab them with needles is the price of what amounts to a second lifespan. And the problem with some parents today is that they don't remember what life was like for their great-grandparents. They haven't buried several of their children. They haven't had to raise children crippled by polio, or blinded by measles, or paralyzed by diphtheria. Unfortunately vaccines don't give you a visible positive benefit, like superpowers. Vaccines reduce the risk of early death and disability. And as we have seen in those who continue to ignore the official warnings to stay home and otherwise physically distance themselves from others, some people have a hard time understanding something that prevents a negative outcome.

Which can make it really hard to understand when we think about God's greatest gift to us: Jesus. While following Jesus does have positive effects, they are not always or immediately obvious. Like the soreness at the injection sight and the mild feeling of illness some get after vaccination, the downside of following Jesus looms often larger in our eyes than the upside. Ridicule and possibly being ostracized by old friends for being perceived as a fanatic are just two of those negative effects you might risk in our society. But in some countries, being a Christian could get you imprisoned or even killed. So in what way is Jesus a great gift?

We have been talking about getting closer to God during Lent. Last week we talked about what we can do for God. This week we start talking about what he did for us. And the big thing is he sent his son. He sent him to teach us and give us an example of how to live. But God knew that he was sending his son on what was essentially a suicide mission. And beginning this Sunday, we remember that part.

To get at how Jesus is God's greatest gift, we have to deal with a question that bothers a lot of people: “Why did Jesus have to die?” Many of us have been taught something like this: God hates sin. It is against his holy law, so he has to punish it. But God loves us. He doesn't want to punish us. So he punishes his son in our place and thereby lets us off the hook.

I have a lot of problems with this explanation. For starters it amounts to God exploiting a legal loophole to save us. How is that moral? For another thing, it makes it seem that God is somehow under the law. But the law comes from God; it is an expression of God's character. And as we learn in 1 John 4:8, God is love. When asked which was the greatest commandment, Jesus gave two: loving God with heart and soul and mind and strength and loving our neighbor as we do ourselves. He said the whole law derived from these two commandments to love. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48) The word for “perfect” could be translated “mature” or “complete.” It means having reached your goal or aim. God wants us to be as loving as he is.

So why would a loving God want his son to die, if he is not under any legal obligation to do so? Consider for a moment that the law is not so much like a legal statute as like a law of nature, a statement of the way the universe operates. That helps us to understand it a little better. For instance, our bodies are subject to the laws of nature. If I abuse my body, damage is done. A sufficient amount of damage, done all at once or over time, will kill me. But we are not merely physical beings. We are spiritual as well. And it follows that any abuse I do to my spirit will damage and eventually kill that part of me. Jesus came to heal us in our totality.

Also when Jesus healed people we are told that he felt power go out of him, as when the woman with the chronic hemorrhage touched his garment. (Mark 5:29-30) If power went out of him when he healed people physically, what kind of power would it take for him to heal them spiritually? And what would it take for him to repair the spiritual damage done to the whole world?

Jesus' healing ministry was popular because medicine's ability to heal back then was limited. They knew that being physically unclean could lead to illness. Thus the good Samaritan cleansed the wounds of the man left for dead with olive oil and wine, which we now know have antiseptic properties, and he bandaged them to reduce the risk of further infection. Our ancestors weren't stupid; they simply lacked the level of knowledge we have, largely because of our scientific instruments. We only know that disease is caused by entities invisible to the naked eye because of the invention of the microscope around 1590, and the discovery of bacteria almost 90 years later, though it took many more decades before physicians proposed that these bacteria caused disease, and it wasn't until the early 1800s that this was proved. We call these invisible entities germs. Our ancestors called these invisible entities unclean spirits or demons. But they knew that something had gotten into people that made them sick.

Yet doctors could do little for the person who was seriously ill or injured. Ancient Egyptian and Indian physicians could diagnose diabetes. They couldn't effectively treat it. It was nearly 100 years ago that Canadian scientists showed they could save the lives of people with diabetes by giving them insulin obtained from animals. The first blood transfusions were performed between dogs in 1665, but trying to transfuse animal blood into humans was often fatal. By the early 1800s human to human blood transfusions were done with mixed results. It wasn't until blood types were discovered in the first decade of the twentieth century that blood transfusion became a safe way to save lives. At that same time, a medical researcher foresaw the possibility of one day transplanting organs to replace diseased ones. It wasn't until the late 1960s that heart transplants were attempted and it wasn't until 1984 and the introduction of cyclosporine that taking the healthy heart from a dead person could reliably give life to someone with a failing heart.

My point is that for certain serious physical conditions, only the donation of something vital from a healthy person can save one who is dying. And it stands to reason this could be true on the spiritual level as well. For instance, the Bible says that “life is in the blood,” and that is the reason why atonement for sin was done through animal sacrifices in the Old Testament. (Leviticus 17:11) But as we said, animal to human transfusion did not work well. The first two sheep to human transfusions worked; the third try was fatal. Similarly animal sacrifices were not ultimately the best solution. As it says in Hebrews, “For the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sins.” (Hebrew 10:14) As we said last week, if we perform a ritual empty of understanding or in the wrong spirit, it doesn't do any good because the purpose is to get us closer to being and acting like God.

Yet because dog to dog transfusions went well, it showed the idea worked in principle. And the high priest laying his hands on the head of the scapegoat and releasing it into the wilderness to carry away the people' s sins illustrated the principle of transferring the sins of many onto the one. So we can think of the sacrifices in the Old Testament as enacted parables, drilling into the heads of God's people the principle that the sacrifice of one life can save those of others.

Exactly how on the spiritual level the death of Jesus gives us life is not spelled out in detail in the Bible, which is why people try to come up with explanations that make sense to them. This attempt of mine is based on a couple of things. The first are hints in the Old Testament. In Ezekiel it says, “I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:26) That sounds eerily like a heart transplant, 2 ½ millennia before such a thing existed.

But who is the donor? Jesus, of course. That's the second part of my explanation of the atonement: the transfer of a healthy life to the dying. Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25) and “I am the way, the truth and the life.” (John 14:6) Switching metaphors, he says, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” (John 6:51) The life Jesus gives us is his life. After all, he offers eternal life and eternal describes something without beginning or end. We have a beginning but Christ doesn't. So the life he gives us is his own eternal life.

And you know something weird? People who receive a heart transplant sometimes report changes in their tastes in music or food or even changes in personality. Some simply attribute it to getting a new life. But 6% attribute it to receiving something of the person who donated their heart. In taking Jesus' gift of his life into our own, we should change as well. We should take on his self-sacrificial love of others.

You may think that I have been rather clinical about Jesus giving his life for and to us. That's something I, a nurse and very rational person, probably inherited from my mother, a nurse who was also a very rational person. Of course, Jesus' death was quite emotional for him, and for his followers and for his mother and family. We know that the night before he died he prayed that God would let the bitter cup of his death pass him by. We are told he was in great distress. (Matthew 26:36-44) On the cross he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Matthew 27:46) Yet he went through with it. Why?

I am reminded of the story of the little boy whose sister was quite ill. She needed a blood transfusion and the whole family was tested and her little brother was the only one who matched. So he was asked if he would give his blood to save his sister. And it was obvious that he didn't like the idea but he said “Yes.” And then he went to his mother and to his father and hugged them and said “Goodbye.” And it dawned on them that he thought he was being asked to give all his blood! They assured him that was not the case. But he was willing to die that his sister might live. That's how much he loved her. And that's how much Jesus loves us.

You can survive donating blood. You can survive donating a kidney or even a lobe of your liver. But a heart donor, of course, must die. And you can specify that on your driver's license. In case of your death, your organs can give life to someone else. But you have to sign the consent when you get your license. Jesus signed his life away that we might live.

It was not a neat surgical operation, either. He was beaten and whipped and skewered to a cross to die of blood loss and hypoxia. He took no anesthetic. And at a time when most people would be lost in their own pain and suffering, Jesus managed to pray for the forgiveness of his executioners, and promise a criminal that he would be with him in paradise that day, and arrange for the care of his mother. Jesus focused not on himself but on others. He lived his whole life for others. And he continued in that right up to his death.

The corpse of a heart donor doesn't look much better than Jesus'. His chest is cut open, his sternum and ribs are sawed off and removed, the vessels are severed and the place where the heart resided since it was formed in the womb is just a bloody hole. Of course with a heart donor they are neatly sewn up afterward. But the body is grievously wounded to save the life of another. If someone from an earlier time were to see it, it would appear as barbarous to them as the cross is to us.

God sent his son to save us. He sent him knowing what we would do to him. But he knew that he could take this evil act of ours and bring great good out of it. Jesus knew this too and that's why he volunteered for this suicide mission.

We do not completely understand how he did this, anymore than an infant understands how the vaccination saves him or that, through herd immunity, it saves other people from a disease he might otherwise spread. We are infants in our understanding of the ways of our Creator and Redeemer. All we can do is respond to this gracious gift we didn't ask for, or know we needed, with awe and and gratitude and love.