Read: Revelation 5 & Revelation 12
So here are my thoughts on Easter. No reflection on Easter can
begin with Easter, it must begin with Good Friday. We must never forget that
our salvation, that the triumph of God, came to be through suffering and death.
Suffering and death are the doorways through which the Divine walks to bring
about redemption. Jesus death, I think, must be understood on two levels. There
are two cosmic truths being played out in the death of Jesus.
The first is the forgiveness of sins. Jesus, in my view, is not
some sacrifice God demands for sin. God isn't killing Jesus so He doesn't have
to kill us. This standard view is known as propitiatory sacrifice. It is the
idea that Jesus stands in for every sinner. I don't think this is right. I
rather think of Jesus as a propitiatory victim. Jesus shares in the suffering
of every victim of sin. God cannot forgive sins willy-nilly. It is not possible
for a just God to forgive someone for a sin visited upon you or me, without
making God unjust. But in Jesus Christ, pace Girard, I think God stands in the
place of every victim of every sin. God shares the suffering of all people, and
in Christ of all victims, and so God gains the moral position He needs to
forgive in a way that is truly just.
The second level of Jesus' death I think is more
about an objective fight between good and evil. The apocalyptic worldview
attributes suffering in this world in part to the action of dark powers that
stand between God and man. There is war in heaven, and in apocalyptic Judaism,
the war creates collateral damage. We suffer from that collateral damage. The
devil targets us because God loves us. Revelation 12 talks about this a little
bit. Revelation 5 shows us that the suffering Jesus incurred on earth
translates to power in Heaven. The horror of the cross is the horror of
warfare. The terrible toll on the human person Jesus is an outward and visible
sign of the epic battle Jesus waged against sin in the cosmos. His standing
with every victim cost Him dearly in His incarnated self, but it raised Him up
to the supreme level of Divine authority in Heaven. His blood and His suffering
were the very weapons by which satan was defeated, according to Revelation
12:11. The propitiatory victimhood is part of the very key to this. For satan's
power in Revelation 12 is said to be the power of 'accusation'. The devil has
the power of judgment. By standing in the place of every victim, The Son gains
the power to forgive, and thereby rob satan of his power.
Easter is the exercising of the power of Christ on Earth. It shows
us who won that battle we saw being waged in Jesus' body. God won. He was the
only one who could. The Resurrection is an event, a raw experience of the
divine through Jesus after His death. We ignore the strangeness of the Gospels
if we try to define what the resurrection was too tightly. It was an event
beyond words' ability to fully describe. But it included a few important
elements. It included JESUS. Jesus, after death, came and touched the
disciples' lives. The Gospels are founded in part on the absolute conviction
that Jesus was proved to be the divine instrument of salvation. The New
Testament is actually diverse when it comes to trying to define what it means
to say that Jesus saved us. But the conviction that JESUS saved us is
foundational. In included GOD. Whatever the Resurrection was, it was a divine
act. It was proof that God was completing HIS plan. Jesus founded His life on
the idea that God alone could save us. The Easter Story does not leave His
conviction behind. The central Christian belief in the divinity of Jesus stems
in part from later post-Biblical theological reflection. It is doubtful that we
can pull a simple dual-nature theology from any part of the New Testament. But
the convictions from which those beliefs stem ARE in the New Testament. They
are the convictions of the Resurrection: in Jesus' power as savior and in the
need to have God alone be our savior.
Finally, the Resurrection included US. The Resurrection has to be
in part about Jesus' rebirth within the church. Jesus gave His disciples a job
to do. The battle that Jesus fought is over, and Jesus' work ensured the
triumph of our side. It was the decisive battle, but not the last battle.
Revelation 12 reminds us that after satan's defeat in Heaven, he has come to
earth, and we must continue the fight here. Jesus has offered us unmediated
access to God. We are now to confront satan on earth with the power of God. How
do we do this? By imitating Jesus life, death and resurrection in our own
lives. We must see in Good Friday and Easter, the key to everything. These
events are the essence of reality laid bare. They are all life poured out in
one life. We must put Good Friday and Easter, the Cross and Resurrection, at
the center of everything we see and do. Life must become cruciform, and the
universe must be seen as the triumph of being over non-being, consciousness
over non-consciousness, life over death. If we can learn to see and live this
way, then like Jesus we may be crushed down on earth, only to have great
treasure and glory in Heaven. So may it be. Amen.
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