Easter Reflection 2: New Thoughts

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.