The Means of Life—Wait, What?
People like things to be predictable. We like to see patterns and rhythms, and so have a sense of how all will go. When things go differently than we expect, and this happens quite often, it is surprising and even disturbing; we tend not to like that. In a case where things go better than we expect: that is a good thing, but otherwise, reversals of what we anticipate, can be upsetting.
One of the principles of the whole sacred story of the Bible is the concept of “reversal.” It happens over and over again in the Bible. Think about these: 1. Abraham is told to leave the safety of his nomadic family and people to secure the future family of his innumerable offspring; 2. Joseph the son of Jacob is sold off to foreigners by his brothers who hate him and by this, he becomes the agent for their survival by the mysterious workings of God; 3. The children of Israel in their escape from Egypt are sandwiched between the Red Sea and the army and chariots of Pharaoh, and the very sea that threatens to end their lives folds back to reveal their avenue to safety; 4. The one to be anointed to replace Israel’s first king, the powerful Saul is among the sons of Jesse: the youngest and smallest of them. Oh my, how many other examples we could point to!
Holy Week brings us the mysterious paradox of Christ bringing forth life for all through death. To supply yourself with a means to get that figured out in your mind is to miss out on the wonder somehow. Embracing the highest meaning of Holy Week, we must open to what is beyond comprehension. We beg to give us ways other than just rational thought to perceive it. One priest early in my life, Fr. Glenn Jenks, said this about mysteries of the faith: “If you try diligently to comprehend, and you remain perplexed, you are on the right track.”
If we were gathered in church this day, Tuesday of Holy Week, for the Eucharist, we would have evocative scriptures and prayers assigned. For an appreciation of the gospel reversal wrapped into Christ’s saving work, look at the Collect of the Day:
O God, by the passion of your blessed Son you made an instrument of shameful death to be for us the means of life: Grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ, that we may gladly suffer shame and loss for the sake of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ.
Life comes through death when we are in God’s hands. Glory comes through shame when we operate within the mysterious life of God. Reversal is at the heart of it all. The principle of God who astounds us with reversal is woven into the ancient story. The prophet Isaiah tells forth how the agent of God’s choosing who will redeem the people of God will be rejected, hated, and of low estate, humanly speaking. By God’s reversal, this lowly one will be revered: Kings will rise to their feet, princes bow low. All of this is because human ways and thought are pushed aside as God’s chosen one emerges:
Thus says the Lord,
the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One,
to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers,
"Kings shall see and stand up,
princes, and they shall prostrate themselves,
because of the Lord, who is faithful,
the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you." —Isaiah 49:7
Older than the prophecy of Isaiah are the Psalms of David, the King of Israel. These songs, at length, were sung in Temple worship. Note this passage in which the one who is vulnerable and expected to be done in, is the one whose prayer for help is heard:
They say, "God has forsaken him; go after him and seize him; *
because there is none who will save."
O God, be not far from me; *
come quickly to help me, O my God. —Psalm 71:11-12
How does it happen? How can it be? The lost are rescued. This point is held forth powerfully through St. Paul the great missionary of the first century. He states the paradoxical surprise of God’s saving ways in his writings to the believers in Corinth. He is showing that the cross of Christ represents an impossible puzzle both to the tradition of the Greeks, and that of the Jews. One who is captured and executed cannot be divine, cannot be the anointed redeemer. Son of God, crucified? Messiah, captured and killed? The vulnerability and surrender of Jesus cancels out a claim that he is Savior in the mind of the Jew and the Greek. Yet woven into this death is the deep mystery that his love, his self-offering, overturns death. Paul develops this perplexing surprise through the whole chapter, but we can peer simply through one verse to see the wonder proclaimed:
For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength. —1Cor. 1:25
The very words of Christ, in St. John’s record of Good News, announce the holy reversal that makes death the means of life:
Jesus answered them, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. — John 12:23-25
It is true: we like things predictable and according to patterns we know. How unspeakably wonderful it is that God knows just when to interrupt our human ways of thought. To the bystander that day at Golgotha, it must have been a gruesome and horribly common picture. Three more prisoners pitifully executed: the rabbi between two robbers. But to you and me, who contemplate the way that God surprises us, it is the picture of love…
See, from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down!
did e’er such love and sorrow meet, or thorns compose so rich a crown?
Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were an offering far too small;
love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all. (Hymn 474)