For example, if you have a husband who likes to have a drink after work, that's fine, and it might help him to unwind. But if he needs to have a drink after every workday, you may be looking at a pattern. It's the same with your wife. Does she enjoy to flick through Facebook in the evening? Okay, fine. But if she only does the Facebook thing all evening, and it's every evening, well, you have a different matter to deal with, don't you?
Patterns are important, simliarities are important, and sometimes things are more simliar than you might think. You might not notice it, but your brain does. The story that we have from the Old Testament is one of those, the story of the binding of Isaac. This is a story that is largely hated by, well, mostly everyone, really, Christian or otherwise. People have lost their faith over this story, have drifted away from God, from faith, from everything because of this story. It's funny, really, because we know for sure that the knife wasn't used in this situation, that Abraham and Isaac both walked right back down the mountain again, with no troubles. Sure, things are fine after this story, no harm, no foul. But the distaste that everyone feels about this story has to do with the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son.
It represents a failure in keeping the essential, core contract that we all know, and of which a violation is an absolute scandal to all of us. Parents should protect their children, that is the way it is, that is the way it always should be. When we hear about parents not protecting their children, or worse, hurting or harming their children, we are outraged. It bothers us, it hurts us, and we react violently against it. We look at these situations and we are so bothered by it that lots of the times we can't even stand to look at it. And Abraham, having been told by God to sacrifice his son Isaac, his only son whom he loved, took him up the mountain with the express purpose to plunge a knife into his son, and kill him, slaying him as an offering to God. His son, Isaac, who trusts him, is being led up the hill to be killed. You look at this, and it bothers you. It troubles and angers you. It angers you even though everyone survives, and God provides the sacrifice, as Abraham said he would.
This story bothers you, troubles you way down, and upsets you. You don't think about it too much, because it's such a troubling story that you want to skip it. Fine fine fine, so let's think about a story that, as a Christian, you do like. How can I pick the one story out of the entire Bible that I can be sure every Christian will like? How about, given that this is lent, the crucifixion of Christ. Now, the crucifixion of Jesus may not be a fun story, but it's a good one. And sometimes good things aren't fun. Sometimes filling a tooth or extracting a kidney aren't fun, but they're good. They can be really good, really powerful, really, intensely amazing things. And the crucifixion of Jesus, if you don't appreciate that story, then you really have no business being a Christian. The Christian faith is, at its core, one about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and to get to that, we have to get to the crucifixion. Getting to that crucifixion of Jesus Christ, that takes us to another hill, with another Son, but this time, the child isn't spared.
For you see, the story of Isaac, and the story of Jesus, they're the same story, and that's kind of the point. Think about it for a second. The sacrifice of a beloved son, in whom, the father is well pleased. The son having to haul the wood up the hill, the binding of the son, the knife and spear, the sacrifice with its head in the thorns. This is the same story, but you love one of them, and hate the other. Why is that? Why do you reckon that you do this?
We Christians, we are honestly a bit too laid back when it comes to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. We don't feel much outrage, we don't experience much anger, we don't get troubled by its effects. We think about it as a guarantee, right? Of course Jesus would die on the cross for your sins, naturally he would, why wouldn't he? Why wouldn't he be slain on the cross for you and for me? He was obviously going to die, and the specter of the cross, the spear, the crown of thorns ,well, we just don't think about it too much anymore, because we are so used to it, it no longer shocks us.
In horror circles, it's usually wise to keep the monster under wraps. If you show the moster too much, if you give too much away, you'll find that the audience will normalize the creature, and won't be afraid of it anymore. That's part of the reason that Jaws was such a big hit, because the shark was under wraps for most of the film. If you would have seen Bruce for the entire film, the reaction would have worn off pretty quickly. If you use him sparingly, though, the shark has the power to shock all the way through the film. It's the same with the cross of Christ. If you get comfy with it, you need to be shocked back out of that again. For a lot of us, the movie "The Passion of the Christ" by Mel Gibson was a pretty big shocker out of that. It showed the suffering of Jesus in a way that we don't often think about. We gloss over the whipping, the flogging, the nails, the spear, we don't think about it, and we rush to the conclusion. Jesus dies and rises again.
Well, it's Lent, and since it's Lent, it's time for us to think about the suffering of Jesus anew. And what we need to think about is the suffering and death of Jesus Christ in a way that can still shock, can still appal. How do we do that? Well, this week sets it up quite nicely for you. The story of Abraham with Isaac, and the story of Jesus, realizing that they're the same, that sets things up perfectly. For with this matter, you can channel the outrage over the binding of Isaac towards the cross of Jesus. Don't run from the revulsion you feel at the story of Isaac, but understand that the sacrifice was provided by God, not just that ram, but the full, perfect and complete sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who died for the sins of the whole world. Usually, we want to think that that element is too light, too frivolous. But today, I want you to think about the cross of Jesus through the lens of the binding of Isaac. Does it bother you that a father would be asked to offer up his son, his beloved son for forgiveness of sins? If it does, then let the cross of Jesus bother you just a bit more. Does it trouble you that a son would walk up a hill carrying the wood to which he would be lashed? Then think about Jesus in that same way, staggering up the hill with the cross. Does it bother you that a knife is held over a son with the intent of ending his life? Then it should bother you that the spear actually plunged into Jesus, causing water and blood to flow out.
In other words, let the cross of Christ have the weight it deserves. Let the work of Jesus be as large as it is, let the sacrifice of Jesus have the meaning that it does. It's awful. It looms large. It should bother and trouble you,for this is the end of the life of a perfect man, one who had done nothing, and one who could have avoided this death at any moment. This is the death of a man who had no reason to die except that he knew that this was the only way through which you could be saved. Back to the beginning, we all know that the obligation of a parent is to do whatever it takes to ensure the survival and well-being of their children. If a parent fails at this, it is a horrible failure of what has been a promise between parents and children for as long as parents and children have existed. And we are God's children, and we know that he is supposed to do whatever it would take to ensure our survival, our well-being, our eternity. This is what God is supposed to do, and the only way to work that out is to pay the debt in full that we all, through our sin, owed. And this is the work of Christ. It should trouble you, it should bother you, you should never grow too relaxed in thinking about the death of Jesus. Channel the revulsion you feel at the binding of Isaac, and think about the death of Christ in that way. Think about the price that was paid for us to be adopted into the family of our father. Thanks to Jesus, when God looks at us, he says something phenomenal to us, the same words spoken to Jesus as he came up out of the baptismal waters.
No comments:
Post a Comment