Christ is risen! Part 1

Christ is risen!

(A theological reflection in 4 parts)

Christ is risen! Part 1: The great reversal: hate to love; death to life.

On the third day.

For those who believe, who know the gospel, no more is needed to be said to connect us to resurrection life. Except to say, now it is the third day. The day he is risen. Today, Jesus is risen.

This earliest, basic acclamation of faith is the heart of all.

It gains much of its power by contrast with what went before.

Jesus was crucified by his enemies, the victim of their power, hatred and fear. The excruciating pain and bloody mess of it is beyond imagining to all except those who have experienced a war zone of severed limbs and shattered bodies with blood and gore all around. Except that in some ways, this death is worse for being so controlled, so personalised, so completely directed to its chosen victim. Sacrificial theology has plumbed as far as it can go, but crucifixion is not about thought, but the experience of pain. Raw bodily pain that makes you scream and rage and beg. You are fully aware that this is your journey to death, and those who hate you have deliberately chosen to extend your torture as long as they can. No easy way out to annihilation for you. You must endure each breath until it stops. Knowing that your torturers are delighting in what they are doing. No pang of remorse or sympathy from them; they exult in your agony and their victory. So, even as the mind is on the point of imploding under the terror of this ordeal, on top of the physical pain is this understanding of your enemies’ delight and of the destruction of all your own hopes. And for you, above even this, is the distress at the very core of your spirit that the one you trusted, the one you gave your whole life to, has brought you to this hour, and he is doing nothing to rescue you.

How did the followers of Jesus turn this into the profoundest expression of love? They have achieved a complete reversal: the more hatred and pain expressed, the more love and joy is released. For this crucifixion is understood, not as something done to Jesus by his enemies, but as something Jesus has done for love of us. It is not demonstrating the extent of human hate, anger and fear, it is demonstrating the extent of God’s love, revealed in the human person Jesus. It is understood as something that Jesus chose out of his faithfulness to God, believing that God had chosen him to demonstrate to the world that there are no limits to what he will do for love of us. In Jesus, God is suffering on the cross. His death is seen as embodying sacrificial love and revealing to humanity that this is the very nature of God. In the mystery of his death, all that is wrong with us is faced up to, embraced, absorbed, accepted – and overcome. In the very act of succumbing to death, Jesus won his victory of revealing his love for us – the love of God – that would not turn away but loved us to the death.