Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time Cycle C
St Austin, Austin TX Feb 10,
2019
As you know I
am a member of the Paulist Fathers, and Paulists, not surprisingly, like St.
Paul, both for his accomplishments and for his writings. We have a longer than usual portion of one of
St. Paul’s letters as our second reading, and I would like to look at
that.
Paul tells the
Corinthians, and also us, what he handed on to us of first importance. This is not something he made up, but
something he received, and has handed on to us. And he tells us that this is of
FIRST IMPORTANCE, and so worthy of paying attention to. And it is this: “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures; that
he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the
Scriptures…..” This is what is of
first importance for our faith and our salvation.
Therefore, I
think this is worthwhile our spending some time to flesh it out and understand
it better.
What do we
mean when we say “Christ died for our sins”?
How did Christ die for your sins and my sins? What is that all about?
Various
answers have been given over the two thousand years of Christianity, and many
of the answers were lame at best, and destructive at worst.
Did Christ die
to appease an angry God? That sin
offended God’s majesty and God was mollified or appeased by the terrible death
of an innocent man, Jesus, to make up for the offense? NO!
That is a bad understanding of Jesus’ salvific death.
Did Jesus die
to somehow repay a debt to God? Humanity
had offended God, wronged God, and now had to pay a sort of fine to
re-establish friendship with God. Did
Jesus repay our debt to God? NO!
So how is
Jesus’ death on the cross salvific for you and for me? What does it have to do with us?
The salvific death of Jesus is a great
mystery, which can never be fully explained nor totally comprehended. Its power and import and beauty are beyond
what human words can express.
Nonetheless,
we can still say somethings about the manner of Jesus’ death that are
true. It is not so much that Jesus died. All
people die, and unfortunately plenty of people die tragic, awful, unjust and
painful deaths. It is not that Jesus
died, but rather the manner in which Jesus approached, accepted, and endured
His death, that was salvific. That
condition of mind and heart with which Jesus accepted and embraced His death is
called in the Bible “obedience.” This
Biblical obedience is all about Jesus’ disposition. This is not like the obedience that a dog
learns in obedience school. It is not
like obedience in the military, where it does not matter if the soldier or
sailor understands or agrees with the order, but only that the soldier or
sailor do it.
No, the
Biblical concept of obedience is rather about a harmony of will and
action. Jesus remains true to the
Father’s Will for him – proclaiming God’s Kingdom, God’s care and love for us,
even though doing so would upset the usual way of doing things, and inevitably
lead to conflict with the chief priests and the Romans, and ultimately end in
death.
This
obedience, this adherence of Jesus to God’s Will, by someone innocent and
uncompromised, in a remarkable way heals you and me of our selfish willfulness
that leads to disobedience and sin.
We are
God’s. We are not totally self-contained
units that have no connection to the universe or the power that brought the
universe into being, and that sustains it in existence every instant. We are God’s children. But we do not live the life we are called
to. We hurt others, ourselves, and
creation We sin. And we are trapped in sin.
But thanks be
to God, Jesus, by His perfect obedience to God’s Will for Him, lived fully in
harmony with God’s Will, even to the point of death, death on a cross.
Because of this, God greatly exalted him
so that at the name of Jesus every knee
should bend,
of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
to the glory of God the Father. Phil 2: 9-11
This, St. Paul tells us, is of first importance! Christ has not only shown us the way to truly
live as the children of God, but by conquering death, He also enables us to share
in His victory, so that we do not need to live in fear, and certainly not in hopelessness. But by sharing in a life and death like Jesus
– that is, in the manner of His love and obedience to God our loving Father, we
will also share in Christ’s resurrect life; to live for God forever! AMEN
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