Readings:
Well, this is a great lot of Scriptures for the day we welcome Cate officially as a member of this parish. Especially the Romans text, that how-to list for living in Christian community. Sounds pretty easy at first: hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good. Love one another. Rejoice, have patience, pray, share, and show hospitality.
So far, so good. Right? These are the bright spots, the basics, the easy marks of a community of faith. But then we get: bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. And weep with the ones who weep. (In other words, don’t avoid the people who suffer, join them in it!) Live in harmony and with those deemed lowly, don’t try to get back at anyone who has done you wrong - in fact, if you kill ‘em with kindness you’re doing it right.
Welcome to Christian community. Where everyone is a doormat and we really like to suffer.
Okay, no. Not really. Not the point. Not the invitation we’re given. Not the shape of our lives together once we’ve been welcomed, even though to many it may sound like that.
Paul isn’t inviting people to be pushovers, he’s offering them strength for the inevitable. Remember, Paul himself has endured prison, beatings, the whip, all for the sake of the message he proclaimed about the death and resurrection of Jesus. When he had opportunity to escape prison after an earthquake set loose his shackles and opened the doors, he stayed where he was to bring good news to his jail keeper. He has seen the power of the Gospel change lives and is willing time and again to put his own life on the line for the sake of those who have not yet heard they are welcome at God’s table.
It’s from this context that Paul writes to the Romans. Christians are being killed around him, left and right. He himself used to gather them up and bring them in to the authorities. Then Jesus shone in his heart so brightly he was struck blind on the road and had to depend on the kindness of the very strangers he came to threaten. He has lived and known the power of the Gospel.
The disciples, on the other hand, are still in the middle of that story and haven’t the foggiest idea what to make of it. Peter has just spoken truth about who Jesus is: The Christ, the Son of the Living God. He has said things he does not understand, because he cannot comprehend that anyone would be able to kill someone like that, let alone that Jesus would have foreknowledge of it and let it happen anyway.
But this is just what happens when God and the world we have made collide. When sin and the sacred meet face to face, it gets pretty ugly. God knows it will. God also knows that what comes after is worth the price. That remaining aloof and uninvolved won’t fix us. That walking with us as God did in the garden will result in blood and death for both of us. We were promised death if we ate that fruit of that one tree. We were promised death, and we got what we chased after. We wanted power, were tempted by the idea that we would be better gods of ourselves, and in trying to make ourselves more important we wound up killing ourselves.
So what was God to do? When we left the garden, we made our own way, we wrestled with God and with gods of our own making and with each other, and made such a mess of things we don’t even remember a world without this mess, can’t even imagine the sort of Kingdom God promised, not without the social structures we have built to keep the ‘right’ people in and the ‘wrong’ people out.
Jesus had to remake the world. From its very foundations. Which would not be easy. It would require a sacrifice unlike any other. In ancient times, sacrifices were made in blood, because blood was life. It still is, in many ways, but before we had scientific studies and transfusions and microscopes, blood was a sort of magic thing, because life and death were so mysterious and holy. Even with scientific research and medicine, life and death are still mysterious and holy. But in that mystery and holiness, a virus crept in, a plague, a scourge called sin, which infects all of us. Be it pride or lust or racism or embezzlement or what have you, sin is a big problem. And it needs an answer, it can’t just be wiped away and forgotten by anything we do.
Blood sacrifices used to serve as the way the effects of sin were repaired. They also served as thanksgivings. This sacred thing, this life blood, was spilled from rams and goats and cows and sheep and birds, on our behalf. Some gods even asked for the blood of children to make the crops grow or bring the rain. It was not the sort of image we use when we talk about sacrifice. It was smelly and smokey and there was fire and you couldn’t get the ritual wrong, and you had to do it on a regular basis, over and over again, to make yourself acceptable before God.
Jesus took up his cross willingly, lived his life knowing it was going to end at the hands of the very people he loved so much. He also knew it was going to be the end of the sacrifices, that his death would once and for all make the world acceptable before God again. Not that we could and would never sin, but that sin would no longer be the last word. Sin would not define or direct us. Peter was so distraught by Jesus’ talk of his impending death that he missed entirely the hope which followed: and on the third day rise.
Jesus broke the power of death to control our lives. That’s what Paul experienced in his living, through all of those trials. That’s what we have experienced and known in our lives together, through all of the actual deaths of loved ones and all of the other sorts of deaths when our lives have changed and set us off balance while we get used to new things before God springs something else new on us. That’s what we welcome you into sharing with us here, Cate. In this particular time and this particular community, we are learning together how the cross of Jesus has set us free to live for others. How to follow a savior who never gave us any promises of success as the world sees it, but promised to be with us to the end of everything. How to lose our lives in the life of the Spirit moving in and through and among us toward ministries which may make us unpopular but will bring us more fully alive. How to trust that we are always, no matter what the day may bring, welcomed, loved, forgiven. Thanks be to God.
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