Scandal
Sermon
From Upside Down To Rightside Up
Cycle C Sermons for Lent and Easter Based on the Gospel Lessons
While Don Richardson was a student at Prairie Bible Institute in the 1950s, his heart burned in anticipation of bringing the good news about Jesus to an unreached tribe. He and Carol found their prayers answered in 1962 as they sailed out of Vancouver harbor toward Netherlands New Guinea. Before long, they were deposited by a missionary plane among the Sawi people, a group of tribes living in the trees of the interior rain forest.
The jungle floor was too damp for permanent dwellings, so the Sawi helped Don and Carol, and their infant son Stephen, build a tree house in their neighborhood. Carol learned the ways of the Sawi women while Don spent time with the men, attempting to understand their language and reduce it to writing. Afternoons would find the Sawi males in one of their treetop workrooms, buzzing in conversation while they mended nets and hunting equipment, and swapped stories of fish and boars.
It was in this setting that Don took his first furtive steps toward speaking the Sawi language and reciting stories from the gospels. Most of the time the others ignored him, caught up in their own manly concerns. The months progressed, and with little Stephen becoming a Sawi child, Carol adapted meals to local produce, and Don attempted to get the message of the Bible into a form the Sawi could understand.
An Upsidedown Gospel?
But one day everything changed. Don was moving along in the gospel story to the last weeks of Jesus’ life. As he related the tales about Jesus heading toward Jerusalem and the conspiracies that were swirling about him, the Sawi men began to listen. At first, it was only that their conversations with one another died down, while their hands continued in busywork with their hunting and fishing tools. But then even this work ceased, and every eye was fixed on Don. He happened to be talking about Judas’ secret meetings with the religious leaders and the betrayal that ensued.
Suddenly there was a murmur of approval, and the delighted smiles of those who seemed to know this story. What is going on, Don asked his translating helper. The reply chilled him to the bone, even in the heat of the tropics.
The Sawi, he was told, prided themselves for their hunting and fishing prowess. But there was an even greater expression of manhood. They called it “fattening the pig for the slaughter.” It happened when one young man chose to target another young man in this or a neighboring clan, and built a strong web of friendship. The two would hunt together, fish together, roam the forests together, eat together, laugh, and talk together. They became best buddies. Then, when the relationship was secure, the initiator of the friendship would invite his comrade over to his mother’s home for a grand meal. During the middle of the feast, when laughter was the language of the hour, and back-slapping good humor seasoned the supper, the first young man would suddenly pull out a long knife, brandish it with delight before the other’s face, and when looks of dawning horror increasingly webbed out from the betrayed’s eyes, plunge it through his “friend’s” chest, piercing his heart.
The mother would come quickly with freshly baked bread that the traitor touched to his dead comrade’s genitals before eating it. Then mother and son would open the skull of the victim, scoop out his brains, and consume these as well.
The deadly project was complete: one brave young Sawi warrior had displayed his cunning prowess, and then had ingested all the power of his target. He became a greater man by taking into himself the strength and energy of his betrayed friend.
Don was dumbstruck! How could he communicate the story of Jesus and the love of God to these people if they viewed Judas, the betrayer, as the hero of the tale? And just as important, what was on the tribal menu for supper tonight? Were the Richardsons the next victims of “fattening the pig for the slaughter”? Don slipped out of the men’s lodge a wary and troubled man.
Passion Week Primer
The story has a wonderful ending, which will come at the conclusion of this message. But the central issue for Don and Carol Richardson is one that is key to all that Christians talk about and “celebrate” this week and this day: Why did Jesus have to die? Is his demise at a young age a symbol of weakness rather than strength? Is Christianity a religion of wimps who prided themselves in following the loser rather than the winner? How do you preach Christ on another Good Friday in a world that thrives on war, one-upsmanship, devious politics, profits at all costs, and survival of the fittest in a cosmic game where the rules are heralded every Thursday evening: “outwit, outlast, outplay!”?
Three major families of atonement theory have been proposed over the centuries, to answer such questions. The first is linked to a story Jesus told shortly before this. In Luke 20, as Jesus was wrestling with the leaders, the crowds, and the challenges in Jerusalem during this emotionally charged week of Passover, he told the story we often call the Parable of the Tenants. Jesus said a man planted a vineyard and then turned it over to tenants while he traveled to distant places. The tenants were supposed to look after things for the owner and share with him in the care of the vineyard and its proceeds. But they rebelled and tried to take it all for themselves. They scorned and beat the owner’s representatives who came to make reports and collect rent. Then, when the owner sent his own son, confident that the tenants would respect this blood of his blood, they did the unthinkable, killing the heir. They schemed, wrongly, that with the son out of the way, the vineyard would be theirs.
Everyone knew what Jesus was talking about. The vineyard master was God. We humans are the tenants in God’s good world. God has sent representatives like prophets to keep in touch, but we reject them. And then, to put things right, God sent his son.
The rest of the drama was about to play out, as Jesus predicted his own death very shortly, just like his parable had anticipated. God has been wronged. God’s people have gone the way of wickedness and wastrels. The world is imbalanced, and the Creator isolated from the people who are to him like loved but wayward children.
How will things be made right? Who will bring restoration and renewal and reconciliation? According to the word of the Lord through the prophets, it would happen when God’s unique servant entered the picture and rewrote this awful history. It was not clear exactly what the heaven-sent suffering servant would do, but the outcome was sure. After what appeared to be a lackluster residential sojourn, those around the servant would attack him, cause him pain, and kill him cruelly. But when all of those things had happened, there came a new peace between God and humanity, and the former times of alienation were gone.
Anselm interpreted this as Jesus’ mission into our world to defend the honor of the Father. Because of the arrogance of spreading sin, and the hubris of human communities that took the image of God which they possessed for rebellious license, the Creator had been shuttered away from the creation, and Yahweh was forgotten except as a curse word.
But along came Jesus. Like one who still remembers the true nature of reality, and appearing in the guise of a humble but faithful servant, Jesus took up the thankless chivalric duty to restore the honor of the king of the castle, the lord of the estate. The Father might have been ready to wipe out the whole of humanity, but then he saw the face of the suffering servant, and realized that this one still held him in honor. The faithful obedience of the one mitigated the divine wrath of God for the many, and life on planet earth was restored and balanced.
Calvin took Anselm’s ideas a step further, paying close attention to the forensic language of Paul in Romans and Galatians. It was not merely God’s honor that had been violated, Calvin said, but the righteousness of God’s justice. We humans were not merely rebellious clods; we had become downright guilty lawbreakers. Before the court of heaven, none could stand with either pride or dignity. The eternal codes of propriety accused every person of failure and transgression and fault.
Enter Jesus. Jesus came as the lawyer for the accused. He did not pretend we were innocent, but openly marked our guilt. Yet when the holy sentence is passed, and capital punishment is ascribed against us, Jesus showed the extent to which he will advocate on our behalf. He himself stepped into the penalty box, he himself climbed up to the gallows, he himself was strapped into the electric chair, he himself received our toxic chemical cocktail, and died our death for us. There is good news about resurrection to come on Easter morning, just as Isaiah hinted at in the closing notes of his lament. But on Good Friday, the good news is that of escape and substitution.
A second family of atonement theories is not the Creator/Father who needs to take note of Jesus in his sufferings, but we humans. We have forgotten who we are. It may well be that we have offended God, but God is big enough to be able to handle it. What is more important is that we have offended ourselves. We have lost touch with our place in the house of God. We need a high priest who can help us find our way back home.
Jesus did this in a variety of ways. Irenaeus thought that Jesus had to be at least fifty years old when he died, because the point of Jesus’ coming to earth was to go through all the stages of human life (fifty was certainly old age at the time) in order to show us how to live and die correctly. We had lost our way. Only when we saw Jesus living our lives out of grace, love, and courage, and even dying well, would we be able to do the same. He called Jesus’ work “recapitulation,” a replaying of human identity done right. What we observe most of Jesus on this Good Friday is his ability to die with courage and dignity, just as he had lived. When we see Jesus we buck up, and we get our act together, and we recover the best of our humanity.
Of course, later theologians would further emphasize that exemplary character of Jesus’ life and death. Abelard saw in Jesus death the power of moral influence. We have grown complacent in our degradation, according to Abelard. Jesus came among us and all we could see was his goody-goody character, and we despised him for it. We taunted him, trying to make him become a normal sinner like the rest of us. We teased him as if he were sub-human. When he refused to play our dirty games we get angry with him, and plot to get rid of him, and ultimately threw him up on a cross in despicable shame. Only when the dastardly deed was done, it was not he but we who were suddenly cut to the heart. We heard his words from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!” and we were embarrassed beyond loss of face. We saw in his reflection what we had become, and came to know the ugliness of ourselves for the first time. His morality pierced our immorality and we must turn away. Like the dirty old man in one of O. Henry’s stories, the one who saw by lamplight the beautiful woman he once called friend but lost because of the blackness of his own rotten character, then suddenly remembered what he could have been if he had stayed with her instead of becoming his awful self. We turned with him down a dark alley, banged our heads against a wall, and cried out, “Oh God, what have I become?” Still, in Jesus’ love we find ourselves anew for the first time.
Schleiermacher and Ritchl took up the same sermon generations later, preaching a morality in Jesus that became an example for us. Jesus’ death was not a failure, but the ultimate testimony of love. Did not Jesus himself declare it? “Greater love has no one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends!” Here was Jesus on the cross, condemned by the political powers of the day for combatting power with love. While all of his troupe could have been sentenced and killed, Jesus was willing to stand along, allowing the others to scurry off to save their skins. But when they later realized what Jesus had done, they gained new courage to be like Jesus as well, and formed a socially-transforming movement that has since spanned the globe. “Be like Jesus!” they declare.
There is also a third approach to atonement theory, and our gospel reading connects with it. For Luke, God’s good world had been plunged into darkness by the viral effects of sin. Creation’s brightness had been swallowed up by the shades of evil. Those who were made in the image of God had become ruined, warped, and distorted. It is the scene of Mordred in Tolkien’s Middle Earth, where everything once righteous and holy had become twisted, perverted, distressed, and rotten.
All power appeared to be in the hands of the evil one, the “father of lies” as Jesus once called him (John 8:42-47). No relief from the shadows seemed possible until Jesus calmly stepped into the chasm manufactured by iniquity and it closed around him.
Origen called it a ransom to the devil. Satan, he said, was the greatest fisherman of all times, snagging every flipping creature from the waters of this world. When his boat was filled to the limit, he headed for shore and a ravenous meal of consumption that would send us to his infernal bowels forever. But like any good fisherman, the devil snaked a troll line into the boat’s wake on the journey back to harbor. Suddenly the reel whizzed out in a furious tug. A giant fish had gone for the devil’s spinning lure!
Satan stopped rowing and fought the line. The fish at the other end was huge beyond belief. After playing it with practiced dexterity, the devil finally saw the fish near the gunwales. It was enormous! And, more than that, it was the Creator’s own first creation! It was the Son of God!
The devil was in a dilemma. He did not have room for the big fish in his boat. He could keep either his current catch or toss it aside and claim the prize of the day, but he couldn’t do both. Like any great fisherman, he chose the record breaker. Shoveling the little fish out of the boat, he managed to tease, taunt, and gaff the big one over the edge, to get it to flop heavily onto the deck. His catch would be the news of heaven and earth!
But as he wrestled his over-committed craft toward the docks, the trophy fish he prized gave a sudden wallop of its mighty tail, capsizing the boat, and escaping into the water. In an instant, the devil was left with nothing.
So, said Origen, is the story of Good Friday, when Satan, the prince of the powers of this age, played his biggest hand, trading all of wicked humankind for the big prize of God’s own son, and lost everything in the bargain. Why did Jesus have to die? Because it was the only way to get the rest of us free.
Still, Jesus himself remains in charge of his own existence. And on Easter morning, as we shall soon see, the big fish will get away, as do all of us who swim after him in the waters of baptism.
Where To From Here?
The story of Jesus’ horrible death is as familiar as it is enigmatic. We know that Jesus died, and did so in a cruelly painful way. But the why of it still remains fuzzy. Did Jesus have to satisfy God’s honor or justice? Yes, that is indeed a message of the New Testament. Was his death an example to us and an act of moral persuasion? Certainly, for Jesus’ own words testified to that. Were the evil powers that have locked their claws into this good creation of God weakened and perhaps ultimately destroyed in Jesus’ infamous demise? That, too, is an element of the tale. But all are mixed together in ways that refute easy dissection or quick categorization.
Don and Carol Richardson survived their Sawi sojourn and even succeeded in bringing the gospel to those people. The story that begun above took a later strange turn. Due to increasing scarcity, the Sawi people needed to range further in hunting and fishing. This, in turn, caused them to run into conflict with other nearby tribes and peoples. Soon there were skirmishes and fights and all-out wars. People returned to Sawi homes bloodied, battered, or missing limbs. Sometimes they failed to return at all, claimed by assassins’ wounds and swallowed up by the putrefying womb of the jungle.
It was then that the men began to talk openly about the possible need for a “peace child.” Intrigued, Don asked what they meant by that term.
Sometimes, they said, when war got too pronounced and murderous, when tribes were in danger of killing one another off, when brutality bested their will to live, one of the chiefs might grab the youngest newborn male baby from its mother’s arms, and run swiftly, despite the woman’s wailing, across the no-man’s-land between the tribes. Reaching the first enemy village, he would thrust the baby into the arms of a young woman.
All knew what this meant. A son from one mother was now the possession of the other tribe. Both tribes had a stake in the child’s future, and all warfare would cease for as long as that child lived. The “peace child” reconciled the foes.
With interest mounting, Don asked a further question. What would happen, he queried, if someone should kill the “peace child”? Horrified, the group shook their heads aghast. No one would ever think to do such a dastardly deed. It was beyond belief!
Hmmmm…. thought Don. And then he proceeded. “Let me tell you a story…” he said. And he related a tale of a time when the tribes of heaven and earth were at war with one another. And he told of the chief of heaven bringing his own son across the no-man’s-land into our tribe as a “peace child.” He explained how one day someone had instigated the murder of that “peace child.” When the horrified Sawi warriors begged him about what could be done to erase this monumental human blunder, Don preached Christ, grace, and the forgiving love of God.
That was the day that the Sawi became Christians. Do you understand?
The jungle floor was too damp for permanent dwellings, so the Sawi helped Don and Carol, and their infant son Stephen, build a tree house in their neighborhood. Carol learned the ways of the Sawi women while Don spent time with the men, attempting to understand their language and reduce it to writing. Afternoons would find the Sawi males in one of their treetop workrooms, buzzing in conversation while they mended nets and hunting equipment, and swapped stories of fish and boars.
It was in this setting that Don took his first furtive steps toward speaking the Sawi language and reciting stories from the gospels. Most of the time the others ignored him, caught up in their own manly concerns. The months progressed, and with little Stephen becoming a Sawi child, Carol adapted meals to local produce, and Don attempted to get the message of the Bible into a form the Sawi could understand.
An Upsidedown Gospel?
But one day everything changed. Don was moving along in the gospel story to the last weeks of Jesus’ life. As he related the tales about Jesus heading toward Jerusalem and the conspiracies that were swirling about him, the Sawi men began to listen. At first, it was only that their conversations with one another died down, while their hands continued in busywork with their hunting and fishing tools. But then even this work ceased, and every eye was fixed on Don. He happened to be talking about Judas’ secret meetings with the religious leaders and the betrayal that ensued.
Suddenly there was a murmur of approval, and the delighted smiles of those who seemed to know this story. What is going on, Don asked his translating helper. The reply chilled him to the bone, even in the heat of the tropics.
The Sawi, he was told, prided themselves for their hunting and fishing prowess. But there was an even greater expression of manhood. They called it “fattening the pig for the slaughter.” It happened when one young man chose to target another young man in this or a neighboring clan, and built a strong web of friendship. The two would hunt together, fish together, roam the forests together, eat together, laugh, and talk together. They became best buddies. Then, when the relationship was secure, the initiator of the friendship would invite his comrade over to his mother’s home for a grand meal. During the middle of the feast, when laughter was the language of the hour, and back-slapping good humor seasoned the supper, the first young man would suddenly pull out a long knife, brandish it with delight before the other’s face, and when looks of dawning horror increasingly webbed out from the betrayed’s eyes, plunge it through his “friend’s” chest, piercing his heart.
The mother would come quickly with freshly baked bread that the traitor touched to his dead comrade’s genitals before eating it. Then mother and son would open the skull of the victim, scoop out his brains, and consume these as well.
The deadly project was complete: one brave young Sawi warrior had displayed his cunning prowess, and then had ingested all the power of his target. He became a greater man by taking into himself the strength and energy of his betrayed friend.
Don was dumbstruck! How could he communicate the story of Jesus and the love of God to these people if they viewed Judas, the betrayer, as the hero of the tale? And just as important, what was on the tribal menu for supper tonight? Were the Richardsons the next victims of “fattening the pig for the slaughter”? Don slipped out of the men’s lodge a wary and troubled man.
Passion Week Primer
The story has a wonderful ending, which will come at the conclusion of this message. But the central issue for Don and Carol Richardson is one that is key to all that Christians talk about and “celebrate” this week and this day: Why did Jesus have to die? Is his demise at a young age a symbol of weakness rather than strength? Is Christianity a religion of wimps who prided themselves in following the loser rather than the winner? How do you preach Christ on another Good Friday in a world that thrives on war, one-upsmanship, devious politics, profits at all costs, and survival of the fittest in a cosmic game where the rules are heralded every Thursday evening: “outwit, outlast, outplay!”?
Three major families of atonement theory have been proposed over the centuries, to answer such questions. The first is linked to a story Jesus told shortly before this. In Luke 20, as Jesus was wrestling with the leaders, the crowds, and the challenges in Jerusalem during this emotionally charged week of Passover, he told the story we often call the Parable of the Tenants. Jesus said a man planted a vineyard and then turned it over to tenants while he traveled to distant places. The tenants were supposed to look after things for the owner and share with him in the care of the vineyard and its proceeds. But they rebelled and tried to take it all for themselves. They scorned and beat the owner’s representatives who came to make reports and collect rent. Then, when the owner sent his own son, confident that the tenants would respect this blood of his blood, they did the unthinkable, killing the heir. They schemed, wrongly, that with the son out of the way, the vineyard would be theirs.
Everyone knew what Jesus was talking about. The vineyard master was God. We humans are the tenants in God’s good world. God has sent representatives like prophets to keep in touch, but we reject them. And then, to put things right, God sent his son.
The rest of the drama was about to play out, as Jesus predicted his own death very shortly, just like his parable had anticipated. God has been wronged. God’s people have gone the way of wickedness and wastrels. The world is imbalanced, and the Creator isolated from the people who are to him like loved but wayward children.
How will things be made right? Who will bring restoration and renewal and reconciliation? According to the word of the Lord through the prophets, it would happen when God’s unique servant entered the picture and rewrote this awful history. It was not clear exactly what the heaven-sent suffering servant would do, but the outcome was sure. After what appeared to be a lackluster residential sojourn, those around the servant would attack him, cause him pain, and kill him cruelly. But when all of those things had happened, there came a new peace between God and humanity, and the former times of alienation were gone.
Anselm interpreted this as Jesus’ mission into our world to defend the honor of the Father. Because of the arrogance of spreading sin, and the hubris of human communities that took the image of God which they possessed for rebellious license, the Creator had been shuttered away from the creation, and Yahweh was forgotten except as a curse word.
But along came Jesus. Like one who still remembers the true nature of reality, and appearing in the guise of a humble but faithful servant, Jesus took up the thankless chivalric duty to restore the honor of the king of the castle, the lord of the estate. The Father might have been ready to wipe out the whole of humanity, but then he saw the face of the suffering servant, and realized that this one still held him in honor. The faithful obedience of the one mitigated the divine wrath of God for the many, and life on planet earth was restored and balanced.
Calvin took Anselm’s ideas a step further, paying close attention to the forensic language of Paul in Romans and Galatians. It was not merely God’s honor that had been violated, Calvin said, but the righteousness of God’s justice. We humans were not merely rebellious clods; we had become downright guilty lawbreakers. Before the court of heaven, none could stand with either pride or dignity. The eternal codes of propriety accused every person of failure and transgression and fault.
Enter Jesus. Jesus came as the lawyer for the accused. He did not pretend we were innocent, but openly marked our guilt. Yet when the holy sentence is passed, and capital punishment is ascribed against us, Jesus showed the extent to which he will advocate on our behalf. He himself stepped into the penalty box, he himself climbed up to the gallows, he himself was strapped into the electric chair, he himself received our toxic chemical cocktail, and died our death for us. There is good news about resurrection to come on Easter morning, just as Isaiah hinted at in the closing notes of his lament. But on Good Friday, the good news is that of escape and substitution.
A second family of atonement theories is not the Creator/Father who needs to take note of Jesus in his sufferings, but we humans. We have forgotten who we are. It may well be that we have offended God, but God is big enough to be able to handle it. What is more important is that we have offended ourselves. We have lost touch with our place in the house of God. We need a high priest who can help us find our way back home.
Jesus did this in a variety of ways. Irenaeus thought that Jesus had to be at least fifty years old when he died, because the point of Jesus’ coming to earth was to go through all the stages of human life (fifty was certainly old age at the time) in order to show us how to live and die correctly. We had lost our way. Only when we saw Jesus living our lives out of grace, love, and courage, and even dying well, would we be able to do the same. He called Jesus’ work “recapitulation,” a replaying of human identity done right. What we observe most of Jesus on this Good Friday is his ability to die with courage and dignity, just as he had lived. When we see Jesus we buck up, and we get our act together, and we recover the best of our humanity.
Of course, later theologians would further emphasize that exemplary character of Jesus’ life and death. Abelard saw in Jesus death the power of moral influence. We have grown complacent in our degradation, according to Abelard. Jesus came among us and all we could see was his goody-goody character, and we despised him for it. We taunted him, trying to make him become a normal sinner like the rest of us. We teased him as if he were sub-human. When he refused to play our dirty games we get angry with him, and plot to get rid of him, and ultimately threw him up on a cross in despicable shame. Only when the dastardly deed was done, it was not he but we who were suddenly cut to the heart. We heard his words from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!” and we were embarrassed beyond loss of face. We saw in his reflection what we had become, and came to know the ugliness of ourselves for the first time. His morality pierced our immorality and we must turn away. Like the dirty old man in one of O. Henry’s stories, the one who saw by lamplight the beautiful woman he once called friend but lost because of the blackness of his own rotten character, then suddenly remembered what he could have been if he had stayed with her instead of becoming his awful self. We turned with him down a dark alley, banged our heads against a wall, and cried out, “Oh God, what have I become?” Still, in Jesus’ love we find ourselves anew for the first time.
Schleiermacher and Ritchl took up the same sermon generations later, preaching a morality in Jesus that became an example for us. Jesus’ death was not a failure, but the ultimate testimony of love. Did not Jesus himself declare it? “Greater love has no one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends!” Here was Jesus on the cross, condemned by the political powers of the day for combatting power with love. While all of his troupe could have been sentenced and killed, Jesus was willing to stand along, allowing the others to scurry off to save their skins. But when they later realized what Jesus had done, they gained new courage to be like Jesus as well, and formed a socially-transforming movement that has since spanned the globe. “Be like Jesus!” they declare.
There is also a third approach to atonement theory, and our gospel reading connects with it. For Luke, God’s good world had been plunged into darkness by the viral effects of sin. Creation’s brightness had been swallowed up by the shades of evil. Those who were made in the image of God had become ruined, warped, and distorted. It is the scene of Mordred in Tolkien’s Middle Earth, where everything once righteous and holy had become twisted, perverted, distressed, and rotten.
All power appeared to be in the hands of the evil one, the “father of lies” as Jesus once called him (John 8:42-47). No relief from the shadows seemed possible until Jesus calmly stepped into the chasm manufactured by iniquity and it closed around him.
Origen called it a ransom to the devil. Satan, he said, was the greatest fisherman of all times, snagging every flipping creature from the waters of this world. When his boat was filled to the limit, he headed for shore and a ravenous meal of consumption that would send us to his infernal bowels forever. But like any good fisherman, the devil snaked a troll line into the boat’s wake on the journey back to harbor. Suddenly the reel whizzed out in a furious tug. A giant fish had gone for the devil’s spinning lure!
Satan stopped rowing and fought the line. The fish at the other end was huge beyond belief. After playing it with practiced dexterity, the devil finally saw the fish near the gunwales. It was enormous! And, more than that, it was the Creator’s own first creation! It was the Son of God!
The devil was in a dilemma. He did not have room for the big fish in his boat. He could keep either his current catch or toss it aside and claim the prize of the day, but he couldn’t do both. Like any great fisherman, he chose the record breaker. Shoveling the little fish out of the boat, he managed to tease, taunt, and gaff the big one over the edge, to get it to flop heavily onto the deck. His catch would be the news of heaven and earth!
But as he wrestled his over-committed craft toward the docks, the trophy fish he prized gave a sudden wallop of its mighty tail, capsizing the boat, and escaping into the water. In an instant, the devil was left with nothing.
So, said Origen, is the story of Good Friday, when Satan, the prince of the powers of this age, played his biggest hand, trading all of wicked humankind for the big prize of God’s own son, and lost everything in the bargain. Why did Jesus have to die? Because it was the only way to get the rest of us free.
Still, Jesus himself remains in charge of his own existence. And on Easter morning, as we shall soon see, the big fish will get away, as do all of us who swim after him in the waters of baptism.
Where To From Here?
The story of Jesus’ horrible death is as familiar as it is enigmatic. We know that Jesus died, and did so in a cruelly painful way. But the why of it still remains fuzzy. Did Jesus have to satisfy God’s honor or justice? Yes, that is indeed a message of the New Testament. Was his death an example to us and an act of moral persuasion? Certainly, for Jesus’ own words testified to that. Were the evil powers that have locked their claws into this good creation of God weakened and perhaps ultimately destroyed in Jesus’ infamous demise? That, too, is an element of the tale. But all are mixed together in ways that refute easy dissection or quick categorization.
Don and Carol Richardson survived their Sawi sojourn and even succeeded in bringing the gospel to those people. The story that begun above took a later strange turn. Due to increasing scarcity, the Sawi people needed to range further in hunting and fishing. This, in turn, caused them to run into conflict with other nearby tribes and peoples. Soon there were skirmishes and fights and all-out wars. People returned to Sawi homes bloodied, battered, or missing limbs. Sometimes they failed to return at all, claimed by assassins’ wounds and swallowed up by the putrefying womb of the jungle.
It was then that the men began to talk openly about the possible need for a “peace child.” Intrigued, Don asked what they meant by that term.
Sometimes, they said, when war got too pronounced and murderous, when tribes were in danger of killing one another off, when brutality bested their will to live, one of the chiefs might grab the youngest newborn male baby from its mother’s arms, and run swiftly, despite the woman’s wailing, across the no-man’s-land between the tribes. Reaching the first enemy village, he would thrust the baby into the arms of a young woman.
All knew what this meant. A son from one mother was now the possession of the other tribe. Both tribes had a stake in the child’s future, and all warfare would cease for as long as that child lived. The “peace child” reconciled the foes.
With interest mounting, Don asked a further question. What would happen, he queried, if someone should kill the “peace child”? Horrified, the group shook their heads aghast. No one would ever think to do such a dastardly deed. It was beyond belief!
Hmmmm…. thought Don. And then he proceeded. “Let me tell you a story…” he said. And he related a tale of a time when the tribes of heaven and earth were at war with one another. And he told of the chief of heaven bringing his own son across the no-man’s-land into our tribe as a “peace child.” He explained how one day someone had instigated the murder of that “peace child.” When the horrified Sawi warriors begged him about what could be done to erase this monumental human blunder, Don preached Christ, grace, and the forgiving love of God.
That was the day that the Sawi became Christians. Do you understand?
