Are you satisfied?

Speaking of Joe (from a few posts ago), he shared a blog post on Facebook over the Easter Weekend.  It is written by Brain Zahnd (brianzahnd.com) and is a post called "How does 'Dying for our sins' work?"

We say that all the time - Christ died for our sins.  Our bible study has been exploring that topic, looking at different theories of atonement each week as part of the "24 Hours that changed the World" (Adam Hamilton) series.

Zahnd calls some of those theories abhorrent, and I must agree.  We sometimes portray the Father as needing a sacrifice to be placated, or as a god who requires a quid pro quo to "gain the necessary capital to forgive sinners."  Those kind of theories don't fit the image of God that I have  from scripture.

He goes on to say that "before anything else, it (the crucifixion) is a catastrophe.  He echoes passages from the book of Acts to support that statement.

The Bible is clear, God did not kill Jesus.  Jesus was offered as a sacrifice in that the Father was willing to send his Son into our sinful system in order to expose it as utterly sinful and provide us with another way.

The crucifixion is "about the revelation of a merciful God."  When Jesus asks God to forgive those who have done this, he is not asking for something he doesn't expect.  He knows the heart of his Father, and this is not contrary to it.

Always remember, that in the acts and words of Christ, we see revealed the very nature of God.

Go read the post - it's really good.

And one more Julian of Norwich quote:

And this was shown to me when he said:  Are you well satisfied?  And by what Christ next said:  If you are satisfied, I am satisfied, he made me understand that it was as if he had said, "this is joy and delight enough for me, and I ask nothing else for my labor but that I may satisfy you.  Generously and completely was this revealed to me."

Are you satisfied?  Do you understand?  Do you get it?  That Christ (and God, as revealed by Christ) died so that you would come to understand that God loves you.  To quote Zahnd, "We are seeing the lengths to which a God of love will go in forgiving sin."

Amazing Love

One more Julian of Norwich quote (I think):

And in these words: If I (Jesus) could suffer more, I would suffer more, I saw truly that if he could die as often as once for every man is to be saved, as he did once for all men, love would never let him rest until he had done it.  And when he had done it, he would count it all as nothing for love, for everything seems only little to him in comparison with his love.  

Do you hear in that Christ's love for you?  If convincing you of God's love meant that he could die for you - just for you - he would do it out of love.  The suffering seems little to Christ in comparison to the love.

Amazing love, how can it be

That you my king would die for me?

Witness to Love

Julian of Norwich goes on to say:

I said this because I did not want to look up, for I would rather have remained in that pain until Judgment Day that have come to heaven any other way than by him.  

This is a statement Julian makes in response to what she is witnessing - the love for her expressed by God through his death on a cross.  She knows that this is her way to heaven, and she is so grateful for the action, so immersed in love for God, and so loyal to his suffering, that no other way to heaven will do.  It will be this way.

That doesn't say it's the only way - it's not an exclusionary statement.  It's a statement of gratitude and love.

And I imagine she knows what she is saying when she says it. Jesus isn't sitting poolside enjoying a vacation.  He is suffering, dying.  She sees the death, in great detail, and in this writing, tells us about it.  She knows that this way - this way with Christ - is one of suffering.

She is suffering with him as he dies.  Who do we suffer with, because we love them so much?  Who does God call us to suffer with, for the sake of God's love for that person?  How will you follow Christ to heaven? Will you follow him through suffering for others?

(Don't hear that as a call to martyred pain.  It's a call to make love for others so strong that you won't walk away from their suffering.)

Loving God

Continuing from yesterday, I said that it is necessary to look upon the crucifixion to see the pain of Christ in death so that we will come to understand the love that Christ has for us.

Julian of Norwich goes on to say:

But there is no greater physical pain that this; how could I suffer greater pain than to see him who is all my life, all my bliss and all my joy suffer?  Here I felt truly that I loved Christ so much more than myself that I thought it would have been a great comfort to me if my body had died.

Isn't that the opposite of what I said at first?  And can it be that it is ALSO necessary to look at the crucifixion to come to understand our love of Christ?

Will we come to realize when we see how much Christ suffered out of his love for us that we truly and deeply and with all of our being, love God?

Love and Suffering

Last week, when I was preparing to teach a bible study lesson on the crucifixion, I posted on Facebook that I would rather teach a lesson on the Nativity.  "That's part of the point, isn't it, though, that crucifixion is too horrible to contemplate."

When our Associate Pastor, Joe, read that, he suggested a reading out of Julian of Norwich, and last night he brought the book with him to church and loaned it to me.  It is in the Short Text of Showings - Chapters x, xi and xii.

She is speaking of watching Christ's death on the cross, and says:

This long torment seemed to me as if he had been dead for a week and had still gone on suffering pain, and it seemed to me as if the greatest and last pain of his Passion was when his flesh dried up.

That's just a piece of a paragraph describing the pain that she saw in Christ during her vision of his death.

One of the things I learned as I prepared for the Crucifixion lesson is that we should open our eyes and hearts to the suffering and death of Christ, for in it, we see the extent to which he would go.  In his dying and death, we see love personified for us.  In this we see the nature of God.