Heart of the Matter

Another response to my pastor about a sermon on Palm Sunday.

Your sermon yesterday got me thinking. It's easy for people to say that Christ died for our sins. But what does that mean? The phrase has never really had that much meaning for me. I think sometimes Christians have the perspective that Jesus was sacrificed in the same way that a lamb was sacrificed in the Old Testament...that we have to suffer and give up things we love because that is somehow pleasing to God...that Christ died so that we can live on in heaven. This attempt at logic and faith just doesn't cut it for me. I'm left asking, "why?" I'm not saying that's what I got from your Palm Sunday message. I'm just saying these ideas seem to be prevalent in Christian culture in general and your sermon got me thinking about it.

The thing that resonated with me about your message was the part about forgiveness...

Jesus didn't just die. He was murdered. And we did it. It wasn't the Jews, the heathens, the unsaved, "those people" who didn't know what they were doing that killed him. We did it. We killed him and we continue to kill him. I'm finding that one thing we need to learn from the Crucifixion is that we are every bit capable of doing it again. We need to explore the part of ourselves that has that capability, seek to understand it, so that maybe someday we can control it. Maybe someday we can stand up for those who are being slowly, systematically, distantly, painfully crucified every day by starvation, by violence, by disease. God's children, the hands and feet of Jesus, are still suffering with us today.

The thing I remember the most about Palm Sunday in the Catholic church (at least the one I went to) was that the whole congregation was involved. We were the crowd waving palms. But then... we were the crowd proclaiming "Crucify him!" The liturgy involved reenacting the last supper with communion, but also going through the Crucifixion. And I remember asking my step-mom when I was about 7 years old why we were saying crucify him, when Jesus was good. She tried to explain that it was so that we could remember that even Jesus' friends turned on him and so that we remember that we might have done the same thing...that just everyday people went along with it even though it was wrong.

And God let it happen, willed it to happen, made it happen? How confusing. But the thing that clicked with me yesterday is that this allows us to see the abundant grace of God. The fact that we tortured God's only son and killed him and then we are forgiven? Forgiven! Would we ever forgive someone that did that to one of our children? Jesus died and yet God forgives us for the sin and to, in a sense, prove that we will always be forgiven and to leave us with the task of trying to understand a love so great that allows that to happen. Knowing that I am forgiven allows me to forgive. That may be the greatest love that we will ever know.