Daring to Die

Daring to Die--March 20, 2018

"For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a righteous person someone might actually dare to die.  But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life." [Romans 5:6-10]

Tom Brokaw famously called them "the Greatest Generation,"--the men and women who survived the Great Depression and fought the Second World War.  And there is a strong case to be made that they were among the greatest in our nation's history, given how much they sacrificed in the name of liberating occupied peoples, throwing down a dangerous, murderous demagogue, and saving the lives of those who were under the boot of the Nazis and the Fascists in Europe, and the Imperial armies and navy in the Pacific.  

We can thank those who served where we know them, and we can rightly honor their service.  It would seem to be the ultimate expression of human serving--to borrow Lincoln's words from Gettysburg, "the last full measure of devotion" to lay down one's life in the aim of  saving lives, liberating the oppressed, and ending the menace of war in the hopes of a just and peaceful future.  It is hard to conceive of some more extreme example of love, at least by human standards. It is, as we sometimes say in our Sunday liturgy, "indeed right and salutary" to honor such sacrifice. And so we hold parades. We decorate tombs. We memorialize the fallen.  All of that is good and appropriate to do.  It is a noble and respectable sacrifice to die for your country, your family kept safe back home, your ideals, and even for the innocent citizens of some foreign land across an ocean... because they are our people, or our principles, our land, or at least on our side.  Such people and places seem somehow innately worthy of giving one's life for, because they are our people and places.

And that is also exactly what makes the cross--and thus the gospel itself--so scandalous.   Paul the apostle lifts up our highest, noblest, most extreme picture of honorable self-sacrifice, and observes that at the cross Jesus pushed it further, even further than we are probably comfortable with.  Because at the cross, Jesus didn't just die for people who were "on his side," but for us, as the apostle puts it, "while we were enemies."  Jesus didn't just risk his life for "good people," but dared to die for "the ungodly."

That's scandalous.  That's reckless.  That's unsettling to our ears and to our hearts.  Because it pushes beyond our concept of what is fair and noble.  Dying to protect your family seems heroic.  Dying to protect and preserve your way of life, your country, and your nation's ideals seems virtuous.  Dying to help innocents and allies seems worthy of praise, too.  But your enemy?  People who are opposed to you?  People on "the other side"?  People who are ungodly and wicked?    That hits our ears like a sour note.  It seems a bridge too far.  It might even qualify as a punishable offense as "aiding the enemy," depending on whom you were helping... and how.  We can heap up laud and praise for those who died for their own country, but we cannot stomach the idea of someone laying down their life to save someone from the "other side."

And yet that is precisely what makes the Gospel Good News, according to Paul.  It is the fact that at the cross, Jesus doesn't die for "deserving" people--but for rotten, no-good, godless wretched miserable stinkers... which is to say, for us. 

We will never really understand what makes the Gospel both so scandalous and so genuinely good until we are prepared to let it go further than we are comfortable with.  Paul won't let us off the hook with a reasonable-sounding religious message of "A good man died for other good men and women because they had shown themselves so worthy of the sacrifice," or even "A decent man died for his own people and country." The gospel pushes beyond what is respectable and insists that at the cross, God chooses to love the "ungodly," the "other side," the "bad guys," and the "enemy."  And, like the comic strip put it all those years ago, "The enemy... is us." At the cross, God in Christ dares to die for a world full of people who have all sworn up and down they don't want anything to do with him.

The voice of conventional wisdom inside us says, "That's a bad deal for God."  That voice says, "God shouldn't do a stupid thing like dying for a bunch of ingrates who are on the other side--God should do a smart thing like leveraging us into good behavior if we want to be saved, or pushing for more offerings and prayers and better church attendance... God should press to get more out of the deal."  That voice, which is an awfully tempting one to listen to sometimes, says, "God should only be looking out for people who are already on the record as being on God's team--nobody else.  That's just good business sense."

And then here is the amazingly good news of the Gospel... which takes all of that conventional wisdom and sweeps it into the dustbin of history to make room for the uncontrollable love that dies for the undeserving, the "other side," and the "bad guys."

It is, as I say, very well and good to thank those brave souls now looked back on as "the Greatest Generation," for the willingness and nerve to liberate death camps, to stop Hitler, and to defeat Fascism.  And perhaps in this age of narrow self-interest and zero-sum-thinking tribalism, that by itself will be a necessary and countercultural act.

But beyond our gratitude for those who risked their lives for "their own" and for "good people," maybe this is a moment, before we hear the story again of the cross and the borrowed tomb, to remember that Jesus' kind of love always thumbs its nose at the boundaries of what we think is respectable or safe, and pushes beyond them.  And then, perhaps we can remember, too, that a God who dies for the bad guys is our only hope, since we are among those "ungodly" stinkers for whom Christ died "while we were enemies."

Lord God, we can scarcely believe the depth, the breadth, and the power of your love.  Let it seep into us so that we can love like you do, and so that we can know your love embraced us even when we were turned away (and when we still turn away) from you.