The Catch That Wasn't

The Catch That Wasn't--March 7, 2018

"For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing." [Gal. 2:19-21]

It was all for me.  It was all for you.  

Just let that sink in for a moment. 

You, as in the real you, and not just "the idea of you," or "you in the abstract sense," or "you, insofar as you are a well-behaved card-carrying, dues-paying member of the redeemed."  You in all of your you-ness--the failures and successes, the selfish impulses and the moments of deep, beautifully self-giving love, the things that are lovely about you and the things that are terrible about you: this is what Jesus gave himself away for.  And he did the same for me--knowing I'm a hot mess, a bundle of hypocrisies and contradictions, and apart from considering my list of good deeds and bad deeds.  The cross of Jesus is always caught up in the logic of grace.

So remember that--it was, and is, all for you.  Not only you--just as it is not true that Jesus died only for me.  But all of it--the suffering, the humility, the willingness to be put to the trouble of the nails and the whipping, the smug look on that imperial blowhard Pilate's face when he insisted he had the "power to crucify" Jesus, the aloneness, the godforsakeness--all of that was for you, and for me, too.  It is personal--not my private possession, but personal all the same.

Sometimes our religious talk can become quite abstract. The sentence, "Jesus' death effects atonement for sinful humanity," contains deep and wonderfully good news, but buried underneath all that jargon, you might never know it. To recognize that the Son of the Living God "loved me and gave himself for me" brings God's action much closer to home. That's not to say that Jesus died only for me, or only for people like me. Jesus didn't just give his life for Americans, or brown-haired people or people who think or look or vote or act like me.  For that matter, Jesus didn't only die for people who go to church, or people who made it onto my list of "approved" recipients of redemption. But it does mean he died at least for me, and me as I really am, even in the mess that my life is at this present moment, even in the mess that my life will continue to be down the road.

Now the "catch" for us in all this--which really turns out to be the fact that there is no "catch"--is that if I can embrace the reality that Christ has love and died for me precisely as I am at this moment, and even despite all the darker moments I have yet to muddle my way into, then I have to admit that his loving me isn't based on the number of gold stars I've earned or positive accomplishments in life. And--perhaps even more uncomfortable for us to face--it means that Christ has loved and died the whole world precisely as it is in this moment, and despite all the darker moments it has yet to muddle its way into. If Christ has loved me without regard to how well I follow the rules, then Christ's love for others needs to be just that free and unconstrained, too. 

That can be uncomfortable for us to acknowledge, because it means that God loves the untouchables, the unacceptable, the undeserving, and the ungrateful just as much as God loves church folk who don't like to consider themselves riff-raff or impolite or unworthy. It means that Jesus' death is for the whole lot of us, even if we don't have the eyes of faith to recognize that it was for the whole lot of us. The scope of God's love is that wide, even if it rubs us the wrong way to see outsiders welcomed in. Sometimes the catch is recognizing the fact that there is no catch.  That's what the cross of Jesus forces us to come face to face with. If the One on the cross can say, "Father, forgive them..." and if, as Paul wrote to the Galatians here, Jesus gave himself away for me by grace apart from the law, then I am going to have to learn to be ok with the fact that God chooses to redeem us and give his own life away for nobody but stinkers.  Once I recognize that the cross was "for me," as I really am right now, it will mean also wrapping my brain around the message that the cross was for everybody else, too, whether I like it or not.

Our whole day--no, our whole life!--is changed when we can hear the good news as "for me" and "for you." Today, how can you be a witness, even without using churchy jargon, to someone else you encounter today, to speak the news that the love of God, and the cross of Christ, are for them?

Lord Jesus, let us live and die in you today--after all, you have lived and died and lived for us. Open our ears to hear that your love has come really and truly for us, and then open our mouths to let everyone we meet know that they are included in the "us."