Magicians and Mousetraps--March 15, 2024
"Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he [Jesus] himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death." [Hebrews 2:14-15]
I hadn't really thought about it until reading this passage from Hebrews again, but Jesus is really like the anglerfish of God. And now all of a sudden I see those bizarre creatures as strangely lovely.
Don't know what an anglerfish looks like? Go ahead--search it up. I'll wait--but, fair warning, it's pretty jarring. The ancient Christians who used the fish as a symbol of their faith weren't picturing those bad boys which live way down deep in the darkest places of the ocean (as an aside, the fish was an ancient symbol for Christians because the Greek word for fish, "ichthys," could be used as an acrostic-like memory device for "Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior"). Okay, have you got the image in mind?
So yeah, the anglerfish is not likely to win a conventional beauty pageant, and the bioluminescent little tiddlybit that dangles from the top of its head seems like something from another planet or a sci-fi creature from a movie. But that little glowing appendage (made possible through a symbiotic relationship the fish has with bioluminescent bacteria that come to live in the fish from the seawater) is one of the cleverest hunting strategies you'll find in nature. The gist is that it acts as a lure for other fish--they'll just see this intriguing light source floating in the water and be drawn toward it, maybe even to try and eat it. Well, the moment a fish tries to get in close enough to gobble up that little dancing lure, the angler gobbles up the fish that took the bait. In the act of trying to swallow up the lure, it gets swallowed up itself. The anglerfish offers itself as bait, in a sense, and ends up tricking the would-be predator by turning the tables on it and making it into prey.
Okay, so that might not sound very Christ-like at first blush. But bear with me for a moment. To hear the writer of Hebrews tell it, Jesus' death on the cross is what made it possible to destroy the power of death. In letting himself be swallowed up by death, he actually swallows up death and breaks its power. Call it the Divine Anglerfish Maneuver. Jesus lets death do its worst, along with all the diabolical powers that try to intimidate us with the threat of death, but in consuming Jesus, death itself is blown apart.
Before anybody had ever discovered an anglerfish, the early church father and theologian Augustine of Hippo had a similar mental picture: a mousetrap. Augustine said the cross was a "muscipula diaboli"--a mousetrap for the devil--by which Jesus lures the powers of evil to take him, only to have the trap spring on Old Scratch himself and break his diabolical power in a puff of fire and brimstone. Jesus offers himself up as bait, knowing that evil can't help but want to endlessly consume and devour, like a hungry mouse that has gotten into your pantry and eating all your Cheez-Its. And once the devil goes for the bait, the jig is up and Jesus proves victorious, precisely by letting himself be swallowed up by death. In other words, it's the anglerfish strategy--offer yourself up, letting it look like you've been trapped, until you turn the tables and the hunter becomes the hunted.
The same plot twist shows up in lots of stories: I remember as a kid watching the Disney classic, "The Sword in the Stone" and seeing Merlin the Wizard triumph in his wizard's duel against Madam Mim by a similar move. As the sorcerers take turns transforming themselves into different creatures to try and defeat their opponent, it looks like Mim wins the day by becoming a horrendous fire-breathing dragon, and it seems like poor Merlin has gone up in a puff of smoke. But it turns out, much to young Arthur's relief, that Merlin hasn't vanished or died, but become a tiny germ, and let himself be "caught" by Mim--so she loses the duel because she's gotten sick from swallowing up her opponent! Or fans of comic book movies will remember a similar climactic moment in the original Hellboy movie where the hero lets himself get swallowed by the monster, only to blow it up from the inside. Or you might see a similar riff in the opening of the second Guardians of the Galaxy movie as well. The trope has been around now for a while, but that's because it works. And in a sense, that's how this passage from Hebrews talks about the cross. It's Jesus' way of destroying the power of death by dying. It's the anglerfish letting a piece of itself dangle as bait to be swallowed in order to swallow up the fish that was looking for a "light" meal. It's the cheese in the mousetrap that breaks the power of death and the grave.
In other words, at least in these verses from Hebrews, the cross of Jesus isn't about paying a "debt" back to God, or about God demanding some kind of punishment to be inflicted on Jesus or needing to satisfy divine wrath by zapping someone. It's about Jesus breaking the power of death by dying, of offering himself up to let evil's salivating jaws get close, only to be swallowed up itself in a table-turning triumph.
That's important, because it reminds us, first, that Jesus doesn't have to pacify a bloodthirsty deity, or to persuade God not to hate us. The cross, as it has been said, isn't how Jesus changes God's mind about us, but where Jesus reveals God's love which has been constant all the time for us and breaks the power of death. It is not about God demanding a certain amount of pain be endured in order to love human beings, but about the willingness of God to endure pain for the sake of loving us, in order to free us from the tyranny of death that had held us captive. Death and evil are the enemies, and they ultimately destroy themselves because they cannot resist the bait of Jesus' own life.
The mysterious fish with the light-up lure.
The mousetrap.
The magician's duel.
Take your pick of mental pictures, but remember the underlying idea. The cross isn't a hurdle in the way of God's victory--it is the very means of that victory. That's why we can call the Friday in two weeks "Good Friday," and why we can see the cross not as a loss to be ashamed of but a triumph to be celebrated. Jesus' love leads him to lay down his life as the bait that springs the mousetrap and the lure that catches the hungry fish. The cross is our reason for hope.
Lord Jesus, enable us to see your victory over death itself in the cross, and let us be free from the power that fear has held over us.
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