Easter Perspective: Rise!

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Rise!

As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed.  But he said to them, "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.  He has been raised; He is not here.  Look, there is the place they laid Him."

Mark 16:5-6 (NRSV)

Christ is risen from the dead

We are one with Him again

Come awake!  Come awake!

Come and rise up from the grave!

From "Christ is Risen" by Matt Maher

"Christ is risen!"

"He is risen indeed!"

Today is Easter Sunday, the day on the Church calendar when we remember that two days after a brutal, bloody, and wrongful execution on a Roman cross, Jesus Christ was raised from the dead.  We remember that these events that happened in the Middle East nearly two millennia ago have important implications for the entire cosmos.  We remember that, as St. Paul writes, "For in [Christ] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him God was pleased to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of His cross."¹

One word that is often associated with these events is atonement.  This is an originally English word that means exactly what it's spelling implies²: because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are now at one with God.  For the past two thousand years, theologians have debated how exactly this "at-one-ment" works, and a number of theories, metaphors, and interpretations have emerged over the years.³

The seemingly predominant understanding of atonement is the penal substitution theory, which basically states that God's righteous anger burns against us because of our wrongdoings.  Because of our sins, we are not allowed to be in the presence of a holy and just God and are thus condemned to suffer eternal punishment.  When Christ, who is perfectly sinless, dies on the cross, He receives the punishment we rightfully deserve, thereby satisfying the wrath of God.  In this way, Christ's suffering on our behalf enables us to stand before God.

Personally, I'm not at all a fan of this interpretation, for, in my opinion, it paints a very dark picture of a God who is, according to the Bible, love and light.  I find it hard to believe that God finds us intolerable because of our sin, for this is not at all the image of God we are shown in Christ, who reached out to lepers and other "unclean" types, sat down for dinner with dishonest tax collectors, allowed prostitutes to wash his feet, and gave thieves and terrorists the opportunity to follow in his footsteps as his closest disciples.  I find it problematic that God would demand blood because of our wrongdoings when God could simply forgive us.  Christ himself spoke out against the whole "eye for an eye" system and instructed us to forgive instead of demanding a proverbial pound of flesh.⁴  Are we actually called to be more merciful than God?  I would think not.

There are a number of alternative understandings of atonement.  One theory I find compelling is known as the ransom theory.  This theory is similar to the penal substitution theory, except that the one demanding payment is not God but rather Satan.  Basically, the devil is holding our souls hostage because of our wrongdoings.  On the cross, Christ pays the ransom on our behalf, setting us free from bondage.  Of course, by raising Christ from the dead, God totally puts the devil in his place, invalidating any claim he thought he had.  The ransom theory is associated with the Christus Victor theory of atonement, which states that Christ has won the victory over sin and death through His crucifixion and resurrection.

These ideas of atonement are illustrated quite well in C.S. Lewis's classic novel The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  In this fantasy, four human children - Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy - find their way into Narnia, a land suffering under a curse by Jadis, the evil White Witch.  Soon after the children find their way into Narnia, the heroic lion Aslan returns to the land, and the witch's spell begins to break.  According to prophecy, the presence of Aslan and the four "Sons of Adam" and "Daughters of Eve" will mean the end of the witch's reign.

Aware of the prophecy, the witch gets Edmund addicted to enchanted Turkish Delight and uses the promise of more to manipulate him into telling her where his brother and sisters are planning to meet Aslan.  After Edmund is rescued from the witch's clutches and is reunited with his siblings, the witch, who represents Satan, approaches Aslan at the Stone Table and demands to kill Edmund.  According to the "Deep Magic from the Dawn of Time," she has a claim on all traitors as her "lawful prey."  Aslan, who represents Christ, makes a deal with the witch that saves Edmund's life: he allows her to kill him on the Stone Table in Edmund's place.

Aslan, like the One he represents, is raised to life, and the Stone Table breaks.  What Aslan knows and what the White Witch doesn't know is that there is an even "Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time," which dictates that "when a willing victim who has committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward."⁵

I think that, in some sense, we all know how it feels to be held hostage by certain things in our lives.  Maybe we've suffered the consequences of our own faults, failures, mistakes, wrongdoings, and addictions.  Maybe we feel that we're under bondage because of the sins other people have committed against us or because of the systemic evils of our society.  Because of these things, we suffer a type of living death marked by condemnation, guilt, blame, bitterness, and shame.  The cross of Good Friday reminds us just how destructive humanity's choices can be.  It reminds us that, as St. Paul would say, "the wages of sin is death."  Jesus did nothing to deserve execution: He was an innocent man put on the cross by corrupt people who thought they had something to lose.  Christ, quite literally, died because of the sins of humanity.

When people speak about atonement, they tend to focus on Jesus' death on the cross, but it is important to remember that the cross is not the end of Jesus' story.  Personally, I think that, when we discuss atonement, we really need to give more attention to Jesus' resurrection, for the empty tomb of Easter Sunday is the place I believe the triumph over sin and death is truly found.  The empty tomb reminds us that though "the wages of sin is death," "the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."⁶  The resurrection of Christ is a sign of things to come: because Christ is risen, we will rise as well.⁷

That said, we may look at Easter as God's blessing to move forward, freed from the past, for our failures no longer have any claim on our lives.

We can see this message throughout the Gospel story, for time and time again Jesus calls people out of their living death into new life.  One day, the religious leaders bring to Jesus a woman who has been caught in an adulterous affair.  According to the Jewish Law, she is to be put to death by stoning.  Jesus says, "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her."  Needless to say, everyone drops his stone and walks away.  Jesus, who has the right to throw the first stone, simply says, "Go, and sin no more."⁸  Though we tend to focus on the "sin no more" part, I think the Easter blessing is found in the "go" part.  Jesus is giving the woman both His permission and His personal blessing to move on with her life, completely unchained by her wrongdoings.  It is as if Jesus is saying, "The adulteress is dead.  Live a new life free from your mistakes."

So did Jesus really die for our sins, as people often say?

The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ mean many things to many people.  Honestly, I don't think we will ever fully understand what happened over the course of those three days.  As for me, I would say that Jesus died and rose again not just to make the payment for our wrongdoings, but to move us forward, past our failures and into a new and abundant life.  It is my Easter hope that those of us who call Jesus Christ our Savior will not just believe that Christ is risen but will follow him out of the grave into new life.

Rise!


Notes:

1. Colossians 1:19-20 (NRSV)
2. Wiktionary: Atonement
3. Theologian Tony Jones describes various theories of atonement in his sermon "You Need a Better Atonement."  Revolution Church podcast, 05/09/2014.
4. See Matthew 5:38-45.
5. C.S. Lewis.  The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
6. Romans 6:23 (NRSV)
7. See 1 Corinthians 15:20-22.
8. John 8:3-11 (Both the NRSV and the KJV are quoted.)

The photograph of the dogwood flower is used courtesy of forestwander.com under the under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States license.  The photographer is in no way affiliated with this blog.