As I read these texts and prepared for our worship this
evening, I was struck that after the resurrection we are presented with a new
reality, but one that doesn't displace the old reality. One can live in the light of the reality of
the Resurrection or not. But the
resurrection only has meaning if we in reality are already raised with Christ,
that is the Resurrection only has meaning if our humanity is now one with God
through Jesus Christ and that really (whether we believe it or not) has changed
our humanity. Yet, we can’t fully appropriate this other reality of our
humanity if we don’t recognize it for what it is. Faith is that appropriation of the new
reality of the incarnation completed in the death, resurrection and ascension
of Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnation of God the Word/Son.
In Lent we were called to contemplate the mystery of
Christ’s passion and resurrection through self-reflection and spiritual disciplines. In the joy and awe of Christ’s Resurrection
we continue in this contemplation in joy and celebration.
John invites us into the ecstatic contemplation of the
meaning that we are called Children (or Sons) of God. This naming is tied to our union with God the
Son, Jesus Christ.
This union is in part due to our acceptance and seeking to
be united to what God has done in Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. Yet the union is also simply the case. And we lose some of this aspect of John’s
proclamation in the Epistle with the translation of “Sons” as children. God the Son or the Child, becomes human and
becomes rejected, suffers death and injustice, becomes sin, in that sense. Through this God is united with the depths of
the human condition, even descending to the dead. The incarnation passion and death is God’s
complete union with humanity. This
provides hope, because you can’t keep the Lord of Life dead, or if you could,
death and not life would have the last word on what it means to be human.
Now in the light of the resurrection we can come to see our
humanity as best defined as Son or Child of God, that is, God the Son is
human. Our humanity in Jesus Christ is
united with God, and as such is perfected and purified.
A way to talk about this is to talk about our divination or
theosis. Saint Athanasius is said to
have summed this up by saying “ God became human that we may become divine.” The truth of our humanity is summed up in the
union of God and human through the incarnation of God in Jesus of Nazareth.
In the light of this reality we can come to see sin and righteousness
not as violation and conformity to a law external to us, but as separation and
union .what we now find in our very being because God is united to us and we
are united to God in Jesus Christ, is that to be one with Christ is to not sin
because of Jesus’ righteousness and to live apart from Christ is to be in sin
separated not only from God but our own selves.
Thus we can come to identity things like what Paul calls the
flesh, those desires which hide or divinity from ourselves. If we live according to these desires we fall
into a reality in which we aren't one with God in our humanity. The Christian tradition of contemplation and
meditation is to open ourselves up to seeing and knowing this dual reality in
our bodies and selves. Contemplation and
meditation can then keep us open to our union with God in the human Jesus of
Nazareth.
We don’t need to work at being righteous nor work at avoiding
sin. As Paul says it isn't by works but
by grace through faith that we are saved.
The grace is that what we are called to be, is already in us. Faith is our being open and accepting what
God has done in Jesus of Nazareth.
Seeing and accepting that “The Kingdom of God is in you.”
We may though, mistake this claim. The kingdom of God isn't in us as humanity
and creature separate from God, rather this truth is only found in the union of
God in Jesus Christ. Because God became
human, we are united to God, divinized in our humanity united to God in Jesus
of Nazareth.
And so we are Sons, Children, of God because of the Child,
The Son, of God incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth, who because of this union is
the Messiah the Christ.
Salvation is union and reconciliation. Liberation comes in recognizing this reality.
This is a reality that requires new sight. It requires seeing everything and ourselves
through the lens of Jesus of Nazareth.
Or it is to accept this amazing gift that God accomplished for us what
God desires for us, to be Like God. If
we accept this we will find that we are already who we are called to be.
Yet, there is still sin, and we deceive ourselves if we say
we do not sin, and we deceive ourselves that one who is righteous does what is
righteous. This may remain a puzzling
set of exhortations. This is an exhortation to remember that this isn't a
distinction between reality and what isn't real, but that there are two
realities that we continue to live in and need to distinguish from each other. We sin, we are part of a reality that is
separate from God and avoids union with God, each other and creation, and thus
we aren't righteous. But we are also part of the reality of God come in human
flesh, Jesus Christ the Son of God. In
this reality we are freed from the need to overcome sin to do works to make us
righteous rather we can live in the knowledge that we are united with the one
who does righteousness and thus is righteous.
This is the best way to understand Martin Luther’s
simultaneously sinner and saint, but contrary to Luther this isn't merely as a
legal pronouncement by God that though we are guilty that guilt is no longer
imputed to us. Rather such a statement
should mean that we in fact live in two worlds, one that is separated from God
and dominated by sin and death and one in which we are (all humanity and
Creation) united with God through the incarnation: the life, passion, death,
Resurrection, and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth the Christ, God the Son. Our struggle then is to live with the
consciousness of Christ, rather than our former selves. One of these is only more real in the sense
that God is victorious over the reality of the world dominated by sin death and
the devil. Christ descends to the dead
and raises up Adam and Eve our humanity that separated itself from the
knowledge and love of God.
Then while works don’t save us, what we do matters. We
betray our Baptism when we live as if Christ isn't resurrected as if we aren't
being transformed, as if we aren't the son of God Jesus Christ. We are all God’s son, God’s child. All of us.
Through Baptism we are initiated into this sonship, we are made one with
Christ. This is the awe of the Resurrection,
we are now all God’s Child, God’s Son.
That is without any effort we are righteous by God’s action. Yet, and this is the paradox and mystery, we
must choose and act according to that choice, because this is an alternate
reality as real as the reality to which it is an alternative. The truth is that in the end one way or
another we will act as if one or the other reality is true and the other false. We must then do the truth, we must act as
though we are in this new reality of truly being the child of God, the Son of
God, God the Son. Our awe at all of this
should propel us away from sin and death into life and righteousness of God the
Son, in which we are already, and is the reality in which we have been
initiated into through Baptism.
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