Victory of the Snake Crusher

Good News, Bad News, Good News

Today is probably one of the most interesting days in the Church calendar. There is the great joy of the Palm Sunday celebration. Our spirits are high as we retell the story of Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, although, and if you’re brand new this is a spoiler alert, we know what is looming in the very near future for Jesus, for the disciples, and for us still today. There’s a plot twist, one that we can see coming, but one that Jesus’s followers certainly had a hard time understanding.

So today we celebrate Good News, but we know that there is bad news. But like any good story, any story worth reading, retelling, and living, there is Good news again. We really like the beginning and the end of the story. The good news. We hardly want to dwell on the bad news. We certainly don’t want to FEEL the bad news. But today, like each of the 5 last Sundays, we are going to look at the bad news, the Cross. And if you are tired of listening to us talk about the cross, me too. It’s an exhausting and complex reality, but it is the fundamental piece of our faith that ties the entirety of the Bible together and demonstrates the heart of the God who loves us.

So this series has been called Mosaic, because we believe that what was accomplished on the cross is vast. Each week Jason has discussed different theories that the Church has come up with to describe the Atonement, or how God makes us At One With God through the cross. So we covered blood substitution which says that Jesus takes the punishment for sin in our place; ransom which says that Jesus sets us free from the bondage of sin; Moral example which says that Jesus shows us how to live; Reconciliation which says that Jesus restores our relationship to God; and finally last week was the cleansing theory which says that Jesus makes us clean.

So you may be wondering… which one is the right one? Our answer is yes. All of them. They are all pieces of a picture. But you may feel like something is lacking. Like certain words or concepts haven’t been quite said yet. Like you haven’t seen the whole picture yet. Well you should feel that way, because you haven’t. But today we are going to zoom out and see the whole picture. All of the past 5 weeks have set the pieces in place to make this picture. And the picture is called Christus Victor.

Christus Victor is not the name of a fancy Italian sparkling water. It is latin for Christ is Victorious.

It defines sin like this: Sin weighs us down and renders us powerless to overcome it on our own strength. We are left in a perpetual state of being defeated, as if we are doomed to push a boulder uphill every day.

And this theory says this: Through the Cross, Jesus has won the decisive victory over the evil powers of this world that are responsible for sin and death.

This is illustrated by the Apostle Paul in Colossians 2:6-15: and check out how all of these pieces fit together.

Common English Bible Chapter 2

6 So live in Christ Jesus the Lord in the same way as you received him. 7 Be rooted and built up in him, be established in faith, and overflow with thanksgiving just as you were taught.

Moral Example Theory: Jesus shows you how to live

Common English Bible Chapter 2

8 See to it that nobody enslaves you with philosophy and foolish deception, which conform to human traditions and the way the world thinks and acts rather than Christ.

Ransom Theory: Jesus sets you free

Common English Bible Chapter 2

9 All the fullness of deity lives in Christ’s body. 10 And you have been filled by him, who is the head of every ruler and authority.

Reconciliation Theory: Jesus restores our relationship to God

Common English Bible Chapter 2

The circumcision of Christ is realized in the stripping away of the whole self dominated by sin. 12 You were buried with him through baptism and raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.

Cleansing Theory: Jesus makes us clean

Common English Bible Chapter 2

13 When you were dead because of the things you had done wrong and because your body wasn’t circumcised, God made you alive with Christ and forgave all the things you had done wrong. 14 He destroyed the record of the debt we owed, with its requirements that worked against us. He canceled it by nailing it to the cross.

Substitutionary Theory: Jesus paid our Debt

and Finally:

Common English Bible Chapter 2

15 When he disarmed the rulers and authorities, he exposed them to public disgrace by leading them in a triumphal parade.

Christus Victor

What we see here is that everything has been leading up this. Jesus disarmed Evil, his enemies, our enemies, on the cross. It gives us this definition of Salvation:

Jesus grants us victory over sin and enables us to overcome the sins in our lives.

Paul’s not talking about the armies or political apparatus of Rome, at least not directly. When he says rulers and authorities, he’s talking about the forces behind the corruption of the rulers and authorities. He is talking about the source of evil. And I know that this is kind of an uncomfortable topic for a lot of folks, because talk of evil and of demons and Satan have been abused over the course of Church history. However, in order to truly understand the cross, we need to accept the reality that evil exists and that evil has a source, and that the source of evil can, has been, and will be defeated by Christ.

Zooming Out

On that first Palm Sunday the people of Jerusalem hailed the coming of their king, the long prophesied messiah of Israel — A king they believed would bring military victory, dethrone the puppet kings, and oust the occupying forces of the Roman Empire. Although this idea of this kind of king was the culmination of nearly 1000 years of cultural memory, they were still too short sighted to see what was really happening. The story begins much earlier, and so we need to zoom out, as far out as we possibly can.

Our story begins, well on like page 2 of your Bible. God created the physical realm and said that it was good and very good. But it didn’t stay that way for long. On page 3 we get introduced to the bad guy. In literary terms, the antagonist. The problem. No story captivates our attention without some problem that needs to be sorted out right? So we meet the serpent, and what we learn is that this serpent, the נָּחָשׁ was more devious than all the animals of the field that God had created. The important thing to take from this is this isn’t just some naturally occuring talking snake that God created. It’s something else, something foreign. It is the embodiment of evil. It doesn’t belong in God’s good and ordered world.

And you probably know the rest of the story, the serpent deceives the humans and a whole mess ensues. And God pronounces a lot of consequences. The humans are going to have a hard time. The ground is going to take work to make food, childbirth is going to be painful etc. But before any of that God says these words to the serpent:

Common English Bible Chapter 3

14 The LORD God said to the snake,

“Because you did this,

you are the one cursed

out of all the farm animals,

out of all the wild animals.

On your belly you will crawl,

and dust you will eat

every day of your life.

15 I will put contempt

between you and the woman,

between your offspring and hers.

They will strike your head,

but you will strike at their heels.”

So yeah it kind of just sounds like God doesn’t like snakes. Which, who would blame God? Snakes are weird. But God’s not just saying like this entire family, genus, species of the animal kingdom is cursed. God is speaking directly to this character. But in the worldview of the Bible’s human authors, the snake represents the source of evil, therefore the descendants of that source of evil will always be at odds with the offspring of the woman - Human beings. This is why evil baffles us. It strikes at us in the place we least expect it, in the heel.

But the offspring of the woman, a human one will strike at the head of evil. This might seem like a far stretch, but I promise this is going to make some sense.

And so, when we look to like the last pages of the Bible there is this really strange scene. A woman is pregnant and gives birth to a Son who is meant to rule the world, but a dragon is there lying in wait to kill the child. But God protects them and then we get this glimpse into the cosmic drama that has been unfolding throughout history and the identity of this dragon is revealed:

Common English Bible Chapter 12

So the great dragon was thrown down. The old snake, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, was thrown down to the earth; and his angels were thrown down with him.

And I won’t read it to you, but throughout the rest of Revelation the dragon is dealt with by Jesus and the powers of heaven, and is ultimately defeated, resulting in a renewed creation where evil no longer exists.

So that’s like the Google earth 1000x zoomed out view of things. There is a nemesis, and in order for God’s creation to live at peace and free of the frustrations of evil, something has to be done. To which any rational person says, yea, so what’s taking so long?! And why drag it out. And what’s up with the cross in all of this.

The Cross as Victory

The cross is this central place in the story of the world where the future hope of a world free from the stain of sin is revealed and made possible. While in Jerusalem just before Jesus’s final meal with his disciples we get this story where some people who have travelled for the passover festival want to see Jesus, and when he finds them he says this:

Common English Bible Chapter 12

27 “Now I am deeply troubled. What should I say? ‘Father, save me from this time’? No, for this is the reason I have come to this time. 28 Father, glorify your name!”

Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”

29 The crowd standing there heard and said, “It’s thunder.” Others said, “An angel spoke to him.”

30 Jesus replied, “This voice wasn’t for my benefit but for yours. 31 Now is the time for judgment of this world. Now this world’s ruler will be thrown out. 32 When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to me.” (33 He said this to show how he was going to die.)

On the cross, the ruler of this world aka the serpent/dragon/satan had judgment rendered against it. Evil lost at its own game. While it was the scheme of evil working in the world to destroy Jesus — from the jealousy of the religious elites, the ambivalence of the Roman authorities, or the greed of Judas — the cross used evil to defeat itself. While the world was lifting Jesus up onto a physical cross, they were actually lifting him up onto his throne as the king of the world. And kings become kings through victory, not tragedy. Not loss. Somehow in a strange and unexpected way the cross won a battle that turned the tides in an epic and cosmic drama.

You have likely read or seen the movie The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The witch has infiltrated the land of Narnia with “The Deep Magic.” It has unleashed chaos on the kingdom of Aslan, the Lion King of Narnia. And a curious thing happens. One of the human children, Edmund, becomes a traitor and join forces with the witch. But this action renders him guilty of the penalty of death, but Aslan offers himself in Edmund’s place. Seemingly a gift to the witch, as Aslan was the only thing standing in her way from complete control of Narnia. After Aslan dies on a stone table, it cracks. The witch and her armies go on about their business, but later on the main characters find Aslan alive and breathing. Astonished they ask, what does this all mean? Aslan replies,

“It means that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.”

That deeper magic, that secret incantation is God’s love. A magic that the enemy knows nothing about.

There’s a lot more story in Narnia from that point on, lot’s more struggle between the Deep Magic of the Witch and the Older incantation of Aslan’s love. So too, the cross was not the end of our struggles, not the end of the existence or stain of evil in the world, but it is the turning point. We have this knowledge of God’s love and that through that love evil will be irradiated, and so we are given the ability to live and see the world differently.

There is a story of American prisoners of war in Japan who heard on their captors’ shortwave radio that World War 2 was over. The allied forces had won. They remained in prison, but they knew in their hearts that it was over. Some day soon they would be completely free. But in the meantime they were free to hope, free to laugh, free to live as though someday soon all of this would be over.

We know that long after a war is over, the effects of it can still be seen and felt. Just look at the state of some eastern European countries now who still feel the effects of the USSR’s empire. Their entire political, economic, and social structures were infiltrated and rearranged by the communist regimes. That work isn’t undone in a day.

That is pretty much where we find ourselves now. Jesus has been declared victorious through the work on the cross. The wall has come down, the veil is torn. And the beauty of the cross is that while it was violent, torturous, and bloody way to die, that violence was all on the hands of the enemy forces. Jesus never drew a sword. Instead, on the cross Jesus disarmed them. He rendered them harmless by taking away their power for destruction and making us, his followers capable of overcoming evil with his help.

All of these theories of atonement have been pointing us towards this reality. Jesus has changed our status. We once didn’t know how to live in a way that loves God and neighbor, Jesus showed us the way. We were once enslaved to the source of evil, Jesus set us free. We suffered from the fractured relationships between us and God, us and one another, us and ourselves, and us and the earth. Jesus restored those relationships. We once were dirty, Jesus made us clean. We were guilty, and Jesus declared us righteous by paying our debt.

Every single one of these aspects of our existence was the war machine of Evil, and they have been rendered powerless. Which means, that we have become powerful. The effects of evil are still evident, but the war has been lost. And every time someone declares allegiance to Jesus, evil is further disarmed. Victory has, and will be ours. Christ is Victorious, not just in the cosmic battle between humans and the serpent, but in the individual battles that each of us face and the systemic ways that evil uses us to try to gain a foothold in this world.

Living Victoriously

There is an ancient Greek story of a man named Sisyphus. He was a mortal who had disdain in his heart for the gods. He was supposedly brilliant, and he managed to cheat death many times over, which angered Zeus to the point that he was condemned to an eternity in the underworld until he completed one single task. To push a large bolder up and over a hill. Every day Sisyphus would push the rock up the steep hill and just as he got to the top, he would get fatigued, stumble, and the rock would fall back to the start.

This isn’t a true story, however it illustrates the futility of the human life and our battle with sin. On our own we can try, and get so close, but with out help we just tumble back down to the start. If only we had help.

Jesus is that help. Jesus comes alongside of us and helps us to roll our stone, to not only deal with but overcome the burden that we face living in a world that still feels the effects of sin, and if this year has done anything, it has shown us just how present the ugliness of evil is in our individual lives.

But that ugliness doesn’t stop with us. It spills out and over into systems that do the work of evil in the world. And so, victory needs to come. What good is winning a war if no one knows that it’s over?

You see Jesus’s victory in our hearts isn’t just about us. He helps us roll our stone so that we can join him in coming along side of others to help them roll their stone. Together, as people who have accepted the reality of Christ’s victory, we are empowered to go into a world that still is burdened and weighed down by the lasting effects of evil and declare that there is a new king. We can infiltrate and disarm systems that perpetuate violence, destruction, racism, and poverty. We can change the world into a place that reflects the victory that Christ has won in the cosmos, in our hearts, and in his world.

So maybe today you are still struggling to push your own rock up the hill. You are hearing the word of victory, but you are feeling the weight of your rock pressing you back down that hill. Jesus is inviting you to let him help. If you are with us in person, look around. This is a community of rock pushers who want to help you. If you are online you can connect with our community too! There is no better time to reach out and ask for help than now.

If you’ve dealt with you rock, what are you doing with that freedom? Are you basking idly in the gift that Christ gave you? There is a world out there that still thinks evil won. It’s time to get moving. Help these people push their rocks, help society push its rock. Just because we know that Jesus won, and that eventually Jesus will ultimately deal with evil in a final way, that doesn’t absolve us of the call to live out that victory. What breaks your heart? What can you do about it? How can you help? How can you declare that “Christ is Victorious” in the world with your hands, heart, and mouth?

We enter this week into a time of deep sorrow as we remember the agony of our ancestors. In addition to the Christian Holy Week where we remember the torture and murder of our savior, our Jewish siblings celebrate passover, and remember the oppression and plight of our ancestors at the hands of the Egyptians. These weeks of mourning are a time to reflect on how we as a society and as individuals perpetuate these same power systems that inflicted wounds on our ancestors. How have we become the people that God saved us from. It’s a time to repent, to ask God to do it again. To overcome our captors and set us free, to disarm the powers of sin in our lives and in our world and show us how to live out the victory of God in the world in a way that sets others free. That is what Christ’s victory looks like. A force standing in the face of evil, disarming it, and replacing it with the love of a God who willingly took the cross on our behalf.