Suffering Forgiveness and Resurrection

Suffering, Forgiveness, and Resurrection 4-4-21 1 Peter 1:6 "In this [salvation] you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials." We've been going through holy week. Webster defines holy as dedicated entirely to the deity or the work of the deity. Holy week is when great things were done by God. Some say it is holy because it is the week we were made whole. We say that Christ died for our sins, that he atoned for our sins. I have done a lot of thinking and studying on the subject of atonement. My study has brought me through the valley of the shadow of suffering and death. I have two friends who have recently had strokes. Their suffering and that of their loved ones has been great. So the opening verse where Peter speaks of suffering grief and trials seemed especially apt for last week when we remembered the suffering and death of Jesus. But I have recently come to see Christ's suffering in a slightly different way than in the past. I read an article that discusses the cost of sin and forgiveness.* I'd like to talk about that for a few moments. As sinners we pay the cost of separation from God in the loneliness and emptiness we experience when we have turned from God. And others pay the cost of sin too. Maybe you have been hurt by a close friend or relative who said horrible things to you and cut you off from a long time relationship. The betrayal might have hurt you and maybe you felt sad and angry at the rejection. I got to thinking about God and how he must feel when billions of people over the centuries have sinned, rejected and separated themselves from him. It must hurt him deeply, (Psalm 95:10) especially since he stamped his image on our souls. We have the spark of God in us and he wants a relationship with us, to be close to us. Yet it is a part of our nature to be self-centered rather than God-centered. How God must feel and experience a tremendous ache about this. (Isaiah 62:10) A man murders a person who has a wife and children. The cost to the survivors is incalculable. And we naturally want justice for the harm he has done. He has a debt to pay for his crime and we want him to pay the cost of his sin. How could the wife and children ever forgive the murderer and the horror he has visited upon them? If they are to forgive him it will cost them dearly. They will have to give up their hurt and anger and desire for revenge. Forgiveness is expensive. So if you have been hurt deeply by someone, the pocket of your love and generosity was robbed or emptied, at least for a while, and that person owes you a debt for emptying your pocket, so to speak. To forgive that person you would have to be willing to give up the owed debt. Your forgiveness would be a very real and tough sacrifice for you. There is always a human cost for sin - even, or especially for corporate sin like slavery or genocide. And there is also the human cost of forgiveness. We are blessed to have a relational God. (Genesis 2) There is an inseparable bond between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. (John 17:21) We also believe that God is love. (1 John 4:8) It is that relational God who is our model of love. And in this blessed holy Trinity there was a decision to pay the cost of humanity's centuries of sins. (1 Peter 1:2) The decision was that the Son would become human and would stand in for us sinners, he would suffer the pain, hurt and even death to show us humans how much we have hurt God. This was a love decision, generated within the holy Trinity, not a parental-demand decision. (1 Peter 1:20) God hoped that we could see this man Jesus, who was also God, and we would know the pain we caused God. (Jeremiah 42:10) And maybe, just maybe we would feel sorrow for and with God for the all the rejection of him and his people, people in whom he had implanted the very spark of his life. Jesus stood up for the poor, the sinners, the victims of the powerful of their day - the Romans and Jewish leaders. Jesus stood up for us before their courts and showed us how God would react to rejection. He did not strike them down in a fit of revenge. Instead he stood powerless in the face of the powerful. The only power he showed was the power of love. He made the Roman leader notice him and not pass him off simply as the cost of doing business with the Jewish leaders and the Jewish people. And all the while he was also representing us poor, broken, empty human beings. (I Peter 1:17-21) But then after he was gone from their midst Jesus' followers woke up and believed in this loving God. They came to trust him and even to surrender themselves to him. And through this surrender they had a rebirth, now embracing that spark within them and joining themselves to the triune God. In baptism they - we died to our old self-centered selves and began a new life. And that made them and us part of what has become known as the Body of Christ, Jesus risen and still present in our midst by the power of the Holy Spirit. (I Corinthians 12:12) Jesus rose above the human tendency of self-centeredness and pride. That was an aspect of his Resurrection. But there is much more. By rising from death he showed us that we too could rise from our darkness, sin, suffering, and death to join him in glory. (I Peter 1:21) So, as Peter said in my opening scriptural verse, for a while we will suffer just as he suffered, but because God sent his Son - whom we now know as the Christ - to stand in for us, to pay the debt we have incurred by our sins, (1 Peter 1:19) we too have the ability to join him in a place where our lives will be eternal, like his. The Resurrection of Jesus gives us hope for our own resurrection from our sin, suffering, and death. And finally, atonement or as some have named it, "at-one-ment" has been complete - in the divine cycle of suffering, death and resurrection. We can participate in the ongoing cycle. We can experience the suffering of the cross by taking Jesus with us when we reach out to the broken, the sinful, and the unbelievers, as well as to our own loved ones - and show them what God's love is all about. Prayer Father God, thank you for making us part of the cycle of love that is your essence. Jesus Christ, give us the strength to bear your cross in our lives and into society. Holy Spirit, give us strength, inspiration, and grace to forgive, to rise above our self-centered tendencies and temptations and stand up in the presence of others so they can see who you really are and what you are about. We pray these things in the name of the one we celebrate today in his rising from the dead, our precious savior Jesus the Christ. Amen. * "When love looks like sacrifice," by Martha Tatamic, The Christian Century, March 24, 202, pp. 24-27