Easter April 1, 2018: ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son…’ John 3:16
We need to slow that down a bit. It’s an amazing statement that I think we can so easily rush through because of its familiarity. Image the character and heart of God revealed in that statement. Sometimes I’m not sure that we hear the depth of its implications. If we’re not careful, we sometimes let our unbridled subconscious talk to us, letting human logic define what happened in the Garden of Eden. We can come up with the idea that God’s response to Adam and Eve was an angry response rather than the actual response mentioned in that scripture. We can turn that into thinking that God needed to fulfill a heated temperament toward His Creation in order to get even for that little apple dessert those two had enjoyed. God’s motivation is bigger and better than anger and restitution. Rather, His fingerprint as a Giver is all over how He responded to that tragic moment. It helps to remember that Jesus was coming long before Adam; Jesus was not plan B. Jesus was coming in the heart of God from the very foundation of the world. (Eph. 1: 4-5)
It’s Easter. Roughly 2020 years ago a child was born who, while a surprise to Joseph and Mary, had been prophesied to bless the whole world, at least those that would choose to have it so. Easter focuses us on the Cross of Jesus of Nazareth just as the Christmas story focuses us on His birth. For sure the Cross is an appropriate place for Christians to annually pause and think about why and even how this Story came about. It’s a place for us to wonder about, evaluate, and discover what really happened on that Cross which some 2000 years later still repels some and attracts the human heart of others. No one has all the fullness of that story to tell, and certainly, my letter is only a part of a bigger picture of God’s Creation and the fix required to ‘fine tune’ it. But, since we’re playing a lot of resurrection music and most of us will be celebrating that Cross this month, let me just pour out a bit of my thinking about this celebration we call Easter.
First of all, why was this Cross necessary? Why was this Jesus buried and raised from death? Big questions and probably too big for this letter. However, let’s touch the surface by starting here: the fall of Adam. We’ll start there because most everyone starts there. After all it’s the first subject of Genesis, and that’s where our ancestor’s poor decision-making started all this mess.
One of the things that the Gardens of Eden and Gethsemane remind me of is that we have to go back even further than either of those gardens to understand that bigger picture of God the Father, Son and Spirit. And, because I always seem to get to this point every few letters, let me shorthand the picture of pre-Eden by just saying God; all three manifestations of God if you will, were from the foundation of the Cosmos together and involved in the dream of Creation and the fellowship that was to follow from the first breath of man. All three buried themselves into the ‘Yes!’ that emphatically proves that Creation (and its humans) is worth everything that has happened in and to that Creation. All three persons of the Godhead agreed ‘in One’ that any price They needed to pay would be paid to experience the givingness of Life and fellowship of God and His creature: man. That any price part is to be emphasized here, before the Creator created, Jesus was coming! Or, more appropriately, Jesus was not just coming but the Father has said over and over again in New Testament scripture: He was sending Jesus, with a purpose and on purpose.
It’s here that I like to separate my thinking a bit: dividing the Why He came from the How He came. It’s really one coin with two different sides to it. But, that difference helps me clarify some the early questions I have had about this whole Story of the Gospel. Let me say it like this. Why He came was to build a bridge between His creature and Himself. How He came (the story of the Cross) was chosen to convince us that something huge had to be done to build that bridge. The how He came was chosen to help us reconcile in our weak and feeble minds to thinking like He thinks. The only way to do that was to pay a price so big that it would, in context, overwhelm our thinking. How He did that helps us solve the problem we have about how can we ever have a relationship with God again after the horticultural failure of those famous ancestors of ours. I know there’s too much to say about all this to examine it in full, the Bible uses 39 chapters in the Old Testament and another 26 in the New to try and convince us of both the need and the remedy, this letter won’t be able to by a few lines of writing here. But, I think it’s something for us to begin to think about during this special holiday. Why He did it, How He did it, medicates our alienated minds. Imagine God desiring so deeply to reconcile with us, even to the point of doing that for us. That’s a profound Truth. All other gods pretty much leave it up to the other fella to make up the gap, to build the bridge. Our God came and did the construction project for us.
Simply, Why God created all this was for relationship. It wasn’t because They were bored; not because They needed anything. They were three in One and that closeness, Their ‘agreementness’ was so beautiful that They could not help but create something outside themselves to share in Their relationship. God is Love and in His (Their) very nature, God is aggressive to share, to care and to give. That Love has never had a shadow of turning, never changed and never will. The fact that Love is what caused Jesus to step into our world, take on the violence from the men of His own Creation, die and be raised is the center of this Celebration we are now expressing. It’s the same Love that caused God to seek out Adam and Eve rather than destroy Adam and Eve. It’s that Love for His Creation that, after the Fall said, ‘No, I will not give up on you, I will not abandon you, We will pay the price to redeem, a heavy price to gather you back to Ourselves.’ That’s the Why: to re-embrace humanity and to pick up the pieces of the Garden of Eden.
The how to do that so that it’s manageable for humanity’s wee little brains meant a grand, huge action by God would be required. So grand as to overcome our knowledge that we are jerks and really don’t have a reasonable way to get back into relationship with God. Our natural minds are alienated and darkened. What could we really do to repair this mess? We’re so aware of our dire predicament that we just can’t reason our way through it. And, that was exactly the deal, the plan. God did something so huge, so unreasonable, His remedy left nothing to doubt as to the passion and will of God to redeem His people. Something that would grant you access to the fellowship of God, that had to be a biggy. Had to be something so necessary that only a God could do it. Something that would overpower our intellect and break our hearts. Now the world’s religions will tell you that you, by yourself, can do that by either hundreds of actions or perhaps thousands of formulas. In reality, only God could build that bridge back to fellowship. It’s His remarkable Story that’s declared simply in Habakkuk 2:4, Hebrews 10:38, Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11; the just shall live by Faith. Faith that Christ did what He said He would do, Faith in His bridge back through reconciling our problem by His Life, Death and Resurrection. God had to do something so obviously astonishing so that we ‘might’ let down our guard, might not run off into the bushes as our ancestors did. Dying for us was the way He got our attention and hopefully and justifiably our hearts.
The Way, the Truth and the Light of Life came, died on the cross to show us His determination to be with us and convince us of His willingness to make a way for us. Jesus died on the cross but He did not stop there. By the Spirit He was raised to a New Life and by that same Spirit raised us with Him. All barriers have been removed except in our head. Our awareness of our shortcoming, the alienation in our minds, those kinds of thoughts will have to be taken captive and changed to His thoughts. It was completely unreasonable for God to do such a thing, actually illogical. To make us acceptable and worthy through the death of His Son, that’s unimaginable, but it’s true. That’s exactly how He did it! Performed a profoundly unreasonable event so that we might come to understand why He did it.
That’s Easter for me. Yes, it’s about a man on a cross, but it’s also a picture of what Father, Son and Spirit were willing to do, willing to pay to persuade our brains to imagine how determined They were to be with us in this new garden called the Kingdom of His Dear Son.