It’s Not You, It’s Him
The song reached its penultimate verse – again – and the evangelist up the front was smooth-talking the crowd into coming forward, “to meet Jesus”. He had the patter of an accomplished salesperson, yet all these cynical years later, I have no reason to doubt his sincerity. It was when he said…
The song reached its penultimate verse – again – and the evangelist up the front was smooth-talking the crowd into coming forward, “to meet Jesus”. He had the patter of an accomplished salesperson, yet all these cynical years later, I have no reason to doubt his sincerity.
It was when he said something like “If you were the only person in the entire world and all of history, your sin would have taken Jesus to cross. He would still have been put to death – just for you.” Even then, in my more conservative faith beginnings, I felt uncomfortable. This Jesus on the cross was all about me?
You may have noticed that some of the worship songs we sing have had some subtle changes in their wording. It’s sentences like “It was my sin that held him there [on the cross]” that make me similarly uncomfortable to that evangelist’s pitch three decades ago. Whenever we worship and the songs or the prayer or the preacher seem to have their finger pointed solely at me, I want to disagree.
It was God’s love that held Christ there.
Easter is first about Jesus. The journey to the cross, the death, the silence, the empty tomb, the resurrection and the astonishing appearances which follow are all about Jesus. In a world community obsessed with individuality, the Easter story shines the light on God’s act of restoration in Jesus.
Without doubt, the signs of brokenness and sin are evident throughout our world, but this story is first about God’s intent, God’s love. We are caught up in this all-defining act of grace, our names are known, forgiveness offered and life begins.
We stand in awe at what God has done in justice and hope: restoration not just of each of us, but of all of us, of everything.
This act of God in Jesus Christ is sufficient to save all of creation through all of history. The story is all about Jesus, which is why we have hope; God will never stop loving us, never stop seeking us, never stop forgiving us – because of who God is and not because of who we are.
Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!