By Such Stripes Are We Healed
by Jack Shaver
©The United Church of Canada, 1985
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 0-88622-196-X
7M/12/85/APL
Used with Permission
The Fifth Sunday of Lent
Any old death won't do
Romans 6: 3-11
Today I propose that we reflect on what it means to be "united with Christ in a death like his." It is a good time to attempt to make some important distinctions. All through this Lenten study we have considered writings that made a connection between the suffering of God's chosen person and our healing. All along there was the inference that there was to be suffering on our part in connection with this healing. Paul makes this point many times in his letters. The way we are put right by God as a gift is to die and rise with Christ.
In the Gospels we hear about being born again. We hear about taking up our cross in order to follow Christ. We hear about drinking the cup that he drank and being baptized with the baptism with which he was baptized. Whatever God's remedy for sin, it is not a transaction that takes place in some far offworld. It is a relationship in which we are full participants.
But this does not mean that every kind of suffering is good for me, or every kind of miserable fate is God's will for me. Nor does it mean that every way in which I bring suffering down on myself contributes to my salvation. Not any old kind of death accompanies our reconciliation with God. As Paul says, it is to be a death like Christ's.
If I am to let God put things right as a gift, I must forgo all attempts at self-justification. If God's righteousness is to prevail with me, I must forgo a righteousness of my own. If God's forgiveness is to reconcile us, I must come before God empty-handed. That's the kind of dying that's good for me and for the world.
If I am to participate in the ministry of reconciliation, so that people discover through me that they are forgiven by God, then I must have risked leaving my justification up to God. Boasting and defensiveness are excluded.
If God's remedy for sin is to bear it, then I will find that my reconciliation with God has put me bearing the sin of others. It is one thing to accommodate a beloved friend or a gracious guest. It is another thing to put up with a tiresome neighbour. But it is an entirely different matter to bear the sin of another. That's what it is to participate in Christ's suffering.
This business of bearing sinners is not put forward as punishment. It is not put forward as pain to be endured in order to win a reward. It is put forward as what it is like to be reconciled to God; as what it is like to be in Christ; as what it is like to be a new creation.
No wonder we shake our heads over the gospel.
If I could learn to love like that, it would make everything new.
Benediction
Eternal God ruler of history,
Long ago, at Mispah, your not so worthy servants covenanted together:
"May the Lord watch between me and you while we are absent one from another."
O Bountiful One, may the blessing of that benediction visit the earth in countless places.
Watch between the strong and the weak so that the mighty don't get to have everything their way.
Watch between the have's and the have-not's so that the affluent don't get to have everything.
Watch between those powers who trust in their own righteousness lest they offer up everyone else.
Watch between the nations which trust in their own might for their safety, lest they destroy the earth.
Watch between all the interests of the world who trust that competition for survival is the law of life, lest they devour the resources of the earth in their competition.
Dear God, if we could all let it be your watching alone that is between us,
your benediction would visit the earth in countless places.
Watch between us, O God, for if we take care of what is between us without you, we will destroy us all.
Amen