The Easter Body

Mitchell, Brody, Shannon, and Shelby,

The other day, I came across a website that claimed that Jesus' death on the cross was a myth created by Christians.  One of the author's reasons for contention, besides his own wild conspiracy theories, was that crosses didn't start to adorn Christian tombs and art until a couple of centuries after Christ's death.  I don't know if that fact is completely true, since he was a conspiracy theorist and I have been able to verify many of his historical claims to be false, but since I'm currently writing this without any access to the internet and cannot Google "Earliest references to the cross," I'll assume he's correct.

The reason being that, even if this was true, it only emphasizes the main point of our faith.

It's weird that the cross would be the symbol for our faith, when you think about it.  It represents an important part of the process, Christ's sacrifice, which truly is important in how it allows God to forgive us while also being completely just.  Yet, that isn't what our faith is about.  It isn't about suffering.  It's about trusting in God's promise to sinners that we shall inherit eternal life.  It's about the completion of a covenantal bond.  It's about something good.

Just the other day, we celebrated Easter.  For some reason, I tend to see a lot of artwork right around this time of year having to do with the cross.  Even I, when I hand myself over to a fully automatic thought process, think of the crucifixion when I think of Easter.  "Christmas is for the birth of Christ, but Easter is when we start talking the important things that symbolize our entire faith.  If there's ever a time to spread the word of the main message of our faith, it's on Easter!  What's the one things that the world can't secularize?  Jesus' death.  It's the most distinctively Christian of all the Christian doctrines!"

Because, you know, the cross has become an ecumenical symbol of our faith.  What do you see when you approach a church?  Almost everywhere you look, you see artwork and architecture modeled after the cross.  That, and actual crosses.  "The Cross" has become a synonym for "Jesus."

So naturally, this holiday that gets down to the fundamentals of our faith must be about the cross.

Except not so much.

Actually, our faith is about the Resurrection.  Specifically, a bodily Resurrection.  Jesus had to overcome, on every level, the curse spread throughout Creation when Eve accepted the serpent's lie.  By defeating death, He undid everything that the serpent accomplished.  By removing the curse from himself, the curse ceased to be an absolute power within created order.

The way early Christians commemorated this was through something we call the Eucharist.  They took the bread and the wine, confessing that it was the the actual presence of the Lord.  This was their symbol, and this was how they marked themselves, for this was indeed who they actually were.  Through the Resurrection, we have actually become Christlike.  They saw people publicly tortured to death on crosses all the time, but it wasn't everyday that they saw a person come back to life.  The crucifixion paid the penalty for our sins, but we aren't restored to our proper relationship with God on such graceful terms unless we accept the Resurrection.  It's His gift, fully paid for on the cross, and fully given to us through the Resurrection, for all of us in His holy church to receive.

The Son rose to life from His grave.  Therefore, I believe that the Son rises to life in all of us who accept His incredibly expensive — and completely free — gift.  God points His finger at us and says "You are the body of My Own."  It's so ridiculously spendthrift of God, so generous beyond all human expectations, that it's no wonder that it takes great faith to fully accept it.  Yet it's true.  It's the Gospel, the Good News that Jesus preached when He repeated, again and again, that the Kingdom of Heaven was coming.

Sincerely,
John Hooyer

Forgiveness from a Cross

Mitchell, Brody, Shannon, and Shelby,

Jesus died on a Friday.  Many of His closest companions said that they would never turn their backs to Him, and yet that's exactly what they did when He entered into His darkest hour.  It's a pretty grim story.  For some reason, we make that the banner for our faith, as counter-intuitive as that seems.

For as long as I can remember, the main tenant of my faith, as taught by both my Catholic mother and Reformed father, was "God forgives."  That was the entire Gospel, all there in just two words.  Many might think that it was insufficient, but after hearing those two words to describe my faith over and over and over again, it was all I needed.  I believe in God.  I also believe in forgiveness.

Someone else will try to butt in and introduce their own buzzwords.  "We are righteous for God."  "Praise God from Whom all blessing flow."  "There is a God and you must be baptized in the Holy Spirit as evidenced through speaking in tongues."  "You have no need to worry for the future if you just trust God."  "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul, and love your neighbor as yourself."

Interesting pieces of wisdom, but what about forgiveness?  When I speak of Grace, I'm always referring to forgiveness.  Forgiveness is absolutely central to our salvation.  It's nothing that we do.  It's merely accepting forgiveness for our past, present, and future iniquities.

But what is forgiveness?  It isn't necessarily just ignoring sin.  If anything, that's apathy.  God had pretty strong words to say about apathy.  He would rather us either to be hot or cold, but apathy is so dangerous that he spits lukewarm Christians out of his mouth.

Forgiveness isn't moving past the sin.  Forgiveness is dealing with that sin.

In the parable of the unmerciful servant, people always seem to end on the note that the servant should have pardoned his debtor just as his master pardoned him.  I never saw it that way; why didn't the servant go to his master and ask for him to help with the additional debt?  After all, the servant had already been pardoned of quite a huge debt himself, a few small silver coins shouldn't shouldn't make much of a difference to the master.

Think about this: The servant was not only in debt, but I'm just assuming that a significant portion of what money he did have he had lent out.  So even though he was no longer in debt, he was still in a financially precarious situation.  He was short on money.  Sure, he could have forgiven his debtor, but that would have meant accepting that he could never have again what was rightfully his.  It might be a noble sacrifice, but it's still altogether unjust.  We shouldn't have to be merciful at the expense of being just, because there will still be something unbalanced in the relationship.

So I just wonder why he didn't ask the master to pay the second debt.

The moral of the parable, for me, looks like this: "If you can trust me to forgive you of an unpayable debt (which, I know, looks too good to be true), then you can trust me to remedy the debt that someone else owes you."  I think that this faith requires some eschatological hope, since in the real world I can forgive someone for hurting me, but that hurt will still be there.  It won't, however, continue to be there when the Kingdom of Heaven arrives.

So when it comes to forgiveness, I'm going to be honest.  I'm not in the financial situation, spiritually speaking, to pay off any debts owed me.  I can't fix a relationship that's been broken, because I can't die for someone else's sins.

Because that's what forgiveness requires.  Forgiveness requires death, even death on a cross.

Which is why it's all the more of a relief to know that we have been forgiven!  You didn't think that Jesus would go all that way only to leave the job half finished, did you?

Sincerely,
John Hooyer

As We Also Forgive Those Who Sin Against Us

Mitchell, Brody, Shannon, and Shelby,

Also Levi and Valerie,

Not so long ago, I said that I didn't believe in forgiveness.  My ideas weren't particularly influential or popular, but I strongly stand behind my views on the human capacity for forgiveness.  That is to say, I don't believe that any of us truly forgive each other.  Not for the big things, not for the little things, either.

When someone commits a sin, they deliver damage.  They owe you a debt, as Jesus put it.  Sure, you can relieve them of the responsibility of paying that debt, but somehow that debt must be payed.  Until then, the damage is real.

"Forgive because you have been forgiven."  Except I don't see this ever truly at work in the lives of Christians.  I see hatred, sometimes right on the surface, other times merely tucked away.  Whatever the case, and however we try to rationalize it, I really don't think that human beings ever forgive.

I've been walking for some time and have had the opportunity to look around.  I've looked left, right, up down, inside, outside, and I have created panoramas by spinning around in circles to take it all in.  I've searched for things, and stumbled upon things serendipitously.  Whenever there's something worth seeing, I stop.    From what I've seen of the world, I'm certain of my opinion, and it's unfortunate that because it sounds jaded and pessimistic that people are going to assume that I'm just responding from bad experiences, that someday I will have a change of heart as I encounter something more inspiring.

This isn't pessimism, though.  It's just realism.  I believe in this because I believe that we need a Savior who had to take on all of our sins on the cross.  Forgiveness had to start somewhere.  It began there.

When we make forgiveness something easy, something we can simply do if we're feeling merciful, it isn't really forgiveness.  One of our best recourses is to say "I realized that it wasn't such a big deal after all, so I just forgave her."  Yet, if a sin was never a big deal, if it lacks a basic aspect of realness, then we basically forgive our debtors for nothing.  In order for forgiveness to be real, the sin needs to be real.

Sometimes we merely forget sins committed against us.  We run away from the possibility of considering them genuinely as bad as God considers them, and we file these sins away in our short-term memory.  I won't congratulate people for saying that they forgave someone merely because they forgot what the sin was.  "Forgive and forget" never really sat well in my book.  I don't want to ever forget about the things that happened in my relationships with people, the good and the bad.  I want to remember those relationships for exactly what they were.

No sin can ever go unpunished.  A crack in a relationship must be reconciled.  The way that we "forgive", those cracks remain there and we're content to merely walk along with a relationship that gets increasingly fragmented over time.

Once I talked with Justin about a cinematographic idea.  I thought about what it would be like to film a movie through a cracked lens, and to allow the lens to continually grow more and more cracked as the story went on, representing the seemingly irreconcilable brokenness of the family in the frame.  People would, at times, choose to feel good, but those cracks were always there.

So forgiveness, as we usually understand it, doesn't really make the sin go away or properly deal with it.  It's merely a means of managing the symptoms of debt.

There are some good things in this strategy, though.  I won't deny that.  I think it's a good decision, albeit not an entirely complete one, to choose to not obsess over a debt.  We shouldn't dwell on the sins against us, nor should we resent people.  I believe that it's possible to get rid of resentment without forgiving someone.

It's just that these sins do need to be addressed.  These cracks have to actually affect something.  Someone has to feel actual hurt for these actual sins.

How is it, then, that we forgive someone, being fully conscious of their sins and their true weight, and not in some way hold any resentment against them?  I don't think that we do.  Although I will say this: God forgave their sins.

"Shouldn't you have mercy on your fellow servant just as I had mercy on you?"

Maybe.  Maybe I should have mercy.  I can't bring myself to actually truly forgive, not as authentically as God does.  I can only mimic the symptoms.

However, seeing as their sins are forgiven and the lost relationship has been paid for and restored, I suppose that I can have mercy on them.  I can't forgive people with my heart, although maybe I can forgive with God's heart.

So your sins are forgiven.  Not by me since I never really fixed anything.  I didn't offer anyone life.  Your sins are forgiven, though.  So while I haven't learned the fine art of forgiving and I haven't seen anyone else actually forgive, either, I'm fairly sure that we can still get into a good habit of surrendering judgment to God.

Until then, I don't think I've ever forgiven anyone of any sin ever committed against me, and I don't think I will until the final judgment comes.  Then we will be given new bodies and new hearts, and there will no longer be any cracks in the lens.

Sincerely,
John Hooyer