31^st March 2015

Rev Dr Max Champion at St John's UCA Mt Waverley Sunday 22 March 2015

Lessons - Genesis 18:20-33; 2 Corinthians 5:14-21; Mark 10:41-45

     God said to Abraham, 'For the sake of ten righteous people I will not destroy the city.' (Genesis 18:32)

     Jesus said to his disciples, 'The Son of Man came ... to give his life as a ransom for many.' (Mark 10:45)

     Paul said to the Corinthians, '... we are convinced that One died for all.'

     (2 Corinthians 5:14)

These texts point us to the special nature of God's love for the world. They express the fact that, in the covenant with Israel and in Jesus Christ, the Creator of all things has acted to heal our fractured humanity. 

In Genesis, Abraham intercedes for the notoriously wicked twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. He bargains with God to save Sodom from well-deserved punishment.  He knows that, in God's good creation, evil must be judged. But he argues for the salvation of this 'Sin City' because of the righteousness of the very few (50-10). God agrees! 'I will not destroy it for the sake of ten righteous people.' 

Like Moses, priests and prophets, Abraham intercedes for those who have done wrong. But, whereas they pray for God's chosen and  flawed people, he prays for non-Hebrews whose wickedness is notorious. This story most clearly foreshadows the coming of the One whose righteousness  intercedes for sinful humanity. 

The idea of acting on behalf of others is hard for us to understand because we live in a very 'individualistic' society where everyone is held responsible for their own actions. The idea that the merit of some good people (in Genesis) or One good person (Christ) can save bad people from punishment is strange, if not offensive. It seems to absolve the guilty of blame. Why would a good Creator act on behalf of ungodly people? 

There are many areas of life where people act sacrificially on behalf of others: parent - child, soldier - nation, rescuer - drowning/fire.  On rare occasions, good people act on behalf of those who are not: for example, solid citizens will speak on behalf of kids who have 'gone off the rails'. A parent may take the blame for a crime that a child has committed to save them from punishment.  A few incredible people have died or risked death by stepping forward to take the place of an accused prisoner of war or captive hostages.

They 'paid' for the freedom of others by being punished or dying 'in their place'. 

In the Old Testament the image is used to describe Israel being redeemed from 'slavery' in Egypt (Exodus 6:6) and returning from exile in Babylon (Isaiah 43:1ff). It is also used to express hope that a Suffering Servant would come to pay the price of the nation's rebellion against God (Isaiah 53:10ff). As a free man bears the cost of a slave's freedom from bondage, so One would come to bear the cost of the nation's bondage to sin. 

The use of 'ransom' to describe the plight of Jews and their hope in One who will come is the idea that God acts 'on our behalf' in a dire situation similar to but much more serious than slavery, bondage or exile.  As flawed human beings, we cannot free ourselves from who we are: people who neither love God with our whole being nor our neighbour as ourselves.  We cannot free ourselves from thinking that everything  -including our good deeds - revolves around us (Mark 10:35ff). 

The use of 'ransom' to describe Christ's 'service' to humanity helps us see something of the depth of God's love for humanity - the 'many' referring to the vast majority in contrast with a few faithful people. In the Gospel, 'ransom'  points to the uniqueness of the Creator's sacrificial love in Christ. There are similarities between this kind of action and the Abraham story.  

But the difference between both of them and the sacrificial action of Christ is striking! Neither Abraham nor the ten good folk died to save the wicked city. And those who have died acting on behalf of someone who is in danger of dying or has done wrong do not act on behalf of all unrighteous people, as Christ has done.    

He 'came ... to give his life as a ransom for many' (Mark 10:45). As Paul puts it, the One who loves us, died for all (as if he were a sinner), not 'counting the world's sins against them' (2 Corinthians 5:14ff). The crucified-and-risen Christ (v15) intercedes to save not only a wicked city but the City of Man (Augustine).

What he has done is so remarkable that the image has to be stretched beyond its usual meaning. It is now used of One (only One!) who voluntarily sacrificed his life to free humankind from 'enslavement' to sin. In effect, the Righteous One dies 'as if' he were enslaved to sin 'in place of' those who 'are' enslaved. The Son of Man sets sinful humanity free from the bondage of sin, not by paying money but by dying on a barbaric cross.

The image of ransom should not be pushed too far. No 'theory of the atonement' is satisfactory.  Jesus is not 'buying off' his Father or the Devil to stop them doing to us what they would otherwise do. It is a costly act of grace for sinful humanity that expresses the unity of love between Father and Son. 

Images of ransom (and reconciliation) can only point to a reality unlike anything else in our experience.  What he has done is unequalled in history!

In a way that cannot be thought within our usual ways of thinking about sacrificial action, Christ dies for the whole human race. We cannot free ourselves from being enslaved by our own self-centredness. 

The universal scope of what Christ has done for all is well expressed in good church music. We praise God that we have been 'ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven' (Together in Song 134). We rejoice that 'for those who will not come to him, the ransom of his life was paid' (Together in Song 213). And we bow before the wondrous mystery of the Incarnation of the One who 'shed his blood for this world's ransoming'. (Anthem: 'Now my tongue the mystery telling'). 

He dies on the cross because, unlike us, his whole life revolved around doing God's gracious will. That is to say, he dies to himself because of his love for unrighteous people who think that everything revolves around themselves.

As Paul puts it, 'in the One who died and was raised for all, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their sins against them'. (2 Corinthians 5: vv 19,15). 

To hold fast to what God has done for us in Christ is to be turned away from ourselves to others. It means that we are set free to truly serve God and our neighbour. Two things are vitally important: 

* Love for those who do wrong should stir us to engage in intercessory prayer! Abraham implores God to save the most wicked of cities for the sake of a few good folk. What looks like unseemly bargaining  with God actually shows us that the God of grace has entered into a real relationship with his chosen-and-flawed people. Because God is not callous and remote, Abraham can plead with God to judge the wicked city with mercy. 

* We are called to proclaim the message of reconciliation in a world where people are enslaved to things that are idolatrous, arrogant, hateful, greedy, lustful, envious and so on. Sin and evil continue to destroy the humanity for which we have been created. We must not mistake God's grace for kindly tolerance. Sodom and Gomorrah are judged. 

We must name evils that enslave our relationships: mistreating refugees, denigrating sex, destroying the environment, trashing marriage, discarding inconvenient lives, hating God. The Christian life is a life of costly love in which we die to ourselves in response to an unparalleled act of grace embodied in the One who lived, died and was raised 'for all'. That note must accompany the exposure of actions and policies that mock God's good purposes.

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Rev Dr Max Champion is Minister in St John's Uniting Church, Mt Waverley, Victoria, Australia.

Dr Champion is a member of the Council of the Assembly of Confessing Congregations within the UCA.