My husband was very ill for about a year and required home nursing, three times a week. One of the nurses we had was a wonderful lady who had converted from the Episcopal faith to Buddhism. I am ever thankful for that year of getting to know her and what I learned not only about her faith but the beautiful spiritual discipline of meditation. One day as I sat beside her working, I am not sure even now how it happened, our conversation drifted to why she had converted. She said that she just came to a point where she could no longer believe in a God that would crucify His Son so that He might be reconciled with His creation. I will never forget that explanation and the questions it raised for me.
In the scripture reading for this Sunday in 1 John 4:7-21, that question is again broached and answered, in what I feel, is the only way it can be. God is love, not hate. He did not murder His Son, He sacrificed His Son for us. As I read those words, I thought of Micheangelo’s Creation of Adam, the beautiful painting found on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and the isolated portion of the painting so often reproduced. The arms and hands of God and Adam reaching out to touch. In this case, though, I saw my arm, my finger poised toward God’s. As I struggled toward God, I suddenly felt a hand on my wrist. Looking up I saw it was Christ helping me to reach Him. Just before He guided my finger to His Father’s, Christ placed my finger into the nail rent of His other hand. I was shocked and I wanted to pull back, but He continued to guide me to God and the Father and I touched through that gruesome wound. Isn’t that just awful? But isn’t it so terribly powerful!
In the beginning, God initiatated the sacrificial system with Abraham, even to the point that He instructed Abraham to sacrifice his only living son on an altar in an act of worship. Of course, God stopped him before that happened, but the foreshadowing was powerful. This system of worship was common to the peoples of that time, even child sacrifice, and He continued to use that as the venue for Abraham’s worship of Him, using various animals. Throughout the history of the Jewish people, this type of worship was instituted and followed. Then when Jesus came to the point where He would make the supreme sacrifice, God’s only Son went as a lamb to the slaughter. His demeanor before Pilate was the best picture He could possibly give us of that sacrificial lamb. Then to be executed by the current Roman means of punishing criminals for their sins, was like putting one of those strobe lighted arrows to the glaring fact that He died for OUR SINS!!! Wow!
But back to my visual. As I sat there dumbstruck of the very means Christ used to join me to God, I looked up at His face. But it was no longer Jesus I saw, but the face of Michangelo’s God. And in that face of God I saw the most unbelievable mixture of love and pain. Tears coursing down His face as He looked into my eyes. And a tinge of hope, hope that I would understand just how very much He loves me.
I hope I never forget that feeling. I hope I never forget that face. I hope that in my heart of hearts, I spend the rest of my life not trying be worthy of it or earn it– that would be the greatest waste of my time - but to feel it, and glory in it, and live through it. To reach out to my brothers and sisters in my own feeble way.
I wish I could see that nurse again. In light of the gift she gave our family, I would thank her again, from my heart, for the wonderful care she gave my husband. In light of the gift she gave me in that explanation, I would thank her for that question. Then I would try, somehow, with the very limits of my language to express that God did not crucify His Son. Love did! Love did and hopefully it is doing the same each and every day in my life and the lives of those I call my family in Christ.
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