Naming God - as demonstrated by the Minneapolis conference and subsequent reaction to it - is a perilous adventure in these days of so-called "Second Reformation". As Christians we need continually to be asking ourselves how we name God, what words we use to invoke the presence of the Jesus we claim to worship. As the early church re-imagined God as they held that God had appeared in the person of Jesus Christ: there was no more revolutionary, or subversive word that they could use to describe Him than to call Him Savior. Caesar alone was the Savior of the world. But when the woman of Samaria met Jesus the Nazarene she, and the other residents of her village, announced: "We know that this man really is the Savior of the world!"^[i]

Christ Our Savior is a good place to begin our Lenten series "Behold The Lamb". As William Barclay states categorically: "No title of Jesus is more dear and precious to the Christian than the title Saviour"^[ii]. Our hymnals are full of references to Christ as Savior: "Beautiful Savior, Lord of the nations", "Savior Like A Shepherd Lead Us", "Savior Again To Thy Dear Name We Raise", "Savior Thy Dying Love" - the number is legion. The early Christians drew their "Ichthus", "Fish" to signify that Jesus was the Christ, God's Son and Savior.

 Yet surprisingly references to Jesus as Savior in the New Testament are few: twice in the gospels^[iii], twice in Acts^[iv], once in Philippians^[v], again a single reference in Ephesians^[vi], a significant reference in I John^[vii] and no less than five in II Peter^[viii] and in the Pastoral Letters a further four^[ix]. It would appear that as the early church thought more and more about Jesus, knew His life in their midst, reflected on Who He was and what it was that He had done for them, they took the name "Savior" to embrace all that they had experienced about His love and mercy.

So the early Church delighted in calling Jesus "Christ our Savior". Their affirmation of the Christ was profoundly personal, as the Samaritans that day had encountered Him, but it was also collective: in the community of faith Christ became our Savior. Together they affirmed their common faith. And so it is appropriate that one of the references to Christ as our Savior - in Titus 3:4 - 7 - is one of the five "trustworthy sayings"^[x] in the so-called Pastoral^[xi] letters, taken from the early church's joint affirmation at the time of a baptism:

"When the kindness of God our Savior,

and His love toward humankind, appeared,

not by works done in righteousness which we did ourselves,

but according to His mercy He saved us,

through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit,

which He poured out upon us richly,

through Jesus Christ our Savior;

that, being justified by His grace,

we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life."

What do we affirm when we say that "Jesus Christ is Our Savior"?

Christ Jesus Our Savior appeared

Christ Jesus Our Savior saved

Christ Jesus Our Savior transforms

Christ Jesus Our Savior successfully completes His work

I. CHRIST JESUS OUR SAVIOR APPEARED

Actually the first reference to a Savior in this formula is to God the Father as Savior:

"When the kindness of God our Savior,

and His love toward humankind, appeared."

The God who is Savior sent His Son Who is the Savior. This Savior has appeared. As His mother Mary sang in the Magnificat: "My spirit rejoices in God my Savior"^[xii]. The Father and the Son are one in their intention to save their fallen creation.

Why this concern? Verse 4 states as the opening statement that the birth of a Savior showed the goodness and generosity - literally philanthropy - of God. For the world into which Jesus came was longing for a Savior - as one scholar states it was "a world crying out for saviour gods"^[xiii]. I have seen the shrines at Epidaurus and Pergamum where men would come to spend a night in the precincts calling Aesculapius, the god of healing, "the Savior of the World". Into a world looking for a savior, God the Savior sent the Son to be called Jesus, one who would "save His people from their sins"^[xiv].

II. CHRIST JESUS OUR SAVIOR SAVED

Christ our Savior appeared: but for what purpose. The statement goes on to state the obvious - a Savior is one who saves:

"not by works done in righteousness which we did ourselves,

but according to His mercy He saved us."

            The tense here is significant: the aorist tense in Greek means something that is once for all done and completed. And this salvation that is now complete is not based on what we have done, but is - again picking up on the theme of goodness and generosity - but simply because of God's mercy. The name "Savior" is unspeakably precious to the believer because it emphasizes a God Who takes the initiative, One Who rescues someone who can no longer save himself, or herself.

The word "Savior" is intertwined in our thinking with that of "Shepherd". The Good Shepherd is our Savior who with His crook rescues that lost lamb, recovers the wayward, gives His very life for the sheep. As John says: "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins .. and we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world."^[xv]

III. CHRIST JESUS OUR SAVIOR TRANSFORMS

As our Savior reaches out to us in grace, taking the initiative to save us, He works a mighty transformation in us:

"through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit,

which He poured out upon us richly,

through Jesus Christ our Savior;"

The outward sign of this transformation is baptism, referred to here as "the washing of regeneration". The inward reality it represents is the "renewing of the Holy Spirit". The cleansing of the heart and the rite of baptism of which it is a sign and a seal are "poured out" richly on us. Christ our Savior, working with the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, creates a revolutionary change as the Father Savior fulfills His purposes in the believer.

IV. CHRIST JESUS OUR SAVIOR SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETES HIS WORK

And what does Christ our Savior do? Our formula concludes by stating that our Savior completes His work in us in the present, in justification, and in the future the hope of an inheritance as adopted members of God's family:

"that, being justified by His grace,

we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life."

Justification: Christ my Savior declares me righteous. A present reality. Glorification: inheriting a hope that eternal life will be mine. A future certainty guaranteed because Christ is my Savior.

Over a hundred years ago Charles Haddon Surgeon was asked what his secret was as the foremost preacher of the English speaking world. How was he able to hold a congregation of ten thousand hanging on his every word, given the rapid changes of Victorian England. His advice?          "Of all I would wish to say this is the sum; my brethren, preach Christ, always and evermore. He is the whole gospel. His person, offices, and work must be our one great, all-comprehending theme. The world needs still to be told of its Saviour, and of the way to reach Him ... Salvation is a theme for which I would fain enlist every holy tongue. I am greedy after witnesses for the glorious gospel of the blessed God ... Blessed is that ministry of which Christ is all." ^[xvi]

Christ Our Savior: Christ my Savior. Is He my Savior? Have you met with Him as those residents of the Samaritan village did so long ago? If you have, life can never be the same: and you will be able to say with them, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world." And you will then join with those early Christians as you affirm:

"When the kindness of God our Savior,

and His love toward humankind, appeared,

not by works done in righteousness which we did ourselves,

but according to His mercy He saved us,

through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit,

which He poured out upon us richly,

through Jesus Christ our Savior;

that, being justified by His grace,

we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life."

February 27, 1994

Lent II

"Behold The Lamb!"

(2) Christ Our Mediator

Hebrews 12:24

When I baptize slightly older children I like to do a few "dry runs", if you will excuse the pun. The other evening I was at the home of one of the parents with children to be baptized this morning, and was practicing with their two daughters what would be happening on Sunday.

Four year old Caitlyn found the flicking of water irresistible. After I had "baptized" them, she attempted to baptize everything in sight, including - of course - older sister and even the dog. I doubt that she had any idea what the significance of sprinkling as a way of baptizing was all about.

How many of us have any idea why sprinkling is used as a mode (if I may use the technical expression) for baptism. Last baptism - in November - I described three pictures of looking at baptism's meaning: a ring, an indenture, a bath. Let's think this morning about the way we baptize, and specifically why we sprinkle. Presbyterians actually have a smorgasbord of options for baptism: three ways of performing the rite. The first is pouring: the earliest picture we have of a baptism is in the catacombs of Rome where a man is standing in water and taking a shell to baptize another person. The shell has been the graphic symbol of baptism ever since.

A second way, equally legitimate for Presbyterians, is to immerse. John Calvin, the founder of the Presbyterian and Reformed churches, once stated: "Whether the person baptized is to be wholly immersed, and that whether once or thrice, or whether he is only to be sprinkled with water, is not of the least consequence; churches should be at liberty to adopt either, according to the diversity of climates, although it is evident that the term baptize means to immerse, and that this was the form used by the primitive Church."^[xvii]

I like the story of the Baptist and the Presbyterian who were discussing the proper way to baptize. The Baptist was being quizzed by the Presbyterian: "If you were immersed up to here" - pointing to his waist - "would that be sufficient?" "Oh no", the Baptist replied indignantly. "Well if you were baptized up to here" - pointing to the neck - "would that be sufficient?" "Oh no", replied the Baptist, by now somewhat resigned to the Presbyterian's ignorance. "Well if you got up to here in the baptismal water" - pointing to his forehead - "would that be enough?" "Of course not", the Baptist replied, wearied by the persistent questioning. "Well", the Presbyterian concluded, "then it's really only the bit at the top that matters."

The third option as a way of baptizing is sprinkling. Why do Presbyterian sprinkle? Their Biblical warrant for sprinkling comes from the ninth chapter of the book of Hebrews. There in verse 10 there's a reference to what the NIV calls "ceremonial washings" and the NRSV - picking up on the old King James - calls "various baptisms". And the specific baptism to which it refers comes in the next paragraph: the rite of purification on Yom Kippur, when the priest sprinkled the blood of a heifer, sprinkled seven times outside the altar. The body of the heifer was then to be incinerated on a pyre of cedar wood, hyssop and a red thread. The charred and burned remains were then put outside the camp and if you touched a dead body, or were otherwise ceremonially unclean, you were then to be sprinkled with water mixed with the ashes. These are the "baptisms" referred to in Hebrews 9:10 - the sprinkling both by blood and water in order to be ceremonially clean.^[xviii]

"If that sprinkling made them clean", the writer of Hebrews asks, "then how much more will the blood of Christ, who ... offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences ... so that we may serve the living God?"^[xix] And then he draws the obvious deduction: "For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may ... (be) set free from the sins committed under the first covenant."

Christ our Mediator: it is the mediatorial work of Christ that we symbolize as we baptized by sprinkling this morning. A mediator is someone who goes between warring parties and makes peace. The sprinkling by water in baptism is a picture of what we call the mediatorial work of Christ. During Lent we are going through the various "terms of endearment" by which Christians refer to Jesus. This morning I want to think of the name that comes to mind immediately as we sprinkle water in baptism: Mediator. And to do so I want to go on in that same book of Hebrews to the twelfth chapter, verses 18 through 24, as the explanation about Christ's mediatorial work is further developed.

I. WHY DO I NEED A MEDIATOR?

The first thing you an I need to ask as we think about baptism and the sprinkling rite and the Mediator it depicts is: "Why do I need a mediator?" A mediator by definition is someone who stands between two warring parties. He or she is someone - literally - "in the middle", a middleman. In the language of the New Testament, it reflects the reality that Greeks hated litigation lawyers. They never wanted a law suit to reach the courts: their ideal was to solve disputes by mediation^[xx]. In Athens men of sixty were compelled to serve as arbitrators, mediators, to settle all disputes before they went into litigation.

The Bible takes this imagery and applies it to the human condition. Job complains^[xxi] that there is no umpire between him and God to protest his innocence. The word there - in the Greek translation of the Old Testament - is the only time the word "Mediator" occurs in the Old Testament. But in the New Testament the word appears on six occasions^[xxii], half of them here in the book of Hebrews. It reaches its climax here in 12:26: "You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word .. ".

The Bible, we are told, is a story of twin peaks. The one is Sinai, the Ten Commandments, God's demand that we keep the law perfectly. "Lord, we can't take this: we can't do what You want us to do. We are unclean." But there is another mountain: Zion, "the city of the living God". We are among people who are joyful, singing the praises of God, their names written in heaven. We see the Judge, but there's also Jesus and He's the Mediator of a new covenant. He's made it possible for us to approach God without fear, to enter His presence with joy and praise.

Just this past week I heard on the radio the astonishing figure that over 90% of Americans pray. And their most common prayer? Almost the same percentage said that the prayer they most often make is for forgiveness. You and I want to reach that holy mountain: we just hope that there's a Mediator there for us.

Forgiveness is why I need a Mediator, a go-between, a middle man.

II. WHO CAN BE OUR MEDIATOR?

What kind of a Mediator do I need? Well the first task of a mediator is to represent both sides in the dispute. He must be able to relate to both, opening a way of communication that had previously been shut.

That is what our passage offers us in Jesus. The essence of the Christian faith is that He was both God and man. As the early Christian thinker Irenaeus said: "Jesus shows God to humankind and also, at the same time, presents humankind to God". He is fully God and came to earth as a baby, and from the time He lay in that manger in Bethlehem that first Christmas to the hill called Calvary as He lay there on a cruel cross and said "Father, forgive" to the open tomb of Easter and the words "Peace be with you", he demonstrated who God is, as He took human form and lived among us. And He stands among us today.

But He also comes to His Father and says: "This is the human condition. I have lived, been tempted, experienced sorrow and loss, know the physical limitations of tiredness and sleeplessness and pain." So He represents us to the Father, and prays with great tears of identification with our human predicament.

Only a God-man could be our Mediator. No one else could bring God and man together as He has. He is the only Mediator. As Paul states:

"For there is one God,

and one Mediator between God and man,

the man Christ Jesus."^[xxiii]

III. WHAT DOES OUR MEDIATOR DO FOR US?

What can our Mediator do for us as he brings our need before His Father? What plea can He make on our behalf? The Mediator knows that we have no claim on God for any favor. The Mediator knows that I deserve only God's judgment.

And yet I come to Mount Zion, approaching the holy place with confidence. What is it that gives me that boldness. I have a Mediator. That Mediator comes with a single plea. "All that he owes, any grievance You may have against Him, has been paid by my life." The Mediator offers His life for mine: the cross is a plank thrown out across the chasm that exists between "God" and "humankind" and makes it possible for me to enter a new relationship with the One Who I have wronged: the Mediator's task is complete when I accept His mediation. Where there was hatred there is love, where there is war there is peace. Communication is reestablished.

That is why I sprinkled water on the children this morning. The sprinkling is a reminder that for each of us there can be a day of atonement, a blood sacrifice sprinkled over us, freeing us from the weight of our own shortcomings, our failures, our sin. Grace comes: amazing grace, grace free and undeserved.

At just the point when John Bunyan felt overwhelmed with his own needs, "ready to sink with fear, suddenly there was, as if there had rushed in at the window, the noise of wind upon me, but very pleasant ... Then fell with power that word of God upon me, See that you refuse not Him that speaks ... This made a strange seizure upon my spirit; it brought light with it, and commanded a silence in my heart ... It showed me also that Jesus Christ had yet a word of grace and mercy for me."^[xxiv]

You have come to Jesus Christ the Mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks.

Christ Our Mediator: see to it that you do not refuse him who speaks.

For Jesus Christ yet has grace and mercy for you.

                                                                  March 6, 1994

Lent III

"Behold The Lamb!"

(3) Christ Our Passover

(I Corinthians 5:7)

In a few moments we will be gathering around the communion table and there celebrating the Lord's Supper. As we do so we will be joining with other Christians across the centuries in five parts of the communion liturgy that have been a part of our worship across the millennia. I refer to the credo, the profession of faith; the peace - pax vobiscum; the sursum corda, "Lift up you hearts"; the eucharistic prayer; and, finally, the Agnus dei, the Lamb of God. As well as linking us with Christians over the centuries, each of them has profound theological and spiritual content. It is to the very last of the five that I wish to draw your attention this morning.

As those of you who are Roman Catholics will know, the Agnus dei in that tradition is always said as the priest breaks the wafer - the so-called "fraction" - and is a prayer addressed to Christ as present in the Eucharist. During the crushing of the wafer - reminding us of the body broken for us on the cross - a prayer is made that invokes the unworthiness of the one about to receive the sacrament and calls on the Lord Whose real presence in the wafer is to give one peace.

But - you ask me - why is our prayer after the distribution of the elements? When Protestants recovered some of the richness of the age-old communion liturgy, when they refused to allow the sacrament merely to be "tacked on" to the end of a service, rushed through at the conclusion of a lengthy sermon - they determined that there should be no confusion about the significance of the bread and wine as a memorial, a feeding on a Christ Who had died once and for all on the cross on that first Good Friday, making a full, perfect and complete sacrifice for the sins of the world.

So the Agnus dei becomes a part of the liturgy only at the conclusion of the receiving of the elements, as a reminder that we have fed upon the Lord who gave His life as the Lamb of God that we might be called to be a holy people, serving a risen Christ, desirous of being His women and men in a world filled with distractions that keep us from our primary mission: of being at peace with ourselves and our fellow humans as we seek to live a life without reproach. The Agnus dei thereby becomes a call to action, a summons to obedience, an expression of our need for continual cleansing and empowerment by a Spirit we call Holy.

That is precisely Paul's point as He invokes the pascal Lamb in I Corinthians 5:7. The situation which he describes as existing in the Corinthian Church is as old as 57 AD, when the letter was written, and as contemporary and local as last Monday evening's meeting of the Presbytery of Boston when we dealt with the question of the sexual abuse of power among clergy and elders. Like us, the Corinthians lived in an environment of sexual license in which anything was tolerated. The Christian community was compromised, Paul states, at the beginning of the chapter, by a man who was practicing incest. But Paul's concern does not stop there: the Corinthian church was actually being arrogant about its condoning of the abuse. He spends as much time condemning their arrogance as the sin itself.

And to make his point he focuses on the communion service, reminding them of the parallels between it, as the sacrament of the new covenant community, and the Passover, as the sacrament of the old covenant community. And as he draws the analogy he uses a single word to describe Jesus: Christ our Passover. I thought it particularly appropriate on the Lenten Communion Sunday as we are, throughout these forty days, focussing on names of Christ in the New Testament, to reflect around the Lord's Table on what it means to call Christ our Passover.

I. CHRIST OUR PASSOVER MEANS DELIVERANCE

The Passover was a feast of deliverance: a time for reflecting on the power of God to liberate His people from the yoke and bondage of the oppressor. It brought back memories of Moses called to summon the people of Yahweh out of their slavery with the words to Pharaoh who held them in his thrall: "Let my people go."

The deliverance came through the blood of the lamb sprinkled (there's that word again!) on the door post of the home so that the angel of death passed over the place where the blood protected the first born from its power: "the blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt"^[xxv] Forever after the Passover is the sacred reminder to the Jew that God does intervene, God does bring deliverance to His suffering people, that God is merciful and gracious.

When the disciples took steps to celebrate the Feast of Passover with their Master, they asked of Jesus: "Where do you want us to go and make preparations for you to eat the passover?"^[xxvi] And Jesus tells them who to approach about a guest room, where He and His disciples can eat the Passover. And so - as Matthew, Mark and Luke record - they go to the Temple with the other worshippers, taking their lamb, and then, as it is killed within the temple precincts and the blood is sprinkled on the altar, they take it to the Upper Room where they eat it with their rabbi, repeating the story of the deliverance from Egypt as observant Jews have always done.

John, the fourth evangelist, has a slightly different version of the story: in his chronology the meal the disciples eat is actually a kiddush^[xxvii], a meal that followers of a rabbi had as they prepared for the approaching Sabbath. John says that Jesus was actually condemned to death at Noon on the day of preparation for the passover^[xxviii] when the sacrificial lambs were being prepared for slaughter in the Temple. The analogy he draws is that the "Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" - as he heard his mentor John the Baptist say of Jesus when he first learned of the Messiah^[xxix] gave His life as the sacrifice for sin.

The tension between the first three gospels and the fourth will not easily be resolved, though it has been suggested by one New Testament scholar^[xxx] that the different chronologies are based on Galilean and Judean, Sadducee and Pharisee systems of calculating the days of the Passover, the 14th and 15th days of the month Nisan. The point to make is that the New Testament is anxious to draw the parallel between the old and the new covenants, the Lamb slain on Jewish altars, and the Lamb of God Who once and for all gave His life, the sacrament of the old covenant - the Passover, and that of the new - what we call holy communion. The meaning is the same: the new covenant, the new community, celebrates deliverance through, and because of, a Christ Who is our Passover.

II. CHRIST OUR DAILY PASSOVER

The reality that Christ is our Passover then leads Paul to relate two other aspects of the Passover observance to us as members of the new covenant community. He refers to both preparation and continuation of Christ as we come to, and as we leave, the Lord's Supper.

To prepare for the Passover, it was the custom of the oldest son of the house to go around the house with a candle during the night of the 14th Nisan to search for the hametz yeast^[xxxi]. Whatever he found was then thrown out in order to prepare for the Passover of the next day.

Paul as a boy had doubtless done this, and so he now draws the analogy: to prepare for the Christian Passover, purge your house, your family - and the household of faith, the community of the faithful - of all the yeast of pollution. Remove sin from your midst, prepare for the observance of the Lord's Supper by recognizing that if Christ is our Passover, if He paid for our sin by His life, then we must deal with sin seriously. Paul is anxious that nothing mar the effective testimony of the Christian community, and as they come to the table they must ask - as Judas of old - "Is it I, Lord?"

But the preparation for the Lord's Supper is one thing. After the feast the Jewish Passover allowed for seven more days in which there was to be no yeast in the house. Paul's conclusion in verse 8 is that we must go on celebrating the Feast - continue the practice of dealing with sin, rooting out the yeasting influence of evil in our life, so that our household - both personally and collectively - is free of anything that would deny the reality that Christ is our Passover.

The Lord's Table then is where you and I will shortly meet "Christ Our Passover". We need to recognize that the forgiveness that the Lamb of God brings us through His shed blood on the cross is not something that we can take for granted. We come only after we have taken the old yeast out of our lives, removed every unconfessed sin from having its influence, regarding the Communion observance as a time to settle accounts with God.

And then we leave this place determined "Keep the Feast": the Communion service is not the end of our self-examination, or commitment to be holy and consistent before our God. Rather, as Paul states, it is the beginning. We leave the Lord's Table committed to the Christ who, as our Passover, calls to live a life of godliness in an evil and perverse world. And in the eating, as we have fed upon our Pascal Lamb, we have new strength to be the kind of people God wants us to be: holy and blameless.

Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without years - as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival ...  

                                                                 March 13, 1994

Lent IV

"Behold The Lamb!"

(4) Christ Our Peace

(Colossians 1:20)

Welcome to the world of Beavis and ButtHead, first seen on television a year and a half ago and now part of our national psyche. Originally submitted as a one-time entry for a festival of "sick and twisted" cartoons, MTV executives, quickly ordered up thirty-five episodes. It's now a multi-national operation with animators in New York and Korea churning out the images of its inventor, Mike Judge, a thirty year old cartoonist whose Mother, a school librarian in Albuquerque, assures was "nothing like Beavis and ButtHead as a child."

Just as well. In that now famous, or infamous, first program, titled Frog Baseball, the deadly duo blow up a locust with a firecracker and then take batting practice with a live frog. "My mother didn't like that at all", says Judge. Further incidents have them painting "Megadeath" on Mr. Anderson's house, feeding him a deep-fried rat, and mowing the botanical garden. A reviewer observes: "It captures something essential about the American male experience in a new way; that to exercise the power of life and death over small, defenseless creatures with effortless cruelty and stupidity can be really, really funny."^[xxxii]

Are Beavis and ButtHead a cause or a reflection of our national penchant for violence, man's primeval aggressive instincts? Does television create violent behavior or merely tell us what was there all along? George Gerber of the University of Pennsylvania says that by the age of sixteen the average child will have witnessed 200,000 violent acts on television and no less than 33,000 murders. But Steven Bocho, creator of the television program NYPD Blue, states: "There is more violence on the 5 o'clock news than anything you'll see on the networks during primetime." We were shocked by Colin Ferguson on the Long Island Railroad 5:24 commuter train. Polly Lass, an innocent twelve-year old, taken from her slumber party at her Petaluma, CA, home, has become a kind of icon of the senseless violence of our society. Who's to blame?

There's tremendous perplexity about the causes of violence in our society. The President's Summit meeting on violence, scheduled for last December, had to be canceled "for lack of focus". Studies on violence proliferate - from Congress to the Violence Policy Center in Washington, to our local Harvard Project on Guns, Violence and Public Health. I think that a comment in the December 6, 1993, issue of US News and World Report summarizes it when it speaks of the endemic cause of violent behavior in our society is a "spiritual decay that encourages" violence.

What an opportunity for Christians to bear witness to their faith! But honesty compels me to admit that we are compromised. First, there's our track record.  Violence has been sanctioned by the church from the crusades to Irish tribal conflict and South African racism. The Klu Klux Klan carried a cross as they went about their murders and lynchings. Then, as well, there are some within the church who are saying that talk about "blood" or the body broken as an atonement for sin by the Son - terms from the Eucharist that traditional Christianity has used since its beginning - raise the specter of child abuse and abhorrent animal sacrifice. How can we speak convincingly of peace with blood on our hands?

Jesus was no stranger to violence. He was killed on a cruel cross, hounded to death by a senseless act of jealousy and rage. Can Jesus help us understand and heal the tragic violence of our time? Can the Victim of Good Friday share not only the anguish of our society but also empower us to experience with Him the Victory of Easter?

Paul would answer emphatically: "Yes". He called Jesus both "our Peace" and "our Reconciler? Here in Colossians 1:20 and 21 he joins the titles and as he does so, helps us speak to the roots of violence in human behavior: Christ our Peace, Christ our Reconciler. "For God was pleased ... through (Jesus) to reconcile to himself all things ... by making peace through His blood, shed on the cross." Because Christ is my Peace I can say three things to a violent society:

I. CHRIST OUR PEACE BRINGS DIGNITY TO HUMAN LIFE

Part of the reason for violence in our society is the cheapness of human life. We see white supremacists in Bophuthatswana begging for life, shortly before they are shot, on the front pages of yesterday's paper. Life is cheap: even the closest relationships where people know each other - and have at one time loved - are in the most jeopardy from random acts of hatred and cruelty. There is a mindlessness to much of the orgy of destructive and manic murder we see around us.

"God was pleased to have all God's fullness dwell in (Jesus)." The affirmation of verse 19 is at the heart of the Christian faith. "The image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation" (verse 15) became a human being. The very One through whom "all things hold together" (verse 17) is the One Whom God chose to be our Peace, our Reconciler. It mattered to our Father that we were at war with one another. He sent His Son, invested with all the power and authority of heaven, to die for us.

At the cross Jesus invested human life with new dignity and value. He loved us so much that He died to be our Peace. No one who has seen Jesus, as the image of the inviable God, dying on a cruel cross can ever cheapen human life again.

II. CHRIST OUR PEACE UNDERSTANDS VIOLENCE

Another point these verses make is that God was no bystander, observing human violence without lifting a finger. He did not watch as we humans battled it out among ourselves. He did not allow the human condition to disintegrate, carelessly letting the human predicament worsen. He did not leave us lost in a violent, self-centered, angry existence. Rather he came into human existence, and died an undeserved death. He was not inured to human suffering, wiping His hands of it and saying: "They got what they deserved".

No! Jesus - by whom all things were created (verse 16) - became a creature. He identified with the human condition. This all-powerful One - in Whom God's fullness dwelled - made Peace the only way He could: by His blood shed on the cross. As Dorothy Sayers once stated: "Whatever the answer to the problem of evil, this much is true: God took His own medicine."^[xxxiii]

Once - he continues in verse 21 - you and I were alienated. But now - the contrast in verse 22 - God has reconciled us through Christ's physical body. He took frail flesh and died. He understands the sorrow of the victim of violence because He was one Himself. He weeps with the child who was abused, the helpless who are taken advantage of, the woman who experiences the angry lust of the powerful male. He weeps with family members who are forced to live the rest of their lives in the shadow of the violent death of a loved one. He is there - as of old - at the grave side. He will be there with us when we feel most vulnerable, most helpless, most threatened, most intimidated.

My friend: in a violent world Jesus the victim of violence can bring you peace through whatever violence you have experienced because He understands. Above the tumult of the storm He is there in the tossing boat with you and whispers "Peace, be still". Christ our Peace - through the blood, shed on the cross, for me, with me.        

III. CHRIST OUR PEACE BRINGS FORGIVENESS TO THE VIOLENT AND HEALING TO THE VICTIM

But there is more. Christ not only identifies with the victim of violence. He brings power to the powerless, and helps the weak and the weary to overcome the darkness of despair that violence brings. Once we were alienated from God, enemies in our minds because of our evil behavior. But now - we experience peace. Peace only through Christ: our verse adds an additional "through Him" (omitted in the NIV) "making peace through the blood of the cross through Him, whether things on the earth or things in heaven".

Christ our peace - by the blood of the cross - helps us to start all over again. He is our peace was for a single purpose: "to present (us) holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation" (verse 22). Holiness is whole-ness, shalom, God's ordered existence for His children in a disordered and fragmented world.

To the victim Christ our Peace says this: God does not intend for you to live the rest of your life that way. There is peace - peace primarily within, but peace even to those who have wronged you. Forgiveness is a way of life, not something stated in a sentence once and then over. The Christian is only a Victim if she (or he) ignores the saving, healing power of the gospel. And the Christian community must always express that forgiveness, demonstrate that mercy, live that love. "In Jesus Christ you are forgiven" is a way of life. Christ was,