Eucharistic meditation, Easter Sunday

Eucharistic meditation, Easter Sunday April 16, 2006

1 Timothy 3:16: By common confession great is the mystery of godliness: He who was revealed in the flesh, was vindicated in the Spirit, beheld by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.

As Pastor Wilson has emphasized this morning, pagan civilizations are essentially satanic, founded on accusation and scapegoating. Pagan civilizations are unified against a common enemy, the one guilty man who must die for the sake of the people. Once the scapegoat dies, the citizens realize that his death saved the city, and the scapegoat is apotheosized into a god. Oedipus is exiled from Thebes but by the end of his life cities are competing to give him a burial ground; Julius Caesar is slaughtered in the Capitol, but he later joins the pantheon of Roman gods.

Superficially, Christianity looks like more of the same.


We too talk of a scapegoat, the one man who must die for the people. We too see that the death of this one man is a saving death, and by it the city is delivered. We too celebrate this sacrificial victim as a God, now exalted into heaven.

But that superficial resemblance obscures the fundamental difference, and the fundamental difference is Easter. When Paul summarized the “mystery of godliness,” he spoke of the resurrection as Jesus’ “vindication in the Spirit” or “justification in the Spirit.” The resurrection of Jesus is first of all something that happens to Jesus, something that the Father does for His incarnate Son through the power of the Spirit. It is something that the Father says about Jesus. By the resurrection, the Father vindicates His Son, declares Him righteous, overturns the verdicts of the Sanhedrin, of Herod, of Pilate. The Father declares that the scapegoat who died for the people was not guilty but innocent; He was not a sinner but a righteous man, the righteous man.

That declaration of innocence, that justification of Jesus, undoes the whole scapegoat mechanism that founds pagan societies upon accusation. Through that declaration made in the resurrection of Jesus, the Father gathers a new society and plants a new city. Because of that declaration, we gather at this table not to remember the guilt of the scapegoat but to celebrate His innocence.

This feast is wholly different from the festivals of paganism. We gather at this table as the new people, the new society, the new city because Jesus our scapegoat has been vindicated, He is vindicated indeed. Because He is risen, He is risen indeed.


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