The Rev. Virginia W. Nagel
Ephphatha Parish of the Deaf
Episcopal Diocese of Central NY
Turn to me now and be saved, people all over the world! I am the only God there is.
This is what God told Isaiah to proclaim to the people of Israel and Judah. This is also what the Church still proclaims to the world. The big problem, of course, is that very few people bothered to listen to Isaiah, and very few people today bother to listen to the Church. But these words were true in the time of Isaiah, and they are still true today.
We are now at the beginning of Holy Week. This week we will be turning our full attention to the events in Jerusalem that led up to Jesus' death on the cross, and to his resurrection from the dead on Easter morning. We all know the story so well. Perhaps that is part of our problem. We know that Easter is coming and so we do not really take in the depths of the tragic events of Holy Week. We look ahead to Easter. While we are still in Holy Week we are also worrying about new clothes for Easter Sunday, the ham or leg of lamb for Easter dinner, candy and flowers and other things we use to make the Easter celebration special. But Jesus and his followers had none of these things. Their whole attention was on the events that happened during that week, leading Jesus to the cross and the tomb...and beyond. The disciples had no idea that he would rise from the dead on Easter Day, although he had told them many times that would happen. And because we know the climax of the Passion story, we tend to skim lightly over the terrible cost of our salvation...the cost to Jesus, of course, in that physical torture and death, and in the emotional pain of knowing a close friend had betrayed him and all his other friends had deserted him; the pain to the disciples, who thought that all their hopes and dreams were coming to an end with Jesus' death; the horrible time Mary experienced watching her son die on the cross, and preparing his body for burial; and the agony that God the Father felt, seeing his dearly beloved Son, Jesus, go to that terrible death.
But it is costly to us, too. Paul presses this point home in his letter to the church in Philippi:
The attitude that you should have is the attitude that Christ Jesus had. He always had the nature of God, but he did not think that by force he should try to become equal to God. Instead of this, of his own free will he gave up all that he had, and took the nature of a servant...He was humble, and walked the path of obedience all the way to death---even to his death on the cross.
Now all of us have something of the nature of God in us. God made us in his image, and breathed his own breath of life into us. We are living images of God...not completely, as Jesus was and still is, but on a lower level. Jesus' will is God's will. Jesus told us this over and over again, all through the Gospels. But our will is not always God's will. God made us with free will, so that we could decide for ourselves if we would follow God or not.
Unfortunately, our first parents, Adam and Eve, and every one of us ever since then, has used that gift of free will to try to become equal to God, by force...the very thing that Paul says that Jesus did NOT do! From Adam and Eve wanting to have the full knowledge of good and evil that God possessed, right down to us today who want to have everything that we see, or everything that our friends have, or everything that the TV tells us we should want, we want more, more, more. We want to be better, smarter, more famous, richer, more honored, you name it. We want to be like God.
And that, of course, is the problem. Jesus put aside his own desires and goals and hopes and accepted God's desire, goal, hope. Of his own free will he gave it all up, and took on himself the nature of a servant, a servant of God. That's the key. Remember, Isaiah was told to tell the people: Turn to me now and be saved, people all over the world! I am the only God there is.
We may not be called to be, like Jesus, totally obedient unto death, even death on the cross. Some people are, of course. There are still martyrs for the faith. There are still missionaries who are killed by pagan tribes. There are still Christians who work themselves to death to serve God in the poor, the sick, the needy.
But all of us are called to give up our own free will, and make God's will our own. All of us are called to make God's goals our own goals. All of us are called to be completely obedient to God to the best of our ability. In doing this, we "put on Christ," as St. Paul says. In doing this, we find our salvation. Joshua, the man who followed Moses as the leader of the Jewish people, said it well: As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. God grant that all of us are able to say that, not just this Holy Week, but every day of our lives. Amen.
