Saturday, May 17, 2014
Maundy Thursday April 4, 2012
Maundy Thursday
April 4, 2012
Holy Trinity & St. Anskar
This
is my Blood of the New Covenant
which
is shed for you and for all for
the forgiveness of sin
+In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided
Trinity
The forgiveness of sin is at the heart of the New Covenant. So
much so that it is not an exaggeration to say that the forgiveness of sin is the New Covenant. Jesus mentions it
both at the Last Supper and as he endures crucifixion. I am increasingly convinced
that the forgiveness of sins is not about God's forgiving our sins, but about
our forgiving one another’s sins. Our sins were forgiven before we committed
them — "before the foundation of the world". But the New Covenant in
His Blood actually changes human nature, bestowing upon us humans the divine
capacity to forgive sin.
We become new creatures by participating in the Sacrament of His
Body and Blood, that is to say by participating in the Paschal Mystery of his
Death and Resurrection. At the center of that New Creation is His prayer: Father, forgive them for they know not what
they do. He spoke these words at the very moment He shed His Precious for
us and for all. Forgiveness of sin is accomplished on the Cross, but it is
not a matter of paying off God, it is the restoration of the disfigured image
of God. No longer are human beings the children of Cain, murdering each other
in the name of outraged justice, which is really envy and revenge. The cycle of
violence into which we are born, is broken by the One Who takes all of our
violence and revenge into His own Body, into which He incorporates us.
In Slavonic, the word is slightly different, closer to remit, to send back. But the roots of
the Slavonic word really means "to set aside" or "to place
outside of”. The New Covenant means setting us outside of sin, the cycle of
violence. The Blood of Christ, removes us from sin so that we no longer stand
in it, but we “stand anew” outside it (anastasis
— Resurrection). The Blood of Christ is the life’s Blood of the Universe. It is
what we call the force that one progressive Rabbi describes as
the force that permeates every ounce of Being and unites all in
one transcendent and imminent reality…the force that makes possible the
transformation from “that which is” to “that which ought to be,”
the force that makes it possible to transcend the tendency of human beings to
pass on to others the hurt and pain that has been done to us.
Incapacity to forgive is
sin. Our sins are the offenses done
to us, which we keep in our hearts and nurture. They are ours and we’ll be damned if we will have them taken away from us!
Damned indeed. That's the problem. These sins that others commit — or that we
imagine others to commit — against us have a hold on us. They enslave us, as Pharaoh
enslaved our spiritual ancestors. The Blood of Him Who said Father forgive them for they know not what
they do dissolves that bondage, and permits us to "stand anew"
—"set aside” from our sins.
The divine capacity to forgive sins is at the center of the New
Creation, because without it there is no possibility of peace — only endless
blood-feud. The New Covenant bestows this new capacity on "many" —
which is to say upon all the
children of Adam. In this view of the Atonement, the Blood of the Cross is not
an expiatory offering to God for sin, for God does not need to be placated. If
it were so, that the Blood of Christ paid for our sins, then it would not be
forgiveness at all, but repayment –
payment made by Christ on our behalf, but still repayment and not forgiveness. Rather,
the Blood of the Cross — which is also the Blood of the Cup — is the Sign of
the New Covenant.
Ancient Hebrew covenants, contracts between men, were sealed in
blood. The covenanting parties would wound their hands and then join them, so
that their blood mingled. Then they would eat a ceremonial meal together – a
lamb or goat or ox that was slaughtered to be eaten as another sign of the
Covenant. This had nothing at all to do with propitiatory sacrifice for sin.
Nor were the animal sacrifices, offered just as Jesus was dying, offerings for
sin. They were the re-enactment of the First Covenant — the Passover — in which
the animals were slain and eaten in haste, their blood smeared on the lintels as
a sign to ward off the angel of death, whom God sent to devastate the enslaving
Pharaoh.
The New Covenant universalizes the first (“for you and for many”). God's part in this agreement is
to share divinity with us: beginning with the divine capacity to forgive. So
that, by the Blood of Christ, we set
aside all evil done to us, and are thereby liberated from it.
WE ADORE YOU, O cHRIST, AND WE BLESS YOU
BECAUSE BY YOUR hOLY cROSS YOU HAVE REDEEMED
THE WORLD
