Saturday, May 17, 2014
VII Easter May 20, 2012
VII Easter
May 20, 2012
Holy Trinity & St. Anskar
For as in Adam all die, even
so in Christ shall all be made alive.
+In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity
This proclamation is found in one
of the earliest Christian writings: Paul's first letter to the Corinthians.
Almost no one disputes that the Holy Apostle Paul actually wrote these words,
sometime in the middle of the' 50s, the sixth decade of grace. It is the basis
of what came to be known as the "recapitulation theory of the atonement."
Christ is the New Adam. Adam means
dirt, in Hebrew , as human means, in
Latin. Adam means all humanity.
Christ recapitulates Adam in the sense of starting over, from the top, and
getting it right this time.
The Byzantine Easter Troparion,
which I use as a doxology at the end of these Paschaltide homilies, ends with
the phrase "… And bestowing life on those in the tombs." That means
everybody who has died. It does not say "bestowing life on some of those in the tombs," but
simply "on those in the tombs." The only qualification for the
bestowal of life is residence in the tomb. Likewise, the Pascha nostrum, from I
Corinthians, which we use in its full form during Paschaltide in place of
the Agnus dei, says:”… For as in Adam
all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." Not some: all. All shall be made alive in the new
life of perfect, communal love, which is what we mean by life in Christ.
Paul's simile points to an
unmistakable tendency of the early Church to regard salvation as universal. At
a minimum, it means that whatever Christ accomplished for us is not confined to
an exclusive national minority. In other words, though salvation may be
"of the Jews" — as Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well — it
is not confined to the descendents of Abraham according to the flesh. That's at
a minimum, a minimalist interpretation. The plain sense of the phrase means
that everybody is freed from death by God's action in Christ.
For
as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
All. Not some: all. As death is
universal in Adam, so life is universal in Christ. Salvation means health.
Salvation means rescue from the ultimate ill health of death. Salvation has to
be be universal, because death is universal. Human life — life in Adam, which
means life under the yoke of mortality — inevitable decay, death, and
corruption unto nothingness —is replaced by life in Christ. No one is excluded,
not even the most wicked, because "as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."
So what about Judas? What about the
most wicked of men? The exalted rhetoric of Paul's mystical insight is too much
for us. It was too much for many of his own contemporaries, who also
contributed to the New Testament. Clearly, it is possible to exclude oneself
from the happy Company of the all who
shall be made alive. "Judas
turned aside to go to his own place," according to the Acts. Theologians have wrestled with
this ever since. Like the elder brother of the Prodigal Son, Judas preferred to
isolate himself from the conviviality of the Banquet. He preferred "his
own place". Like human life, life in Christ is voluntary, not compulsory.
We can take our own human life, as Judas did. But the universality of the
Victory of the New Adam means that we cannot really kill ourselves.
Thus, the necessity of hell, not as
a prison of everlasting punishment, but as merciful, divine respect for our own
freedom. The Father will not compel his elder son to join the banquet. The door
is open, he is welcome, but the father will not force him to come in. As in
Adam, no one can opt out of death, even so in Christ no one can opt out of
life. But we are free to opt out of
the Banquet, and to isolate ourselves in our own place. Universal salvation in
Christ means, I think, that the door remains open to us forever. We do not have
the capacity to cut ourselves off from God's mercy — to cause the father to
shut and bar the door to the banquet. All we have is the capacity to refuse to
walk through the door, which remains open forever.
Meister Eckhart said, "what
burns in hell are our attachments". As long as I prefer the flesh — that
is my ego, my sense of self as separate from others — I choose not to join the
Banquet. Even God cannot force me. But, because Christ has destroyed death, I
cannot choose not to live. All I can do is to choose to abide in him outer
darkness, where the mythological flames of my voluntary hell — my own place — burn away the attachments
that I prefer to the self-forgetful conviviality of the Banquet.
Alleluia! Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down
death by death,and giving life to all in the tombs. Alleluia!
