At One

One of the readings for this Sunday, April 26 is from Acts 3. Peter and some other disciples had gone to the temple for daily prayer, along with many other Jews. On the way into the temple courts they saw a crippled beggar and healed him. The crowd is astonished and Peter told them he was able to do this through the power of the crucified and risen Jesus, who was rejected by the Jewish people and put to death. Yet Peter acknowledges the people acted in ignorance, and the suffering of Christ fulfilled what was foretold in the prophets. And it is through the crucified and risen Jesus that there is repentance and forgiveness of sins.

At first reading it may seem that Peter is laying the blame for Jesus’ death at the feet of the Jewish people by calling them “Christ killers,” a terrible term that has been used all too frequently in Christian attitudes toward Jews. But the reading below from Daniel 9 helps us to see Peter’s speech in a different light. Daniel was a devout Jew who was forcibly brought into exile in Babylon. Like his fellow exiled Jews, Daniel longed for a restored relationship with God that would allow God’s people to return to God’s Promised Land. So in prayer before God Daniel acknowledges not only his sin and rebellion, but the rebellion of all God’s people, from the kings and priests on down to the common folks. After confessing the sin of all the people of God, Daniel seeks God’s mercy and asks God to restore God’s people and the holy city of Jerusalem. In this prayer Daniel is not blaming anyone for what has happened, he is simply acknowledging that all people, from least to greatest, failed to head God’s word and presence in their midst. Yet despite this God is compassionate and merciful and can act to save. This is the gist of what Peter is doing. Peter is not blaming the Jews for Jesus death. Like Daniel he is acknowledging that the people have rebelled but that God is still rich in mercy, that through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection the breach between God and humanity has been healed.

But how does Jesus’ life, death and resurrection heal this breach between God and humanity? How does Jesus atone for our sins? The words “atone” and “atonement” were created by John Wycliffe, the first person to translate the entire Bible into English. When he tried to translate Hebrew, Greek and Latin words that speak of how Jesus’ death saves us he could not find the right English word, so he created one. “Atone” literally means at one. Jesus makes us at one with God. The Eternal Son of God who was one with the Father since before the creation of the world, became fully human in Jesus and made the story of humanity God’s own.

In Sunday’s reading from Luke’s Gospel the resurrected Christ appears to some disciples and said, “Everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” It is interesting that Jesus mentioned the psalms, for these psalms are not primarily God speaking to human beings, as are the Law and Prophets. The Psalms are human prayers of joy and sorrow, of triumph and agony, of steadfast faith and of confusion addressed to God. On the cross Jesus quoted two Psalms: Psalm 22 (My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?) and Psalm 31 (Into your hands I commit my spirit), and in the New Testament the Psalms are often quoted to help us understand who Jesus is. In his reliance on the Psalms Jesus is making our longings, our story, his own, and therefore God’s own. In his life, death and resurrection Jesus both brought the presence of God “down to earth” and lifted our human story “up to heaven.”

In their prayers and speeches Daniel and Peter retold the story of God’s relationship to God’s people, a story as applicable to the Church as it was to the Jews Daniel and Peter addressed. In Jesus Christ the story of this relationship is also retold: Both the people of Israel and Jesus had humble origins and were under the thumb of worldly powers (Egypt, a corrupt monarchy for Israel, Babylon, Persia and Greece for the Jews; A corrupt monarchy and Rome for Jesus). Yet God chose both Israel and Jesus to be God’s image in the world. Israel struggled with this call and in its disobedience experienced the godforsaken feeling of exile from all that gave their life meaning and purpose. On the cross Jesus made his peoples’ exile his own, crying out in godforsakeness as death ruptured his relationship to the Father. But the story does not end there. Resurrection is not just a happy event for Jesus, but God’s promise that all who know what it is to be exiled, lost and cut off will be redeemed.

The Book of Daniel shaped the imagination of the Jews at the time of Jesus – Jesus’ reference to himself as “the Son of Man” comes from Daniel. In the reading from Daniel 10, Daniel encounters a divine messenger who comes in human form, and he is terrified at the sight. This messenger goes on to tell Daniel that even as God’s people are in exile God is uprooting the fallen powers of this world so that the kingdoms of this world might become the kingdom of God. When Jesus’ disciples see the risen Christ they have a similar response to Daniel when he encountered his divine visitor. A divine visitor revealed to Daniel that the suffering present in the world did not mean that God was not at work. The story of Jesus’ life death and resurrection tells us that God’s story is “at one” with ours, that in Jesus God both shares in our story of longing for a better world and has acted with power to redeem this world. How do we experience “at one-ment” with God through the story of Jesus?

Thursday, 4/23
Daniel 9:1-19
I John 2:18-25

Friday, 4/24
Daniel 10:2-19
I John 2:26-28

Saturday 4/25
Acts 3:1-10
Luke 22:24-30

Read Psalm 4 each of these three days.