A Lamb Led to the Slaughter

What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? 33 Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. 35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written,
‘For your sake we are being killed all day long;
    we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Today is, according to the liturgical calendar, the Second Sunday of Lent, that “joyful season” in which we prepare for Christianity’s high holy days, our commemoration of the death and resurrection of Christ. The Gospel recommended for today is the story of the Transfiguration, but since Rev. Paul Johnson gave an excellent message on that a couple of weeks ago, there is no need for me to speak directly about and I decided to turn to the reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans that is also from the lectionary for today. Now, the interesting thing is that I think Paul is talking in his own way about the same thing that the Transfiguration story is talking about in its language.
I say this because, first of all, Peter’s and Paul’s words echo each other so profoundly. What could Peter say in the face of the Jesus transfigured? Mark tells us that “He hardly knew what to say, there were so terrified.” Paul, for his part, addresses a question to us: “What then are we to say about these things?” I want you to see how that question of Paul is not some sort of rhetorical device, but rather contains echoes Peter’s terror.
Paul’s question is implicit in the Transfiguration in this sense: the question, “If God is for us, who is against us” contains a pretty big “if.” Obviously, if God is for us, then no one can really be against us. God is all-powerful. He is the big guy. If He has our back, we are OK.” So this is the question, but it is a real question.
Let’s remember Peter’s terror. Why do humans get terrified? They get terrified when they are threatened by a powerful force. I think that Mark even draws out what is implicit in Paul’s question. Mark has Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus. Moses, the Law; Elijah, the Prophets. There is the whole of the Old Testament. If we ask, then, who could be against us? We could well answer, God’s Law and God’s Prophets, to name just a couple of things. Shall we conduct a survey? Would everyone who has kept the law of the Old Testament, we won’t even talk about the New, will everyone who as loved his neighbor as himself and loved God with all his heart and soul please stand up. Will everyone who lived faithfully the life that the Old Testament prophets witness to, please stand up. Remember these are divine commands and divine prophecies. If we fail to live out the law of love and we fail to heed the voice of the Prophets, if the Jews fail to live their Law and listen to their prophets, is it reasonable to expect that God is for us? Shouldn’t the opposite be our assumption? Peter was terrified because he was afraid he was about to be judged. He knew that the judgment would not be good. The Bible has often been read as a book of condemnation; a book that tells us how sinful we are. But Jesus turned the page on that. What the transfiguration prefigures and what Paul writes is that the Bible cannot longer be used as an accusation against us. Why, because God is for us.
But we need to go deeper. The reasons for Paul’s confidence are, to put it mildly, interesting. Paul explains to us why we should have such confidence in God by putting it in the form of a question. How could God not grace us, after “not sparing” his Son and “handing him over” on our behalf.
The logic implied answer to this question is the most critical thing in the whole of the Bible. That is, God did not spare his Son from suffering that we humans inflicted on him, rather he “handed him over,” he “delivered him over” to us. The Greek word for “handed over” that Paul uses is here paradoken, and this word is practically the technical term in the New Testament for that which happened to Jesus that led to his Passion and Resurrection. It is exactly the same word used in the Gospels for what Judas did to Jesus. Only once is the separate word that means “betrayal” used for Judas’s act. Otherwise in both the synoptics and in John, Jesus is “handed over.” Thus, the only way that we know that God is on our side is this: He let us do our worse to his Son and he continued to love us. He handed him over to us, he did not spare him, and we tortured him and put him to death. And lest there be any doubt about the meaning of the handing over, that is was first and foremost, but not only the handing over of Jesus of Nazareth, please remember the Lord’s words to Paul on the road to Damascus: “I am Jesus who you persecute.” Paul, like us, never met the historical Jesus, but this was never a hinderance to our persecution of him.
Paul’s continues posing questions, questions that are to be our questions: “Who will make an accusation against God’s chosen ones?” This one question expresses our deepest fear. That finally someone is going to truly accuse us and show to everyone what a massive fraud we are — they will reveal our true self. Paul, the persecutor asks this, Peter, the one who denies Christ fears this: who will accuse? The first word that follows that question and that stands as an answer, while being itself a further question is “God.” And then there follows another question “Who is the one who condemns?” Again the same pattern, first word of the answer that is itself a further question is: “Christ.” In both cases the answer does not go on as we expect and as we fear. It turns out that it is not God who accuses, it is not Christ who condemns. God is the one who vindicates. And Christ is the one who has died, killed by us but in that moment dying for us. He is also the one raised at God’s right hand. This is not about the heavenly seating arrangements. This is a reality of power and of glory. He is the one who intercedes for us.
So Paul now can ask, Who will separate us from the love the Anointed, from the love of Christ? Will affliction or anguish or persecution? No, we tried all those things on Jesus of Nazareth and he would not separate himself from us. God would not separate himself from us. Will famine or nakedness or peril or the sword? No, Christ faced those things or worse and still he sits at the right of God and prays for us.
And with that everything is changed: Peter is the denier who leads the church, who leads by being led to where he would rather not go. He is crucified as was his master. Paul, the persecutor, is now the persecuted and this is his glory. To join Christ in giving up his life rather than continuing to take the lives of others.
Christ is the suffering servant of the Servant Songs in Isaiah. He is handed over and is “like a sheep led to the slaughter.” In Romans Paul alludes to this by quoting the 44th Psalm and applying it to us, not just to Christ. We are reckoned now as “sheep for the slaughter.” We turn, we convert, we repent and we stop persecuting, afflicting others and join Christ in letting others afflict us. And it is this metanoia, this turning of the Lenten season that makes us conquerors. “Through the one who has loved us we more than conquer.” All the forces of creation, seen and unseen, are nothing compared to the love of God in Christ. This love has been poured into our hearts. It transforms us by enabling to lay down our terrors and to accept that God is for us.
Let us pray: Almighty Father, you handed your Son over to us and we persecuted him. We ask, with utter confidence, that you forgive us and now hand us over to your Son and let us live a life of reconciliation with and in him. We ask this in his name. Amen.