Saturday Night Theologian
10 April 2005

Acts 2:14a, 36-41

A friend of ours experienced a terrible tragedy this week, when her father was killed in a traffic accident. As the family tries its best to cope with the devastating loss, they must also be dealing with some of life's deepest concerns. Does life have meaning? Why would God allow something like this to happen? Where can we find the strength to go on? There are no simple answers to these questions, but there are answers. Yes, life has meaning, but it's not always easy to figure out exactly what it means. After all, we all look at life from different perspectives--our own, unique perspectives. Life is like a prism: no two people see exactly the same light rays as the prism separates white light into brilliant rainbows of color, and neither do any two people see the meaning of life's events in exactly the same way. I don't know why God allows tragedies to occur, but I do know two things about such events. First, God does not inflict such tremendous suffering on people in order to punish them, or even to get their attention, though of course many people do turn to God in times of loss. Second, death is part of life, and God is with us every step of the way, from birth to death and beyond; furthermore, God is present with those who are left behind, comforting them through friends and family. We find the strength to go on within ourselves, for that is where God is, in the hidden recesses of our very beings. God is not some being "out there" who occasionally deigns to look in on us and pat our hands to comfort us. No, God is within us, and we are within God. In God we live and move and have our being, for God is the ground of all being. The strength to live, or, as Paul Tillich describes it, the courage to be, ultimately comes from God, whether we recognize it or not. The disciples faced a tragedy of their own after Jesus was horribly crucified in Jerusalem one Friday afternoon, but in the aftermath of the tragedy, they found a miraculous new source of strength in the resurrected Christ. Jesus' death and resurrection transformed the lives of Jesus' followers, and they understood for the first time the true meaning of Jesus' life. Jesus had called all humanity to repentance, and he invited everyone to participate in the joy and hope that God offers. On the day of Pentecost about 3,000 people were added to the followers of Christ at one time. They saw beyond the horrors of death to the hope of resurrection and the meaning of new life. What are we doing to share that hope with people today?

Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19

"O God, if you'll just let me pass this test, I promise I'll study harder from now on!" "O God, if you'll just let me get this job, I promise I'll give you twenty percent of all my income!" "O God, if you'll just heal my loved one from this terrible disease, I promise I'll serve you forever!" We've all made promises to God at one time or another in our lives. When we feel a sense of desperation, none of us is above begging God for special mercy and help. When God does answer our prayer, how often do we follow through completely with our vow? Are we like Burt Reynold's character in the 1978 movie The End? When he finds out he has a terminal illness, he tries unsuccessfully to kill himself in a variety of ways, many with the help of an escaped mental patient, played by Dom Deluise. Finally, he decides to swim out as far as he can into the ocean and drown himself. The problem is, once he's far away from shore, he decides he wants to live. He promises God, "God, if you'll let me make it back to shore, I'll give you everything I have!" As he gets a little closer to shore, he says, "God, if you'll let me make it back, I'll give you 50% of everything I have!" A little closer, then "20%, God, 20%!" "I'll give you 10%!" As he drags himself up on the beach, exhausted, he tells God, "What do you need my money for anyway, God? You've got all you need!" Psalm 116 is a psalm of thanksgiving for deliverance from illness. The psalmist describes his former dilemma in very general terms in the first four verses, then he tells how God has delivered him from his illness. The remainder of the psalm focuses on the worshiper's response to God's salvation. Thanksgiving psalms were generally used in the context of offering a thanksgiving sacrifice to God. This psalm speaks specifically of a vow that the psalmist is now fulfilling. How does the worshiper propose to repay God? In verse 13, he says, "I will lift up the cup of salvation," probably a drink offering to be poured out before the altar. "I will pay my vows," perhaps a set amount of money given to the temple or a set number of sacrifices (cf. Hannah's vow to give God her firstborn in 1 Samuel 1). "I will offer you a thanksgiving sacrifice," an offering that accompanies whatever other payments the worshiper brings to God. When God blesses us, do we remember to give thanks? Do we take the next step and give something tangible of our resources or time or effort? Responding with gratitude for God's many blessings is always appropriate.

For another discussion of this passage, click here.

1 Peter 1:17-23

In O. Henry's story "The Ransom of Red Chief," a pair of crooks hatch a plot to kidnap the son of a notable citizen of a small town in Alabama and demand a ransom of $2,000. They grab the boy, who calls himself Red Chief, but he turns out to be more than they can handle. The boy has a particular affection for inflicting pain on one of the kidnappers. He throws a brick and hits him in the eye, he tries to scalp him in his sleep, he knocks him out with a rock thrown from a sling, and he rides him like a horse down the mountain. The boy is having the time of his life. The kidnappers send a ransom demand to the boy's house, though by now they're only asking $1,500, figuring that $2,000 is too much to ask for such a rambunctious boy. The boy's father sends back this note:

Gentlemen: I received your letter to-day by post, in regard to the ransom you ask for the return of my son. I think you are a little high in your demands, and I hereby make you a counter-proposition, which I am inclined to believe you will accept. You bring Johnny home and pay me two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and I agree to take him off your hands. You had better come at night, for the neighbors believe he is lost, and I couldn't be responsible for what they would do to anybody they saw bringing him back.
Needless the say, the would-be kidnappers return the boy, pay the ransom to the father, and high-tail it for the next county. 1 Peter describes the method by which God rescues humanity from its sin as a ransom, paid not with gold or silver, but with something infinitely more valuable, the precious blood of Christ. The Ransom Theory of the Atonement was a popular way of understanding how the death of Christ accomplished human salvation in the ancient church, beginning in the second century. Origen said that because of the sin of Adam and Eve, Satan had taken control of the world, including its human inhabitants, and God paid Jesus as a ransom to Satan in order to purchase our freedom. Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth century elaborated this theory further. He described God as a trickster who used the human Jesus as bait, dangling him in front of Satan like bait before a fish. However, what Satan didn't know was that inside the mortal flesh of Jesus' body was a divine hook, his divine inner nature, that would capture Satan and result in his destruction. Like the kidnappers in O. Henry's story, Satan would be forced not only to lose his ransom but also to lose even what he had to begin with. There are many different theories of the atonement that have been proposed throughout the history of the church, and all can claim some biblical support. However, it is silly to claim that one and only one theory of the atonement is the right one, for every one is nothing more than a verbal picture of one way in which God showed love for us through the life and death of Jesus. Thinking of God as a trickster or imagining that God would need to pay Satan anything to obtain the release of humanity from the demonic clutches may not speak to people today the way it did in times past, but the ransom theory, as exemplified in this passage, continues to present an important element of truth to us today. God's sacrifice, in the blood of God's son Jesus Christ, was indeed a payment of infinite value, and sufficient to overcome any debt incurred by sinful humanity.

Luke 24:13-35

What happens when a dream dies? After the Great Disappointment of 1844, the vast majority of the followers of William Miller, who had left their homes in anticipation of Christ's imminent return, deserted him and went back to their normal lives. After the Mayan Empire collapsed around the ninth century C.E., those who survived the wars and famines abandoned the great cities and left them to be re-conquered by the jungles. After their conquest by the Assyrian Empire, the nobles of the Northern Kingdom of Israel were deported to the Assyrian homeland, where they were absorbed into the society and quite simply became Assyrians themselves. When dreams die, people often become discouraged and lose heart. The two men walking along the road to Emmaus on Easter Sunday had a dream that had died. They had been followers of Jesus, and they thought that he just might be the messiah. However, he had been put to death, and their hopes were shattered. As they trudged along dejectedly, a stranger began walking alongside them. When he asked why they looked so disheartened, they told him everything: their hopes, their dreams, their sorrow, and their bewilderment. The stranger proceeded to make them look at their situation from a different perspective. Maybe everything that happened wasn't a terrible mistake after all, he suggested. Maybe Jesus' death had been part of God's plan all along. Moreover, maybe God wasn't yet finished with Jesus' followers but was just beginning with them. When they got to their destination, the stranger broke bread before them, and they saw him, too, in a new light, recognizing him as Jesus himself. They hurried back to Jerusalem with a new message of hope for Jesus' other companions. Sometimes when a dream dies, it does so only to allow a greater dream to be born in its place. A plant withers and dies and drops a seed into the ground, only to see a rejuvenated plant grow in its place. Sometimes we do need to give up on certain dreams that we have, because they're not in God's will for us. However, if we do have to give up on a dream, we shouldn't lose hope, because God has an even greater dream in store for us.