Romans 8.31-37; Psalm 40.1-11; Matthew 20.20-28
Our theme of walking in love takes one more step along the path of exploring Christ’s love for us. Tonight’s theme is, “And Gave Himself for Us.” Walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us. Probably the most familiar passage in the Bible to describe how God gave is John 3.16. “This is how much God loved the world: God gave the only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Now that text will be part of the gospel reading this coming Sunday; you will have to come back for more John. Tonight’s attention is elsewhere. Our reading from the Gospel of Matthew includes a key verse for understanding the meaning of Jesus’ death, given by Jesus himself. “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
Only what does it mean that Jesus gave himself for us as a ‘ransom’? In English, a ransom is what you pay to get a kidnapped loved one back from the kidnappers. Or when hackers load ransomware on a corporate computer system, they keep it locked down until the company pays out a hefty sum of money; Monday there was a story about a ransomware attack on a healthcare system that led to a $22 million payout. Yet in both examples, a ransom rewards the wrongdoers, puts cash in their pockets, an outcome that surely encourages more of the same. What does Jesus mean when he says his life is a ransom? Who, for instance, is getting paid off?
Now the biblical sense of the ‘ransom’ does include the idea of payment, but not in way that keeps wrongdoing in circulation; rather, it puts an end to wrongdoing. A ransom is how slaves are freed and slavery ended, the blood of the Passover lamb protecting the Israelites from death, a picture and image of how all people receive new life in Jesus through his death and resurrection. The past is behind, the future opened. “Nothing can separate us from God’s love,” Paul says in Romans. “You know that from your empty way of life inherited from your ancestors you were ransomed,” says the letter of 1st Peter, “not by perishable things like silver or gold, but by precious blood like that of an unblemished and spotless lamb, namely Christ.” At the heart of God’s victory over the powers of the world is Christ who gave; on the cross, Jesus Christ gave himself “a ransom for many.”
That Jesus gave himself for us is not, however, only about the one-time event of the cross. To speak about Christ “who gave himself for us” summarizes his entire life, all the ways he gave himself. Right before talking about his life as a ransom, Jesus says, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.” Self-giving service is the pattern of Jesus’ entire life and ministry, his teaching and healing, culminating in his death and resurrection and in the forgiveness and new life that flow from it. “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly,” Jesus says in another place. Jesus gave himself for us throughout his life; Jesus’ very being is a gift.
Tonight, too. The one-time event of Jesus giving himself as a ransom on the cross—“a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world,” as we will pray over the bread and wine of the Holy Eucharist—is made real in this sacrament. Here is your ransom from the powers that threaten to keep you from God. Here is forgiveness and life for you. “Nothing can separate us from God’s love” in Christ who gave, and gives, himself for us.
A prayer included the Sunday bulletins over the last weeks prays, “Grant that throughout this Lent, our souls may so be fed by him…that day by day we may be renewed in spirit by the power of his endless life; who gave himself for us.” To speak of Christ of who gave himself for us as a ransom is to speak of Christ who gives himself to us even now in his body and blood.
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