Risen with Christ...

Unlike so many clergy, I did not grow up in the Church as such. Christianity was kindly regarded by my family, but church-going was not on the regular schedule. My early perceptions of Christian worship were school assemblies (I grew up in the UK) and what was seen and heard via the TV or the radio. As a child I found the religious side of Christmas nice, but a bit irrelevant. It was only when the full impact of St John's words, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth," that my perception of Christian as something nice, but not really relevant changed to an assessment that Christianity was fascinating and important. This began a process of exploration that has continued up to the present day.

At the centre of my fascination is the whole idea of God as being passionately involved with humanity not just through creation, but through the process of redemption. However, when I think about redemption, I am thinking about something a good deal wider than Mrs. Alexander's verse in the hymn 'There is a Green Hill Far Away,'

"There was none other good enough To pay the price of sin: He only could unlock the gate Of heaven, and let us in."

Modern theological liberals object to it because it reflects the idea of penal substitution, the teaching that Christ took the penalty for our sins. However, what they miss in their desire to demythologize Christianity, or whatever it is they are doing, is that throughout human history atonement was made with the blood of a sacrifice. What is unhelpful about Penal Substitution, is that it focusses too narrowly on a single aspect of Jesus life and work, which, in the wrong hands, can make it seem as though the Christ came simply to suffer and to die.

Christ's sacrifice upon the Cross was part of a redemptive life. From the moment the angel spoke to Mary, to this day, the work of Christ is that of redemption. His human life from cradle to grave was an alignment and participation by God in the life of man, the profoundness of which is encapsulated in the comment from Hebrews that Christ our 'high priest' was 'in every way like us, except sin.' This means that when we cry out to God, asking Him if He knows what we are going through, the answer to our question is yes. Christ knew pain and loss, childhood and home, the work place, the market place - everything it is to be human. He not only experienced it, but redeemed it, so that the alienation between God and Man that was the result of Adam's rebellion could be over come. The language of the New Testament occasionally compares Adam and Christ,

"For as in Adam, all die; even so in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Cor. 15: 20)

As we think about this, it should remind us of the fact that as Christians we have two births. The first is from Adam - that is to say our natural birth. In it we are descendants of Adam made in the image and likeness of God, but that image has been marred. Our second birth is through baptism by which we are incorporated into Christ, Christ whose incarnation restore the image of God in Man through the incarnation. Baptism is a symbolic purification and a sign of death and resurrection by which we are incorporated into Christ, so that, so the gift of the Holy Spirit is stirred up within us, so we become more aware of the life of Christ in which we participate, hopefully through prayer, reading and meditation upon the Scriptures, the sacraments, and good works. This engagement with Christ through the means of Grace means that we begin to live a risen life; one that will find its fulfilment through our death and resurrection when the vail will drop away, and we will see the fullness of His glory. The resurrection is the seal, if you like, of Christ's saving work; the sign that we will indeed receive the fullness of His life, the life into which we have been baptized.