The Power of Sin
A reading for Friday, July 25, 2014: Matthew 27:1-10.
The stories of Jesus trial, torture and death are hard to read and even more difficult to consider devotionally. How could today's story share the good news of Christ for me and my life? The betrayal of Judas and his suicide? It makes us sick to consider how sin could reach so far.
What if that's the point? What if the point of this story today is to communicate the massive problem of sin to us once more. We say the wages of sin is death, but do we really believe that? Judas is an example of the utter desperation and isolation of sin. This is what it looks like when evil takes over...
We are not so far removed. Have you watched the new lately? Children continue to die in Gaza. A plane full of vacationers from Amsterdam and even those fighting against the disease of HIV aids are suddenly and violently killed in service of someone's politics and border disputes. Dozens of people in Chicago are caught in the midst of gang violence again and again. It's the same sin and death.
Until we allow ourselves, as Greg Boyd says, to stand on the edge of a mass grave of children staring into the abyss and do theology from there, we have not understood the magnitude of what God has come to do for us. Judas understood evil finally and completely and it destroyed him.
Thanks be to Jesus Christ, who has taken on the sin of this world to empower us to stand on the edge of the evil of our world with a gospel that condemns evil as evil and mercy as mercy. Thanks be to Christ that we can stand against sin without fear of death. Thanks be to our Lord who has given us hope when no hope seems possible...
The power of sin and evil is massive. The power of Christ is even greater!
The stories of Jesus trial, torture and death are hard to read and even more difficult to consider devotionally. How could today's story share the good news of Christ for me and my life? The betrayal of Judas and his suicide? It makes us sick to consider how sin could reach so far.
What if that's the point? What if the point of this story today is to communicate the massive problem of sin to us once more. We say the wages of sin is death, but do we really believe that? Judas is an example of the utter desperation and isolation of sin. This is what it looks like when evil takes over...
We are not so far removed. Have you watched the new lately? Children continue to die in Gaza. A plane full of vacationers from Amsterdam and even those fighting against the disease of HIV aids are suddenly and violently killed in service of someone's politics and border disputes. Dozens of people in Chicago are caught in the midst of gang violence again and again. It's the same sin and death.
Until we allow ourselves, as Greg Boyd says, to stand on the edge of a mass grave of children staring into the abyss and do theology from there, we have not understood the magnitude of what God has come to do for us. Judas understood evil finally and completely and it destroyed him.
Thanks be to Jesus Christ, who has taken on the sin of this world to empower us to stand on the edge of the evil of our world with a gospel that condemns evil as evil and mercy as mercy. Thanks be to Christ that we can stand against sin without fear of death. Thanks be to our Lord who has given us hope when no hope seems possible...
The power of sin and evil is massive. The power of Christ is even greater!
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