On Earth as it is in Heaven
[bl]I[/bl]n our Lenten silence, I sit among my young and can’t help but know that my sin is so much uglier than theirs. The fear. The selfishness. The wastefulness. The pride. The unavailability. The practical over faithful. The discontentment. My long list of sin hinders me. Keeps me from understanding. Prevents me from living faithfully…
…but then there’s the cross. This rugged piece of wood that holds a man and my sin. And all things become possible. In my brokenness, the life giving death of Jesus makes it possible for me to be whole. To live whole.
We say that Jesus takes away our sin. And I can’t help but wonder if we should communicate this truth with truer words.
When I sit at the feet of Jesus, anticipating eternity, I will be whole — without sin, reconciled with my Creator.
But what about now? Is wholeness possible in the midst of sin? For while I walk this earth in faith, my sin will always be present. It’s never really taken from me. And so I consider how the death of Jesus creates a more miraculous possibility:
Jesus makes me whole despite my sin and brokenness.
This is redemption on earth. It’s not a taking away of sin. It’s a making right of sin. It’s not a washing away of sin. It’s a continual cleansing of sin. I make choices that hurt and break my relationship with God, myself, and my community. And this need to be made whole again is satisfied through Jesus. His life teaches how and his death makes a way.
The cross makes it possible for me to approach my God broken, my community broken. Do you see it? Do you see how the cross makes wholeness on earth possible?
Sin means death for all people.
But God wants life for all people.
So his plan for creation must include a plan for redemption.
And this plan is the cross.
Because blood is the only atonement for sin.
One will die for all.
One death, rather than the death of an entire creation. And in this one death, God provides new life — a redeemed life — to all those who will receive it.
When we say that Jesus takes away our sin, we make ourselves static receivers, rather than active participants. We can’t save ourselves, but we are important players in the redemptive process. For at the heart of redemption is reconciliation, and at the heart of reconciliation is grace. Not just the grace given by God, but grace given by us.
When my sin and I are received with grace by God and others, I am given new life. New opportunity to live, choose and relate differently than before.
And this redemption — this making right of sin — births restoration, the point in which I become whole. The bringing back together of the broken pieces shattered by my sin. A pieced together wholeness. A broken wholeness that brings glory to God.
And I realize sitting here in the quiet, that redemption isn’t only God work. But my God created hands must participate with him in the picking up of the broken pieces — of mine and others. Redemption doesn’t happen to us. It happens in and through us. Do you see the difference?
We help in the process of making one another whole. This is the taking up of a cross, the Jesus way of living.
So I look at the darling faces of my children with great hope. I know their naive sin will morph. Their bickering and control over who gets to sit where will one day be power struggles of greater consequence. It’s easy for me to recite to my children that Jesus died to take away their sin. It’s much harder to help them understand how the cross pierces their sin. To teach them their responsibility in redemption. The part they play in restoration. How confession, which begins this whole process, is absolutely necessary in the redemptive life of a sinner.
It’s harder because I have to model it. Live it. And pray that the journey of sin and confession for my children will reveal to them the possibilities carved out by the cross. Wholeness found through redemption and restoration. And the truth that as their sin gets uglier, the grace of God gets deeper.
The cross of Easter has me believing that wholeness is absolutely possible on Earth, as it is in Heaven. Find ways to participate in the process. Pick up a broken piece today and find where it belongs.
