Christ the victim

The Easter good news is, of course, eternally the same. But there is a fundamental difference between those of us who hear the Easter proclamation today and those who in Jerusalem first, heard the same message two thousand years ago.

Those who initially heard first the rumours and then the confidently proclaimed conviction that Jesus had been raised were the very ones who had actually been involved in his death, either actively as judges and accusers, or passively as consenting bystanders. Put bluntly, they were people with blood on their hands.

"This Jesus," said the Apostle Peter in a very early Easter sermon recorded by Luke in Acts 4, "this Jesus whom you crucified, God has raised from the dead." Their very own victim was back!

Even before the truth of that claim could be checked out, it naturally sent a cold shiver down the spine of those who heard it: Had he perhaps returned to get his own back, to seek revenge, or to turn the tables on those who had sought to dispose of him?

The Easter proclamation soon scotched any such fear. Their very own victim was said to be inexplicably alive, back from the dead ... but not as a ghost to haunt and torment them. His return from the grave was announced not with gravity but with gladness. It was announced as good news, even for them. The very one they had condemned was back, not vindictively to condemn them, or to seek revenge, but with the proffer of salvation.

Just as Jesus had soaked up insult prior to his crucifixion and not lashed out at his critics, and just as he had turned the other cheek, steadfastly refusing to curse his accusers, so now, having suffered at their hands, the victim returns with the marks of his crucifixion wounds on his hands, but as he always was in terms of fundamental disposition: He offers forgiveness and life, precisely to those with blood on their hands. Such is the nature of the love we call divine.

That is the nub of the first Easter proclamation two thousand years ago as we have it recorded in Acts. The resurrection is not just another mature miracle that demonstrates what God can do with matter, It is not just a "conjuring trick with bones", as a former Bishop of Durham once so notoriously put it. Rather, Jesus re-appears as the bearer of salvation in the concrete form of acceptance and forgiveness, even for those who had wronged him.

It is in making this point that St Luke goes on to affirm, somewhat aggressively, that it is only through Jesus that salvation can come: "There is salvation in no-one else, for there is no other name under heaven, given among mortals, by which we must be saved" (Acts 4: 12). In other words, salvation came to those in Jerusalem only via their very own victim, only through this Jesus of Nazareth whom they crucified.

Now, in the history of the Christian Church, this text has been used as the basis for making fiercely exclusive Christian claims: Only through Christ does salvation come, not through the Buddha, or through Eastern mysticism, not through Mohammed, or the Rajneesh, or any other form of religious adherence, whether ancient or new age.

Indeed, this text and others like it have triggered often hostile and self-righteously condemning Christian attitudes with respect to the adherents of what we refer to these days as 'other religions' or of 'no religion' for that matter. Christ may not have come to condemn the world, but his adherents have more than made up for this omission.

Each year a Commonwealth Sunday Service is held in St. George's Cathedral in Perth. It is modeled on a similar service each year in Westminster Abbey. Members of various religions represented in the nations of the Commonwealth are invited, not to participate in some bland lowest-common-denominator observance, but to say their own particular prayers for peace. If this service happens to be televised we receive a spate of communications from angry people, often good Christian people, born-again people, who are hell-bent on exclusion and condemnation – for, they say salvation can come from Christ and no other, save Christ alone. Christians should have no dealings with Buddhists and Moslems and Samaritans!

But alas, when St. Luke wrote that there is salvation in no-one else, save Jesus Christ alone, he was not just comparing Jesus with other alternative religious leaders and rival religious systems. Indeed, if he had a vague idea of the existence of India at the fringes of his world, he probably had no idea of the existence of China at all, let alone of the teachings of the Buddha or Confucius - Mohammed was, of course, yet unborn. The modern question of 'other religions' was for Luke miles away, centuries off.

That is not to say that there are not important differences between Christianity and other religions. The philosopher A.N. Whitehead has helped us to see that the Buddha, Confucius, and Mohammed gave their teaching to enlighten the world. Christ gave his life. It is for Christians to discern the teaching.

Luke's teaching is not just that salvation can come only through Jesus by contrast with other religious leaders and systems, but rather, that salvation came to those in Jerusalem only through Jesus, their victim. Only from the victim can salvation really come to those with blood on their hands. Only a living victim, restored and vindicated, in other words, can be the bearer of forgiveness and acceptance of that unconditional and utterly unqualified kind that we call divine.

And this is one of the universal truths of the Easter mystery - something essential to the Gospel that is eternally the same and eternally valid.

When you think about it, the unexpected return of the bruised and battered recipient of your own victimisation would normally give you cause to hold your breath and grit your teeth, in trembling anticipation of a justly deserved torrent of hostility and retribution, particularly if your victim now has the upper hand. In the modern world, it would probably mean a writ for false arrest and a huge compensation payout … if not imprisonment.

But when that does not happen, when he comes instead in appeasement and love, generously forgiving and in no way condemning, then one can breathe again and that experience is salvation and life.

Forgiveness when it is experienced as salvation, liberation and relief, is necessarily a forgiveness that is mediated to us from one who by any worldly reckoning, could be expected to deal with us in precisely the opposite way, by kicking back in hostile revenge. When that treatment is not meted out to us, especially when we anticipate and expect it because we feel we deserve it, our experience is an experience of salvation. Only those whom we have wronged can forgive us in this immediate and poignant kind of way.

But who exactly are our victims? Who are the ones with the capacity to mediate Christ's salvation and life to us?

I think we can identify them, like those in Jerusalem, as those who belong to two categories: active and passive. There are those whom we unfairly judge and actively condemn (and we do it often – more than we may think or are prepared to admit), and those who suffer as we, perhaps unwittingly, passively stand by.

We do not have to look far for people whom we in one way or another judge and thus victimise – by making them our victims. These are those whom we write off or put down or think of as incompetent, those who challenge us and disturb our peace ... or just plain fools. There are plenty of those around – those whom we would not think it worth spending time with, whose social status or background or interests, after all, are not ours.

We all have our pet lists of those who come from Barcelona, like Manuel in Fawlty Towers: "He is very limited, you know" ... as though coming from somewhere explains everything.

All these are diminished in our estimate; in a sense they are deprived of their human due. They are the victims of our negative, ungenerous estimate. But when one is welcomed by them and graciously received, and when those with whom we violently disagree, perhaps in heated argument, nevertheless openly and generously continue to relate to us as persons, and when somewhat surprisingly, those whom we tend to diminish and put down, and overlook as people of value honour us by valuing us, then we are judged ... but also and at the same time saved. The victim becomes the medium of acceptance and forgiveness or welcome which overcomes an alienation generated by us, and thus we know the reconciling impact of the salvation of God.

On the other hand, there are plenty whom our society victimises as we passively stand by. For respectable, white Anglo Saxon people it comes as second mature politely to tolerate foreigners who come to settle within our shores. We are very careful to ensure, of course, that there are not too many of them. But it is, after all, our Christian duty ... and other things being equal, and particularly if they are gifted, it can be good for the national economy.

And yet the inner conviction of our own superior place in the universe continues to make them in some sense victims – like the man who was passed over for that important job for no other reason than he had a suspiciously foreign-sounding name. Or the one who was passed over because of a suspicion of being gay, or the woman at the bus stop whom we failed so much as to notice, let alone greet with a good morning smile – was it because she was Asian? Not too far away on the bus stop wall is the sign "Asian go home", or the, long-suffering and dispossessed Aboriginal community whom society so quickly judges to be lazy, good-for-nothings. It is easy for others to be judged while we passively stand by.

They are victims of our shared negative thinking insofar as we tend to devalue and diminish, marginalise, alienate and exclude. And the judged are also the condemned. If we think that way, it is very unlikely that we shall ever be motivated to do anything to set things right. Saying sorry, so as then to receive the forgiveness of those whom our society has over the decades victimized will be as foreign to us as we inwardly think they are.

It is when we are unexpectedly met and received with a welcoming smile on the face of the stranger whom secretly we tend to write off or diminish, or those who suffer as a consequence of our unwitting passive inactivity, that we know ourselves to be judged...but not at the same time condemned. Rather, when we are instantaneously forgiven, accepted, welcomed and received, we know that salvation of God, through the medium of our victim.

And when we begin to open ourselves to ethnic diversity and see value its the culture and life-style of those who belong to other sectional groups, whether racially, or socially, or sexually, or theologically different from ourselves, even the adherents of other religions whom formerly we have tended to look down on or write off, then we know that the salvation of God is at hand.

Closer to home, we have a regular example of the same kind of thing in families whenever we have a family row and we are out of sorts with one another and keep our distance for a while. We do not know how it will be in the hallway when next we meet the one to whom we have said more than we should, or who has been victim of a cutting remark. But when a smile of appeasement and forgiveness allows instantaneously the restoration of the relationship, then it is, in relief, that we know the salvation of Christ and the possibility of new life.

And if we know the salvation of God in this way, via our victims, then we ourselves in turn become the bearers of salvation to others. For the other side of the penny is that as sharers in the suffering of Christ we also bear the salvation of God to those who victimize us by misjudging us, misrepresenting us, unfairly condemning us, putting us down or failing to respect and value us to the point where we feel diminished or alienated and excluded. Indeed, it is in the face of the natural tendency to lash out, strike back, or to demand redress for the minor wrongs done to us, that we in Christ can be the mediators of the grace and forgiveness of God so that the world around us knows the fresh possibilities of new life.

The Easter good news involves a little more than the contention that something remarkable and inexplicable happened to the crucified Jesus. It also involves the affirmation grounded in experience that because Jesus lives, we also live. But it is equally true that because we live in Christ, the world lives also - by our receiving of forgiveness from those whom we tend to victimize and by our offering of the gift of acceptance and forgiveness whenever we ourselves feel victimised.

Clearly, the first step on the way of transcendence is to value and see value in our very own victims and the victims of the society of which, perhaps as bystanders, we are part - those with whom Jesus so closely identified. There is salvation in no one else; only via the victim can we be saved.

Is it any wonder that this truth has been celebrated and proclaimed for two thousand years?