Christ the victim

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.