God’s Problem, Our Salvation
Homily for Easter Sunday
God has a problem. That problem is you and I. That’s a strange way to start an Easter homily, isn’t it? What do I mean by that? How are we God’s problem?
Well, God didn’t make man accidentally or arbitrarily. God made us for a reason. He made us for life. Specifically, he made us to share in his life. At the beginning of our existence, the first pages of Genesis record God breathing his own life into us to give us life (cf. Gen 2:7). Those same pages also record God’s warning that if we rebel against him, and so separate ourselves from the source of our life, then we would die (cf. Gen 2:17). We rebelled. And death entered the world.
This may sound more like a problem for us than for God. But it is God’s problem; first, because God loves us, and second, because God did not make us for death (see Wis 1:13, God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living). He made us for life. So if death were to have the final word, it would appear as though God’s plan had failed; that death — and our sin that caused it — is more powerful than God. But God is omnipotent (all powerful). There is nothing that can thwart God’s will; God made us for life; therefore death cannot be our ultimate end. And yet God tells us plainly that if we turn away from him we will die. And God cannot be mistaken, because God is all knowing. And God cannot lie, because God is Truth. Therefore we must die.
This is why I say that God has a problem. God cannot spare us from death without contradicting himself. Nor can he allow death to reign without also contradicting himself. It seems like a paradox. What is God to do?
As the angel Gabriel told Mary on the day of the Annunciation, “Do not be afraid… with God nothing is impossible” (Lk 1:30, 37). What seems like an impossible problem for us is not impossible for God, and God’s solution to the problem of sin and death is something that no man could have imagined and a testimony to the power of God’s love for us.
God’s solution to the problem caused when we, his children made for life, separated ourselves from him by sin was to unite himself to us by taking on our mortal human nature so that he, the Author of Life, might gain the one thing we possess that he lacks — the ability to die. And he used that ability to make of himself a sacrifice on our behalf, fulfilling all justice and righteousness, paying in full the price for our sins. The cross upon which he paid that price has been called a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who believe, Jews and Gentiles alike, it is the power of God (cf. 1 Cor 1:23–4).
Now if that were all Christ came to do — merely to pay the price for our sins — our celebration would end on Good Friday. But we know there is more to the story. That God could and would die on our behalf is a marvelous wonder. But as wonderful as that is, God has something even greater in mind than we could imagine (he always does).
When the Author of Life willingly entered into death, a marvelous transformation took place. You see, Death is incompatible with Life and so it was forced to become something else. It became the opposite of what it was. Not an end, but a beginning. Not something permanent, but something temporary. Death became, in fact, the very gateway into eternal life.
This is why Jesus says impossible sounding things like, “He who would save his life must lose it” (Mt 16:25), and “take up your cross and follow me” (Mt 16:24). Jesus is “the way, the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6), but how could the cross lead us on the way of life. These statements, so familiar to us, make no sense apart from one thing — the testimony of the empty tomb.
“On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved” (Jn 20:1–2a). They ran to the tomb, and they “saw and believed” (Jn 20:8).
Christ our Lord has risen; not back to his old life like Lazarus or the widow of Nain’s son, but to a new and eternal life, a life that is qualitatively different — a glorified life. And all who die in Christ die with the hope of that same glorified, eternal life. And how do we do that? How do we die with Christ? The answer is that we have to die before we die.
St. Paul tells the Colossians, “You have died, and your life now is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3). What does he mean, “you have died?” He’s not talking to zombies. He’s referring to baptism, the sacrament that unites us in a spiritual way to Christ’s death and resurrection (the sacrament that we just celebrated here in this church last night at the Vigil).
Jesus says, “Unless you are born again of water and the spirit you cannot enter the kingdom of God” (Jn 3:5). Our Lord is very clear about this. God, in Christ, has united his saving grace to baptism, and he did this for our benefit, so that we might know how to join ourselves to his Body, so that we might share in his divine nature.
Why should we have to do anything at all? you may wonder. Why doesn’t God just do it automatically? Because our union with him has to be our choice, because it is a union of love; it is a union, in fact, with Love itself, and that means it has to be entered into freely and willingly.
But what about those who don’t know this good news, or who don’t have access to the sacrament? God may have bound his grace to this sacrament but he himself is not bound to it. So we have faith that he makes those same baptismal graces available to those who seek him who, through no fault of their own, cannot access the sacrament. But for those who can, who know of the sacraments necessity, but who choose to follow their own path instead, preferring not to do things God’s way… well, they get exactly what they want, which is a life without God (which is no life at all).
This is why it is important, my brothers and sisters, to stay true to our baptismal promises, promises we will renew today; that we seek what is above and think of what is above so that when Christ appears again in glory we may appear with him sharing in that same divine glory, because we have united our life and our death to his (cf. Col 3:1–4).
The bad news is that we will all one day die. None of us can escape that reality. The good news — the gospel we proclaim — is that if we choose to die in Christ (and we make that choice by living in Christ as his disciples, denying ourselves, accepting our cross, and loving others with a self-giving love the way that Christ loves us) then our tombs will one day be empty like His.
I began this homily by saying God has a problem. Of course that is only true from our perspective. God has no problems, and he has, in fact, transformed this so-called problem of sin and death into the very means of our salvation. This is our faith. This is our hope. This is what we celebrate today, and what we ought to celebrate every day. This is the day the Lord has made, the day Christ has conquered death and opened for us the gates of eternal life; let us rejoice and be glad. Alleluia!
