Why did Jesus have to die?
Another way at this question is to ask, why did Jesus have to rise again? For a long time I have advocated the idea that even if all we knew was that God in Jesus Christ had come to share our human life and to die among us, it would be enough. I guess I get this idea because of all the existentialist philosophy I studied years ago. In any event, no one seems to agree with me. Gotta have the Resurrection…
So all right, if the Resurrection isn’t the icing on the cake, then it is the heart of the matter. We say that we believe that Jesus is born of the Holy Spirit of God and Mary the Virgin. That line in the Creed seems hard for people today to swallow, but it isn’t a biology lesson, it is the proclamation that Jesus was sent into our world by God for a mission. And that mission is to live and die as one of us, but then, to rise from the dead and destroy death’s power over us. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, would it matter who his mother was? Would we really care that in him, we see God? At best, having only the death of God in Christ would be a mere consolation. Well, yes, we do need more than that.
Buried…
Paul says to the Romans, “… we have been buried with him by baptism into his death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in…
