If “in these last days” Jesus is the reflection of God’s
glory and the very imprint of God’s very being” then God (in Jesus) was, for a
little while, lower than the angels as well. By that I mean Jesus cannot taste
death for everyone while the one Father who sanctifies remains distant. Even if
we reduce the relationship of the inner workings of the mystery of the Trinity
to something a little lower, like human parent and child, God experiences the
death Jesus drinks. More to the point, it is not just any death that Jesus
tastes. He does not die in his sleep. The cancer doesn’t get him. He doesn’t
drop dead of a heart attack. It isn’t an accident. Crowned with thorns,
stripped naked and nailed to wood Jesus’ death is as creative as humans can get
when it comes to inflicting shame and pain on one another. And given that God,
for whom and through whom all things exist, knew our nature from the beginning…
(in subjecting all things to them God left nothing outside their control) it
was not only fitting but really the only option that salvation for savages such
as ourselves should come through suffering. And by that I mean Jesus descends
into our corruption and rises above our much lower status so that we might
ascend above and beyond our beginnings to become like the pioneer of our
salvation.
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