“For this cause he is the Mediator of the new covenant”
For what cause? Meaning for what reason or on account of what? The reason or cause is redemption or atonement which can only be accomplished by a Mediator; indeed, as Hebrews insists, “the Mediator.” The Christian understanding of redemption hangs on the idea of Christ as the Mediator between God and Man.
Passion Sunday marks the beginning of deep Lent, a time of great seriousness and contemplation about the human condition of sin, suffering, and death, on the one hand, and about how that condition is addressed and dealt with by God, on the other hand. We are thrown into the deep waters of theology.
The lesson from Hebrews lays out the Scriptural doctrine of human redemption. “Christ is the High Priest of good things to come,” the Epistle reading begins, hinting at something greater and better and more efficacious than the sacrificial “blood of goats and calves,” and yet it is by blood, “by his own blood,” that this is accomplished. That “blood” belongs to the truth of Christ’s humanity as derived from Mary whose Annunciation fell just this week past, marking the conception of Christ in her womb without which this greater sacrifice would not be possible. He is “immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,” by which “salvation to all that will is nigh,” as John Donne’s sonnet, ‘Annunciation’, so beautifully puts it.
“By his own blood he entered in once into the holy place.” The references to “High Priest” and “the holy place” speak to the sacrificial rituals of the Temple in Jerusalem that recapitulate the forms of Israel’s deliverance and dedication to God, but the point of Hebrews is about something greater. It is signified by Christ “enter[ing] in once,” and once for all, we might add, “having obtained eternal redemption for us.” The contrast is between the Old or First Covenant and the New or Second Covenant; the turning point is the nature of the Mediator who gathers our humanity into the life of God.
The word redemption is used twice in this passage. Christ “enter[ing] in once into the holy place” obtains “eternal redemption for us.” “He is the Mediator of the new covenant, that by means of death for the redemptionof the transgressions that were under the first covenant,” meaning the Old Covenant of the Torah, the Law, “they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.” The end or purpose of our humanity is to be found in God and not simply in our own projects and designs.
For our own projects and designs are invariably but “the devices and desires of our own hearts,” as the General Confession so clearly puts it (BCP, p. 4), such things, which we admit, “we have followed too much.” For “we have offended against thy holy laws.” ”We have left undone, the things which we ought to have done.” “We have done the things which we ought not to have done.” Would we really want to protest this? Is there any wonder, then, about acknowledging that “there is no health in us”? The phrase in the context of this honest appraisal of the human condition is that “we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves” (Collect for Lent II). We are not self-complete nor are we self-sufficient, as the events of our world more than amply suggest.
In our current confusions and distresses, we might like to point fingers of blame at others but the simple truth of the matter is that we are all implicated in this crisis, in one way or another, in the interplay between the ‘global’ and the ‘local’. Yet, at the very least, this crisis should move us to reassess and reconsider the assumptions of our culture and world, as well as our own lives. If we can avoid the dangers of allophobia, the fear of others which so easily turns into the hate of others, then, perhaps, we can begin to reclaim the priority of the ethical in the communities in which we live. Perhaps, we can begin to recover a respect and a commitment to the mediating institutions which contribute to the good of our lives with one another; institutions such as church, school, family, and community; in short, to reclaim the dignity of our humanity signalled so profoundly in the pageant of Passiontide. It will be about learning again what it really means to care for one another and to discover that is our real freedom. That may, perhaps, be already the ‘upside’ to the Covid-19 crisis.
Were we able to gather for Church this Passion Sunday, we would pray the Litany and remind ourselves that prayer itself participates in Christ the Mediator. We would be letting Jesus pray in us; “let[ting] Jesus’ prayer happen in you,” as the former Archbishop of Canterbury, suggests in reference to the Lord’s Prayer. We would remember the dark realities of the human condition that belong to our fallen world. We would pray, perhaps with a deeper sense of humility, to be delivered “from lightning and tempest; from earthquake, fire and flood; from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death.” I highlight “plague, pestilence, and famine” only because those conditions are suddenly more vividly before us and, yet, without taking away from the current crisis, such things are not new. We can only be delivered from such things by God. “Good Lord deliver us,” we pray, but God works, as Passion Sunday shows us, through us, through the union of God and man in Christ. For the Son of man comes “not to be ministered unto but to minister,” in other words, to serve, and “to give his life a ransom for many.” Prayer is our service to God and so to one another. I encourage you to pray the Litany (BCP, pp. 30-34 [1]). It will be good for your soul and counter something of the fearfulness that besets so many at this time, a fear that paralyzes and antagonizes.
The word “ransom” in Matthew is the same word in Greek as what is translated as “redemption” in the Letter to the Hebrews. The Latin Vulgate translation kept the same word, redemptione, in both passages as do the earliest English translations, by Wyclif in the fourteenth century and by Tyndale in the sixteenth century. “To give his life for the redemption of many.” The King James Version of 1611 opted for “ransom.”
Redemption means atonement. It implies a separation which is overcome. How? By “the Mediator.” Passion Sunday provides the Scriptural ground and basis for our understanding of the radical meaning of Christ’s Passion. He obtains “eternal redemption for us,” for our being at one with God. But atonement implies our separation and its consequences, namely, sin and death. What the lessons for Passion Sunday signal is the deeper reality of Holy Week. Through the Passion of Christ, we are redeemed and restored to God and to one another. The sacrifice of Christ is our redemption. How? Because he is both God and Man.
Our redemption or atonement is the work of Christ, not just as God, not just as man, but as fully both in the distinction of natures and in the unity of his person. Anything less than the full and complete integrity of the divine and human compromises the mediation and thus redemption itself.
The deep mystery of the Passion is the reconciliation between God and man in Christ the Mediator. Passiontide sets all of this before us in the story of the Passion. What is there before us objectively has to be realized in each of us subjectively. In other words, we have to be constantly growing into the understanding of the mystery of Christ’s atonement. It means learning to will what God wills for us.
We seek, no doubt, like the mother of Zebedee’s children and like her sons themselves, for what we think is best but we do not always know what that is. She expresses her sense of what is best for her boys in terms of prestige, preference, and prominence. She asks “that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom.” It is a kind of holy lobbying, seeking a benefit for the few but ignoring that this is necessarily at the expense of the many, of others.
Jesus’ response is intriguing. “You know not what you ask,” he tells her before asking her sons “are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” His question to them anticipates our participation in his suffering. It looks ahead to the agony in Gethsemane and to the Cross, and it looks back to his baptism in Jordan by John the Baptist who heralded Jesus as “the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world.” What God seeks for us cannot ignore the realities of human sin and wickedness which deny divine justice and the justice of creation. Redemption at once confronts us with the seriousness of human sin and the deep love of God in himself and for us. His love is the greater justice that reconciles and restores our humanity to its truth in his love. That has somehow to be learned. Jesus begins with this simple statement about our ignorance. For sin darkens our reason and confounds our will. How will we learn what God seeks for us and which is the true and only good for our humanity?
The Gospel shows that the way of atonement is the way of humility and service for that is Christ’s way for us and in us. He is the Mediator of the new covenant because his suffering and death gathers us into his love for the Father. Such is the divine justice that illumines the despair and darkness of human sin and the grandeur and mercy of God’s love. We can only learn it by journeying with Christ into the depths of his Passion for us. We confront the contradictions of sin in ourselves even as we are enfolded in the reconciling love of Christ the Mediator.
“For this cause he is the Mediator of the new covenant.”
Fr. David Curry
Passion Sunday, 2020
Posted not preached owing to the Covid-19 crisis.