What if we could cure everything in one simple act?  I wonder, sometimes, what life would be like for me if there was no more injury, illness or death.  I suspect that like many physicians, I would have to simplify.  My income, my relevance is tied to our collective desire for health and our ingrained disdain for pain and death.  What if, one day, it were all gone?  And nobody, ever again, would have sickness, injury or death?  Ignore, for now, the logistics of a world with a population that never died.  I don’t know what I would do.  But I believe I would be happy.  No, I know I would be happy.  Bankrupt, maybe, but happy.

And what if the way it were accomplished were this:  one great, loving man could have every injury, and every disease; could endure every pain, sprain, spasm, rash, cough, gasp, fever, ache, weakness, paralysis, madness, confusion, delirium.  One man, every disease, and when all diseases had been born (all at once), they would be finished.  From that moment on, all of them powerless.

That is the story of Jesus Christ that we celebrate this Lenten season.  One man, stricken with the essence of all disease; the sin, the brokenness, the rebellion of our humanity. The thing which, theologically, led us to the place where we could be diseased.  Sin, the arch-disease, the root.

Sin, born on the cross and endured.  Every lie, theft, murder, adultery, fornication, coveting, disrespect, broken law, wasted opportunity. Every hard word, abandoned child, disdained parent, wounded lover.  Every bit of greed, every genocide, every manipulation and each abuse.  Every rape and every injustice.  All guilt along with all the pain and shame of that guilt.  All sin and all consequence.

In this season, we know it.  We face it.  We see ourselves, heaping pain on Him.

On Easter, the Easter, all sin was defeated.  Every Easter, this Lent and Easter, we remember the journey and the gift.

He rises, we rise with him.

And sin (and death) is overcome forever.

 

 

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