the Son of God came to serve and to give His life a ransom for many

THE SON OF MAN CAME NOT TO BE SERVED BUT TO SERVE, AND TO GIVE HIS LIFE A RANSOM FOR MANY

a sermon for Sunday 9th March 2009 @ 6pm

Matthew 20: 28 and 1 Timothy 2: 5 – 6

INTRODUCTION
Throughout the centuries, people in a wide variety of different cultures and circumstances have found that, as they contemplate the cross and the death of Jesus, they are profoundly moved, and they experience a feeling of God’s love and a sense of release.

I am quite content to gratefully accept this as a God-given gift of grace without needing to understand why this should be. I have a gut feeling that the cross is about God’s love for me and for the world, that it promises life in all its fullness, and that it calls for a response of obedience. And for me that is enough. But other people are not as simple, and they have constructed grand theories of explanation.

One of the earliest classical theories was that Jesus’ death was a ‘ransom’, and it was based on the verses in our two readings. This remained the principal view for the first thousand years of Christian history. After this time the Eastern Orthodox Church continued to hold onto it, but in the West it was superseded by other theories. Now it is becoming popular again, and it is appealing to Christians from a wide range of outlook: Evangelical Christians, Progressive Christians and Mennonite Peace Churches, as well as the Orthodox tradition.
The view of Christ as a ransom appears in all the hymns that we are singing tonight, and if you are looking for a theory of the Atonement, then this one has much to recommend it.

A RANSOM IMPLIES THAT THERE IS SOMETHING OF GREAT VALUE INVOLVED.

In the century before Jesus, pirates captured Julius Caesar and held him until someone paid over a sum of money for his liberation.
In the Middle Ages knights who went into battle bore a coat of arms. This advertised who they were, and so protected them from being slaughtered. Dead, they were worth nothing. But if they were captured instead, then they had a ransom value. People would raise money for their release.
This sort of thing still goes on. Last year a Dutch cargo ship was seized by Somali pirates and the owners paid a ransom of c £750,000 to secure its return.
A modern version involves highjacking files on people’s computers and threatening to infect them with a virus if victims don’t cough up a ransom fee.
On Valentine’s Day a Welsh fundraiser came up with a novel idea for raising money for the NCH. He was ‘arrested’ by the NCH and would only be released when the sum of £1000 had been raised and paid over as a ransom. I have an uncomfortable feeling that if I was to try something similar people just might decide not to pay up!

Jesus reveals how much the world is worth to God, how much human beings are worth to God, how much YOU are worth to God. No one is worthless. No one need have a low estimate of themselves. You may think that you are not so good, but nevertheless God values you.

A recent Songs of Praise programme featured Desmond Tutu. Because of his colour, the South African government didn’t consider that he was worthy to have a vote, and he was in his 60s when universal suffrage was introduced. He told of how Trevor Huddlestone doffed his cap to Tutu’s mother as he walked through the streets of Johannesburg. And that gesture made a deep impression upon Desmond. A white man was treating her with respect and honour.
When I was in Halesowen bank the other day, the woman in front of me went to the till and began speaking in a derogatory way about a man that she had seen in the town. He works in one of the charity shops and is transsexual. She was saying that he was a freak, he made her flesh creep and ought to be locked up. Other people, including the bank staff, were smiling. So I raised my voice and said, ‘He is a human being’. Everybody went quiet and looked ashamedly at the floor.

Jesus was never about degrading people, but about restoring their worth. ALL human beings are precious and of great value to God.

A RANSOM IMPLIES THAT A PAYMENT HAS BEEN MADE.

The film ‘Ransom’, tells the story of an airline owner’s son who was kidnapped. A ransom payment of 2 million dollars was demanded. Arrangements were made for it to be paid over, but the boy’s father tricked the kidnappers and secured his son’s release.

Although the Bible uses the image of Jesus as a ransom, it doesn’t go into details of a transaction by saying who received the payment. One of the 3rd century Church Fathers, Origen, developed the image into a rescue drama. He taught that Adam and Eve handed over the souls of humanity to the fallen angel, Satan, who held them captive. God offered Jesus to Satan as a ransom payment, so that we could be released from the tyrant’s grip. Satan killed Jesus and it looked as if the forces of evil had triumphed. But God played a trick by raising Jesus from the dead, and the forces of good proved to be ultimately victorious.

By the 11th century this was thought to be rather crude and unsatisfactory and people looked for a new theory. The theories they came up with, that have stood for almost another 1000 years, were actually less satisfactory, since they proposed that GOD required the violence of the cross. Whereas the earliest view asserted that it was the ADVERSE FORCES, that don’t recognise the rule of God, which needed the death of Jesus, in order to destroy God’s reign. If we get past the imagery to the substance, the ransom theory recognises that there are destructive forces present in the world and in our lives, and that it was forces of darkness that were responsible for Christ’s death. But God is stronger and has the ability to break their power. We believe that Christ’s death and resurrection reassures us that the world isn’t going to sink into a morass of moral chaos, but gives us a guarantee of God’s ultimate victory over all that is unGodlike.

THE PAYMENT OF A RANSOM IS TO ENSURE THAT SOMEONE IS SET FREE.

The Biblical image of Jesus as a ransom doesn’t say that a transaction took place between two parties. It is rather seeking to convey the idea that Jesus liberates human beings from those things that constrain us. And that he frees us not just through his death, but also by his life of service.

What does Jesus free us from?
Jesus frees us from ignorance about God. Because in him we see what God is like.
Jesus saves us from being crushed by a sense of our human weakness, our inadequacies and our failures. Because he shows us that God’s grace is stronger than our unworthiness.
Jesus liberates us from that which corrupts our nature and makes us prefer our own will to God’s will. He gives us the hope and the faith that we can be cleansed and made whole, that we can be transformed to rise above our destructive drives and begin a new life of righteousness, that survives death.
Jesus is a personal Saviour who will enable every one of us to achieve our full potential as spiritual beings.

But our social and economic systems are also corrupt and not as God intended. There is poverty, injustice, oppression, violence and exploitation. The Ransom Theory of the cross makes it clear that God acknowledges that all those things that are in opposition to God’s purposes cannot be ignored, but must be challenged and defeated. And so we too will not accept those systems that are destructive and sinful, but take action to defeat them.
The Hindu caste system in India treats Dalits as outcast, disposable and untouchable. Christians are standing in solidarity with them in their attempts to break free from their situation by getting an education. This Lent our young people are collecting money for Dalit children. Emma will be glad to receive your donations. They have also started to sell Fair Trade goods, and I encourage you to buy from them. Here are two ways this Passiontide that you can cooperate with God to help set a section of humanity free.

CONCLUSION
Different generations and cultures have found their own ways of expressing the meaning of the cross and resurrection. The Ransom Theory is one of a number of explanations, none of which is completely satisfactory. For hundreds of years Christians have argued over which is the ‘right’ one. Now they are finding unity in this theory. It asserts that, because we are of worth to God, God acted to defeat those powers that are contrary to God’s rule and purposes, setting human beings free from death, to live life to the full.
But in the end, the cross appeals to the heart rather than to the head. And like me, you may well want to echo the words of Dora Greenwell’s hymn: ‘I am not skilled to understand, what God has willed, what God has planned; I only know at his right hand stands one who is my Saviour.’

By Margaret Bradley