Who Is the Subject?

 Let’s start today with a little grammar quiz.  What is the subject of a sentence? The subject performs the action or is described by the verb.  Tom threw the ball.  Tom performs the action of throwing the ball.  Tom is a baseball player.  Tom is being described as being a baseball player.  Tom is the subject of both sentences.  

This Sunday the Church gives us the great opportunity to look at the cross.  The other day we really get to do this, of course, is Good Friday.  As we think about the crucifixion, perhaps we don’t see Jesus as the subject, but rather as the object or the victim.  We can say Pontius Pilate crucified Jesus.  We can say the Jewish leaders crucified Jesus.  We can even say our collective sins crucified Jesus.  While these thoughts have some degree of truth, I think they fall short by of what the crucifixion is mostly about.  Having Pontius Pilate or the Jewish leaders or our sins as the subject of the action, it leaves Jesus as a helpless victim.  And yes, we might consider him a victim, but we must realize that he is a willing victim, he is the subject.  Jesus chose to be crucified.  For he is God.  God is never a powerless victim, rather, he is a willing savior and redeemer.

In Phillipians, we hear about the all-powerful God emptying himself and taking the form a slave.  He humbled himself.  His torturers did not wield power over him.  No, he emptied himself and took the form a slave.  We did not make him a slave.  He became one, so that we might have life.  The Incarnation itself, the Word becoming flesh, was a total gift of self.  The Eucharist is a total gift of self.  He gave it to us.  We did not take it from him.  He laid down his life for us.

Why does this matter?  After all, he still died.  What does it matter if he gave his life or if it was taken from him?  It make all the difference.  A God who had his life taken from him is simply a God who lost his power.  A God who has given himself for our sake and the sake of the whole world is a lover.

From the very beginning, God is in love with whom he created.  He longs for us to be with him for all eternity.  This desire is in him and it never fades.  It is very simply who he is.  And so it he acts on that desire, and we get phrases in today’s readings like, “He emptied himself…He humbled himself….He became obedient even to death, death on a cross.”  A lover does something for the sake of the beloved.  The lover could stop the action at any point.  The sentence is nothing without the subject.  The fact that Jesus, that God, that the one who loves us without measure, could have stopped the crucifixion and didn’t is an amazing reality.  He came not to condemn the world, but to save it. There has never been or where there ever be a more important sentence as this, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”  Where would we be with that sentence and most importantly without the subject ot that sentence?

- The Servant