Tuesday (Epiphany 3 Year 2)
Today’s assigned readings:
Genesis 15:1-11,17-21, Hebrews 9:1-14, John 5:1-18
Dear Friends,
For if the blood of goats and bulls, with the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer, sanctifies those who have been defiled so that their flesh is purified, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our F60 conscience from dead works to worship the living God!
Hebrews 9:13-14
This idea that God had to sacrifice his own son to himself is only one way to understand the work of Jesus that has been used in the Church. It is not the primary understanding currently used in the Orthodox Church nor in other places. An exaggeration of this view, with a lot of blood imagery, is very common in conservative Protestant and Roman theology, however. But to focus on only one aspect - as opposed to all others - is to risk a distortion. It makes all of Christianity to look as spooky as today’s reading from Genesis.
I highly recommend these lectures from Kallistos Ware, an Orthodox Bishop from the UK. The are on the website for Holy Cross Parish, located in Baltimore, MD.
On March 24 2005, His Grace Bishop Kallistos (Ware) of Diokletia gave three lectures at the Annunciation Cathedral in Baltimore, MD, as part of their Lenten Retreat and Centennial celebration. His topic was on the Cross of Christ, and characteristically his lectures were both pastoral and academic. Included in the mp3 downloads below is Q&A following each lecture.
Lecture I: The Cross as a Redeeming Sacrifice
Lecture II: The Cross as Suffering Love
Lecture III: The Meaning of Forgiveness
Many recent converts to Orthodoxy (myself included for a time) tend to imagine that another aspect (called “Christus Victor“) is The Only Way To Go, I think it needs to be seen as part of a spectrum of understanding - as Bp Kallistos seems to indicate.
Much love,
Huw