With Holy Week fast approaching, thoughts naturally turn to the cross, resurrection, and the meaning of it all. For me, the meaning too often gets reduced to, "Jesus died for you and then rose again. Believe this and you're saved." Thus "salvation," whatever particular meaning a person has for that term, becomes about recognizing the right formula and plugging yourself in.
But Paul's words from Romans 11 are a bit hard to fit into the formula. Paul is clearly bothered by the fact that so many of his Jewish kindred have rejected Jesus. Yet he is unwilling to see this simply as them not "getting it." He sees the whole episode as somehow a part of God's plan, and he also sees no evidence that God has rejected the Jews. Surely this means that the cross is much more than formula. It is a part - indeed the central part - of God's plan to redeem all Creation, a plan that is often incomprehensible to human beings.
Many years ago I was having lunch with a fellow pastor who was part of our neighborhood, ecumenical clergy group who had conducted a funeral earlier that day. And he said to me, "Boy it sure is hard doing a funeral for someone you know isn't saved." I told him that on this point I washappy to be a Calvinist, and to trust that God saves whomever God saves. Who is and who isn't is known only to God, and I'm more than content to leave that in God's hands.
The cross is a pretty strange way for God to go, when you think about it. And I suspect that easy formulas seek to make simple what are the inscrutable purposes of God. In the meantime, I will meditate on Holy Week, the cross, and the resurrection, and continue with my own feeble efforts to have my life conform better to what I see God doing there.
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