Like God we Die

Now, my thoughts may look lugubre... because they are about death....but, no, they rather are about life.

First of all, our Christian faith tells us that our God died. Yes, God in Christ died on the cross. Then he rose on the third day, of course. The death of Jesus was evidence of how serious he was about life--our life. He preached about his Father's love--in the form of "kingdom"--and no rejection of that message was strong enough to make him withdraw from his mission. In front of the threat of the authorities of his time, he did not flee.

One striking teaching of Jesus was his invitation for us to be LIKE his Father, to be as "perfect" as his Father. "be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt5/48).This word "perfect" can be so misunderstood to mean something like a perfect geometrical shape. Jesus explained what being "perfect as the Father" meant. It meant a kind of dying. We tend to select those we respect and perhaps love from those we'd rather have nothing to do with. Take the example of human dignity. It is accorded to those who resemble me. Same class? Same ethnic group? Same language? Same political color? Those outside the sphere of resemblance do not deserve the same "dignity". We have to die from that. I may tend to limit "dignity" to my social class or ethnic group but I am told to respect the "other" whoever the "other" is and from whatever background the "other" may be.
Now, the Father of Jesus, "makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust" (Mt5/45). All have the same human dignity; all have the same dignity to be revered and respected.

This is not easy. This requires a certain death. I'd like to say, "death to being too full of myself". Look at the different passages in Matthew in chapter 5. Jesus speaks of death to anger, death to adultery, death to hatred, death to retaliation. But to die this way is to accept that the heavenly Father is my Father and I am a child of my Father. Hence Jesus says, "...that you may be children of your heavenly Father".

In Matthew we again find the same word "perfect" when Jesus talks about the poor. We read: "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to [the] poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me (Mt19/21).” Imagine working for social economic equality! It means a lot of dying involved. This time, "perfection" is evidence of discipleship with Jesus.
Notice then that it is a dying in order to promote life. I die to my egoistic ways in order to promote authentic human dignity. I die to my hoarding in order to share.

The Father did the first step to die! The first creation story tells us that "he rested on the seventh day from all the work he had undertaken. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work he had done in creation" (Gen2/2-3). Sabbath is a way of dying. The Almighty and Powerful God takes "absence" from that might and power. The Lord God, in this story, allows the created world "to be". One striking evidence is in the creature called the human being. The human being is to be LIKE the Lord God. How?

First of all, there is the move from being male/female to becoming man/woman. The human is more than just a biological creature; the human is to be properly human. Secondly, the human is to have "domination" over the created world. This word is so misunderstood. Luckily today some prefer the term "stewardship". Some biblists translate the word to "mastery". It is a mastery OVER MASTERY. LIKE God the human is also to go sabbath--take hold of one's own might and power, guide these to revere AND NOT DISFIGURE the created world. As steward therefore the human must operate with a sabbath distance FROM ONE'S OWN TENDENCY TO DISFIGURE THE WORLD AND SOCIETY. Remember the human is now man/woman. So to "dominate" is to be like God and learn to die--die from egoism and ursurping power and might!

In the Creation story the Lord God is telling the human, "if I can do it (the sabbath distance), you too can do it because you are LIKE me". This, I think, is authentic dying. God has no issues with his own ego, trying to be "big timer" over us human creatures. Already from the start--creation--God "humbled himself". Later, in the New Testament, we read that God "empited himself" in Christ: "he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness" (Ph2/7). God became like us to reaffirm that we are in the likeness of God. Like God we die so that life be.