Alleluia! Christ is risen!
A new movie that’s very popular right now is Hunger Games. The setting is sometime way off in the future in North America. The current countries of North America have long since ceased to exist, and there is a new realm. In this realm the have-nots exist to serve the haves. There had been a revolution, but it failed, and every year, in order to assure such a revolution doesn’t happen again, each of the 12 districts of the have-nots have to send two of its teenagers to a tournament where the 24 young people fight to their deaths until only one winner survives. Each of the twelve districts, each year, draws the names of the boy and girl who will be sent to the tournament.
Hunger Games is about one such tournament. In District 12 the name of a twelve year old girl, Primrose, was drawn. She had an older sister named Catniss, who loved her very much and was always protective of her. When they called out Primrose’s name, Prim was stunned, but began to walk to the platform, everyone knowing that the little girl was walking to her death. All of a sudden, Catniss shouted out that she would be a substitute for her beloved sister, and go in her place. Such sacrificial love was almost unheard of.
The story unfolds from there as Catniss is taken to the place of the tournament, where she assumes she will very likely be killed. In the film there is no indication that Christianity is a part of the North American culture any longer. Hedonism seems to be the only motivating force among the haves, and survival the only motivator among the have-nots. Catniss’s selfless act was, therefore, all the more surprising. As people watch the Games, they want Catniss to win because they are drawn to her because of her act of love.
It’s not a Christian film, and yet Catniss reflects the love of God as she substitutes herself for her sister, being willing to die in her place. That is what Jesus did for us. God created us to reflect his love, and yet all too often we act not out of love, but for our own selfish ends. The result is discord in our personal lives, in our families, in our communities, and ultimately throughout the world. To love is to choose life in its fullness. To live with self at the center is to choose a path of destruction, ultimately ending in death. Holy Scripture tells us that the wages of sin is death.
There is only one human being who ever lived who chose always the path of love, and yet for him that choice didn’t lead to life, in the short run, but to his death. His message and way of life threatened the religious establishment. The Roman government saw him as an insurrectionist. The people who flocked to hear him preach and see his miracles deserted him. His closest friends, fearing for their own lives, left him to fend for himself, one of them even denying any association with him, and another actually betraying him. It is among the worst of stories in human history of injustice done to a totally innocent victim.
The death that he died was the cruelest form of capital punishment ever devised. It was designed to keep a person alive as long as possible, with the maximum amount of pain. A person who was crucified could live for a few days, and yet Jesus died in only a few hours. That was partly due to the scourging he received, which itself could have killed a weaker man. But it was also surely due to a broken heart.
What we recall today is the triumph of God’s love over the worst that humanity can do. God himself, through his Son Jesus Christ, offers himself as a substitute for the death that we have brought upon ourselves through our sin. The resurrection is the sign of that triumph.
We’re not told if Catniss’s selfless act has a lasting effect in her community in the way people act in the future, if perhaps instead of living only to survive they learn the value of sacrificial love, but one gets the impression that it will have a lasting effect. Jesus’ death on the cross has an everlasting effect on everyone who believes in his Name and is baptized, thereby being reconciled with God and made heirs of everlasting life. His death on the cross also becomes an example for all for all time to come, of the way we are to live, as we give ourselves sacrificially to others in love.
That is the purpose of the Church our Lord founded. We are the bearers of the message that Jesus died for our sins, that he is alive, and that God the Father “has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
We, the Church, are also the community brought into being in order to live this new way of life. We are to show the world that living a sacrificially loving life, with Christ in the center, in our homes, in our communities, and throughout the world is the only way to true life. We sometimes forget our calling, and sin is still a reality in our lives, but the risen Christ is with us, and the Church witnesses to this new way of life in myriad ways, to the glory of God the Father.
It is that sacrificial love that truly ends in life and peace. And it is that sacrificial love that we celebrate this Easter and every Easter, and every day of our lives.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!