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The Ordination Paper The candidate should write a paper demonstrating their theological and pastoral expertise. The paper should be no more than 20 pages, 12-point font, double-spaced, 1-inch margins. The ordination paper should be written in conversation with the United Church of Christ Statement of Faith. The paper should demonstrate a candidate’s ability to articulate the historic Christian faith and locate his or her own faith in relation to the ecumenical and Reformed tradition. We believe…

For most of my life, I did not believe in God. I was born in Hollywood, Florida, to Nate

and Ivy Montoya as the youngest of six children. My father would die of emphysema in 1992

and my mother of skin cancer in 1994. I have two brothers and three sisters, all older, ranging

from five to 23 years older. After my parents’ death, the next youngest brother and I moved to

Davidson, North Carolina, to live with one of my sisters. I had a mostly happy life as a child and

youth in an upper middle class, mostly white liberal college town. We grew up with no church

in the household. Although we did not specifically dislike church, it just really was not our thing.

Davidson was a liberal college town, which made it easy to not go to church. The one exception

to this was my “teenage rebellion.” During my freshman year of high school, I attended Roman

Catholic Church heavily. I had an instant group of friends and a framework for living my life.

Eventually though, I slowed down my involvement in church, and eventually stopped going. For

the next nine years, I would only have cursory contact with religion. This changed when I moved

to Dallas, Texas.

I moved to Dallas to start a new job working in early childhood literacy with the Dallas

Public Library, and wanted to meet people. Dallas is the type of city where the second question

you might be asked socially is “what church do you go to?” As such, I decided to solve both of

these problems, and pick out a church. At that point, I was a staunch atheist, and wanted

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nothing to do with the Christian religion. I had heard about Unitarian Universalism growing up,

but had never attended a service. I went to my first service at the First Unitarian Church of

Dallas in July of 2010. I fell in love with the church’s community and its commitment to helping

people make meaning.

At the beginning of the next church year in September 2011, I began to get involved in

leadership positions in the church through religious education and young adult ministry. I

taught sixth and seventh graders religious education on Sunday mornings, with a curriculum

focused on the radicalism of Jesus. Admittedly, I was uncomfortable with the curriculum at the

beginning of the church year, but by the end of the church year, I felt a newfound respect and

openness toward Jesus the teacher and Rabbi. At the same time, I began to be part of the

planning and leadership for my church’s nascent young adult ministry, which really started to

take off in January 2012. I planned and helped run the “Pints and Ponderings” program series,

modeled after “Theology on Tap.”

I started to feel a vocational call toward the church. As I was still in the process of

changing careers, I started to check the Unitarian Universalist Association’s website, when in

June of 2012 I saw a job posting that would change my life- Young Adult Ministries Associate. I

applied for the job, was interviewed, and accepted it. I packed my bags, moved to Boston, and

started on October 1st, 2012.

I was then being paid to think about young adult ministry. I began to read and

incorporate the best of what was available about ministry toward young adults. I learned about

the enormity of the challenges that leaders of all denominations and faith traditions were

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having in our rapidly changing world. I had conversations with wonderful, faithful people, and

developed relationships with young adult religious leaders- both lay and religious professionals.

In March of 2013, I attended worship for the first time at The Crossing, a congregation

of St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Boston. The first time I went there was as part of

my work; this was a congregation focused on young adult ministry that I had read about in

academic papers, and was excited to see in person. I went in as an observer, not expecting to

even participate; the Holy Spirit, however, always has plans for us that are different from what

we expect. While there on that first visit, I was a witness to a powerful spiritual event.

Ironically, I actually do not remember much about the worship service that the leaders

put the most time into. I cannot recall the hymns that were sung, or the reflection topic. I do

know that the bible reading was the parable of the prodigal son. After the reflection by the

worship leader, The Crossing allows for spoken reflection and response from the congregation.

Most of the time, these are usually around a minute, and speak either about some interesting

explanatory piece of the bible passage, or a small personal connection between the story and

their personal lives. The person who spoke was not any of those things.

The young woman who spoke up first looked young, probably still in her teens, and with

a quivering voice said that the story of the prodigal son was her story. She had been kicked out

of her house by her mother because she was gay, and she was working to repair the

relationship with her mother. She knew it was going to be tough, and she would probably not

be welcomed home with a festival. But something in that story named her experience, and she

knew that everything would be all right, for she was trusting in the steadfast love of God. The

person who had the least would end up with the most. She was the one, more so than any

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pastor, any celebrated saint, who would teach me about what faith meant; not about adhering

to a creedal system, but about living out the promise of God as fulfilled in Jesus in the world. In

September, I would become a regular attender, and for the next two years, the treasurer of The

Crossing.

I was “downsized” from my position at the Unitarian Universalist Association in the

middle of March, 2013 due to severe budget cuts. I began applying to seminary immediately,

feeling that if God had been nudging in me a sense of call to the pastorate, it had suddenly

become a fierce push. I would begin studying at Andover Newton Theological School in

September of 2013. As part of my seminary education I began my field education as an intern

minister at The Eliot Church of South Natick, affiliated with the United Church of Christ and the

Unitarian Universalist Association, in the fall of 2014. I joined the church as a member in

November 2014. Over the course of my field education experience, I began to imagine and

envision my ministry as an explicitly Christian ministry.

This imagining became possible because through a combination of my academic

learning and Christian discipleship, I was able to combine the academic with the emotional and

experiential. I had long-standing myths about the Bible dispelled through my Scripture classes

as I felt the beauty of it through worship. I learned about Communion not only from a

wonderful class taught by Mary Luti, but also by experiencing it in both the very formal low

church tradition at the Eliot Church and the informal, high church tradition at the Crossing. I

learned not only about the beauty, mystery, and paradox of the Trinity in Systematic Theology,

but also about the experience of Trinitarian Love within the Eliot Church and at The Crossing.

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I began to realize that the Trinitarian Christian ministry that the Holy Spirit was guiding

me toward was something that would not be fully realized within the Unitarian Universalist

Association. As someone called to an explicitly Christian ministry, I felt my authentic self and

ministerial identity constrained, not only within the internal politics of the Unitarian

Universalist Association, but also in the churches I would be serving.

In January 2015, I made the decision to seek authorized ministry in the United Church of

Christ. I did and do this with the guidance and full support of my fiancé, Shannon Burke, my

supervisor and mentor, Rev. Dr. Adam Tierney-Eliot, my teaching committee at church, chaired

by Lee Manuel, countless colleagues and friends, and by the grace of God.

… in God, the Eternal Spirit, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and our Father…

I love the United Church of Christ’s statement of faith. It speaks both to a broadly

Protestant, and especially Reformed, yet ecumenical understanding of the Christian faith, while

also allowing for poetry and beauty. Throughout the course of this paper, I will attempt to

speak to that broad Christian tradition as well as the beauty and poetry of our unfolding faith

and still-speaking God.

I believe in the Holy Trinity, whose persons we know through many names, and

historically through Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, bound together in oneness of spirit through

the power of love. Our Triune God is the creator, sustainer, and redeemer of all. God is known

to us in many ways: through personal prayer, the still small voice that Elijah hears; through the

“Word of God” found in the “words of God” that we encounter throughout the Bible; and

through the sacraments of Baptism and Communion.

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Yet God as presented in this statement is in many ways a paradox; logically, how can a

spirit, even an eternal one, be a parent to Jesus? And how can that spirit be our parent as well?

How can the “Threeness” and “Oneness” of the Trinity be upheld at the same time?

Paradoxes are at the root of Christianity because Christianity is not merely a rational or

reasonable faith, although our reason is incredibly important to its faithful practice. We are a

people who know of our God primarily from the deeds of God as testified through scripture. I

take these stories very seriously, but not literally. These stories tell of a God who created us in

God’s image, and with whom we are in constant relationship with in the best and worst of

times. This is a God who is not only the transcendent ground of being, but a God who desires

personal relationships with us as we suffer and mourn, as we celebrate and laugh. We know

that our God is also a directly incarnational God, who sent forth Jesus of Nazareth, to be our

Lord and Savior in fully human and fully divine form.

It is through the words of Jesus of Nazareth that the word Father has become one of the

most popular titles or descriptors for that first person in the Trinity. The Lord’s Prayer, said in

Sunday worship in our churches, affirms that God is not only the “abba,” usually translated as

“papa” or of Jesus, but our abba as well! We are all children of God, bound together in the

common humanity of the family of God.

The word “Father” as a title, description, or name for God has come under scrutiny by

feminist theologians and other critics; their critique that this language in some way enforces the

oppression of women and enshrines male domination has merit. Our words matter, and how

we treat each other matters. I am proud to be a member of a denomination that, although it

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has much work yet left to do, celebrates the ministry, lay and authorized, of people of all

genders.

But I do not believe the best way to “fix” the problem of language is to erase existing

language about God. Instead, I suggest that we use a variety of metaphors, titles, and

descriptions for God, mixing in those of the historic church with others that reflect how God is

working in the world today. For example, there is something about the way Jesus uses that

word “abba” that creates an intimacy with God that is hard to recreate with other words. Yet

there are other words and images of God, found in both scripture and through our lived

experiences that testify to God’s work in the world. These new images are not “politically

correct” or “liberal”, but instead expand our understanding of God to something more than

“just” a father.

…And to his deeds we testify: He calls the worlds into being, creates man in his own image…

The deeds of God are testified to in the Bible in the Old and New Testaments. Scripture

tells the stories and histories of salvation and right relationship with God. I use the words

stories and histories intentionally; the Bible is a collection of many books, with different

authors, cultural contexts, and understandings of God. These different understandings and

visions of God form a rich mosaic. As I mentioned previously, a breadth of imagery is necessary

for us in our encounters with God, lest we become complacent and believe that God only fits in

our own intellectual and spiritual constructions.

Perhaps the most prominent deed of God is creation. The Genesis creation is mythical

and poetic, and testifies to the beauty and wonder of the worlds. The breath of God moved

over the surface of the waters with the same intensity as it does now, shaping our world and

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many others. This story’s majesty is in no way hindered or lessened by the findings of modern

science; the metaphor and power of the creation story is enhanced by the absolute vastness of

time and space that we find ourselves in. We are stardust that God has breathed life into.

My understanding of God is directly related to my understanding of the metaphysical

nature of the world. The Trinity puts forth a God that is founded in relationship to itself and to

the universe. Each of the persons of the Trinity is bound in a loving relationship to each other

part, and although each is God, they are not each other. Most of the actors in the universe,

both divine and human, operate under similar conditions. We are not “one” with each other,

nor are we diametrically bifurcated between two binary options, but instead bound to each

other in a series of relationships. This ontology and metaphysics preserves the uniqueness of

each person and actor, yet recognizes the interdependent nature of our existence and place

within the creation story.

…and sets before him the ways of life and death. He seeks in holy love to save all people from

aimlessness and sin.

I find that sin is sometimes hard to talk about in progressive religious circles. Perhaps it

is because of a desire to not be “that kind of Christian,” but I believe it is something we must be

able to discuss openly and confront powerfully. There is much evil in this world, both personal

and societal, and we are being called to minister to an increasingly secular society that has no

useful framework for how to deal with sin and evil.

My sense of what sin is comes from the writings of the Christian Realist and Neo-

Orthodox schools of thought, as critiqued by liberation theologians. Original sin is not a

supernatural curse bestowed upon us because of the events of the Garden of Eden, but a

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description and observation of humanity. Sin is the state of broken relationship to God. For

those who have power, social, political or economic, this brokenness comes from a sense of

pride, thinking that they are either closer to God or better than their fellow humans. For those

with less power, especially historically underrepresented groups, such as women, Native

Americans, African-Americans and LGBT folks, sin is not achieving the full humanity promised to

them. I see in this critique the echoes of the words of Mary in the Magnificat, who has a God

who has toppled the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. The path of life is the

work of right relationships with God, with our fellow humans, and with nature.

I believe that the path of life is best chosen through encounters with God and Jesus

through the power of faith. In these encounters, through Scripture, prayer, and the sacraments

of baptism and communion, we are most properly reminded of our proper relationships with

God. Although I recognize that God speaks to people in many different ways, the Christian faith

is a uniquely powerful one, and one the world needs desperately now.

He judges men and nations…

Christianity is not just a religion for individuals. It is also a religion that is rooted in

communities, in the line and lineage of saints past, present, and future. Our God is not just a

God of transcendence, mystically distant, but also rooted in our communal histories. Our

collective salvation and right relationships with God and each other are just as important as our

individual salvation and right relationship with God.

The writings of the Hebrew prophets are our greatest insights into what this collective

salvation might look like. The prophets functioned as transmitters and interpreters of the Word

of God to the people, and also as advocates for the people to God. Amos, for example, has a

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social critique of the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel grounded in their mistreatment of the poor.

Although I believe that the era of collective punishment through military conquest and natural

disaster ended with the Babylonian Exile, I do believe that our collective sins weigh on our souls

just as much as our individual sins.

I have hope that the salvation offered in and through Jesus Christ is universal, and that

hell is empty. I use the word hope deliberately, as my faith dissuades me from diminishing the

power of God to bless and curse. Yet I hope that God’s overwhelming and extravagant love for

us, expressed to us most clearly through the life, ministry, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus

Christ are all that is necessary for all to be ultimately reconciled with God.

…by his righteous will declared through prophets and apostles…

One of the things that I love the most about the United Church of Christ is the sense

that God still has more to say to us, more light to shine forth. Prophets and apostles did not

stop appearing when the author of Revelation put down his metaphorical pen. They have been

with us throughout the ages, most inside the church, but some outside of it, to and through

who God is till speaking. The United Church of Christ has a clear sense of its own history, in

both our Congregationalist Christian heritage, of which I am most connected to, and the

German Evangelical and Reformed heritages as well. We are a denomination with a past,

whose foundation is the prophets and apostles, as Paul tells us that our churches should be

founded on.

We count as prophets not only those Hebrew prophets who called for their societies to

get back into right relationship with God, and all those who have done the same throughout

history. Whether it is calling out on a national scale that racism, sexism, or homophobia are

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against God’s plan for us, or by working directly with those most affected by those policies and

attitudes, we honor their work for God in the world.

…In Jesus Christ, the man of Nazareth, our crucified and risen Lord, he has come to us and

shared our common lot, conquering sin and death and reconciling the world to himself.

Jesus Christ is the fully human and fully divine son of God. His human life in Roman

occupied Judea and Palestine was marked by a ministry which changed the world. He spoke

truth to power, challenging imperial Roman domination of their society, while envisioning a

new humanity bound together in love for God, the true Lord of the world, and for each other.

Through Jesus, God’s love and desire for relationship would extend beyond God’s already

existing and established covenant with the Jewish people to the “nations”, to be spread

throughout the whole world.

The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus are some of the earliest statements of Christian

witness in the New Testament, mentioned in Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians. Thus, we must

consider them seriously as an integral part of what Jesus meant to his earliest followers, and to

us today.

I believe that Jesus’ death on the cross, one of the most humiliating and painful means

of execution in the Roman world, was his final kenosis- an “emptying out.” Jesus’ ministry is

marked by a series of encounters in which he defies what it means to be ritually clean and pure

from a rabbinic standpoint. In a sense, he is gradually ignoring and even sometimes mocking

the earthly signs of authority that set people over each other. As religious leaders criticize his

healing on the Sabbath, Jesus reminds us that people are not in service to Sabbath, but that

Sabbath is a gift of God that serves the people. Yet every time an emptying out occurs,

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something even greater and usually unexpected occurs. Healing and the message of forgiveness

of sins comes out of contact with lepers. Great faith is found not in the religious establishment,

but in a pagan centurion who helps local Jews build synagogues. When Jesus mourns and cries

for Lazarus alongside Martha and Mary, the dead are raised.

Thus when Jesus was taken for his “trial”, he remarks that he could have had legions of

angels there at his fingertips, yet did not. To conquer death through the resurrection, death had

to happen first. This ultimate kenotic act did multiple things. It signified that Jesus and God

was connected and bound to humanity in the most intimate ways. From a meager birth until

cruel and violent death, God has walked the ways of human existence, tore down the high and

mighty, and raised up the lowly.

The crucifixion also teaches, as René Girard reminds us, that innocents are far too often

sacrificed as scapegoats. Jesus was the ultimate innocent; blameless in life, he was sacrificed by

a people who were scared and suffering under oppression, with the hope that their own

relationship with the power that dominated them would be appeased. Thus, the powerless are

made expendable so that others might live in harmony. Jesus understood that this was not

necessarily a conscious decision, or one that the understood the reasons for or consequences

of, and forgave the mob as he was dying. We are left with a lesson about the terror of

scapegoating, and its destructive tendencies in our relationships with each other and with God.

Jesus’ resurrection is the ultimate reversal; he turned the tables not just on the way that

society should be structured and how individuals should relate to one another, but also the

inevitability of death. His resurrection is linked to the resurrection of the body; when the

Kingdom of Heaven is realized, it will not be just a divine realm, but an earthly one as well. This

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speaks to the “this-world” centeredness of the hope for life everlasting, and the importance of

our own bodies to each other and to God.

He bestows upon us his Holy Spirit…

The Holy Spirit is all too often the forgotten person of the Trinity in our churches, and

this is to our detriment. We have a special place for God, as transcendent creator of the

universe and ground of being. Jesus is approachable, our brother in faith, moral exemplar, his

humanity serving as a “bridge” to God. The Holy Spirit, though, is somewhat nebulous. We

know from the book of Acts that the Holy Spirit would be with us, at least until the Reign of God

is realized. It is this spirit that will empower us to create and sustain the church. But the Holy

Spirit is more than that which allows us to have good board meetings.

The Holy Spirit is also disruptive and creative. I identify the Holy Spirit with the Ruach

Elohim- the breath of God, the mighty wind that blows over the surface of the waters in the

first chapter of Genesis. This power both disrupts what is around it, the formless surface of the

waters, and helps to give it shape throughout the rest of the creation story. We see in the story

of Jonah another mighty wind, a great storm which forces him to confront his duty to God and

to his people. But the Holy Spirit in the form of mighty winds and great cosmic events is not

always the way that God speaks to us. That same sort of windstorm happens around Elijah

while he is in the cave, but instead of finding God’s voice in the power and majesty of natural

disasters, Elijah finds it in a “still small voice”. We would be wise to remember that the voice of

God comes to us not only as communities, but also as individuals, and to honor the ways that

God is still speaking to us.

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…creating and renewing the church of Jesus Christ, binding in covenant faithful people of all

ages, tongues, and races.

I understand that there are many models for church within the United Church of Christ.

Two models, in particular, need to be balanced in order for our churches to function properly,

and the church to assume its proper role as herald and mustard seed of Kingdom of God. The

first of these models, particularly important in our Congregationalist tradition is that of church

as a “voluntary association.” This model emphasizes the local church’s autonomy, the human

centered organizational and leadership structures of the church, and the care that the church

takes in serving its members.

Another model, which is exemplified in our history and traditions through the

Evangelical and Reformed Churches, and especially the Mercersburg movement, envisions the

local church as a small part of the mystical body of Christ. This model emphasizes the unity of

the Church over the particularity of the local church, and deemphasizes the human action that

we take on part of the church. The Church will survive, no matter our budgets or worship styles

or buildings, and even if our particular local churches happen to close or “die.”

Unfortunately, the second half of this statement has become a dream rather than a

reality in all too many of our local churches. The United Church of Christ is much “whiter” and

older than the United States as a whole. Even though we have a great love for the missional

work of social justice, diversity in our churches is elusive. I do not have any solutions for our

dilemma; perhaps it is unsolvable, but it is something we must be aware of not just as a

problem for the future, but for the present.

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…He calls us into his church to accept the cost and joy of discipleship, to be his servants in the

service of men…

The primary function of church is not a social club. It is not a social justice organizing

committee. It is not just a place to hear a fifteen minute lecture and listen to some nice organ

and piano music on a Sunday morning. The primary function of the church is to build faithful

disciples who love God, love their neighbors, and live in kindness and mercy with all creation. I

believe that many of the United Church of Christ’s congregations, in their well-meaning and

ultimately good desire to be as welcoming and open as possible, have undercut and

downplayed the meaning of discipleship. Although our salvation is through faith, not through

works, it does not mean that Christianity is something that only happens in the head. If it does

not provide discernable and real change within the hearts and the works of both individuals and

communities, then we have shown our congregations nothing more than sham spirituality.

A life of discipleship is not one that we should take on easily. One of the best effects of

the decreasing level of Christian normativity in the United States is that it is becoming less and

less convenient to be Christian. I hope for the sake of American Protestant Christianity that we

become counter-cultural again. I hope that we are no longer the establishment, the elite, and

the trendsetters. When the church has cleansed itself of its privileged place, when the cultural

kenosis happens fully, at a moment of despair, that moment is when the church will be reborn.

to proclaim the gospel to all the world…

The proclamation of the gospel is one of the most important duties of Christians.

Unfortunately, this duty to spread the gospel has often been made subservient to the desires of

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people in power. It has been used as a justification and excuse for slavery, imperialism,

colonialism, war, and genocide.

It is in this history that we must remember that Jesus Christ did not set Christians over

one another, or over people of other religions. In our proclamation of the gospel, we are called

primarily to minister with people, not minister to people. This is especially important when we

minister with people from historically underrepresented groups and those whom the Christian

church has often treated terribly. We must be willing to cede our capacity to always take

charge and instead listen and then partner and build up leaders in order to create lasting

changes within communities and proclaim the Gospel.

…and resist the powers of evil…

Evil is real; as Christians we are called to renounce it and resist it in our lives and in our

communities. Evil takes many forms, both individual and collective. It infests our hearts and

minds, and undoes the goodness of our hands, even as we try to realize the Kingdom of

Heaven. When we do violence to those around us, physical, emotional, verbal or economic, evil

acts have occurred. When we imagine ourselves better than others because of our gender,

race, socioeconomic class, religion or other factors evil is there. When think of others as less

than human, and ourselves as more than human, evil is present in our hearts.

To do or feel no evil ever would be impossible for us both as a society and as individuals.

The statement of faith acknowledges that, for to do claim ourselves immune to evil would both

place ourselves at the level of God and give into a naïveté which we must avoid. Instead, what

we must do is acknowledge the evil that exists in ourselves and our society, learn to minimize

its effects and strike at its root causes whenever possible. Sometimes the effects and roots of

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evil are easy to identify. Other times they are more insidious, and decay and rot inside of us

like a foul disease until they are named and uncovered. Doing so, however, is the only way

toward repentance, reconciliation, and wholeness.

…to share in Christ's baptism and eat at his table…

Baptism and Communion are sacraments; outward signs of the inward grace and love

that God has bestowed upon us. They are physical ritual acts of some of the most simple and

basic of human functions, bathing and eating. The seemingly simple acts of baptism and

communion remind us that connecting to God need not come only from the preaching of the

Gospel or the silence of contemplative prayer. Connection of God also comes through the

connection of the material and spiritual within the context of a community, particularly a local

church congregation.

Baptism is a sign and seal that the person being baptized is a member of the Christian

church and beloved of God. I believe that infant baptism and adult baptism each provide us

with a valuable insight into the nature of the Christian faith. Infant baptism reminds us that

baptism is not defined by intellectual assent by the one being baptized, but through the action

of God. It humbles us and reminds us of the reality that God has a special favor not to the

mighty, but to the vulnerable. Adult baptism reminds us that Christians are not born, but made,

and that new birth and resurrection are always possible, no matter our age or life

circumstances.

I believe in the real presence of Christ within Communion. As I noted above,

Communion was and is a key part of my path to Christian discipleship, and I take it seriously.

The real presence of Christ is not about whether or not bread and wine become

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transubstantiated or consubstantiated. The Communion meal is a ritual reenactment, a call for

us not just to remember the meals that Jesus ate not only with his closest disciples, but also

with those he preached to. We are called to remember these meals not only with our minds,

but with our hearts and our bodies as well. In this act of memory, Christ becomes really and

truly present to us.

It is because I believe in the real presence of Christ that I support an open table. I

recognize that for much of Christian history and for most Christians worldwide, communion is a

“closed” sacrament. For many, it is only available to Christians in their own denominations or

traditions, and usually only to baptized and professing Christians. I also know that there are

different opinions on what “open table” means within the United Church of Christ, and that

these vary based on region and theology. I respect the right of any local church or body of

Christians to decide who is able to receive Communion. Based on my personal experience, I

believe that one of the ways that God is calling out to us now is through the communion table.

It can be one of the most powerfully emotional experiences within the scope of Christianity,

and to deny that to someone who is genuinely seeking it disturbs me.

…to join him in his passion and victory.

As I previously mentioned, the passion story is the ultimate kenosis, the emptying out of

Jesus Christ. In those moments on the cross, all of his honor and glory as the Son of God and

Son of Man, the Messiah, mean nothing as he dies the violent and tortuous death of a criminal.

Yet it is in that moment of ultimate kenosis that the framework for Jesus Christ’s victory is laid.

It is in this end that the salvific work of all humankind is done. This is the ultimate reversal

played upon those forces that seek to cause innocent suffering and dominate others. The

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powers of domination and evil that seek to set humanity against itself, to declare some more

than human and others less than human will have no more purchase on this earth because

Jesus made an absolute mockery of them. With the passion and the resurrection, the promises

of the Magnificat are made real; the mighty are cast down from their thrones and the lowly are

exalted. Sinners are forgiven, and the boastful righteous take their place alongside those they

would condemn.

He promises to all who trust him forgiveness of sins and fullness of grace, courage in the

struggle for justice and peace, his presence in trial and rejoicing, and eternal life in his

kingdom which has no end.

I know of no better summary of the hope of the liberating gospel of Jesus Christ. I have

nothing to add other than my favorite verse of the Bible which tells us of the fulfillment of this

promise in Revelation 21: 1-4.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” Blessing and honor, glory and power be unto him. Amen. Amen.