Sacrifices mirror the heart of Easter
Lori Borgman | Monday, Mar 29, 2010
Stories of sacrifice command our attention. When we read about heroics, we
are both inspired and uncomfortable. The selflessness amazes us, yet the
unanswered question nags us – would we do the same?
Years ago, I remember being stunned by a story Chuck Colson told upon his
release from prison, having been sentenced on charges related to the Nixon
administration’s Watergate scandal.
Colson was having a particularly tumultuous time behind bars. His father had
died. His mother was alone. His wife had her hands full managing a home and
family without him and then one of his sons began getting in trouble and was
arrested for marijuana possession.
A
congressman who had been part of Colson’s Washington, D.C. prayer group called
Colson in prison. The congressman said he was going to see the President and
planned on asking if he could serve the rest of Colson’s sentence so that he
could be freed and return home to his family.
What kind
of man offers to take another man’s place in prison?
At a fundraising banquet recently, someone asked a woman at our table how she
was feeling. “Pretty good for missing one kidney,” she said.
The woman had been in church when a student from several years ago came to
mind. It was a student who had had a rough year. That evening, the student
called out of the blue. She said she needed a kidney transplant. Her family
members all had been tested and nobody was a match – would the teacher be tested
to see if she could be a kidney donor? Some tests and waiting ensued, but the
teacher said yes.
What kind of woman gives up a kidney for a former student?
A 19-year-old Army gunner, Spec. Ross Andrew McGinnis, from outside
Pittsburgh, was on patrol in Baghdad’s Adhamiyah neighborhood. A grenade was
lobbed through his hatch and into the Humvee. Realizing the four soldiers inside
would not be able to escape in time, McGinnis dove into the vehicle, threw
himself on the grenade and absorbed the full force of the explosion.
McGinnis was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. “He had the opportunity
to escape,” his father said. “He chose not to.”
Every story of sacrifice holds up a mirror to the greatest sacrifice of all,
the one Christians around the globe commemorate this week – the sacrifice of
Christ.
Like the congressman, Christ was willing to take on another’s guilt and serve
the sentence. Like the teacher, he was willing to be physically broken so that
others might be whole, and like the soldier, he surrendered himself to death, so
that his friends could have life.
But Christ’s death on the cross isn’t the totality of the story, just like
Good Friday isn’t the end point of Holy Week. Christ’s sacrifice was the
lightning bolt that pierced pages of time and still radiates today because it
culminated in the miracle of the resurrection.
The great joy of Easter is that Christ’s sacrifice not only offers the gifts
of hope, healing and life with each new dawn, but that through the sacrifice of
one, the hope of life after death now belongs to many.
