Healer or Teacher

22"He committed no sin,
and no deceit was found in his mouth." 23When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. 24He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. 25For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
--1 Peter 2:22-25

I was a disruptive little boy. My Sunday school teacher had to call a conference with my mom and me to discuss my behavior at church. At church camp one year I mischievously altered a sign in the woods which led to a group of campers wandering aimlessly in the woods. I'll never forget my counselor's response. He was understandably angry but when we returned to camp he bought me a candy bar and taught me about forgiveness and turning the other cheek. He was truly a role model for me. He modeled for me the example of Jesus.

But this passage goes farther than that. Perhaps the greatest misunderstanding of Christianity is to see Jesus as merely an example. As he suffered in the face of opposition, so to shall we humble ourselves with non-violent submission. The goal of the Christian life, it is assumed, is to seek and strive to follow the example of Jesus. But this passage moves beyond that. What Would Jesus Do? When I'm faced with temptation--to give in to that which ultimately will harm either me or others or both--When I am faced with the decision of doing what I want at the expense of others or placing their desires above my own--I can ask myself what would God do if he were in my shoes? But this passage goes farther than that. To be sure, verse 21 tells us that Christ left us an example, but verse 24 takes us far beyond the mere examplarism that sucks the supernatural out of religion. "By his wounds you have been healed." Somehow in some other-worldly way, when I am insulted, or hurt, or mistreated, or walked on, or made fun of, or put down, or forgotten--somehow the pain and the injustice which I suffered is taken from me and placed on the shoulders of Jesus. He is the scapegoat. We endure injustice not because we've seen that it can be done, as if Jesus' role as the first fruit means merely that we, like him, can rise above our mortality ourselves and somehow attain a similar deity, but because Jesus was so entirely different from us--as different as is the finite from the infinite, the mortal from the immortal, the human from the divine. How are we so united with him that our pain becomes his? This answer, as ultimately are all answers, is found in the one central mystery of the humanity and divinity of Christ. In him chaos meets order, time meets eternity, changing meets unchanging, and discord meets peace.

So central, then, is the Lord's Supper. For it is here that we symbolically, literally, metaphysically, spiritually (can we please finally move away from modern reductionism and simply say "mysteriously"?) unite with Him by whom our wounds are healed.