In the financial crisis of 2008, millions of people lost their homes.  They couldn’t pay their mortgages.  We came to learn that many of these folks should never have qualified for a mortgage.  In the vast number of instances, they didn’t defraud the lending institutions.  It was the other way around.  Unscrupulous banks and mortgage brokers sold people loans that had low initial rates that would skyrocket later.  They allowed people to take out loans that were way too big for them to realistically afford.

Why, you might ask, would anyone loan someone money that they were unlikely to be able to repay?  The answer is simple.  The person making the loan was not sticking around to see if it would be repaid.  As soon as the ink was dry on the loan papers, they sold the loan on to someone else.  The originator had nothing to lose if the borrower defaulted.  The lender had no skin in the game.

As we journey through this Holy Week, we follow the Christ who completes the Incarnation, first evidenced in the Annunciation to Mary.  The one who “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness,” did not fulfill his Incarnate self-emptying as a helpless baby in Mary’s arms.  The fullness of the Incarnation is ultimately revealed in a depiction of the pieta, with the lifeless Jesus cradled in his mother’s arms.

God condescended to be united with humanity in Christ.  God came all the way.  God had skin in the game.  In Christ, God lived the full human experience under the weight of sin and sorrow and death.  Christ has sanctified (made holy) this earthly life and this earthly death that awaits each of us.

God was united with humanity in Christ so that we might be united with God through Christ.  In union with Christ, we can have a new life.  This new life in Christ not only sanctifies our earthly life and earthly death; this new life cannot be extinguished even by the power of sin and death.

This is what we bear witness to as we are carried once more through time and space to abide with Jesus in the upper room and at the foot of the cross and before an empty tomb.

Prayer:  When I try to thank you for your costly love, words fail me; make my life a prayer of thanksgiving.  Amen.