Sacrifices mirror the heart of Easter

[Warph]

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.

.........Lori