One of the great ancient Greek stories is that of Orestes. He was the son of Agamemnon, the King of Argos, an ancient Greek city. While Agamemnon is away at war, he sacrifices his oldest daughter to the gods in order to assure victory. After his return in triumph, the queen slaughters Agamemnon in his bathtub. She sends Orestes far away to prevent him taking revenge. The only child left is his daughter Elektra, nursing an unquenchable thirst to avenge her father’s death.
While all this has been happening, the gods have punished the city of Argos by allowing its inhabitants to be tormented by the Furies, bloodthirsty creatures with long teeth and nails. For fifteen years, the city suffers at their hands, until Orestes returns to avenge his father’s death. Helped by his crazy sister, he manages to kill Clytemnestra and her lover.
But at the end of it all, a strange thing happens. The Furies leave the citizens of Argos and attach themselves to Orestes. As he flees, he takes them with him, thus freeing the city from the terrible nightmare they have suffered. Orestes has finally liberated them from the curse they have suffered for so long.
It is a grim and bloodthirsty story of treachery and revenge. But it is also a story of fall and redemption. Yet despite the fact that we feel a need to see justice done, we are appalled to see it inflicted as revenge on a mother at the hands of her own son. Though Orestes is innocent of all the terrible deeds done by the others, and though he takes the suffering of the citizens on his own shoulders, we cannot help feeling that he has lost his innocence through the murder of his own mother. Even as the saviour of his people, Orestes is hardly like them in all things but sin.
Orestes certainly takes the sufferings and sins of his people on himself; but he does it by revenge and the shedding of blood. How different is our Saviour, the Lord Jesus, who takes away the sin of the world, “a man like us in all things but sin!” His means of redemption is not retribution, but forgiveness. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” is his prayer, even as he hangs dying on the cross.
Orestes redeems his people by accident; his drawing off the Furies from Argos is a mere side-effect, the unintended consequence of his retribution. Jesus, from the beginning, has intended to redeem his people, and has done it by voluntarily taking their sins on himself, and of paying the price for their sins himself. Orestes achieves his unintended redemption of his people through a crime of blood. Jesus’ act of redemption is completely free of any such bloodletting; it is his own blood, rather than that of his enemies, which is shed. And he remains silent, like “a sheep dumb before its shearers, never opening its mouth,” rather than lift his hand or voice in the slightest way against those who were responsible for his suffering, and for whom he was suffering. He is truly the spotless “Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”
If we cannot see the uniqueness and the necessity of the salvation offered us by God through Jesus Christ, how will we ever convince others that they must believe in Him? In an age when, more than ever, people are coming to believe that “we’re all basically just the same” and that “there’s no real difference between religions; we all believe in the same God,” is it not more than ever incumbent upon us to show that we are not all the same, and that any other religion is indeed very different to redemption in Christ?
For there really is no other name by which we can be saved. And if we can only see it and believe it, we will become the instruments by which many others will come to believe in his name.
Amen.
Fr. Phillip
