The Third Line You Never Heard

The singing had gone past four o'clock, which meant Della was not going to quit until somebody turned a light off on her.

Verna was in the kitchen with her hands in the dishwater and the door propped open with a folding chair, because the fellowship hall got close in July and because she liked to hear it from in there. Sixty three years of fifth Sunday singings and she had washed the cups at most of them.

Bo was up on the counter with a dish towel he was not using, swinging his heels against the cabinet door, seven years old and out of patience with the whole afternoon.

In the next room they started the one about the Man of Sorrows.

Verna sang along without deciding to. That is what those words are to her. They are not a decision, they are furniture. She has known them since she was six years old at that same piano, standing on the pew so she could see over the woman in front of her.

Bearing shame and scoffing rude, In my place condemned He stood; Sealed my pardon with His blood: Hallelujah! What a Savior!

Bo stopped swinging his heels.

"Mamaw," he said, "what's a pardon?"

And Verna Gilliam stood there with a cup in one hand and the water going cold around her wrists, and she could not answer him.

Not because she did not know the word. She knew the word. She had said the word out loud in that building more times than she had said almost any other set of words in her life, and if you had asked her to spell it she could have spelled it, and if you had asked her what it meant in a courtroom she could have told you that too.

What stopped her was this. She had sung that line for fifty seven years and never once heard it as a report of something that had happened.

She had heard the other things. She had heard, all her life, what she was supposed to do about it. Be better. Come more. Keep shorter accounts. Watch her mouth. Nobody in that building had ever been cruel to her about any of it, and she would fight you if you said they had. It was just that the doing had always been the loudest thing in the room, and the news underneath it went by at the speed of a hymn, three or four times a year, in the third line of the second verse.

"I don't know, honey," she said, which was the truest thing she had said all day. "Let me think on it a minute."

She pulled the plug and let the water go and dried her hands on the front of her dress, and she went and stood in the doorway to hear them sing the last verse.

Listening this time.

Somebody had already stood in her place

A seven year old asked the only question that matters, and the woman with her hands in the dishwater had every word of the answer and none of the news in it.

So let us do the thing that hardly ever gets done. Before anybody asks you for anything, let somebody stop and tell you what happened.

Paul writes to a congregation in a port city that is arguing about nearly everything, and he tells them what he handed over to them first of all. Not first in importance only. First in order. Before the ethics, before the sorting out of their meetings, before one single instruction, he gave them the announcement.

For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:1 Corinthians 15:3-4

Four things sit inside that, and Verna had been singing every one of them since she was six.

The Lamb. Go back to a night in Egypt. A household takes a lamb without blemish, and the lamb dies instead of the firstborn son, and the blood goes on the two side posts and the upper door post, and the word for what happens next is that the destroyer passes over that house. Nobody inside was safe on account of the year they had had. They were safe on account of what was on the door. And centuries later a man standing at a river sees Jesus walking toward him and says, behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. He does not say behold the teacher. Paul says the same thing plainly to that same arguing congregation: Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.

You are inside a house with blood on the door, and the reason nobody comes for you tonight has nothing to do with your year. Exodus 12:13 says when He sees the blood, He will pass over, and it is the Holy Spirit, not my telling of it, who takes a night in Egypt and sets it down in your own kitchen.

The offering. In the old order a man laid his hand on the head of the offering, out in the open, where everybody could see the transfer being made. The animal was not a symbol keeping a respectful distance. It went where the man should have gone. That is exactly what the hymn's second line says and what its third line settles: in my place condemned He stood, sealed my pardon with His blood. Read the tense on that. Sealed. Not may seal. Not will seal, on review, if the paperwork holds.

Your pardon is not pending and it is not out for a second opinion. Isaiah 53:6 says the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He said it once, and His Spirit has never stopped saying it into a heart that has been braced for a verdict its whole life.

The empty tomb. An offering with no answer is only a death, so the announcement does not stop at the cross. He rose again the third day. Women come in the dark carrying spices, expecting nothing but the finishing of a burial, and the stone is rolled back and the linen is lying there and the body is gone. Not moved. Not hidden. Gone, and the tomb has stayed empty every day since.

You are not standing at a grave with anybody still in it. What is written in 1 Corinthians 15:4 is that He rose, and the same Spirit who raised Him from the dead is moving that stone in your chest while you read.

The Father's verdict on His Son. Here is the part Verna had never heard, and it is the part almost nobody is told.

The resurrection is not merely a happy ending stapled onto a sad story. It is the Father answering. The Son offered Himself and went into the ground, and the Father raised Him up, and raising Him is the Father saying out loud and in public what He thinks of what His Son did. Romans 1:4 says He was declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. Romans 4:25 says He was delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justification. The same Father who said over the water, this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, said it again on the third day in a language nobody could argue with.

And this is why it is your business and not just good history. The verdict the Father spoke over His Son is the verdict spoken over everyone who is in Him. If the Son is accepted, then the ones hidden in the Son are accepted on that same word, not on a separate hearing of their own.

You have already been given a verdict, and it was not a close call. His word says He was raised again for our justification, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries a courtroom word across into a kitchen and makes it sound like your own name.

Nothing in any of that is a step. It is news. It happened while you were somewhere else, most likely doing something you are still ashamed of, and it did not wait for you to improve before it happened.