S-S is for
the Surprising Switch, the Sweet Swap, the Sanguine Substitute
An amazingly good thing happens next, though no one notices at first. A new kid appears on the block and he hangs out with the kids under the back porches and in the alleys. He gives them a startling promise. His promise is that he can bring them to the owner of the house with the broken window and that for his sake the owner will be glad to see them and call them good kids. To be sure, the new kid, who happens to have very big ins with the owner, knows he'll be the one taking the heat for what they did--taking it as though he himself is the guilty party. That heat is the cross of Christ. Nevertheless, so he promises, if they stick with him, cross and all, everything will become different, renewed, reconciled--indeed, better than ever. For they too will share the same "ins" with the new kid.
This is Step Four of the Crossings'--now--prognosis, The Eternal Solution. Jesus is the new kid on the block who promises them that the owner of the house is his father, and that he will win his father's permission to bring them home, no longer as kids in hiding but as his beloved brothers and sisters who are welcome in his father's house anytime. Jesus' father will welcome them because they are friends of Jesus.
The other kids who did not break the window refuse to let Jesus make such a promise. They deny that Jesus can prove he is the son of the owner of the house. They angrily detest that he could take such window-breakers and make them welcome in the very home of the person whose window they broke. Outrageous! Despicable! And of course, in a sense they are right. What Jesus does is outrageous. It does contravene all the principles of conventional justice. Yet, who are those other kids that they should think they could dictate what the way of the owner should be? Is the owner not free with regard to what is his and who he welcomes into his midst? Indeed, part of the reason for Jesus' execution is the outrage he elicited from those other kids over his breaking the law of retribution by extending mercy. But the primary reason for his execution is to accomplish, once and for all, the way of mercy over the way of retribution as the way God reconciles the world to God's self, an accomplishment that is verified in his resurrection from the dead.
