What is the defining moment of your life?
What event most impacted the course of your life? Was it a personal encounter? Was it a life-changing experience? Is there a “watershed moment” you remember and can point to as that moment when your life began to be what it is today? Can you identify that distinct point to which all the streams of your life flowed and from which much that you experience now flows: that place on your life’s timeline where significant experiences culminated and new ones commenced?
To listen to many “Extreme Makeover” subjects this was their “defining moment." Repeatedly I hear them say, “It’s everything I ever dreamed of!” “I’ll never be the same again!”
Christians believe that Christmas is humanity’s defining moment. (Saying this I’m assuming the inseparable connection between Christmas and Easter.) There are many places in the Bible where you can find this belief expressed. One of them is in a letter St. Paul wrote to Christians in the Roman Province of Galatia. He states, “When the time had fully come, God sent his Son … .” (See Galatians 4:4.)
“When the time had fully come … .” What does that mean? Was there a specific time God declared to be the exact moment when he would send his Son? What would distinguish that moment from all others? Would it be that point in time when a certain number of people had been created? Did something have to take place first? Would deteriorating conditions sound the alarm? Could it be that the period in history known as the “PAX ROMANA,” – the “Roman Peace” during which, in fact, Jesus was born, when Rome ruled a vast Empire with previously unparalleled efficiency - really was the moment of greatest opportunity? Or was it simply a strategic moment in the history of God’s chosen people the Jews? Certainly there are reasons to believe that one or another or several of these conditions could have played a part in the determining of that “moment.” But finally, simply, this “time” became “humanity’s defining moment” because it was “God’s time.” To speculate about what else could made this moment distinct is futile. “When the time had fully come, GOD … .” The “eternal” – timeless – God stepped into time and everything was changed forever. It was a “watershed moment.” We would quickly learn that all the event streams of the past flowed into this moment. And we are learning that the significant future emanates largely from that Divine act. Always, when God defines a moment by “Divine Fiat,” – sovereign action – it is monumental. It is a “defining moment;” a moment in which some things culminate and other things commence. His “timelessness,” interfacing with “time,” is in itself, iconoclastic. The very essence of our environment is turned right side up. The phrase, “when the time had fully come,” could, quite accurately be translated, “when time was completed,” or “when time was finished.” When God sent his Divine Son into time the eternal and the temporal clashed. So Jesus could very seriously suggest that we not “worry about tomorrow,” (Matthew 6:34) In his “eternal – i.e. – timeless - kingdom,” today and tomorrow are one and the same. God is “Alpha and Omega,” he is “the beginning and the end” and everything in between. On one occasion, when Jesus met demon-possessed men, their reaction was most telling. “What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?” These devils did not know the future. What they did know was that their time was relative; that it was, at best, doomed to come to an end. They further knew that the “Son of God,” was the one who would determine the time of their end.
Repeatedly throughout the Bible the impact of God’s timeless Kingdom on the time/space world is recognized. What goes on in the “Kingdom of Heaven,” has major significance here. During the rule of Hezekiah King of Judah, the prophet Isaiah was sent with a message to Sennacherib, a powerful and pompous Assyrian king, who had conquered all the cities of Judah and was threatening Jerusalem. This was the message.
“Have you not heard?
Long ago I ordained it.
In days of old I planned it;
now I have brought it to pass,
that you have turned fortified cities
into piles of stone.”
(Isaiah 37:26)
God’s sovereignty is never in jeopardy. The power of kings, even evil tyrants, exists only because God determines they should have it. Furthermore, all the grand schemes and strategies they devise have been “ordained – decreed” by God “long ago,” “planned” “in days of old.” The timeless kingdom determines what takes place in the “kingdoms of this world” of time and space. In the thirteenth chapter of Revelation, verse eight Jesus is referred to as “the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.” His friend Peter says, of him, “He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.” (1 Peter 11:20) St. Paul picks up this theme twice. He’s writing to his protégé Titus. In the letter he speaks about his mission. He describes it as being “for … a faith and knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time … .” (Titus 1:1 & 2) To another protégé he writes, “This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus … .” (2 Timothy 1:9) Peter remembers a day when he, James, and John saw Jesus in his Divine splendor: “… we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.” (2 Peter 1:16 – 18) He and his colleagues saw the eternal and time/space intersect. If you read Luke’s account of the event you’ll see that two men, Moses, and Elijah, now living in the real, unseen, eternal kingdom, appeared and talked with Jesus about the completion of his work in Jerusalem as if it were a present reality.
The “Kingdom of God;” “the Kingdom of the heavens;” has come among us in Jesus and time is forever altered. For those who receive Him as their King their time/space life is increasingly drawn up into the timeless; into the “range of God’s effective will.;” “where what he wants done is done.” (This process is extensively discussed in Dallas Willard’s, The Divine Conspiracy.) Before the creation of the world, before the beginning of time this moment we’re contemplating was and now, by an act of the Supreme Sovereign, is – is forever – the “defining moment” for all humanity.
Christmas is our defining moment. When Jesus was born the “sacrifice” - the “lamb slain before the creation of the world,” the consummate “lamb” that gave merit to all other lambs offered for the sin of God’s people - was made. The Christmas manger would become Friday’s cross. All that separated us from the timeless Kingdom, for which we’d been destined from the beginning, would be atoned for. The redeemer, that was chosen before time, was revealed “for our sake” that first Christmas night. The “Eternal life” God intended for us was provided then. “Grace,” that astonishing and immeasurable favor God extends to us, is revealed in the manger, in Bethlehem. Later glimpses of Jesus’ “splendor,” and “majesty,” are glimpses of what we are destined to become. The “voice” of God from the “Majestic Glory,” is an awe-inspiring encounter with an infinite grandeur. It is, at the same time, an endearing glimpse of the profound intimacy that exists between Father and Son. We know, because we’ve seen it, that this is the environment which we are destined to live in forever. Humans, who’ve become celestial beings, conversing about events, which are yet to be in the time/space world, as if they were present realities, remind us that decisions which really matter are being made in a “self-sufficing community of unspeakably magnificent personal beings of boundless love, knowledge, and power.” Dallas Willard writes about this “self-sufficing community” in which we live and move and have our being, in The Divine Conspiracy. I recently wrote about the growing impact of this idea on my understanding of God’s influence in my own life. (See LifeLog – 11.27.05 – Thanksgiving.) Now we’re considering a new, expanded dimension. Humans, who’ve become celestial beings, are insiders in this Community. Jesus taught it would be this way. He said that when the Holy Spirit was given to us he would be “with us,” even “in us.” He said that those who love him will passionately pursue a relationship with him that empowers them to live their lives “as he would if he were them.” And he promised that he and the Father would respond by coming to “make (their) home” with them. Jesus taught these things to his followers. One of his followers, St. Paul, wrote about them. He said that this intimate Divine/Human partnership is part of the timeless plan for us. We are, he said, “being built together to become a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.” This is “the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed.” What is that mystery? It is “Christ in us;” now and since before time, “the hope of glory.” God's purpose, which he has always known, is to bring us into himself so that, as Jesus prayed, “we may be one” as he and the Father are one, and that we “may be one” in them. (The biblical references to Jesus teaching on this Divine/Human union, which I have used here, are John 14:17, 14:23, 17:21; Ephesians 2:22; and Colossians 1:26 & 27.)We know all of these things because Jesus was born. It’s “everything we ever dreamed of; more than we ever dreamed of; beyond what we’d have ever even thought of dreaming!” “We will never be the same again!” This is our watershed moment. All that has taken place, in time and beyond, flows to this point. All that will ever be flows from here. The culmination of the human event is reached in Christ. With the new birth which he inaugurates, a radically new, timeless existence begins. WE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN!
No comments:
Post a Comment