The baby announced by the Heavenly Messenger tonight; our Rescuer; our Heroic Liberator; is Divine at the same time. The Angel said He is “the Lord.”
Anyone with the least understanding of Jewish tradition would know that an Angelic messenger, speaking of “the Lord,” would be referring to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Whether the Angel spoke in Hebrew, or Aramaic, made no difference. The “Lord,” is “God,” to Israel. “Hear, Oh Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord, is one,” they declared in their Congregations routinely. Hundreds of times throughout the Hebrew Scriptures God implored His people to remember that “I am the Lord.” He is the Supreme Sovereign.
Radical as it may seem the Baby in the manger is being introduced as this Supreme Sovereign. Matthew, in telling of an earlier Angelic announcement of this Child’s birth, described the event as the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy. This birth, he wrote, is what Isaiah promised when he foretold that the “virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him ‘Immanuel’—which means, ‘God with us.’” (Matthew 1:23) With this Matthew leaves no doubt. An ancient Hebrew prophet, and a First Century witness to the life of the Child, Jesus, both knew and declared that the Child was Divine.
God has come to be “with us” in a new and intimate way. He would be one of us. Mysteriously, yet certainly, He would, by the brooding Spirit who stirred life out of the primal abyss, bring an embryo into existence that was, at one and the same time, Divine and human; the always existent Second Person of the Trinitarian God, and the Son of a virgin Mother. John, the Son of Thunder declared this as fact in the very first words of his biography of Jesus. “In the beginning,” he wrote, “ the Word – another name for the Child we’re visiting tonight – was with God. He was God. This same person was in the beginning with God.” He was not some sort of appendage to God. He was and always is “one” with God. “All things,” John insisted, “were made by Him. Without Him nothing created ever existed.” This “word,” he says later in the early lines of his story of Jesus, “became flesh and lived with us.” Think of it. God has become one of us. He’s lived with us. Fully human He lived as we do. He walked dusty roads. He learned to live with other people. He worked as we do. He enjoyed life. He suffered. He was, another writer insisted, “in all ways tested in the ways we are, with this difference. He did not sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) “God is with us” in the person of the Child announced to the Sheepherders this very night.
Better still, tonight, even as I post these thoughts, the Child – Son of Man/Son of God – our Rescuer, Heroic Liberator, and Lord, is with the Father. Resurrected after His heroic death in a now magnificently glorified body He is in the “Heavens around us.” He and the Father we pray to in the words, “Our Father who are in Heaven – in the Heavens around us … always near – are one and the same person. They are of one heart. And that heart now has a human component for it enfolds the heart of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus, our Intercessor; our Advocate – the one who “pleads our case” – our Companion; our Guide – is not only with God. He is God. He is, at the same time, the Son of Man. We are fully and perfectly represented in Christ. We are “reconciled” with the Father. There is no further question about the esteem with which God sees us! Nor is there any doubt as to His understanding of the human condition. He really does know “what makes us tick.” He knows where it hurts and comes as any loving Father but with perfect attention to care for us with a compassion and perception that comes from experience. His care is unrestricted or hampered. His provision for what we need fits us particularly and generously. There is no question! The prayer of Paul of Tarsus is a prayer the Father answers out of love for His Children and the Son; His Brothers and Sisters.
NO MATTER WHAT!! we can expect to be, as Paul prayed in his letter to Ephesian Christ-followers, “… strengthened with His power by His Spirit to the very core of our being … Christ living in our hearts by faith … rooted and stabilized in love we will be able to comprehend, with all Christ’s followers, how long and wide, how high and deep His love for us truly is.” We can now be “filled w/ all of the fullness of God.” Because of the conquest won by our courageous Hero we are now restored to full collaboration with our Creator/God just as our predecessors in Eden were.
So!? Now that we’ve been restored us partnership with our Creator/Lord what’s our next step?
We live as if it’s all true … NO MATTER WHAT!!
Mother Teresa said it well when she wrote in her journal, “Even tho’ I don’t sense His presence for long periods of time I will love Him like He’s never been loved before!”
Love Him, then, “with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength,” NO MATTER WHAT!!
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
A Cosmic Salvage Operation 2.
The rescuer introduced by the Angel that night over Bethlehem would be called Christ.
Christ?
Yes! A Greek word for “anointed.” The very one Jewish people longed for. Messiah! He would come in the tradition of a long line of chosen, Spirit-filled men. Prophets were anointed; chosen by God to “stand in the gap on behalf of His people,” to tell them what He wanted to say to them. Isaiah said, “the Spirit of the Lord is on me because He has anointed me to preach … .” Priests were anointed. They were the mediators between a sinful, rebellious people and the God they’d offended. Courageous men these. Their mission was a constant matter of life and death for the sin they sought atonement for was punishable by death and the sacrifices they carried into the Holiest place were the sole means by which they could be spared certain annihilation. Any glitch in the process would cost the priest his life. Kings were anointed. David, the Sheepherder was anointed while he was only a boy. Later in life he became not only a King but a fierce and powerful warrior; the champion of Israel in whose steps the promised Messiah would walk.
Yes this Child would be all of these things. God, who, “on a variety of occasions, and in many different places, spoke in ancient times through prophets,” would now speak through this Child. He would come to be known as “the Word.” He would teach with an authority possessed by no other. He would be a High Priest; the sole “mediator between God and mankind.” In the end He would become the “Lamb of God who removes the sin of the world.” He would be the King above all Kings. God would give Him a name, “above all names” before which “every knee would bow and every tongue confess that (He) Christ is Lord.”
We know now, He is the ultimate “anointed.” He is the “chosen”! He is “the one”! He is, as He routinely said of Himself, “the Son of Man.” The consummate “Hero”!
But is He really our “Hero”? Is this champion walking in the steps of David the destroyer of thousands?
Years after the night the Angel declared His name to be “Christ,” on the day of His trial, His judge asked Him, “are you a King?” He replied, “My Kingdom is not of this world. If it were my followers would have fought and prevented my arrest.” With this He affirmed that, in fact, Kingdoms were in conflict on that dreadful day.
The Kingdom of this world with which He fought, the kingdom He’d been in conflict with all of His life on earth, was a Kingdom of “pleasure seekers.” That day, on the cross He suffered immeasurably. The subjects of this Kingdom He battled, as the pain cried out for relief, offered him something to numb it. He refused. He’d come to suffer every nuance of all human pain. His mission was to bear every bit of my pain and yours. His body writhed with the torture of all who’d ever lived, then lived, or would live in the future. Never once did He turn from it. With infinite courage and fortitude He suffered all suffering and demonstrated in doing so that “travail,” leads to “joy.” He who goes out in the toil of the noonday sun to put seed in the ground comes in autumn to fill his barns with grain, celebrating the bounty of the harvest. These adversaries were sensationalists. “If you’re our King come down from the cross!” They were looking for proof of His power. “Show us!” they shouted! Give us a “sign.” “Wicked people who corrupt the good by their abuse and misuse of it look for proof,” He’d said many times of them. And now they sought to sabotage His mission by taunting Him into misusing His power to prove Himself. He knew such self-serving demonstrations would be inconsistent with the will of His Father. He would not. There would be a sign. But not the kind of sign they wanted. Frankly, when I revisit this event again and again I find myself wishing He’d have just come down from that cross for but a nano second; slapped the High Priest a couple of times; and leapt back on the cross. He couldn’t do such a thing. You and I both know that in doing so He’d have lost the battle. The sensationalists of this world would have won. Image would have become everything for Him and all would have been lost. But He refused to make His own vindication His business. It would be the Father’s to insure His glory.
The kingdom he battled that day, and all through His life, was a polyglot of power grabbers. The very cross he hung on was a grim reminder that Rome, that evil Empire, was the greatest power of the day. Crosses dotted the landscapes of all its regions. Stark terrifying reminders of the tyranny that no one had been able to break. Great men died on those crosses. Mighty men were reduced to whimpering wraiths; flayed remnants of someone’s hope that this barbaric oppressor might finally be overthrown. Our would be hero locked wills with this terrible instrument of denigration and execution on that dread day. Looking at His struggle through the eyes of the Officer in charge of the execution reveals what came of the contest. As Walter Wangerin Jr. so ably tells us in his marvelous book, Reliving the Passion, this soldier, a Centurion, commander of a hundred fighting men, had seen it before. Likely hundreds of times he’d heard them curse the Empire they hated. Their curses turned to groans, then pleading and whimpering. But this man was silent. He seemed to be on a mission. About six hours into it He cried out. It was difficult for the soldier to make out what He said.” “Eloi! Eloi! …” something. One thing was clear. He really wasn’t any different than all the others. He’d been hanging there for about six hours. Six hours into the execution the strongest of them would break …
“What was that?!” The Centurion spun around torn from his reminiscing by the loud shout! Megale phone!
A shout not of pain or despair or cursing. Nothing like you’d expect to hear from a dying man!
“It is finished!”
And then, suddenly, He died. The Centurion knew when a crucified victim was dead. This man was dead. He was not simply unconscious nor in some sort of comatose sleep. He was dead. “… but suddenly! That’s what rivets the centurion. It’s as if this man chose to go fully conscious straight to the wall of death and there to strike it with all his might and, in the striking, die. Aware of absolutely everything.” …
In awe of what he’d witnessed the Centurion declared, “Truly this man was the Son of God.”
The Christ won the battle that day. The cross is, today, not a symbol of terror and tyranny but of hope. Death, too, has been conquered. We know because of His mastery of it that, through His victory, death’s “sting” has been drawn and thwarted. He is our Champion, our liberator, the Mighty Conqueror
… OUR HERO … THE ONE!!
NO MATTER WHAT IT WILL BE WELL FOR US … HE IS THE VICTOR! GOOD NEWS ... GREAT JOY!
Christ?
Yes! A Greek word for “anointed.” The very one Jewish people longed for. Messiah! He would come in the tradition of a long line of chosen, Spirit-filled men. Prophets were anointed; chosen by God to “stand in the gap on behalf of His people,” to tell them what He wanted to say to them. Isaiah said, “the Spirit of the Lord is on me because He has anointed me to preach … .” Priests were anointed. They were the mediators between a sinful, rebellious people and the God they’d offended. Courageous men these. Their mission was a constant matter of life and death for the sin they sought atonement for was punishable by death and the sacrifices they carried into the Holiest place were the sole means by which they could be spared certain annihilation. Any glitch in the process would cost the priest his life. Kings were anointed. David, the Sheepherder was anointed while he was only a boy. Later in life he became not only a King but a fierce and powerful warrior; the champion of Israel in whose steps the promised Messiah would walk.
Yes this Child would be all of these things. God, who, “on a variety of occasions, and in many different places, spoke in ancient times through prophets,” would now speak through this Child. He would come to be known as “the Word.” He would teach with an authority possessed by no other. He would be a High Priest; the sole “mediator between God and mankind.” In the end He would become the “Lamb of God who removes the sin of the world.” He would be the King above all Kings. God would give Him a name, “above all names” before which “every knee would bow and every tongue confess that (He) Christ is Lord.”
We know now, He is the ultimate “anointed.” He is the “chosen”! He is “the one”! He is, as He routinely said of Himself, “the Son of Man.” The consummate “Hero”!
But is He really our “Hero”? Is this champion walking in the steps of David the destroyer of thousands?
Years after the night the Angel declared His name to be “Christ,” on the day of His trial, His judge asked Him, “are you a King?” He replied, “My Kingdom is not of this world. If it were my followers would have fought and prevented my arrest.” With this He affirmed that, in fact, Kingdoms were in conflict on that dreadful day.
The Kingdom of this world with which He fought, the kingdom He’d been in conflict with all of His life on earth, was a Kingdom of “pleasure seekers.” That day, on the cross He suffered immeasurably. The subjects of this Kingdom He battled, as the pain cried out for relief, offered him something to numb it. He refused. He’d come to suffer every nuance of all human pain. His mission was to bear every bit of my pain and yours. His body writhed with the torture of all who’d ever lived, then lived, or would live in the future. Never once did He turn from it. With infinite courage and fortitude He suffered all suffering and demonstrated in doing so that “travail,” leads to “joy.” He who goes out in the toil of the noonday sun to put seed in the ground comes in autumn to fill his barns with grain, celebrating the bounty of the harvest. These adversaries were sensationalists. “If you’re our King come down from the cross!” They were looking for proof of His power. “Show us!” they shouted! Give us a “sign.” “Wicked people who corrupt the good by their abuse and misuse of it look for proof,” He’d said many times of them. And now they sought to sabotage His mission by taunting Him into misusing His power to prove Himself. He knew such self-serving demonstrations would be inconsistent with the will of His Father. He would not. There would be a sign. But not the kind of sign they wanted. Frankly, when I revisit this event again and again I find myself wishing He’d have just come down from that cross for but a nano second; slapped the High Priest a couple of times; and leapt back on the cross. He couldn’t do such a thing. You and I both know that in doing so He’d have lost the battle. The sensationalists of this world would have won. Image would have become everything for Him and all would have been lost. But He refused to make His own vindication His business. It would be the Father’s to insure His glory.
The kingdom he battled that day, and all through His life, was a polyglot of power grabbers. The very cross he hung on was a grim reminder that Rome, that evil Empire, was the greatest power of the day. Crosses dotted the landscapes of all its regions. Stark terrifying reminders of the tyranny that no one had been able to break. Great men died on those crosses. Mighty men were reduced to whimpering wraiths; flayed remnants of someone’s hope that this barbaric oppressor might finally be overthrown. Our would be hero locked wills with this terrible instrument of denigration and execution on that dread day. Looking at His struggle through the eyes of the Officer in charge of the execution reveals what came of the contest. As Walter Wangerin Jr. so ably tells us in his marvelous book, Reliving the Passion, this soldier, a Centurion, commander of a hundred fighting men, had seen it before. Likely hundreds of times he’d heard them curse the Empire they hated. Their curses turned to groans, then pleading and whimpering. But this man was silent. He seemed to be on a mission. About six hours into it He cried out. It was difficult for the soldier to make out what He said.” “Eloi! Eloi! …” something. One thing was clear. He really wasn’t any different than all the others. He’d been hanging there for about six hours. Six hours into the execution the strongest of them would break …
“What was that?!” The Centurion spun around torn from his reminiscing by the loud shout! Megale phone!
A shout not of pain or despair or cursing. Nothing like you’d expect to hear from a dying man!
“It is finished!”
And then, suddenly, He died. The Centurion knew when a crucified victim was dead. This man was dead. He was not simply unconscious nor in some sort of comatose sleep. He was dead. “… but suddenly! That’s what rivets the centurion. It’s as if this man chose to go fully conscious straight to the wall of death and there to strike it with all his might and, in the striking, die. Aware of absolutely everything.” …
In awe of what he’d witnessed the Centurion declared, “Truly this man was the Son of God.”
The Christ won the battle that day. The cross is, today, not a symbol of terror and tyranny but of hope. Death, too, has been conquered. We know because of His mastery of it that, through His victory, death’s “sting” has been drawn and thwarted. He is our Champion, our liberator, the Mighty Conqueror
… OUR HERO … THE ONE!!
NO MATTER WHAT IT WILL BE WELL FOR US … HE IS THE VICTOR! GOOD NEWS ... GREAT JOY!
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