Wednesday, October 5, 2022

 

Wednesday, October 5, 2022


Psalms 82; 84

Haggai 2:10-23

Colossians 3:18-4:6


How lovely is your dwelling-place: O Lord God of hosts!


One of the saddest, yet funniest accusations of the unbeliever against the faith we have in the Lord of creation comes about from the invention of the telescope. Scoffers from every walk of life, from the secular statist to the pagan new-age “wise” men of the subcontinent claim that Jesus could not have come down from heaven, since, we have looked up into the sky, and there is no heaven to be seen. Those who are truly spiritual find themselves making a face-palm, because of course there is no up (or down, for that matter) in the spiritual realm, and looking into space merely reveals more space.


Yet we still have this concept of Jesus “descending” from heaven in the incarnation, and “ascending” after His resurrection. (The old Book of Common Prayer described the incarnation as God “condescending” to be among us, which might actually be a more appropriate term.) One of the best old hymns about Jesus’ second coming starts with the line “Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending”. We certainly like to lean heavily on this imagery of vertical movement when it comes to salvation.


When meditating on what happens during the Eucharistic feast, Martin Luther had an image in his head of a pile of cow dung being covered up by a thick layer of crisp white snow: Christ, in the bread and wine, comes down and covers up our sinful nature. John Calvin, however, thought about the fact that we confess that “Christ will come again”, and so this “downward” movement is not really applicable to communion. Christ is coming again, but not in the same way He does in the meal. Calvin suggested that Christ’s work in the elements of bread and wine was an upward movement; by spiritually consuming the true body and blood, we are lifted up to that place where Christ is.


We have already established that God has made our bodies His temple. This is not only God coming down to be with us. This is also God lifting us up to be with Him. We open our eyes in the morning and the light is the light of God; we eat breakfast every day at the table of the Lord. We shower in the blood of the Lamb, and dress ourselves with the armour of God. We go out to work, see friends, and do everything “as is fitting in the Lord” in the communion of saints held together by the love of God. God’s kingdom is not only inside us: it is here, around us.



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