Saturday, February 4, 2023

 

Saturday, February 4, 2023

Psalm 80

Genesis 23

Luke 3:23-38

Observance: Anskar, missionary bishop in Sweden (d. 865)

But let your hand be upon the one at your right hand, the one whom you made strong for yourself.

Last night I tasted the most fantastic baked treat I have ever had in my life. You will know the type. Picking it up, it just looks like some sort of baked slice, but when you bite into it, you find there a bits and pieces of chocolate all through it.

This is how the Christian life works, too. We receive the Holy Spirit, who points us to the truth and beauty of Christ and the empty tomb. Life becomes enchanted: we have meaning, and all the mystery of life slowly begins to wisp away like the dawn fog.

Then, as we bite into what it really means to be a follower of Jesus and begin this trek of pilgrimage, we see glimpses of glory here and there. Little flashes of dazzling light of God’s true glory shining through for us.

The sentence for this morning is one such glimpse. At first glance, could this be one of those Messianic passages that speak of Jesus that peek out at us here and there in the Old Testament? Let’s look closer: God’s hand is upon a “man” on His right; upon the “son of man” who is strong for God. This specific phrase, which appears as the second “one” in the NRSV translation, is “ben adam” in the Hebrew, “son of the earth” (remember, “Adam” and “earth” are the same word, hence the name for the first human being).

We dig a little deeper, and we find this phrase “ben adam” all over the Old Testament. It is God’s name for Ezekiel; it is found in the middle of Isaiah’s prophecy about Jesus: “Just as there were many who were astonished at him – so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of “ben adam” (mortals). (Is 52:14)

The most curious use is found in the book of Daniel. The angel Gabriel appears to Daniel and tells him that the vision he has just received is about “the end times”. (Dan 8:17) This end times vision is the famous vision of Daniel 7, where he sees the “Ancient of Days” (7:9) destroying the evil beast, and, importantly for our study, a vision of “one like a human being”, or “one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven”. (7:13) However, in this one place, Daniel has written it not in Hebrew, but in Aramaic. The one like a son of man in Daniel 7:13 is not “ben adam”, that is, from the earth, but “bar enos”: “son of weakness”.

Christ is fully man: He walked this earth, just as Luke described, laying claim to a physical ancestry going all the way back to Adam. He is also fully God: ascending on the clouds, perfectly comfortable sitting naturally in the throne room of heaven. He took our flesh, bore our weakness on the cross, ascended into heaven, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father. And in this one sentence out of this one Psalm, we have been given a little glimpse of that dazzling glory, so let’s just sit in awe and wonder for a moment or two.