Upon Entering a Clearing
Fears often reach back to a reference point for context. When it gets cold and windy, I start praying for ERCOT and the electrical grid. When there is a disturbance in the south Atlantic, I start praying for some kind of pressure system that would take any potential storm out to sea. You can pretty much fill in the equation with words like variant, diagnosis, accident, or threat. Over millennia we have come to be survivors because we learn from previous challenges or tragedies in order to prevent future ones.
I recently listened to a sermon in which a preacher described the biblical day of atonement on which the Jewish High Priest would make a sacrifice for all the sins of God’s people. Only one day every year the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies where God was most known to be present. If you see picture of Jewish people in Jerusalem going to the “wailing wall” to pray, they do so because it is the closest place to where the Holy of Holies was before the destruction of the Temple in the first century. Only the high Priest was allowed to go in to this sacred space and anyone else was believed to be struck dead upon entry. This was such a concern that they would tie a rope with bells on it to the High Priest’s leg in case something happened to him while he was in the Holy of Holies. Every Year, the High Priest would make a sacrifice in that most special of places in order to atone for the sins of God’s people – to keep them in right-relationship with God.
That celebration was the ongoing act of God’s people doing all that they could to ensure that they would never again be separated from God. Our faith articulates that Jesus was the ultimate fulfillment of that yearly offering. Jesus stepped into the role of once and for all fulfilling the atonement. God gave God’s own self as fulfillment so that we would know that through God’s love we will forever be in right-relationship with God no matter what. This is why we have the imagery account in the Gospel that the “curtain in the temple was torn in two” (Luke 23:45). No longer was there separation. God not only became one of us on Christmas, but became one with us for all time on the cross and in the resurrection.
What this means is that no matter what we become anxious about in this life – hurricanes, grid failures, variants, diagnoses, accidents, or any other threats – we have the assurance that nothing can separate us from God. We have had “worthy” and “beloved” spoken over us once and for all through the complete perfection of God’s love. So, to quote the ending of one of my favorite podcasts, “Remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all thigs are true, everything is going to be ok.”
We love you and God loves you,
Josh Condon+