sin, death and the salvation of the cosmos. part three

-----The following is part of an ongoing process of discovery taking place in my inner recesses.  That said, these topics are still being wrestled out in my mind and heart and are in no way definitive.  This particular series has been written with much wrestling and reading, and I have no doubt that some of the statements contained herein will be tuned and transformed over the course of my life with God.  If you have anything to add or comment, I would appreciate it greatly; even if you disagree with the whole thing, tell me that too.  Wrestle with the truth alongside me.-----

you might want to start with part one here.

 

"I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. And I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses. And I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you."

(Ezekiel 36:25-29)

"When, Lord?" Cried his people.  "When will you make us clean from this creeping death, all these dichotomies of good and evil?  This life is painful.  Help us."

All these years they'd been doing blood sacrifices, cutting the throats of young bleating lambs, just to clean themselves temporarily.

The night before the Israelites left Egypt (on the "Exodus"), the story goes that YHWH told Moses to have the dad in each family kill a young, white lamb, and, having taken its blood, wipe the doorframes of the primary entry to the house.  There would be a death during the night--all the firstborn sons in any house without blood on its doorposts would die (the firstborn sons represented dignity and identity)--but the death would not strike those whose thresholds were marked by the blood of a young lamb.  

That was the first day and is the year one on the Jewish Calendar (like our 1 CE).  A lengthy feast is still celebrated in memory of the night before the Exodus by both Jews and Christians.  They call it “The Feast of the Passover,” and the Israelites were to keep it alive as a tradition, to remember what the Lord had done that night in a sweeping and final rescue of his beloved from the hands of their oppressors in Egypt, where they existed as a downtrodden community of slaves for 430 years; it was a rescue of a people who were to be the light of goodness to the whole world.  "Do this feast in remembrance of me," that was the reason YHWH gave.

Remember.

But they didn’t.  They remembered the trappings of the feast, indeed, the “rituals” if you will.  But these blessed people forgot their rescuing king.  They went away and worshipped the gods of other people, because they cared more about their power and money connections with those other people in their world than they did their lover and creator and wise, healing God.  The other gods weren't continually taking them out of oppression, but their worship came with common political ties to the cultures of humans who worshipped those other gods; a valuable resource in the economy of the present world system.  And the image of the feast began to peel away from their memories.

And they sank back into that pool of creeping death.  Blaming and shaming and being blamed and feeling ashamed.  Feeling powerless, hungry for some sort of love and hanging onto hopes that disappointed.

To cap the problem, they were eternally selfish.

That's the human condition.

We, as both the collective human race and as individuals, can't stop being selfish; we all want "me" to win--even if for the most part subconsciously.

But these Israelites knew of a promise; one day the cleanliness would last forever.  The shame would go away.  They would be free to love and be loved fully and well.  The prophets rejoiced over this day to come.  Many of the poetically beautiful verses in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) are found in the prophetic hymns to the messiah (the promised bringer of final freedom from suffering--the victory of God) in ancient books like Isaiah.

Over. And over.  And over again, these people cried out.

The people Israel longed to be good people; ones who knew and believed their own lost dignity, as individuals and as a nation; people who could be counted on and trusted, free from the crushing arm of shame.  It was said that one day there would be one who would come; he would be a servant of God and would do the perfect will--in absolute love and justice--of the lord of love who sent him.  But the servant would be crushed and destroyed, his blood spilt like all those bleating sheep who were sacrificed to honor the covenant of justice and love.

He would be the last lamb.

--written sometime during the 6th century BCE (five or six hundred years before--him).

                            ****

He was despised and rejected by men;

a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;

and as one from whom men hide their faces

he was despised, and we did not honor him.

Surely he has lifted our griefs

and carried our sorrows;

yet we esteemed him stricken,

smitten by God, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions;

he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

and with his wounds we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray;

we have turned—every one—to his own way;

and the LORD has laid on his servant

the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,

yet he opened not his mouth;

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,

and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,

so he opened not his mouth.

By oppression and judgment he was taken away;

and as for his generation, who considered

that he was cut off out of the land of the living,

stricken for the transgression of my people?

And they made his grave with the wicked

and with a rich man in his death,

although he had done no violence,

and there was no deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him;

he has put him to grief;

when his soul makes an offering for guilt,

he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;

the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.

Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;

by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,

make many to be accounted righteous,

and he shall bear their iniquities.

(Isaiah 53:3-10 ESV)

There was a servant to come. 

The Israelites cried out, "Who is this man, Isaiah, O Prophet of the most high?  Where is this "man of sorrows," the one that's coming to allow his people freedom into full love and from shame and fear, freedom which we've lost for ourselves in a time gone past and still today?  This last lamb to be cut off from the land of the living, who will he be?"

More centuries went by.  Many good young men and women died too soon, mothers without husbands died in childbirth, there were wars and devastations, famines and siege.

And then, some 500 years (that's a half a millennia!) after Isaiah died (the prophet who wrote the passage above), there was a man in a desert somewhere on the west coast of the Mediterranean Sea.  He was dressed like an ascetic, ate grasshoppers and raw honey, and kept shouting in a rather loud and exuberant manner, "Prepare the way of YHWH, make his paths straight!"  People all over the region were hearing the rumors.  But he wasn't the only one who caused them.  There were and had been dozens of these "messiahs" in the ancient Near East (all over the world in fact, but especially here and now in the place where this man appeared in the desert).  All the messiah movements stumbled to a halt at the death of their self-proclaimed king.  Who's to say that this one would be any different?

I imagine these people as a skeptical bunch.  Jaded dreamers, a lot like us.

I told you this was going to be three parts, but I'm going to stretch it out.  Stay tuned for more.