Thursday 21 August 2008

Today is an important tie between the kingdom of God - Jesus - Israel.

A proper appreciation of the centrality of the theme of imitation must begin, however, not with Jesus but with Israel. For Jesus brought no new insights into the law or God's nature that Israel had not already known and revealed. The command to be perfect as God is perfect is not some new command, nor is the content of that command to love our enemies new. Both the structure and the content of the command draw from the long habits of thought developed in Israel through her experience with the Lord. Jesus' activity as presented in the Gospels makes no sense without assuming what Israel had long known, that any story worth telling about the way things are requires an account of God's activity as the necessary framework for that story.

We are talking about the Reign of God again. It is the Reign that has been unfolding among God's people all along the way. It is so important that we understand how Jesus is recognized as the Messiah of God. He lives as though the Reign of God is his life! He lives as the light to the world. The light that will cause people to turn around and see the fullness of humanity shining in all its glory as humanity is meant to be. It is the peace and love of God - the same peace and love that flows through the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures - coming to life fully. Jesus is not merely imitating this long history of God's love being poured out and shaping a people....Jesus is this love now alive so that we can see our God more clearly. Israel, remember, was given this opportunity. Just as we are. I don't see it as imitation...I see it as simply becoming really alive - present - available. One theologian I like to quote notes that Christians evangelize Jews -not by trying to make them Christians, but by encouraging their faithfulness to God's call to be Israel.

Connection: This whole piece makes me wonder how really close we are to one another when we are able to see the vision of the peaceable Reign....that is so much a part of our humanity when it shines.

Come, Light of the World, and shine among us so that we will become that light even as we wander through the parts of our day when we do not see light around us and often feel as though we are not the light you have called us. Amen.