As I read the scriptures this week I have caught myself savoring the Colossians passage. I feel like Paul is bringing me behind the curtain with this stuff about Jesus. How does Jesus hold all these things together? How does his blood make peace? Paul doesn’t say how. He doesn’t begin to answer my why questions. But he weaves this heady tapestry, and I long to worship this Jesus in the ether before time began.
I also feel myself read quickly through the account of Jesus on the cross, mocked even by another man on another cross. How low is that? My eyes scan quickly so that I miss the dialogue and the heat and the blood and the flies and the suffocation and those nails and the joints and all the bones intact—I don’t want to be bothered with all of that. I don’t even want to hear him welcome some murderer into paradise.
I’d rather sing that Christ hymn in Colossians. But a wise man has taught me that it is not sufficient to worship this first-born Son; we are called to follow this homeless Palestinian (the same person) through the cross somehow. Lord, let me read the hard parts closely.
(from ryan)
1 comment:
I'm reading Kierkegaard's Training in Christianity right now, and he has a lot to say on this theme. He says that we "undertake to do what the Father is to do, to array Christ in glory ... as though that were the Second Advent." But no, we must believe and follow Christ the way He Himself chose to come, and not ignore that in favor of His glory.
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