Lent Midweek 2022 (2)

“And in Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, Born of the virgin Mary”

These little words that I just spoke, the words of the creed regarding the second person of the trinity are the greatest Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion lesson the world will ever know.

By these words we know that the flesh of our bodies can be utterly filled and consumed with God’s own presence and at once united to all of humanity.

Did you know that for about the first thousand years of the church the death of Jesus was not the central teaching? The crucifix was not readily present in worship for at least the first four hundred years of Christianity. The predominant teaching of the church in those early years is something that we don’t quite touch upon in these days: God in flesh.

Where the world today is wildly consumed by the idea of how can we be equal with each other the church is consumed with the question, how can we be equal with God?

Unless the equality we all seek is found in our common humility, our common brokenness, our common imperfections: hemorrhoids, warts, acne, eating disorders, addictions, and dysmorphia’s there is no common ground because there is no perfect human.

No not even one. That is until we talk about Jesus.

Hear this stunning sentence from Leo the great, written sometime in the early fifth century:

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 2.12: Leo the Great, Gregory the Great III. The Acknowledgment of Our Nature in Christ Is Necessary to Orthodoxy

But what reconciliation can there be, whereby GOD might be propitiated for the human race, unless the mediator between GOD and man took up the cause of all? And in what way could He properly fulfil His mediation, unless He who in the form of GOD was equal to the Father, were a sharer of our nature also in the form of a slave: so that the one new Man might effect a renewal of the old: and the bond of death fastened on us by one man’s wrong-doing might be loosened by the death of the one Man who alone owed nothing to death.

See the utter perfection of Jesus is that He is both incredibly and unattainably pure, good and decent while still completely yoked to all of our indecencies.

I remember when I worked at Walgreens we would get to see what was on our freight truck a few days before it arrived. It also told us who ordered what was on the truck. Roughly, RX meant the Pharmacy had ordered something, S meant our automated system had stocked something, OP was for store operations and then there was this terrible DO. The District Manager at the office or someone at corporate could decide that we needed - real example 500 snuggies, or 350 chia pets. And then they could DEMAND that we sell them.

It was infuriating, I’d always shout at the printout! YOU COME UNLOAD THESE, YOU STORE THEM, YOU COME SELL THEM!

Jesus is having the Lord of Heaven and earth stand by your side. This is exactly the promise made to King Ahaz;

Isaiah 7:11 ESV

“Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.”

Ahaz is facing a coming invasion and Isaiah says: the Lord will come and fight defend you and Ahaz refuses to believe it. Jesus wants to be the mediator in all conflicts- EVEN DEATH- and humanity wants nothing to do with the glorious getting their hands dirty.

In Jesus, the defiant King is dethroned and the young teenage girl is exalted. In Jesus, we who were once outsiders are brought near and death is destroyed. All we need to be included is to know how little we bring.

These short words of the creed should compel us into radical relationships with one another, not based upon how much we can offer another but based upon what our God did for all of us. He solicited our help - He couldn’t even carry the cross and yet He still died upon the one we carry for him.

In Jesus, we are bound to the divine.

In these first words of the creed, we are told that though we could not be like God, God became like us. This is good and makes you good.

Amen.