The Veil -God Coming Out

I was thinking this morning about the veil that was torn in two at Jesus’ death. Matthew records it like this:

“And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split.”

Certainly there is a lot of truth that can be gleaned from Matthew’s description (Mark and Luke describe a similar occurrence) of this event. The truths are all important truths. Truths like our access into God and his presence is now available to all through Christ’s finished work.

The writer of Hebrews does a great job describing some of the benefits made available to us:

And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us; for after saying,  "THIS IS THE COVENANT THAT I WILL MAKE WITH THEM AFTER THOSE DAYS, SAYS THE LORD: I WILL PUT MY LAWS UPON THEIR HEART, AND ON THEIR MIND I WILL WRITE THEM," He then says,  "AND THEIR SINS AND THEIR LAWLESS DEEDS I WILL REMEMBER NO MORE." Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin. Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Hebrews 10:15-22.

The point of Hebrews and most writers (and rightly so) is our access into the Holy of Holies. God has made a way into his presence through Christ.

But as I was thinking about this, and it struck me that maybe there was something else at work. Just as much as God was making a way for us to ENTER IN, he was also signaling that he was COMING OUT. That the veil and temple worship that kept God in the temple, in Jerusalem, in a localized way, was coming out. He was not just the God of the temple worship, or the God of Israel, but the God of the whole world. God was on the move (Aslan!), redeeming his world.

I think we get a glimpse of this (God moving out into His world) in Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus in John 3. Keep in mind that John 3:16, (We all remember this famous passage. I think we remember it so much we forget the context of Jesus’ words, as they were directed to Nicodemus) “For God so loved the world……” is Jesus responding to Nicodemus questions.

Think about Nicodemus’ conversation with Jesus.

Nicodemus meets Jesus late in the evening and pays him a compliment:

"Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him."

Jesus as he always does, answers a question that Nicodemus is not asking, but should be,

"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God."

Many evangelicals go for the salvation jugular around “born again” and “seeing the kingdom of God”. The interpretation is: Get saved (born again) and you are going to heaven (see the Kingdom of God). I am not sure this was what Jesus was saying. And I don’t believe this is what Nicodemus was hearing.

I think we need to look at this in nationalistic terms. We also have to see it in light of the covenant that Nicodemus was living under. Nicodemus was not concerned about getting to heaven. He was not concerned about his salvation. But he certainly understood that being “born again” meant a different citizenship than what he currently was living under. For him, the kingdom of God, Messiah, the temple, Jerusalem, and Israel were all tied together. In one sense you couldn't talk about one without talking about the other.

What Jesus was saying and what he was trying to get Nicodemus to hear and see, was that God’s kingdom and his work was no longer localized to just Israel, or the temple or Jerusalem. If he wanted to “see” the kingdom of God he was going to need a different citizenship. He had to be born of “water and spirit”. That which is born of the flesh is flesh (nationalistic Israel), that which is born of the spirit is spirit (God’s Kingdom people). Jesus was trying to help Nicodemus understand that if he was going to really see Him as Messiah, if he was going to see God’s kingdom at work, he (Nicodemus) would need a new pair of eyes. And the only way to get those new pair of eyes was to be born again. He had to shed the confidence he had in his genealogy. That fact that he was a Hebrew under the covenant would not be enough. It would only limit his sight. It would limit his view. He would misinterpret God’s work and he was going to misinterpret Jesus.  What I hear Jesus saying is,  "God is coming out!"

For the sake of time and space, keeping in mind what I just said, let’s look at John 3:16 (and verse 17) again. Let’s look at it through Nicodemus’s eyes, through his ears. Let’s look at it from what Jesus was trying to help Nicodemus see. What Nicodemus is about to hear, is ground breaking news that would disorientate him, knocking him out of what he thought was a secure place for him. Listen to these words through Nicodemus’s ears:

"For God so loved the world (not just Israel or Jerusalem, or your idea of what it meant.... yes, God loves all those Gentiles or Romans, his creation), that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. "For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.

God was coming out! The temple, Jerusalem, or Israel (which had long ago stopped representing him well) could not hold onto him any longer. He was God of the whole world! The veil had been ripped in two (from top to bottom, meaning God did it, not man). The idea that God loved his world, would not have sat well with a good Jew/Pharisee like Nicodemus. Being born again to not only see, but enter into the Kingdom of God was a hard pill to swallow. But swallow he would need to, if he was going to see God coming out in Jesus, God loving his world, God at work in His world. 

I am not diminishing all that is meant by our ability to enter into God’s presence through Jesus’ shed blood. But at times, as we have emphasized one aspect, we have become like Nicodemus stuck in seeing the Kingdom of God at work in only one way. It is usually localized and parochial in nature. We too, like Nicodemus “must be born again” if we are going to see God at work in his world. God is breaking out. The early church left Jerusalem (with a little help from Stephen and a lot of help from Paul) and by the end of Acts ended up in Rome.  In AD 70 Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed. God was on the move. He was redeeming His world. He was not going back! He was moving forward.

Of course these are just my thoughts. 

I Wonder

I wonder why the gospel message doesn’t “up end” our world like it should. What are we missing? Why doesn’t the radical message of a new and different order, an order that Jesus announced, lived, died for and was resurrected, doesn’t impact us in a deeply personal way?

I wonder if we have so compartmentalized our Christianity that we end up seeing Jesus' teachings through the lenses of our current Christian life and church experience. Instead of challenging that life style we end up reducing the message to something that sees it justification in our current religious activities. Or even worse, we have decided to legalize and ritualize his words to the point that they lose their life and meaning. The light and life become darkness and death, a burden to bear. We then find ourselves having a hard time agreeing with John that God’s commandments are not burdensome. The yoke we bear is a mixture (which is never good) of our current religious life and an attempt to follow the commands. One is holding us back, the other calling us forward into life, real life.

The call to biblical Christianity, to live in and serve the king and his kingdom, will have a hard time finding its fulfillment in our current structures. They are too tight, to constricting. They lack creativity and life. It is like doing the same thing only with a different look. Is it lipstick on a pig? I don’t know. But there is a risk when we decide to communicate and release God’s people to move beyond, to embrace the gospel message of the kingdom of God. If you sow the seeds of life, you have to expect they are going to sprout up in ways that you don’t expect. But, if the Holy Spirit is at work in the Word given, if his breath is breathing on those listening, than we have to expect growth, change, and above all Life. Jesus made it clear to Nicodemus the unpredictability of the Holy Spirit’s work. He said you don’t know where it came from or where it is going, but you will see evidence in the wind blowing through the trees. The evidence of the Holy Spirit at work is seen in the world, God’s creation. How it happened and where it is going from there, only God knows. Is the church willing to lose its life, or will it attempt to save it?

I wonder if when we read the scripture that we find ourselves reading it through the lenses of those who considered themselves “IN”, not “OUT”. By “IN” I mean those who thought they had figured it out, who had in some sense arrived, who considered themselves the protectors and communicators of God’s ways and laws. They could recite the 10 commandments, knew all of the rules, could recite clearly all of the current doctrines and ensure all of those in the synagogue, at least outwardly, conformed to them. They had all of the words and terminology down pat. Their subtle and at times deceptive self-justification rested on the fact that they were the defenders of the faith. The “IN” didn’t like there service disrupted, their conventional wisdom challenged, and the security of their lifestyle, taught and imposed, challenged. Their way of living was clear cut. Very little faith and a lot of conform. Those who were considered “IN” were clearly seen and those who were “OUT” were also clearly seen. A nice arrangement which kept the leaders in control and those both “IN” and “OUT” in their defined roles.

The back drop of much of Jesus teaching is to reach those who were not “IN” but “OUT”. He challenged the “IN” in their way of thinking, to see that their world view was clashing with God’s ways. That in reality they were “OUT”. To those who were “OUT” Luke writes this about Jesus,

And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read. And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book and found the place where it was written, "THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME, BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR. HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES, AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND, TO SET FREE THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED, TO PROCLAIM THE FAVORABLE YEAR OF THE LORD." And He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

The “OUT” were clearly on Jesus’ mind. His identification with the poor, the captive, the blind, and the oppressed were on His Father’s mind. I am not sure this was on the minds of those who were in the synagogue.
Those who were “OUT” certainly saw this as good news. Those who were “IN” would see this message as disruptive to their world view and they would do whatever was needed to preserve that order. Even to the point of killing Jesus. Think of it: Healings on the Sabbath! Healings in the synagogue! Parties with sinners! Forgiveness and Grace versus condemnation and isolation! Certainly disruptive!

Why am I saying this? I want us to grasp the reality of Jesus message. To see the Gospels in a fresh way. To quit placing Jesus words in the context of a self-justifying religious belief that sanitizes and moralizes the words of Jesus to the point of obscurity. To get us to see that in many ways we are the “IN” that are really “OUT” and that the “OUT” are really the “IN”.

I probably could have said all of this a lot better. I don’t know. Hopefully you will get the heart of it and not just the words. I am challenged to follow the Christ of this kingdom. I don’t want to be “OUT” because the “OUT” is the new “IN”. I want, like Paul, to say, “That I might know Him”. And where ever that leads me well…I wonder!