Wednesday, January 15, 2025
 (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Body work
The children share in blood and Flesh.
This sounds worse than it is. Usually we call it flesh and blood. We each carry a body around from the moment we’re born till the day we die.
Not all of this is fun, of course, although we can easily become gnostic in a culture that worships physical fitness and covets physical immortality. Is matter a “deterioration of spirit,”as AI defines gnostic this morning on Google? Is the universe “a deprivation of the Deity?” Or does the restoration principle – that God will finish the good work he began – hold?
Jesus likewise shared in our flesh and blood, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the Devil, and free those who through fear of death had been subject to slavery all their life.
The author of Hebrews sounds pretty sure of himself in what he says about God. He willingly assures us of a contradiction the Bible hammers home over and over, that death is conquered by death, because life for all of us resumes after we die, beginning with Jesus’ resurrection. Those gas station attendants who say “you can’t get there from here” are wrong. It’s just a little off the beaten track, that’s all.
So I strive not to be interested in death as a finality. I echo Wendell Berry’s character Nathan Coulter and say, “I’m going to live right on. Dying is none of my business. Dying will have to take care of itself.” When living ends, I am ready, fine with that, on the road, singing the songs. Because there is something going on in that Place that I can’t get to from here.
He had to become like his brothers and sisters in every way, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest before God to expiate the sins of the people. He himself was tested through what he suffered, and now he is able to help those who are being tested.
I say I know nothing about death, but I also say I know something about heaven, about the workshop way up there where Jesus our Brother is hard at work building mansions. It’s more like a fairy tale than a news story, but fairy tales are always more true in their essence than news bulletins. And this is The Greatest Fairy Tale Ever Told.
Jesus himself was tested through what he suffered, and therefore he is able to help those who are being tested.
It does make sense, doesn’t it? Maybe I think it makes sense because I’ve heard this story for seventy-five years, with little respite and little change. It’s not what the eyes of my body see, but what the eyes of my spirit discern that generates hope and foils despair.
The Lord remembers his covenant forever.Â
We prayed for our eyes yesterday … we often pray for our body eyes, but yesterday we prayed to see what God sees and ignore the altogether physical evidence of our bodies. Is that gnostic? I think it might tend that way, so we are quick to praise God with his servant’s words from the psalms.
Give thanks to the Lord, invoke his name. Sing to him, sing his praise, and proclaim all his wondrous deeds.
When nothing was visible in the suffering moment, the Hebrews looked back through history for the wondrous deeds. They remembered, and their eyes were opened.
He is the Lord, our God, and throughout the earth his judgments prevail.
Doesn’t get any better than that, the way life is meant to be.
We sang a song, and the words flowed through our mouths as they have countless times before. This is a song that must filter through the Fairy Tale from Heaven before it makes any sense at all.
What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
O precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow.
No other fount I know
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
This is another day that the Lord has made. We will celebrate with all our might.
And the children share in blood and Flesh.
(Hebrews 2, Psalm 105, John 10, Mark 1)
 (posted at www.davesandel.net)
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