October 31st, 20

HE IS OUR PEACE

Today’s readings are Psalm 121 and  Mark 9 – 10.  We are reading from the New Living Translation.

It’s a trap.  They’re trying to set a trap for him and they’re using the Bible to do it.  They’re weaponizing the Word. They ask him about divorce.  They’re going to weaponize the tragedy of divorce to try and trap him in his words.  But Jesus is so skilful in his answer.  He asks them what Moses says.  What does Moses say about divorce?  They answer, Well, Moses gave us permission. The Word says we can. We can write a letter of divorce.  But Jesus reaches back, farther than Moses. He points to God’s original intent in marriage is.  It is that two would become one. God has miraculously brought together two and joined them together as one.  And no one should tear apart what God has joined together.  This is God’s purpose and intent behind marriage.  

What Moses has offered us is a concession to our brokenness.  It’s a concession to our hard hearts.  What Moses wrote was not some holy loophole.  It was God conceding that we are far more broken than we know. God has conceded, because of our hard hearts, to allow for/permit, divorce under certain circumstances.  In fact, all of the law of Moses is a concession, to our hard-heartedness and the brokenness of this world.  But God has a far greater plan than just to concede.  His plan is to reconcile and make new, to join together that which was severed. He’s going to bring us back together, to him.  What God has done in Christ is to remarry us to himself.  He’s bringing back together that which was severed.  And He has done it through the body of Christ himself.  In Ephesians 2:14-16 Paul says,

For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us.

Together as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of his death on the cross, and our hostility toward each other was put to death.

Christ is bringing the two together as one, by means of his own body. He’s making us one, with him, and with each other.  This is God’s ultimate plan. It’s not concession. God will not concede forever.  His plan is not the law. The law was there to crowd us to the cross so that we might see what He alone can do – make us one again.  If we’re not careful the law can become a trap for us.  We can try to manipulate the concessions to justify our hard-heartedness, to justify the divisions among us.  When we do that we get caught in a trap.  But when we live in Christ we live free of the trap.  On the cross he sprung the trap and made a way for us to live beyond concession and into victory.

Live beyond concession and into a life of reconciliation – a with-God life, even now.

You are loved!