Tuesday, March 6, 2018
For Christ
did not enter into a holy place made with human hands, which was only a copy of
the true one in heaven. He entered into
heaven itself to appear now before God on our behalf. Hebrews 9:24(NLT)
When I was six or seven my younger cousin Gary stayed with us for part of
the summer. I’m certain the dog days of
August, and the patience of both sets of parents wearing-thin had something to
do with this plan!
Fast-forward a
dozen years and it wasn’t the August sands of our backyard, but the heat and dust
of South Vietnam. There were no plastic
action figures to move fearlessly through the perils to win the war before
dinner. This was real, scary, and, for a
19 year-old boy from Long Island, an excruciating introduction to the ugliness
of what it means to have a sinful nature, the result of fallen humanity.
More than 50 years
later, the comparison of the invincibility of playtime with toy soldiers in the
early 1950’s, and the extreme mortal vulnerability I experienced around my 20th
birthday being the action figure some generals moved around, is
still vivid enough to enter my dreams at times.
I have relived the
emotions over the years as we hold our parades for the warriors who manage to
return; the uniforms are smart and starched, and the music is inspiring. Sentiment runs high for the courageous
warriors; we praise their sacrifice…and then Mom calls out the back door that
dinner is on the table…and we know it’s time to get back to real life.
This isn’t
cynicism, but something of a realistic sadness that, whatever doesn’t fit with
our playground, idealistic, heroic ideas of war, we cast-off as irrelevant –
including the soldiers that no longer fit in a culture that cannot deal with the
roller-coaster effects of their PTSD-driven anger. We conveniently move-on, as if the call to
wash-up for dinner trumps the anguish of the soldiers we placed in harm’s way.
The Temple in
Jerusalem had become a backyard playground for religious leaders. They went through the motions which only a
settled, religious, repeated experience can provide. The shock experienced when Jesus showed up and
turned over centuries of ceremonial pretense in the religious community was like
an earthquake on steroids.
Jesus put an end
to the endless ceremonial sacrificing of animals in Jerusalem’s Temple when he
came to be the ultimate sacrifice. And when
He entered heaven to stand for us, offering His own blood as payment for our
sins there was, and is, nothing left to do; Calvary was the war to end all
wars.
For You Today
Lent should remind
us that the battle is over, and the victory has been won. It should remind us that the cost was
ultimate, and we should put away our action figures and be all grown-up into Christ.
All else is petty.
You chew on that as you hit the
Rocky Road; have a blessed day.
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