THE HOLY OF HOLIES - SHEPHERDS AND MYSTICAL STAR GAZERS
15/12/2020
The Holy Of Holies
Where God lives
No one dares go
Only the High Priest
And only once a year
Carrying the blood of bull and goat
And aroma of sacred incense.
To find yourself in the presence of God
When you fear even using his name
The Holy Of Holies
No one dares go.
Until this morning
When
Look
Dirty shepherds
Straight from the fields
With lambs on their shoulders
Not even sacrificed
And stargazing magicians
From foreign places
Without Scripture
Or Abraham’s ancestral line
Gentiles!
Yes, this morning
Nobodies
And strangers
Enter the holy of holies
And meet God
In the flesh
As a baby.
It is as if the curtain in the temple
Was torn asunder
By grace
Not works
By love
Not law
By a baby born.
For some time I have believed that all that that Jesus would live out and teach in his life are crammed into the nativity stories of Matthew and Luke. That you should store up treasure in heaven, no earth. That the first will be last and the last first. That you should love your enemy. That the meek will inherit the earth. It is all here.
And in those scenes that many of us set up in cribs at the front of our church buildings lies the greatest of all Gospel truth. Through this baby any ordinary man or woman can now enter into the presence of God and have a relationship with God.
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. (Hebrews 4:14-16)
The shepherds and wise men standing around the manger is a prophetic picture of what would happen later in this baby’s life. On a Good Friday thirty three years later the baby breathing his first breaths today then breathes his last breath… “at that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom” (Matthew 27:51).
This changes everything. It changes everything in our own lives. It gives the spiritual resources to transform communities and to build hope that has a form foundation on the events of time and space by the interruption of God transcendent grace.
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