THE HOLY OF HOLIES - SHEPHERDS AND MYSTICAL STAR GAZERS

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.