First Sunday of Advent!
The Advent reading for this Sunday was Luke 1:26-38.
This is part 10 of a sermon series through 2 Corinthians. For weeks now, Paul has been contrasting two different kingdoms, two very different ways of living:
a law of the letter vs. a law of the Spirit,
a way of life that leads to death vs. a way of death that leads to life,
a fragility of the body vs. a tenacity of the Spirit
One is tempted to view reality as a duality: that is, a material world and a spiritual world striving for dominance. In Christian dualism, one believes that the spiritual world is good; the material world is evil, best avoided, tolerated when necessary, and escaped from ASAP. Christian dualism gives rise to cults, hermits, asceticism, and the worldview common to many evangelicals: the sooner the world goes to hell, the sooner we can be raptured and start living the good life in heaven. However, this is not the biblical worldview.
2 Corinthians 5
Commentary
v1 the earthly tent we live in. i.e. our bodies. The KJV translates tent as tabernacle, and the temptation then is to look at our bodies as a holy abode if God’s Spirit is with us. However, correct that might be, the main point here is the impermanence of our current abode, just as Abraham living in a tent (Hebrews 11:9) was a metaphor for the impermanence of his earthly circumstances.
v2-3 At first glance, these verses appear to support the Christian dualist worldview. However, I see in these verses a reference to two other biblical characters who were found naked. Adam & Eve’s great tragedy was not being naked, but breaking relationship with God through willful disobedience. One can imagine Adam & Eve evicted from Eden, groaning, longing for their idyllic home, but mostly grieving the intimacy with God that they had destroyed.
v4 swallowed up by life. We have an innate sense of how life should be: peaceful, secure, prosperous, happy, loving, healthy, fair. The Hebrews called this life shalom. It was the life Adam & Eve squandered. It is the life that Jesus promises. It is the life that the world will see one day when the dwelling of God is once again with men (Revelation 21:1-4).
Application
One of the controversies in the early church involved the role of Mary. For centuries, early church fathers had given Mary the title Theotokos, meaning Mother of God, or more literally one who gives birth to God. In the 5th Century, the patriarch Nestorius challenged this view, claiming that Mary should only be called Christotokos, meaning Mother of Christ, or one who gives birth to Christ. For Nestorius, it was inconceivable that the Son of God should have a conception (pun intended). Nestorious maintained that the divine aspect of Jesus must have existed from the beginning, whereas only God’s appointed human agent—literally the Christ—could be pinned down to a point in time. By arguing for two distinct aspects to Jesus, one divine and one human, Nestorius was condemned by the Council of Ephesus in 431 of heresy.
In the incarnation of Jesus, Christian dualism crashes against the hard fact of a life that is 100% divine, eternal spirit and 100% mortal, finite humanity—and yet this fusion of two worlds is life fully expressed.
There is a similar tension at work in us. We groan underneath the burden of the life we live, and yet there is another life, a life that predates us, that we are called to live: it is our life in the mind of God. Since the very beginning, long before the creation of the universe, we existed in the mind of God. We didn’t exist as disembodied spirits; we were not pre-incarnated in other bodies; we were simply in the mind of God until the appointed time when we were realized in our mother’s wombs. We did not receive a mortal body as something to be endured; rather, we received our bodies for the very purpose of learning how to live, to wit: life is a gift to be given back over to God.
A strange thing happens when we give our lives back over to God. At first it feels like losing control, giving up, or dying. Christians even call it dying to self. But then the miracle happens: our relationship to God begins in earnest, and we are swallowed up by life. We are swallowed up by the life that exists in the mind of God. The power of that life becomes possible only because of our relationship with God. Our lives start to change in ways that we could never have predicted, never have manufactured on our own. It is the power of God at work within us to will and to work, according to his purpose (Philippians 2:12-13).
It was never the case that our bodies were a mere inconvenience to be shucked ASAP in favor of a disembodied spiritual life. God’s plan for humans has always been for our relationship with him to be lived out within our finite bodies. In the words of Mary (Luke 1:38) we are God’s to direct, may it be unto us even as it is in the mind of God. See in Paul’s words today not the desire to shed his body as a snake sheds its skin, but rather to move into a world where the mortal has been swallowed up by immortality and the prayer "Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven" is a reality.
Points to Ponder
Compare the language of this passage with 1 Corinthians 15:50-54. What words, phrases, and ideas do you see in both passages?
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