Sometimes, my mind likes to wander away without telling me where it's going. Thankfully, it's only gone for a few seconds (my wife begs to differ). Sometimes I end up in rainbow-land, or in fields full of clover nipping rabbits, or upon the plains once inhabited by Troglodytes and their kin.
Today, it was a more meaningful place: 1st century Palestine where I sat on a hillside listening to a homeless man. Strange that this man and the things he said would one day change the world.
In some circles, he was known as Jesus. Others knew him as the carpenter's son and those closest to him would one day realize that he was the high priest of a "new and everlasting covenant."
They saw him entering into the Holy of Holies. He isn't self-righteous about it. He doesn't snap his toes and say "Shazaam!" (being Jesus, I don't think he would've needed to snap his fingers). He merely entered, paying with blood.
Doing this seals the deal. Jesus, the prophet bridges past, present, and future. He fulfills the Mosaic law and brings old and new together forever. Sounds like a great role to play until you factor in the scorn, the rejection, and the crucifixion.
But Christ is a hero isn't he? He's an eternal king so he would rise in vindication, no longer villified but glorified, right?. This is exactly what happened. But before it happened, our homeless man, the king to whom all heads must bow and every knee must bend wore a crown of thorns. Why not just skip right to the glorious parts? Why enter the house of pain?
Jesus had a more perfect way made so through weakness. And he didn't come to tell us that. That's the pitfall professors warn us about in Englsih 101. Don't tell, show. Don't write about how so and so was sad. Describe so and so's actions in such away that the reader can infer that he's sad.
That's exactly what Jesus did.
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