Week 20—Saturday Galatians 6:14, 17
Galatians 6:14, 17
IS GOD THE GOD OF THE PERMANENT SCARS?
We saw yesterday that the Incarnation continues—continues in the fact that Jesus is still persecuted in the persecution of his own, still suffering in the sins and sorrows of the sinful. So the Incarnation continues in that whatever falls on us falls on him. But there is a further step: The Incarnation means that our personhood is taken up into God. So Browning cries: “It’s weakness in strength that I cry for! My flesh, that I seek in the Godhead! I seek and find it!” Is our flesh now in the Godhead? Is our humanity now a part of the Godhead? I see God in the stars, but do I see God more deeply in the Scars—the scars in the nail-pierced hands? Certainly it is not flesh and blood. For flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God so certainly will not inherit the Godhead. But in some real way we are not now represented in the Godhead—our humanity a part of God in the Incarnation became a part of us?
Jesus after his resurrection showed his pierced hands and side—these marks were in a resurrected body—a body which could pass through closed doors and could rise from the earth and be caught away into heaven. Did he ever divest himself of those signs, or are they still there? The church has always believed that this is true—and rightly. For if he became part of us in the Incarnation, then in that same Incarnation we became a part of him. These scars are pledges that we belong to him and he will await his own. And we will come seeking our Homeland.
So the Incarnation was not like an insect at evening time diving from the air and skimming the surface of the lake and in doing so laying its eggs and then going back to its flying in the sky. No, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”—dwelt among us and made us his own and took our humanity back with him. So we are permanently there. So when we come to him we come to our own because we are his own.
O Savior, we are saved in no light fashion. “He loved his own and loved them to the end”—and that “end” is forever. Because of this we are not your passing interest—we are graven on your hands and our destiny is in your wound prints—there is where we belong forever. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: My flesh taken up into him? Yes, today and forever.