How was your Easter? In France, the Monday after Easter is a national holiday so we are all starting our week today. On Sunday, I got up early (okay, not with the sun ,but definitely before most of Nice-ville) to spend some time on the beach. On the train ride to Nice, I listened to a Shane and Shane song, Liberty, whose lyrics ran through my mind the rest of the weekend: It is done, the veil is torn. He has won and I am free.
When I was a kid in Sunday school, I was incredibly intrigued by the Old Testament’s Holy of Holies. If you’re not familiar, the Holy of Holies was the most sacred part of the tabernacle and later Jerusalem temple where the Ark of the Covenant was kept and as a result, where God dwelled and met his people. The Holy of Holies was separated from the rest of the temple by a thick, thick curtain that ran the height of the space and the only individual allowed behind the curtain and into the Holy of Holies was the High Priest. Yet he even was only allowed on one occasion each year: the Day of Atonement when he would offer the blood of animals sacrificed to represent the sins of the people. It was such a serious thing that when the High Priest went behind the curtain and entered the Holy of Holies, they would tie a rope around his ankle with bells so that if in the case the priest had not honestly performed the sacrifices with true repentance, when he entered the presence of God and was killed, they would know by the the bells that had stopped ringing on his foot and they could use the rope to pull the priest out. It was an incredibly serious endeavor to enter the Holy of Holies and one that the smallest percentage of the population could actually do.
It was this way through the Old Testament and up until the day Jesus died. But that’s when it changed. I kept thinking this past weekend about Jesus’ final declarative statement: It is finished. It could mean so many things, couldn’t it? His mission to die for our sins, His time on earth as a man, the pure agony of dying, the completion of all that was necessary to pay for our sins . I think these are all a part of it, but I also want to think that He maybe meant our separation was finished. It says in Luke that “the temple curtain was torn in two.” In Mark, it says the curtain was torn “From top to bottom.”
The time for us and God to be separated is no more. The time for a priest being the one to go to God on our behalf is over. When Jesus died for us, he restored the possibility for each of us to have a personal, close relationship with God. We don’t need a priest a good deeds to connect us – we have Jesus and through him, God is near – so near he’s closer than your very heartbeat. What a gift.
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I wonder if you’ll be able to bring me to tears this easily when you are back in the states. Love you and love the heart God has placed inside you.
This will preach…