Spirituality Column #740

January 19, 2021

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Let’s Get to Work

By Bob Walters

“All the peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.” – Genesis 28:14

(Sunday was my at-bat to come up with and present the traditional service communion meditation at East 91^st Street Christian Church.  Here it is.)

“It has been a joy in this new year to begin our project to read through the Bible, together, as a church.  The corresponding sermon series is up to Leviticus this week, but the reading plan wrapped up Genesis yesterday.

It has probably been 15 years since I last read the Book of Genesis start to finish.  You forget, well at least I forget, so much, and mis-remember other things.  Now it is fresh again; even things we may not think about often.

For example …

- I knew God had said it, but I couldn’t remember exactly where, that the whole world would be “blessed” through Israel.  That’s Genesis 28:14, in Jacob’s Dream at Bethel.  The whole world – all of us – would be blessed. 

- I knew Jacob had wrestled with God, and God renamed him “Israel,” which means “wrestles with God” … and there it was in Genesis 32:28, shortly before a very nervous Jacob reunited with his previously very angry brother Esau.  That context had slipped my mind.

God’s promise to Jacob … and what became the Nation of Israel in Jacob’s 12 sons and descendants … well, God’s promise that Israel would one day “bless all the earth” of course comes to fruition in Jesus Christ.  We learn throughout the Old Testament and especially in the prophets that Israel would bring forth the salvation of all mankind through this “Messiah Christ.”

Israelites thought the Messiah would come to save just them.  No, Jesus came not to make us all Israelites under the Law; Jesus came to save us all by faith, initiating God’s Kingdom on Earth.  The Cross and Resurrection unlocked the eternal door.

When we partake of the bread and the cup, and remember Jesus as He commanded us to remember Him, we join in communion with God’s Kingdom.

Neither Jesus nor the Cross nor the Gospel nor this communion are here simply to wisk us off to another sphere of salvation, free of sin and corruption and death.  Jesus came to Earth to put us to work in God’s Kingdom in a community not defined by sin … but defined by forgiveness.

And we, the forgiven people, are put to work in and for His Kingdom.

Each time we remember Jesus in communion, our joy is renewed.  If this meal is physically small, its nourishment is spiritually great.  It is a reminder that life requires nourishment, and that Jesus is our life. 

In the Old Testament the Israelites found the life of God in the Temple; for Israel, that’s where heaven met Earth … in the Temple.   Now, in our communion with Christ, we meet the life of God, and Heaven meets Earth, in Jesus Christ.

Let’s remember Jesus, and invite the Cross of Christ to put us to work.”

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) has been reading a lot of N.T. Wright this year and it bleeds through in Bob’s focus on God’s Kingdom, not just “a sinner being saved.”