Returning To Eden Through the Perfect Sacrifice
How long, O Lord, how long?" This is the frequently repeated refrain of the Old Testament. The people of Israel believed in God's promise to make them a great kingdom, and God seemed to delay and delay and delay. They thought they knew what they were waiting for, but they didn't. Centuries passed and still they weren't ready. Even when Jesus became Man, they weren't ready for the coming of God's kingdom.
But God declared that the time of the Incarnation was "the fullness of time." We live in the fullness of time. We live a life that has been lived by Perfection Itself, who, in every instant of His life, cleaned up all of broken human life and perfected it. But he did not get rid of our broken world; He did not make every subsequent life perfect. He provided an alternative way of living every moment, but we must chose perfection over emptiness and brokenness.
That's the scary thing. In every moment we have a choice of living in perfection or outside of it. And our choices make our eternity. He gives us more than enough to make the perfect eternal choice. See it and choose it.
Laura Weston - widow of Deacon Michael
IF YOU LIKE, READ ALONG AS YOU LISTEN:
The reading in Genesis today is a reading that you realistically can say has caused a whole lot of trouble in the history of the world and the history of the Middle East.
Because you remember Judaism traces its roots back to Abraham. Christianity traces its roots back to Abraham. And Islam does.
And all of us see ourselves as descendants of, in our story, the man who will soon become Abraham, whose children will be numerous.
And God gave that land in the Middle East to the descendants of Abram.
So the Jews and the Muslims argue about it saying, "Well, I'm a descendant of Abraham. I'm entitled to that land."
And that is one of the core problems that we have in the Middle East.
We have a manifestation, a theophany, that we are dealing with here. And from our perspective it brings you back to the road to Emmaus. Everything in the Old Testament relates to Jesus.
And the sacrifice that we see that is ongoing that Abraham does is a sacrifice that we see throughout the Old Testament. But you see the sacrifice of Jesus. The unending sacrifice of Jesus as the Lamb of God, as the perfect sacrifice, the culmination of the sacrifices to God by the descendants of Abraham came with the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.
That is the fulfillment and that is the ultimate perfection of the sacrifice that man could make to God.
That is why we have the Eucharist and the celebration of the Liturgy of the Eucharist every, every day if there's a priest here, because that celebration is the perfection of the sacrifice.
God calls for sacrifice from Abraham, he does the sacrifice, but ultimately you see the total fulfillment in the perfect sacrifice of Christ on the cross. That's what we're talking about. It traces all the way back to Abram.
The sacrifice creates the covenant between God and Abram, with regard to the lamb, and having numerous descendants, all traced and carried forward to the perfection of Christ.
That is another thing that is reflected in the Eucharist is, it is... and we hear this, you hear this... the perfect sacrifice that made all other similar sacrifices unnecessary forever. It reached perfection and there is no need to go further.
In the gospel reading today, we have something that I try to talk about, and I don't do it as well a Jesus, obviously. But if you are a follower of Christ, if you believe and act in your life as a follower of Christ you will become something different.
It is the,"Beware of false prophets that come to you in sheep's clothing but underneath are ravenous wolves." The good fruit coming from the good tree. Through Christ you have the ability of being the good tree that bears much fruit and bears good fruit.
But it is the transformative process of Christ that makes it so we are not wolves in sheep's clothing, we are the sheep. It makes us the good tree that’s bearing good fruit, not the bad tree. It makes us something different in Christ.
The something different, the transformation that Christ is seeking in us, and talking to us about, is the transformation of going from the imperfect, of not following Christ and living in the world, and coming and working towards the perfect.
And what comes from all of that is that “every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. So by their fruits you will know them.”
Not only do you know the bad, and we have experienced it, you know people who are bad, and you see the bad fruit, but the good fruit of following Christ exists during our lives and becomes the culmination at the end of time where there is going to be a separation of the sheep and goats, or there is going to be a cutting down of the bad trees, throwing them into Gehenna. Thrown into fire, again, thrown into Gehenna.
So we see Jesus again telling us, as he does so often, and so well... like I said, I wish I could use the wonder of the way He expresses Himself, the wonder of telling us that through following Him there is something wonderful and special that is coming.
And what is coming is the perfection of you and me, if we live our lives according to the teaching of Jesus Christ, so that when we die we can go into Heaven and participate... and it is hard to articulate because this is outside of time... but to participate through Christ in the perfect sacrifice that He made, wholly human, wholly divine, that was the fulfillment of the sacrifices necessary to bring us the promise of eternal life.
The sacrifice that we see in Abram becomes perfect in Christ and that sacrifice enables us to perfect ourselves to the degree that we can spend all eternity with God in Heaven.
So you see the cycle that is being fulfilled in Christ, in the perfect sacrifice. But in the sacrifice of Abram, the perfection in Christ, and the ability, through Christ, to perfect ourselves to the degree that we see that we can spend all eternity in Heaven, we also find that in this process of the sacrifice of Christ, the sacrifice of Abraham, we see a full cycle, because in a very real sense what we are doing through Christ is returning to the Garden of Eden, returning to the image of Heaven as the Garden of Eden, and living for all eternity in the presence of God.
June 26, 2019 2