Lenten Meditations on the Cosmic Riddle, Part 3

 "The LORD said, 'I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt.  I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering.  So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land....'"

-Exo. 3:7-8


"But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.  This is why it says:

'When he ascended on high,
He took many captives
And gave gifts to his people.'

(What does 'he ascended' mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions?  He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.)"
-Eph. 4:7-10


"It is not to angels that he has subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking.  But there is a place where someone has testified,

'What is mankind that you are mindful of them,
A son of man that you care for him?
You made them a little lower than the angels;
You crowned them with glory and honour
And put everything under their feet.'

In putting everything under them, God left nothing that is not subject to them.  Yet at present we do not see everything subject to them.  But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honour because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. ... Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of death -- that is, the devil -- and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. ... For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a faithful and merciful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people."
-Heb. 2:5-17


I wonder if Jesus ever felt culture shock.

Abraham.  Isaac.  Jacob.  Joseph.  Moses.  Joshua.  Ruth.  David.  Jonah.  Jeremiah.  Ezekiel.  Esther.  Daniel.  Nehemiah.  All these individuals, and many others both before and after Christ, were called in some measure or another to sojourn in alien lands, to cross linguistic and cultural barriers, in order to fulfill God's will for their lives.  They ALL left their home city, their home nation, their home language, their home culture, their home religion, etc. at some point in their lives, and many of these individuals never came back.  Abraham never went back to Ur of the Chaldees (which was NOT in Mesopotamia, by the way, but inland near the middle of modern-day Syria).  Joseph never returned to Canaan.  Moses never returned to Egypt.  Ruth never returned to Moab; or at least, I think it's a pretty safe assumption.  And the list goes on.

In fact, this command to leave is the first thing God ever says to Abraham.  Have you ever pondered the enormity of that?  Check it out, in Gen. 12:1-3.  Then verse 4 says, "So Abram went, ...."  Wow.  I'm not sure I have that kind of faith in me.  I mean, I had been a Christian for nearly twenty years before I thought God was calling me to go to another country, in another part of the world, for the purpose of fulfilling His will for my life.  I'm not sure I would have done it on the very first go-round.  But from what is written in Scripture, it seems that Abraham did exactly that.

But it took me a long time, and the help of professors and scholars, to see that the Scriptures explicitly declare that God Himself is a cross-cultural traveler.  And I'm not talking about God's plan throughout history to bring His gospel to all nations, although that is certainly true, and it's one of my favorite topics in studying biblical literature.  I could go on and on about it -- like in Genesis 11, or in Exodus 19, or in Deuteronomy 32, or in 2 Samuel 22, or in 1 Kings 8, or in Psalm 67, or in Psalm 96, or in Isaiah 66, or in Ezekiel 36, or in Zephaniah 3, or in Matthew 28, or in Acts 1, or in Romans 15, or in Ephesians 2, or in Revelation 21 -- oh sorry, I think I got carried away just then.  My apologies.

But that's NOT what I'm talking about here.  No, I'm talking about God Himself leaving His home and going to a foreign land.  I'm talking about God crossing not only national, cultural, and linguistic borders, but cosmic barriers in order to fulfill His own mission.  I'm talking about God leaving heaven and coming to earth: the Invisible becoming visible, Spirit becoming flesh, Life becoming death.  The cross-cultural experience -- living, working, ministering, and everything else that comes with it -- was God's idea, an idea for which He was willing to die, and He did.

This idea of a heavenly God willingly coming down to earth was unthinkable to the ancient worldview.  This is why the exodus event was so powerful, not just to the Israelites but to all the other nations who quaked in fear when the Israelites came up out of Egypt.  Israel's God had actually come down and performed signs and wonders among them, resulting in the complete and total devastation of the Egyptian army whose bodies were strewn along the shores of the Red Sea.  

Wait, what is His name again?  Yahweh.  And what is His Son's name?  Jesus.

Of course, Jesus is the answer to the Cosmic Riddle.  He did the impossible in ascending to heaven, but only after doing the unimaginable in descending to earth.  Very God in mortal flesh, the God-Man, fully human yet fully divine.  God the Son left His perfect dwelling, where there was perfect unity, perfect harmony, perfect peace, perfect joy, perfect bliss, perfect everything.  He left all that to come be one of us ... sinners.  Well, Jesus wasn't a sinner, but you get my point here.

Perhaps it's more accurate to wonder if Jesus ever didn't feel culture shock.


[to be continued]