Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Hebrews 10:5-10

5Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,

"Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
   but a body you have prepared for me;
6in burnt offerings and sin offerings
   you have taken no pleasure.
7Then I said, 'See, God, I have come to do your will, O God'
   (in the scroll of the book it is written of me)."

8When he said above, "You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings" (these are offered according to the law), 9then he added, "See, I have come to do your will." He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. 10And it is by God's will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

    
“Sacrifices and offerings G*D does not desire, but a body has been given to me”. “Sacrifice” and “body” are further contrasted with “law” and “will/desire” with a forgone conclusion that the former, in each instance must back off for the latter to come to fruition.

To have a body is to hold a promise of tomorrow, regardless of what the past has been.

Then, at verse 10, things get turned around and we are told G*D’s will/desire is for the legal sacrifice of Jesus’ body. Somehow to not have a body that was given is supposed to clean up a past which, each moment, is being added to by junk in the present.

If one follows the journey of Sisyphus, happiness with his eternally repetitive task can be achieved, but it begins to move some theorized once-for-all-ness of one sacrifice of goodness for every subsequent need into question - G*D doesn’t desire sacrifice and yet finally comes to sacrifice of “self”.

In the schizophrenia of Advent we rejoice over bodies of babies given for facing toward tomorrow. We also recognize a body perpetually rolling away a rock, facing back at us, to judge and redeem what has been.

Generally we end up on one side or the other of the unspoken divide between the end of verse 9 and the beginning of verse 10. Often it is the space between our utterances that is the real crux of the matter. What happened in that mysterious moment between verses that set a divide between progressive Christians and the religious-right?

Advent honors this mysterious space by waiting with expectation for it to come clear.