Blog Archives
The Habit of Hospitality
People are creatures of habit. We like to be comfortable and content. We like met expectations. We like sameness.
But Christ did not call us to comfort and contentment, sameness or habit. We are called to more than the status quo, more than what is easy and accessible.
We are called to go. We are called to give up. We are called to drop and follow. We are called to run. We are called to be bold. We are called to be counter-cultural. We are called to be subversive. We are called to live in tension, in paradox. We are called to more.
Since moving to a new area and starting over again to find a community to participate in, my husband and I have been reminded — at times quite painfully — what it’s like to be new, outside, uninitiated. In the past year, here are three key ingredients I’ve discovered in true hospitality.
1) Be genuine.
Even the less-discerning among us can spot a faker a mile away. The smile a little too forced. The voice a little too high. The questions that don’t wait for an answer. The slimy feeling left behind — sticky-sweet, I call it, the kind of hospitality that leaves a residue. If we want people to feel welcomed, we have to be genuinely welcoming.
2) Be the initiator and the pursuer.
Simply put, follow up. New people have already made the first move by showing up. Make them feel genuinely welcomed by inviting them out for coffee, texting them to ask about their day, Facebooking them a funny video that reminded you of your recent conversation. Do something honest and tailored, something that allows for a response. Do it more than once. No form letters or cold calls allowed.
3) Earn the right to ask personal questions.
Everyone hates small talk, but going zero to sixty can make newcomers feel uncomfortable and caught off-guard. Don’t ask a question you wouldn’t be willing to answer yourself. Take time to build relationship with people. Let depth come naturally. Create space for deep conversation, make the first move, and allow them to share when they’re ready — when you’ve earned their trust.
I’m the first to admit I’m not the person most suited to hospitality. As an introvert, I tend to make terrible first impressions and usually only slightly less terrible second and third impressions. It takes time for me to open up to new people. On the rare occasion I work up the courage to initiate, the experience is generally monumentally awkward for everyone involved. (Hence my failure at working retail.)
I know how hard it can be to be willing to be uncomfortable, to be the one to break the ice, to leave the circle of familiar friends and open up to someone new. But this past year, being the newcomer at every new church service, every new community event, I have been reminded that it is infinitely more difficult to be on the outside, feeling displaced and excluded — maybe even unwanted.
Next time I’m on the end of extending hospitality to someone new, I will remember to be in the habit of being genuine, following up, and earning the right to go deeper.
What’s your hospitality story?
What would it look like?
What would it look like if church communities sat down every month and had a Kaizen meeting? What if we constantly asked ourselves what God values and how to usher in the kingdom of God?
What would it look like if we not only allowed church plants to be new and different — to behave newly and differently — but also expected it? Go forth and be new wine skins.
What if we viewed church communities as organisms, not as organizations? Living, breathing, growing, changing entities with lifespans and families and personalities and the freedom to try, to surpass, to surprise.
What would that look like?
What if we started by asking what God is already doing and how to join in instead of asking God to sign on to our next big idea? See the new thing springing up and enter in!
What if we refused to programmize, institutionalize, or bureaucratize? What if the church community didn’t need accountants and buildings and budgets? What if we focused more on being available than on being established?
What if “preacher” were not automatically synonymous with “leader?” What if our leadership were flat? What if it were equal?
What would that look like?
What if we worried more about being mobile than being mega?
What if we did not pursue the praise of people but the principles of the kingdom of God?
What if we were innovators and creators and deconstructors and reconstructors and philosophers and activists and lovers and monks and healers?
What if we were loud? What if we were quiet? What if we were brave?
Who would we look like?
All You Need Is Love
In the evangelical Christian worldview, we like to have the answers for everything. We like neatness and order. We like clarity. We like black and white truths. We like boundaries. We like to know what is okay and what is not okay, what is allowed and what is not allowed, who is in and who is out.
Bonhoeffer on Community
I’ve written before about Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s expression of intentional Christian community (see here and here). Bonhoeffer described the number one characteristic of Christian community as Jesus as mediator. When we communicate and interact through Jesus, when we view our brothers and sisters through Jesus, we cannot help but act and react, share and respond out of love. When we know our brothers and sisters view us the same way, we cannot help but trust that their actions and communication are out of love as well.
Bonhoeffer also stressed the importance of confessing our sins to one another and forgiving each other as Christ forgives all of us. One of my favorite lines in Life Together is when Bonhoeffer notes that it is difficult to interact with members of our community with anything but love and trust when we hear the confessions of our brothers and sisters and grant them absolution, praying together with them for the forgiveness and blessing of Christ.
The Life of Love
In the Critical Journey, the authors call Stage 6 the Life of Love. (Here’s a great chart reviewing all the stages.) When we reach this stage in our journey, we live, serve, and speak out of our healing, out of the love we have experienced in our encounters with God.
We let go of the questions, the boundaries, the concerns over who’s in and who’s out, who’s right and who’s wrong, and we just love on people. We love people as Christ loved because our agenda is gone. Our wall has been dismantled, and we no longer live in our pain and react out of fear and anger.
It’s no longer of principle concern whether we are warning people about hell or condemning their actions and words. It’s no longer our concern whether people know and love Jesus as we know and love Jesus. Only God knows a person’s heart, and we are not designed to fill in for God in matters of the heart. We are designed to be God’s hands and feet in the world, the body of Christ among the people of God—all of them.
When we reach Stage 6, we no longer worry so much about the doubts and questions of Stage 4. They may still be there, unresolved, unanswered, but they are no longer driving our thoughts and actions. They are no longer overwhelming us. They are rather a reminder that we do not have all the answers, that we do not have it all figured out, and that’s okay. The one thing we are sure of when we reach Stage 6 is what our experience of God is like, that we want to continue moving toward God along with our brothers and sisters, and that we cannot help but share our hope with one another.
Paul’s Theology
Paul’s well-known 1Cor 13 passage is the epitome of the Life of Love. No matter what wonderful things we have accomplished, what honest and intentional lives we lead, if we are still living in Stage 3 where our words and actions are coming out of our duty and our pain and woundedness are still skewing our efforts to serve God, then we are nothing more than a whole lot of loud and ineffectual noise.
I love what Paul says later on in the chapter about growing up in Christ. When we are children, we behave like children, which is right and appropriate for our natural development. Being a child is good—while you are young.
But there comes a time when our natural human development moves us into that wonderful world of responsibility, wisdom, and work called adulthood, and it is in this stage of life that it is no longer right and appropriate to behave like children. Now it is time to grow up, get a job, move into your own apartment, pay taxes and bills, maybe join with another adult and start a new family.
This is natural and right. This is good. Behaving like child is good while you are a child, but behaving like an adult when you have grown up is just as good.
Just as we should not retain our childish interests and behaviors when we are grown, so we should not remain in our childhood or adolescent state of spiritual development. This is another area where the lack of a holistic body theology is evident. We too easily remain unaware of the necessity of spiritual growth along with physical growth. As our bodies grow and change, so should our spiritual lives.
There’s a reason Paul uses the metaphor of a physical human body so often in his letters. The wellbeing of our physical and spiritual selves are intimately related. Thus, they should both be growing. We should pursue spiritual health and growth just as fervently as we pursue physical health and growth.
Too easily we are satisfied with life in Stage 3. We think if we can get people to grow up enough to start giving back, then that’s enough. We’ve arrived!
Never mind people are giving back out of their woundedness. Never mind people are giving back out of their fear and lack of understanding. Never mind people are following blindly after others who are giving out of the same woundedness, fear, and lack of understanding.
It’s no wonder so many Christians leave the Church when they reach Stage 4. In Stage 3 churches, there is no room for questioning and doubting. There is no room for messy, for in-between, for grey.
It’s no wonder so many people view Christians as intolerant, rigid, ignorant, and hateful. Stage 3 is a wonderful and necessary part of the Christian journey, but when we get stuck there, when we fool ourselves into believing we’ve “arrived,” then we become intolerant, rigid, ignorant and hateful. We become everything we say we are against.
We become Pharisees.
But God has called us to more than this. The Christian life is not about the conversion experience. It’s not about the active Christian life.
It’s about the Life of Love. It’s about love—dirty, messy, sacrificial, costly love. It’s about love that humbles itself to take the form of a human being. It’s about love that humbles itself to become obedient to death by the most violent and painful method of execution ever designed. It’s about love that follows after Jesus not because it’s what is acceptable or required but because the call to “come follow me” is irresistible and renewed each day.
Much-Afraid Becomes Grace and Glory
The allegory Hinds Feet on High Places ends with Much-Afraid’s arrival at the Mountain of Spices. She is healed, transformed, and receives her new name, Grace and Glory.
But that’s not the end of the story.
In the sequel Mountain of Spices, Grace and Glory makes her way back down from the Good Shepherd’s home, back down into the Valley of Death where her family lives. She faces the cousins who tortured and taunted her, and she responds to them with love. Her love confuses them! Her transformation inspires the journey of others in the Valley.
What Much-Afraid, Bonhoeffer, and Paul all have in common with the Critical Journey is Stage 6, the Life of Love. It is when we are living and acting out of our healing that we are truly interacting with each other through Jesus as mediator. When we are living the Life of Love, we can confess our sins to one another and forgive each other.
When we live the Life of Love, being in community is a joy. It may not be easy, and it may not be comfortable. It may not even be “acceptable.” It certainly won’t be ideal.
But it will be real. It will be genuine. It will be full of love that casts out all fear, in which we are rooted and grounded, in whom we live and move and have our being, out of whom we speak and act and are the body of Christ.
Having a holistic body theology is great, but it is nothing without love to drive us toward something fruitful, beautiful, honest, holy—without love to drive us toward God, always toward God.
May love be the foundation of our communities, lovely readers. Let us be the beloved Bride of Christ, the Church active in the world and actively loving the world, our body theology lived out among the people of God.
“Already” in the Flesh
If you missed Against the Flesh: Part 1 and Against the Flesh: Part 2, you might want to go back and read them first. You’ll definitely want to check out Tammy’s awesome response posted yesterday.
Like Tammy said yesterday, we all have internalized lies about our bodies that have distorted our self-image and our approach to relationships and sexuality. But we don’t have to live in that place anymore.
It’s time to embrace the truth about who we are as children of God. It’s time to spend a little time in the “already” of the kingdom of God.
So today, even just for an hour or a few minutes, allow yourself to really believe and live into the “already.”
Tell yourself in the mirror, or grab a friend and take turns telling each other the truth about who you are. Allow your body to hear your words, receive them, and begin to transform your life–as Tammy said–from the inside out.
Are you ready?
(Better get ready…)
Here we go!
Truth #1: You are precious.
4 Since you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you, I will give nations in exchange for you, and peoples in exchange for your life. 5 Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west. 6 I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’ Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth— 7 everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” Isaiah 43:4-7 (TNIV)
Truth #2: You are priceless.
19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (TNIV)
Truth #3: You are chosen.
12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Colossians 3:12 (TNIV)
Truth #4: You are the dearly loved child of God.
1 Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children 2 and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Ephesians 5:1-2 (TNIV)
Still don’t believe it? Take some time to review the list of “already” verses from Tuesday. I also encourage you to revisit some of God’s truth about your identity in this list.
What’s your favorite truth about who you are? How are you living in the “already” today?
Against the Flesh: Part 2
Yesterday, we looked at a list of the negative treatment of “the flesh” in the New Testament.
The Flesh = The Sinful Nature
When the gospel writers and Paul write about “the flesh,” they are not making general statements condemning our physical bodies. Fleshly, earthly, and human are all descriptors used in reference to the sinful nature. For example, you’ll notice I used the NIV for the Galatians 5:16-18 link yesterday because it uses the translation “flesh” rather than the updated TNIV translation “sinful nature.” The scholars working on the TNIV decided to update the translation to help illuminate the point Paul is trying to make.
It is the desires of our sinful nature that are against the Spirit, not the desires of our physical bodies. Our bodies’ need for basics like food, sleep, and sex are not evil or filthy desires in and of themselves. God created us with these desires and designed our bodies to function this way. Paul’s point is that the sinful nature corrupts these desires.
Paul’s Already/Not Yet Theology
But the list I shared yesterday is not the full story. That list was only the “not yet” of Paul’s argument: that we are still battling the sinful nature and must fight to follow the Spirit and bear fruit. The battle is ongoing and will not be fully realized until we die or Jesus returns.
There is another part of the story, the “already” of Paul’s argument. The battle has already been won. We can experience the fullness of redemption right now and forever. There is nothing to struggle against anymore because Jesus came to live among us, was crucified as the ultimate sacrifice for our sin, and was raised from the dead in final victory.
Here are some “already” verses for you:
- Jhn 1:14
- Acts 2:26-27
- Rom 8:8-10
- Rom 9:8
- 2Cor 10:2-4
- Gal 2:20
- Eph 2:14-16
- Eph 5:29-30
- Eph 6:12
- Col 1:19-23
- Heb 2:13-15
- Heb 10:19-22
We Christians are really good at living in the “not yet” part of the kingdom of God. We struggle and try and work out our salvation with sweat and tears. We put the burden on ourselves to do the work of capturing every thought, renewing our minds, and beating our flesh into submission. We are still being saved.
What we can’t seem to learn is how to live life in the “already.” This part of the kingdom of God is just as real, just as available to us as the “not yet.” This is where we have already been saved. The battle is won, and we are now heirs with Christ Jesus. We can approach the throne of grace with confidence. We are clothed with righteousness. There is no condemnation for us because we are under Christ Jesus. We are dead to sin and alive to Christ. We have taken off the old and have put on the new.
Old Testament Sacrifice and Jesus
In the Old Testament, the blood sacrifice of a pure, unblemished animal was necessary to purify the sinful flesh of the people of God. Every time a person sinned, another blood sacrifice was necessary to make the person clean and pure again.
When Jesus died on the cross, our pure, spotless lamb, his blood purified the sinful flesh of the people of God forever. No longer are we bound to the need to sacrifice an animal for each of our sins. Our sins have already been paid for. Jesus’ blood has already purified us. We are called righteous because of what Christ has already done.
Tomorrow, we’ll look at the implications of this “already” theology for holistic body theology.
Forward Friday: What the Story of God Means
One of the most significant elements in body theology is the actual, physical life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. That’s why Christmas, Holy Week, and Easter Sunday are so pivotal. We Christians are who we are because of who Christ is and what Christ did for us. Sometimes looking at the big picture of the course of biblical history can help us understand what brings us to this moment of Christ’s preparation for death.
As you celebrate Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday this weekend, read back over some of the key elements of the story of God from our little flash Bible course this week to dig into the significance of what we are about to celebrate. What stands out as particularly meaningful to you? Let me know in the comment box below.
1. God takes evening walks with Adam and Eve in the garden.
2. Becoming aware of their nakedness and feeling ashamed causes them to hide from God.
3. God’s people become afraid of God and ask Moses to speak to God on their behalf.
4. God’s people are afraid even of the glory of God reflected on Moses’ face, so he has to wear a veil until the glory fades.
5. God instructs the people to build the Ark of the Covenant, where God’s presence will be confined among them.
6. The people never touch or open the Ark of the Covenant because it is so holy.
7. The Ark lives in its own tent among them, called the Tabernacle, where the people come to worship God.
8. After Moses, God speaks only to specific people God chooses, usually prophets, kings, or priests. These chosen few share God’s words with the people–who often do not listen.
9. To see the face of God is to die, and even the prophet Elijah–who asks to see God’s face–covers his face with his robe before meeting God at the mouth of the cave.
10. Once God’s people settle down in one place and begin to build houses instead of tents, God instructs King Solomon to build a temple for God to live in.
11. God’s presence is reserved for the Holy of Holies–a small area within the temple restricted from everyone where the Ark is kept, the entrance to which is blocked with a thick curtain.
12. Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest goes through an elaborate cleansing ritual in preparation to enter the Holy of Holies and sprinkle the blood of the sacrificed animal to atone for the people’s sins. (They even tie a rope around his foot each time in case he dies from the experience of being with God and has to be dragged out to be buried since no one else is allowed to enter the Holy of Holies, even to retrieve a dead body.)
13. Then Jesus is born, and he is called Emmanuel, which means “God with us.”
14. No longer is God among the people yet blocked from their access. Jesus lives with the people, learns and grows with them, eats and drinks, sleeps, speaks, heals, reprimands, and teaches.
15. Jesus says that those who see him and know him also see and know God.
16. Jesus is anointed at Bethany for his coming death.
17. When the people celebrate Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem–what we call Palm Sunday–they acknowledge that Jesus is fulfilling the long-anticipated role of the Messiah, the one who has come to save them and restore the original order as God intended.
18. Jesus washes his disciples’ feet as an example of their role in each others’ lives.
19. Jesus breaks bread and passes the cup of wine to his disciples to foreshadow his impending arrest and execution.
20. Jesus prays in the garden with his disciples nearby–by some accounts so fervently that the capillaries break on his forehead and he begins to sweat blood–not only that he might yet be spared his role as the sacrifice for the people’s sins but also that he accepts that role.
21. Jesus is arrested, abandoned and denied by his disciples, beaten, mocked, and sentenced to death by Rome’s most barbaric form of execution.
22. Jesus is forced to carry the crossbeam through the crowded streets of Jerusalem up to the site of his execution.
23. Jesus is too weak to complete the trip and collapses. A member of the crowd is chosen at random by the guards to carry the crossbeam for Jesus the rest of the way.
24. At Golgatha, Jesus is stripped naked (yes, as naked as he was born).
25. The guards attach Jesus to the crossbeam with iron spikes through his wrists and to the stake with spikes through his ankles and raised to hang between two thieves until his struggle for breath overcomes him and he gives up his spirit to God and completes the sacrifice.
26. At the moment of his death, there is an earthquake and the curtain separating the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple is torn in half from top to bottom.
27. Jesus’ execution lasts only six hours, considerably less time than most people endured the experience.
28. Jesus is buried and mourned, and the disciples hide in fear that they will be arrested and executed next.
29. The women at the tomb discover Jesus’ resurrection early in the morning three days later. They become the first bringers of the good news (gospel) that Jesus is alive.
30. Jesus appears to his disciples and to many other people over the 40 days following his execution, eating and drinking with them and allowing them to touch him to prove that he indeed has retaken physical form.
31. Jesus ascends into the clouds after promising to send his spirit to be with his followers and to return again one day soon to bring the kingdom of heaven.
32. The disciples wait and pray until they experience the promised presence of the Holy Spirit during Pentecost.
33. The disciples become apostles, who preach the good news (gospel) that Jesus came back to life to all who are gathered in the street. Miraculously, each listener hears the words in his or her own language.
34. The apostles perform many other miracles by the power of the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus, and many who hear believe. Thus the Church is born, and all who believe in the good news that Jesus came back to life are filled with the Holy Spirit…even the Gentiles!
And then, after Holy Week…
Monday, we looked at the big picture of the history of God’s relationship to people up to the Day of Atonement. Tuesday, we looked at the entrance of Jesus into the story. Yesterday, we considered the passion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. Today, let’s look at the coming of the Holy Spirit and the implications of this story for body theology.
32. The disciples wait and pray until they experience the promised presence of the Holy Spirit during Pentecost.
33. The disciples become apostles, who preach the good news (gospel) that Jesus came back to life to all who are gathered in the street. Miraculously, each listener hears the words in his or her own language.
34. The apostles perform many other miracles by the power of the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus, and many who hear believe. Thus the Church is born, and all who believe in the good news that Jesus came back to life are filled with the Holy Spirit…even the Gentiles!
When I was little, we used the phrase Holy Ghost. Some people might have found that phrase a little scary. To me, it was just a name, as incorporeal and intangible as today’s more common Holy Spirit. Growing up Presbyterian, there was never much emphasis on the Holy Spirit at all. We talked a lot about God as The Father and Jesus as The Son, but God as The Holy Ghost was just something we said as part of the Nicene Creed each week in the church service.
I’ve come a long way in my journey with the Holy Spirit. That’s a post for another day. What I want to share today is the continued trajectory of the story of God.
On Monday, we looked at the beginning of the story of God when God was present with Adam and Eve, walking in the garden. Through the entrance of sin and shame, a barrier went up that kept the people of God from God’s presence with them. As we walk through the story of God, we see God living nearby, but there is always something keeping the people from direct contact with God–whether that’s shame, fear, or the belief that they are too unclean or unholy.
But God was determined to be with the people again. On Tuesday and Wednesday, we looked at the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus–God in human form. God broke the barrier by making the ultimate blood sacrifice so the people would never again be too unclean or unholy to be present with God. But Jesus’ physical existence on earth–like ours–was only temporary, even after death.
So God sent the Holy Spirit–the presence of God–to remain in the world with the people of God and to actually live within the people, making their physical bodies into temples. Now, people don’t have to go anywhere to be present with God. No one can keep us away from God or force us to stay at a distance from God’s presence because God is now present inside the human body!
If that’s not the most exciting thing ever, I don’t know what is! Our bodies house the presence of God. God’s presence inside us is what changes us, makes us new, and makes us holy. There is nowhere we can go where God is not present. There is nowhere we can go that is not made holy by God’s presence there. The curtain has been ripped open. The Spirit of God has been released into the world and into the body of every person who believes.
That is what body theology is all about. That is why our bodies matter to our faith. That is why the physical reality of God in the world matters to our theology.
So get ready for Easter, people. The curtain gets ripped tomorrow. The body of Jesus gets buried and the spirit of Jesus enters the place of eternal damnation on Saturday. And then Sunday–oh glory!–we get to celebrate the living-breathing-walking-talking-eating-drinking-teaching-healing-actual-physical-human/divine-Jesus for defeating death, ending forever the need for blood sacrifice, forgiving sin, and making possible the presence of God in the world and in the body of every believer everywhere until the kingdom of God returns to us again one day soon.
People, get ‘a ready. Jesus is ‘a comin’!
It’s Holy Week! Part 3
Monday, we looked at the big picture of the history of God’s relationship to people up to the Day of Atonement. Yesterday, we looked at the entrance of Jesus into the story. Today, let’s look at the Passion of Christ and the rest of the Jesus story.
21. Jesus is arrested, abandoned and denied by his disciples, beaten, mocked, and sentenced to death by Rome’s most barbaric form of execution.
22. Jesus is forced to carry the crossbeam through the crowded streets of Jerusalem up to the site of his execution.
23. Jesus is too weak to complete the trip and collapses. A member of the crowd is chosen at random by the guards to carry the crossbeam for Jesus the rest of the way.
24. At Golgatha, Jesus is stripped naked (yes, as naked as he was born).
25. The guards attach Jesus to the crossbeam with iron spikes through his wrists and to the stake with spikes through his ankles and raised to hang between two thieves until his struggle for breath overcomes him and he gives up his spirit to God and completes the sacrifice.
26. At the moment of his death, there is an earthquake and the curtain separating the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple is torn in half from top to bottom.
27. Jesus’ execution lasts only six hours, considerably less time than most people endured the experience.
28. Jesus is buried and mourned, and the disciples hide in fear that they will be arrested and executed next.
29. The women at the tomb discover Jesus’ resurrection early in the morning three days later. They become the first bringers of the good news (gospel) that Jesus is alive.
30. Jesus appears to his disciples and to many other people over the 40 days following his execution, eating and drinking with them and allowing them to touch him to prove that he indeed has retaken physical form.
31. Jesus ascends into the clouds after promising to send his spirit to be with his followers and to return again one day soon to bring the kingdom of heaven.
There are so many wonderful moments in this part of the story of God. Jesus, a physical human being, dies a physical human death (of the worst kind), and is resurrected to again be a physical human being. The women are the first evangelists. Jesus promises to leave his spirit with those who believe in him.
But my favorite moment is the moment of Jesus’ death when the curtain is ripped in two. Remember the curtain? That piece of fabric hanging in the entrance to the Holy of Holies? It served as a reminder of the barrier between God and God’s people. It blocked people from God’s presence with them.
In fact, only the people considered to be the cleanest and most holy were even allowed near the Holy of Holies. Even the high priest, the holiest person out of all of God’s people, was only allowed inside once a year to sprinkle sacrificial blood on the Ark to atone for the sins of the people. God was just too holy to be with the people. The people were just too unholy to be with God.
But God came to the people anyway, in the physical human form of Jesus. God became the ultimate blood sacrifice–the last and final atonement for all the sins of all people everywhere throughout all of time. God ripped the curtain (top to bottom) at the moment of Jesus’ death to show the people that there was no more need to separate the holy from the unholy–the sacred from the secular.
And when I think that God, his son not sparing,
sent him to die, I scarce can take it in,
that on that cross, my burden gladly bearing,
he bled and died to take away my sin.
Then sings my soul, my savior God, to thee.
How great thou art! How great thou art!
Holistic Body Theology 