Advent 4
Devotional
Water From the Rock
Lectionary Devotional for Cycle C
And it is by God's will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
-- Hebrews 10:10
There has always been a central mystery to our faith. How do we resolve the contradiction between the sinful state of humanity and the holy purpose of God? The prophets agonized over this problem as they recognized that even though God had provided humanity with God's law to direct them in their lives, still they continued to rebel. Jeremiah suggested that God would create a new covenant in which the will of God would be written upon the human heart (Jeremiah 31:31-34). Later, Hebrews suggested that through Christ God inaugurated this new and interior covenant. The law had served a purpose of being a reflection or shadow of the good thing to come, but it was not the real thing itself. The real thing was seen in the perfect obedience of Christ.
In developing this thesis, Hebrews interpreted Psalm 40:6-8. The full psalm was a prayer of thanksgiving for deliverance and a prayer for help. If you substitute Jesus' name for the pronoun and read the psalm in this context, you can imagine it being an important prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane or at any of several trials in Jesus' life. Hebrews interpreted the psalm as Jesus' prayer and suggested that the new covenant had been inaugurated through Jesus' full obedience to God's will. In doing so, it had abolished the need for repeated sacrifices because the shadow to which such sacrifices pointed had been replaced by the real thing in Christ's sacrifice.
As we approach Christmas, in the midst of gifts given and received, this passage again confronts us with how we truly receive a gift. What does it really mean to receive this gift of our sanctification from God? When you have received a totally unexpected and wonderful gift from someone, what is the best way to respond?
-- Hebrews 10:10
There has always been a central mystery to our faith. How do we resolve the contradiction between the sinful state of humanity and the holy purpose of God? The prophets agonized over this problem as they recognized that even though God had provided humanity with God's law to direct them in their lives, still they continued to rebel. Jeremiah suggested that God would create a new covenant in which the will of God would be written upon the human heart (Jeremiah 31:31-34). Later, Hebrews suggested that through Christ God inaugurated this new and interior covenant. The law had served a purpose of being a reflection or shadow of the good thing to come, but it was not the real thing itself. The real thing was seen in the perfect obedience of Christ.
In developing this thesis, Hebrews interpreted Psalm 40:6-8. The full psalm was a prayer of thanksgiving for deliverance and a prayer for help. If you substitute Jesus' name for the pronoun and read the psalm in this context, you can imagine it being an important prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane or at any of several trials in Jesus' life. Hebrews interpreted the psalm as Jesus' prayer and suggested that the new covenant had been inaugurated through Jesus' full obedience to God's will. In doing so, it had abolished the need for repeated sacrifices because the shadow to which such sacrifices pointed had been replaced by the real thing in Christ's sacrifice.
As we approach Christmas, in the midst of gifts given and received, this passage again confronts us with how we truly receive a gift. What does it really mean to receive this gift of our sanctification from God? When you have received a totally unexpected and wonderful gift from someone, what is the best way to respond?
