Living Sacrifice

Our room is colder than it is outside. I don’t know how that’s possible, but it’s true. The hallway is warmer than our room. I also don’t know how that is possible.

Anyway, this next one is similar to my last one. It’s about walking around the exact places Jesus walked and imagining myself there. It happened when we were walking around and checking out the stairs just outside the Second Temple. There are 15 steps ascending to the three-dome entrance- one small step, one big step- 15 times. You don’t rush up these stairs. It’s believed that you would one Psalm of Ascent for each stair you went up (120-134).

Before entering the Temple, a Jew would have to cleanse himself in a 40-gallon tub of water to signify that he is ritually pure. These stairs were the community hot spot- it was the hangout. (I imagine SFO for those of you reading and remembering those days.) It’s where people met up and talked. It was where Rabbi’s taught and people were heard. As I walking up those steps, I imagined ascending in Jesus’ posse reciting the Psalms. As I got up the top though and saw the three pillar entrance now closed up, and thought of something. I wouldn’t have been able to enter the Temple then anyway. I wouldn’t have been in Jesus’ posse. I’m a Gentile; a non-Jew; a foreigner. I would have sat on those steps watching. That is the role I would have played.

Then I realized the radically, earth-shattering implications of Jesus coming and inviting us into worship and opening the Temple to everybody. 2,000 years ago, most, if not all of us, would be left outside to observe. But with Christ’s death, the Temple was torn (which I’ll talk about next time actually). We are free to have communion with the Triune, Creator God of the universe. If we do offer sacrifices in the new Temple at new creation (Ezekiel 40-48), we Gentiles will be invited in.

I never appreciated this aspect of Jesus’ coming. I stress personal relationship and communion, without ever realizing or noticing the basis or establishment that makes that relationship possible. For now, we can offer our bodies as living sacrifices (Romans 12.1-2). We are invited into that. And for that I thank God in Christ that the Temple is torn and we can all gather around to praise, honor, and worship the one true God- man or women, slave or free, Jew or Gentile.

Excited for sacrifice,
Sos