April 26: Becoming Holy
♫ Music:
Friday, April 26
Christ Will Come for His Bride
Scripture: Hebrews 9:24-28
For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.
Poetry:
Before All Things
by Tania Runyan
The day Christ died a record-long freight train
barreled through the Rollins Road crossing.
For seven minutes tankers and lumber flats
vibrated through the spikes in his wrists.
A fisherman dropped his pole by the retention pond
and headed toward the hill. A girl at a bus stop
clutched her side as the embryo implanted himself.
We’ll be late for the movie, I said.
That night, a meteor lit a tongue of fire
over the Midwestern sky. Our kitchen flashed,
and you froze at the sink. Christ was just born,
you said. I ground my best coffee as an offering
and kept watch through the night. Legion roared
through the maple leaves. The Pharisees’ stones
thudded to the ground. The loaves in the kitchen
ruptured their bags, then the earth burst into being.
BECOMING HOLY
Seven days ago, we mourned as our Messiah died. Five days ago, we rejoiced in awe and wonder as he rolled back the stone that imprisoned him in the grave.
Now, he is alive. I suspect we’ll never really understand what happened during those days between his arrest and his resurrection. But we do know something wonderful happened. We can feel it. The writers of the New Testament understood that with his death and resurrection, Jesus had initiated his reign over the cosmos. Now, he sits in heaven at his Father’s right hand where he guides his kingdom into an epoch of holiness, justice, and peace. For many in the West, the “end-times” have become a topic of obsession, with all our ideas about the when’s and how’s of the final days of human history as we know it. Yet, for the author of Hebrews, the “end of the ages” has already begun. Indeed, it was initiated the very moment Jesus had appeared to “put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” Whatever happened on the Cross, however it “works,” the author is convinced that it was the starting point of the new age when God would reign through the promised Messiah.
His resurrection is the reason we celebrate his death every year. It is the reason we remember his death every time we take the elements of Communion. The forgiveness of sins was only the beginning of something beautiful. It is the doorway into his kingdom. And yet, as the author says earlier in the Epistle, “At present we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him...Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death…” (2:8-9). Without trying to make a doctrinal statement, it is important to remember we are still living in the end-times, the epoch in between the initiation of his kingdom movement and the day when he returns to fully take what belongs to him.
As citizens of his kingdom, we bring his rule little by little into the world. We incarnate his life into the everyday moments. Something as unspiritual as a train barreling “through the Rollings Road crossing” becomes endowed with meaning because it is taking place within God’s good world. Coffee becomes a sacrament within the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. The banal is imbued with holiness as the Breath of God is breathed into the world and all that happens in it through those indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
The more we understand this, the more meaningful our lives become. Every moment is a moment of communion. Everything in his kingdom is holy. Zechariah promised a day when the bells on the horses would be inscribed with “Holy to Yahweh” (Zech. 14:20). When you read “holy,” think “devoted.” Think, “a doorway into communion.” He goes on, “Every pot...shall be holy to the LORD of hosts” (Zech. 14:21).
Everything you own is becoming holy. Every moment is an entry into his presence. All of it.
When Jesus finally returns, it won’t be a scratch in the record, at least not for those already in his kingdom. It will be the fulfillment of all desire, the answer to the groan of creation. In that day, no one will “teach his neighbor and his brother saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me” (Jer. 31:34).
Prayer:
Jesus, today, you sit at the right hand of your Father. Today, you reign as king of the cosmos. Everything in the heavens, everything on the earth, everything under the earth belongs to you. You have made everything and every moment holy. You have made everything and every moment an opportunity to commune with you. Help me, today and everyday, to remember that. I will choose to see you and your kingdom in all things. Let this reality permeate my vision, so that when you return, it’s not an interruption of my way of life, but the natural progression of your kingdom and life in me.
Amen.
Joshua Bocanegra
Pastoral of Community Life Create Church KC
Kansa City, Missouri
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Artwork:
Paradiso, Canto 34, 1868
Paul Gustave Doré
Wood Engraving
This is the final work in a series of wood engravings by Doré created to illustrate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. Gustav Doré published this image in 1868 in a volume, which contained both the second and third parts of Dante's poem, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso, from which this image comes. This series of images is perhaps the most famous of Doré's artwork, and it is closely associated with the poem it represents, having been published time and time again. It depicts Dante and his true love, the late Beatrice, standing in the Empyrean, a heaven of pure light beyond time and space, gazing into the celestial rose of angels and saints from every period of history. God lies beyond the rose in the emanating point of light at the center.
About the Artist:
Paul Gustave Doré (1832-1883) was a French artist, printmaker, illustrator, caricaturist, and sculptor who worked primarily with wood engraving. At the age of 15, Doré began his career working as a caricaturist for the French paper Le Journal pour rire. In the late 1840s and early 1850s he made several text comics, and then went on to win commissions to depict scenes from books by Cervantes, Rabelais, Balzac, Tennyson, Milton, and Dante. In the 1860s he illustrated a French edition of Cervantes's Don Quixote that influenced subsequent stage and film depictions of the characters. These were followed with work for British publishers including a new illustrated Bible. Doré's illustrations for the Bible (1866) were very successful, and in 1867 Doré had a major exhibition of his work in London that led to the foundation of the Doré Gallery on Bond Street in London. At the time of his death, he was working on illustrations for an edition of Shakespeare's plays.
About the Music:
“Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne, HWV 74: I. Aria "Eternal Source of Light Divine" from the album The Sound of Alison Balsom
Lyrics:
Eternal source of light divine
With double warmth thy beams display
And with distinguish'd glory shine
To add a lustre to this day.
About the Composer:
George Frederic Handel (1685-1759) was a German Baroque composer who spent the bulk of his career in London, becoming well known for his operas, oratorios, anthems, and organ concertos. He was strongly influenced by the great composers of the Italian Baroque and the middle-German polyphonic choral tradition. Musicologist Winton Dean writes that his operas show that "Handel was not only a great composer; he was a dramatic genius of the first order.” Handel composed more than forty operas in around thirty years. “Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne” (HWV 74) is a secular cantata composed by Handel to a libretto by English poet and politician Ambrose Philips.
About the Performers:
Alison Balsom (trumpet), Iestyn Davies (countertenor), English Concert (orchestra) conducted by Trevor Pinnock
Alison Balsom (b. 1978) is an English trumpet soloist, arranger, producer, music educator, curator and spokesperson for the importance of music education. Balsom was awarded Artist of the Year at the 2013 Gramophone Awards, has won three Classic BRIT Awards and three German Echo Awards, and was soloist at the BBC Last Night of the Proms in 2009. She has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from the University of Leicester and Anglia Ruskin University and is an Honorary Fellow of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Iestyn Davies (b. 1979) is a British countertenor widely recognized as one of the world’s finest singers, celebrated for the beauty and technical dexterity of his voice and intelligent musicianship. Critical recognition of Iestyn’s work can be seen in two Gramophone Awards, a Grammy Award, a RPS Award for Young Singer of the Year, the Critics’ Circle Award and recently an Olivier Award Nomination. He began his singing life as a chorister at St John’s College, Cambridge under the direction of Dr. George Guest and later Christopher Robinson. Later, after graduating in Archaeology and Anthropology from St John’s College, Iestyn studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, of which he is now a Fellow.
The English Concert is a baroque orchestra playing on period instruments based in London. Founded in 1972 and directed from the harpsichord by Trevor Pinnock for 30 years, it is now directed by harpsichordist Harry Bicket. Nadja Zwiener has been concertmaster since September 2007.
About the Poet:
Tania Runyan is a widely published poet, author, teacher, and private consultant. She studied creative writing at the University of California, Riverside, and went on to receive an MFA from Bowling Green State University and an MA in Secondary Education from Roosevelt University. After working in educational publishing and teaching English, she began her own tutoring business and now works with students on reading, writing, college admissions testing, and applications. Her popular titles How to Read a Poem and How to Write a Poem are used in classrooms across the country. She is also an editor for Every Day Poems and the poetry editor for Relief Journal. Runyan is the author of the poetry collections Second Sky, A Thousand Vessels, Simple Weight, and Delicious Air, which was awarded Book of the Year by the Conference on Christianity and Literature in 2007. Her poems have appeared in many publications, including Poetry, Image, Books & Culture, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The Christian Century, Atlanta Review, Indiana Review, and the anthology In a Fine Frenzy: Poets Respond to Shakespeare. Tania was awarded an NEA Literature Fellowship in 2011. When not writing, Tania plays fiddle and mandolin, drives kids to appointments, and gets lost in her Midwestern garden.
About the Devotional Writer:
Joshua Bocanegra
Writer and Educator
Pastoral of Community Life Create Church KC
Kansas City, Missouri
Joshua Bocanegra lives in Kansas City with his wife, Katrina. They have served in inner-healing and pastoral ministry for over ten years and are committed to the health and maturity of Christians within their communities. Joshua is a writer and teacher for his church and for Estuaries, a program dedicated to the reintegration of deep spirituality and intellectual rigor.