Realism says that what is past is past, what is present is present, what is future is future.
We know the past, we live the present, we look to the future.
William Faulkner once wrote, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." (Requiem for a Nun)
C.S. Lewis posits in The Dark Tower that, somehow, the past, present, and future are all tied together in an alternate, parallel universe that is concurrent and equal. Somehow, what we live out today has ramifications and consequences for our past, present, and future.
If you read the prophets and apostles of Holy Scripture, there are two roads one might travel: a) the road of literalism that maintains linear movement and chronological sequence; thus an insistence on millenialism (and, ultimately, some form of dispensationalism); or b) the road of apocalyptic, wrought with nuance, symbolism, and inhabiting fully this notion of past, present, and future being tied together in some mysterious way. Apocalyptic is the marriage, a rather uncomfortable marriage in our limited, earthly minds, of the cosmic and creaturely. It transcends time.
The easy road is certainly that of a). The much harder road is that of b). I've been immersed in Amos, 2 Peter, and Revelation this week. I keep coming back to Revelation 12:
"And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days."
This is the Christmas story.
I am overwhelmed this Advent with the transcendant glory of Jesus Christ. A glory dimly perceived by a very small gathering of humans in a manger in Bethlehem; a glory growing ever-brighter on the roads and towns of Palestine 2,000 years ago; a glory seen fully, if only for a moment (and which so completely and profoundly influenced St. Peter, as evidenced in his epistles) at the transfiguration (Matt. 17:1-8); a glorious light apparently snuffed out on the cross of Calvary; a glory triumphantly emerging from an empty tomb. The light of the risen, triumphant, vindicated, and ultimately glorified Jesus Christ.
I am struck this week primarily by the transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain top (a true mountain top experience for Peter, James, and John). Can you imagine the light? Can you imagine how dull everything must have seemed when "they lifted up their eyes, [and] saw no one but Jesus only" (17:8)?
The light of Advent is the promise of glory--shining dimly at the birth, crescendoing at the transfiguration and resurrection, and to be our shared experience forever when Christ's kingdom fully comes (Rev. 21): "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth..." (21:1). "And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever" (Rev. 22:5). In Jesus Christ we have, even now, "all things that pertain to life and godliness" (2 Peter 1:3). We have everything!
Somehow, those who have been baptized into Christ's death and resurrection are to live as though past, present, and future have been joined together. Jesus is coming (Rev. 22:20). We are to live as though it is here, "hastening the coming of the day of God" (2 Peter 3:12).
Christmas is not past. It is eternally now.
The glory of Jesus Christ in his parousia (coming) is not future. It is eternally now (just as it was eternally now for Peter, James, and John for one brief moment in time).
Of course both of these are historical events--one past and one yet to come, but for those who have washed their robes (Rev. 22:14) all is now. The glory of Jesus Christ is so pervasive in our shared, corporate reality that we have no choice but to glorify Him in orthodoxy (worship) and orthopraxy (living the virtues) in this cosmic time "beyond time's surface" (Harink, Brazos, 2009).
We are in time living a reality outside of time. We share in the eternal. Praise be to God!
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