Day 20 “Desire of Nations” O come, Desire of nations, bind all peoples in one heart and mind; bid thou our sad divisions cease, and be thyself our King of Peace. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel shall come to thee, O Israel. Scripture: “God has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” Ephesians 1: 9-10 God’s will, God’s purpose, God’s plan. Who wouldn’t want to know these things for himself? Who wouldn’t want to read the blueprint of her life, to have at hand the higher perspective that might make the small annoyances (and the large problems) of life more bearable? And in the course of nations, as kingdom and powers rise and fall, who wouldn’t want to discern what God wants? Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus that, in fact, and in Christ, God had already practiced full disclosure. God has clarified the mystery. We already know what God’s will is, because we have seen God’s will enacted in Christ. Unity. What does that mean? Is it lock-step uniformity? Does it mean absolute lack of all conflict? Is it a one-language return to Babel? Does unity mean a leveling out, a flattening, of all cultures, into a single world-culture? Let’s look at what the word ‘unity’ means. The word “to unite” is the closest English translation of a long Greek word, anakephalaiosasthai. (Don’t worry about trying to pronounce it; it’s not exactly a word you’re going to use in everyday conversation!) The word is broken up this way: “ana” is a prefix, meaning “again.” “Kephalaio-“ is a word fragment meaning “head”. “Sasthai” comes from a word that means, more or less, “gathering up.” Thus, the plan of God, according to Paul, is the gathering up of all things into Christ, the head. (The Latinized form, with which we are undoubtedly more familiar, is ‘recapitulation.’) The whole word, anakephalaiosasthai, comes from ancient mathematics. It referred to the process of putting down a column of numbers, then going through the process of bringing those numbers into a sum at the bottom of the column. The number at the bottom (even though it’s the head) gathers all the other numbers into itself. Thus, when you add 3 + 4 + 8 +12 +19 =46 you get a number that includes the other numbers into itself. In a minuscule way, you have traced God’s plan. But what does it mean that God plans to unite all things into Christ? Does it mean that everyone in the world will (eventually) become Christians? Well, in a way, yes, and in a way, no. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul wrote that ”at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” And in his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul declares that “as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” Paul’s sense of the summing up of history is very clear: Christ is the head, and all things will be added up, somehow, into him. There is no doubt in Paul’s mind: Christ Jesus is indeed the desire of all nations. But that’s not exactly the same as saying that everyone in the world will become a Christian, is it? Even Paul’s all-embracing statements don’t necessarily lead to a kind of militant Christian fundamentalism. After all, even if we assume that someday all people will become Christian, just what kind of Christian would they become? Reformed? Protestant? Pentecostal? Roman Catholic? Orthodox? Copt? Maronite? Uniate? (A recent estimate indicates that there are some 34,000 definable sects.) We who follow Jesus aren’t exactly ‘recapitulated’ ourselves! Perhaps “desire of nations” means that, while all people on earth long to live under some form of benevolent governance, Christ alone is the One who has come to earth with true benevolence, expressing the unconditional good will of God toward humankind. All nations long for him, because he alone is the Prince who selflessly offers peace (offers his very life!) to his people rather than the self-aggrandizement that all merely human governments practice. One theologian has said that “Christ did not come into the world to make us into Christians, but to make us human.” I’m not sure I’d go quite that far (sounds a bit optimistic about human potential to me). But it’s somewhere in the ballpark, I think. In Christ will all be made alive. . . Come, save us, and save us all! Preparation for Prayer: How might you be made alive today? How might the life of the world be made more alive, more reflective of God’s will today? And what might you do to be part of enacting God’s good will? O Ruler of the nations, Monarch for whom the people long, you are the Cornerstone uniting all humanity: Come, save us all, whom you formed out of clay. Come, Lord Jesus.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 11:40:11 +0000
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