Five year olds have a distinctive view of the world. “What is the best thing to see at the museum?” I asked. “The mummy animals,” my nephew told me. “They have cats, and birds, and a baboon. And a big sphinx, and it has wings and a lion’s body and a face.”
I’d never thought much about animal mummies. But when I found the case - complete with cats, a falcon, an ibis, two crocodiles and the baboon - I found myself wondering why anyone would bother mummifying animals. The information panel said that many animals were associated with gods, regarded as sacred, and people would present them as offerings; some animals were even thought to be the embodiment of the gods themselves, and so were preserved and honored.
It seems to be part of human nature to want to know what God looks like. When you visit a museum, you find culture after culture that has striven to embody their gods in wood and bronze and stone - until you come to the section that displays artifacts from the people of Israel. There the representations stop. Because on Mount Sinai, when God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, God gave one commandment that would set the Jews apart from everyone around them: “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.” (Exodus 20:4-5a)
And that becomes the story of the people of God throughout the Old Testament, the struggle to know and worship a God who cannot be seen.
But all that changes when Christ is born. “Emmanuel, God with us,” the angel tells Joseph that this child will be. God is incarnate. God can be seen, and touched, and heard, and yes, even smelled! Jesus travels the length and breadth of the land, bringing the God into the everyday details of life.
But then comes the cross. Jesus Christ is killed. Is God dead?
No, is the resounding answer. No, he is alive, risen by the power of God! But he can no longer live among them in the same way that he has done. Instead, he breathes his spirit into his disciples, and invites them to continue his work. And from then on, the followers of Jesus have been filled with his spirit, the Holy Spirit, to bear Christ to the world.
The second letter to the Corinthians describes it best:
For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. We are...persons sent from God and standing in his presence...You are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. (2.15-17; 3:3)
We are the heirs of the disciples of Jesus. We have been given the Spirit, and have become bearers of Christ: God is written on us, so that anyone looking at us, will see God. And that means, that as Christians, when we speak and when we act, we do so as God’s presence on earth.
God could have done otherwise. If God is all-powerful, then there were any number of means at God’s disposal to work in the world. But God chooses - God chooses - us as the instruments of the divine mission. God chooses to act first and foremost through us, the bearers of Christ. We are the incarnation of God’s mission.
And what is that mission? If we return to 2 Corinthians, this time chapter 5, the mission of God is described as reconciliation: reconciliation between God and humankind, and between every human being. It’s all about relationships. God invites us to be part of helping people to be reconciled with one another, and to be reconciled with God.
Reconciliation is about healing relationships. But it’s about more than that. The root of the word in Latin is to make good. Reconciliation is about making good our relationships. But it is more than that. It’s is about making things good, restoring all of creation - us included - to what God originally this world to be. It’s a new Eden, a place where evil is banished and all things work together in harmony, where there is justice and peace.
Jesus himself described this ministry of reconciliation as he set out on his public ministry, quoting the prophet Isaiah,
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’ (Luke 4:18-19)
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’ (Luke 4:18-19)
So every time
we work for justice,
we are God at work in the world.
Every time we work for peace
we are God at work in the world.
Every time we proclaim the good news of God in Christ
we are God at work in the world.
And when people are searching for a tangible God, they find us. Not a mummy, or an idol, or even a winged sphinx. Christ is seen in us, as we do God’s mission in the world.
