A Curious Thing About John

It was around three o’clock on a Sunday morning, and I was in a café in Santa Barbara, California. This was years before I was saved. At that hour, the café was busier than you might think: about 10 people, including a couple of police officers. The most curious thing happened: a man who had been sitting at one of the tables got up and walked over to the police officers. The man asked them if they could “help” him not drive because he had been drinking and didn’t want to drink and drive.

I don’t know what he expected them to do—lock him up? Sit on him? I have no idea what he expected, but one of the officers told him no. They weren’t going to do anything to help him. Even when he persisted, they sort of laughed and walked away. Before they left, one of them turned around and said something like, “Don’t let me catch you out there.”

What’s With This Zadok Guy?

“The Levites who went far from me when Israel went astray and who wandered from me after their idols must bear the consequences of their sin…They are not to come near to serve me as priests or come near any of my holy things or my most holy offerings; they must bear the shame of their detestable practices. And I will appoint them to guard the temple for all the work that is to be done in it.

Ezekiel 44:10,13-14 (NIV)

“‘But the Levitical priests, who are descendants of Zadok and who guarded my sanctuary when the Israelites went astray from me, are to come near to minister before me; they are to stand before me to offer sacrifices of fat and blood, declares the Sovereign LORD.

Ezekiel 44:15 (NIV)

There’s a curious irony in these passages from Ezekiel. About 900 years or so earlier, Aaron, the first high priest, really messed up:

How Could Someone Like Me Get Into Heaven?

I can be such a hypocrite sometimes. The other day I wrote about managing our shame, asking, “What Do We Do With Shame?” I concluded that “we identify with Jesus because He shapes our identity—an identity purchased with His blood, by grace.” But today, I was reading Revelation 21 when my heart sank after reading this passage:

I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Revelation 21:22-27 (NIV)

The Holy City sounds amazing, but as much as I don’t want to admit it, I still, on occasion, do shameful things, things that no one but God knows about, so I suppose I’m deceitful too—How can someone like me ever enter the Holy City?

Curtains!

Time betwixt time,
darkness reigns
upon mortal
wounds,
while fields of
woe,
flourish still.