The inventors of the Oreo cookie should be commended. They created a cookie that redefined what cookies are about. With apologies to Sunshine, the makers of the Hydrox cookie and other substitutes, they simply don't merit what only belongs to the Oreo. Since its debut in 1912, about 370 billion of these cookies have been enjoyed by human kind. They have been dunked in milk (how long you keep them floating in the white liquid oasis is part of the fun and subject to your personal tastes), twisted apart and consumed layer by layer, nibbled at teasingly, or just plain popped into the mouth whole and enjoyed as a total experience. One of life's biggest guilty secrets that we each own but rarely divulge, is how many of these things have we eaten at one time once the bag is opened and no one is around.
It is really a simple invention. Two chocolate wafers on the outside encase a rich white creamy filling on the inside. It is the combination of outside - inside that makes the cookie what it is. While we may twist it open and consume the white creamy filling on its own, we rarely toss the wafers away after doing so. Neither do we purchase Oreos to remove the filling and eat only the wafers. It is the combination of the two parts, wafer and filling, that is the brilliance of Oreo. When one considers the idea of a double-stuffed Oreo brilliance becomes ecstasy and we experience cookie paradise.
What does all of this have to do with Jesus? It is simple. The brilliance of Jesus is found in the two bookends of his life: his virgin birth and his death and resurrection and in the part that comes between. We must hold equally both parts of the Messiah if we are to experience the scriptural Jesus. For many of my friends and in many of the churches that I personally know this is simply not done. It is a truly difficult task. To hold both parts of the Messiah in equal fashion redefines him and his mission and forces us to redefine what our lives lived for and how we live them in a radically different way.
For many, Jesus is seen as the virgin-born Son of God whose mission was to die on the cross for personal forgiveness and assurance of heavenly salvation. He is as it were two wafers of Christmas and Easter with nothing in the middle. What he said, what he did, why he said it and why he did it, and how the things that he said and did fit within history are simply not that important. His words are difficult they say. His actions are to prove his divinity for the greater purposes of the cross they hold. His gathering disciples, fulfilling prophecy, and proclaiming a Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven are things that those who waste their time chasing theology and deeper teaching are hopelessly caught up in. The stuff between Christmas and Easter simply isn't where its at. Or if we consider for a moment that the stuff between the wafers might be important, it is only for the purpose of furthering the importance of the wafers.
For others that I engage with, the wafers of virgin-birth and the bloody cross and resurrection are not really what's important. The human Jesus as a teacher, activist, and role model is what is important. The stuff between the wafers is where it's at. Jesus doesn't have to be divine, the cross was unfortunate, and the resurrection might be a myth. The teachings of love, justice, peace, reconciliation, caring for the poor, the sick, and the needy are the causes worth living for.
But as I stated earlier, the brilliance of Jesus is found in both parts of the spiritual cookie. The wafers of virgin-birth and resurrection only make sense when applied to the teachings and activities of Jesus. The cross is the Kingdom's cross and what was accomplished on the cross goes beyond personal forgiveness and personal assurance of a heavenly home. The stuff between Christmas and Easter can only make sense in light of God coming to earth in human flesh and suffering on the cross to reconcile a creation held in bondage back to its Creator and through bodily resurrection set the stage for the day when God recreates all things through Christ the King in the new heavens and new earth.
Kingdom without cross is pure idealism and wrongly guides its sheep to conclude that humanity holds the key to future progress through political, social, educational, and cultural revolution. The cross without the Kingdom is misguided escapism that abandons human responsibility to our current world in exchange for a bus ticket to the world beyond. It wrongly guides its sheep to conclude that the world is going to hell in a hand basket, let's rescue as many as possible. Kingdom without cross denies the power of God. Cross without Kingdom denies the purposes of God.
It is interesting to note, that Jesus himself spends little time talking about heaven as we know it. The words "eternity" or "eternal life" had no reference to Plato's concepts of the soul's immortality in another space. They were instead references to the future Kingdom of the Messiah: a kingdom by the way that was before them personally in the humanity of Jesus and was to have no end. Instead, Jesus spends his time demonstrating the Kingdom through the miraculous and teaching the Kingdom way of living through radical devotion to God and others. His miracles declared to everyone that God was visiting His people with the Kingdom in which every tear would be wiped away, the blind would see, the lame would walk, and the captives would go free. His teachings declared that God expected a new way of living before him that could only be expressed by those willing to embrace the call to lose their lives in him. This is the stuff in the middle.
How is this "stuff" to be lived out? By believing that Jesus was and is the Messiah through whom these things would come. By accepting the fact that he and only he as the perfect human representative would fulfill God's plans and purposes that included a bloody atonement for sin on the cross and a bodily resurrection from the grave. By being obedient to the teachings of Jesus through the power of an indwelling Holy Spirt that was to come as a result of the Messiah's death and resurrection. The means to his Kingdom vision could only be achieved through the cross. The Kingdom's inauguration could only be launched by the resurrection. The Kingdom's manifestation only through the Spirit-empowered church of Pentecost.
Kingdom and cross are inseparable. You can twist them apart and eat only the parts you want. But why would you do that? You lose the beauty of what is the most celebrated life in the history of mankind. Keep it together and you get to experience the wonder of doing life now in a Kingdom that promises righteousness, peace, and joy to its followers and hope to a darkened world held captive by another kingdom. You get the added blessing of a Kingdom that will one day be revealed in all its glory with an end to death, a resurrection of our bodies, a New Jerusalem, and ruling and reigning with the King.
I'll take my Oreo in it's original form (no double-stuff, no chocolate or white coating, and no colored or flavored filling) and a glass of cold milk please.
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