Who am I?
I’m a gentile woman, born outside the ancient covenant Yahweh made with the Hebrew nation. As an outsider, I was opposed by God’s people for thousands of years. As a woman, I was silenced by countless governments, countless societies.
But glory be, for God wanted me too. Glory be, for God put on skin and walked among us. God came down and said that the Hebrews got it wrong, that his covenant people had fallen so far from his Good Intent for humanity. God said,
“No, I want the Samaritan. I want the gentile” (John 4:1-26; 3:16).
God said,
“No, I want the weak ones whose voices have been silenced. I want the children. I want the women. I want the leper” (Matthew 19:14; Mark 16:1-10; Luke 17:11-14).
God came down and honored his mother. God came down and pitied the sick, wept with the grieving. God came down and his heart broke for Jerusalem, the city that was supposed to be a light…the city that stoned its prophets, exploited its widows, rejected the embrace of LORD, and had become buried under ashen regulations and heartless sacrifices.
God said,
ENOUGH.
God loved, and healed, and refused to capitulate to the “religion” of his people. God was arrested, convicted, and killed. God took upon the sins of his children – all of his children, from every corner of the world, and died. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit did something amazing and God the Son came back to life in a New Body, a Resurrection Kind of Body, a body that can pass through walls, and he said, “Peace, be with you.”
God taught some more, healed some more, loved some more.
Then God said, go, and tell this good news.
Not old news.
Not animal blood, levitical law, the death penalty, and the yawning mouth of Sheol.
{good news.}
That Christ’s blood has been spilled, and that is enough.
That every letter of the old law was to point to loving God, and loving our neighbor. That the separation from Jew and Gentile created by the old law has been broken, and God is drawing ALL MEN to himself now.
That Sheol cannot defeat the Resurrection. That Christ overcomes, and God is stronger than death.
Before his ascension, Christ didn’t say, “Go, and make Jews of all nations.”
Thank God, no. Thank God, God was turning the page.
“Go and make disciples,” he said. (Teach them the words I have taught you. As you were my disciples, teach to them what you learned from me.)
“Baptize them,” he said. (Don’t cut them, like your fathers and forefathers. This new covenant requires no more blood, no more flesh. I have paid that in full. This covenant is a washing and a cleansing. This covenant is about making new. This covenant is burying the old man under the floodwaters, and raising the new man full of my breath and my spirit)
God did those things!
God said those things!
In that kind of God, I find my identity.
(washed, loved, renewed, worth dying for)
What a mighty, mighty God I serve.
Debbie Holloway is Assistant Editor for Family Content at Crosswalk. Recently married, she lives in Henrico, Virginia and is an avid writer, reader, and participant in local community theatre.
Publication date: June 14, 2013