I get all kinds of texts and this one was not unusual.
“Chris, what is that verse of the Christmas carol that you like so much?”
“You mean the Wesley one? The one about ‘second Adam from above?’”
“Yeah, that one – what are the words?”
Ben had been in my mentoring group and we had talked about the verses that are seldom sung.
“That’s ‘Hark the herald angels sing,’ and the verse that I love is this:
‘Come, Desire of nations come, fix in us thy humble home;
‘Rise, the woman’s conq’ring seed, bruise in us the serpent’s head. Adam’s likeness now efface! Stamp thine image in its place! Second Adam from above, reinstate us in thy love.’”
Wow – good old Wesley! Both the words and the music are deeply stirring!
Some time ago, it dawned on me that the work of the mission of God is largely speaking the re-assembly of shattered Adam. Mankind has been broken, no, shattered is better, by our own
willful rejection of God’s authority and Kingship. That shattering process has been and will always be true.
And so it is that the Healer, the Maker, the Redeemer, sets out to do his work. The effacement of Adam’s likeness and the stamping of the divine image of the Son of God in us corporately and individually involves the careful and pain-staking re-assembly of a fractured Adam.
Is mankind broken? It would seem that the very features that distinguish us as the peoples of the earth are the features employed by the enemy to divide us. To fracture us.
But, in a ‘humpty-dumpty’ kind of way God does so much better than the king’s horses and men who utterly failed at re-assembly. Our loving Father in heaven is putting humpty together again. In fact, that is the essence of both the Great Commission and the Great Commandment.
Ah, but it is not a simple task. Adam has fallen far. The shattering is complicated. The cultural identities run deep. Very deep. Even so, our King is patient. And, hopefully, his re-assembly team is paying attention to what he is doing and realizes the incredible privilege they possess in ‘putting Adam together again.’
Our God is taking all of the fractured pieces of humanity, 16,000 plus different cultures, fragments, shards, if you will, and patiently, very carefully putting us back together.
Oh yes, God is definitely on a mission. And we, as his children, are participants in that mission. I believe that at the heart of that mission is the re-assembly of shattered Adam because of the accomplished work of our Savior on the cross.
This is why we welcome peoples from every corner of humanity into our midst!
This is why we reject ethnocentrism at its core!
This is why we love our enemies!
We are doing ‘His work.’
And it is glorious!!
Yeah, man! Hark! They are still singing!