Day 37- The Curtain is Torn

This is such a powerful moment that occurs just as Christ dies.  The temple curtain, separating the Holy Place from the most Holy Place, is completely severed, top to bottom.  God is doing a new thing.  God is tearing up the old, and replacing it with something far better.  Earlier in Lent, I preached a sermon on the promised new covenant of Jeremiah 31:33.  In the new covenant, God's law would move from the external to the internal, from the outside to the heart.  Access to God would be through faith alone, not some outside set of laws or some priestly intermediaries.  God gets deeply personal.  This is the point at which that promise is symbolically fulfilled.  There is no more curtain in front of God.  Now, everyone shall have opportunity to know the Lord.  God's law will forever be written on our  hearts. 

It was on a ninth grade confirmation retreat many years ago, that I first heard and understood that I could know God personally.  This amazed me.  This overwhelmed me.  God was not just some concept or some distant being.  God could be known personally, just by praying and asking for God's presence.  This changed my life.  You might say that the curtain that separated me from understanding God  was torn in two, top to bottom.  I am so grateful that this curtain was first torn and taken away from the temple, when Jesus died.  Now everyone has access to God.  I am even more grateful that the curtain was torn in my life, opening up a whole new world of faith and life with God.