Mind the Gap

So I was reading about bridges earlier today, which might sound a little strange, but as you can probably imagine, bridges are pretty interesting. For example, did you know that the oldest standing bridge in the world was constructed in 605 AD in China? It’s an arched stone bridge that is still used today. And did you know that most bridges are designed using complex equations that have to do with compression and tension? Imagine taking a pink eraser and placing it between your thumb and first finger. Squeeze your thumb and first finger together gently. The eraser will flex downward into a “U” shape. This is the same shape that bridges will make when a car drives across the top of the bridge; the upper side of the bridge is compressed while underneath, the bridge is under tension.

So why was I reading about bridges? Well, when Dirk writes sermons he always collects about a million factoids about the text and culture. And then he has time to share a tiny bit of his reading with us during a sermon, and the rest gets packed away for another day. Dirk will sometimes share these factoids with me throughout the week, and recently he mentioned that some theologians and historians speculate that God chose the land of Israel to be “his” land because it connected two important continents during the earliest days: Africa and Asia. So by claiming that central land, God was able to reach the most people with his message of grace. Eventually, as we heard on Sunday, the people stop listening to God and they stop sharing his grace with others, and they are taken into captivity for 70 years in Babylonia under Nebuchadnezzar. After Nebuchadnezzar’s death, the Babylonian Empire, once the greatest empire in the world, falls into decline. The Medes and the Persians conquer the Babylonians, and while the Israelites have more than 400 years of foreign rule ahead of them, King Cyrus of Persia does allow the Israelites to rebuild the temple that Nebuchadnezzar destroyed.

Typically, when one culture invaded and took over another, the defeated culture would be totally destroyed. And the Babylonians destroyed culture better than any other army. By the time the Persian king Cyrus allows Zerubbabel to lead the Israelites back to Jerusalem, only a remnant of Israel desired to go. The rest had turned away from God. The homogenization of all peoples from Babylonian to Persian to Greek and eventually to Roman is so complete that by the time Jesus is born, the entire world, it seems, is Roman. One language, one emperor, one culture. Many scholars believe that just as God chose the land of Israel because it served as a “bridge” between two continents, God sent Jesus at just the right time because the people needed a permanent bridge between heaven and earth. In only 70 years of Babylonian exile, many Israelites turned away from God to a pagan religion. After several hundred more years, the world was more uniformly pagan than ever before. Rome was everything, and Roman gods were everything to those who lived in Rome. Many generations would pass before Constantine would convert to Christianity in the early 300s AD and in the meantime the Romans continued to perform horrific feats to please their many gods. If ever there was a time for a savior and for grace, this was it.

So Christ enters the Roman world with a message of grace and love. He bridges the gap between depravity and holiness and brings the possibility of hope to a desperate world. And then, after a brief ministry, he leaves his disciples with instructions to do exactly that: to bring the possibility of hope to a desperate world. The task of today’s Christian, then, is to figure out exactly how we are to become the bridge that connects the people in our spheres with the almighty creator. What specific actions do we engage to pave a way for Christ to enter into the life of one who chases chaotically after any source of happiness? How do we share the truth of the gospel in a way that opens eyes and hearts? It might be coffee and a conversation or a note, but it might also be a facebook status or a tweet. In a time when the world is so desperate once again for the smallest amount of grace, it’s up to us to make grace abundant. And time isn’t exactly on our side, is it? Think about the ways and the places where you personally have the greatest influence and pray about a way to leverage that influence for Christ. For many of us, our greatest public presence is in social media. Every time you send an update into the electronic world through Instagram or Twitter, hundreds (thousands?) of people see your name and the attached message. Pray about ways that you and I can be a light into darkness and a bridge between grace and this fallen world.