Being in Southern California on Christmas day is quite an experience weather-wise for this Chicagoan! Wearing shorts and a tee-shirt in the middle of winter is just not what I am used to. Maybe I think clearer in such great weather, you can determine, but the word Advent is on my mind today in a whole new way.
Rarely do we even hear, much less use, the word Advent; instead, it is replaced with “The Christmas Season” or “Christmas Day.” How surprised I was, and disappointed, to read this definition in a dictionary of the word advent: “arrival of something – e.g., advent of spring” with absolutely NO reference to the use of Advent referring to the coming of Christ as a baby in the manger at Bethlehem!
It seems that these days the only place we hear the word Advent used is in a church, and that’s not bad at all, since in church we hopefully can trust that we hear truth! Advent – To Come To refers to the Creator of the universe coming into the universe in human flesh and blood, a crying baby lying on straw in a Bethlehem animal shelter.
Advent leads to interesting questions, does it not? Advent – To Come To only to the planet earth? Other planets out there where God saw fit to incarnate as a baby? How does incarnation work anyway? Assuming that the Creator God does not have flesh on bones like we do, just how does God change into flesh and blood? An interstellar magic show of sorts?
And this one just knocks my intellectual socks off every time I put energy into trying to answer it: why would a non-human Creator God even want to become flesh and blood like humans? To “save us from our sins” is the theological answer to my question but that leads to “why did we need to be saved from our sins?”
And finally, this question may strike some as sacrilegious at best, heretical at worst: Is it possible that God already does have flesh and blood? Genesis does say, “God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them“ [Genesis 1:27 NLT]. So, if we humans were created “in his own image” and we have flesh and blood, then maybe, just maybe, God has flesh and blood too? Sort of like the famous math formula: if A=B, and B=C, then A=C too!
And then Advent – To Come To raises a whole other set of questions for me. Since I have been taught, and believed my entire life, that God is omnipresent – which simply means everywhere – is it not logical to wonder “why did God even need to come to earth as a baby if God was already here?” Maybe this question is easy to answer: God was always here on earth, we just couldn’t see God. But wait, there’s more! If God was already like humans (i.e., with flesh and blood) then why could we not see God here on earth before Jesus was born in Bethlehem?
Advent – To Come To is not as easy and simple as “away in a manger” and “oh holy night” seem to make it. I will leave this to the professional theologians, but invite my blog readers to hit the comment button and leave your thoughts on these questions. Worth pondering, right? Especially when it’s 76 degrees out and sunny!
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The Merton Prayer 
This amazing comment is from bible scholar/preacher/teacher Gerald Denny, my brother!
When it comes to whether we will have a flesh and blood body when Jesus returns and a new eternal heaven and earth appears, I don’t think so. However, Jesus seemed to have a flesh and blood body after he rose from the dead. John 20:19-20 in the NLT * says, “That Sunday evening the disciples were meeting behind closed doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. Suddenly Jesus was standing there among them! “Peace be with you,” he said. As he spoke he showed them the wounds in his hands and his side. They were filled with joy when they saw the Lord.”
Luke 24:39 adds a few details to the above account when Jesus says, “Look at my hands. Look my feet. You can see that it’s really me. Touch me and make sure that I am not a ghost, because ghosts don’t have bodies, as you see that I do.” The next verses say that Jesus asked, “Do you have anything here to eat?” “They gave him a piece of broiled fish and he ate it as they watched.”
At the last supper Jesus gave his disciples a cup of wine with the instruction for each one to drink from it. He declared “this is my blood which confirms the covenant between God and his people.” (Mt 26:29) He then said, “I will not drink wine again until I drink it new with you in my Father’s Kingdom.”
The book of Revelation speaks of the wedding feast of the lamb (Rev. 19:9). It is at this heavenly feast that I believe Jesus’ words on drinking wine again with his disciples will be fulfilled. I’m not sure the exact time the feast will occur. I assume it will be when the new heaven and earth appear at the end of time and the new Jerusalem has arrived on the new earth.
The Bible says that at the second coming of Jesus, all who will be spending eternity with him will have been given new “glorious bodies “, “like his own.” Phil.3:20. I Cor. 15:43 & 44 says, “Our bodies are buried in brokenness, but they will be raised in glory. They are buried as natural human bodies but they are raised as spiritual bodies. For just as there are natural bodies, there are also spiritual bodies.” They are not only spiritual bodies, they are immortal bodies (1 Cor. 15:53} that will never die.
If these immortal bodies will eat and drink with Jesus at the wedding feast of the lamb, they must still have some physical form like the resurrected Jesus did when he appeared to the disciples and ate a piece of fish. But the physical form must be of a different quality that allowed Jesus to enter the locked room where the disciples were without first unlocking the door. It must not be a normal flesh and blood body. Flesh and blood bodies don’t last forever. They develop diseases (leukemia, tuberculosis). They have the pain of arthritis and diverticulitis. Their bones sometimes break. They sometimes have bowel blockage or diarrhea. The new, spiritual, immortal bodies will hot have to deal with any of these bodily problems. As Revelation 21: 3c & 4 says, “God himself will be with them…. and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain.” I’m not sure how God will create new bodies that drink and eat without going through the digestive and elimination process (including stomach aches and heart burn). However, God is certainly able to create the new bodies any way He chooses. He could come up with any number of possibilities that would no longer require digestion and elimination (e.g., evaporation where you get to enjoy the taste but then the liquid and food would immediately disappear).
A survey of relevant Scriptures leads me to believe that the Christian’s old flesh and blood body decays after death and is raised as a new spiritual body. It is possible that the new body could be designed to partake of physical food and drink without any physical problem occurring, a spiritual body that will never die while containing many features of flesh and blood bodies (seeing, thinking, speaking, singing, eating, drinking, worshipping, rejoicing).
However, I think the Christian’s new body will be designed perfectly to do and be everything God wants it to do and be. The fact that the resurrected body of Jesus was able to just appear in a locked room, be recognized in his human form (including his crucifixion wounds) and eat a fish used physical things human beings could relate to, evidence needed for the disciples to believe the impossible had happened. Dead Jesus had risen from the dead.
Talk about the special wedding feast of the lamb could simply be using language we humans understand when the main point is that there will be a great ceremony when Christ’s bride (the church) is joined with Christ( the groom) in eternal wedlock that begins in the new Jerusalem. It need not be a time when drink and food are involved at all.
If the above is how it will really be, how am I to understand the part in Revelation when it talks of “a river with the water of life . . . flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb…. On each side of the river grew a tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, a fresh crop each month. The leaves were used for medicine to heal the nations. Rev. 22:1 & 2) Is this to be understood literally or is it figurative language to be understood that all one’s needs as a an eternally redeemed spirit will be met on the new earth?
I believe we won’t know exactly what our new body will look like until we get it or what the new Jerusalem will look like until we get there. All the language describing both might be literal or figurative or a mixture of both. One thing is for sure. Both will be far better than we can imagine. As 1 Corinthians 2:9 says, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.”
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