Ps 111 (Seeing the Christ)

Seeing the Christ

When Christ’s face emerges from this psalm we find the incarnate Act and heart of Yhwh and Israel. And it is in him that we see how these two things—the heart and the Act—are inseparable.

We saw in the psalm how Yhwh’s acts, through the covenant, are ‘elongated’; they are prophetic. They can be meditated upon because Yhwh, as the Actor, is faithful and present. For that reason, meditating upon his great acts is not simply the turning of the mind back in time. Meditation upon the acts is itself a participation in those acts. As we said, the acts are like seeds that grow—truly—within Israel through their meditation (their ‘watering’). Their meditations carry the Acts forward, en-acting them again through each generation, until the Prophetic Act will find its Fulfillment.

As Jesus grew, he became meditative Israel. And, through his meditation upon the acts, he brought them more and more to bear—he incarnated them, more and more. They were prophecies that became fulfilled in and through him, which included in and through his meditation upon them. The Time had come, and Time ‘approached’ and ‘arrived’ not in a way that was external to Christ—it arrived in and through him. This is key—the fulfillment of the great Acts, the fulfilment of them as prophecy, was not, in any way, separated from the human, covenant partner of Yhwh’s, heart. In Christ, the Heavenly Act and the Human Heart, are one, and they, in a sense, ‘grow together’. The Act becoming the Act. Jesus becoming Jesus (Yhwh-saves).

And so, Prophetic Exodus, and the Prophetic Wandering—those great Acts that were themselves prophetic in the hearts and mind of Israel—found their fulfillment and their goal in Christ. He gathers together, and becomes, these prophecies and, in his life, brings them to fruition. In the context of this psalm, Jesus is Meditative Israel. In his meditation upon the Acts of his Father, he, like Israel, is ‘incarnating them’ in his heart and in his life. However, because he is the Son of God who came in order become the Day of the Lord, he is also the Fulfillment of all Acts. As Fulfilment, Jesus turns the Acts into Sacraments. This is absolutely key—what lived as prophecy became sacrament through Jesus. Jesus closes the prophetic distance between Earth and Heaven. Here is one example, drawn from this psalm.

Jesus is Wandering Israel—as he is cast out into the Wilderness by the Spirit (as he will later ‘cast out’ demons). And, importantly, he brings the Wandering to its Fulfilment. In Mark, when Jesus is cast out into the Wilderness for forty days to wrestle with the Accuser, he overcomes him and, in so doing, he establishes Peace in the Wilderness. He will, later in the gospel, then be able to retreat to the Wilderness in order to pray because he has already established Peace and cleansed it, returning it to its original state of Eden-Peace. Jesus does this throughout Mark—establishing beachheads in his battle against the Accuser, Chaos, Sickness and Death. He is not performing isolated, metaphorical acts. He is spreading heaven across the cosmos. What we find in the Wilderness episode is not a symbol or metaphor, but the actual, and literal Fulfilment of the Wandering and the Acts that Yhwh performed there. And it was through Jesus’ fulfilment of the Wandering that he would then, himself, become the Bread that his new Israel would feed upon as they journeyed toward the Land. In Jesus, Heaven has again become conjoined to Earth such that the Acts can now become Sacraments. Jesus’ life sacramentalizes the old covenant Acts.

From the Wandering to the Nations—if this is the case (which it is), then a new light is cast on Jesus’ life. The Sacraments are Jesus’ way of providing more-than-literal nourishment to his Israel. But, like the bread in the old covenant, it will stop when his Israel gets to the Land. Once that border is crossed, the “possessions of the nations” will be theirs. Heaven will descend upon the Earth. And there will be no Temple and there will be no need for lamps because God will have finally come to be with his People. And so, we see how Jesus’ life itself, his sacramentalizing of everything that came before, is also a type of prophecy pointing forward to his Return. We live in a time of Fulfillment-Waiting, of Already-But-Not-Yet, of Sacrament.

Jesus and the Forever—lastly, we should see Jesus as the one who offers to his Father the perfect praise of this psalm. Jesus takes the Forever-Seed, his Father’s charges, fulfills them, mirrors them back his Father, in perfect faithfulness and uprightness. And they become the perfect mirror of each other. “I and my Father are One. I do what I see the Father doing. And I abide in him, and He in me.” And, as the human covenant partner, he adds to this Forever-Seed his own faithfulness and returns it to his Father, as the fruit that he was sent to become and to harvest. He is not simply the mirror of the Father, in the sense of a 1 to 1 correlation. No—in his (human and divine) faithfulness, he shows forth—better, enacts—the Prodigal and Ever-Flowing Love that is God. In a way, God is more of enacted than shown, which is why the covenant dynamic—the human and divine faithfulness—is the ex-press-ing of God. And why the fruit of Jesus adoration of the Father is a Forever, something kept Forever, something continued Forever.