Ephesians speaks of a very similar dynamic to what we see above. We saw how Israel was a type of island within the Cosmos. That image, though, doesn’t fully capture it. It is more as if Israel is the only sun within a dark universe—it alone burns with the divine and prodigal intensity of Yhwh’s blessing, his loyal-love and his faithfulness. Not necessarily because Israel is Yhwh’s exclusive possession, but more so because the nations have turned to dead idols and themselves become dead, become part of the silent Sheol of the universe.
Another way of putting this is that only in Israel is the burning holiness of Yhwh made present. Paul speaks of this too when he says that those ‘in Christ’ were chosen ‘before the foundations of the world to be “holy and immaculate” before him in love. And the goal of this ‘chosenness’ is, as in this psalm, so that we could be “for the praise of his glory”. For Paul, Christ becomes the locus, the place, wherein we dwell. He is the Glory-place. It is “in him” that we are made into the glory-givers. In a sense, he is the “proper idol”, the one in whom, and through whom, glory can be given to the Father such that it results in the life spoken of in this psalm, rather than death. And because he is the locus of this “glory giving” he is also the locus, the place, “of blessing.” We give glory “in him” and we receive all heavenly blessings “in him.” Christ is, in the context of this psalm and Ephesians, the Cosmos of Giving and Receiving. He is both a type of true idol and Temple and also the Cosmos that receives divine blessing.
This is what the sacraments are. But, more importantly, this is what they do. They put us in the Sun. They put us in this Place of blazing glory-giving and this Place of torrential heavenly blessing. In other words, Christ is, quite literally, this Psalm. It occurs “in him”, he occurs “in it”, and we occur in both.
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