The Society for the Advancement of Ecclesiological Theology

January 3, 2012 by Gerald Hiestand

Plodding Toward Consummation

This from my sermon this past Sunday, preached on John 5:39, where Christ tells us that the most fundamental point of Scripture is that they “bear witness” to Christ.

Relating to Christ through the Scriptures is not at all unlike relating to your spouse in marriage. Just as not every moment in a healthy, loving marriage will involve passion and romance, so too not every moment in Scripture will be attended with spiritual goose bumps. The bulk of both relationships are lived in the day to day—without fanfare or fireworks. But it is precisely our fidelity in the day to day experiences that makes the moments of marital and spiritual consummation precisely that—consummation. Consummation is the summing up of the whole. It is the celebration and bringing together of everything that makes a thing the thing that it is.

In respect to marriage, bodily union is the consummation of the whole shared life of marriage—the mundane, the exciting, the beautiful, the difficult, the grievous, the joyful. And in respect to the Bible, Christ is the consummation of the entire biblical narrative. Without fidelity to the whole of the biblical narrative—plodding, as it were, through Numbers and Leviticus and the Minor Prophets—there is no narrative to consummate. But if we are patient, faithful attention to the whole story of Scripture will yield consummating, Christological moments. And indeed, such moments will be all the richer because we’ve steadily plodded through the entirety of the narrative.

Categories: General | Gerald Hiestand | Scripture