Drawing Close to all Flesh

MANY PARABLES OF JESUS speak of God's "coming. " Matthew's last judgment parable tells of the day "when the Son of Man comes in his glory" (Matt 25: 31-46), and Luke speaks of the man who "returned, having received royal power" (Luke 19: 15). The Lord will indeed come again in glory, but that glory will not eclipse the reality of his first coming, for that was when he was revealed in the flesh (2 John 7). The Lord is not only spirit, as he insisted with his disciples: "Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have" (Luke 24: 39). At the end of time, the risen Lord will return, drawing close to us in the flesh, and "all flesh shall see the salvation of God" (Luke 3: 5-6; cf. Isa 40: 5). The Word become flesh (John 1: 14) will not judge us by abstract or purely "spiritual" ethical norms. He will judge us rather by those concrete norms that arise directly out of the way he lived and the path he traced out for us. He will judge us on whether we knew how to draw close to "all flesh" and recognize in it the Word of God.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1: 14)