With acknowledgements to Hodos for the discussion of atonement and
Pattern who patterns whom?
Type who is the type and who the antitype?
How is Melchizedek like Christ?
Example is it followed?
Outline or is it filled?
Sketch not a form but a movement in time?
Model is it a copy or an exemplar?
Plan who will be its fullness?
Promise how will it be completed?
Ideal does it stand disincarnate from the beginning?
Eikon Paradeigma Imitation?
Who do you say this Jesus is?
What parallel can we find?
Tent God camping out with humans
Temple not Platonic but eschatological
Body of flesh the sanctuary of the temple
Image likeness transfigured humanity
Whole never separated from source
Holy set apart, consecrated for us
Beloved bridegroom making his guest
Original yet without abstraction
Author having authority
Architect proving his building skills
What is the nature of his life?
Political? Better news that Caesar
Religious? Pontifex Maximus without coercion
Social? Revealing essential injustice
Dangerous? To the established interest
Offensive? Like any lover
Power-hungry? Not needing such a word
Critical? Inviting participation in his way
What shall we say of his death?
Accidental? Not foreordained but inevitable
Irrelevant? No one can disregard it
Sacrificial? Only by later interpretation
Violent? And revealing violence
Unnecessary? Unfortunately or fortunately not
Expedient? By the will of the high-priest
For instead of because of? Including me.
Ich bin unschuldig an dem Blut dieses Gerechten.
I am not so guiltless as Pilate.
Sein Blut komme όber uns und unsre Kinder.
A kinder statement would not carry such irony.
Cleansed, covered, wed by his blood?
This my patterned, outlined, mercy seat,
Filled by his body of flesh,
Spirit-gifts life to my mortal body.
Words carefully chosen do not reveal.
What word will create in this wind of ours,
Something new that leaves envious imitation?
Metaphor God turns the light that is above into flesh.
Feetnote:
Line 1 - I am innocent of the blood of this
righteous one
Line 2 - line 1 was spoken by Pilate -
Gospel of Matthew
Line 3 - His blood be on us and on our
children
Line 4 - puns and irony in that the blood
is sacrificial
Line 8 - the verb is a unique reading of
Paul's Adam Christology
Line 9 - the difficulty of explaning
Line 10 - wind - Abel in Hebrew
Line 11 - envy - Cain's sin
Line 12 - Meta-phor
- Greek for light from above (sort of)
And the last line is pointing to incarnational theology