One of my best reflections on Advent came from a second-grade child. My wife and I teach a young children’s Sunday School class using the Godly Play curriculum.* At the end of the year, we review the life of Jesus. Setting out the first panel of the birth story, we asked children to go around the room and pick out an item from a lesson that they saw as connected to the birth story. There was one young girl who was always spinning around in her twirly dress and who did not seem to pay close attention. She went over to the OT section, picked up a model of the ark of the covenant/testimony, and set in next to the manger. One of us politely asked, “Why did you bring the ark? She said,
“The ark of the covenant let God’s people know that he was with them. And, Jesus is called Immanuel, which means that he is God with us.”
Amen! She understood -- profoundly. The ark was apparently modeled after a footstool to a portable Egyptian king-throne and would have represented the invisible presence of God enthroned above it. The Israelites carried the ark of the covenant with them in their wilderness wandering, and prior to the building of the Temple, to remind them that their God was present with them.
About the ark:
“I will meet with you there, and from above the atonement lid [the cover of the ark], from between the two cherubim that are over the ark of the testimony” (Exod. 25:22).
About Jesus:
“The virgin will conceive and bear a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means ‘God with us’” (Matt. 1:23).
I would like to take that girl’s association one step further by noting how the cover of the ark of the covenant, the “atonement lid” or “mercy seat,” functioned and how that term is used of Jesus as well. In the Tent of Meeting and later in the Temple, the ark was kept in the back chamber, the Holy of Holies. That chamber physically represented the closest point in “sacred space” in which one could come near God. Only the High Priest, who mediated between the people and God, could enter there, and only on one day of the year, the Day of Atonement. On the top cover of the ark, the “atonement lid,” were two gold cherubim symbolizing the heavenly realm. The lid of the ark symbolically was the closest point of contact between the people and God. It was on it that the sin offering of the blood of atonement was made.
About the lid:
“He [the High Priest] is to sprinkle it [the blood of the sin offering] on the atonement lid…. So he is to make atonement for the holy place from the impurities of the Israelites and from their transgressions with regard to all their sins (Lev. 16:15b – 16 a).
About Jesus:
“… [for those] being declared righteous by his [God’s] grace through the deliverance in Christ Jesus, whom God dedicated as the atonement lid through faith in his blood [the atonement sin offering]” (Rom 3:24 – 25a).#
Back to the young girl. She understood. God has always wanted the people who entrust themselves to him to know that he is present with them. He gave them the ark of the covenant. But that was not enough. He wanted to become closer. So he “emptied himself and took expression as a slave” (Phil 2:6; see devotional of 11/24/23).
Lord, may the eyes of my heart see as clearly as this young girl. Amen.
*I highly recommend this curriculum. It invites children of all ages to "enter" the stories of the Bible and to relate to God at their level rather than asking them to recite platitudes that they do not understand. See: https://www.godlyplayfoundation.org/
#Unfortunately, most English translations do not capture this connection to the Day of Atonement. [If interested in a detailed translation and commentary on Rom 3:1-26, see "Part 2: An Illustration from Translating Paul (Romans 3:21–26)" in "Hope for the Future of New Testament Theology" (https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/12/11/975).]
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