Tag: argument

The Figure Above the Sapphire Sea

~ Kern Family ~ 1 Comment

It’s about 2am, and I must write down the journey I had through Exodus tonight.

The long office reading in Liturgy of the Hours today is Exodus 24, where Moses and the elders “see” the one who brought them out of Egypt. The text notices the clear sapphire floor beneath the figure’s feet. That odd detail sent me into Revelation and the other throne visions.

Who, precisely, sat above that sapphire sea? John tells us that no one has seen God. Calling this a preincarnate theophany names the event without telling me what Moses saw.

God lives in the Eternal Present, the unchanging and uncreated reality of eternity. Time is a creature. God is present to every moment and does not wait for Mary, the Incarnation, or the Resurrection as we wait for tomorrow.

From our place in time, the Word becomes incarnate, dies, rises, and ascends in sequence. From God’s vantage point, the whole life of Jesus stands within one eternal decree. God always wills the Incarnation. In that sense, His union with human nature in the God-man is never an afterthought.

That eternal decree does not make Christ’s humanity eternal. The Son is eternal according to His divinity; His human nature begins in Mary. Any speculation about the risen Christ acting within earlier history has to preserve that boundary.

Colossians 1 names the Son as the image of the invisible God and says that all things were created through Him. The eternal Son through whom creation comes is the same divine person who takes flesh from Mary. We awaken in time to what God eternally wills without making Christ’s humanity eternal.

That still leaves the body Moses saw. Did God fashion a temporary human form for the occasion, something like Jesus but not Jesus? What was it, and what became of it after the vision?

There is another possibility. The risen body of Jesus passes beyond the ordinary conditions of earthly life without ceasing to be a true human body. He appears behind locked doors and makes Himself present where He wills. The Transfiguration occurs before the Resurrection but displays the glory we associate with the risen Christ. None of those texts directly says that His humanity travels backward in time.

By virtue of the Hypostatic Union and His risen body now ascended, could Jesus participate in history retroactively? Could the figure above the sapphire sea be the glorified Jesus rather than a temporary form?

If so, the one who said, “Let there be light” is rightly identified as Jesus. On this Christological reading, the one who walked with Adam and Eve was Jesus. And if Moses had been able to see His hands and side, perhaps he would have seen the wounds. Exodus does not say this; it is the speculative edge of the argument. The God-man is the image of the Creator. Jesus can tell Philip that anyone who has seen Him has seen the Father.

This also changes how we read creation. Nature’s cycles conform to the Passion rather than the Passion conforming to nature. Birth, death, and new life are patterned after Christ. The distinction between the “other” and the beloved reflects the life of the Trinity. Suffering takes its final shape from the cross. From our place in time, Christ arrives after creation. In the eternal decree, His life logically precedes it.

The cosmos becomes a field of hieroglyphs, and the life of Christ is its Rosetta Stone. This is why Christ is rightly called the Archetype. Creation exists because Christ wills to draw it into the wedding chamber of divinity. As Paul says, from Him and through Him and for Him are all things.

I want to follow this into the Mass, especially the Eucharist, where the risen body of Christ hides as He hid from the disciples on the road to Emmaus and where He consecrates a better Sinai, a meeting place of heaven and earth. But that is for another night.

What We Told Our Boys After a Shouting Match

~ Kern Family ~ Leave a comment

The Incident

One sunny afternoon, Luke, Levi, and their friend Adil were by the creek tossing sticks into the water. Our neighbor called across the creek and warned them that the sticks could dam the water and cause a flood. That would have been fine. Then her husband began screaming threats at the kids and my pregnant wife.

My wife yelled back and told him to stop. I heard the shouting from the house and came barreling into the backyard. I was furious. When the man turned toward me, I shouted over him and told him twice, “I don’t want to hear another word from you.” He turned around and left.

These neighbors had a history of drunken shouting and escalated confrontations. That history explains why we reacted so quickly. It does not mean every part of our reaction was wise.

What We Told the Boys

Once things calmed down, we gathered the boys. They were frightened and confused. We told them that anger can arise when someone threatens you or someone you love. Jesus Himself drove the merchants from the Temple. But anger cannot be allowed to master us.

We also told them that forgiveness and boundaries belong together. Jesus says in Matthew 5:44, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Forgiveness means refusing to nurse hatred. It does not require pretending that a dangerous person is safe.

Jesus remained silent before Herod. We took that as an example of refusing a pointless confrontation. In the same way, we can love a neighbor while keeping enough distance to protect our family. We do not have to keep returning to a volatile exchange to prove that we have forgiven someone.

Forgiveness Without Pretending

We have not yet gone back to smooth things over with the neighbors. For now, the honest lesson for the boys is that we must let go of resentment, pray for the people who wrong us, and keep prudent boundaries. It is also worth admitting that their parents lost their tempers. The boys did not need a performance of perfect calm. They needed us to name what happened truthfully.

We ended the day by praying the Our Father and asking for the grace to forgive those who wrong us. That was the lesson: forgive, tell the truth about danger, and do not let another person’s anger govern your own.