Now the tunic was seamless, woven from the top to bottom. – John 19:23
Love YHVH your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. – Matthew 22:37
A serious artist cannot tolerate a disconnect between the vision and the reality, and thus will struggle fervently with the material of his medium to bring down that vision into the reality of his art. Likewise the Messiah, who was asked by his disciples on how to pray replied, “Our Father in heaven…your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.”
We who have been given the grace to behold that vision of the heavenly kingdom, and who have been commissioned to bring that dimension down to earthly reality as per that prayer above, quickly come face-to-face with the challenge of the materials with which we must work, and the struggle begins.
Our own body of flesh and blood with its appetites and desires faces the challenge of that vision, and we become as ones taming and saddling a wild horse- especially bridling the wild tongue. At times our first steps are stumbling and discouraging, and we are thrown to the ground- like learning to skate or ski. And the challenge is compounded in the interaction with other people. The vision of success seems far off, and we understand that everything is easier said than done.
The artist Picasso painted a world of cubist fragmentation, of humanity broken up into parcels of discontinuity, much as we in modern life are broken up into compartments of existence, a disconnect between all our parts- a day at work, a day in court, a day at church, a day at play etc. Even our religionists tell us we are divided into body, soul and spirit. Even God himself has been divided up, whereas YHVH is echad– one. And Messiah prayed that we may all be one (John 17:21), a prayer that has yet to be realized due to the many divisions in the house of faith.
It has even been said by some that to access God one must “turn off the mind,” whereas we are informed that we have been granted by God “a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7), and I suppose therefore expected to use our mind soundly. Such a unique Christian writer as CS Lewis has bonded the intellect to the spirit in a seamless fashion. He understood that we have been given the gift of the Spirit of God to dwell within us, and therefore it is not by effort of force, or only visits to congregations or conferences or hypnotic music that the Spirit is to be obtained. We walk with God in the present, in all our daily activities. Or that should be the case.
Many seem to only find their spirituality one day a week while visiting a congregation. It would seem that amplified music and loud pronouncements in a large gathering have become the modern hallmark of the presence of God. But the prophet Elijah discovered that God was not to be found in the whirlwind or the earthquake, but in the kol dmama dakah– the still small voice. Perhaps it is in quietness that we may better relate to the divine presence. And our witness or testimony to others may be best transmitted as we breathe, rather than by large campaigns with megaphones and tracts. It is in our very lives here in reality that Heaven and Earth are to be woven into a seamless garment of reality, woven from top to bottom. It is our commission to strive to reduce the disconnect between the dimensions of the New Jerusalem and the Old, wherever we may be, until we then see face-to-face, and “until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Messiah.” (Ephesians 4:13)
Then the dimension of eternal divinity will intersect the temporal and material dimension, and the latter will fully achieve its ultimate potential. Until then, may our fellowship together be face-to-face in real communion and community, rather than in word alone- for Love is a verb.
A seamless garment, as we walk the earth in our allotted time, would include the intellect and emotion, the spirit and the body together imbued and charged with force from the Source of power, without which every flower fades, every horsepower fails and dies. It is written that at the time of the crucifixion of the Messiah the veil separating the kodesh ha kodeshim– the Most Holy sanctum- was torn from top to bottom. Thus the place of the very presence of God has been made accessible to all who would freely enter in to live in His presence.