The Curtain is Torn
Matthew 27:51
[message shared with Friendship Church's Women's Renewal Weekend, October 25, 2003]

I don’t usually remember my dreams. But I had a frustrating one not long ago that I do remember.

In it, I’ve gone to the house of a friend. After I walk in, the place is packed with people, almost none of whom I know. I look and look all over my friend’s house, but can’t find him anywhere.

The closest I get to seeing him is when I spy his silhouette behind a rather sheer curtain. I can barely discern him as he works at pouring people drinks and pulling things out of the oven in his kitchen.But before I can get to him, some people come up to me and move me in a different direction.

After that, unable to find my friend, I leave the house, feeling frustrated.

Weird! And yet when I think about it, that’s sort of how many people see God: distant, unapproachable, covered by a curtain of mystery.

Others, frustrated by God’s seeming distance and maybe, just a little bit full of themselves, dismiss the whole idea of God. They say God is like the wizard of Oz, hiding behind scary displays of power and threatening words, but impotent to really do anything to help us in this often painful and confusing world.

But when we pay attention to the God we meet through Jesus Christ, we realize that God is neither a distant figure or a helpless wizard trying to intimidate us while begging, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”

The Bible says that God came into our world through Jesus Christ. He did this, as you know well, to die as the perfect, sinless sacrifice for our sin. Jesus gave up His body and blood in order to pay the price we owed to God for our sin. The New Testament writer Paul says, “...the wages of sin is death, but the free gift is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

God came to earth as a baby who soils his diapers, a boy who experiences adolescence, a man who works hard at a trade, and a condemned criminal in order to give His life so that sinners like you and me can live with God forever. That isn’t a distant God. That’s God up-close and personal!

And God didn’t suddenly become the wizard behind the curtain after Jesus rose from the dead and went to heaven either!

For one thing, He instituted this meal–bread and wine, His body and blood–so that we could be re-membered to Him, re-united with Him, a sweet preview of the forever feast we’re going to enjoy with Him in heaven.

We have God’s love letter to us, the Bible, that we can read each day and sense God’s presence.

Jesus also commanded us to pray to God the Father in His Name and promised that our prayers would be heard.

And He filled the Church with His Holy Spirit so that ordinary people like you and me could be living reminders to each other and to all the world that God is close, that God wants to be one with us, that God wants to be reconciled to all His children.

The Jesus-filled people you and I can find in the Church may be the most wonderful reminders of Jesus' presence and love that we can find! There have been many times when I have been discouraged or overwhelmed and somebody in Jesus’ family, the Church, has said something to me or made a simple gesture of love and I knew that no matter how alone I may have been feeling before, that God really was and is there!

Our son Philip had an experience of this a few weeks ago. Phil is twenty-two now, a senior in college. He thought and we thought that he would be graduating this spring for sure. He still might do so. But for some reason, a problem was discovered just a few weeks ago: not all of his credits from Capital University, where he had attended his first year, were accepted at Asbury. On a normal pace, he would be two credits shy at the end of spring semester.

Ann and I weren’t exactly pleased, especially because this problem was discovered so late in the game. I told Philip that while he would be paying for any additional course work he might do beyond spring semester, he should move heaven and earth to see if he either could take the additional classes needed in the spring or get credit for the disputed courses. Phil felt badly that he hadn’t paid close enough attention to things to have realized there was a problem earlier. He felt badly that in some way, he had wasted money because of this oversight. And he didn’t want to go to his academic advisor, a guy he had never liked and who, he thought, didn’t like him either. But I pressed him and said, “You must talk to him.”

He did so and felt entirely differently about his advisor than he had before. He sensed a genuine love and concern coming from this man, even though he was telling Philip that they might not be able to get him graduated at the end of the academic year.

As Philip started to walk out of the advisor’s office, he turned to him and asked, “I feel like I really messed up. Would you please pray for me?” His advisor said, “Well, come on back in here. We’ll do it right now.”

Philip learned again the reality that God is not distant. God isn’t inaccessibly hiding behind a curtain. God is available to us in prayer. And God has His agents everywhere to remind us that He cares and He wants to be reconciled to us. God wants to be one with us.

Maybe the best proof of how much God wants to be in our lives is what happened to a curtain one day two-thousand years ago. In the temple in Jerusalem where the Jews worshiped, there was a place called the Holy of Holies. It was the place where it was thought, the very presence of God dwelt. It was covered with a curtain. Just once a year, the high priest was allowed to go behind the curtain in order to present God with a sacrifice of an unblemished lamb. There, the priest would ask that every Jew’s sin would be forgiven. But he and the people had to go through an elaborate ceremony, which included the worshipers being sprinkled with the blood of this lamb, before the priest could even be worthy of approaching God.

On the Friday when Jesus died on a cross two-thousand years ago, strange things happened. But the Gospel of Matthew tells us about the strangest...and most wonderful. It says:

"Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed His last. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom..."

The Savior, Who gave His body and blood as a loving sacrifice, has torn the curtain that once kept us from knowing or seeing or being one with God. And He invites us to follow Him in a life of constant fellowship with God. Whatever burdens you have, whatever sins with which you may be wrestling, whatever personal inadequacies you may feel, the invitation is the same. The curtain has been torn. God is on your side.

God is willing to take your weaknesses and give You His strength. If there are any walls between you and God, they don’t need to be there. The way is open to oneness with God. Walk on in; the curtain is gone and God is waiting for you...and He’s got a smile on His face.