21.11 | Getting the Macro
1 Peter 2:4-3:7
‘But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.’
1 Peter 2:9
The Bible often moves between macro and micro ideas.
Macro ideas are big-picture—comprehensive themes that give framing and order. Macro ideas are paradigmatic, broad, and encompassing. They create frameworks for how we see and understand the world we live in, and give form to the other many thoughts and choices and details that make up our lives.
Micro ideas are usually more practical. They are the thousands of smaller ways that the big ideas are implemented in practice. Micro ideas pull the big-picture themes into the normal choices and details of living. Being micro is not the same as being trivial, for often it is most truly the little decisions that set the truest course of our lives.
We spend much of our time in the micro. And yet, without getting the macro clear, our micro choices cannot be made with the right vision and values.
Peter today is dealing in macros and micros.
The macro touches on two huge themes from the Old Testament.
Temple.
And priests.
The temple was the building that sat atop the mountain in Jerusalem. It was their primary place of worship, for sure, but the symbolism of the temple for the First Century Jew was not merely as a building for worship. The temple was providing a response to the ultimate problem that humankind had experienced since Adam and Eve tasted that fruit in the Garden: heaven and earth had been separated. The temple was the response to this problem—God’s own throne room upon the earth. It was purified with blood. It was the place of His presence. It was the intersection of heaven and earth, to which a broken humanity could go to seek the life and wisdom of God, and from which the life of the heavens could abundantly flood back into the wounded world.
The priests were those who ministered in this temple—the only ones permitted to enter into the actual temple itself. Their role was to take the prayers and hurts of the people to the throne of God, and from that throne return with the wisdom and blessing of God. They were mediators of His presence and unleashers of His life.
Temple. Priests. These are macro ideas.
And Peter uses them to describe us.
Us as the temple—the embodied place of His presence upon the earth. Heaven intersects earth in this very moment, because God dwells in us through the Holy Spirit. When we walk into the world, we do so as the living, breathing, moving temple of God—carrying the life of heaven with us in our souls that have been set free and filled with His presence again.
Us as the priests—those people called to mediate between a broken world and God’s presence, bringing His life and wisdom and life and blessing to a hurting world.
This is the macro.
And then, we’re ready for the micro.
For these themes are then to play out in the many environments of human experience. In how we engage with political leaders, neighbours, line managers and spouses.
What does it look like?
It looks like honour. It looks like purity. It looks like truth. It looks like integrity. It looks like respect and understanding and goodness and humility and love.
It looks like the invasion of a wounded earth with the life of the heavens.
Reflect:
How can you carry the life of heaven into your places, choices, and relationships today?
Pray:
Father,
If I am a part of your temple,
Then I house your presence.
And if I house your presence,
Then where I walk
Can be touched by You.
Raise my sights to this story
That my micro-moments
Be moments of encounter,
Between a bruised world
And a blessed heaven.
And Father,
If I am a part of your priesthood,
Then the problems I carry
Can be brought to your altar;
And your blessing
Can be released in my words and ways.
Teach me the priestly ways,
That heaven may touch the earth.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
Ezekiel 41-42 | Psalm 133