Epiphany 17

Lord and Holy One,

Your perfection cannot tolerate imperfection. You who commanded ceremonies of sacrifice and atonement to remove and cleanse disease and uncleanness, your holiness cannot stand the traces of sin. How could we make common your tabernacle, your dwelling place with our blood and the impurity of our flesh? Yet Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, the lamb without blemish. He touched lepers and was not made unclean; rather he made them clean. He touched the garment of a woman with a discharge of blood and was not made unclean, rather she was healed.

You are high above this world, with its dust and dirt and blood and filth, but enter into it to seek us. You were among deceitful men with murderous hearts, threatened tyrants out for blood. In Jesus Christ, our God is revealed not as above Israel only, but as the true Israel himself. You are the true Son, Lord Jesus, who was called out of Egypt. Yet you were not spared wrath, but reserved for greater wrath—the vengeance of a Holy God, not of a sinful man. Bearing his wrath, you would spare us all, and make us clean, holy and pleasing in the presence of your Father. I will thank you forever, because you have done it.