Dung to Lilies: In the Beauty of the Lilies He Transfigures You and Me

Dung to Lilies: In the Beauty of the Lilies He Transfigures You and Me August 6, 2017

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Sometimes you will pick up the cutest child only to catch a whiff of the least cute odor. Yet somehow, someway, if it is your very own child or grandchild, there is a sweetness there.

Really. Love helps this transfiguration happen!

One of my favorite songs has this verse:

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free;
While God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! While God is marching on.

As a kid I loved the poetry, but thought: “Jesus was not born in the beauty of the lilies, but near smelly cow manure.” I was a real terror in Sunday School, but I was sort-of-right in the later-you-will-see-how-wrong-you-were way.

Jesus was born in a cave. There might have been lilies around the stable, but nobody would have picked it as the most beautiful spot in Bethlehem until He was born. Jesus cannot be born without beauty any more than He can sin.

When Jesus shows up, beauty follows. The lyrics are right. Jesus brings the decorations with Him!

The verse is about transfiguration and how death, even our death, can be transfigured to something beautiful and good if it does so to make men free. The helpful souls who change the verse to “let us live to make men free” miss the point, just as I missed the point when I wanted the lilies to be cow dung. Jesus made the stable, that cave of animals, sweet. He is the Lily of the Valley, the great Love, come to earth and He transfigured the dank stable to beauty.

Jesus makes the cave a garden.  In her purity, the virgin giving birth having done the will of God, Mary, was also a lily in the stable. Joseph was the just man that Scripture also says blossoms like a lily. The Lord Jesus was a lily surrounded by lilies! Jesus would later stand on a mountain, between the Law and the Prophets, and be transfigured. He would unite the justice of the Law of Moses with the judgement of the prophets in the mercy and beauty of His nature. No wonder Peter wished to stay on that mountain! Beauty was making all things beautiful. Later Romans would take the ugliest instrument they could find: the wood of the cross, and with the iron of nails, hammer Jesus to it. Jesus transfigured all that ugliness into beauty as He died to make men holy.

Jesus shows up and there is enough wine at the party. Jesus shows up and a stoning turns into liberation. He transfigures from crap to lilies.

This glorification was available in the 1860’s to the vast majority of Americans who fought in Christ’s name against slavery and injustice. The war that had been merely to save a union, became a righteous cause. The same glory is available now in prison, in opioid infected West Virginia, in the worst part of the worst city in America. No human is so lost he cannot be transfigured, no place so vile that He cannot make it beautiful.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

 


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