The Gospel, IN-God

Jesus paid the price
For the way humanity thinks and lives like God can be mediated
And he paid that price both in life and in death
And Jesus, anointed as Christ our Messiah
Is resurrected to us, and in each of us 
When we live into that unmediated relationship in God
Which Jesus so supremely showed us

This is why Paul preached not just Christ, but Christ crucified

Because only a Messiah who could die

Could prove to us a Gospel not bound to mediating figures

So to release us from the bondage of living as if

Lineage, law, temple, or nation could ultimately mediate a life in God

Indeed, a Messiah who could not die
Would merely be a loftier king, or a surer priest

But in living like a servant king
And dying like a forsaken priest

Jesus returns to us in the fullest and realest sense of life possible

His essence his spirit, his work his being
Rises within us and among us
Not in an esoteric way, but in the most important way
In a human way
  

For this is the real incarnation
The unmediated presence of God, in God, in Christ, in us, and in all of us
And so the only true and worthy sacrifice becomes a living sacrifice
Sacrifice to fulfill all sacrifice
Even as we learn the wounds of each our own lonely cross that we must bear

That we too should die upon the glorious courts and temples of our own lives
Which of themselves cannot ultimately mediate our immediate grace and place in God

For only with the surrender

Found in unadulterated child-like concern of faith

Can we give our lives, our lessons, and our loves nakedly back in God

To be born each day again, to drink new wine

And to live a life unalienated, cleansed of all strident beliefs and sin

That the kingdom of heaven is anywhere else

Than at hand.