Blueberry Pie

One night I had an insight into the nature of Jesus.  It came as a similitude.  Jesus Himself would have presented it as a parable, so let’s call this the parable of the Blueberry Pie.

 

Consider a blueberry pie baking in the oven.  As the pie bakes, the blueberries heat up and begin to give off the most wonderful, tantalizing aroma – an aroma that you may remember from your childhood or if you are fortunate, from just last week.  That aroma fills your nostrils, your mind and your heart.  You begin to want that pie; how glorious it will be, how tasty.  You begin to want that pie, but you can’t have it yet.  The pie is not yet ready.  You can’t even see the pie because there is no window into the oven and the oven door remains locked until it is time for the pie to be placed before you.  Still this amazing aroma has emanated from the oven and filled the whole room, filling your senses and building your anticipation of the glory of that pie.

Jesus would say: This is the way it is with the Kingdom of God.  The oven represents the Kingdom of God.  The Pie represents God.  He is nearby but inaccessible.  Because of the aroma that emanates from the Kingdom, from God, we can sense how good He is but we cannot reach Him.  We cannot touch Him.  We cannot be with Him; we cannot taste His goodness.  Still, He doesn’t want us to be without Him.  He wants to fill us with His presence and He makes this possible with this glorious aroma that He gives off.  His desire to be with us is so powerful that His aroma simply must escape the oven, the Kingdom, to reach us.

This aroma is so palpable that we can almost taste that Pie – even though it is still not accessible.  This aroma is like the person of Jesus.  Jesus gives us the flavor of God, a foretaste of the goodness of God.  Jesus fills us with a sampling of God just as the aroma of that blueberry pie fills us with a sampling of that pie.  Jesus comes directly from God just as the aroma comes directly from the Pie.  Jesus fills us with anticipation for God just as the aroma fills us with anticipation for the Pie.  Just as the aroma of the Blueberry Pie is emanated from the Blueberry Pie, Jesus is emanated from God.  It is as if God has begotten that aroma.

We unfortunately call this aroma, Jesus, the Son of God.  Maybe we should have called Jesus, the Aroma of God or the Emanation of God.  For, just as YHVH revealed Himself to Moses in the Burning Bush, He revealed Himself to us all in the person of Jesus, the Aroma of God.

Metaphor is a beautiful thing, isn’t it?  Maybe that is why God uses it so often in His Holy Word.