What is the distance between God and man?

The Old Testament Reading for Tuesday, Proper 9, Year Two comes from Num. 35:1-3,9-15,30-34.  There, the law describes the penalty for killing another human being. If the killing is intentional, the penalty is death: if unintentional, the killer could go to one of the six cities of refuge in ancient Israel and there live in a kind of internal exile. The land of Israel was holy. God dwelt there and could not allow its defilement. "You shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell; for I the Lord dwell in the midst of the people of Israel.”

The Gospel Reading comes from Matt. 23:13-26.  There, Jesus says, “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who would enter to go in."  The space where God dwelt and where man stood was not one that was defiled by egregious acts alone: according to Jesus's detractors, any number of conventions had to be observed to maintain a proper relationship with God. But Jesus rejected that teaching.

The New Testament reading comes from Rom. 8:31-39.  There, Paul writes, "For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,  nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."  

Paul knew that Jesus bridged that distance between God and man.  Nothing can open that gap again.