The week the queen died. It’s a bit like losing a parent, she’s been such a constant.
The disabled people I support for work are disturbed by it. They all spend a lot of time alone watching free-to-air television. They are at least annoyed by the wall to wall coverage. But two schizophrenic people are genuinely grieving, trapped with the TVs triggering it.
They are sensitive to what an anchor she has been. They feel the loss, and it seems to connect to so much else they have lost.
Internationally the grief seems to be similar, she’s a marker and connector to so much that has passed.
But here in Hebrews 12 we have the reminder that the saints are all there in heaven watching like a crowd at the Olympic Games, cheering us on to run our race unimpeded by sin as God planned: learning from Christ’s love and sacrifice to work tirelessly for God’s kingdom of peace and justice. Rahab and Jepthah are there. Plus the queen, plus mum and dad.
And even if those images were just our memories or just narratives of them, which I don’t believe they merely are. But even if they were, they would still be a powerful encouragement, and comfort in our loss. Our identity, our provenance.
It’s a frame in which to endure hardship, by remembering them, and thinking of it as discipline that strengthened them.
The author returns to the choice Moses presented to the Israelites as they looked over the border of promised land between the mountain of blessings and the mountain of curses. Who will they serve? When everything is going wrong, I might be fooled into thinking I’m on the mountain of curses.
But my hardship for Christ’s name is like the wilderness years. They lead to mount Zion; to blessing not curses. And to reject it would be to reject God’s grace.
Maybe my hardship at the moment involves batting down my feelings of frustration at being stuck being a mere support worker, and my sense of burnout at church. Maybe it’s taking greater care of Kelly and the kids. Maybe there are whole new paths out there that I could be open to. The choices are more about the spirit and the fruit than the specific path.
Great chapter, interesting thoughts. And today I have a day off with Kelly, and a drive to visit our friend Lisa up the coast. Yippee!
Praying for family, and as I have got in the habit before every shift, for wisdom and love.
Paul’s last chapter, pretty much ever. He has broken the mould in this letter. They usually have a sermonish structure, theology then application. The theme of truth reaches a climax only here at the end, you see it’s been the focus from the start: preach the word, stick to it.
I give you this charge: Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.
v2
Great patience and care, focused on others, always guarding against the ego trip.
Comparing it to a sermon structure, this has been more of a journey through Timothy’s history and Paul’s, with scattergun application. It’s also been a bit of a star is born story, of generational transfer.
Paul is desperately worried about all the corrupt teachers already in the church, all the dark forces. But he reminds himself and Timothy throughout of God’s power, promises, and the solid ground of the scriptures.
Then there’s the personal touches. Come before winter. Bring that cloak I left in Troas, and the parchment. He’s gathering the ones he trusts before the end.
Practical and focused on the immediate as ever, he’s not an empire builder for it’s own sake, he does the task before him.
It’s inspiring.
First day of work belied my fear. It was ordinary, for a first day. Somewhat overwhelming, but also familiar. It’s stuff I can do. They seem like nice people. I’m much less nervous, I had a few people praying for me, and it was good.
I’m starting this post without having read the passage, because I want to remember the six mile creek camping ground. Just woken up on the third morning of our little holiday.
We’re car camping, We’re dodging COVID, which in January 2022, at the height of the Omicron variant, is everywhere.
Also being chased by an unseasonable amount of rain. We’ve driven through a couple of absolutely blinding storms each day. Though there have been enough gaps in the rain that we’ve still managed to have a pretty good time.
Car no longer overheats! So good. We drove down the South coast of NSW to Tuross heads, a return to the first place we ever went car camping. Then to Merimbula, a wonderful beach town with lots of tacky, but abundantly so much more natural beauty that the tackiness is more quaint than offensive.
We’re heading inland today to visit friends who own an old church near Gundagai. We’ve camped in a free bush site about an hour inland from Merimbula.
The mountain road was spectacularly beautiful, but became wetter as it climbed, foggy, surrounded by think forest and the surface went from bitumen to dirt to, at a few points, slippery wet mud. I kept apologising to our valiant car for it not being a four wheel drive. Now we’re ridiculously dependant on its reliability. Road surface is a detail Google maps doesn’t seem to regards as relevant. It was a real adventure.
So we’re next to a creek, in the rain, no internet, middle of friggin nowhere. We debated, quite tensely, whether to move onto the next town, but given the road, that was an even bigger unknown. We had beer, wine and prosecco. Water? Not so much… I’d actually thrown in a tarpaulin, but no rope! Consummate campers!
We made enough of a shelter off the side of the car to light our stove and boil some water. After a good tea, and a downloaded Netflix to chill, the feeling of bedding down in dry clothes was glorious.
Today we battle an unknown amount more winding dirt mountain road towards Brungle, the tiny town our friends fixed upon.
Tuross HeadsMerimbulaSix mile creek
Oh no, woke up and I left the key in the ignition overnight. Last thing I did was adjust the windows to let in some air, forgot to take keys out. Two other campers here at least. Either flat battery, or worse burnt out ignition. So stupid! I don’t have jump leads, neither do the others but one will drive us till we get phone reception and can call NRMA. So cross with myself!!!!
My gosh, what a day! Having got the car started again, we left six mile creek for Bombala. Hit a kangaroo just out of town!!!
I had to put it out of its misery, grisly! And Kelly dragged it off the road by its tail. The car seemed quite drivable, but the radiator was cracked and leaking coolant. Fortunately we found out before it overheated. Don’t want to blow that beautiful new engine I just got put in!
Long story short, the NRMA guy at Bombala lent us his ute to drive to Cooma, an hour or so away, the nearest depot for hire cars. NRMA organised a motel and a hire car to get us back to Sydney. Our car will be fixed by insurance and delivered back to us. We are dazed, exhausted, but glad at least to have a shower!
We both lost it when we hit the kangaroo, though both a bit giggly too at the shock of the gore of the poor thing. I lost it majorly in the Cosmo Cafe in Bombala, where we went for comfort after learning the car could not go on. They didn’t want us, infected Sydneysiders. The owners were pecking away at us the whole time.
I got a call from NRMA explaining what we had to do next. It would only work on the dodgy connection if I stood up and moved to the front of the cafe. The chef/owner would not let me walk around, interrupting to demand I sit at my table. I said “please, it’s the NRMA, and there’s no reception at my table”. He wouldn’t stop hectoring me. I became overwhelmed. I threw my phone down in disgust and left and even yelled, for the whole cafe to hear “how about some of that old fashioned country service you promise on the window!!!”. Wife and phone still in the cafe, I had to return, humiliatingly, and apologise to everyone in sight.
So Colossians.
It’s a church Paul didn’t found, and may not even have been to.
The flow of the first chapter springs off what Paul prays for them:
Thanking God for the news of the faith and love with which they received the gospel, part of a worldwide transformation.
Continuing to ask God to bring them to a mature understanding and worthy life of patience and endurance
Thanking God for their being part of his son’s Kingdom of light
Paul expands on describing Christ’s significance. Jesus was there at creation, at the start. He’s here now, holding everything together, and he is the means of reconciliation with God though his death.
Paul describes his own role, a servant of the gospel, a servant of the church, particularly gentiles, with whom God has now chosen to share the mystery of salvation. Suffering as Christ did to present people fully mature in Christ.
The bit about Christ is glorious, and really helpful for understanding him:
“The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
v15-17
This holiday is being quite stressful, life is quite stressful especially until I can be earning a bit better. I needed to lose the job I had, it was too dangerous, but I’m yet to pick up enough to replace it.
Paul is giving these glimpses of how everything holds together through a loving God, at the same time talking about suffering and difficulty in life, a tension between glory and anxiety.
These are ideas, beliefs about God and Christ. They influence everything you do but it doesn’t mean that’s all you do. Paul had long days making tents. Long boring days in prison or under house arrest. The time of a believer can often largely be spent similarly to the time of a non-believer.
This is time for my relationship with Kelly, our time, and we’ve been put under stress. Our anxiety levels have been through the roof. I won’t beat myself up for trying to have a holiday. The gospel includes holidays. If it’s actually a testing, difficult time, instead of a happy, glamorous affirming time, it’s ok to mourn it. And then let’s at least have and love each other through it. I’ll pray for the love, honesty, humility, tenderness Christ modelled as the visible image of the invisible deity.
Such an encouraging chapter. I know it so well, how often must I have studied it in my life?
It starts with a vigorous condemnation of the circumcision party (“those dogs, those mutilators of the flesh”) and Paul listing his Ultra-Jewish credentials. Then he calls it all garbage.
And really it could be any system in which we put our confidence once we realise that Jesus is the best way. A lot of people put a lot of confidence in New Age, self help, wellness, old school tie, gender identity, whatever. It looks a lot like garbage to me too. Not without some practical merit some of it. But weighed as a replacement for the actual Lord of life, hopeless.
Then we get “pressing on, to the higher calling…”. A verse Bob Dylan irrevocably attached to music. Such an encouraging articulation of the live-up-to-how-God-sees-you message that Paul gets to in every letter.
He talks about our citizenship being in heaven, which sounds sort of disconnected from the world, but I take as bringing clarity to it. He aligns it with maturity, so the heavenly-mindedness is not a dreaminess or a cluelessness, more about being clear-headed about what is really happening in human dynamics, within the ephemeral structures of social and political relationships.
Funny, I’ve gone and had coffee with Kelly since the last sentence, and come home to lie back in bed and finish this. I have every day except Thursday off this week. Two four hour shifts, when I would have had three eight hour ones, plus six ad hoc hours. Facing the reality of under-employment. Speaking of clarity, I need to be brave and get onto my next move.
I’m going to look for white collar employment again, throw out that line, as well as develop the disability support work. I’ll sign up this morning. And I’ll comb through the Hire-Up listings more intensely, dig out some one-off disability support jobs. Sometimes people want to be driven for an appointment, etc.
I am feeling encouraged by working on Daisy’s car. I fixed the first of three problems, the headlight being pushed in. I took off the grill, the bumper bar, the lights. I bent an internal frame that has been smashed, bending it until it corresponded to a wonky version of what came out of the factory, straight enough to hold the headlight and the bumper bar close enough to their intended position, and re-assembled everything. Looks like a real one! Easier than I thought!
Surely I can mend some of my own knocked around bits and hit the road… That moment when you are through being inspired to be effective and brave, and you actually have to be effective and brave! I press on!
So now Paul returns to the thought he started in v1 chapter 3. You can really tell these letters were dictated. A whole parenthetical chapter, inserted mid sentence, which surely ranks among the most profound and jubilant songs of praise to God’s love we have… Oh Paul!
Now it’s how to live, since we have grace.
And here, in the sanctuary, with Paul before God, sharing his visions with you, it makes such sense! In the cut and thrust of life, it’s so hard.
Be completely humble and gentle. Yes! Think about what unifies you: one love, one grace from the one God, Yes! Don’t have the darkened minds, futile thinking, greedy insensitive lives of those out there, be mature selfless honest team builders, no one left behind. Yes …church as a safe place, a thriving supportive community! Be kind, compassionate not brawling and bitter. Of course! Yes yes yes!
Until it’s time to actually do it. The autism sufferer was throwing poo at me yesterday. It’s something they do. He was having fun. The advice is”stay neutral”. If you go on about how disgusting it is, it makes things worse. Very hard to stay gentle. “In your anger” do not sin, Paul says. I may have achieved that standard. But I didn’t even want to be angry.
As for the darkened greedy minds of the gentiles, insensitively pursuing meaningless gratification… Why do they seem so glamorous? How is it they make me feel like a loser? If their minds are so dark, how do they seem so on top and effective?
They used to talk about the Apple computer guy Steve Jobs’ “reality distortion field”. His knack for bypassing your brain, for making you think your life won’t be complete until you have an iPad.
Paul is like the realty distortion field in reverse. These verses are a reality field of undistortion. Oh so familiar words that are a true and real glimpse of building heaven on earth:
“live a life worthy of the calling you have received.”
“attaining the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”
“no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching”
“put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires …put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”
And so on.
The way he frames the faith here, his lens, has been the frame and the lens of my identity as a Christian since I can remember.
Still got plenty of Paul letters to go. I’ve noticed it’s often the same ideas. They are tailored to different audiences and needs, they have their own exotic theological insights. Here I think might be the first time Paul has talked about mature and infant Christians. BUT always they return to the vision of these churches. Safe, empowered, gracious, loving, god-like communities and people.
Don’t think… “Oh, just that again”. Think “another chance to be motivated to be a bit more like that”.
I pray that I might learn by repetition, affirm it over and over to myself like a mantra. So the truth undistortion field persists more and more between readings, deeper into the hardness and messiness of the road.
Christmas 2021 in three days. Nothing much organised. At least I have a bit of time today and Friday to think. And then to think about next year. Feeling quite calm and positive right now, strangely enough.
Interesting chapter. First of a few chapters of Paul’s various trials.
The Roman governor of Judea, Felix, tries him, and doesn’t find him guilty of anything, but won’t release him because of the risk to Jewish peace, not to mention the risk to Paul.
He speaks a lot to Paul, Luke comments dryly that he has some interest in the Way, and his wife is Jewish, but he’s also angling for a bribe. Paul is under semi arrest for two years… He’s allowed visitors.
It’s a plotty chapter with not much spiritual element. But I was impressed with Paul’s focus. His core business is telling people about Jesus, and that’s what he does, right through two years of enforced meetings with Felix.
Paul lets Felix have it on the subject of righteousness, self control and judgement, which makes Felix scared, but he continues to send for him.
The super efficient disconnected pointlessness of it reminded me of the “no biggie” scene in the Coen Brothers movie “burn after Reading”.
I’m back in Sydney now, Sunday, back to the grind of unclarity, of where next, and the work of trying to stay connected to Lew and Ren, both of whom have reasons to be depressed, and are spending a lots of time in their rooms.
Praying for Lewes and Ren, and for the kids at Bourke as I continue to process it all.
I tuned into the scarred tree zoom church this evening (indigenous church operating out of our church). They had prayers written about deaths in custody, which had everyone reeling. I would hate that to happen to any of the TRYP kids. It could.
A positive, Kelly and I enjoying being back together so much. We’re so happy, and good for each other’s mental health.
Jesus just wants us to say “yes” to his gift of love. And people have many different understandings of what they are saying “yes” to.
That first prayer, that first act of faith, must surely often come from quite an ignorant, or silly place. I recall some very weird notions I had as a child. And there is usually plenty of time to grow and become mature.
But that sincerity of heart, that often wildly misguided, initial trust and humility to accept god’s love… The angels in heaven rejoice.
In this chapter there’s all sorts of whacky stuff happening in another long period of Paul ministry, to Ephesus. During this period the faith spreads like wildfire.
Paul meets Christians whose theology has not progressed beyond St John the Baptist’s foreshadowing of the Messiah… Paul gets to tell them they missed him. Been and gone.
Paul does faith healings and miracles through the power of the faith. His used handkerchiefs etc. become vehicles for power. That confronts my image of him from the letters as the Bible’s ultimate intellectual theology boffin. And the idea that they are somehow opposing stereotypes.
Some mystics and sorcerers burn their books because they acknowledge Jesus’ name. Luke quotes almost in awe the market value of what they destroy, Others try to exploit it, by adding Jesus’ name to their general incantations.
Paul comments later in Philippians that he does not doesn’t spend much time delving into the motives of preachers, as long as Christ is being proclaimed.
The chapter ends with the silversmiths who make images of the goddess Artemesis holding a rowdy rally because rampant Christianity is starting to threaten their livelihood.
The other Christian leaders can barely restrain Paul from going in and trying to preach to what is essentially a lynch mob for Christianity.
My brother pointed out that Acts is one of the funnier books of the Bible, in the choices of anecdotes and the way Luke tells them. He’s so right. I found this moment from that scene quite funny: “The Jews in the crowd pushed Alexander to the front, and they shouted instructions to him. He motioned for silence in order to make a defense before the people. But when they realized he was a Jew, they all shouted in unison for about two hours: “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”
Christianity is a very adaptable faith that has expressed itself in very many creative and strange ways to the full range of human quirkiness over the millennia. The church is always riding rollercoasters of naivete and cynicism, power and weakness, mainstream and marginal, head and heart, nobility and corruption, zeal and nominalism… You get the picture.
Through it all the power of the cross still brings people to say their own yes to god’s forgiveness and love. That beautiful acceptance.
So we should not to be shocked or surprised at new craziness, it has always been thus. Cling to the truth, trust in the power of love. It is in god’s hands.
I’m not looking forward to driving to Bourke tomorrow, but I’m usually like this before going away anywhere. At least this chapter has prepared me mentally for whatever.
I commented on the last chapter how much supernatural support God gave to the conversion of Cornelius, gentile, into Christianity. This chapter shows how every detail of God’s intervention was required to convince the apostles that gentiles were included in the new faith.
So they really thought Jesus’ teaching was establishing a sect within the Jewish religion? Their vision was that small? Reading the four gospels as a gentile Christian, is almost impossible to see how they got there.
I’m glad God tried so hard. And to their credit, when Peter lays it all out for them, they come right on board. I pray to abandon the smallness of my own vision as absolutely.
I had a lovely experience leading the scarred tree message stick discussion on Sunday night. That’s the zoom version of the indigenous ministry within our church.
I read the parable of the wine skins, the new wine, and talked about how engaging with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Christians had shifted my perception and understanding of a number of Jesus’ teachings. It was warmly received, and deep discussion followed.
I’ve mused since then on how I am something of a deadbeat in the world’s terms: unemployed, and increasingly a bit of an old duffer who isn’t as clever as I thought I was. Meeting the people in scarred tree has made me more comfortable with that sort of relevance deprivation syndrome too.
I remember almost a decade ago, around the time my business was failing, I was going to another church. Lots of great friendships there, but I felt my relative inadequacy much more intensely, such that I struggled to keep going. I felt shame at of being a loser who could not cope among a group of people who were handling life much better.
I have less of that sense of alienation now. My identity comes from the love of Christ, and the strength of my community, more than my own strength. Ray, the leader of scarred tree, has spoken eloquently about shame, which is a real Aboriginal issue.
Geez I am more of a psychological mess than I thought I was though. My friend gave me two small, 500 word writing tasks, paid, $300 to do on Monday. I’ve done one, she described the draft as “perfect”, which is exciting. Still labouring the second.
But it brings up pain and hurt over losing my last job as if it were yesterday. Why does it hurt so much? I was treated unfairly, ok. But it’s over a year since.
I find my self wanting to make a case to my boss that it was his judgement of my work, not me that was wrong. That in the face of sincere best efforts by me to make it work, to be the employee he wanted me to be, his sustained negativity towards me was an abuse of the power and authority he had over me.
Then self doubt… But he has a point. You really don’t get it, you don’t understand normal expectations. You frustrate people. You can’t be trusted to be reliable. You’re weird, a worry, a risk.
Arrgh! I think of plans that might give me closure. Write letters. Meet and have it out. But that’s silly, it was so long ago…
All this comes up when I sit down to do a paid writing task.
Is this my personal equivalent of the huge mind block the apostles had to get past to see God’s inclusive vision for salvation of gentiles as well as Jews?
If so God: send the angels, the visions, speak!
This chapter is the first time people are called “Christians”. Huge moment. Barnabas goes to support the church at Antioch. He fetches Paul. They preach and mentor there for a year.
I recall there is a moment in the narrative of Acts, from last time I read it, where the focus shifts from the apostles in Jerusalem and the spread of the church from there, to the adventures of Paul. Maybe this is when.
It’s one of my favourite biblical books to read as a story. There’s something about the excitement and freshness of it. And Luke, the writer, is a great naturalistic dramatist. He’s like the J K Rowling of his day. The prose isn’t fancy but the plotting and narrative choices are spot on.
Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.”
Mark 7:15
I love this teaching, I’ve returned to it many times to clarify my thinking. It came up in Matthew 15 too.
It combats a lot of dumb church culture about being respectable, in control and moral; about changing standards in society being the biggest danger. We all have evil in our hearts. It’s a leveler.
It combats a lot of stuff outside church culture that links diet, exercise, being well-off, looking good, success …whatever… with being a good person.
Those things are all good ideas. I particularly noticed this time reading it that Jesus gave this teaching because the Jewish religious leaders criticised him for not washing his hands before eating. Reading this in the age of COVID, you have to admit they have a point. Washing your hands is a good idea.
But you can’t wash away greed, selfishness, bitterness, cruelty. Jesus isn’t arguing against washing hands at all, he’s against feeling entitled and smug because you can present an Instagram-ready exterior.
The arrangement of the stories is designed for extreme contrast. Jesus has just finished offending the male leaders of his own Jewish culture. And then he can’t refuse the humble faith of a non-Jewish, woman, whose daughter he heals. Smash the patriarchy, Jesus! Inclusion not exclusion!
I spent a happy day doing carpentry yesterday, I made a wood box for Kelly’s market stall in two weeks’ time.
But I planned only to do that for the morning, and get onto life-stuff in the afternoon. I didn’t, and now I feel like it’s a stress issue. So praying i have the discipline to get onto it today.
My thinking is still very bitsy and disorganised. High stress levels, tempted to just bury my head in the sand. But here’s Jesus saying don’t focus on what is outside influencing you, look after your heart, it’s more important than the chaos. Takes some trust.
She would read the Bible to me every night when I was a child. And when the notes ran out, she gave me the choice, and I always chose this passage.
I took it as an illustration of the same creative power by which God made the world. Metaphor seems too grand for a kid, it was a vibe. A vibe about what God is like, and what he can do.
Take a bunch of bones and knit them into bodies, take the bodies and breathe life into them. I had no trouble believing God who made everything could orchestrate the vivid scenes that this passage fired up in my mind, kids are like that.
Ezekiel does a stick trick in the second half of the passage that sort of repeats the bones vision, on a national scale. He writes “Israel” on one stick, and “Judah” on another stick, and then holds them together, like they are a single stick, a promise that the divided kingdom of the Jews will be one again.
Mum showed a judicious sense of drama and used to stop reading before she got to that bit. As sheer theatre, it’s somewhat anti-climactic after the bones vision.
It’s messianic, the Messiah is simply called king David. But the ruler of the joined sticks has the characteristics of the eternal kingship of God.
And here I am at 57, days into 2020. Zero honeymoon of new-year optimism as our bushfire season is catastrophically exacerbated by climate change, and the middle East seems destabilised, maybe headed for war.
I have a tiny role in that messianic vision of nations bought together under god’s love and grace, Jesus’ work happening now and promising a grace-filled and blessed destination for eternity.
The bones trick, people having new life, getting beating hearts and the breath of God as he washes away their idols… I see that regularly in the salvation army, and at church too. It’s beautiful.
The stick trick, I do believe, I draw great comfort from it. But it seems like a few steps back more than a few steps forward at the moment. It seems like the more amazing one right now.
Give me, and use me for, peace, life and hope in 2020 lord Jesus Christ.
inheriting the earth 