Hebrews 11

Classic chapter, the heroes of the faith. I’ve been a bit frightened of doing it justice, which is ultimately a silly response. God’s word deserves respect but it deserves engagement more. If you can’t give God praise, give him struggle. Did Psalms teach me nothing?

This is just a great chapter about faith, the hope in something invisible. The eternity that Ecclesiastes said is hard-wired into our hearts, expressing itself as an awe of something not known, but greater:

“All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth.”

“welcomed them from a distance…” A lens for the whole old testament, connecting it to Christ.

Having emphasised devastatingly the disconnect Christ made with the Israelite religious system, now we have this magnificent connection: faith. It’s surely one of the best sweeps through the whole narrative so far.

And of course these people have flaws. Rahab Jephthah, Samson, David. It’s a shock every time to remember that David was a murderer.

I was also interested in his identification of their sense of being strangers. The unnamed ones who were beaten, sawn in two, and lived hard as vagabonds because of their faith.

It’s all setting the stage for huge encouragement. This starts to make it clear that the sharp rebukes the author has been making are not despairing but hopeful. It’s a vision, a spur, to the great lives the listeners could be living.

Thinking about my life, I’m a bit mixed up because I realise the flexibility of the work I’m doing, care work, means I can do so much more in the church community. Is it wrong to want more?

I’d like just a bit more money. Kelly is a bit miserable and would value the option to work a bit less.

Plus I don’t know about the future, when I’m retired, or how much I want to be able to support the kids. Whether I’ll be able to support myself.

It’s all a swirl into which this passage speaks.

Faith is a simplifying principle, and the guidance, the choices, it offers are broad. My feelings from reading this chapter are very positive, if confusing.

I’m nervous this morning too, as I’m returning to support the guy I offended last week, who slammed the door in my face. I hope it’s not too awkward.

I used to joke about the phrase “live by faith”, a bit of schtick where I outrageously took for granted my parent’s supplying my every need while I also berated them for not “living by faith” (“I neither wash up my plate nor my linen, but lo, it is done! Why can they not live as I do?”)

The phrase was coined by God in response to dialogue in habukuk. The prophet challenges God… how dare God use the Babylonian conquest to solve the problem of corrupt priests!

Live by faith, God says.

Maybe the joke’s on me. Hebrews, habukuk, God are saying things could get a lot worse!

But faith helps you feel OK about living like an outcast here on earth.

Romans 3

Salvation by faith. Were here.

It comes out of Paul’s discussion of whether being Jewish means anything. Of course that would be his central preoccupation. It’s organic to his story, from inquisitor to missionary. Beaten, jailed, hounded for preaching the salvation of the gentiles.

This chapter could easily have been the guts of his speech in Acts 15 to the council in  Jerusalem that decided Christians didn’t have to be circumcised. I like imagining that a “sharp dispute” birthed this incredible articulation of the insight that God loves us, sacrificially, outrageously, though we in no way deserve it. Context only reinforcing the point…

At that council in Jerusalem, James reaches a compromise where he proposes the letter that gets sent, saying circumcision is not necessary for salvation …So all they have to do is abstain from sexuality immorality and eat kosher meat. D’oh!

Such an unhelpful apostle, James. Stuffing up Calvinism from the get-go!

So I’m thinking what to write about the beautiful gift of God’s grace to me. And I wind up down multiple theological rabbit holes in the Wikipedia entry on grace til my head hurts. Argh!

I think Paul was preparing us appropriately for talking about salvation by faith in chapter 2, when he teased out why it is evil to think you can judge your fellow humans. I don’t think we can crack God’s formula for saving and damning people.

The different traditions, Catholic, orthodox, Calvinism, arminianism, Lutheran. What I know of them, which is very little, feels like an unsolvable Rubik’s cube (which in my experience, is all of them).

If you slide one colour into place, another colour doesn’t match on one or more of the other sides.

Calvin’s pretty lame sounding explanation of God’s justice seems like a prime example, if the summary I read is fair.

Why were some people randomly elected for damnation before time began? Because a) God’s justice is unknowable and b) because we all deserve death, all death is just. God is allowed to be unequal because God is God (see “a”)

If it means I can have a slightly more useful understanding of God’s justice, I prefer grace to be the thing that stays a bit unresolved on the Rubik’s cube. And I think Paul was suggesting that in chapter 2.

I think my most natural theological position is “narrative theology”, which is pretty much “if you say you’re a Christian, who am I to argue? Let’s get on with it”.

The wiki article described it this way “That is, each and every meaning is, to a certain degree, relative to the reader and their own set of contexts.” It makes sense that I would think this way, because it’s exactly what I would have been told in my arts degree, which in turn clicked with my life experience.

The downside is that I never quite get to the heresy side of the cube. The sort of “sharp dispute” that perhaps produced the pearl of salvation by faith in the first place.

And I do believe in absolute truth. Jesus, the rock, I love that. Indeed my arts degree, by describing almost all meaning as relative, only made that more focussed for me. There was a lot more sinking sand than I previously thought. How precious that rock!

The problem is that every time the colours on the “truth” side start to align, I flip the cube and the colours on the “human-heart-is-the-most-deceitful-of-all-things” side are going out of whack…

Wikipedia’s great, but it is drowning out the spirit voice today.

That voice is giving me a feeling of freedom, of confidence. I feel a sense of comfort in my faith, in verbalising and living in it, rather than mostly writing as I do here. I gave a stumbling talk to the boys at deadly warriors a couple of weeks ago. It felt unfamiliar, but great. I did an announcement at church which I scripted but it was heartfelt and conversational. I feel like I’m getting the words.

I have a sense of growing opportunities and lessening spiritual inhibitions. That’s what I’ll pray about out of today’s passage.

Romans 1 part 3

I’ll stop talking about homosexuality soon, but I want to have a thought bubble about how it will play out.

Churches will probably split on the issue.

My Anglican diocese is more likely than not to become his own independent no-gay-clergy branch of the Australian Anglicans, probably sparking an identity crisis for my own beloved local church.

Homophobia in general will continue to lessen, because it’s no longer a marginalised and demonised lifestyle. But a generalised cultural war between liberal and conservative Christians may sharpen.

I’m someone who I guess combines elements of both, I’ll either be valuable or irrelevant. And possibly stressed.

There being more gay-friendly churches, there will be more openly gay Christians.

People who go to non-gay-friendly churches may experience a gay person being the only other Christian at work. They’ll think about whether to go for jobs at gay-friendly Christian not-for-profits.

Churches with differing views will have to decide whether to join forces for public events like carols by candlelight, walk against want, etc.

People from non gay churches will have kids who follow the faith to the letter other than marrying same sex, and think about whether to go to their baptisms, celebrate Christmas and Easter together…

A practical de-escalation is inevitable. It may come too late for the church to avoid further loss of respect as a place to find meaning for the general populace, but that ok. It’s all in God’s hands.

And maybe then the issue will finally be cool enough for me to calmly form my own informed opinion about what scriptures are actually saying on the subject. Except I’ll be dead. And I’ll know anyway. Up in hetero heaven.

Enough!

I’m struggling to get organised this week, still don’t know about deadly warriors youth group this afternoon which won’t happen if I don’t go, but requires missing some of my most valuable training and isn’t organised. I could easily cancel. Decisions decisions!

Anyway Paul’s message in chapter one is really quite simple: all have sinned, all need God.

I’m finding him easier to read if a think of him as a gospel salesman. He can’t say anything without coming back to his sales theme.

If Paul was a real estate agent and you said “good morning” he’d answer “yes, it is a particularly good morning for this sunny northern aspect with park views, enjoying the peace of mind that comes from knowing you have great access to public transport, local cafes and the catchment area for the best schools, schools that you know your children deserve. My sincere hope is that you and your family can have that peace of mind too”.

It’s already clear that his sales pitch is for salvation by faith in Jesus alone. It’s going to be a great ride! Which I’m going to try to be a lot less wordy about!

Matthew 8

This is more of a PowerPoint show than a biography. A playlist of greatest hits, organised by genre.

Which of course draws attention to how things are ordered and the editing choices.

We’ve had three amazing chapters of Jesus’teaching, today is a series of his acts showing his power, and the responses.

It starts with healings, which are examples of the faith of the recipients as well as Jesus’ power.

He has power over sickness, but he is excited by those with enough faith to ask for healing. This is a practical example of the themes from the sermon. Just ask, and you will be given.

It’s so easy to forget to ask, to carry all your problems alone.

The healings are put in the context of fulfilling scriptures, as Matthew does.

Next the power over nature, (calming a storm); and the forces of darkness (sending demons from two men into pigs).

The responses vary. The non Jewish Centurion earns counter-intuitive praise from Jesus for his faith. The Roman military commander recognised power when he saw it.

The disciples aren’t quite there yet, they are amazed at Jesus’ command of the weather. “Who is this man?”. You wonder who they thought when they dropped everything and followed him. Maybe they thought it would be just for a few days or a week, to find out what “fishers of men” meant.

The locals want rid of him. The herd of pigs full of demons, running into the sea is the last straw. Jesus? Not in my backyard!

The contrast in attitude of Jewish people and the Roman hangs over it. Though this book is clearly a quite specific plea to Jews to consider Jesus, it has been accused of being antisemitic. That tension will come back.

For my part, I’m not sure if a certain depression is making me feel sick, or sickness is making me feel depressed. But I’m sad and struggling to stay motivated, and my throat hurts.

Not majorly, yet. I’ve had a quite producive and enjoyable two days not working. What bliss that is! Did some DIY. I’m also just out of practice having so much self-directed time.

But the rest of my family do seem happier than me. I’ll pray for healing, just ask.

Started looking for jobs, did a work sheet about my purpose in life that a salvo friend sent me. It encouraged me to look outside myself. I’m going to his retirement afternoon tea on the weekend. I’m enjoying feeling open to new experiences.

Habakkuk 3

A strong and simple song to end the book. A vision of God victorious, massive glorious and powerful. A Godzilla-like image, a giant striding through the landscape, lightning thunder, judgement and justice, terror and vindication.

I was imagining as I read if that was the only image of God you had. Not the suffering servant from Isaiah, certainly not Jesus. You just patiently wait though a time of no intervention by God, before this awesome colossus will come and smash your enemies to smithereens …and maybe you too.

It’s not a wrong vision, God IS an awesome colossus – indescribable. Its just a partial vision. Our revelations are all metaphor and incomplete in the end, because we only “see in part” as St Paul put it.

The Father, the Lamb, the Son the Spirit, 3 in 1, the ancient of days, a baby. One of my teachers at school used to like saying that us trying to understand the universe was like a mouse trying to understand a jumbo jet. Let alone the mind of the designer and builder…

But even with the vision of God he has, that doesn’t yet explicitly include Jesus, Habukkuk responds in faith. Its a memorable end to the book… and his song, in words we still sing’:

Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful in God my Saviour.
19 The Sovereign Lord is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
he enables me to tread on the heights.

Habukkuk 3

The vivid message about trusting God when everything runs out is true today as when it was written.

This little conversation of Habukkuk repeats in believer’s minds – at least this one’s – everyday –

“Are you sure this is the plan God? Things seem out of control God!”
“I’m God – OK?”
“OK, I believe”

Its laughable logic if you don’t believe – I recall a law lecturer parodying religion by saying “I don’t know, I just BELIEVE”. And the way he put it, it did sound self-evidently ridiculous.

And a glorious bright place his mind must have been, if only I could live there, in the land that is defined by the known! Truth defined by one person’s experience, and interpretation. If we all lived there – in his mind specifically – wars would cease! And we’d all know an amazing amount about the Australian Constitution circa 1983.

But I’ve run with God. And if there is no grapes, olives, or sheep in the pen; if I have no idea what the future holds, and no control over anything… I will rejoice!

Ezekiel 10

In this chapter the glory of the Lord literally leaves the temple. The big throne thing from chapter one collects it.

It is like a cloud, it goes from the holy of holies to the threshold and then it departs altogether.

The Messenger who marked the faithful people to skip destruction in the last chapter takes coals from the big throne-with-wheels thing and spreads them about the city.

This predicts the burning of the city, which did in fact happen a few years later. The bitter pill the Israelites have to swallow is that the judgement may be executed by invaders but it comes comes from God.

The sermon on Sunday was about losing your religion. From John 29:10, how we are sheep that can’t be snatched from God.

The key thing being that faith is on our part governed by free will. Nothing external can separate us from God, but we can choose to. And nothing outside of ourselves will put the belief back into us. But we can always choose that.

Most of the Israelites have chosen to worship the sun instead of God, in his own temple. But those who have despaired at those choices are kept from destruction by God’s mark.

God, Father I can understand, mostly, the challenges before me. But I really don’t understand your plans for those who choose to reject you. You have revealed your character, and that I love. And trust.

Proverbs 16

The most famous classic this chapter? ‘Pride comes before a fall’.

Some big topics here, the interaction of our will and God’s will, and the interaction of political power and righteousness.

For example, at first blush this sounds like a pretty verse for a poster:

In their hearts humans plan their course,
but the Lord establishes their steps.

But what does it actually mean? There are several such conundrums:

To humans belong the plans of the heart,
but from the Lord comes the proper answer of the tongue.

Jesus had a habit of speaking this way too, seemingly straightforward statements that don’t tease out as easily as they seem they should.

It seems to be embracing the mysteries of predestination: we have control over our actions, and they are within God’s eternal plan.  Plus, I suppose, if you are looking at the difference between what we think about doing vs. what we end up actually saying and doing… the plan can turn on a dime, but the actions are written in eternity.

Maybe its like the difference between temptation and sin, but with a positive spin: thinking about doing the right thing vs. doing the right thing.

That’s not a king… this is a king!

The characteristics attributed to a king make one doubt that most earthly kings are kings at all: speaking justice like an oracle, detesting wrongdoing, & maintaining the throne through the value they place on righteousness, honesty and truth. The mere brightening of their face brings life – like a raincloud in spring.

There are a lot of proverbs about humility interspersed. I mean, said no earthly king virtually ever:

Better to be lowly in spirit along with the oppressed
    than to share plunder with the proud.

Maybe that is the point. We’ve had a few proverbs about the character of the Lord just before this group: the Lord atones for sins, engineers peace, works out everything for a proper end and sees the true motives behind our actions.

The ideal of kingship could only be fulfilled by God. For us citizens, following the king’s ethic is associated with all sorts of rewards – prosperity, blessing, a fountain of life, healing.

So we have here this complex interplay of responsibility for our choices and actions,  being governed by higher authority and inspired by holy example.  Its urging us to be mindful before we act, and remember that our actions are eternal and become God’s plan for good or ill.

Proverbs 5

Still doing wisdom for young men – of course adultery is on the list. There’s a lot of it about these days, and from the tone of this, there was then too.

It mixes morality and practicality. It says a life of lusting strangers is foolish as well as wrong. Mostly foolish actually now I look again. But they bolster each other. It is giving you self-talk so you can work on your discipline.

While not an active adulterer thank God, I know all about the temptations of it. I’d hoped it might lessen, but it gets worse in some ways as you age and are tempted to wallow in mourning your youth. All young people start to look poignantly attractive to you.

The writer knows it – he wishes for guys happiness in the wife of their youth. Mind you, Solomon’s empathy on this subject is pretty hollow, if it’s him. Solomon in all his glory never has a wife of his youth like mine!

The negative reinforcement focuses on what a waste of time and energy it is, how it can ruin you, send you broke, and won’t deliver ultimately of the things that will keep you happy. It gets you to pre-visualise the end of your life and think about all that that you may have lost, thrown away for lust.

It has a sense of the aimlessness of both cheaters which I thought was really wise… Both drifting ‘She gives no thought to the way of life; her paths wander aimlessly, but she does not know it.‘

Mainstream society has largely thrown off the shame of sex outside marriage, but the underlying wisdom of this has held true in that most people spend the majority of their lives in monogamous relationships even so.

Cheating is still regarded immoral because few can deny the pain it causes in service of instant gratification. On the other hand there is little patience with dysfunctional relationships, hence the serial monogamy.

I do think the Christian ethic of the infinite value of every soul has a lot to contribute to expectation management in relationships. If you just toss relationships aside as they go bad, you are putting off learning to love. Chemistry is a flawed ideal for long term relationships, compared to love.

However, I also have known many relationships so bad I accepted they needed to end.

Casual sex remains almost completely irresistible to a lot of people for a while, but also for most unsustainable.

The urge is way strong, but the repetition seems to mean you have to be a little bit mad not to want after a while move on to something richer and deeper. And I mean all the other amazing stuff other than sex life has to offer, as well as richer and deeper for romance.

It ends with a warning that God is watching, knowing all. But it seemed not so much a threat as a reminder of the inevitable.

When five year olds have chocolate around their mouths, after being left alone in a room with chocolate, and they say they have no idea what happened to the chocolate …that is how our double standards, our sophisticated rationalisations over lust, look to God.

To me it has the same impatient ‘can’t we just skip the bullshit?’ tone when Adam and Eve cover themselves with leaves after listening to the devil.

It’s a great chapter, very helpful.

Job 34

Elihu continues to speak, and will for several chapters.

He seems here to be saying exactly the same argument as the friends have made thus far.

He’s highly critical of Job. He devotes a stanza to each of these concepts: God is all powerful. He is just. He knows and sees all.

So if he has seen fit to bring down misfortune on Job, it is deserved. And if Job continues to say it is unfair, then Job is unrepentant.

‘To his sin he adds rebellion’ he concludes. Everything Job says in his defence just multiplies his sin.

It’s a bit of a yawn. He’s a bit like a younger, more black and white version of the older friends. Like a kid fresh out of theological college, full of zeal but knowing more of theology than the world.

Great at loving God, more to learn about loving his neighbour.

The thing that struck me most was when he talked about the contradiction of suffering. He really knows God and talks about the spirit a lot. He understands God as the sustainer. If he withdrew his spirit, we would be nothing. I visualised it as the valley of the dry bones in Ezekiel in reverse.

That’s his reason for rejecting the idea that God would allow random suffering for good people. It’s contradictory because God is the author and sustainer of life. And he’s right, in pure logic.

But all we have to return to is that pure logic is not wisdom, the fear of the Lord is.

I’ve got to concentrate until Wednesday. I have a second interview then for the job managing my department! I’m in contention! But I have to do a 15 minute presentation on what I would do in the first 90 days running the department.

I make a pact now to quote that verse from Job about the fear of the Lord at least once in that interview. Because you can’t run a faith based organisation on logic alone!

2 Chronicles 4

Details the lavish interior materials and decoration of the temple.

I was struck by some of the new testament echos, like when Revelation spoke of christ walking among the golden lamps, which are metaphors for the churches, it would have evoked to Jews the lamps that lined the interior.

The contrast between the finery and the grisly purpose of the temple, with 1000s of animals marching to their death, also intrigued me.  The hygiene work must have been extreme.  I think it had no windows. What must have been like inside! Everything gleaming with gold filigree. Was there a stench?

It is God giving the people what they understand, an animal sacrifice religion, as religion was widely understood in their area at that time. And for starters, they got grandest version of it ever, fitting for the God above all Gods.

‘God is love’ includes god only ever blows our minds so far. God loves faith, a positive response to him. He meets faith at a place we are capable of expressing it.

I did the church warden thing of reminding people to keep up the giving the other Sunday. One of our members who is steeped in faith, but less mentally able than most, gave me her copy of the Sunday paper in response.  I didn’t say “don’t you realise I was talking about money, not newspapers. This is useless to us”. Of course not. How much more our heavenly father…