Revelation 7

I like how heaven is in-the-round in this vision. God’s throne in the centre. Concentric circles: 4 beasts, 24 elders.

Last chapter it morphed to an altar, covering the martyrs, who are given white robes and told to wait.

This chapter the vision morphs to the four corners of the earth as 144000 are sealed as pure from the tribes of Israel, and then it returns to the vision of the throne in the round to which is added a great multitude from every nation, tribe, people and language, and the heavenly host.

It reminded me of Numbers, where the Israelites walk in circles in the desert after the exodus. They also camped in concentric circles with God’s forgiveness and love, the holy of holies, the tabernacle, God’s presence in the centre. Grace moving out, through the high priests, the priests and the twelve tribes, out beyond them to all corners of the world.

The Bible has so many symmetrical narratives. After all, the Messiah/Jesus is at the centre of the meta story, a sort of arch that includes the prophets and the gospels.

And I remember being struck by Lamentations: five symmetrical chapters of pain around the surprise centrepiece “the steadfast love of the Lord never fails, it is new every morning”.

I read up a bit about the mysterious 144000 Israelites  who have God’s seal on them as pure. Many weird rabbit holes there. Some interpretations go quite well until they get to a later verse that specifies they are all virgins, a head scratcher that seems to floor both sensible and wacky interpreters alike.

My thoughts: they can’t not be there. Narrative symmetry requires closure for the chosen people. Imagine if the only reference to the Jews was the fake ones: the “synagogue of Satan” quote from the letter to Smyrna.

Maybe they are mentioned separately and first because that’s how it rolled out in the Bible story: first the Jews, then the gentiles.

The last chapter ended with the sixth seal opening, death destruction and judgement in the post-Revelation, post biblical era.

Now we are assured there is a plan for Jewish people and for gentiles to come out of the tribulation, either constantly or in a rapture event before it becomes an intense period of tribulation.

I think I recall other references in the scriptures to a mysterious special plan for the Jewish people. We don’t know the details, it’s shrouded.

Paul talks about something like that in Romans 11, eg v28 “As far as the gospel is concerned, they (Jewish people) are enemies for your sake; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs”

He goes on to say: “How unsearchable (God’s) judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out”

So I just think there’s some business to be finished. Its something we don’t fully understand, but the 12 tribes have to be there. Why virgins? Stumped!

But the big picture of this heaven-in-the-round is that no matter how bad and deserved judgement and hardship gets, God’s sacrificial love is at the centre of the universe reaching outwards to include you. All tribes, all nations. Accept it!

A week fragmented by my variable energy levels as I rapidly recover from my illness, but have moments of collapse after I push myself a bit too hard.

Emotionally, two things have got at me.

I did counselling on Monday along with Kelly but not also Daisy, yet.

In anticipation, it brought it all forward from an ever-present background, like grief, to the front of my consciousness, which made me despairing and sad.

Having done it, and made an appointment for the next session, it was satisfying. There is a process that will lead somewhere. It’s a pause in, after all, one of the four most important relationships in my life. But it’s moving forward. Time and structure to consider the nature of how it might continue, if it is to (pray it is!).

The other thing disturbing me is that time feels like it’s rapidly running out with my employer. Standards have fallen, it’s just a matter of when I leave, really. I questioned the shift cancellation rules last week, and their answers gave me no confidence that they aren’t ripping workers such as me off hundreds of dollars.

But I have anxiety because my backup plans either in support work or in other industries aren’t delivering an escape route fast enough. Kelly’s work is even more unstable than mine. We can’t make it on job search benefits alone, we’ve tried! And my anxiety about the whole thing makes it hard to just knuckle down and get on with it.

Great tribulations. I pray for the disabled people I support, it is hard to consider leaving them. I pray for family. Dispatches from New Zealand, where Rennie is holidaying are positive, may he be safe! Making moves to get Lewes on NDIS again.

Church is re-entering the scene, a good time to be reading Revelation as I plan the year ahead.

Philippians 4

Starts the last chapter with a big “therefore”. Paul is saying that because they are citizens of heaven, there is no time for disputes between two of the early, trusted leaders of the church. He tells them to end it, asking a third “true companion” to help.

Oh! 15 mins on rapid home COVID test up. Time to see results… I woke up feeling quite dizzy and fluey. Negative! I’ll move on…

It’s about the only criticism he has for this church. They are a great church. This letter has taken them back the first principles, in glorious vivid imagery, to remind them how great Jesus is. Now, twice, he tells them to rejoice.

He praises their financial support of his ministry. Oh, the contrast with some clergy I have known when he talks about how he’s learned to get by on very little! He really doesn’t want to guilt trip them. He wants genuine generosity to flourish if it will.

Pauls love is flowing through it. He wishes them the peace that passes all understanding.

That verse turns up in the Anglican liturgy. I remember as a choir boy in at Andrews cathedral, hearing it in up to six services a week, it really stood out as something that keyed me into what Christianity, God, spirituality had to offer. This quiet confidence that there is order and sense, goodness in the universe, even if logic dictates you should panic.

Assuming the chronology of the letters is right, it’s Paul’s final blessing to any church.

I can’t say I got very far with life stuff yesterday, but I won’t beat myself up. I expressed interest in a meaty 8 hour per week Wednesday shift with an autistic 13 year old boy and a father who has all sorts of problems too. I half applied to co-ordinate communications for Youthworks, Anglican organisation. But realistically, there would have to be very drop kick young people applying for me to get a look in, burnt out 59 year old. I don’t really do tiktok!

I did choose to watch a movie with lewes. It’s so rare for him to propose a plan, I was happy to be able to agree. Then we went shopping for dinner stuff and had a good chat. I felt it was a good day.

Everything in St Paul’s writings tells you not to get too het up about the material things:

“I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”

V12-14

2 Corinthians 5

Paul struggling with the intangibility of Christianity in a material world again. And articulating it for the ages.

The flow of thought is still against the background question of Paul’s credibility as a Christian leader.

He is aware that his readers, by and large, will understand and share the eternal perspective, the longing just to be in heaven with Christ, that makes Paul compare badly to preachers who are designing their persona for earthly success. He going on about it so passionately to give them the words and ideas to persuade others.

It’s do or die for Paul. He’s seen their church so quickly threaten to be just another worldly organisation that loses the whole point of the Jesus’ mission of reconciling the world to God, one human heart at a time.

So this is not just about who-the-hell-Paul-thinks-he-is, these are words by which the focus and purpose of churches, and Christians, can be measured down the course of history. As indeed they have proven.

This chapter has so many beautiful encapsulations of what Christianity is all about, that are much easier to grab than the flow of argument:

1 For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.

5 Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

7 For we live by faith, not by sight.

14-15 Christ’s love compels us … he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

(“The love of Christ compels us” is on the wall of every Salvo church, staring down at the multitude of weird and wonderful events those halls witness…)

17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

I mean just wow. They work stand-alone as hooks straight to the heart of the good news about Christ. But if you’re coming off reading the old testament… so rich.

That opening verse! “if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God“. Recalling the tabernacle that the Israelites dragged through the desert from Egypt to Canaan. And God’s command to king David that he had to leave Solomon the job of building the brick and mortar temple. And the matching promise that God was building David a spiritual house, now realised. All on the theme of things that appear transient and permanent switching places in eternal significance… a wry reference to Paul ‘merely’ being a tent maker, perhaps?

And so it goes. What am I taking from it? Clarity. These are familiar verses, but not to be dismissed. It measures me, as it is intended to, and it inspires me to love God and tune out to worldly values.

Praying for Afghan women, I read another story yesterday. Thinking about truth, facing truth is the only way forward towards justice. Praying for the nieces getting married this weekend, and the mental health of the community.

Luke 7

Two stories of Jesus’ power. He heals the servant of a centurion, who is on the verge of death. Jesus is astounded by his faith. Then he raises the only son of a widow, as the son is being carried out dead on a stretcher.

The scale and adaptability of Jesus’ power seems to be the theme.

He talks about his contrast with John the Baptist, not only in role but style, and people’s ability to respond to neither. John is like a funeral dirge, dire doom-laden and ascetic; Jesus is like a dance, celebratory and joyful.

John is accused of being a demon, and Jesus of being a carousing glutton with dodgy friends but “But wisdom is proved right by all her children.”, Jesus says.

The wisdom is in the fruit, not the style.

I sat under the Aboriginal scarred tree next to a fire pit outside our church building last week, during a concert called “different colours, one people”, a celebration of Islander culture sponsored by the city council.

I was chatting to pastor Ray, who runs the indigenous church, who introduced me to his old friend,Al.

Al is a cross dresser guy, in his sixties I’d say. They had met at a Baptist church that convened in a bar, and was closed down at some point by the Baptist union. Seemed to have been a ministry to gay people. Crumbs, how did it ever open?

Ray has been accused of being a demon a few times, for the way he fuses Aboriginal beliefs and Christian theology. He’s had his fair share of idealistic churches that were planted and rooted up.

I don’t know Al, maybe he is a demon or a carousing glutton! I asked him if he is still involved in any church, and he said he had started his own group. He logged into Ray’s zoom church last Sunday, and clearly has a deep theological knowledge… Interesting guy!

The quote from Jesus about the many children of wisdom bought the scene to mind.

Luke slips straight into the story of the dinner with the sympathetic pharisee who is none the less confronted when a dubious woman weeps over Jesus feet and pours her most precious possession, her perfume, over him. Which Jesus uses as a teaching moment about the outrageous unequal beauty of grace.

May the god of all power give me wisdom, may it have many fruitful children, may grace abound in me and through me.

Luke 22

Luke’s account of the last supper and the arrest of Jesus.

This time reading I kept noticing the interaction of the human and the divine.

Luke has a tiny insight into what Jesus was feeling.

he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.”

Verse 15

Is he simply saying it’s very important? Or an element of determination by Jesus to enjoy the last meal with this crew, in this phase, marking the end of a three year journey. I hope it’s partly the latter.

It’s not a great meal in many ways. Judas is there, and Jesus knows the betrayal comes next. The disciples waste time arguing about who will be the greatest.

But it makes me feel known and loved to think of God sitting at the table, looking forward to a meal of wine bread and lamb hitting his hungry human body, in the company of ordinary humans, who have become close friends. I mean, what an image of God!

After, when he went and prayed he felt misery and cried at what was coming. The things he had to do alone. But at the meal he knew there would be comradeship, affection and sustenance.

The directing hand of the divine is everywhere over the story of a meal and an arrest.

The provision of the room is a bit like a spy film “follow a man carrying a jar”.

And Judas is a study in the weirdness of predestination. Luke says Satan entered him, to make the betrayal happen. Jesus holds him accountable “woe to him who betrays…” but also recognises that it has been decreed to happen. Too deep a mystery for me, the human and the divine.

Luke includes an odd detail where Jesus tells them to bring the money with them, and checks they have two swords, which he says will “be enough”. He knows he’s beyond protecting, he’s thinking about the disciples’ financial and physical protection. He won’t he there to do it himself. He braces Peter for his threefold denial. But how much of their path is uncertain to Jesus, from his viewpoint?

And most of all the amazing transformation of the Passover meal into the central remembrance of god’s sacrificial love for us in Jesus. The moment we still all share, one way or another, to define us as Christian. The divine and the human.

“Did ere such love and sorrow meet, or thorns compose so rich a crown.”

And I feel it, with all the churchyness and bible reading I’m doing. Aware of the divine, the kingdom.

On Tuesday, my work day, loading and unloading trailers for TYRP, we prayed over news that one of the boys who came to a number of the camps, who was resident in glebe, well known to the boys who come to our Friday group, suicided. At 15.

Same age as my niece Vivian, still about the worst thing that has ever happened to my family.

I lead the group on Friday, along with Pat, our other team member. Colin is away. I’m aware of depending on God as I think of what to say to them, as I welcome them and acknowledge country.

The news also came that day that my brother Richard’s surgery went well, praise God.

A call back yesterday about carer work. I’m through interview one. Time to consider whether I actually can for real wipe bottoms, along with other, rewarding stuff, for low pay and bitsy shifts. Yes! I do want to try if it works out that way.

Acts 11

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.

And so another day.

John 16

The third chapter of Jesus’ careful preparation of the first Christians. It’s hard, from my perspective as the umpteenth Christian, to understand how strange the theology was. And they had to urgently be prepared for a time when all would seem lost, when Jesus was dead, and the holy spirit not yet come.

His image of their future selves has wild conflicts. They will be pariahs, thrown out of the synagogues, shunned and even killed for their beliefs.

But they will be full of joy, because the indwelling holy spirit will mean they understand all. A lonely, tiny crew who alone fully understand that Jesus is the expression of the universal creator’s love for us, that his death means victory over evil and death. God’s spirit living in them…

“…will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because people do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.”

John 16:8-11

For me it’s Monday morning of self discipline week. I’m going to fully get cracking, imposing structure on my self, and starting to implement my future.

That’s a big call, that sort of prediction in a blog like this, because failure is easily exposed in future entries. But damn the torpedoes, I’m doing it.

Some resolutions:

• I’m going to earn my hobby time.
• Wake up each day with a structure of what I am doing with the day
• Things can be rescheduled, but not drift.
• Balance… Share time between housework, family, church stuff, DIY projects, career transitioning, home admin.
• Identify and actively avoid bad habits, especially time sucks.
• Generally start the day with a few hours of hard stuff: career transition, bill paying sort of thing
• Depression makes you self obsessed. Love the family, support them, know where they are at.

My hobbies: music, learning video software only work if they are hobbies.

I found myself watching video colour grading / editing tutorials at three in the morning the other day. Then I realised it had become a obsession about proving I am clever, not joyous. Creativity hobbies should delight, inspire and, for me, celebrate God; not intimidate people and be driven by getting praise for myself.

I don’t drop my hobbies, but I earn them as I would if I were employed. I can live with that.

I repeatedly forgot it was rennie’s first day of HSC year on Friday, but very focussed on video editing! Oh dear.

Balance. Wise use of time.

And that connects back to the passage. I keep saying how Jesus’ message is immediate and small, but also profound at the same time. It’s not trivial to read Jesus’ big words about the central salvation event of history and think “so I’ll avoid YouTube rabbit holes after midnight”.

I am his disciple too. My time, my choices, only happen once and then are written into my eternity. This stuff matters. All is forgiven, but every day is a fresh chance to write a different story. Every day is a gift from God.

John 5

Chapter 5 opens with healing by Jesus, of a paraplegic guy who was relying on healing waters in Jerusalem, a natural spa he couldn’t get to because of his disability. No one had the compassion to help him, but Jesus understood his dilemma at once and gave a permanent cure. The narrative flow seems to pick up on the theme of living water from the last chapter. The theme is that Jesus is the unique source of life, of salvation.

Jesus healed on the Sabbath, the day of rest, and the rest of the chapter is spent on him answering questions about this from the religious leaders.

Its a ridiculous question really, they should have known better. After all of God’s overwhelming promises of blessing; streams and flowers in the desert, a river of healing to all nations, etc. Binding up the brokenhearted, the marginalised the weak. Did they really think none of that would happen on the Sabbath? That’s the issue?

Faced with healing and deep compassion shown to a vulnerable person, they look straight past that to the an arguement over the correct day of the week? They ought to have known God’s signature.

Jesus makes the connection easy by aligning himself with the father, his actions are the father’s will. That just makes them hate him more. They can’t focus on the evidence of a life transformed by healing compassion.

Partisanship and fixed thinking are still with us, and how. People view incontrovertible facts through their lens, and can’t see what is before them. I felt flattered when my career transition counselor identified me as adaptable. I’m not that much really, no one is, its a constant effort. But the word has haunted me this week: adaptable. A valuable commodity today, I think.

Jesus’ call is stark. Believe in him or die. It reminds me of the old “two ways to live” pictographic evangelistic brochure. Giving Jesus the crown of King, or crowning yourself King.

Except the second way to live is actually a way to die. Is unsustainable. Christ is at the centre of the universe, it revolves around him. It doesn’t revolve around me.

I’ve been tuning into an indigenous church on Sundays and it’s interesting viewing the western church through Aboriginal eyes. They get that God is the same in all the denominations that came over in the boats: Catholic, Protestant, Anglican, Presbyterian etc. But they don’t get why the differences, and don’t form strong alliances to any particular one for its own sake, but rather for the local family they find themselves in.

In my lifetime the view of Australia as an outpost of England has lessened, and so we come to terms with our identity and the identity of our Christianity. I saw some of the work of one of my former salvo colleagues this week, who is an Aboriginal woman working on reconciliation.

She is a weaver, she makes beautiful traditional pots in her spare time, and clearly influenced an art work they commissioned for the reconciliation planning process. It has the cross at the centre of a woven circle. Threads weaving outward into society from there, through reconciliation conversations and ever outward.

Christ weaving organically into the land Binding it, but outward from the cross. Like those parables of the kingdom growing like nature. The threads going outward to sustain life, not being drawn inward to make a discrete object, such as a denomination.

Its a powerful image of adaptability, of how traking the crown off our heads can be a positive promise of life. That’s what Jesus’ judgement was about, giving life. A plea to live.

I hope my faith and that of our culture becomes more indiscrete, in a new sense of not forming discrete lumps and blocks, but joined up, adapted and woven into a common passion. As well as in the old sense of erring on the side of disclosure and honesty.

Mark 9

Some phrases went through my mind reading this quite complicated chapter. I felt too tired for it, so I’m just going to look at the phrases and see where it goes.

“The great misunderstanding”. Jesus takes a select few disciples up a mountain and they get a glimpse of him transfigured into the God he is, glowing and mighty, alongside heros of the old testament, Moses and Elijah.

The disciples misunderstand Jesus’ kingdom deeply. They get competitive, and understandably so. Jesus has chosen a few for the vision, and the vision is glorious.

It looks like he has favourites who are getting into the inner circle. But that’s because they think there will be a straight path to glory… Jesus’ talk of dying makes no sense to them. The inner circle isn’t what they think. Ultimately, many of them will die too.

“Exclusion and inclusion” The disciples think Jesus’ kingdom will be an exclusive hierarchy, like a company with an org chart defining who is most important.

They are resentful about others who are driving out spirits in Jesus’name and aren’t in their circle. But Jesus says it’s all good “if you are not against me, you are for me”. Not many churches are comfortable with that level of inclusion.

I love and often remember Jesus’ comment here that even someone who just gives them a cup of water will have their reward. He sits a small child on his knee and says they are included. He inverts the org chart… The least shall be first in his kingdom. He does pretty much everything he can to shake up the disciples vision of their importance.

But there are also strong words of exclusion here too. Hell, specifically, which is a Jesus concept. It doesn’t really exist in the old testament.

I skimmed the commentator for this one, and they said his word for hell would have been understood by the disciples as a comparison to the rubbish dump outside Jerusalem, which was usually burning.

It was put on the site where traditionally the worst kings worshipped Moloch, the child sacrifice God, instead of Jehovah. So the site was tainted with unambiguous evil, a bit like the site of a concentration camp in our culture.

He doesn’t use hell as a threat, more as a bad choice. His comments are almost like those “would you rather” hypothetical questions… Would you rather lose an eye /hand / foot or be cut off from God, aware of your regret over your bad choices?

Jesus’ way is the way of self sacrifice, unselfish choices, compassion, love. We stumble when we make other choices. After talking of the exclusion, Jesus swings towards to inclusion again. All of us will be seasoned by fire. We will know complete forgiveness, he’s said that, but our stumbling will be part of our story forever. The scars of the sin Jesus absorbed will be in his body forever, too. Or at least, they were in his resurrection body, as last reported.

What’s the difference between the excluded and the included? He doesn’t really get there, is not his main point. His words are in the context of ticking the disciples off for being too exclusive. But I guess it’s forgiveness. That is God’s to give, and at the end of the process I believe it will still be true that God is love. I know nothing more.

“I believe, help my unbelief”. A guy who has asked for healing for his child says this. He has believed enough to bring the child to Jesus, but he still has some hesitation. He says “if you can do anything, take pity on us…” And Jesus says, essentially, what do you mean ‘if’!?! “Everything is possible for one who believes”.

I love this verse, the guy expresses how it often is with Jesus. It’s so honest, and Jesus understands. It’s good stumbling; stumbling towards God.

No neat logical package after talking it through, but I feel peaceful and close to God and ready to pray.

I pray for more clarity about my situation going into this week. But, help my unbelief, it’s not all about me.

May I focus on others with compassion, not stumble and not lead others to. May I be generous, helpful, worthy.

Matthew 28

Quite a perfunctory wrap-up to the book. It left me thinking what a strange thing it is to believe in Jesus. The disciples found so too. They all meet Jesus in person post- resurrection and still some of them doubt.

There is no ascension in this telling. Jesus is left standing with the disciples saying “I am with you to the end of the age”. Read literally, a skeptic would ask “so where is he then?” There’s no hint that Jesus’ ongoing presence won’t be in physical bodily form on earth.

A key thing is the end of Israel. Scholars make much of the fact that the author has used the word “Israelites” to describe the people til now, and post resurrection they are “Jews”. Defined by ethnicity but no longer by an exclusive covenant with God. All the talk of the kingdom of God resolves to Jesus’ instruction to the first disciples to make disciples of all nations.

The book was apparently written around the time the Romans definitively destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, and can be viewed as a polemic about the significance of that.

It worked. Here I am, in a country unimagined by the 12, praying to God in Jesus’ name, trusting in his presence. Its a strange thing, as I said. To think his life and teaching gives me confidence that God wants to be aware of my thoughts about my employment situation, or my hopes for my kids.

Oddly the detail that always rings truest about the story was that women are the witnesses of the empty tomb – that whole point that in their era they were unreliable witnesses because of their gender. Them up against the machinery of church and state putting out a lie that Jesus was stolen by his disciples to trick people into the resurrection. What motivation is there tell it that way that unless that is simply actually what happened?

The narrative is supremely confident. The author doesn’t use emotive pleas, or tie up loose ends, or boost up the evidence. It’s very minimally and plainly laid out there, take it or leave it. And my heart accepts it.

God made a beautiful perfect world, in love. And creatures of free will, reflections of his own nature, in love. Into a world that includes cracks in its perfection, God came as a man, to show that God’s love is sacrificial to the point of death. To reaffirm justice and teach us wisdom. And the world has this amazing history of spiritual revelation, of choices to follow a code other than self interest, of love. As well as other choices.

Its a deeply weird story, but our existence, our ideals, pretensions, creativity, pleasures cruelty, kindness, ambition and failures, are deeply weird to account for by any means. And my heart accepts this.