Hebrews 6

The chapter divisions in Hebrews are, so far, annoyingly in the middle of idea flow. This chapter finishes the idea started in 5 yesterday, and half way through, switches to the idea carried on in chapter 7. Not very helpful if you’re reading a chapter a day, let alone every few days.

The material about mature vs baby Christianity, the milk vs solid food teaching metaphor, takes a more urgent turn than I expected. His point is that for grown ups, milk is a starvation diet.

As a mature-ish Christian I was most interested in him defining what counts as mature teaching. He doesn’t, though it seems the rest of the letter will at least exemplify that.

It seems like the Hebrews have heard and accepted the gospel, the news that Christ is Messiah, but there are troubling signs that it’s made little long term difference to the leaders. They’ve acknowledged that Jesus is God, but otherwise stayed comfortably culturally Jewish.

It has to transform your whole world view and speak in actions, or it’s dead. The writer is dramatic, there’s no coming back if you hear it and it makes no difference.

This feeds a larger pattern I think I’m noticing in the Bible, that hell is a teaching primarily for believers. The responsibility of being privileged to hear and believe the gospel story of Jesus is greater than much of humanity.

He hastens to add that he believes that the Hebrews are still a way off the edge of the fiery pit, but it’s a warning, a strong encouragement that the rest of the teaching will keep them edging towards the better direction, towards God.

It’s ringing in my ears a bit because our pastor likes to describe our church as “comfortably anglican”. And it’s the morning after the Anglican church in Australia dramatically split with the creation of a breakaway parallel Anglican church defined by it’s hard line stance on homosexuality.

I’m still processing that, and won’t go into it much today.

Initial impressions are that the way it’s been done is either the most careful way that concerned conservatives could have taken a stance, or a really crafty power play. Or maybe a bit of both.

How it might impact homosexual people with sincere spiritual yearnings (aka, all of them at some point), I’ve barely thought about yet. I hope the breakaways have!

But this teaching, of the necessity of Jesus transforming our cultural comfort zones, flows in surprising ways around the shape of my internal debate about it.

The rest of the chapter returns to Jesus being a high priest like Melchizedek. I think there’s a chapter and a bit to go on that, so I’ll also leave that discussion.

Except to mention that this part of the chapter has the stellar quotes. This morning I particularly appreciated:

“God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised. God did this so that… we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged.

“We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure”

Anchor for the soul. Unchangeable. Phew!

Care work is still ramping up, 22 hours this week, close to my aim of about 25. But not regular yet, still a lot of fill-ins. And it’s quite exhausting. But so little of the exhaustion is from work politics, so much is from the strain of meeting someone in their need. That’s refreshing.

I’ll hear whether or not I’m a candidate for the Baptist job I applied for soon, which would be much more relaxing and comfortable… as long as it’s not the path to hell.

1 Titus

Another letter to a leader. Titus is on the Isle of Crete, looking after the leadership of several churches. The same issues: first up, hostile Jewish Christians trying to trap the new faith into Jewish legalism, seemingly as a way of retaining their power and influence.

It contains a notorious passage where Paul affirms a racial slur against the Cretans… Lazy brutes, liars, gluttons. I’m quite ok with ignoring it. We’re back in time before the internet, before plane travel, before printing presses for heaven’s sake. Verbal epithets were the only thing most people knew at all of other races. Paul is careful to quote one of Crete’s own philosophers, and goes on to use the cliche to reinforce his frustration with the circumcision group.

His life belies the racist charge. I’m a Christian because he turned on his race at great personal cost to bring the gospel to gentiles. 

It’s time to start talking about the elect. I say start because I don’t expect to make an end of it. Spoiler alert, my guess is it’s too big for human brains.

I was taken by a quote from Bishop Desmond Tutu during the week, I think Rev. Mark passed it on. “We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.”

The elect seems like the new testament version of the remnant in the old testament. The group of those who get it, who are transformed by God’s grace. It seems to turn up more in Paul’s letters to leaders than churches, but it’s in both.

Perhaps it’s partly a convenience. He can’t refer the “congregation” or the “church” because he is also attacking a faction within of the congregations, the circumcision group. So this description differentiates the true believers.

But it’s also deeply theological. He has a humble sense that his ministry is merely revealing those God has chosen before time. He has a burden that gentiles are among the elect, he’s gone out to give them the good news.

Here’s where it starts to turn into a mind warping time travel movie scenario you can’t think too hard about. If Paul didn’t give them the good news, would they still be elect? What were they before they heard it? Elect already? What bexomes of the proto-elect in places Paul didn’t get to?

From the moment Moses decided to go to the west end of the wilderness and found the burning bush (how long had it been there?), The bible has shown God acting in an unclear intersection of randomness and fate.

Job wasn’t even Jewish, but he was elect, or at least he knew that his redeemer lived. Ninevah was a city of the elect, to the chagrin of Jonah. Nebuchadnezzar was. According to Hebrews, all sorts of people were.

I’ve been scared of the concept of the elect because it sounds unjustly exclusive. No matter how hard you try, if God hasn’t chosen you before time, it ain’t happening. No heaven for you.

But the remnant is far more encouraging. Why?

It’s partly because the remnant is so rag tag. In Leviticus, God set up Jewish society to welcome the vulnerable. And so it did, apparently. The story of Naomi and Ruth was not uncommon. Israel was a haven for widows and other people who would have been invisible and ignored in other cultures.

Also the remnant is comforting because it says that God is working his purpose it even when he doesn’t seem to be. God’s salvation plan does not depend on earthly power, popularity or success.

The remnant is the thread of God’s grace through history, the through line of God’s interaction with humans.

Maybe I should think of the elect the same way.  Not as a scary exclusive club. Consisting only of those sufficiently unheretical to make it to heaven.

I remember Paul seemed to say in Romans that the elect have always been there, in all times in all cultures. But I might be wildly off there!

I think of the idea as a comforting proof that God’s salvation plan, while counter intuitive, is in hand. And it includes pretty much anyone. God’s standards are low! We know that on the other side of the dark glass is love. And it will be just.

Personally, I’m somewhat depressed. I think I’m experiencing a kind of post crisis let down. Post employment crisis, post pandemic crisis. Normalcy quickly seems to descend into grind. We have a backlog of yucky boring stuff to deal with before I can enjoy the calm. New life rhythms being established, a bit of chaos.

Being dependent on doing a good job at work freaks me out, but it is what it is.

Praying for Ukraine, health, moderation. Family. Energy. Easter week next week.

2 Corinthians 4

Fireworks, fire, eternal flame.

This carries on with Paul’s powerful vision of how god’s glory works.

It’s come from failure in his relationship with the Corinthians. He’s establishing his credentials, after someone asked for his references, essentially.

There seem to be much more flashy preachers than Paul who pay attention to establishing their credibility in a recognisable traditional way. As if Paul would play that game!

He says: of course I’m nothing! You won’t see my credentials because Christ’s glory is invisible. My reference is written on your hearts by the spirit of God, not by me.

The fireworks, fire, eternal flame analogy is not perfect, but it came to my mind because fire is not solid.

The old testament was like fireworks, God intervening in the darkeness and lighting up the sky, moments of glory that passed.

After Jesus, the way to God is established for us, God is in us and we have the spirit, the fire burning in us and catching from person to person. It doesn’t burst and die like a firework, it builds and grows.

The old testament goes from moments of glory to disappointment and decline, it ramps down, but after Jesus, we ramp up.

Paul finished the last chapter with an image of us all reflecting God, getting closer and closer to god’s image, the ramp up.

We see in our lives death, as Jesus died. The fire consumes our mortal bodies. We become blackened burned out stumps, charred remains. This is the chapter where Paul describes us as treasures in jars of clay. He means we suffer in earth and our bodies ultimately pass away, but the catching, building fire in us and between us becomes an eternal flame.

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Verses 17-18

He opens and ends this chapter with “that’s why we don’t lose heart”. It’s quite a jump to answer “where are your credentials?” with “come on buddy, you don’t have to be so discouraged as to ask for credentials, that’s for people who have given up”

Have a bit of faith, he’s saying, turn your spiritual sensitivity back on and soak in what is actually happening here in this church!!!

Well, how flat and discouraging, how ordinary and formal church, and Christian life often is.

We have two weddings this weekend, an artefact of COVID. The public health rules have relaxed as vaccination rates climb, and two of my nieces are jumping at the chance to have some sort of limited (20 only, I think) social celebration of marriage. The rest are streaming it to screens.

Some relationships turn out to be fireworks, I suppose. But a functional couple relationship, a functional family, are prime examples of how invisible things can be the lasting and most beautiful things we can experience. Weddings give us heart. The promise of growing, building love.

I’m simply going to pray that I can stay fixed on the unseen, that love may abound. And for the happy couples, one on Saturday, and another on Sunday!

1 Corinthians 3

Paul is locked down. Well, he may as well be. He’s writing a letter to this church because he can’t get to them.

I’ve been feeling so disengaged from church, from God in a way. It’s very self absorbing being locked down.

But Paul isn’t self absorbed. Here he is writing to them.

The church he founded is now being run by Apollos. And, surprise surprise, some of the heavies in the church have a problem with the new minister. You can imagine them having crisis meetings and comparing notes, remembering what Paul did and finding Apollos wanting for this or that style or theological nuance. Such a familiar scenario.

But the point today for me is, Paul is doing something and I’m not. I can’t even get that excited by the bible let alone the church. I mean I’ve always had a very passive approach to relationships.

But it says here that church relationships are sacred. Together we form a temple. I’m used to the teaching that our bodies are the temple of God, but this teaching, that our groups are temples, obvious as it is, is new to me. Those characters I zoom with once a week, a temple.

Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.

Verses 16-17

Paul accuses them of being babies, and of being worldly-wise but spiritual fools, and finally, inspiringly, of thinking too small.

They have the keys to the kingdom themselves. They have it all, they need to be doing the work of becoming mature and awesome in themselves, not arguing over which mature person’s camp they will be in.

Well I should be a mature Christian by now, and I need to respect sanctity of the temple. This message has jolted me into thinking I need to connect with people at church.

What can I do? I’ll call Colin, who’s the co-leader of the youth group, and I’ll make them a message telling them I’m missing them. For starters!

I’ll brainstorm a bit more. I was going to work today, but my shift was cancelled because they couldn’t get anyone to work with me. It’s a gift, one I greatly appreciate. I really didn’t want to work today, after the cancelled iso. I’ll give it to god.

And to my garden arch, which is sort of God a bit too at a stretch. And I just have to finish!

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.

Habakkuk 1

An almost humorous dialogue between God and Habakkuk – or would be if it weren’t life and death issues being tossed around.

Habakkuk complains to God, similar to many Psalmists: “How long?” How long will evil triumph; injustice, unrest and violence abound?

God answers that he is doing a wonderful thing, raising up Babylon – proud, self serving, whose own strength is their God, who only honour themselves. Its a great description of this professional conquering machine sweeping down like an eagle. A few words sketch out perfect rows of war machinery and horses. Resistance by any kingdom will be futile.

Habukkuk politely complains again… its not quite the intervention he was asking for! The holy scriptures have emphasised the holiness of God’s character over and over… why is the Lord using this evil force to execute judgement?

End of chapter one!

I know an answer from many talks and sermons over the years. It’s the only possible compromise God can achieve to save some; working with evil to bring about grace. If God simply destroyed evil, it would destroy us all. We’ll see if Habakkuk gets that classic answer.

Sleepless night, awake now though.

I’m very phobic of work. It would be good for me if it was more constant, if I had clear and regular duties. But things come in piecemeal, and I can’t keep regularly plodding on.The unevenness, if I’m working from home, somehow lets the feelings of not being able to cope with anything take root. I feel similar about the prospect of returning to the office.

We are still working from home because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The longer it goes the more impossible I find it to imagine how I could go into the office every day again. I mulled over bitter feelings about losing yet another job during the night.

The ongoing contract situation is moveable and uncertain, I think I mentioned that before. And everyone in my family needs prayer. We’re all a bit rootless and messed up.

I don’t even feel prompted to pray “how long?” For me it’s a prayer of acceptance, resignation. This is how it is. It’s not the spectacular disruption of Babylon I consider anticipating, it’s just the slow creep of unsatisfying uncertainty and disappointment. Holding things together in the present, with a wing and a prayer for the opaque future.

Hosea 4

Aboriginal people at work were explaining totems to me. You don’t eat your totem. To my friend’s mob, kangaroos were sacred. So as well as being a complex tapestry of different languages and countries, this culture saw Australia as a tapestry of different animal sanctuaries.

That blew my mind a bit. It’s abundance thinking, recognising that, as long as you don’t get greedy, the regenerative machine of God’s creation will provide enough for all forever. A practical way of ensuring God’s will is done on earth as in heaven: God gave us all these animals. If you respect that gift enough to never kill all of any one kind, you’ll have them forever. And that is personally expressed through being bought up having an empathic affinity with a particular animal.

Today’s passage is about the corruption and greed of all Israel. God won’t allow them to point fingers at each other. You’re all equally bad, the passage says.

It explains God’s choice of prostitution to make the point, because the religious practises they had adopted in defiance of God’s revelation literally involved a lot of prostitution. Their spirituality and their economy was built on it. Sacred and secular, almost everyone complicit in this deep corruption of their society.

I say almost everyone, because the prophesy will not allow the double standard of victim blaming:

“I will not punish your daughters

    when they turn to prostitution,

nor your daughters-in-law

    when they commit adultery,

because the men themselves consort with harlots”

V14

Very clear that Hosea’s story was not about “slut shaming” Gomer, wife and prostitute, but exposing the exploitative patriarchy she was born into.

I thought: our society isn’t as bad as that. There is a lot of good. We aren’t as corrupt as Israel was. And I don’t know the answer. But I’ll tell you, greed is on the up and up.

Look at toilet paper. When the history of the 2020 pandemic is told, the ridiculous toilet paper crisis in Australia may be forgotten.

But you can’t find it anywhere. Most Australians seemingly decided that the way to stock up for the possibility of 2 weeks of quarantine was to buy about a years worth of toilet paper, so the shops are currently empty of it.

This is not abundance thinking, it’s selfish greed, admittedly fuelled by panic. But the toilet paper thing seems like a prophetic symbol worthy of the old testament in a world where inequality is dramatically rising, and political movements based on xenophobia keep winning elections.

God promises that the world does have enough for everybody, if we can just be less greedy. But still, greed is rampant.

And sexual exploitation is in this weird place. It’s more harshly condemned than ever in my lifetime, via #metoo and the demarginalising of all kinds of sexual preferences. But at the same time the internet swirls with unprecedented access to it. But I suppose no weirder than the contradiction of Hosea’s marriage. Plus ca change..

So our spiritual health is patchy perhaps, but not great, not at all.

Prophesy is about being God’s presence. WWJD. We’re good for toilet paper.

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.

Psalm 4

This is a kingdom psalm. It’s by David.

I don’t know whether it’s translation issues or a deliberate technique of his but David often plays with voice.

When he does, the psalms become messianic… You aren’t sure if he or God is speaking, and whether the servant of God is him or an aspect of God.

There is a bit of that ambiguity here, you have a triangle, God, David, and others… It could be Israelites/believers/mankind.

He’s talking about the comfort and security he gets from his intense intimate relationship with God. That’s why I called it a kingdom psalm. There is no real hierarchy in the kingdom of God, its building blocks are innumerable individual relationships with God. We can all be anointed as children of God.

David wishes others to have what he has. They will all experience prosperity, but his heart will be filled with unique joy, because he won’t be asking where it comes from, he’ll know it is a blessing of God.

In a way it’s self aggrandising. I’d say it’s from the time he’s been anointed king, but still hunted by king Saul. He calls their failure to recognise his kingship a delusion that brings God’s glory to shame.

But how neatly does that situation match our world of dual kingdoms, where Jesus has been anointed king, the battle won, his victory announced, yet the other kingdoms persist.

David believes quietness will fix it. If only people would tremble before God when they are alone in bed, be quiet, and search their hearts.

This belief that God is easily findable in every heart is a great boon to evangelism. It reminds me of my plan to summarise proverbs with the phrase “think for one second”. A reflective life, will often lead to God…

You can’t force God’s kingdom. You don’t own it, not your plan. But you can live it, passionately, and it’s richness will be evident.

Psalm 114

Is God material or spirit? He lives in our hearts, he loves creating. He operates though physical things. He saves our souls. Why do we have bodies at all? Does Jesus still have the body he ascended with? Will our souls live in a spiritual place forever or will we have resurrection bodies in a new earth?

This brief and startling Psalm, the second in a series of six used at Passover, gets to the main game: the exodus. And sent my mind off into lots of thoughts like these.

Israel was god’s nation, always foreigners in Egypt. It says they became his sanctuary when they left. Became his dwelling place.

They build a temple, a physical sanctuary, but perhaps the thing is that God just transformed the religious practices they already had by living in the people as a nation. We no longer have the practice, their temple is gone and we have many many different new ways to be religious across the world. But we do still have his presence.

I won’t have time to go on in this vein, but the psalm talks about the reaction of nature. The seas and rivers fled at the presence of God. This literally happened at the start and end of the exodus, the red sea and the Jordan.

The water shows respect, fear even, but the hills and mountains show delight, skipping around like sheep. (Mountains do look woolly in the distance).

Why flee, waters, why skip mountains? the Psalmist asks. Then recalls the miracle that involved them both, during the journey: of springs of water coming from rock.

God’s playing with the material world. The creator saying he is the master of reality, it need not be how it is, it’s how he wants it to be. A bit like the old Aboriginal stories of the creator jumping around and shaping the landscape.

And these responses of creation are in service of his rescue, the dangerous water becomes dry land, and the rock becomes life giving sustenance. Creation becomes part of god’s salvation voice.

It is described as trembling, but the commentators say not just in fear, there is a connotation of birth contractions. Creation birthing god’s people.

The meeting of their physical needs of safety and bodily nourishment is the promise of spiritual connection to the maker. Love and safety eternal.

It’s perfect poetry how, with very few and delightfully surprising words, it opens up and out into so much meaning.

The Anglican chant of it stuck with me from childhood as a choirboy, the image of the jumping mountains and coming out of the strange lands stuck in my young mind. You don’t have to know what it is about to know what it is about.

I subsequently learned that musicologists believe this tune is a strong indication of what the original psalm may have sounded like sung. It’s very ancient, seems to have crossed cultures from middle east to west, and corresponds to early notation markings found on dead sea scroll texts.