Revelation 1

Revelation! The last book, and one of the weirdest. I’m sort of excited. I’ve read it a few times personally and in groups, but this time it’s after emerging from a reasonably deep dive into the prophets. This book really draws together those threads for the time we are in now, and what will come next.

The first chapter puts the churches into a context of glorious spiritual significance. These little groups that, since the gospels, the whole of the new testament has been about.

It hasn’t been about the world as a whole as much as it’s been about these tiny communities.

The letter is to seven of them. But surely seven, the number of completion is no accident: it’s to all the church! My church!

Jesus walks among the seven churches, which are gold lampstands – sources of light – in this glorious vision. Jesus holds angels, one for each church, appearing as stars in his hand.

Jesus is glorious. John, the author “sees” this vision, but it’s a pile of superlatives that are beyond visualisation… Face shining like the sun, feet like bronze in a furnace, sword coming out of mouth, voice like rushing waters and snowy white hair. Very Ezekiel.

I always imagined Jesus quietly padding or even wafting among the churches. But when I heard Kanye West’s conception of Jesus’ walk last year, I was also taken with his concept of it being more of a stomping march. I’ll attach the song. It evokes immediacy and relentlessness and it’s a bit scary.

Regardless: Jesus is with us, angels are with us, we shine like glorious gold lampstands. We are a big deal! We matter to Jesus, intensely and moment by moment. We are the starting point and destination of this revelation.

I write this as I lie in bed at a friend’s house on a Sunday morning where I have nicked off church, having a bit of a break, lol.

But this letter, so far, is taking my focus away from my personal journey to the shared journey of my community.

It’s early in January 2023, and I’m synthesising thoughts for the new year. Everything is up for grabs really, things are afoot after a 2022 that has a lot of angst.

Stepping out, don’t know where I’m headed, but Jesus walks too.

2 Timothy 2

Gosh a little polyphonic symphony of ideas. Too many interweaving melodies of goddy thoughts to keep in my head. St Paul is so intense!

A quick summary that does come to mind is a “small hero”.

He talks a lot about heroic characteristics and their value to God. Being lean and focused like a soldier or an athlete. Playing the long game against the odds like a farmer.

Paul returns to condemning unheroic faults that I guess must have been Timothy’s weaknesses. Flee the temptations of youth he says again, having already said it in 1 Timothy. Hmm. Be more than just a chatterbox, either about silly social trivia or trivial theological speculations.

I get that. I have a tendency to trivialise when nervous, to oil the social wheels. It’s not all bad, but Paul has a point that it can get in the way of Timothy’s ability to teach, to be serious. Acknowledging the moment when seriousness is required is part of heroism, and leadership. Heck, Paul suffered to the point of chains, Timothy must be willing to move himself and the church beyond witty banter when the moment demands it.

By “small” heroism, I’m thinking of a strange bit where Paul talks about the utensils in God’s house. They are all equal. The left over takeaway food container is as important, if it’s in God’s house, as the most expensive designer serving bowl for special occasions.

I’m mixed up about whether Timothy metaphorically IS the utensil, or is being told to be happy using a daggy utensil to cleanse himself because it’s in God’s house. But I get the drift. Don’t feel the need to be flashy! Paul praises mildness, gentleness, kindness and endurance.

Though Timothy is just one small guy in one tiny church, Paul wants him to have a grand sense of mission. Paul loves to describe Jesus and the gospel with different nuances for context every time. Here it’s Jesus raised from the dead, and descended from David. Christ is God and man …of destiny. Eternal and king.  A living God who rules. Worth chains, worth our energy.

I got the job interviewed for. Working as the communications manager for an NDIS health company. Part time, four days a week, Fridays off. Short days, 10 -4. I like that. Counting down the days of freedom til I start 8 days from now.

I’m terrified of course, but a sense of rightness is there too. The small heroism required, the safe sense of a larger purpose to life, of a living God just there … it’s speaking to me this morning.

Acts 17

This chapter has Paul’s sermon in Athens. It’s one of my favourite passages.

It also brings back a memory of Billy Graham, who preached on it the night I attended his mission in Sydney in the 70s. It’s vivid, I can hear his intonation.

Paul’s mission journeys are road trips, a venerable genre of story. And road trip stories always deliver vignettes, unconnected except by the narrators who travel through them. So they become a series of mini stories about the human condition, linked by the spiritual journey of the protagonists.

Paul bucked the genre I suppose by having his catharsis at the start of his journey.

The Jews in Thessalonica who agitate against Paul are described as jealous. In Berea, they are described as more noble, because they are open to sincere exchange of ideas, to reading the scriptures and listening to God.

Paul is a man obsessed with his excitement over the gospel. When he arrives in Athens he is distressed by all the idols. He can’t live and let live. But his distress doesn’t play out as attack.

His sermon is beautifully empathetic communication, starting where they are, and emphasising concepts they will understand. I love it because it resonates as my culture. Ancient Greek society, cradle of western thought, and all that.

After years of reading about Jewish culture, suddenly we are in my own, and seeing how the message of the living God, and “the way” of Jesus, builds on it. It is the coming of the light to my tradition.

There is an irony, which Paul latches onto, that a society addicted to ideas winds up with a city jam packed with idols. If humans could explain their condition with ideas alone, I suppose they wouldn’t resort to the carving tools to create an image of a God outside of themselves.

Both ideas and idols come from human creativity, but one has the honesty (humility?) to be open to a spiritual or supernatural element to life that is more than the sum of observable experience.

Paul exploits the logical contradiction that the creator can’t also be the created as his ‘in” to talk about the living God, and Jesus as the way.

I was fascinated by Paul’s line about how idol worship has been, but is no longer, forgivable:

“In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.”

Verse 30

The Jewish people had this message revealed to them since the time of exodus. And their subsequent history shows how difficult this repentance is. Idols are a hard habit to break.

For my culture, ignorance arguably ended in this moment. Or did it?

What about the towns Paul skipped: in the opening verses they passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia. Not to mention all of Asia. There is still this random element to revelation in the plans of God.

I’m meandering. But it’s because I love it, it sets off fireworks in my synapses.

I love it because Paul convinces me. It’s reassuring.

I even love that the opposition he meets is mere sneering rather than brutal jealousy. Some Greeks draw the line when Paul gets to resurrection from the dead. Easter remains a hard sell to logical westerners, at its core. (But so should be the mystery of eggs, eh?)

And even though St Paul is a very different character from me, much more urgent and confident, I love that it gives me encouragement for my own witness.

When Jesus says “I am the way” it is both absolute and endlessly personal. Followers of the way all find the way from a different starting place; they have their own road trip through the human condition.

And Jesus, always Jesus, meets us in our human condition like the father running though the field to embrace the prodigal son, loving what is noble in our ignorance, loving us through both the dramatic reversals and slow slogs of repentance.

Even someone as timid as me can share that.

Acts 15

This chapter of Acts has the church’s first disputes. Their cause and resolution are very familiar.

Paul and Barnabas disputed sharply with some of the Antioch church about circumcision, and it was elevated to the apostles and elders in Jerusalem.

It’s easy now to see why it had to go. As a requirement to be a Christian, it undermined the whole mission of Christ. It symbolised salvation by law rather than grace.

It took Peter to remind the church of his vision of where God told him to eat previously unclean food to get the them to agree to let it go. A contingent of Christian Pharisees argued the opposing view.

But they were there! Maybe one of them was Nicodemus? And by the grace of God, after discussing it, they agreed, even though the practice had been at the core of their identity.

And think about it, the rest of the church council could have turned on the Pharisee faction. Their sect had martyred Steven, and jailed and killed countless others, and now, unlike Paul, they continued arguing this heresy. The council could have suggested their conversion to Christianity wasn’t as valid as Paul’s about face.

Grace all round.

But they told gentile Christians to abstain from non-kosher meat, that could have blood in. And sexual immorality.

The commentator says in context the sex rule was not so much about general cavorting and carrying on as the Jewish rules against marrying within families, which would have been much more of an awkward and disputed flash point for the new churches.

Abstain rather than prohibit these things. An important distinction. It’s still one of the most distinctive and at times annoying characteristics of churches, that there is all this stuff you allow and adjust for in others that you personally think is pointless.

The food rule allowed the meals the new Christians had, which were all in common, not to be offensive to the Jews among them. Ditto the marriages.

Like not serving wine at a church meal with teetoalling Christians like Baptists or salvos, or any reformed alcoholic. We’re saved by grace to have grace, not needlessly provoke.

It’s the only remaining law, the law of love for God others. And it can make you impatient with your floor travellers, over the long haul.

Then the chapter ends with a fight between Paul and Barnabas that results in them splitting. Whoah!

This is over risk management. Mark was coming with them, but Paul thought it was too risky because Mark was flakey and dropped out half way though their last trip. Barnabas wanted him along. He ended up getting him, over Paul, who carried on separately with Silas.

Paul’s objection to Mark seems coldly pragmatic when so many miracles are happening. I wonder if we hear in the narrative how Barnabas and Mark’ s journey went. Did God bless it?

So practical concerns are going to cause disputes. Our treasure is in jars of clay, as Paul would eventually put it.

My mind is still swirling somewhat, this is a good message into that. I worry sometimes that people judge me.

At the moment, being unemployed for so long, I get self doubt. One of my referees for the NDIS work only sent his reference yesterday, I had to hassle him. The application has taken that long! If people do think I’m a dead beat, don’t be surprised.

We had a weirdly warm annual general meeting at church where the officers were appointed and the accounts and activities reviewed. Zero disputes. This passage is a good warning to remember how weird that is and not be upset if things do get rockier, it’s normal.

Acts 4

The power of the gospel. The Jewish power brokers pull Peter and John in, along with the guy they healed, They threaten, they bully, they command them to stop. But there is essentially nothing they can do about the threat to their authority.

Peter’s response is beautifully polite… “We did a kindness to this man in Jesus’ name”. And there is the man standing there healed. How do you out a lid on that?

5000 believe. The message is very appealing. The confidence and insight of these unschooled witnesses “astonishes” the Sadducees. But they can’t surrender to it.

The Christians are of one heart and mind. They share property in common. The excitement is palpable.

Christian movements and revivals have started this way down the ages. The salvos growth was phenomenal in the early days. Now like many they chug along, weighed down by attachment largely ineffective and irrelevant gospel symbols. I remember an officer saying to me “average Australians havent actually been inspired by military imagery since world war two”.

Christianity is the largest world religion, 31%. Islam,24% and no religion 16% round out the top three. Peter can’t stop saying “Jesus”:

“Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”

Verse 12

I feel challenged, judged by this. I’m a hopeless prosthletiser. I love my church but it’s not as focused as this. Working though issues of identity and mission, pushed to the fore by virtue of unemployment, I’m confronted.

Acts is alive for me, at least. I’ll pray that God will speak to me as I read through.

Acts 2

A pretty wonderful amazing chapter in the Bible. The coming of the holy spirit.

The disciples get it! Peter preaches the first fully Christian sermon with all the bits in place. The start of the era we are still in.

I realise in the past I’ve been distracted by the drama of the show… Flames of fire descending, the miracle of simultaneous U.N.-style translation. We sang a killer dramatic anthem about this each year at Pentecost when I was was a choirboy. I’ll try to link it.

But the sermon is also huge.

I thought about the central claim: Peter’s witness to Jesus’ resurrection, and it meaning Jesus is the Messiah. Apparently 25%, of Christians in the UK don’t believe it. But 10% of people with no religion do believe the Easter story (say wha?), and 20% believe in life after death.

There was a poignant/funny graph of Australian religious belief that showed Anglicans don’t believe much more than the general population. Catholics and “other” (Pentecostal?) are creaming us in the belief stakes.

I do believe in the resurrection, but I haven’t really thought about it much as an end in itself. I believe it as part of the whole package; as a consequence of believing other stuff I’m utterly sure of. In for a penny, in for a pound. This story makes sense of the world around me, it answers my inmost longing, it just doesn’t add up that Jesus is lying about being God.

And if he’s God, of course he can resurrect. The mindblowing thing is that he can meaningfully die at all.

Reading it I also thought about chiastic structure. That’s the sort of story telling around a central event. A chiastic tv show typically starts with a glimpse of the cental event, like a grisly murder. Then jumps back “3 days earlier” tells the lead up to the central event, and then moves forward in time to tell the aftermath.

The Bible is absolutely packed with symmetrical and chiastic structures, with Jesus being the biggest. He’s at the centre of the human story. I suspect its something inherent about the intersection of truth, time and eternity.

So we can have Eden and creation at the start, and heaven and the new earth at the end. And Peter can quote what David and Joel have to say about Jesus and Pentecost in this sermon. Because God never changes.

I grew up with a fair bit of tension about the holy spirit because charismatic/Pentecostal churches were growing strongly, and there was a sense of competitiveness with the traditional churches. A fair chunk of our youth group swapped.

They were all about the holy spirit. Though their theology seems to have focused back on Jesus again now, as far as I can tell. And their contemporary worship style has become the default Australian church experience really. And as Jesus says, its all about unity as far as humanly possible.

I’m having interesting and constructive conversations about these kinds of issues with my friend Colin who I work with one day per week. He’s from a Pentecostal church.

Disappointment yesterday, it seems a lot of people have cottoned into the idea of doing carer work and the agency I was applying for is over-subscribed. I’m on a wait list, but I’m not going to slip straight into a job there.

Feeling generally positive though. And I feel a more direct engagement with sense of Christian mission than I have in the past, so these passages, and the excitement of the early church, are sitting comfortably with me.

Here’s that anthem. It’s actually from Isaiah 6, the first big vision where his lips are cleansed with the kiss of a burning coal.

So apt to the thoughts I had reading acts 2.

And I loved the drama of it as a child. The house was filled with smoke!!!! It is very Victorian, written by master of slippery chords John Stainer, when he was a teenager. The also wrote the hymn “eternal father strong to save”.

The only editorialising in addition to the Isaiah text says “oh Trinity, oh unity, …unite the hymns of praise we bring”

Indeed!

John 21

It’s an understated and touching last chapter.

In some ways the book has been the story of Peter and John’s encounter with Jesus. This last chapter certainly closes that loop.

The last time Peter featured, he denied Christ 3 times. After that he was at the empty tomb, but John was careful to point out that they didn’t understand straight away that Jesus had risen from the dead.

Jesus appeared to the disciples after that, in a house where they were hiding from association with Jesus, in Jerusalem. Doubting Thomas featured in that story.

Jesus must have left, and 7 disciples returned to their old life. Back to Galilee, presumably away from the political danger in Jerusalem, and straight back to fishing. They seemingly have no vision for any broader future for Jesus’ teaching. They’re back where he found them, fishing in their old boat. 

Jesus arrives. Having caught nothing all night, they catch abundant fish on his suggestion. Jesus has lit a fire on shore for a fish barbeque.

I wrote perhaps my only ever sermon about that scene, for salvos. I don’t think it was ever preached, little of my work was making it out of my branch by that stage.

I described that barbeque as “the smell of grace”. Because, as a reader you are wondering “what will Jesus say to Peter after the betrayal?” Forgiveness is not asked for or pronounced. Its a cliche Aussie blokey sort of scene, nothing is said.

Peter just knows. He jumps into the lake and wades to reach Jesus ahead of the boat as it approaches the shore.

Forgiveness and breakfast are the same thing. The scent and taste would have been delicious, the food abundant and filling. Jesus’ first words are not about what’s past, but about what’s next: “feed my sheep”, 3 times. Each time he also asks if Peter loves him, and his answers negate each denial. Over this scene, John forecasts the shadow of Peter’s martyr death; the bravery he will have.

It summed up something I admire and have kept from the salvos, a seamless connection between grace and action. “Saved to save”, they like to say.

The Disciples, students, are becoming Apostles, those sent out. John identifies himself in the scene, and as the author of the book. Writing it was one of his actions.

What about me, his reader? The challenge to respond with tangible action hangs there.

I spent a lovely weekend with my brother and sister-in-law in the country, at their new house, which is really a small farm… Quite a journey for city kids. Themes of grace and action wove through it. So much to inspire, to mull over and consider.

Mark 5

A another chapter about Jesus’power. These stories add interesting detail and colour to the nature of his power.

He drives a legion of demons out of a mad guy. They go into a herd of pigs, and the pigs then dramatically run into a lake

The man whose life is transformed becomes a powerful preacher of the gospel. He wanted to stay with Jesus and become a disciple.

There is no pecking order here, Jesus’ disciples are important to the narrative of the book and as readers of the book our focus stays with them. But this man is a star in the kingdom of God.

I don’t know what this means, I don’t understand demon possession, but Jesus’ transforming power in one person’s life is impressively on display.

And there’s something about the detail that the demons had to go somewhere, and were also in some way spiritual beings in torment, that hints at an epic battle against evil. They are frightened of him, not the other way around. Jesus almost seems to have compassion for them.

Then a woman is healed by touching Jesus’cloak. His power emanates from him if you have faith, she doesn’t have to talk to him or have his attention. And he can feel it, the healing touch, differently to normal touch.

It was a bold somewhat sneaky thing she did because her illness seems to be endless menstruation, which makes her ritually unclean. Which might have been why she touched Jesus’ cloak without his permission. Culturally, he could have been disgusted by her. But he finds her, calls her daughter and praises her faith. He tells her to preach her healing openly.

Then he brings a little 12 year old girl back from death. That power he wants to keep quiet for now.

Power over the spirit world, physical illness, and death. Power.

I’ve spent three weeks now almost in another dimension helping run youth boot camps. Its been powerful and transformative too. Most of these are kids are facing social and personal disadvantage like I have never known, so their life skills have to be a lot sharper than mine were at that age.

My head is spinning somewhat, a lot to process. The programs are run by a mix a Christian-motivated and compassion-motivated people who are not Christians. I’ve found it very moving, confronting of my culture, and coming at a time when I’m obviously thinking pretty deeply about my identity and purpose, and my next actual practical move.

Hmmmm… I believe in this powerful Jesus, and choices keep coming to me. I’m playing it by ear.

He’s powerful enough for that!

Matthew 19

Shades of grey. Jesus is presented with two issues, sex and money and asked how the super absolute kingdom standards he teaches work out when they come up against the practicalities and demands of actually living in this world.

He can be cornered into a place where he will admit the grey areas have to be allowed for. But every time you can shift the outcome towards the kingdom template, it is a thing to be excited about. Just because there are grey areas, it doesn’t mean God’s pattern is not better.

He treats divorce as mere semantics, adultery under another name. This is not unexpected after the sermon in the mount, where he introduced the idea that even entertaining lust or greed is the same as cheating and stealing.

And wealth, he says, makes it very hard, almost impossible to enter the kingdom of heaven unless you abandon it.

Both times the disciples are aghast. They challenge him to come right out and confront the logical conclusion of his teaching: that is simpler not to even get married at all, and that virtually no one will be saved on his wealth test, because everyone has some wealth.

Jesus doesn’t say “well duh” but he does by implication accept that most people won’t follow these standards. The point is to have a paradigm shift where you challenge conventional thinking about these things.

When they present these cases intended to show how impossible his teaching is Jesus says, essentially: you’re starting to get it. Why not? Why not live like that?

The way he deals with the grey areas is to treat them as opportunities to think outside the box. He treats thinking flexibly about these moral dilemmas as a helpful “what if” rather than allowing us to dismiss it as a crushing constraint doomed to failure.

That first reaction of the disciples – and our reaction, let’s face it – “but that’s impossible!” shows how perfectly Jesus has skewered two of the very things we hold most dear. Sex and money!

It’s not impossible. Not everyone, in fact probably very few will actually abandon all wealth and the prospect of a relationship for the kingdom of heaven. But everyone should be authentically challenged by it, allow the idea of putting God before these things to mould their thinking.

He points to children again, as in the last chapter. This call to flexible thinking seems to be unpacking what he specifically meant about becoming like a child.

Those who do say “you know what, I’m going to let my wealth go” or “I can do more good in this world unencumbered by a spouse and family. I’m cool with that” have freed their mind like children.

Jesus ends the chapter congratulating those who are topsy turvy: “the first shall be last and the last shall be first”. You may describe like a desperate and dateless impoverished loser, but if you have done it for the kingdom, you are actually awesome and richly know God’s goodness.

Of course, the surrendering of income I have done was not a calculated kingdom plan, just a common or garden redundancy. I can’t take kingdom credit for my relative poverty compared to last year yet. But this enforced change is an opportunity that can challenge my thinking as to what I do with it, and this teaching is actually a comfort to me right now. “What if…”

Ezekiel 47

This is a picture of abundant blessing. In Ezekiel’s vision of the new temple, a river flows out from it, growing longer,wider and deeper the further, bringing life and blessing to all the land it passes through. The fruit of trees that grow near it bring healing, the leaves bring blessing.

It flows into the valley of the dead sea, so salty that not much lives there, and it makes everything new, a new creation.

At this point it’s obviously a spiritual parable about the hope that is revealed in the whole Bible about god’s love and promises.

It’s like Ezekiel’s vision picked up the deep longing of the exiled people, after the news in chapter 33 that the temple had fallen. It started where their hearts were, talking about restoration of the nation to a new better temple. But now the vision has enlarged to restoration of all creation.

We talked about heaven as a family the other day, the three of us. A rare event. We’ve seen it, we’ve seen it this week that this world is a blueprint for how heaven could be. Maybe heaven is a future plan of God, a new place of escape.

But we know what heaven is like, and there’s no reason not to start now, doing what we can to make our world match god’s blueprint for existence.

The last day in Queenstown South Island, before flying back to the North Island. We stayed in a airBnB that was pretty much a glass box with views about this wide, but water level, of this beautiful lake city. Rennie and I rode down that track on cute little carts. I remembered, on the gondola and chair ride up, that I’m more afraid of heights than I remember.