Hebrews 13

The last chapter of what has been a magnificent detailed explanation of how richly Jesus replaces the old Jewish revelation, and there is no going back. Along the way, it draws out revelation, encouragement and warnings for all believers.

The last chapter tries to be a quick list of everything else the author wants to say, but (s)he also can’t resist getting back into the revelatory place of the rest of the letter a few times too.

I describe the author as (s)he particularly because a number have argued that Priscilla fits the bill.

Towards the end the author explicitly says sort of sorry/not sorry for the length of the letter, because while it’s long, there is also so much more that could be said.

The practical reminders are quite beautiful and tender: remember those in prison as if you were there, those mistreated as if you had been hurt, show hospitality to strangers as if they were angels.

That last verse about entertaining angels unawares has goaded me to dig for change in my pocket for vulnerable beggars many times over my life.

The tone is warm and positive after all the sharp warnings in the teaching. Praise Jesus, do good to others and share. The final prayer calls on Jesus the shepherd, not the disciplinarian.

The following verse struck me for some reason. It builds on the fact that Jesus was crucified outside the Jerusalem city wall, not a temple sacrifice. It’s that deep teaching dimension coming into the final salutations:

“Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.”

V13-14

Our model is of someone outside the institutions of religion. The church serves Jesus, not the other way around. Walk your path of relationship with Jesus, even if you look like a criminal/misfit. This life is really just camping out, waiting for eternity.

I’m very miserable. A big fight with daisy a week or so ago which has been building for some time. She came to dinner, we ignited her anger, and she never wants to see us again as long as she lives.

It’s true that we upset her a lot. That is a phenomenon of her life which she has dealt with by this action.

There’s so much more could and I hope will be said about it though. I feel a unique mixture of pain for my sake and for hers. Quite devastated on both fronts.

I love her, which keeps opening it up for me. But because I love her, I also have to keep closing it down so she has the space. But also I do need, and I believe it’s for for both our sakes, to assure her of my love. Complicated!

Rennie has gone away for a week to his girlfriend’s family in the country. That’s a strange first, particularly at this time, I think we’re all feeling that.

Mounting evidence of me being a professional, financial and personal failure at a time when I’m too old and badly burnt to do anything about it keeps tempting me to self pity and joylessness.

But I refuse to make it about me. So far it has made Kelly and I stronger, and along with the boys the four of us have valued each other.

I wouldn’t be as dramatic as to say I’m outside the city wall sharing Jesus’ disgrace, but I’m determined to walk this unenviable path sharing Jesus’ grace. Humbly asking forgiveness. Feeling others’ pain, doing good, sharing. Praising.

Ezekiel 46

I don’t think I’m the only one losing patience ever so politely with Ezekiel at this point. Another Leviticus-type chapter detailing worship in the temple, different in minor ways from the mosaic law given back in the Torah.

Reading some of the commentators… A lot of explaining and unpacking of the mechanics and process being described, not a lot of why and what does it signify?

The set-up is the very pure holiness of God, as represented by the priests and the sacrifices in a part of the temple the people can’t get to. This we had in the first temple. A new element is the Prince, for whom the gate between the people and the holy bit is opened.

When he is before them and among them, they are able to see and worship as the sacrifices occur making peace with God.

Then there are laws that clarify that the inheritance of the children of the Prince is permanent. It is to reset every year of jubilee, so any of his wealth anyone else has returns to his children.

This is a bit of an odd flip on the concept of jubilee, which up till now I thought of as the cancelling of debts every 25 years. Here it extends to property rights stemming from debt, as if the bank cancelled your mortgage debt to them, but also your ownership of the house. Not such an appealing plan practically but it makes a point about being children of the Prince.

Its not hard to see messianic elements to the Prince, Isaiah’s phase “Prince of peace”, which became a title for Jesus, comes to mind. But it is hard to understand.

I’ll leave it in hold and think more.

Rennie, my son, has gone home to start school. Kelly and I have an extra week by ourselves of holiday. We see her sister Wendy today, and for a couple of days.

Not sure how that will go. She’s been in a rough spot in her life and marriage, and she’s a complex person at the best of times.

I’ve already started having a bit of forboding about going back, which I suppose is inevitable in a holiday scenario.

I’m doing some precessing about who I am and the way our family works. I don’t understand why I had this holiday, but I think it will cause some changes to the way I operate that will be good but maybe a bit difficult in the short term.

Together in Queenstown before Rennie returned. Like the South of France in the South of NZ.

Ezekiel 30

The sadness, for Israel, of accepting that this is how it is meant to be. Like death. That person you need most is not coming back.

God pushes us forward to trust in him. The Israelites hate this new adventure, where Babylon smashes their culture and their offspring. They want to go back to Egypt. A familiar, comfortable enemy.

This chapter of lament over the neutralising of Egypt as any sort of powerful ally is all about God emphatically saying that there’s no going back

We need to go forward, into God’s will, no matter how horrible it seems. Israel has the example of Abraham, who God asked to kill his son Isaac. So do we.

I do lack courage Lord, often. Give me fearlessness when seeking your will.

Starting to relax a little, going into the Christmas break. There is a sadness of things that won’t change. My hope for the children refuses to become God shaped.

The holiday is coming together, 3 weeks in New Zealand. I’m actually looking forward to it. But Kelly’s sister is in a really bad place, getting nowhere accepting the death of her marriage.

The weekend with the extended family in Orange was really quite enjoyable. Not a bad Christmas.

Family is an odd connection. As we all know each other less, our lives continue to run in parallel, and we connect on shared cultural history more than shared experiences. It’s great if the experiences we do have together are good ones.

It’s worth the effort. They are relationships that feel a bit random, we happened to grow up together. The extra time allowed by staying all weekend together allow us to renew a bit too.

Sadness, scars going forward, and a bit of hope too.

Ezekiel 19

The theologically correct response to bad leadership.

It’s a lament, a song expressing sadness over the last Kings of Israel. I think it is part prophesy, as one king had not experienced the failure of his leadership yet.

The first two are compared to lion cubs that fall into traps, and the third to a fruitful vine that, ironically is burned to uselessness by a fire lit by a staff made of is own wood.

The change of metaphor signifies that the first two Kings, Jehoahaz and Jehoiachin were not of the line of David.

The lament calls them Princes of Judah, as opposed to the third, Zedekiah, who is described as of the vine from the glory days of David and Solomon, when the southern kingdom of Judah and Israel were one.

They are all Kings that I just wrote off as pathetic when I read Kings and Chronicles. But to the Israelites who lived though the cruel 3 month reign of Jehoahaz, he was the leader, he briefly represented hope. King is a role which parallels in many ways that of God.

Sadness, singing of how far things are from right. That is a good response to the failure of human leadership.

Anger can galvanise you to action… occasionally. But it must subside to indignation and outrage to be effective, because it only harms you in the long run to live in the grip of the emotion of anger. Surely.

Lament is the start of the process of pointing the frustrations of this wrongness back to God.

They hoped in these kings in some small way, or at very least were poignantly reminded of a time when they could trust in them.

I feel it strongest when narratives won’t be neat. When dumb decisions are made. When you can see the happy ending but it won’t just fall into place, whether it’s affecting you or others. The sadness of the fall.

Ezekiel 15

An analogy for how little use Israel is to God. Unlike a tree, a vine is no use for wood. The wood of a vine is all weak, thin and twisty. It is useless dead.

Vines have to be alive, producing, connected to the sources of life.

So with us.

“Frail as summer’s flower we flourish,
Blows the wind and it is gone;
But while mortals rise and perish
God endures unchanging on”

We can decouple from God and not notice the change straight away, like cut flowers.

I pray for those I know who want to decouple from God. Some are very close to me and I love them very much.

Ezekiel 9

I saw the documentary amazing Grace – legendary 1972 footage of Aretha Franklin singing gospel in church. It’s an overwhelming tribute to her talent and her faith that keeps rolling round in my head.

I started to Google about her personal faith, but of course I’d seen it, heard it and felt it. She says not an audible spoken word in the whole movie, but her singing is like Jacob’s ladder to heaven.

How drab did Ezekiel 9 appear, all this Doom and gloom, talking about the indiscriminate destruction of the faithless in Israel.

I want the lovin’stuff… “How I got over” not how I went under!

But it’s all connected.

Ezekiel got off to a thrilling start when the glory of the Lord appeared to him next to a river in Babylon. This chapter reveals the ghastly truth implied by that rolling splendor, God is no longer in the temple.

Israel is becoming the unchosen. In this chapter the creatures holding up God’s throne in Ezekiel’s vision are revealed as cherubim. The things with wings covering the ark of the covenant. As a priest, Ezekiel would never have seen those, even they didn’t enter the holy of holies, only the high priest, once a year.

Yet here they were, rolling around the world at large. And the temple is full of people worshipping idols. Ezekiel sees God’s messengers slay first them, then people through the whole city.

The war that fulfilled the prophesy of Israel’s judgement was just another banal war. The New York Times estimated that in the past 3000 years there have been about 200 without war, if you define it as a conflict in which at least 1000 people die.

That says all you need to know about human nature.

A few, the remnant of the Jews, are marked in Ezekiel’s vision literally with the sign of the cross, a letter ‘t’ in ancient script. They escape.

Another messenger comes to Ezekiel, who is in deep sadness and distress about the vision, and comforts him about the few with the mark.

But the scene I watched of Aretha singing in that scruffy looking church in a converted cinema, full of the spirit. The sense of the spirit myself and my brother felt sitting in that cinema watching it, is because God lives in people’s hearts after Jesus, after Pentecost.

The glory is still rolling (and rocking?) and the wars are still happening.

The joy of her singing triumphed over the pain that inspired the civil rights movement and her own often pretty scummy life.

So I’m thinking about the connection of it all, and about how you have to have the prophets.

Psalm 146

God is eternal, God is good. It’s another praise psalm, and it’s a simple formula. And it’s beautiful.

His eternal nature is compared to human rulers. Even the best of them are a bad bet for your faith, because they pass away, their power fades. Not so God.

His goodness is very much in terms of care for the weak, vulnerable, unexpected, marginalised. At the heart of this boisterous cheer leader chant for God is compassion, gentleness. That’s the beautiful bit.

Less beautiful was the Donald Trump rally yesterday where the people chanted “send her back” about a Congress woman who was originally a refugee from Somalia.

No matter how far you go, beyond citizenship all the way to Capitol Hill, at any moment you can still be hated as a foreigner if you aren’t white. Thrown out of the circle of acceptance. If you have an opinion people disagree with, your race and origin can always be used to attack you.

We watched a sad documentary walking though the racist booing for over a year of Adam Goodes, an indigenous footballer who was made Australian of the year, he played a legendary 375 Premier league matches, but skipped his retirement parade on the field because he anticipated being booed so much. As Australian of the year he expected he had a platform to represent indigenous causes. The acceptance was withdrawn by the crowds when he tried to have a voice.

The Lord watches over the foreigner, says David, upholds the oppressed, lifts up those who are bowed down, sustains the fatherless and the widow. This is our God, it’s who I want to be, my crowd!

Give me a head full of praise today. I’m not going into work, I’m heading off to go bushwalking with my son, a little school holiday escapade. Let my praise be natural, not preachy, but clear and honest.

Psalm 137

Oh it’s that psalm. Not merely a hit for Boney M, as if that weren’t distracting enough (…by the rivers of Babylon…) but also the one that ends with the happy thought of violently killing the infants of your enemy.

Is it the lost 3rd verse of the song? In the Boney M recording session the producer said “is it just me or is that bit about smashing baby heads not working?”

Kelly, my wife, quotes this verse to Islamophobes, you know, who say Islam is an inherently violent and bloodthirsty religion. It’s not hard to characterise Christianity that way too if you want to, by digging out verses like this. She studies with a number of Muslim believers and she says in practice their culture of empathy and hospitality puts many a Christian to shame.

The commentators ultimately conclude that this verse is an old testament thing. We’re taught better in the new testament.

But even Jeremiah taught them not to be like this. In chapter 29, his letter to the exiles told them to become functioning citizens of Babylon, to prosper, have children, and wait out the prophesied 70 years praying blessing for the nation they were sent to.

However the memory of what they have lost is still too raw for them here. The images of the Israelite’s own children being dashed on the rocks would have been seared into the memory of the exiles, it was standard procedure for conquering armies, including the Babylonians.

The Israelites weren’t even particularly planning to personally execute this cosmic revenge. They were recalling the prophesy of Isaiah that the Babylonians would suffer that on their day of judgement at the hands of yet another Empire.

So watching their children killed, among other horrors, then dragged off to a foreign land and told to sing a joyous song …they instead allow themselves the joy of imagining the same fate eventually being visited on their captors. It’s still not exactly “love your enemies”, I agree, but I can see the temptation.

The psalm is poignant. The people subjugated and in a foreign country, remembering Zion, weeping, and having their culture laughed at. Reminiscent of Jesus being given a crown of thorns and called king of the jews. Promising not to forget God and Zion, but seeing no tangible hope, bitterly remembering their “frenemies” neighbouring Edom goading Babylon on, enjoying their destruction. Ending with the memory of their children being mercilessly slaughtered.

I suppose it’s the sadness of judgement. The Israelites have suffered it, the Babylonians will suffer it. Death, violent or gentle, sooner or later will come to us all.

And those who are left will struggle with the spirituality of raw emotion as Israel does here.

Wild thoughts will either turn you to God or harden your heart, maybe making a God of revenge.

The Israelites are presently channeling their intense homesickness into promises to never forget Jerusalem, their spiritual home. But I think, over time they will learn to sing their songs to their children in the strange land.

In fact, that’s a strong speculation of how the book of Psalms came to be. That it’s a portable temple of words. Prayers, not stones, so they can love God with hearts not rituals.

The Israelites here appear have the wisdom to allow God to judge the cruelty of Babylon, but not yet the grace to forgive it, not to indulge in judgement as shadenfreud.

There’s a lot to learn about sadness, guilt and rage here. Sanctifying our emotions is complex work. God doesn’t want emotionless robots. Jesus was not a picture of that. The firehose of emotion is to be channeled by wisdom towards deepening our capacity for love, and sharpening our priorities.

Psalm 94

…. And vengence for the wicked.

This Psalm goes a step further from the visions of safety and triumphant goodness of the past few Psalms. It recognises shocking, abusive, exploitative cruelty.

As if God’s wouldn’t know about this. He who made the ear wouldn’t hear, who made the eye wouldn’t see.

It sets out 2 paths. One of discipline and one of destruction. Blessed is he who is disciplined.

The behaviour that brings about the destruction of the wicked: opportunistically killing the vulnerable, is the discipline that almost overwhelmes the righteous.

The wicked will band together, take charge and seem to be winning, but have no doubt that you’ll want to be on god’s side.

I’m quite down at the moment, and I can relate to the idea that both the paths are a bit miserable. It’s not fun being disciplined.

It sounds silly in this cosmic level of things, but as a family we just keep hitting obstacles at the moment. My wife at one point had no phone plan, home internet or bank access. Plus her study portal access was out. Kids have health and employment issues.

All these expensive things happened: printer broke, dishwasher, I broke a window, couch legs broke… It went on. You know when you feel like you can’t seem to win a trick?

And it’s true that when you are feeling sorry for yourself, the triumph of evil is particularly testing.

My faith should be stronger, but it’s tested by these things.

It feels good to review it, set it out. I’ll pray.

Proverbs 30

An  odd chapter.

Its from a different author, Agur of whom nothing is really known. The tone is instantly wilder and blunter, the consequences of foolishness more extreme than in previous chapters.

It explicitly claims to be God-inspired ecstatic utterance, and it says lots of great stuff, but much I barely comprehend as well… and its only 30 verses or so… such an exhausting book this one!

He is a good example of humility, his wisdom is not his own, it comes from God and from God’s creation. He realises how great and unknown is God – some powerful poetic images reminiscent of Job: the Lord’s hands gathering the wind and wrapping the waters in his cloak. How can we compare? He includes an intriguing reference here to God knowing the name of his son – impossible now for Christians not to think of Jesus.

He treasures God’s words, and he asks for contentment: neither to be poor nor rich. Both lead us into temptation. He wants just his daily bread, which for me illuminates the lords prayer as a petition for moderation and contentment as well as for basic needs to be met. Give us enough, not less, not more.

We’re working through issues of contentment as a family at the moment. Its a wonderful thing to pray for.

He then speaks of groups of people which displease or ignore God – in other translations they are called generations: a generation who invent their own standards of goodness and righteousness without reference to God or inherited wisdom; a generation who are violent and attacking.

I found it oddly encouraging to hear of generations so long ago going to the dogs.  We tend to think the latest generation is the one that is going to hell in a handbasket, but it has always been thus.

Sure, it not great to see wide scale foolishness, evil or ignorance. But it doesn’t mean God has lost control.  Its a generation, it will pass.

It concludes with a bunch of lists of observations from nature – generally 3 or 4.  Its a poetic device similar to our “et cetera”  or “for example”. A list with some specifics that is not exhaustive.

Its encouraging you to look to the world to learn of what is good and what is wrong. Honestly, this was the bit where I really started to loose comprehension.

He lists things that are:

• never satisfied – including the grave and childlessness;
• too amazing for him – including young love’s passionate eroticism, which he finds far more amazing than casual uncommitted sex
• things that make the world unbearable – basically women, servants or employees that rise in the ranks… I really didn’t get that one, he’s finding social mobility or equality offensive?
• things that are small yet wise, humble things in nature with impressive achievements, like ants. This kind of undermined the previous point, but was well made.
• things that have stately bearing – such as a lion, or a greyhound. OK. As a proud Italian Greyhound owner, I can only agree!

Lastly a general warning about evil and stirring up trouble.

So a mixture of stuff that I found helpful and stuff that is hard to access for me now – culturally remote.

I got feelings of God’s size and power, and the sense that despite the randomness and evil we often see around us, God is in control.

I need it. A drumbeat of sadness still underlies the shock of the massacre in New Zealand at the hands of an Australian gunman.

Such a peaceful, tolerant society!  Chosen because they had the effrontery to make diversity work, to punish them for having compassion and love.

He’s failed, but at an insane price.

I sat in church this morning and thought about how easy it would be for someone to walk in and slaughter us if they wanted to try and break a society that would allow us to flourish.