A Lenten Blog 2018

I call this passage "The Big Vee".  I'm not comparing it with St George Rugby League team's jersey, with its big red V on a white background. Far from it! In the world of biblical studies the study of who Jesus Christ is and was is called "Christology". Christology plays between the two poles of Jesus' humanity and His divinity. If you consider that Jesus was simply a human being, a man who may have said and done wonderful things and made an impact for good on the world, but ultimately was as the rest of us, you are said to have a "low" Christology. If, on the other hand, you are convinced that Jesus was God, who came to earth in the guise of a human, but was actually a heavenly being, then you are said to have a "high" Christology. Most Christologies situate Jesus somewhere between these two poles, though the differences between the poles seem paradoxical and irreconcilable. "The Big Vee" that this famous hymn describes ...

Because today's and tomorrow's readings constitute all of Mark chapter 15 i'll treat them together. Rev Dr Robert McFarlane, who earned his PhD through his studies in Mark's gospel, has commented wonderfully on this passage in With Love to the World. I could not possibly do better, so I'll simply quote him at length. His commentaries for these 2 days are terrific advertisements for this bible study resource. Here is Thursday's commentary: "When I was in theological college I was taught not to preach on the crucifixion narrative, but to let the story speak for itself. As I listen, what stands out for me are the people speaking. Three moments catch my ear, each revealing Mark's particular focus on rejection and abandonment. First, along with passersby (vv. 29-32a) those crucified with Jesus ghoulishly taunt him from their own crosses (32b). There is no repentant thief to make the suffering more palatable (Luke 23.40-43). Second, Jesus' own words ...

I've been preparing to write this post with the radio on in the background. The news today, a day overdue, but these stories will continue to run past the 24 hour news cycle, has to do with Facebook being mined for personal information by big data companies such as Cambridge Analytica, which then onsell this data to political parties, or big companies, or foreign governments, who then use these data to work out how to more effectively "push people's buttons". that is, they manipulate them ...US...to purchase what THEY want, and to make the choices and adopt the behaviours that benefit them. Big Data. Brave New World. Meanwhile the Royal Commission into banking in Australia rolls on. Once again, the powerful and the rich use their power and wealth to further disempower and further impoverish those not so happily placed in life. Oh they will say that they don't, or don't mean to, but... And our government is inching towards a senate majority on the matter...

I remember being told that one of the main differences between Asian countries that are not majority Christian and western cultures that are is that the former are shame-based and the latter are guilt-based. To dig a bit deeper, "in cultural anthropology," says Mr Wikipedia, (who continues for some time here, while incurring no sense either of shame or of guilt in the author of this post!) "a shame society, also called shame culture or honour-shame culture, is a society in which the primary device for gaining control over children and maintaining social order is the inculcation of shame and the complementary threat of ostracism. A shame society is contrasted with a guilt society, in which control is maintained by creating and continually reinforcing the feeling of guilt (and the expectation of punishment now or in the afterlife) for certain condemned behaviors, and with a fear society, in which control is kept by the fear of retribution." Shame is a painful, soci...

With Love to the World's commentator for the next 2 weeks, leading up to Easter Sunday, is Rev Dr Robert McFarlane. Rob named the 4 so-called "servant songs" in Isaiah as 42.1-4; 49.1-6, today's passage and 52.13-53.4. You may be most familiar with the "suffering servant" in the last passage. Christians often identify this figure with the Messiah, Jesus, and sure, there is a lot in it that reminds me of the suffering servant Jesus Christ. But Rob wisely reminds his readers that Isaiah's readers, in the difficult period after the end of the Babylonian Exile, would have seen things rather differently from us today. And after all, they were the original readers. For Jews, Rob continued, the servant is their corporate identity. the people of Israel, who had seen themselves as the people of God, had become the suffering servant of God. The danger for Christians is that we simply see Jesus as ticking boxes, fulfilling messianic prophecies, leaving each of...

A few weeks ago a senior Australian politician was outed for his affair with a staffer. A firestorm of debate engulfed him, her and the whole suite of issues they had raised. I got involved in it myself with a much responded to post on Facebook. One respondent maintained shocked surprise that there should be any fuss at all. The people involved were adults, fully capable of making their own decisions, this person maintained. To think otherwise would be simply naive. Worse, to disapprove of what they had done borders on that most heinous of all post-modern sins, judgementalism.  I'm probably pre-post-modern, but I can't get beyond the sense of betrayal...If a whole generation has grown up thinking that the winner does indeed take it all I think ABBA, though wonderfully musical, have done us a disservice. And although the person who argued on my Facebook thread that affairs, changing partners, etc. are simply unremarkable parts of life, there is too much pain around adultery for...

We continue puzzling over the Letter to the Hebrews, a few chapters further on. The author's discussion has been focussed on Jesus' status as a High priest of the order of Melchizedek. However, the New Covenant is a much better arrangement, "a more excellent ministry...enacted through better promises. Here is something else to puzzle about: Why did the framers of the Revised Common Lectionary leave out all but a verse of the quote from Jeremiah 31 which we looked at a few days ago? Anyway, at this point the writer to the Hebrews is trying to establish that the Old Covenant was faulty; otherwise there would have been no need to establish the New Covenant that Jeremiah described. The apostle Paul tackled the same question. They clearly had to if they were trying to convince interested Jews and Jewish-background followers of Jesus. Paul used images such as the law being like a babysitter; there until the time of majority arrived. Verse 13 summarises the writer's poin...

I think the Letter to the Hebrews is the most Jewish of all the New Testament writings, with the possible exception of Matthew's Gospel. It reads as though the author is trying to persuade their readership of the Jewishness of Jesus. John Miller's excellent commentary in With Love to the World points this out very well. Even the fact that because Jesus was not a Levite He was not qualified to perform the priestly role on earth works in favour of this. The Writer quotes Psalm 110.4 as a prophecy pointing to God's appointment of Jesus as a priest in a priestly order older than that of the Levites: the order of Melchizedek. Having established that Jesus was a high priest the author is able to say other things about Him. He stresses Jesus' humanity, having been chosen from among the mortals (5.1) for the high priestly role. One of us, He too has agonised in prayer, suffered, been tested, and so sympathises with us. (vv. 7-8) We don't do "high priests", or...

Some Greeks. Sometimes Jesus responds to comments made or situations in ways that are so strange that I think "Either He's crackers or he's playing a game of chess about 10 moves ahead of me, and I wouldn't bet on the first option!" Or perhaps "Jesus is playing that 3 dimensional Japanese game called 'Go' to my 2 dimensional checkers" is a better image. Maybe the most commonly thought of example of this is at Caesarea Philippi, in Mark chapter 8. I looked at this text in a post a couple of weeks ago. Jesus asked the disciples the double identity question: "Who do people say that I am? Who do you say that I am?" Peter identified Him correctly as the Messiah. Jesus praised Peter for this God-inspired insight, then started teaching the disciples that he would suffer, die and be raised. Peter reprimanded Him, whereupon He returned the reprimand with interest: "Get behind me Satan!" This sounds bizarrely insulting, particular ...

As a new Christian I learnt slabs of the bible, particularly the Hebrew Scriptures, by singing choruses that were often taken verbatim from the Psalms and Prophets. Here's one of my favourites, from Isaiah 51.11: "Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return and come with singing unto Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads. Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return and come with singing unto Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads. They shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and mourning shall flee away. Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return and come with singing unto Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads." I had no idea during my mid-teens in the '70s that this was about the return from exile of the Jews to Jerusalem over 2,500 years ago. It was enough that the chorus was happy, and someone played the guitar tolerably well. In the middle of the book of Jeremiah, beginning in Chapter 30, i...

Today's reading takes us into the longest psalm of the psalter, Psalm 119. It's grouped into 22 stanzas, each comprised of 8 verses. Each stanza begins with another letter of the Hebrew alphabet (which, to give you an idea of how words last over time, could be called the "alef-bet" in Hebrew!). So this is a piece of poetry. And it all focuses on the love the author has for God's Law. We've already encountered the Law in this blog. Two weeks ago we studied Exodus 20.1-17, the passage that contains the 10 Commandments, and a few days later we looked at CS Lewis's favourite psalm, number 19. For the Hebrews God's Law was much more than a series of rules. With Love to the World commentator John Miller put it well: "Biblical religion is about relationship: our relationships with God and with one another. the poet ardently desires to nurture the relationship with God by studying and meditating on god's word as a guide to every aspect of life, i...

Speaking of hope, as I did at some length in yesterday's blog, Psalm 107 is a really hope-filled psalm. Essentially it's like Jesus' parable of the prodigal (sometimes called "lost") son. The boy insults his father, demanding his share of the inheritance early, thus wishing his father dead, then goes off and wastes it, ruining his life. In desperation he turns back to his father, who accepts him back, joyfully. Christian hope depends upon God being like the good father. So it goes in Psalm 107. This is the call to thanksgiving the once lost but now found son could have made: "O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures for ever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, those he redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands..." That term "hesed", translated here as "steadfast love", is a really important one in the bible, and particularly in the Hebrew scriptures. Time after time, and in vario...

One of the subliminal reasons for writing this daily lenten blog is, strangely enough, that I'm trying to finish writing a textbook on ecotheology. It seems to me that unless the team of Australian and Indian authors succeeds in communicating both the utter seriousness and, from a human perspective the hopelessness of the situation that climate change and ecological degradation is forcing upon the world; BUT also the hope that is intrinsic to the bible's message, there's little use in writing the book at all. For if Christians continue to think that our only hope lies lies either in some self-fix or in our disembodied souls being taken beyond this physical world, then there is no motivation to love this world as God does (John 3.16). So we can't just write ecotheology; we have to relate that to theology as a whole. But where is hopelessness and hope to be found? Well, the Bible Gateway website lists 165 instances of "hope" and its cognates in the Bible. ...

After the 3 readings over the past 3 days about the bronze serpent today's reading from the end of  John chapter 3 feels like light relief. John is famous for being the "spiritual" gospel, filled with abstract dissertation from Jesus, and conducive to "high" theology. Yet from time to time John includes asides on Jesus' everyday life that are sharply focussed in their particularity. We learn here that Jesus had disciples though, unlike the accounts in the (other 3) synoptic gospels, they are not yet named. We read that Jesus and his disciples went into the Judaean countryside, and that in their company Jesus conducted baptisms. And we learn that Jesus' cousin John was also conducting baptisms, and where. Some months ago two highly-regarded former ministers of the congregation in which I now serve became grandfathers of the same twins. (Think that through and you'll see that it's alright!) The parents decided to have their children baptised in ...

You’d have to say that the connection between the passages of the last 3 days is unlikely, even by the Bible’s standards. The text two days ago was from Israel’s Exodus, well over a millennium before the time of Christ. The book of Numbers, chapter 21 describes how God ordered Moses to construct an idol - this was expressly forbidden in the Ten Commandments - in bronze, a snake on a pole so that those who had been stung by the plague of serpents sent by God as punishment for Israel’s complaining, could look upon it and live. “The Lord taketh away and the Lord giveth,” it seems. Fast forward to yesterday’s text which recorded the actions of good king Hezekiah of the southern kingdom of Judah. Realising that over the many hundreds of years since the Exodus Israel’s worship had become so corrupted by local Canaanite idol worship that the now ancient bronze snake was regarded as one more idol to worship, Hezekiah had it destroyed, along with idols of the Canaanite fertility goddess ...

The books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles tell the story of Israel from the prophet Samuel to the Babylonian conquest and exile. From 1st Samuel chapter 8 onwards this story is dominated by the histories of Israel's kings. Since Israel split early in the reign of Solomon's son Rehoboam into a northern kingdom, called Israel, or sometimes Samaria (for its capital city) and the southern kingdom of Judah, we get histories of both countries' lines of kings. After King David's affair with Bathsheba the evaluations of each of these kings tended to be judged according to how closely they obeyed God and walked in God's ways. The overall trend, from the heights of David's and Solomon's empire to the ignominy of the Babylonian exile, is downwards, but along the way there are several kings who are exceptions. Hezekiah was perhaps reckoned as the greatest of these. He was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the son of Ahaz became the 13th king of Judah. Archaeologist Edw...

This, and the story of the second time Moses struck a rock and released water, found in the previous chapter, contain salutary warnings. In Numbers 20 the migrating Israelites reach Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin. They run out of water, and despite having been provided with water previously, (in Exodus 17) they quarrelled with Moses. Like some church people I have known ( :-{)) these Israelites really did know how to get under the fingernails of those they wished to irritate. Early in the Exodus they had complained that they'd rather have stayed in Egypt, from where God and Moses had delivered them. Now they complained at having been spared the fate of "Nadab and Abihu [who] died before the Lord when they offered unholy fire before the Lord in the wilderness of Sinai. This was too much for Moses. We know he had a temper hot enough to kill an Egyptian overseer. This time no one dies - immediately, anyway. Instead Moses doesn't follow orders. "The Lord spoke to M...

On ABC radio this morning I heard that tonight's edition of 4 Corners will address the effect climate change is already having in Australia, and the sorts of things that Australians, in government, the private sector and in the general population are already suffering from and are already doing to meet this gigantic challenge. Average temperatures are rising. Heat waves are growing more prolonged, more frequent and more severe. Average rainfall is decreasing. As significant a company as the wine producer Brown & Bros, has decided to re-situate it cold temperature wine grape growing from the mainland to Tasmania.  That is as far as they can go. Nobody envisages being able to relocate again to Antartica! Brown & Bros' decision reminds me of a fascinating conversation I had with an environmental lawyer I fell into conversation with at a function in Delhi several years ago. She happened to live down the Himalayan Valley some 50 km from where I was living. She had married...

Psalm 19 is wonderful reading! According to Peter Walker, commentating in With Love to the World, no less a critic than the great CS Lewis called this psalm the greatest in the psalter, containing some of the finest of lyrics in all history. It includes God's three forms of revelation to Israel. In the WLTTW Commentary these are spread out over two days. Saturday's reading, verses 1-6, rejoice in "natural revelation". In particular it describes God's revelation in and through the heavens in different ways - the night sky and the sun following its course during the day. Sunday's reading includes verses 7-10 and 11-14. Verses 7-10 address God's particular revelation through the law to the people of Israel. The law in Israel meant more than our law means to us. In western societies the Law is "a system of rules that are created and enforced through social or governmental institutions to regulate behaviour." but the Jewish Law, 613 negative and po...

In my first placement as a minister in Glen Innes, northern New South Wales, I made friends with my Anglican colleague, an ex-policeman named Grant. Grant and I were both competitive, left-handed sports lovers, with a shared a love for the Gospel. So it’s perhaps not surprising that two of my favourite memories from those days 30 years ago have to do with a game of cricket in which little Cameron Memorial Uniting defeated Holy Trinity Anglican, and a devotional which Grant presented at one ministers’ association meeting, and at which he spoke on this passage from the beginning of Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth. Perhaps it’s because we stand at the end of a 2,000 year old tradition that has accepted the Jesus story as “gospel”, but very rarely in any church of any tradition I’ve been in have I got any sense of how ludicrous, offensive, scandalous - pick your choice of words used by new atheists about the Christian faith in general - the Gospel is. Both to the surroun...

I've lived my life according to the principles of reasonability and moderation. I can't ever becoming so angry that I've made a public spectacle of myself, as Jesus did in this passage. I do have passions. The environment is one; fairness and consideration of each other is another. "What you see depends upon where you stand" is a self-evident, guiding truth for me. Care of children is a third. There is little that enrages me more than the abuse of the powerless and helpless by the powerful, and that takes a poignantly obvious shape in the abuse of children. But although I become angry I've never behaved in such a way that I've been at risk of harm, gaol or even death. I have a friend who, a few years ago, found herself chained to a gate in the Hunter Valley in her effort to prevent trains taking their kilometre long loads of coal to Port Newcastle and out into the world for burning and the release of carbon over against the provision of energy and the r...