A Lenten Blog 2018

Haggai was a  Hebrew  prophet during the building of the  Second Temple  in  Jerusalem , one of the twelve " minor" prophets  in the  Hebrew Bible  and the author of the  Book of Haggai . Along with Zechariah and Malachi he was the first of three post-exilic prophets from the Neo-Babylonian Exile of the House of Judah, who belonged to the period of  Jewish history  which began after the return from  captivity  in  Babylon . Haggai is known for his prophecy in 520 BCE, commanding the Jews to rebuild the Temple. Little is known of his personal history. He may have been one of the  captives taken to Babylon  by  Nebuchadnezzar . Anyway, he began his ministry about sixteen years after the  return of the Jews to Judah  (ca. 520 BCE). The work of rebuilding the  temple  had been stopped through the intrigues of the  Samaritans . After having been suspended for eight...

Peter Walker has done a great job with his commentary on this passage, so I'll simply pick up on an aspect of it that has touched me personally. I do quite a lot of advocacy on different issues of social justice on Facebook. From Adani's high-handed attempts to buy influence, wreck local environments and impoverish local people to Donald Trump's obvious narcissism, from the NSW government contractors' sale of building waste for disposal in Queensland to our unthinking acceptance of more and more plastic packaging, there is some appalling behaviour both abroad and here at home. From time to time I have no doubt gone too far in my criticisms. The rule of thumb is to stick to the issue and not to denigrate people. If you engage in argument ad hominem you have just lost the argument. But even when I've tried to do this I've on occasion earned the ire of some. I've had someone ask whether I hated the previous Australian prime minister. (No! I just disagreed w...

People who spend a lot of time with the Bible develop our own "canon" of Scripture, our own selection of favourite texts. Many people  have heard of John 3.16, "For God so loved the world...", and 1st Corinthians 13, the famous "Love is" chapter. The very first words of the Hebrew Scriptures (aka the Old Testament) might be familiar: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth..." And then there are the Ten Commandments. Most of us probably don't know the "Decalogue" off by heart, but we'd probably remember at least two or three of the commandments. I find the first 3 or 4 commandments about relating to God a bit difficult to distinguish from each other. The first is in verse 3. It's God's claim on primacy in his people's lives. The second follows from it: the Israelites may neither make nor worship idols. And the third is a prohibition on misusing God's name.  Prohibitions, prohibitions! I th...

Psalm 22 is one of quite a number in the psalter whose mood seems to change midstream. It begins dramatically: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" These are some of the words Jesus uttered on the cross, which raises immediately the question of why Jesus quoted scripture in His extremity. After all, this was not a play or a music put on by the local dramatic society. It was the most excruciating form of torture and execution the Romans could devise. The very word "excruciating" is built on "crux", the Latin word meaning "cross". One must assume both that Jesusknew His scriptures very well, and that He did feel that He had been abandoned by God; that the relationship that had sustained him through His years of public ministry, right up to this point, had been breached. Some wonder how a loving God could allow His Son to suffer, then abandon him. Richard Dawkins, for example, has made this point cogently. If this is so then this god Chris...

It’s unfortunate when one makes genuine, unintended mistakes. The good Lord knows that I make plenty of them, including hopping over last Thursday’s reading, which I now will comment on today! But Jacob, the main character of this reading from Genesis 28, set an intentional pattern early in his life of using deception to achieve his ends. A second twin whose name meant “Supplanter”, he grasped his brother Esau’s heel even in the womb. The rivalry, foretold by God to their mother Rebekah, continued outside of her womb when Jacob took advantage of his hungry elder brother’s ill discipline and induced him to exchange his birthright for a “mess of pottage” as older translations memorably put it. Then, egged on by his mother Rebekah, (Why do parents persist in thinking that showing favouritism is a good idea?) Jacob deceived his father, the ageing, blind and foolish Isaac, into bestowing on him rather than on his sibling the blessing of seniority. Cunning Rebekah (her son’s mother!) preva...

In this typically dense Pauline passage two phrases stand out for me: "Hoping against hope", at the beginning of verse 18; and verse 22: "Therefore his faith was reckoned to him as righteousness." The three verses that follow verse 22 are important too, since they include us, the spiritual descendants of Abraham. in the faith and reckoned ("Imputed" is a word sometimes used.) righteousness of our great forefather. In a collaborative task of writing a simple textbook of ecotheology for Indian pastors I'm engaged in at present I got to write the final, theological chapter. The major task of the chapter has to be to discuss hope. Increasing numbers of scientists now believe that humankind has already influenced the climate of planet earth so much that the world has entered another era of geological time. It has been dubbed the "anthropocene era". Some believe  that the most important question for our time, equivalent to "How can I be sav...

I don't know why the designers of the Revised Common Lectionary included Mark 8.31-38 but excluded, at least at this point in the 3 year cycle, the preceding verses 27-30. In theological college 30 plus years ago we just called this whole incident "Caesarea Philippi". At least in Mark's rendition it was depicted as the turning point in the Jesus' public ministry. The villages of Caesarea Philippi lay about 60km north-east of Nazareth, so a long way north in Galilee. Until this point things had been going pretty well for Jesus. Far from prying Jewish religious or Roman military eyes he was having great success healing the sick and preaching His peculiar message that sounded like but simultaneously unlike what people were used to hearing, and feeding his crowds of listeners. But from this point on more and more of Jesus' focus was on Jerusalem in the far south. The key question of the gospel, "Who is Jesus?" was becoming more and more urgent. I'...