March 15

“And my clothes don’t fit me no more—I’ve walked a thousand miles just to slip this skin” Bruce Springsteen in Streets of Philadelphia

Miles to Go—

…before I sleep

“Come gather 'round people, wherever you roam
and admit that the waters
around you have grown”

By

Daryl Underwood

Contents

Introduction—Miles to Go…before I sleep

Why: Impetus for this book

Reading the Bible right

We love Jesus but we wonder about God

Are you smarter than a fifth grader?

God: God in the upper and lower story

God is a diamond

God, interrupted

"Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh"

Emergent God: Did God grow old and grow up?

The “I AM” in crisis

Portraits: Hints of the final scene

Portrait: Where did Satan come from?

Portrait: Father’s love

Portrait: Lover

Job: the offense, the complaint, the stage

All I Know

Crossroads

Jesus: The climax and commencement

God on the other side of silence

Jesus in His own eyes

Up to

Fix You

Atonement: The victory of God

God

Us

The centrality of the climax of the cross

Paul

Preface

Letter to Home

An open letter to my home town or "Why emerging in the church is so hard"

And after it rains there's a rainbow
And all of the colors are black

It's not that the colors aren't there
its just imagination they lack
Everything's the same
back

In my little town—Paul Simon in “My Little Town”

In the song “My Little Town” Paul Simon laments the inability of his roots to change with the changing times. Across the wide spaces after the cleansing rain there is a rainbow most certainly signaling something of a treasure somewhere out there. But not here, not in my little town laments Simon. Here the colors turn black after the rain. Why is that? No imagination. The townspeople lack the ability to wonder, to question, to seek, to move forward, to change. They are quite satisfied with the way things are here.

And I come from a little town called Evangelicalism. I was born and raised there; it has its own way of thinking. I wouldn’t say or dare go so far as to sing that there is “nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town” of Evangelicalism but it is definitely slow to move and a bit unaware of the rest of the world. Like most little towns they do like to keep things the same. As a result I was feeling a bit trapped there. I decided to move down the road and began to ask questions about other ways of doing things and some of the folks back home wondered about me.

“Does he think he is better than us? Why does he have to be so unsettled anyway, we have a great little town? Is he one of us anymore or one of them, those people out in the world?” and I lost some of my small town friends or maybe we are just losing touch.

To this town and their musings I want to be clear. I do not consider myself better in any way, I am not chasing cars or chasing other stars or simply not very grateful or appreciative of the small town virtues. No, none of the above is true. In fact some of the simplicity of the small town comfort me and ground me. I am not any smarter or modern, or seeking fame or fortune, or emerging while you are so stuck in a rut, and I most emphatically do not disdain my heritage; it is really quite rich.

But I sense the stares and whispers when I am near. And this is coming from my family or townsfolk.

I still want to stay in the family of Christianity. You see, some of the problem with my little town is their reluctance to accept the way anyone thinks unless it lines up with their thinking. They say they love you, accept you, etc. but their actions don't back it up so well. If you are not evangelical or fundamental you probably aren't "Christian" or so it seems.

But I needed to ask questions…and this was discouraged in the small town. And the questions became too loud to ignore. They spoke all the time and when I began to ask others, to talk about it, I found myself a bit tedious to them. They liked me, I grew up there, but they didn’t like what was happening to me. The questions lingered. When I was stirred they became increasingly uneasy. It was time to move on before my questions alienated everyone in the small town.

But like any son I would like a blessing from my roots. Only time will tell if it will come. I suppose the people in evangelical-land don’t feel they owe me anything. We are right here in the town you came from and you know where to find us. I understand they hear stories of what I am up to and there are mixed reviews, some hope I’ll get over it, others secretly hope I will fall flat on my face so that I realize the error or arrogance of my way. And a few may actually hope it works out. As for me, I just would like to come home to hang out with my family and friends without feeling like I am some kind of deserter or outsider or bad person. And the purse strings, well I know they stay in town. But I imagined it might be different.

At any rate, I want to spread my wings again. And honestly, I would like a blessing to do so. I am not the enemy. New always comes and can never stop happening. But it doesn’t mean the old wasn’t a place to build character. And we never forget our roots. I suppose you can take the boy out of the small town but you can't take the small town out of the boy. I still carry small town stuff deep inside my heart. And I am always indebted to that.

On the road

I am meeting a lot of very different thinkers out here. People like Jack Miles, Marcus Borg Abraham Heschel and Walter Bruggemann. Some of these guys I was told to be wary of but they are really great people that think differently. One is a Pulitzer Prize winner; another marched in Selma with Dr. Martin Luther King and may be one of the most articulate folks I have ever met. The third was once labeled trouble but seems to have worked things out rather nicely which I can really respect--such honesty.

The last is a well respected professor of Old Testament at Columbia University. He has been dealing with some of the troubling issues I’ve encountered in Scripture. He has been talking about the violence of God towards the “infidels” outside of the circle of Israel. We can meet Walter Bruggemann via the medium of internet. We can hear his voice, see his movements and embrace his viewpoint. Most back home have never heard of him. Now they will, or at least can, simply by putting his name in a Google search engine. His voice is crossing the airwaves and entering their world. Old constraints cannot protect the small town from the web and new information. It is one of the ways we are changing in the past 20 years or so. Information and ideas can no longer be managed. The big world is accessible to the small town now.

One site on the internet led me to an entry by Dan Stieger, found at www.opensourcetheology.net, wherein he summarizes some of Brueggemann’s theological teachings. Well written, it speaks pointedly to the sad, trivial shape that I believe that much of American Christianity finds itself in these days.

“This last facet Bruggemann mentions of urgency or importance is particularly relevant to our times. We see the text of Scripture dissected and trivialized in evangelicalism’s nauseating penchant for pragmatism. The Scripture is distilled down to a formula and proposition handbook, with “precious moments” theologies (God’s promise-a-day, like a one-a-day vitamin) and a Prayer of Jabez prosperity-driven Christianity. May we not let the missional thrust of the Bible get submerged under the avalanche of technique, systematic theologies, and whatever else aimed at mastering the text so that we can “use” it.

I couldn’t say it better. We have in our attempts to be pragmatic and relevant lost some of the mystery that shrouds God and the story we find ourselves in. We sell out to what works without asking what’s needed. The machine feeds itself. We create the monster and the monster eats us. And we are bored, numb, and passive. And we have forgotten what we are for.

I suppose these people I'm meeting seem fascinating to me because they are from very different cultures and have helped me to see that there are many different perspectives. We live in an enormous and rapidly changing world.

I admit to being overwhelmed by the freedom I feel. The lights and multiplicity of the city is blinding to a small town boy. But the “lights” will guide us home and eventually, we, you and I will know the light, the One that has come into the world. He will…”fix you” and me—in a good sort of way.

It is estimated that 80% of the American Christian world is amongst the evangelicals. Some of us are opening up to mainline theologians and new ways of thinking about scripture and theology. We are called various names. The label that seems to stick most is “emerging”. We are migrating from the rural life, or perhaps the suburban life of sameness and ordinary, to the city life with all its colors, diversity, variety, and openness. The world is changing and so are we.

Many are young. I am not. But I count myself as one of them. We are being drawn into something new, not better or more ‘true’ but nonetheless very different. I hope we don’t get distracted by the lights and sounds along their way. May we continue to emerge, grow, and learn of the One God.

We need to begin a new way of thinking. I believe a new brand of Christianity is being born. And the ‘New Christianity’ is helping me to see it all again, anew. I have accepted Dylan's perceptive truth that 'The waters around me have grown'. That we know more than we once did and that knowing affects our understanding. The theological sky is opening. And it’s a little lonely out here. Sometimes I feel like Fievel of “An American Tale” singing “Somewhere Out There” when I have conversation with people new to this way of thinking. They look at me with glazed eyes and scrunched brows. I can tell they are having a hard time following. So I have determined to write it down instead of talking it through so I can be as clear as possible.

I write this so that other “lost boys” can come home and rest. And I write for the girls, too. You see, Wendy is as big a part of the story of Peter Pan as Peter. They, the girls, are a bigger part of this than we ever imagined. They come out of a rib and find their way back into our hearts to help us be at home again--within. They complete us and we complete them.

When Edward asks,” So what happens after he climbs up the tower and rescues her?" Vivian replies; "She rescues him right back."

Peter to Wendy, Inman to Ada, Jack to Rose, or Edward to Vivian, and even as we shall see, before any of these and the mold for any of these, God to Jesus. The characters may change but the song remains the same--one rescues the other and is then is somehow rescued right back. It is the song about God. It is the song about us--it is, the story we all want to be found in—to experience. We seek to be known, to know another, and to love. We are created for that.

Introduction

The road is long, with many a winding turn, that leads us to who knows where, who knows where--“He ain’t Heavy, He’s my Brother”—a song by the Hollies circa 88’

“Miles to go — before I sleep…”—a reflective story from the one who reflects the unseen God.

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

The title of this book is a play on words. First of all, “Miles to Go” has to do with the discovery of Jack Miles, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of GOD: A biography. I stumbled on him through a musician friend named Drew Nelson. This book has been surprisingly instrumental in setting me free to dream at just the right time in my life. Miles is a bit out there when you come from the small town I come from, but I take comfort in knowing our evangelical friend Philip Yancey, one of the finest writers in modern Christianity, has read Miles and quoted him to boot. Miles book set my mind to imagination. His book (and the sequel Jesus: a Crisis in the Life of God) attempts to see God develop through the writings of the Tanakh as a literary figure. The book while being admittedly speculative and subjective has been a great source of wonder and imagination to me. I am glad I stumbled upon it.

I was about to cash in my chips when the book came round.

Secondly, “Miles to Go”—before I sleep” is a familiar poem from the pen of Robert Frost It is recited by almost every school kid in America or at least it once was. It has a simple cadence and haunting lilt. I appreciate the poem now because I have begun to get it. I know that I am like Frost, that I need a place to reflect, to stop, and following that, rest. I suspect have a bit to go before I sleep—and the sleep I refer to is the sleep of death.

What’s funny is that I remembered that poem here, out of seemingly nowhere, today. It is, like so many thoughts, resident deep in the hard drive of my mind, recalled from a time in my journey when I first had to recite it to the class of Whitehall Junior High. That was 40 years ago and although no one really cares about the many intrusive thoughts of my or anyone else’s mind for that matter, it meant something to me. I don’t know why these things come to mind. But I like to pay attention.

For at last, I am alone, in the woods. Alone is where we are forced to contemplate.

In this snowy silence there is no one to talk to; all the people I know are busy driving the horse out of the woods as fast as they can. They are not reflecting because they cannot pause. They can’t really afford it, or let it happen to them. It’s too risky, too costly, and too hard. So they glance into the theological woods and they scamper by. I don’t blame them. The woods are like a jungle and you never know what lurks behind a tree. I wouldn’t stop and wander in here either but the pause button was pushed by someone, somewhere.

Probably I incited it.

I have discussions with myself when I am lonely—or alone. I believe I come by that honestly. You see, I believe God was alone at one time, alone with the trinity of His thoughts, Himself and Who He is, and I am created in His image. That means I am like Him. And in some ways He is like me.

When God was ‘too alone’ with his thoughts He decided to do something to step out on the water, and so He created ‘in our own image’…to see who He really was. He imagined a beautiful reflection, like Narcissus in the reflective pond. He was eager to see. The creation was superb. But something happened. Something terrible interrupted. The bottom of the beautiful creation suddenly fell out. Theology calls this simply”the fall". When the bottom fell out of the creation that He had brought forth He made a decision based on His character, on His love, and on Himself.

He descended. It is vital to get that etched in our mind to appreciate the unveiling of the Story. He descended.

When He gazed at mankind the image that reflected back to him by the created jewel called Man it was painful. What was once created as good—no very good--was now marred and ugly. He didn’t like what He saw. He interacted with it, His creation, He reasoned with it, His creation, and finally He died for it, His creation. It was shocking to Him to experience the unmitigated fallen-ness of the world. He the eternal One entered and became somewhat subjected to a new concept called ‘time’. In ‘time’ He sought to bring His fallen creation back to eternal. Eternity, the dimension where God exists; heaven if you will has no ‘time’. If it did it would, of course, be temporal or temporary which is the antithesis of eternal. Death for instance is a product of temporal, finite, or mortal. God in His nature is not subject to temporal. He is life and does not end in death. This is the reason why death is described in the Bible as the final enemy. His dimension, for lack of a better word at this point, is immortal.

After years, decades, and centuries of engagement He ‘hit the wall’. As I will describe as we move through this book it occurred late in the expression of the Tanakh. When he came to this juncture in time He pulled away from the pond and pondered. In between the testaments or covenants, that period of silence, I picture God as thinking—resolving—in the period following His last discussion with Job—He thought, He contemplated.

It was like a lonely time stopping by the woods on a snowy evening. And he didn’t scurry by. He went into the dark woods.

After a long period of silence He decided to “re-make” himself, a courageous move that saved God, delivered all of us from evil, and made it so that we along with Him can lie down in green pastures knowing more of the cost of the field we rest in.

When we tasted of the tree of “good and evil” we discovered some things. We fell into something of a chasm, a fall into a “lower story”. And so did God. We fell by ignorance, he descended by choice.

Movies are modern narratives created to move us along. “Cold Mountain” moved me.

The main characters, Inman and Ada, are torn apart from Cold Mountain Carolina by the dream they bought into. The propaganda described freedom for the south. The reality was it became a nightmare called the bloody Civil War. Inman joins the confederacy and experiences all manner of deprivation. War is hell. William Tecumseh Sherman said,

"I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell."

Inman and Ada know that to be true and they want out of the devastation, the death, the ugly cold grip of war and long for the moment they can reunite. They finally do and spend a “Song of Solomon” night together. They share intimacy. The next day Inman is killed. It happens on a cold wintry day and the scene is filmed in bright white amidst grey tones. As Inman lie dying his lover holds his head and the camera ascends till we are looking down on the scene from on high. Inman is spread eagle; his blood runs deep red in the pure white snow. We could as easily be looking at Mary Magdalene at the lifeless terrain of Golgotha at the conclusion of ‘The Passion of the Christ’. It is violent, bloody. Inman actually looks like he is on a cross.

It's over.

But this is not the end.

The final scene of the movie is one of great peace; simple serenity that could not be understood had the violence not invaded. The family sits at a table on a warm, sunny Carolina day beneath a shady tree; they are having a meal with friends. Music is made, pleasantries enjoyed. One person, of course, is sadly absent, and always somehow around. Inman is here, but gone. Another person is mercifully present. The outcome of the “song” sits happily, innocently, with her the family. She has no idea what the cost was for this moment. She doesn’t know the price that was paid, the blood that was shed on this mountain or on that hill. But a song plays in her ear and she hears it so distant yet always somehow here—presently.

Perhaps one day in the sunny warmth of the kingdom of God we will be like her, happy and oblivious. But the atmosphere will be filled with the emotions and memories of the others at the table. Somehow we will know that this table was very costly. Blood was shed for this peace. When Ada departs from the table and recalls, thinks of what is here and what has happened, I can feel it too. The story helps me feel. So valuable, this table, such cost. And we will never, never trifle with it again.

Heaven, as such, is really ‘better’ than Eden. I think it is better because we collectively will ‘know’ something that will cause us to cling tightly to the things of God, and God Himself. Déjà vu may come from time to time but it will pass away as quickly as it comes over us. ‘It’s like a song that I hear playing right in my ear—that I can’t sing—but I can’t help listening.’

After my resignation as pastor of the church I played midwife for and nurtured for 19 years there has been a lot of alone time. As I begin this book it is March in Michigan, a grey time in a cold place where alone feels abandoned. I long for spring, for Cold Mountain, for Camelot, for Kingdom, for God.

It’s odd. Once you are in demand—the next day—not at all. In fact, it makes you feel you are what you do—and you are not so important—for whom you are.

My friend Rick Beerhorst told me a story yesterday. Johnny Cash was aging and began shopping himself around because he “wasn’t done” and music was his life. He found no takers amongst the known “movers and shakers” in the music scene. Old news, old man, disposed of politely or sometimes not. One man, Rick Rubin, not such a well known quantity at the time, did take notice. He hounded Johnny until Cash finally called back. They sat down and the "American series" albums were the outcome.

The sessions are legend to young artists and musicians in the know. He is found as an underground hero. His voice and legacy, as the original “man in black” reborn, has made him a cult classic. It was his last ride. A cult sometimes births a movement. And the legacy grows.

So I am at 52 feeling a bit washed up, old news, disposed of. I am, and this is a bit unnerving and humbling, shopping myself. I have decided that if there are no takers I will stop by this “woods on a snowy evening” and dream of the Camelot to come, the Cold Mountain of spring around the bend, a place where you can lay a child in the crib with an asp without concern, a place where a lion will lie down with a lamb. God is that Lion you know, and He is that Lamb. And they are good friends and might I say—they are lovers. They always knew that, but now we as we watch their lives unfold in this ‘lower story’ where we live--we can 'know it', too.

It is so good for Him, and me, and us, to lie down together, for it is not good to be alone…with yourself with no one to lift you up. God never was and we never are. You might notice that I mention several people in this prologue and this hence the teaser is “He ain’t heavy, He’s my brother”…you see, there are other pilgrims on this road with many a winding turn. And they inadvertently lead because they are eager to walk along. And they do help me see myself, too. Collectively we are being wooed to a dimension where we can be brothers without the curse of Cain. We will beat our swords into plowshares.

Why? The reason is simple, they, too, and we all, are created in the image of the God who walked in the cool of the garden so long ago. They are like Him who is like them. We are made in and for relationship. It is not good to be alone.

We aren’t.

Finally, “Miles to go before I sleep” has to do with the picture above and on the cover of this book. Jesus seems to be looking up from a deep hole; He has a monumental climb ahead. In reality He is in a hole. The world is at risk. He has descended purposefully. And He looks up. For Him this is the conclusion of a long, long journey that began a long time ago. It began when He was with God ‘in the beginning’. When He looks up from the lower story I think he sees the ascension as His destiny. The upper story is His home. The huge hands at the top of the cross are God’s hands, His Father’s hands, the One who loves Him, cleaves to Him, and will lift Him up. The lights will guide Him home. Indeed he has miles to go before he sleeps on this day—a day of the Lord like unto a thousand years—but the journey is nearly done—and He is settled on the ending. The ending which is, of course, in the end, unveiled as the beginning of a new day He can already envision.

When he hangs there spread eagle, dying, red blood drips on the proverbial white snow He knows His work is done.. And it is finished--but it is not over. This is the resolution, revelation, and redemption of God. Here at the cross we view the climax of one story and the beginning of another—better story.

He is the singer, God is the song, and we must at last get lost in this masterpiece. This is His story and this is our story. May the songbird sing to you as we travel together.

The approach to this book

Abraham Joshua Heschel was a Warsaw-born American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians of the 20th century. His book The Prophets started out as his Ph.D. thesis in German, which he later expanded and translated into English. Originally published in a two-volume edition, this work studies the books of the Hebrew prophets. It covers their life and the historical context that their missions were set in, summarizes their work, and discusses their psychological state. In it Heschel forwards what would become a central idea in his theology: that the prophetic (and, ultimately, Jewish) view of God is best understood not as anthropomorphic (that God takes human form) but rather as anthropopathic — that God has human feelings.

In Miles to Go, which I tend to think of as in the vein of a literary narrative which informs theology without corralling God, I will be tracing the face of God, the character of God, through an anthropopathic lens. I will be trying to discern beneath the words of the story. We are familiar with this method. We do it all the time. We read people’s motives. Sometimes right, sometimes wrong. Listening to a song we engage in imagination. Watching a movie we engage in feelings, we enter a character’s world for a time. These stories and songs are more vivid than the words or images they employ to tell them.

I do this with God, as we all do, so no excuse need be made for it. In fact we have been designed to do just that. We are created with this capacity to think about God, to try to grasp God. So I will look at what He was feeling as the narrative of the Tanakh (Jewish Scriptures) and New Testament unfolds. In Part One I will develop the book taking snapshots of God, portraits I call them, using the traditional distinctions of the Jewish Scriptures from the typical order of Story (the narrative) to the Prophets (conversation and memoirs ) to the Writings (experiential knowledge).

Certain themes will emerge giving us a heartful type understanding of God.

I will weave a web more than draw a line. I will be referring to the Tanakh often. The Tanakh is the name for the Jewish scriptures. Their order and timeline of Torah—Prophets—Writings are important to the unveiling of the transitions of God.

Part Two of Miles to Go has to do with the resolution of God on the other side of silence. The resolution, like a rock rolling down a hill in the rather short life of God in the flesh, is the primary message of the Bible—it is about what Jesus does. It describes how He strips the fall of its power, takes responsibility as God for creation and covenant, and recreates. The story culminates in an extraordinary way if we engage it well and let it be told. It is the unveiling of the victory of God over the fall of creation. The Jews, of course, had one expectation during the time of Jesus. They had reasons to believe what they believed. If we were them at the time of Christ we would most likely come to the same conclusions. But in the end they were wrong.

This is the surprise ending Paul saw, the mystery unveiled by the Christ, spoke of extensively by the Apostle. The revelation of Jesus should be likened unto the opening of a curtain on a stage in the final act of a play. It is revealing, surprising and disorienting to the traditional powers and in the end to ‘power’ and domination itself. The Christ event is clearly the commencement of one way (Christianity) and the conclusion of another (Judaism). It, the Christ event, is the center point of the history of mankind.

But what really was done on that cross?

A new way is unveiled.

We can make the Bible about whatever we want it to be, we have in the past, we do in the present, and we may in the future, but I am convinced of this: The resolution of the dilemma of God, and the release of the cosmos from the tyranny of the fall, is the key question answered in the Bible. It is the purpose of the Bible. All else hinges on this issue...all else falls like so many dominos, once this issue is brought to terms and laid to rest. This is Biblical, Pauline language for the work of God in Christ. The curtain has fallen and the epilogue is being played out. We live in this story and it feels familiar at times. Déjà vu is the feeling that we have been in a present emotion at another time. There is something familiar going on. This story told in scripture being everyman’s story—is just like that.

Story

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,--Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“Once upon a time”—Grimm’s Fairy tales

A long time ago in a galaxy far away, once upon a time, it was the best of times; it was the worst of times. It only takes a few words for us to envision that a story is about to be told.

I trust story and suspect interpretation.

A story can stand on its own and pull its listeners along in a very natural way. It has the authority to change us. When we read or watch stories we interact with them. Interpretations are rift with personal isogetical commentary that takes us where they want to go. In the end we are subject to their teachings and perceptions. At some level we need to understand and accept a measure of scholarship and authority that has been our heritage.

I get it.

But I contend that the story stands out from this other way of embracing scripture because the story is unalterable. And the story as I have described comes to a climax in Jesus and then continues on as we play our parts till the consummation. We can trust this story as the message that God gives.

I want to begin with this. Stories teach in a way that penetrates to the heart.

Stories can have wide applications. If we wanted to teach a child the way of persistence we might introduced them to the story of the tortoise and the hare. In this classic Grimm's fairy tale we find that the tortoise, though he isn't very fast, can outlast the rabbit (who takes breaks often, and doesn't plan for the race) simply by staying on the task. When the hare finally realizes that he's far behind in the race due to his leisurely attitude it’s too late and he is unable to catch the tortoise. It's a simple story, but when it's applied across many different applications it can be very effective. The beauty of the story is that even the little child can receive it and be trained by it. They can conclude that it's a bad thing to be lazy and not prepare. And conclude at the same time that it's a good thing even though you may not have all of the talent in the world to continue to do the very best you can so that things may work out in the end. Because the child's behavior will be changed the story has shown to be affective and have authority in their life. The authority of the story shines through. When we talk about Scripture being infallible or authoritative we need to remember that stories are the things that most often change us. When we read of the disappointment of David in the ways of his sons, of God’s feelings in the story of Hosea towards an unfaithful lover, and his joy at the inception of love found in Song of Solomon we know He is like us. As the drama of Job unfolds we can hear the temperatures rise, taste the suffering, feel the tension and anger build. Again stories teach the way that penetrates to the heart.

Let us dream, wonder and be amazed by the authority of the deep engaging story. Sometimes imagination makes the smallest child rise up.

The emergence of universal and global thought

Some things are universal; it doesn’t really matter which culture you come from, where you live geographically, or what time period you come from. They are universal themes. Now that the world is beginning to understand this the stage is set for a new way of believing. A new epistemology can emerge. Some universal themes are obvious.

We long for what is right but sometimes do that which is wrong. We have fathers who bear sons, mothers that nurture children, and a longing to outlive our life whether that means by creating life within family or presenting new truth to the world. We want to be loved—deeply and that usually comes from another who compliments us. We want to give ourselves to something if we haven’t given our selves to our self. When we “do wrong” or things don’t work out that is a disappointment. It may nag us for a long time. We may never come to terms with “it”. These are universal sorts of things whether you are white, black, brown, or yellow. We at one time thought others were not like us or at least did our best to vilify those outside of our metanarrative. As the world becomes more accessible, flat again, every individual via tools tied to the internet can realize that those myths are probably not so. We are in universal terms more alike than different. The difference is—now we know it and knowing that makes it more difficult to act as though we didn’t know. We can no longer say that we “didn’t know” about the starving masses in the world. We do know. Things have changed through technology and innovation. Just 100 years ago most people never travel beyond 200 miles of their home. These days many skirt around the globe in planes, trains and automobiles computer and cell phone at their side. The more the world shrinks and the more we become a brotherhood of man, the more culpable we are for that which is committed against our fellow man. We can no longer—no matter how hard we might try-- ignore the reality that people all over the world bleed red just like us. We can no longer behave as though the pagans, or savages, or barbarians or any other derogatory term that we may have used to denigrate others and elevate ourselves is acceptable. Whatever term we once used to magnify our own metanarrative at the expense of a competing metanarrative is no longer ‘pc’. We are learning that “others” are essentially very much like us.

The Olympics, for example, tell a story. At one time, at least from the American perspective I come from, the Olympics were an arena to show ourselves and other people groups that we are somehow better. We had Jesse Owens to root for to put Hitler in his place. We had Joe Louis to put Max Schmeling in his place. And reporting on the Olympics mostly centered on the USA and we always cheered for the Americans.

But it is not that way today. Recently I saw this add in Sports Illustrated. It was one of many in a visa ad campaign. The campaign was pure genius. To the left is a striking picture of a brightly illuminated stadium, along the top many flags of many countries, and just below emblazoned across the page is GO WORLD. The text to the left says this:

Maybe it’s not where an athlete’s from

that makes us root for them.

Maybe it’s not the flag on their back,

or the anthem that we hear when they win

that makes us cheer.

Maybe it’s simply that they are human.

And we are human

And when they succeed, we succeed.

When humankind wins we all win. Now the coverage has to do with human stories, world wide human stories, and we can feel for example, with the Japanese gymnast that falls, the Jamaican track star that jumps the starter pistol, the Kenyan distance runner who overcame all odds just to get here. And they all can hook us. And we can cry or exalt with them. They hook us because they are stories that cross boundaries of geography, culture, and time. The “enemy” so easy to vilify in days gone by, is getting closer and they look a lot like us. We are becoming the human race.

I say it this way—we are discovering that we all bleed red.

These things are universal because they come from God. At one time God was caught in a metanarrative just like us. He was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He was the God of the Jews. All others were—well the “others”—the “outies”. But in these later times He has become the God of the world. He really always was the only God. But He once was the God of the particular people named Israel. His strategy shifted. It didn’t happen overnight but after an array of complex conversations filled with the range of emotions we feel He changed in scripture from the God of a particular people to the God of all. He changed as He experienced Himself. God is like us and more to the point we are like him. That is what it means to be in His “image”. We are like Him.

And this book is about that.

We are going to see how God became a complex father, a drawn out lover, an angry partner, and a resolved being through working out his dilemma in what I call “the lower story”. Along the way He will face crisis, demons, and finally death. And He will overcome.

If we were to look at God through His revelation of Himself found in the Bible, without too much previous information, we could trace His story with the human race. He would emerge as a friend, a father, a lover, a learner, and a revealer. If we would let God become who He is, we would find out who we are and where we are going in the “age to come” which is another term for God’s place or dimension. He would be unveiled to the human, not the Roman, or the Persian, or the Germanic, or the American or even the Jewish race;--He would be unveiled to the human race.

Competition is out—cooperation is in. Division is out—unity is in. Closed systems or bounded sets are confining—centered sets are liberating. Denominational titles on our church signs are even out—and nondescript generic names like Pathways, Evergreen, Discovery, Living Water, Chapel Pointe, Cornerstone, Daybreak etc. are in. You have to do some real digging to find out what kind of denomination this church is these days. They even sing the same type songs be they imported from England or transported from California.

The divided stories of group or people metanarratives cannot contain the King of the world, even though they speak of Him all the time. They, these various metanarratives, are inferior and for the first time in history we actually are beginning to understand and believe that. In this time, for perhaps the first time. the possibilities are opening to us to let a bigger global God emerge.

I can’t wait to see where we are going. I can’t wait because God is already there—beckoning us to join. We long to be there can sometimes taste it, but we are not—yet. Respected Christian author Phyllis Tickle puts it this way,

“Every 500 years the empowered structures of institutionalized Christianity, whatever they may be, become an intolerable carapace that must be shattered so that renewal and growth may occur. Now is such a time.”

The shell is being shattered in these days. It is a good thing, something to be welcomed. Renewal and growth will occur but it may not look like we expected it to look. I believe God is in this shift, that He is pulling us there, that He is not in heaven pacing nervously, wringing His hands in worry, but leading us, not so much a place, but in a Way. I feel that we are rethinking and re-imagining so much right now. It can cause uneasiness, an uncomfortable feeling. I understand that. These are not just ideas, as if there is really any thing like benign “just ideas”. No, I see these emerging thoughts as coming in and from God—He is revealing the future to us.

We love Jesus but are unsure about God

First of all let me make this clear--I do believe in Jesus as center, fully God, as revealed clearly in the New Testament. I am convinced He is The Last Word, the better word of the Book of Hebrews. He is the centerpoint of Christianity, the climax and fulfillment of the long worn, ragged history of the chosen people Israel.

Final word, climax, and conclusion. He is all these. Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh , that monumental answer to the question posed by Moses, the incredible declaration 'I will be what I will be' finds its resolution and clearest voice at last, in Jesus.

Having said that I must say this; I have questions about the Tanakh and the God revealed there. More and more this questioning voice begs to have attention and gain some resolution. What to do with the God of the Old Testament is no small matter but one that needs careful thought and some resulting unorthodox propositions. This topic is like the elephant in the room that catches the eye of many who are looking for a God to believe in, to give them hope in these days. The answers we have been giving are beginning to give way like an old rural bridge that simply cannot hold the volume of traffic the new suburbs bring.

Recently I heard a thoughtful Christian say 'God has a heart for everybody' and while I do believe this is true today, and could say it honestly now, it made me reflect: Was that always so? Did God always have a heart for everyone?, Did He always cringe at ethnic cleansing, or insensitivity to other cultures, or imperialism, or mistreatment of women, genocide, or even rape? Was this always the case with God? Based on Scripture these are fair questions.

Consider this: Deuteronomy 7:1-6

When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you— 2 and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them , then you must destroy them totally. ^{[ a ]} Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy . 3 Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, 4 for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. 5 This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles ^{[ b ]} and burn their idols in the fire. 6 For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.

Destroy them entirely, make no treaty with them, show them no mercy, break down the alters, smash, cut down, and burn. Doesn’t this seem more akin to Attila the Hun than the God of Israel? How can He love those who have never encountered Him before with this kind of destruction? I am referring to the Canaanites. Yet the record shows clearly that God has spoken these words Himself. It seems to me that if we are to be honest before people we need to embrace this scripture and somehow come to terms with it. What is it saying? What is God saying about Himself and His people? Is violence necessary?

Recently I heard someone preaching on this scripture: Genesis 19:4-8

But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house. 5 And they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.” 6 Lot went out to the men at the entrance, shut the door after him, 7 and said, “I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. 8 Behold, I have two daughters who have not known any man. Let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please. Only do nothing to these men , for they have come under the shelter of my roof.”

What was amazing about the sermon was that nothing was said about the treatment of the daughters, it was simply read over as though it were nothing, and in reality it does seem incidental to the narrative that these young women were offered so easily to be raped. What kind of man offers his daughters? What kind of book brushes over that kind of behavior as "incidental" to the main story line? What kind of preaching focuses on the implied homosexuality while winking at the explicit complicity of Lot in offering his daughters to be raped?

Sometimes we glaze over these scriptures because we have been conditioned to. Our view of God makes it difficult to “hear” this story. We mythologize it or treat it as theodicy.

“The goal of theodicy is to show that there are convincing reasons why a just, compassionate and omnipotent being would permit debilitating suffering to flourish. Some suggest that the goal of theodicy is not to determine the truth, but to convince skeptics by any means possible that a reasonably doubted proposition is, in fact, true”--Wikiopedia

Many have tried to convince the skeptics that certain “reasonably doubtful” propositions are true in order to fit systematized containers. We need to reconsider and take some of the scriptures above mentioned and interact with them. I believe we need to hear these words because they are “necessary” in order to see the impact of the Christ event. We need to notice and find response for these things in our Bible in order to answer a wondering world. Elephants are in the room and even if Christians don't see them those outside of the circle do. Their questions being asked in these days are not necessarily extraordinary or accusatory or mean spirited. They indeed are honest inquiries. I ask them too.

This is why I seek to understand scripture, to find a way of making sense of God. I am not trying to ‘stir people up’ or ‘shake their faith' so much as deal with embarrassing uncle Ralph , the one we hide from everyone at the family reunion. I trust the story deeply. I want it told. I am not ashamed of this Book because I believe it tells a powerful story that needs to be heard.

Scripture re-imagined

Almost all disciplines are being re imagined as we move through our lifetime in this rapidly changing world. But for some reason religion isn’t. This book describes a way to envision Christianity, what I believe to be the answer to man’s dilemma and desire, from the center point outward. Centerpoint Christianity as an apologetic begins with the cross and moves outward from that point. It begins with the Messiah and works backward and forward and outward. The premise is that the cross is the climax to the story of God's struggle to deal with evil, eliminate personal demons, fulfill His promises and responsibilities with Israel, and begin a recreation based on this resolution of multiple complex and convergent issues.

The cross is the climax of what has gone before and the commencement of a new era for God. This isn’t really a new way to look at God—Paul used it long ago. His perspective is that Christ is first. Preeminent.

‘He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.’ –Colossians One.

He is central—the centerpoint. Christianity finds its voice in Him and what He did.

Buckminster Fuller once said, "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change things build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

Christianity as we know it is getting a facelift. Phyllis Tickle calls it ‘The Great Emergence’. It will become a new model that will make the old model with its focus on believing right, being in the right system, and cocooning from culture obsolete. Fuller may have lived a long time ago but his prophetic vision is never clearer than it is today. It is time for a new Christianity to emerge--one that has honored past models but not been weighed down by them. Centerpoint Christianity or The New Christianity is one such model poised to make an entrance in a time when it is most yearned for.

But that isn’t the reason I suggest a new view. The reason is because I believe it to be true or at a minimum a possible beginning to what might follow from others.

We ought not think of these ideas in terms of ‘right and wrong’ or even old and new as though new is better and replaces old and is then of course ‘right’. The better way to construct the model is to keep that which was, and is useful, and add that which has been unveiled as time has gone by.

Consider the computer and its predecessor the typewriter like a Smith-Corona, or a Remington, or even an Underwood typewriter. It has a keyboard; it was useful for its time, and useful to build on. But it is different from the computer I am using today. It served an important function as a bridge of sorts, it isn’t wrong, we have just as a matter of reality, outgrown it. Theology is like that. Theology like most other disciplines ought to be continuously altered by new information. Old information may be replaced or may remain intact. Perhaps the keyboard stays as a foundation but what surrounds the face of the keyboard seems to be in flux. Some foundations need not be dismantled if they have stood the test of time and hold the line still. Others like a house of sand should wash away. Old ideas die hard. The greatest enemy to change is always the religious relic of resistance.

New ideas and old schools don’t mix so well. A new perspective must occur. New wine must be poured into new wineskins.

Are you smarter than a fifth grader?

We should learn from history.

Jeff Foxworthy hosts a reality television show which wants to know Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader? Let’s imagine an episode. Here is the first question. Does the earth revolve around the sun? If you answer “yes” and the year is 1616 you are wrong, and if you don’t recant your position you will be put under house arrest and branded a heretic for life. Any future works will be prohibited. You will be effectually silenced. Your platform will be gone.

Everyone “knows” that according to the Bible the earth stands firm and is not moved. Western Christian Biblical references cited are Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, and 1 Chronicles 16:30. They include text stating that "the world is firmly established, it cannot be moved." In the same tradition, Psalm 104:5 says, " the LORD set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved." Further, Ecclesiastes 1:5 states that "And the sun rises and sets and returns to its place, etc."

A literal rendering makes a closed case. So if you continue to cling to this false doctrine you will be dealt with and you will be silenced. To believe otherwise is to deny inerrancy. By the way, your cellmate will be Galileo Galilei. Galileo had it wrong too.

But if you answer “yes” and it is 2008, then you will be right and so will all the fifth grade children. It’s common knowledge today. So you can stay in the game. As we can see the “right” answer is often more a matter of timing than a matter of correctness.

Next question that Foxworthy poses in our imaginary episode is; “Does God control all things?” Hardly a question a fifth grader could answer but one we all think about. If you answer yes the audience will applaud and agree although they may secretly hold it against God. Everyone “knows” God never changes and is always in control, after all He is God. If you answer no and the year is 1998 you may be on to something. Should you happen to be a professor named John Sanders teaching at Huntington College, a small conservative evangelical college in Indiana you will be praised for your insight into “new breakthroughs in theology”.

But alas should the Evangelical Theological Society bring you up on charges and begin the inquisition about your beliefs about “open theism”, count your days because they are numbered. Even if you are on to something, even if you are right (and I am not saying it is), you are wrong. Eventually Huntington, the school that praised you, will “let you go” and continue to “pray for you and your family” as you work through your problems. You will land with Fievel singing “Somewhere Out There”. This story, too, is An American Tale that happened in evangelical land.

The pressure for evangelical institutions to be orthodox comes with steep price tags. Sometimes it isn't so much about orthodox as it is about old school and deep pockets. So new ideas soar into the sky and are shot down like skeet. The shattered plate is lives that asked questions about the way things are. It didn’t matter that it was their job to do so—for Professor Sanders and others like him. It is a tenuous line to navigate. So no one colors outside the lines. No one suggests much outside the box lest you get thrown out of the game.

Lyricist Mark Heard asks, "What kind of friend would pull a knife when it's him or you and his kids need shoes?" The answer is clear: Administrators and high priced middle men who need to save their jobs by keeping contributions high, and controversy low. And such were the Herodians and Pharisees and Sadducees of Jesus’ day. Borg describes them as being on retainer from the domination system they cooperated with for their livelihood. They had a lot to lose if they didn’t silence Jesus and keep the peace beneath the heavy hand of Rome. Accommodation had its rewards. It almost always does.

So if you think out of the box, color outside the lines return to “go” and do not collect $200. You will be branded as a trouble-maker the rest of the game. Your platform will be removed. And everyone else can secretly harbor their internal angst against God for all the natural disasters (acts of God, of course), tragic accidents involving children, and every other injustice that takes place. I mean if He is in control certainly He could do something. But He doesn’t. He has His own reasons for that. He won’t tell us but we must trust He does.

Or? Do the planets revolve around the Sun? When we assume we have it all figured out do we? Wasn’t Galileo, that lone voice, proclaiming truth?

We need to prepare for the shift, the old poet, modern day prophet Bob Dylan was right on when he said,

Come gather 'round people, wherever you roam
and admit that the waters, around you have grown

And accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone.

If your time to you, Is worth savin'

Then you better start swimmin', or you'll sink like a stone
for the times they are a-changin'. — Bob Dylan

Let the evangelical church as it is take note that the waters around them have indeed grown. The world and what we know about the world is greater now than ever before. If the church evangelical doesn’t change it better start swimming or surely it will sink like a stone. It, this form of Christianity, will go the way of Judaism despite the warnings of Paul in his letter written to the Christians in Rome so long ago. Clearly he warns that we ought not to celebrate that we are ‘grafted into’ the plan of God as though we are something special, or a group somehow special. Should we boast in this special blessing that sets us somehow above others it will serve as a curse on us and we will go the way of Judaism.

The shift is at hand. It is inevitable. And here is the "good news". Perhaps God is pushing and pulling this shift. While much of the evangelical church strives at being “defenders of the faith” (particularly conservatists and fundamentalists) some of the children are slipping out the back door.

They are writing another script. Others who never even got in the door have begun to listen to new voices.

God is moving forward. History pushes and the Spirit pulls. We could go with the stream and actually become better friends of God. Able to sit in the meadow at Cold Mountain one day knowing what God had done to resolve the dilemma of sin and the conflict of the covenant plan gone awry.

Buckminster Fuller said, "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change things build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." I am all about a new model that makes the old model obsolete. Some of the old model will remain intact, useful. Some things are timeless. The time is right for just such a shift as never before. The waters around us have grown because we know more than we did before…and that is a good thing. God is pulling us forward. We are embracing new frontiers, unknown, unimagined, but ever more increasingly conceivable.

Incidentally, On 31 October 1992 , Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the Galileo affair was handled, and officially conceded that the Earth was not stationary, as the result of a study conducted by the Pontifical Council for Culture .

The Old School ways shift really, really slow. If the evangelical church doesn't pay attention they may be comes obsolete and emerging culture will pass it by.

I do believe Jesus as center, God as revealed clearly in The Last Word, the better word of the Book of Hebrews. He is the final voice and expression of God--but what of the God of the Tanakh? Before we answer that we need to enlarge our imagination about God. We need to hear a word about God, glorious, radiant, and most certainly incomprehensible and ‘otherly’. We might compare Him in His glory in the untouchable, sin free, upper story to a diamond; Glorious with many facets.

God

God is a diamond

I envision God as a diamond with untold facets. The facets are the faces immeasurable and unseen.

The scripture unveils the faces or facets of God one by one. There’s a progressive unfolding of the character of God. Who He is can be known by looking at the facets of the diamond as they are revealed as the many faces of God. When we see an expression on another’s face we are inclined to wonder or ask, “What happened?” See a teacher on the play ground with a crying child and you can know the question has been posed. Whenever we see the emotion the natural tendency is to inquire of the cause. This is the presumption of this book. God has faces; he reveals them and feels them as the story unfolds.

Sometime I wonder if the diamond had a scratch in one facet. Is that who Satan is—a scratched face of the diamond of the perfect God now being polished out before our very eyes? Or is he from the underbelly of God like the Mesopotamian goddess Tiamot. So much is speculation. Informed guesses at best I suppose. I imagine it is possible but wouldn’t swear by it. It is not unimportant so I can’t ignore it, indeed it is this scratch or personality, call it what you will that ignites the crisis in heaven. Somehow if all things emanate from God Satan is there. I will attempt to explain further in a later chapter.

The final face is clearly the face of God in the flesh.

And that face has many facets too. We can mine this place, this One face, and never cease to learn more about God. There is always something to know, a new lesson to learn. In Jesus we do just see One face of God, one facet of the diamond. But it is so much clearer than any other in its human form. We can go deepest here and know the core of God when we gaze here. Remember through it all the variety of facets God is still—One—One being. We often mouth the words but we really treat God and Jesus as two separate entities. Jesus lifts the moisture, some of the mist, yet it still is somewhat foggy. We want to wipe the mirror to see the reflection as best we can.

And one day as the story goes we will see him face to face. This will be an unending adventure in discovery. Heaven is in this. We will not face off with God. No protagonist and antagonist. We will be at last at peace—face to face. It is so good--the Lion and the Lamb—and the way of a man and a virgin. So interesting, inviting. Heaven is not just singing all the day long. Unless God is the Song who is like a lover we never tire of gazing at.

At the risk of outright rejection I want to say that I see the feminine coming out of God as the revelation writings continues. She speaks tenderly and influences or draws out the very best of God. She is in Him as Eve was extracted from Adam. She reigns with Him as the queen. And the queen has great power.

When I was a little boy I learned to play chess. I was a math lover. I came across the values of each piece in the chess game. The King of course is central. Lose him and the game is over. Pawns are one point, bishops and knight three, and the book—ends the castles are worth five. But I was shocked to see the price of the queen. Her value is ten points—more valuable than any other piece. At first I was offended, in this game of war how could she, the woman, the queen, be worth so much. I surmised women were less than men never comprehending their value to complete man—to bring out the best in him when they blend as One. After playing chess for a long time it has become clear. Being married 29 years has made it very clear. Lose the queen and you are in danger of losing the game. She sits beside the king, protects him, loves him, is invaluable in her counsel and really draws him out of himself. When He does things that are offensive and is somewhat oblivious to the effect she draws him aside and they talk. And He adjusts and is somehow so much better. It is in him but must be drawn out.

Kind of like a rib.

Actually and surprisingly like a rib for we are most certainly made in the image of God and He is like us and we are like Him. As she comes from man, the feminine comes out of God. When the sexes are at odds or in turmoil we don’t need negotiation, we need reminders, reminders that we are created for one another. Beneath the surface we can feel this as we move through the narrative. We are made complete in this (Tom Cruise said it and all women swooned, but for a reason). All of mankind from all time in all places is familiar with this longing for someone to compliment them, and so it is with God.

To lose her is tragic. God almost did. But in the end of the end of the very ends she is there. She with He, are One, and the Kingdom, Camelot I call it, wins the day. And we all go home, to the beautiful garden of peace, together forever. And we look at the diamond that has many facets and we never get bored.

God is a diamond you know. God is transcendent (so far away), and yet immanent (so close, right here), to us living in the lower story.

And heaven sounds so much more inviting to me now that I know that.

“God Interrupted”

I have never seen the movie “Girl, interrupted” and really don’t want to. But I like the title. And I really like the premise. It’s catchy. And it describes something I want to place in the reader’s mind about heaven, or the kingdom of God, or the “age to come”. These different phrases all describe the same dimension –for lack of a better word—where God dwells, reigns, rules. At one moment in that dimension a blip appeared of the screen—it was an interruption.

The thought of an interruption in the upper story of God is very intriguing. And it is plausible. Here is the concept I propose: The Bible is essentially two stories. One the beginning story—is really an upper story that is timeless; it goes on forever untouched by stain, sin, separation, or anything we can really imagine. It is in fact so “otherly” that it is indescribable in terms we might grasp or begin to understand. We can employ metaphorical terms to try explaining the glory of the upper story, but in truth they fall pitifully short. The Book of Revelation attempts it as does the writer of Isaiah. But we suspect they are trying to describe something with a language that has yet to be imagined with words that fall short. The upper story exists as One, with no fragmentation, and with no telling—since it has no timeline, and a language so high we are at a loss.

This upper story is somehow interrupted, but if only for a moment, actually as far as the upper story goes it is more like a blip on the screen. Out of this blip a second story emerges, or takes over. The second story is the Old Testament we are familiar with, a literary triumph, a creative narrative, and a story from a particular perspective or metanarrative which came to be known as Judaism. The ones who penned it present us with the gift of time. They have somehow been chosen to be the oracles of the story. They come to be known as the Jewish people.

The moment when “God interruptus” occurs is discernible. It happens in a moment, an instance in the garden when Adam and Eve eat the proverbial apple. The interruption, which I will call the lower story, begins with an expulsion from the garden and will conclude with a resolution. Exile and restoration is a primary theme established early in scripture. The expulsion was from a garden--Eden and the final resolution will occur dramatically in a garden--Gethsemane. This lower story is the main text of scripture, the unveiling of God’s struggle with mankind. It reveals, in a way we can certainly grasp, His struggle with himself, His struggle with His creation, His dilemma of dealing with an unknown commodity. The unknown of the lower story is the understanding of Himself in relationship with fallen creation. I suggest this is new to God since He was in the beginning and in the end without sin.

When we conceive of God Biblically we realize He is essentially timeless in His dimension or realm. There is, in fact, no beginning and no end with God. When he descends into the lower story He submits Himself to the concept of time. History and a timeline are introduced to Him for the very first time. These are “new” to God. He has never experienced endings, conclusions, decay, decomposition, and disintegration. He is unity, He has integrity. The fall created beginning and end, it created mortality. God in His realm is immortal, eternal; He is not subject to time. Time having a beginning and an end doesn’t exist in eternity. Time moves towards an ending. Death is the ultimate destination of a realm under the governance of time. This is why death is the final enemy. Death, mortality, temporal is the enemy of eternity.

In His heaven God is all the things we might have imagined Him to be. At peace, in control, unending, unmoving, omniscient, omnipresent, unchanging, without beginning or end, etc. But He has no home in the fallen earth. He created it, he owns it, but in a sense He finds Himself outside of it. He decides He will not stay there. He enters. The affect of sin is something entirely new to God. He has no history with it. In reality He has no “history” in the sense of time at all. No prior understanding of what it is like. The timeless upper story of God continues unabated but somehow He must enter into space and time in the lower story that is the narrative of the Bible.

It is a new deal for God. So a timeline emerges and the timeless God enters time. Think hard about this concept. For the first time God is somehow subject to something. Only the fallen story has an ending. Only the fallen story has a beginning. It is a story beneath eternity.

In the upper story He remains for all time, eternal, as if the interruption doesn’t matter or didn’t happen for it is in the end, finally resolved. In the upper story He is the perfect One, a picture of wholeness and unity. There is certainly no conflict within or without, all is somehow ordered and right. It is a description of peace—shalom.

But it is not so in the fallen lower story that we are accustomed to. The second story that interrupts and takes over for most of Scripture is the story that we are most familiar with. It is as though the bottom drops out of heaven and the resulting narrative, something new, begins on the lower level. This is in fact the best way to perceive the Bible. It tells of an interrupted peace, a fall from grace, an invention of time, and a crisis to be “lived in”. God descends to the lower story and experiences something new, something He is entirely unfamiliar with.

God encounters what is known as Sin. Sin is not a singular event as in “she sinned by telling a lie” as in a singular act but something that pervades all of creation. It is like a shroud, heavy smoke, or virus. It touches all things created. This kind of sin is the kind that permeates all of creation that “longs, groans” (Romans 8), for the redemption it was made to be part of. God commits to the redemption of the fallen story, the elimination of sin. Sin is the problem; death is the ultimate outcome of sin, eternal is interrupted. When sin is dealt with death is gone. At first He will work through a people (named Israel) in order to eradicate sin, ever narrowing down to a remnant of a faithful few, until One man stands alone. He conquers the effects of temporal and ascends to eternal again.

This remnant thread is obvious in scripture. I call it the narrowing way. It comes down in time just like the curve of an hourglass. When it reaches its centerpoint one grain of sand can fit through. One is left. This One comes to His own to save them, this lone figure without a place to lay His head, comes. His vocation (or work) is to be what God had meant Israel to be but she would not or perhaps could not. She was at last fallen, irreparable, dark, and rebellious; she was not the light of the world, the way back home to the garden of God. But out of her came One who could.

His name is Jesus. He completes, “finishes” the work of destroying the curse of the expulsion from the garden and is the first fruit of the renewed new creation.

The lower story is far different from the never ending upper story and it is also His story, our Story, and the story that frames mankind. It is a work of literature; it is a narrative, a study in character, an unveiling of how God works it out.

It is so much more.

It is for our intents and purposes the way back into the garden. It is a long and complex journey for the ones who are created in the image of God for we are deep and complex characters. We reflect the creator and are in fact images of Him. It is fascinating to watch this story unfold.

And we should let it unfold imaginatively.

Indeed Jack Miles has posed an insightful question about how we read and ingest scripture: “Why take so narrowly instrumental an attitude toward a work of the imagination?" Why not let the story breathe new life in us, we, the creation. Why, when our lives are so defined as relational, unpredictable, multifaceted, and unmanageable, do we try so hard to master this gift of scripture? To box it, get it, master it. Why, when it can ignite our imagination for the glory of the anticipated indescribable upper story do we limit its grand potential?

"Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh"

”I will be what I will be”—God in the response to Moses question,
“Who shall I say sent me?”

“Anybody who has put it all together has surely got it wrong” is an accurate statement for all time and our time is no exception to the rule. We (none of us especially me, how arrogant would that be) have a special light, a new revelation about God. The more I read the more I realize that others have thought these things before me. I am just connecting the dots. We all have a duty to seek the meaning of this life and the truth about us. This is what keeps me asking, seeking, and wondering. As an intuitive thinker, narrative theology and literary character absorption and description is what I do—naturally. I am at ease with these tools. To not embrace them is to ignore something placed deep inside me.

Narrative Theology can be taken as an exhilarating, liberating, imaginative unveiling of the Story of God that changes us when we feel it, by viewing the story as it is passing by. His Story (the Framing Story which over shrouds all metanarrative and gives meaning to personal narrative) is the palate to which my personal narrative or story finds its place and deep meaning. I am somehow found in His story and able to understand myself as I watch Him, in all the complexities of His person and personality emerge. When I embrace this type of theology (without disposing of other types of theological constructs) I become like a miner searching for gold, a playwright looking for a plot, a pilgrim looking for meaning, or an artists filling an empty canvas.

The satisfaction comes in the surprise of the creation.

Like a songwriter that had no idea that song was in him. Or perhaps like the lover who is surprised by the depth of his/her commitment when she/he defends the other against attack we can hear God, feel God. I am observing all the time, watching for His cues. In this way I notice I am like unto God…that is, created in His image or imaging Him. If I feel emotions it is because He must feel emotions. Not because He is like me so much is I am like Him.

Songwriter Jackson Browne has this great lyric; I have carried it for years. “It’s like a song I can hear playing right in my ear…that I can’t sing…but I can’t help listening”. And the narrative of God is like that. I may not have it down clearly, and can only sort of sing along, yet subconsciously it is always there, and I am somehow always listening. I live in a déjà vu type world somehow aware that eternity, eternal, is what I was meant for. I “see through the glass darkly”. I fell something is amiss, not quite right; I like Dustin Hoffman am never quite “comfortable in the skin I am in”. I know I am meant for more. We all do.

Looking at the unfolding story where God discovers himself and solves his personal dilemma of the existence of evil in the creation, is fuel for my thoughts. We can walk with Him in this unveiling much like we might a well directed, superbly acted, incredibly written film by embracing narrative and the theology which under girds it. I find myself looking forward to the release date of the movie, or, to use the language of Paul, the unveiling of God, the announcement of His entrance, the glimpse of His face. The mystery never resolves entirely, that is part of the point of eternity, but the many facets I find along the way are reflections well worth keeping.

My wife worries that I may fall over the edge. She thinks I shouldn’t wander here. What she doesn’t know is that I wander here all the time. It is the song I strain to hear, the reflection I squint to see, the familiar déjà vu I am often interrupted by…I may not sing it just right, I may not see it so clearly, perhaps it is a vague sort of notion in my gut…but I cannot help but listen, look, and pause to wonder. It is in my thoughts. I am just now writing them down. It is no more of a risk than it ever was.

The essence of who I am can be better understood as I understand “how” I am created in His image and discover who he is, as He resolves (for our benefit, perhaps) who He is as He lives through the lower story. It is not as though God needs this…perhaps He does…but I most certainly do…if I am going to love Him from an enraptured heart rather than a cautious heart I need to understand. In order to love we must have pieces to the puzzle. Love must come from a deep place to be real love. Surface, childish love will not do when life’s difficult questions arise without my intentional dampening of the voices that rise in me. I have found resolution to be of more virtue than avoidance. Avoidance, of course, is much easier and in ample commodity in the rat race of the western world that I live in. It takes work to be intentional even when at ease with the tools. At some point you have to build something.

Which brings us back to I AM WHAT I AM or perhaps better translated I will be what I will be. The truth is Jewish translators are unsure of what the Hebrew Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh meant. They chose to leave it as simply Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh. What seems clear in a narrative sense is that God is revealing, unveiling, presenting Himself to us in the Bible. Not simply in words but in emotions that emanate from the words. He becomes what He will be. The difference between the two similar translations is important. If the better translation is "I Am" then a steady is-ness is communicated. God is a bit of a done deal. He is an already determined personality. If the "I will be" translation is accurate then one can easily imagine that God is going to be revealed along the way. Rather than He is, He is becoming or being revealed, or at last, unveiled.

That is, He discovers himself.

At first this was very uncomfortable, those last words, even to me. The thought of God changing, becoming, learning was a hurdle. But when I looked deep into scripture and realized God was being introduced to the concept of time it became easier to fathom the thought that He too is on this journey. Abraham Heschel says “time” is a gift that the Jewish narrative has given mankind. They are a people who have history and are traceable. It is hard to accept this theory yet in the divine story it seems all too true.

For example, consider the first few chapters of this great saga. God barks (my wife hates the word but I feel his power in the verb) orders in creation revealing something of His vast nature. Things are instantly in order and spring forth from nowhere, He is huge. He has command of the situation. He is quite powerful and masculine. This seems to be Who He is. He is large, powerful, creative, and apparently in control.

Something a bit out of the character slips out when He interacts with Adam and Eve. He symbolically, bends down, revealing His desire for meaningful relationship with someone, anyone, or perhaps especially this one. It is somewhat out of character for such a being but He begins to reveal something that is within Him. He knows it is not good to be alone. I mean, He knows and isn’t guessing at all. Without being irreverent I imagine He is like King Kong when He is transforming into a lover with large but gentle hands.

He responds violently, and it appears at first glance, is overly agitated when they eat of the fruit of the garden but as the plot unfolds and the cost of righting this mistake becomes clearer we will understand His reaction.

Yet, He seems so tender when He dresses them for expulsion, something to “cover you”, not so unlike the young mother putting a yellow raincoat and snapping the rubber boots on her 5 year-old who she is about to send out into an unsafe world. She can see the thunderstorm out there and hear its crack of thunder, sounding like a cruel whip, as she turns her little boy around to the door. She tenderly kisses him as she sends him out.

I imagine she cries as he leaves, and lightning flashes, revealing her pursed lips and worried face. The thunder cracks as another tear falls, not her first—it won’t be her last.

What I notice is there seems to be two sides to this person. There is this commanding masculine side and a nurturing feminine side. God seems to me the like her, perhaps a tear when no one is looking, it may be the first, but this most certainly won’t be His last. It falls as He places the cherubim at the gate of Eden or is that the gate of His heart.

The cherubim keep him in as much as it keeps them out, because, as we shall soon find out, there is something deep inside Him that longs to run after that child. Something that longs to sacrifice for that child. And one day He will. Commanding God, tender mother, and yet One person.

In the words of Jack Dawson on the deck of the Titanic God has now committed, “I can’t. I’m involved now.” God is involved now. He cannot retreat to the upper story and let this one go. He is like Jack, or is Jack like Him (indeed God can be found just about anywhere, and in almost any story, if we watch). He is involved. He, the great I am is hooked. He has taken off his shoes and is going to jump in after the One He loves.

It all happened rather quickly.

You see, I surmise that God is like all of the above and it makes the story make sense. He cries when his treasure leaves the safety of Eden. But He still is the One who exiles them. He has mixed feelings. This was, is, after all, His prize. Yet he sets them out. He is upset but he isn’t finished. He is like us or we are like Him. You pick.

To me in the end it is all the same. And narrative theology helps me make sense of it all.

Emergent God: “Did God grow old and grow up?”

We are created in God's image and we have ways of trying to explain or understand that truth. They fall miserably short. Wouldn't it be liberating to take it as it stands? That is, to grasp that we reflect him in our journey, we are "like" him though he is "otherly". One of the ways we as created humans "grow up" is through experience. We figure it out as we go. What if it was that way for God? Perhaps he "knows" the outcome, there will be One heaven, One earth, One king, but He lives the experience in time and is often "surprised" as indicated in scripture by outcomes in the narrative of Tanakh.

One of the early moments of revelation or surprise comes as God sees brother rise against brother. When Cain kills Able God asks with incredulity, “What have you done?” Cain’s somewhat casual response to this first bloodshed is telling. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” is an attitude. The remark sounds eerily similar to the question posed to God in the flesh years later, “And who is my neighbor?” What is exasperating to God is that this “curse of Cain” mentality so easily disposes of our brothers. How could this be? He is angry. He feels.

This is one of the underlying theses of this book. He seems to transition in emotion or personality in the same way that we do. Initially, as we observed in the creation, he is bold and simply "speaks" creation into being. He seems more tenuous when Babel is being constructed; a bit insecure about where they are going, perhaps a bit alarmed by their confidence which mirrors His to a tea. If this continues there is no end to what they can imagine.

As time goes on He takes the risk of becoming a friend of particular men. He is "the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob." He is committing to a particular people. He in this relationship reveals himself. Isn’t that how we all reveal our selves; in relationship? He is sometimes not so welcomed or appreciated. Did this "hurt" the divine being? As the relationship He has with "the people as their God" and notice in passing the subtle shift that occurs whenever we engage in relationship, unfolds we notice a subtle change. There seems to be a shift from his ownership to their ownership, so to speak. They "own" him as a personal God. No longer does he sit austere from the heavens and speak forth, he now engages at the table and negotiates. Once He spoke and Abraham listened dutifully. In two short generations we see Jacob making demands, conditions actually, that He must meet in order "to then be my God". What is intriguing is that God meets his demands. As God reaches down, bends down for relationship, man ascends to influence and confidence. Israel become important to God and His unabated sovereignty seems somehow dulled.

And familiarity breeds contempt. In the Book of Genesis the people are contentious, curious, questioning, being…independent. And he vacillates in this relationship. This contempt or seeming disrespect explains why God reestablishes his place as masculine by expressing Himself as the warrior God, God the Almighty, in the book of Exodus. A buffer is needed. You get too close and you are vulnerable. Michael Card pens in his powerful song "Why",

"Only a friend can betray a friend, a stranger has nothing to gain,
and only a friend comes close enough to ever cause so much pain"

Better to not cozy up too much. Getting close can be risky. It can be costly. He will eventually relent from being distant and draw nigh, and feel that pain, and drink that cup to the dregs, but for now…

As time passes the quarrel between God and Israel (the name now given to represent Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) becomes heated. His frustration with humankind, Jewish and Gentile alike, reaches a crescendo in the conversations recorded throughout the prophetic books.

This final emotion laced scene comes after a long hard section of discussions, oracles, pronouncements of giving up, having mercy, proposing divorce, and reestablishing pity and love. This is the second section of the Tanakh called simply the Prophets. It is an animated section. God sometimes speaks in the prophets; sometimes the prophets speak for him, either way his heart bursts forth through these oracles. One of the great illustrations of the tenor of the prophets (conversations) section is expressed in Hosea 11.

11:1 When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.
2 The more they were called,
the more they went away;
they kept sacrificing to the Baals
and burning offerings to idols.

The more I called to him, says Yahweh, the more he ran away…and they kept on, they kept on, they kept on-- sacrificing to others, loving others, lying down with other lovers. Honoring, worshipping, reveling in the creatures, those “prostitutes” those “bad boys” while I called out.

It was I who taught Ephraim to walk;
I took them up by their arms,
but they did not know that I healed them.

I led them with cords of kindness,
with the bands of love,
and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws,
and I bent down to them and fed them.

And I so love them, I taught them as toddlers, I lifted them as small helpless babies, guided them with cords of kindness, and I bent down, I came down, I loved. I risked relationship. And they…would not. How often I would have gathered them up as a hen would gather up her chicks, but they would not. And so now when they call I will turn my head.

But how can I give you up, O Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, O Israel?
How can I make you like Admah (Sodom)?
How can I treat you like Zeboiim (Gomorrah)?
My heart recoils (quakes)within me;
my compassion grows warm and tender.

I will not execute my burning anger;
I will not again destroy Ephraim;

God is faced with the dilemma love brings like a parent who remembers. “But look at the photographs family scenes, conversations, vacations, sand castles, ball games, birthdays…how can I let them go, give them up? Smiles, successes and struggles. I remember them all. God had a long developed history and investment in this relationship. He vows not to destroy Israel and we see something of His nature that draws us to Him.

For I am God and not a man,
the Holy One in your midst,
and I will not come in wrath.

But how will God get this done. How can he lure His people home? How can he help them be the light of the world?

Final straw that severs

The final straw of frustration, the blow up which is followed by a moratorium of silence occurs in the book of Job which is in the next section simply called "the writings" of Tanakh. When this argument is finalized we will hardly hear from God at all for the rest of the Hebrew Bible. The conversation ends tensely when God seems to have had enough and says, "How dare you challenge my moral integrity" and stomps off ne'er to be heard from again.

Or so it seems.

We can presume he is in his room, or perhaps his cave. The writings continue about Him, about His legacy, but he is strangely AWOL. The books of Nehemiah, Esther, and Ruth, for example, hardly mention His name, although His influence is written all over his people who carry, like an ex-wife or lost child or departed friend his marks. They carry on in his absence.

It is as if God is sulking, withdrawing, thinking, when this heated, drawn out, ongoing relationship seems untenable. He is separate. Tired. At the end of his life Johnny Cash was a tired man. One of his last recorded works is a dark Nine Inch Nails song entitled "Hurt". One would wonder about how a country/gospel legend could record a song from the dark, gothic band. When I watch the video of the song on YouTube I imagine God in the final silent stages of Tanakh. He is in the twilight and though he will try--"try to kill it all away, but I remember everything."

“Hurt” written by “Nine Inch Nails”

I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything

[Chorus:]
What have I become My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the end
And you could have it all My empire of dirt
I will let you down I will make you hurt

I wear this crown of thorns Upon my liar's chair
Full of broken thoughts I cannot repair
Beneath the stains of time The feelings disappear
You are someone else I am still right here

[Chorus:]
What have I become My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away In the end
And you could have it all My empire of dirt
I will let you down I will make you hurt

If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way

And who of us hasn't done that. Withdrew, sulked, retreated, and regretted how things have turned out. And if we could start again a million emotional miles away…isn’t it what we would want to do, find a way. We are Image bearers. We can "get it" when it is told honestly.

This wound is so deep that God becomes utterly silent during the ensuing intertestimental period. It is as if He is trying to determine whether or not to continue. Maybe He will leave, jump ship, leave the ones he loves and just like the Springsteen song “Hungry Heart” head to Baltimore Jack. Maybe he’ll go out for a ride and never come back. But He is not like a man; He is faithful…

He works it out. He makes some decisions.

He decides to "remake himself" and using the history he now has, He enters the world again, this time not as a brash confident creator...but as the most vulnerable creature we know. He empties Himself of vestries and becomes flesh, a baby. When the time comes, and its noteworthy to remember He does this following His baptism of repentance...and what is He repenting of, what did he do? Fail in His relationship with His beloved. Hurt them in recoil when he was wounded, taken for granted, or ignored? Perhaps He who demanded that His people "shall not kill" is feeling the blood on His hands from His various forays into genocide...

When this time comes…”fully comes” (Galatians 4:4) He enters, or re-enters, the stage and reveals Himself in experiential wisdom. "You have heard it said...but I say unto you”. Now where did they hear it "said"...why, in the scriptures of course, and the traditions born of them. This is the obvious answer. That is why it is said that Jesus spoke with an authority unheard of amongst the religious elite at that time. It is said, but I say unto you, indeed.

But now God is shifting his position.

I once heard a prominent theologian, Walter Bruggermann, ask, and it seemed as if he were treading on "holy ground" and in danger of being struck down...this question,

What if God realized that violence wasn't working?

What if God "owns up" to some of the way He operated and now that He "knows better" or has experienced more, with his creation, repents? Take for point of illustration 1 Kings 20. The Lord has promised Ahab, king of Israel, victory over Ben-Hadad, the king of Aram. The battle goes just as promised, but aides to Ben-Hadad advise him:

"We have heard that Israelite kings are merciful. Let us dress in sackcloth with cords around our heads (the traditional garb of penitence) and go out and meet the king of Israel; maybe he will spare your life" (1 Kings 20:31).

Ahab shows himself merciful indeed, making a generous peace settlement and sparing Ben-Hadad's life. The Lord, however, is furious with this conduct. He is enraged and tells Ahab,

"You will pay with your life for having set free a man who was under my curse of destruction. It will be your life for his, your people for his'" (1 Kings 20:42).

God is vengeful...indeed, not such a new concept, and one that I didn't pull out of the air, we all are familiar with 'vengeance is Mine' declares the Lord.

And so it seems.

Our modern ears recoil from this type of God. We truly avoid the text altogether so as ignore or hide the reality of the writing of it. We are like the enabling spouse, who makes excuses for the drunken husband when He doesn't pick the children up from school. There is some reason given--something palatable, 'he needed to catch up on his sleep, he works hard, you know' or 'It slipped his mind, he has so much going on these days', or whatever, to save herself the uncomfortable moment of dealing with the damage daddy does. She does it unthinkingly almost second nature she's been in this groove so long; it is the way she carries on with the relationship. Why rock the boat?. She enables the behavior by letting it go forever. And so does much of Christianity.

Which is confounding?

Why don't we just admit it? This behavior of God, this unmerciful vengeance which when revealed, really makes us squirm. It makes us feel ill at ease, we feel like we must 'cover' for Him. We hope the children NEVER discover it. Hopefully, they will read the New Testament and miss this rendering of God in the Tanakh. And should they stumble upon the Jack Daniels in the closet, it 'isn't what it seems' we say and manipulate some forced interpretation so complex or silly that even we can't swallow it. The preacher will tell us, 'God is a mystery' and if we persist 'who are we to 'question the potter' being only the clay and all.' It is a subtle veiled threat from one with ascribed power, who, we instinctively want to trust, has answers. Basically he is saying 'don't go there' and will become stern if need be. Because in the system we have he doesn't have answers but the system must go on and he is the keeper of the door. Generally, people get it and cease to ask hard questions and get on with life.

Perhaps it is best to simply leave it alone.

But you won't hear this, First Kings Twenty, as a Sunday morning text. Best to just stash it, this text, this story, away some place where it can remain obscure or unnoticed. In many circles this stash is more dangerous than Playboy and liberal theology rolled into one. It might undo the thinking person--really, it might. So we attempt not to deal with it. We put a shadowy pall over folks like me--on the edge, you know--and leave it under the bed.

But I can't. I have taken the now proverbial red pill and, indeed, Neo is right, there is no going back. So I begin to ask questions about this reading of scripture and wonder if there is another way. And in the journey down the rabbit hole, I begin to see things in a new way by viewing Scripture; through the literary lens of narrative theology. God was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the tension He was feeling in violence. He was looking for an out that worked. Not in a way of a "cleaner" as portrayed by George Clooney in the movie "Michael Clayton." No, Jesus does not come to function as a janitor to clean up the mess in the cosmos that indicts The Lord on His own judicial court. This is no cover up. It is the honest uncovering of "what I found myself in" and "what I did about it" unveiled in Scripture, by God.

And we call all learn something from that. We can imitate that. The alcoholic, "drunk" can deal with it once He has uncovered the lie he lives in. When he emerges, comes out on the other side we know he is a better man. All of us, when we weigh ourselves and find our "kingdom" wanting can shift and change. We are not locked down. We are not stuck.

Either is God in this unfolding story.

This is, I suggest, at the heart of the transforming power of the gospel. What ever it is that has "undone" us does not "own us". God is showing us the way, leading us. Repentance is not a sign of weakness it is a show of strength.

Mark it now: Whatever it is that has undone us does not own us.

What if He needed to repent? It wouldn't be the first time, at several points in the Tanakh He bemoans the fact that he created and threatens to "undo His creation” for His part in this mess. Repentance is turning 180 degrees. It is resetting one’s course. It is essentially about change. No cover up, but an embracing of responsibility that we all deem so honorable and good. This is the Jesus that emerges after a long silence to represent God's recommitted heart to this covenant. The Lamb within the Lion. Still One. Power and sacrifice meted together as One.

The question now becomes what will we do with the man who has surrendered or suspended His power?

This is the crisis that is in Jerusalem on that climactic holy week of scripture; what will they do with the "emptied God?" (Philippians 2). It is the same scenario in our own heart everyday in every generation. This story becomes utterly believable because we live in it. What will we do when God does not force us?

Sadly, we, with power, often use it to "seize the kingdom", the very thing God was fearful (at Babel and other points such as when Israel begged for a king to rule over them like the other nations) we would do. Seizing the kingdom has to do with the attitude that we can do this well along without you; it is the fall of autonomy. But God has become wise in His time alone thinking. He knows where this may go...and He goes now willingly. This will be the end of the first relationship He so dearly fought for. This decision to "empty Himself" will be expensive.

It will cost Him his life. And it will set Him free to recreate life again, fresh...which He longs to do. Don't we all?

Who of us doesn't want a second chance? Why not God?

And isn't that concept of grace, the "second chance" the thing we so cherish. Isn't it the amazing thing that breaks our heart? The thing that turns the brash slave trader into gentle parsons. It is amazing to experience grace. To blow it, get it, and have a chance to make good? Makes a blind man see, this kind of second shot.

I close this section thusly;:

In the course of this book(the Old Testament Tanakh we are repeatedly told about the differences between the Lord of the Old Testament and Jesus of the New Testament, and the changed relationship with his followers: ''Once he demanded that they offer sacrifice to him; now he sacrifices himself for them. Once he demanded that they serve him; now he serves them. Once he demanded that they love him; now he loves them 'to the end. '--Jack Miles in "God: A Biography"

The ‘I Am’ grows up

He will be, even as He is, the ‘I Am’. Sounds confusing but it will soon make perfect sense.

I am persuaded that God emerges in the Old Testament; called the Tanakh in Jewish literature. He emerges into a character that is in a bind, almost stumped, silenced and finished. Israel is in exile. His child, His lover, His people are on the ropes and have been for quite some time. But He will eventually come to a triumphant, surprising renewal. The God who is becoming is getting ready to make His move. The troubled God will make a triumphant return.

He emerges on the other side of silence. In other words, He changes as the story unfolds and like so many great stories rises up just in the nick of time. It comes in the end when all seemed assuredly lost and without hope. Just then resolution comes, that which was a dissonant chord hanging loosely exposed and vulnerable in history's symphony resolves. In the end the crisis is resolved into a soothing, restful conclusion. And just then, at that very moment redemption occurs for heaven and earth.

This is God and He is solving the dilemma of fallen-ness, of sin, of evil, of Israel.

One of Auguste Rodin’s most famous sculptures is The Thinker statue, a piece originally conceived to be part of another work. The Thinker was part of a commission by the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris to sculpt a monumental door based on The Divine Comedy of Dante. Each of the statues in the piece represented one of the main characters in the epic poem.

Initially named The Poet, The Thinker statue was intended to represent Dante himself at the top of the door reflecting on the scene below. However, we can speculate that Rodin thought of the figure in broader, more universal terms. The Thinker is depicted as a man in sober meditation battling with a powerful internal struggle. The unique pose with hand to the chin, right elbow to the left knee, and crouching position allows the statue to survey the work with a contemplative feel. This poet, this thinker, this One, is God at the close of the Tanakh.

Yes, He “will be” even as He is I am. And He is the image we reflect. And we are like Him.

Something drives Him towards this, and in that way He is like us. We emerge into ourselves and something drives us. We become who we are. We are not born who we will be. We become as we relate and experience our life. Perhaps we are not as noble as God but we both walk this earthly path seeking resolution and redemption.

I believe God redeemed Himself in Jesus and solved His dilemma along the way. It happened all at once. This moment was and is the most crucial moment for Him, the crucible moment for His people, and the christening moment for you and I and all of creation.

This is about that. Before we reach the end other questions have to be raised to fill in the narrative. There are many to choose from. I will look at four characters amongst the many. They are central to the ending and lesson of the narrative. They are, Satan, David, the Lover, and Job. These four snapshots will help us see the victory of God, the fatherhood of God, the crisis of God, and the love of God. They are but four photos amidst a huge informing album called scripture. But they are important for in them lie the relationship between God the Father and Jesus the Son, the reveled mystery of One, the defeat of the accuser, and the crisis point that made God do what He did in Jesus.

Portraits

Portrait: Where did Satan come from?

As a pastor I avoided the question anywhere and anytime I could. It was as though I hoped they would never put it together. Satan, evil personified, is in the garden before the fall. Something is rotten in Denmark.

But we need to “deal with it”. I definitely would not stake my life on what is to follow—but I can not, not deal--with it anymore than God could let him slither around the house forever. At some point—we have to face him.

If there was nothing before God then we must assume that either God “created” him and is quite mute on the subject, or, take a deep breath, he represents something that somehow emanates from God. In other words he was resident in God and emerged from God’s consciousness.

Satan is found in but a few places in the Tanakh. He blends into the background of many photos much like an outsider slipping in the family history.

He appears first in the garden as the slippery, suggestive serpent that “tempts” Eve. While he is not named in Genesis 3, it is generally agreed that he is the one who bruises the heel of the seed of the woman who will eventually "crush" his head.

First Chronicles, one of the books that falls at the end of the Tanakh names him as the one who "incited David" to take a census of the warriors in Israel. It was costly and 70,000 men fell at the release of the plague of the Lord before He recoiled from this and called off the dogs, mercifully, prematurely.

Zechariah chapter three speaks of him as accusing the high priest Yeshiva, a fascinating vision of what is to come. Yeshiva. The accused is dressed in dirty clothes but then after the "rebuke" of Satan is redressed in clothes of majesty, a sure sign of redemption and honor.

Finally, he emerges mysteriously, as if out of nowhere, near the end of the Tanakh in a relatively prominent supporting role in the first two chapters of the book of Job. He is portrayed as the adversary, who, true to form, “tempts” or “incites” God to a wager in the Book of Job.

He tempts God, incites persons, and watches from another “place”. He appears and then, poof, he is gone. His appearances are somewhat mythological in that he is not in the Tanakh narrative anywhere till the very end.

Perhaps he comes from the “mind” or “consciousness” of God, not unlike the wild intrusive thoughts which are his calling card to us. And we, imaging Him, are familiar with the adversary. He slips fear into us making us cowardly. He slides doubt in as a “just a possibility” and craftily assigns motive to others. It is second nature for him. He makes us wonder about God, (”Did God really say?” or “Well, of course Job is faithful, why, you give him everything, who wouldn’t be?)

He is real, yet unseen.

He appears, but none knows where he comes from. He is like an uninvited thought that when allowed to come in, sits downs and becomes an unwanted, welcome invader. He creates that kind of dissonance. Much like Alanas Moriesette’s eerie song “Uninvited” he becomes an object, an idol, who she “like any hot-blooded woman simply wants to crave”. The gate opens and he slithers in. You can feel him and you want to lock the door but he is so intriguing, so beautiful, so tempting.

And, did I mention, so poisonous.

Before you know it, the gate of the garden is creaking and we, God and me and you and, yes, even Alanas Moriesette, are wondering and watching and talking. He is like Ben Lucas, the irritating protagonist in the unpredictable series "Lost" who is not to be trusted alone with anyone lest he "get in their head". And he gets to us—God and His created jewel(s).

Why does Satan have access to the perfect garden anyway? Why is he there if it is a place without sin? Is he really an invader—or does he somehow belong there?

He is there I fear, for lo, he is from God. He at one time did reside in God’s bosom. That is where he comes from. There I said it and I feel better. If God creates all somehow He stands behind this monster.

And he must be dealt with. He has to be harnessed. He must be mastered, by God, lest the garden sprout weeds again and again and again. You see he is the “demon” of God upsetting, unsettling the creation. There from the very beginning, he will not be in the end.

Enough.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing time and again and expecting a different result. So it’s now—or never—living in the circle of again and again and again for all eternity is no way to live. God is exiting the carousel.

Again and again and again stops now. And here is the exit door.

Wood. Nail. Timber.

This is the way it goes down. God will die…and kill him. This is the beautiful collision. Satan, the underside of God, which spoiled mankind in the garden, will “be no more”.

So understand this, atonement is, also, and equally as important, that which sets God free from the underbelly which seeks to destroy Him and possess His creation again and again and again.

Satan, the personality of God represented in the flood, so similar to the Mesopotamian goddess Tiamot, is at last finally overcome, not simply fettered, but killed on the cross, so that the resilient love of God is set free eternally. The one who has hijacked so many photos in the family album, the illegitimate child at best, is removed from the scene. The injection is lethal. Satan is not coming back.

And this is how “love wins". Right there on the cross in death.

The love of God, mercy of God, Father God overcomes all adversaries, including His own, in the final scene of the divine mystery.

Here, at last, God defeats god.

Portrait: The Father emerges

"Fatherhood as a metaphor extends God's language about himself and enables him to escape from the dilemma in which his covenant with Israel has placed him. He cannot do otherwise than inflict the punishments he has sworn to inflict. But then what? Fatherhood is the beginning of an answer to that question”. –Jack Miles in GOD: A biography

When Jesus came part of what He was "up to” was revealing, without shadow, the heart of the Father towards his people. He speaks of the relationship frequently. Although the concept of God as father was not employed often in the Old Testament, it did occur and is significant. As Jesus usage may have been employed frequented it wasn’t first time God, as the father figure, appears.

In order to understand the heart of the God as father we will look at the heart of David, a man described as after the very heart of God. That phrase, so common in its description, of David, really means that David and God had an inner connectedness that was uncommon. What I believe is this: The heart of God lay in the chest of David. It came out in many ways and on various occasions, but none so tender and powerful than in the stories where the heart is expressed in fatherhood.

David had many sons and daughters, but three stand out, actually stand apart from the others.

Amnon, Absalom, and Solomon.

They each have a story to tell. We will listen and learn, look and see, consider and construct. God will be revealed to us in their perspectives. From this juncture on we will use the term “father” with the understanding that the term can be understood as from either the perspective of God or David.

The First Son of blood
In scene one Amnon shows the father’s tolerance, predicament, and longsuffering. In this relationship we can understand God’s dilemma as a father to Israel. We can experience the low boil that simmers beneath the skin of God. How son’s can put father on edge, in predicaments and such. This son's sin puts father in a bind. He is the child that complicates God's life (using David and God interchangeably as father) by his sin. He provokes the crisis in the house of David.

Amnon and Tamar
2 Samuel 13:1

Now Absalom, David's son, had a beautiful sister, whose name was Tamar. And after a time Amnon, David's son, loved her. 2 And Amnon was so tormented that he made himself ill because of his sister Tamar, for she was a virgin, and it seemed impossible to Amnon to do anything to her. 3 But Amnon had a friend, whose name was Jonadab, the son of Shimeah, David's brother. And Jonadab was a very crafty man. 4 And he said to him, “O son of the king, why are you so haggard morning after morning? Will you not tell me?” Amnon said to him, “I love Tamar, my brother Absalom's sister.” 5 Jonadab said to him, “Lie down on your bed and pretend to be ill. And when your father comes to see you, say to him, ‘Let my sister Tamar come and give me bread to eat, and prepare the food in my sight, that I may see it and eat it from her hand.’” 6 So Amnon lay down and pretended to be ill. And when the king came to see him, Amnon said to the king, “Please let my sister Tamar come and make a couple of cakes in my sight that I may eat from her hand.”

7 Then David sent home to Tamar, saying, “Go to your brother Amnon's house and prepare food for him.” 8 So Tamar went to her brother Amnon's house, where he was lying down. And she took dough and kneaded it and made cakes in his sight and baked the cakes. 9 And she took the pan and emptied it out before him, but he refused to eat. And Amnon said, “Send out everyone from me.” So everyone went out from him. 10 Then Amnon said to Tamar, “Bring the food into the chamber that I may eat from your hand.” And Tamar took the cakes she had made and brought them into the chamber to Amnon her brother. 11 But when she brought them near him to eat, he took hold of her and said to her, “Come, lie with me, my sister.” 12 She answered him, “No, my brother, do not violate [1] me, for such a thing is not done in Israel; do not do this outrageous thing. 13 As for me, where could I carry my shame? And as for you, you would be as one of the outrageous fools in Israel. Now therefore, please speak to the king, for he will not withhold me from you.” 14 But he would not listen to her, and being stronger than she, he violated her and lay with her.

15 Then Amnon hated her with very great hatred, so that the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her. And Amnon said to her, “Get up! Go!”

Our offspring have a way of putting us in difficult straits. Serious straits. Binds. Children have the unique ability to tie us up. In this story Amnon rapes Tamar, his half sister, and everyone watches close to see what the father will do. Will God kill his own son for transgression? Will He banish Amnon as He did Adam and Cain following?

Or not.

And if not, then why not? Hooks, they serve to make things complex. Love is a thorn. Fatherhood pricks the finger of God and he bleeds, just like us. And God is transitioning before our eyes in the narrative story--from Creator to Deliverer to Arbiter to Father. Each role draws him into the web of relationship further and further. A Creator can enjoy his creation from afar, a Deliverer warrior can boast of His power from above, an Arbiter can make an agreement at the table that must stick, but a Father is never less than a father and is always involved, if he is good.

You cannot change being father. You can never be ‘not a father’ once you have become a father. There is a certain covenant that exists.

“Fatherhood is an absolute, not a conditional state. The father of a son cannot, in the nature of things cease to be such. If the father disinherits the son, he is the father of a disinherited son. If he slays him, he is the father of a slain son. If he denies him, he is the father of a denied son. Even if he aborts him, he is the father of an aborted son. Functionally, it is this about fatherhood that commands the image to the Lord and to the Biblical writer. But once in the Lord’s mouth, once on the page, fatherhood, one of the richest natural symbols in human experience, inevitably begins to take on a life of its own. Unconditionality is just one among its innumerable possibilities.’—Jack Miles.

This is now an irrevocable, troublesome, complicated relationship. And it is so very thorny. When David hesitates about “what to do” with Amnon we can feel “the why” of his hesitation. No father can unlove his son, no father banishes his son easily, and no father kills without flinching, his own flesh and blood. Fatherhood evokes a very intense image.

We, as we read the story, are not the only eyes upon the father (King/king). Another son is watching. And this isn't the first time his eyes have been opened and his heart has been wounded. The rebellion of Absalom was seeded long before Amnon's sin.

The Second Son

A second son is around the corner. He is looking intently, observing it all. Absalom is the second son. The son who observes, learns, perceives, judges and eventually explodes in “righteous indignation”, a rage that borders on the edge of disgust. It takes on the face of justice. “If my father will not be just...I will be. I have purity, integrity, and a confidence that is clouded in my dad”. As the interrogator, young, brash, and confident, he takes the father to court. He is like a jealous Job, the spirit on Caiphus during Passover late at night. This is a public scandal. Acquittal will not be the verdict, when he plays accuser, judge and jury. He takes matters into his own hands---he kills Amnon--and he is intent on doing the same with David, who bruised his heart in secret shame with Bathsheba, Uriah, and Joab.

Absalom is the spirit of the Pharisees at Passover. They are just doing what is right and best for Israel.

Now, as a true threat to the King and the Kingdom, he must be dealt with he must be killed...or he will kill “the father”. A good friend, one like Joab, who really has something to lose if Absalom succeeds in his sedition, knows this and does not hesitate in the task that is at hand, in the end, Absalom, dangles from a tree, made of wood. Joab kills him there. For Israel to live this beloved son of Israel, the one who observed the law voraciously, even as he twisted it to suit himself, must die. There in the tree he dies…Israel will die there, too.

A second story, one filled with treachery, greed, abuse of power, adultery, and murder will give us a clue as to what happened to cause this tragic tumbling of dominoes and lives. It is also, ironically, a catalyst to the birth of the union which will bring forth the hope of Israel...Solomon...and in the end, when we follow the many genealogies, Jesus.

David and Bathsheba

11:1 In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.

2 It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. 3 And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” 4 So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned to her house. 5 And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”

6 So David sent word to Joab, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent Uriah to David. 7 When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab was doing and how the people were doing and how the war was going. 8 Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet.” And Uriah went out of the king's house, and there followed him a present from the king. 9 But Uriah slept at the door of the king's house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house. 10 When they told David, “Uriah did not go down to his house,” David said to Uriah, “Have you not come from a journey? Why did you not go down to your house?” 11 Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field. Shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing.” 12 Then David said to Uriah, “Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back.” So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. 13 And David invited him, and he ate in his presence and drank, so that he made him drunk. And in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house.

14 In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. 15 In the letter he wrote, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, that he may be struck down, and die.” 16 And as Joab was besieging the city, he assigned Uriah to the place where he knew there were valiant men. 17 And the men of the city came out and fought with Joab, and some of the servants of David among the people fell. Uriah the Hittite also died. 18 Then Joab sent and told David all the news about the fighting. 19 And he instructed the messenger, “When you have finished telling all the news about the fighting to the king, 20 then, if the king's anger rises, and if he says to you, ‘Why did you go so near the city to fight? Did you not know that they would shoot from the wall? 21 Who killed Abimelech the son of Jerubbesheth? Did not a woman cast an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died at Thebez? Why did you go so near the wall?’ then you shall say, ‘Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also."

There is at this junction "blood on the scarecrow, blood on the plough"...and David is the culprit. He has abused his power to the nth degree. This blood will haunt him for the rest of his life and be the reason for two of his greatest disappointments. "Absalom, Oh, Absalom, my son, my son, my son" is the first heartbreak and the temple construction contract that must be, will be, given to another cleaner vessel, is the second.

22 So the messenger went and came and told David all that Joab had sent him to tell. 23 The messenger said to David, “The men gained an advantage over us and came out against us in the field, but we drove them back to the entrance of the gate. 24 Then the archers shot at your servants from the wall. Some of the king's servants are dead, and your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.” 25 David said to the messenger, “Thus shall you say to Joab, ‘Do not let this matter trouble you, for the sword devours now one and now another. Strengthen your attack against the city and overthrow it.’ And encourage him.”

26 When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she lamented over her husband. 27 And when the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord .

It is safe to say that the LORD wasn't the only one displeased. Absalom is watching at the door. Eyes cast down. His hero is fallen. His father has power but has used it to devour his own subjects. He is a bad man to a little boy.

Nathan Rebukes David

12:1 And the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. 2 The rich man had very many flocks and herds, 3 but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, [1] and it was like a daughter to him. 4 Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.” 5 Then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, 6 and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.”

7 Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the Lord , the God of Israel, ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul. 8 And I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. 9 Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. 10 Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’ 11 Thus says the Lord , ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house..."

You never forget it when you hear such things. "Evil against you out of your own house..." is unforgettable. It is safe to say that the evil was named Absalom. But he was not without an accomplice. David is the accomplice, who has helped give birth to the rebellion in his own house. He is guilty. He is undone. As John Cougar Mellencamp writes there is ‘blood on the scarecrow, blood on the plow’. Power has exerted itself to save its own skin. And it is ‘found out’.

And now there is blood on the hands of the father.

It haunts the father, these ghosts of Amnon, Absalom and the unnamed baby. It follows him night and day, echoes in the halls of the house, until another child is born to him and Bathsheba. His name is Solomon and he is the rainbow after the storm. The redemption needed in the worst way. Pierce Pettis is an amazing lyricist/musician, perceptively combines the grieving heart of David, expressed in Psalm 51, into this touching song entitled,

"Absalom, Absalom."

Come and smear me with the branches
Of that tree
Hyssop dipped in innocent blood
To make me clean
And let an old man's broken bones
Once more rejoice
Absalom, you were, my little boy

Absalom. Absalom
My son, my son, my son
Caught in the tangles of deceit
Hanging lifeless from that tree

Absalom, Absalom
My son. my son, my son
Caught by the tangles of your hair
The fruit of my own sins to bear Oh, Absalom

You were the laughing boy who bounced
Upon my knee
You learned to play the harp
And use the shepherd's sling
Always watching me
My impressionable son
Oh Absalom, what have I done

You were watching when I took A good man's wife
And gave the orders for his murder
Just to cover up the crime
All the vanity, cruel arrogance, and greed
Absalom, you learned it all from me

All the vanity, cruel arrogance and greed...you learned them all from me.

David comes to grips with the truth. Absalom around the corner was soaking it all in. Amnon, Uriah, Joab, he saw it all. Caught by the tangles of your hair; the fruit of my own sins to bear Oh, Absalom. What a tragic scene here, hanging from the tree, Strange Fruit. Narcissus at the reflective pond-- cannot bear the reflection, the image, without weeping.

There hangs the son.

These stories tell the tales we can hear and learn from. Absalom represents the son who watches how God reacts to the bind of love, boxed-in-ness, of sin at home, in the house, the House of God. He is the son of immense regret in the heart of David, and ostentatiously, in the heart of God. Why does Absalom despise David in his heart? What did David/God do? How did he perceive God? Why does Israel despise God in their heart? It is a question that lingers over the over-arching story. In David's relationships with his sons we are given a peek into the complexities of this relationship between God and Israel, God and Jesus, God and us. Now we know. Or can begin to surmise. Disappointment gives birth to rebellion. Rebellion is an outcome of disappointment and is a sin that has an accomplice. The accomplice is father.

And Absalom is Israel.

Absalom represents Israel, banished, slain, hanging from a tree. He is the great wound to the father. And the father cries, would that I could take your place ...and He means it. What father doesn't weep for his son? What father banishes his son outside the city gates forsakes him, looks at him and turns away, let him die? Perhaps a king, who must, for the sake of righteousness, turn His head. Perhaps he does but in reality, no, in secret He cries, too. He weeps in fact, just like the prodigal father Jesus tells us about.

The question that haunts David is: Was He responsible for this outcome? Was Absalom, and Amnon, a result of David's life? So with David, so with God, and we get a better view of another face of God in the portrait of father and sons. Was Israel and Judah, the sons of God, divided against one another, in the end exiled and put under other nations authority and rule, rebellious, because God was who He was?

When David is undone by his sin, a comfort comes...in the form of a baby. When God is undone another baby comes at just the right time in the most incredible way.

The third and final son

The Third son is a Second Son to David and Bathsheba and …a second shot, a do-over. Like hearing the whistle of the referee and realizing a foul was called on the three-pointer your team missed with no time on the clock. This time the free throws will be made and the dream will go on to its climax. My youngest son played football. He was able to play in the state finals in Detroit. He almost didn’t get there. Late in the semifinals, Saginaw, who was riding a 20 game winning streak, broke a 52 yard scamper tying the game at 13-13. The extra point was inevitable. My heart died within me. But then…I remember clearly the moment I saw the yellow flag midfield. The play was called back. A redo—redemption. In the end they beat Saginaw 13-7. I’ll never forget the do-over on that cold November day. Those moments are cherished.

But none compare to the moment of the arrival of third son—the vindication for King David.

Haunted and broken by the death of Absalom, David is given a surprising reprieve. Another child is born to him and Bathsheba. The first child died because of sin, the second child, is a child of grace. This son is like the second chance that has become the refrain of scripture and the swan song of mankind. It becomes our song. The "redo”, the mulligan, the Hope of Israel and as we shall soon see--the Hope of the nations as well. He will be king. His name is Solomon and he is the rainbow after the storm.

He is a son--likened unto the Son.

The third and final son is Solomon. He is the son who was given the privilege of building the temple, the house for God. He is a relief for God. He is the "at last" son-- who had come to console the father's weary mind and troubled heart. God declares that He will be his father and we must see this, at the least as a messianic, Son sighting. He has one son, the Son, Jesus, but Solomon's relationship with David's' images Jesus' relationship with God the Father and so Solomon is, also, God's son as well.

"I will raise up your descendant, one of your own sons, to succeed you,²² and I will establish his kingdom. 7:13 He will build a house for my name, and I will make his dynasty permanent.²³ 7:14 I will become his father and he will become my son. When he sins, I will correct him with the rod of men and with wounds inflicted by human beings. 7:15 But my loyal love will not be removed from him as I removed it from Saul, whom I removed from before you. 7:16 Your house and your kingdom will stand before me²⁴ permanently; your dynasty²⁵ will be permanent.’” 2 Samuel 7

God even declares that "One will come from you, David" ...to David. Solomon, son of David, will build the temple of God. It's true. And he does. But it will not stand the brunt of the worlds attack. But Jesus, the One and only Son, really at last, the "Son of David have mercy on me" son, builds the temple of God. He is the cornerstone, we are the stones. It is a temple not made with human hands. It will not be destroyed. This Temple has overcome the world.

One more thing before we move on: Why doesn't David build this house when He desires to so much? The answer is alarming, he, the father, is a man of blood. Bloody hands that will not, cannot be rinsed away. Canaan's blood, Amnon's blood, buckets of blood, everywhere.

Spilled.

Pontius Pilate can wash and wash and wash but the blood still cries out. It always shouts aloud. The most touching scene in Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" has to be at the end of the brutal flogging of Jesus. Mary bends down and ties to recover, scoop up, save, the blood that is spilled "all over". It can't be done. She is in shock. Blood is everywhere like a bad dream. You can hear it shout from the earth, from the stones in Jerusalem. It is the blood of Abel, Amnon, and Absalom.

And Jesus.

The bloody father cannot build this temple. The curse of Cain is in the house of God. And the Lamb will save the Lion and the Lion will lay down with the Lamb.

Because Jesus can build the temple, the dwelling place of God and His people. He can and will because a clean vessel, an innocent vessel with no blood on its hands can build this Home. The Son can. One that has been baptized, in a baptism of repentance, can. The repentant God, remade God, in the form of Jesus, is the only candidate. The Only One that can do this. This is why He is the climax, He is the center point. He submits himself to the baptism of John, which is "the baptism of repentance" (Luke 3: 3 And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.) and emerges clean. Jesus the Son can and does build the Temple. The Son does what the Father could not do. Still under construction but the cornerstone is laid. And it will be finished on that Day.

Solomon can build the pseudo house, the shadow house, the prefigured house, but Jesus, the true Son of God, anticipated Son of David, is the builder of the "bayet- El ", the true everlasting Temple, house of God, dwelling place of God.

Three stories in narrative, multiple lessons we can learn in no other way. Narrative theology shines right here, right now, in a way no other theology can touch. These stories can haunt us sometimes, inspire us others, but they always teach us. They reveal the relationship which will play as a refrain until the final note has been hit. Father and Son. Tender and true.

Portrait: Hosea’s Lover and the emergence of ‘The girls’

Come to the door my pretty one
Put on your rings and precious things
Hide all your tears as best you can
Try to recall what used to be

Roses are waiting for dewdrops to fall
Climbing your windows and walls
Bells in steeple are ringing, singing
Listen to them talk about your love's return --Gordon Lightfoot, Your Love's Return"

Three things are too wonderful for me;
four I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky,
the way of a serpent on a rock,
the way of a ship on the high seas,
and the way of a man with a virgin.

I am not an egalitarian. Not about equality, speaking in terms of gender, as in tit for tat. I don’t even know how to spell it. No, I think we can do so much better that all that angst on both sides of the fence by letting the “otherly” come together as One and marveling at the wonder of that.

How little we care as little boys. They are unnoticed or even troublesome. We make signs to keep them out of our forts, rules to keep them out of our lives, and soon…walls to keep them out of our hearts.

They are the girls.

But in time she comes out and how embarrassing, “completes us”. And, by the way, I ought to be careful, because, isn’t that just the ultimate chick movie line, the real kick in the pants. What if other guys heard me? You can't let your warrior side down lest they, "men", cast you out of the club. Yes, to finally come to terms with the notion that she completes us is humbling. She finishes me. Not to worry—it is the feminine that saves God as well.

This attraction, this feeling, by the way is so like God, yes, I am referring to the all powerful, Almighty God.

Let me try to explain. First draft, many questions, first effort…grace. Read it one more time and then...think on it.

At the beginning of Scripture she is a nuisance. She, the feminine is the problem. She suggests the eating in the garden which begins the lower story that will eventually, after we have walked this long and winding path, elevate us to a new place, a place that has to be risked for, to be believed in…to be seen. God instinctively gets it. At this point she is second rate if noticed at all. And God is always the masculine at the onset. It is always, no matter what modern interpreters try to do, God is He and He is God. But the scent of a woman is in His nostrils and he is being pulled forward, enticed, and invited into a new place where He has never wandered. He has never been here before. He longs. She draws. He is being clued in.

Initially in the story of God she is such a nuisance, as in "Rebecca, why do you talk Jacob into stealing the birthright?", and as a result easily becomes the “fall guy” in scripture. To put it bluntly, she is not respected and somewhat tangent to what is going on. When she enters she is often a prop or a pain.

“Sara you laughed”

“No”

“Yes you did”,

“But, you know it is funny; do you really think you can pull it off?”

“Why, yes, of course”

And so He does pull it off. She makes sure of it just by the way she is…it is beautiful “the way of a man with a virgin.” It is hard to understand. Indeed it is unlike, as the fourth stanza in Proverbs 30:18-19 declares, this one phase standing alone, or triumphant over the other wonderful, majestic, intriguing things--anything else in the world. Nothing compares to the mysterious way of a man and a woman.

Listen.

Proverbs 30:18

Three things are too wonderful for me;
four I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky,
the way of a serpent on a rock,
the way of a ship on the high seas,
and the way of a man with a virgin.

Three things and a fourth that is even so great as to mystify the author. And man is made for a woman and she brings life out of him. She draws out the masculine and then helps tame the violent, testosterone charged edges. Touch me, softly, she says. I have heard that, too.

As the story moves on, the lower story, she is coming up, being brought up, ascending, more and more.

Getting more ink in promising roles. For example, Hannah gains this conversation with God. And He responds kindly to her. I don’t want to shock you but that is a first. Until this moment that role had been the sole right of the boys, Abraham, Moses, Jacob, Joshua and such. Hannah who loves is here and God is noticing.. “When she moves into the room you can hear the strings", man, is she graceful, gracious and grace giving. She is complimentary, soft, it is something she is adept at, and He responds, is drawn to her, something He is natural at.

This has untapped potential.

And she moves “into the fair” from cameo roles, to character roles, to starring roles. In fact as we watch this phenomena unfold we see something very enlightening. God gets accustomed to her and learns from her. She is Wisdom of the book of Proverbs--so listen to her, she is the hero of Esther, using her beauty to save, just watch her work for it is really a thing of beauty, and then, she is the faithful companion named Ruth, who sticks with Naomi, risks in a new land, covers Boaz’s feet, who wouldn’t want to “save her”…in fact, have offspring with her. She is so attractive and interesting.

"He can't live with or without her." And God is really beginning to discover something, a new love within.

And he soon loves openly, no ‘keep out” sign here, in the Song of Solomon. This is a place unexplored and exciting, here romance rules. It is fresh, and makes the heart skip, it just feels good. And, of course, less we miss it, God is singing that song. This comes at a dismal period in the Tanakh as to emphasize its importance. It is as if this is saving God, entreating God to keep on.

Why does He sing? He is singing because…she is a bride, His bride, you, we, the gathered church, are a bride…His bride. Am I making this up, is this making any sense?

He learns how to sacrifice, he is tooled for it. He becomes more accustomed to her influences and reflects her, or does she reflect him? I suppose it doesn’t matter what the children look like, whose image they reflect, they are ours. Soon He is comfortable with saying tender things that are a little feminine, not “you complete me” but still motherly, like “would that I could gather you up as a hen gathers up her chicks”. Would that who would gather up? Are you like a mother, is the feminine of value?

This man’s man, the Lion King, the warrior of Exodus, has just called himself a mother. It’s O.K….in fact, it is good.

The feminine softens the brash, confident male, seeing an insecure child beneath the bold bravado of maleness, she speaks, and then waits, for him, and soon He answers, rightly.

At the end God appreciates her in Him. She may have been lifted from Adam's side at the creatures urging but the Creator has discovered her in His bosom as well. She sort of snuck up and it really surprises him.

In reality, she becomes the ultimate treasure, the bride, the equal focus in the now reconciled God at the table at the Wedding feast of the Lamb—who is notably softer than the Lion. Here God is now at peace and, well, less aggressive, yet strong, really strong. And together they lay down. They don't face off. They lay down. She is with him and He is with her.

They are in “love”. They are “One”. This is heaven.

They are the epitome of where we are going. The "fourth that He does not understand" is with God. And He is helplessly, hopelessly, recklessly, falling in love.

Isn't that one of the primary reasons He clings to the cross. There He will redeem her, pay the bride price, build the house, write the letters, put all the cards on the table. It is here where the spear pierces the side of the Man and the woman comes back in. And they are One at home, at ease, at peace. It is The Story and when it goes well our story. We, both male and female, long for this type of connection in all cultures and societies; it is portrayed, in stories and songs, for all time. It is from God, of God, in God. There, at last again, they are found to be naked and unashamed. This is universal.

They are in “love” God and the Woman. They are “One”. This is heaven. It is really all quite sexy, without all the lust.

I am not an egalitarian. Not about gender equality or anything like that. I don’t even know how to spell it. No, I think we can do so much better by letting the “otherly” come together as One. This is a surprising thread in scripture one that has been apparent although hidden through the ages. The man and woman will come together and it will be better than we could imagine. This mysterious thing of love we all are subject to is not incidental, not simply a means to procreation. This relationship more than any other relationship experienced by all mankind is the model for where we are going, where We are being led. Love is the destination called Eden again. How it works out is a miracle indeed.

Final Portrait: The World through Job or The offense, the complaint

"We are stardust, we are golden, caught in the devil’s bargain…
and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden” --“Woodstock” by Joni Mitchell

In the prophetic books which Jewish theologians have described as stage two of the Tanakh trilogy we have the memoirs of God. In the heat of war, in the midst of the battle a commanding engaged officer only makes tactical moves. All unfolds too quickly for much commentary. But in the memoirs when the dust has settles He can reflect and speak. Following the actual war conversations ensue.

Many conversations.

This is what is happening in the Scripture. Following the narrative God is holding conversations about what has 'gone wrong', why it has happened and what comes next. He describes His feelings during the events. It is His memoirs. He is speaking and reflecting in the prophetic section. One shift we see between stage one of the Tanakh (story) and stage two (conversations) is His disposition towards the nations. Once they were but spittle, to be used and destroyed by the chosen people for the sake of Israel. But now softness emerges in God towards them. He sees them differently. He is being drawn by them. Outside of action reflection is given space to consider. This is dramatized clearly in the Book of Jonah. The prophet is the resistor, Nineveh the receptor, hungry for God, immersed in repentance. God seems ok with this even if Jonah and Israel are not. Now they (the nations) can perhaps turn around and come as aliens into the inner circle, or at least the semi-circle. And the circle is being stressed at all points. Like unseen cholesterol lurking in the walls of a person with heart disease it builds. When the wall breaks something will be unleashed in this tense relationship between God and His chosen people. God is warming up to the world and envisions Israel as the light of the world, salt of the earth for the sake of the world.

Israel doesn't agree. And there is “the rub”. They are the ones who own God, the God of the Exodus who destroyed Pharaoh and Egypt. They want to “rule over the gentiles” so much. This is the reason Jonah is so angry with God. Nineveh doesn’t deserve grace, isn’t fit for inclusion. Nineveh, descendants of pagan peoples are to be destroyed not served. He represents Israel’s heart exactly. The fourth chapter provides a summery and insight into the heart of a nation.

Jonah's Anger and the Lord's Compassion

But it (the forgiveness of Nineveh following their repentance)t displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the Lord said, “Do you do well to be angry?”

The phrasing of “a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, was surely familiar language and may have had a touch of sarcasm or mockery in its delivery. The phrase is an oft repeated refrain first found in Exodus 34. Moses, the key leader of Israel is on the mountain and God descends to him and standing with Moses the representative of Israel, the chosen people of God declares “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness”. This is a definitive moment between God and His peculiar people. But now, to Jonah’s chagrin, it is being applied to all the nations, even Nineveh, a hated enemy. So Jonah does what so many who feel entitled do> He retreats to his own little corner of the world, removes Himself, and builds His own inner plastic world.

Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under and made it it in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city. Now the Lord God appointed a plant come up over Jonah that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” But God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” And he said, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.” And the Lord said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”

When blessed he feels good. When God removes his own personal comfort he is perturbed with God. It didn’t take much since he was already irritated. God uses the plant to teach Jonah something. “You pity the plant which you did nothing to create, but have no mercy, no grace for a nation of 120,000 people who were like sheep without a shepherd, wandering aimless in the earth.” Jonah, get out of your own little world and open your eyes to the trouble that fills the earth. But Jonah will have none of that. God’s plea for Israel to shift to being light, salt, and witness falls on deaf, resentful ears. He represents Israel precisely. They feel entitled and are not changing horses in the middle of the stream.

This turns into a long standing debate between God and His chosen One that will culminate in death. It will happen in the city where God and His people dwell. More will be said about this later for now let's just say God is opening up to the whole world.

Soon, God will go so far as to “love the world and give His only begotten son” entering the earth's stage and dying for the creation. This will be in part for them, part for Him, part for One, a unity of heaven and earth as we will soon see. It is in this act that He will level the playing field for all time. There will be neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free. No favored ones and despised ones.

No innies and outties.

No Israel and the rest. Mankind will be restored and another will be exiled from the unity instead. Satan will be cast down, descending into the abyss. Just as the Apostles Creed suggests God will indeed descend into hell. Jesus descends. Part of Him will remain there. The polishing of the facet is completed in this act and God rises like a Phoenix, now the perfect diamond again, shining like the Sun over all creation. He ascends into the heights. When He emerges clean all bets are off, all things have become new, and the old has passed away. The diamond perfected in heaven flings a door wide open. Exile is over. Jubilee is here.

At last, there will be peace in the garden. It was a process for God to get to this point. Ground He had never covered before in the perfection of heaven. But He persists through the silence of Act three and arrives in the end, here, in the final Act, at the place of mercy. Vindicated is He, are us, is creation.

Stage three introduces a softer decidedly more feminine side of God. Particularly after the outburst of Job do we find Sophia, Esther, and Ruth emerges to tend the wounds of God. We don't know who wrote the book of Job. Some traditions speculate that it is Moses, the default position of all who need some author, but that is doubtful. The writer is simply and secretly anonymous. He is no man and everyman all at once.

We are told that Job lived in the land of Ur. Some have speculated regarding this geographical location, mostly in vain. Writes Thomas G. Long of Princeton Theological Seminary :

Efforts to locate Uz on the map are vain, for this is not a historical chronicle. The narrative effect of the opening lines, like the opening credits of the movie Star Wars , is to say this is a story which happened "long ago and far away".

It is not meant to be known.

Some see it etymologically related to the mystical land of Oz (no doubt where the wizard lives), which means east. To say it is somewhere 'East of Eden', a clever title employed by the John Steinbeck novel, is a safe sort of conclusion. Job is a story of a nameless man of a nameless people from an obscure forgotten nameless place somewhere long ago and far away. It is the story of no one and everyone. It stretches from the genocide of Rwanda to the Holocaust of Europe. It cries out from the ground of Kent State to the cold clay of Gettysburg. The blood cries out from all parts of the tattered earth asking 'why'?

It is an important book. It is a climactic, dark, ominous and surprising story. It ends on a bit of a minor chord as I will explain. I believe it is reasonable to speculate that is the book of mankind written to pose the question of God's actions in the Tanakh respecting the other nations--outside of Israel. It could well be the inquisition of Israel in exile. Either way it is a question we all long to ask. I see it as the question of mankind. The question asked that we often fear to pose to God is asked. The question is 'God why are you like this?'

A tough, gutsy question for sure. But in the end, in fairness to God, and respectful of true relationship, it must be asked. And God 'hears the question' and ponders His position for a long time.

The reinvented God that emerges in Jesus is the answer.

The book of Job comes at a crucial time. The nations are getting God’s attention and He is listening to their cry. It isn’t just the Hebrews in Egypt and He is not a God amongst many gods reaching a nation amongst many nations. He is One God—the only God for the entire world, for the nations. What was once a formula that could read: many gods—many people—is now emerging into a bigger picture, One God—One People. The ad campaign “GO WORLD” by Visa is simply recognizing what is in the heart of God as expressed in Jesus. God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance (to turn around from evil—from sin)

One God—One world.

What I am suggesting is taking place in the final section of the trilogy of the Tanakh (the silence) is this shift in real time. God is changing, responding to crisis, and in the end He will come clean.

The 1993 drama “Indecent Proposal” stars Robert Redford, Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson. The plot centers on a young couple who is under considerable duress. They desperately need money. A recession has hit bringing about the impending foreclosure of their dream home. They drive to Las Vegas in hopes of keeping the wolf at the door. What they encounter is a proposal. Redford plays billionaire tycoon John Gage who trifles with people just to see the outcome. He plays with them like mice in a cage. Like a shark he spots the couple, smells blood, sizes them up, and begins a mind game as folly for his amusement. He begins a conversation which proposes a bet, to him a simple wager on the side, for the young couple a solution to their problem. A conversation ensues.

David : [ while playing pool ] I guess there's limits to what money can buy.
John : Not many.
Diana : Well some things aren't for sale.
John : Such as?
Diana : Well you can't buy people.
John : That's naive, Diana. I buy people every day.
Diana : In business, maybe, but you can't buy people, not when real emotions are involved.
John : So you're saying you can't buy love? That's a bit of a cliché don't you think?
Diana : It's absolutely true.
John : Is it? What do you think?
David : I agree with Diana.
John : You do? Well let's test the cliché. Suppose... I were to offer you one million dollars for one night with your wife.

What unfolds is a drama that centers on what accepting and following through with the proposal does to David and Diana. They cannot resolve their tainted relationship after the “sale”. The wound is fresh, the cut deep. They become insecure in the relationship,

“Did you enjoy the night?”

“Why do you ask such things?”

Pause. “Well did you?”

“You Jerk”.

It spirals down. The spiral has happened to so many from time to time. The issues change but the parts played are familiar. A deal with the devil always brings stuff up and is hard to justify. It complicates our life and creates crisis. Something always changes when someone is sold out.

Both parties are affected.

And in some ways this is the story of Job. As I said before we don’t know when the Book was written or who the author was. Is he Jewish or not, we can’t say? Most suggest that Job plays the part of the world suffering for no apparent reason. And his complaint is that He has been sold out by God. Question: And how was that done? Answer: In a deal with the devil. No, seriously, how did it go down? Seriously, that is how it went down. And that’s what hurts.

What really adds insult to the injury is the casual disposition of God in making the bet. The wager is surreal. It’s like God spots an acquaintance at a local drinking hole who saddles up to the bar along side Him.

God speaks. “Have you seen the Tarheels? Man, are they loaded this year.”

The sidler responds: “I don’t know. I’m not so impressed. I’d wager that Duke can take them.”

“You’re on.”

And just like that Job and his entire family are sold. Why? Because God like John Gage has the resources to spare and it isn’t that big a deal. But it is a big deal. Especially to some people, the little people like David and Diane or Bathsheba and Uriah or Job and His family or everyman in the world. And might I add you and me.

What’s worse is the friend (adversary) comes back for a double or nothing the next day. A second wager is proposed by the sidler. God's unwitting response...

“You’re on”.

And just like that Job’s body is sold “skin for skin”. And Job really can’t see the sport in it. He is beside himself. What kind of God sells people out “just to see”? Is he, Job, the nations, really worth so little? Job has invested his entire life on his family and, in the flick of a finger; it is all but gone in a day.

On a wager.

And he wants to know why. Can anyone blame him? He’s done nothing wrong. Is there no justice with this God? And what ensues is a conversation not about the bet—in fact the friend or the fiend—has, so in character, in perfect diabolical form, slithered off somewhere and isn’t heard from again in the entire book. Not gone forever, he’ll be back.

No, the conversation is between God and Job. God, now, in the spirit of David, who slept with Bathsheba and stole Uriah’s only ewe lamb, is on trial for his treatment of the nations of the world. David clearly misused his power in taking Bathsheba, murdering Uriah, pulling Joab into the conspiracy, and as I have proposed earlier wounded deeply his own son, Absalom. Nathan confronts David with his abuse of power. Job confronts God. David backs down. God does not. But He thinks about this a long, long time. It bugs Him but...well...He is Aslan you know. Is He safe? No, but alas in the end He is good.

But not so much now.

In fact, when the argument gets heated and it appears God is losing the debate He does what many do with their power. He ends the discussion with a “because I said so…” He is like the father of Bill Cosby routines who declares “I brought you into this world and I can take you out!” except this isn’t very humorous.

He seemingly stands up and plays the power card. When asked why do you treat me this way? He responds with “Who are you to question me? Did you create the heavens, or, in our vernacular, do you pay the bills?” It’s like the husband who when backed in a corner by his wife, he may know she is right, she is perhaps winning this argument, but he decides to put her in her place. He threatens and cajoles her into submission. He bellows. She cowers. He intimidates. She withdraws. Might makes right. But it really doesn’t.

And Job backs down. He acquiesces with “You’re right, you are stronger (but that doesn’t answer the justice question) but I will shut my mouth. I won’t say anymore"…but I remember everything. And it will be hard to get over this. And in the aftermath my suggestion is God remembers this too.

And just like in real life it doesn’t end there. The relationship is indelibly altered. God is changed by the outburst and so is Job. Job may back down but the relationship is tarnished. God never apologizes but instead does what so many husbands do—He buys flowers, sends candy, doubles her allowance. Job ends as a postscript—happy. It’s nice but she remembers the cruelty and keeps her distance. She is wounded and the fact that He never apologizes bothers her. For His part he storms away—but it really deep down inside gets to Him. He is bothered—He doesn’t like Himself. He goes off and becomes silent.

And thinks.

Just like a man. But it is not good for man to be alone. And She comforts Him in this low tide of God’s life.

And it won’t go away, this thing that has happened, this thing He has done. The devil is out the door, but the needle tears a hole and the damage is done. God is left with the consequences of the offense, or as we have said “the crisis”.

Crisis is the fuel which causes change to happen. And because God is ultimately good—He will make it right. He will repent which means turn around. He will lay down His life for His beloved. He will make this right and heal the wounds. By His stripes She will be healed. Or vice-versa—it doesn’t really matter—they are in this together and have become and are One.

This story is not over. This marriage will not die. And next time the devil slithers, and sidles up, God will be ready. It will be in the wilderness. He will be slippery but His days are numbered. Wounded heel—crushed head.

And what of Diana and David and their ‘indecent dilemma’? Well, it’s Hollywood and they make it too. This is how love stories should end.

All I Know

“All I Know” written by Jimmy Webb

I bruise you, you bruise me
We both bruise too easily, too easily to let it show
I love you and that's all I know.

All my plans have falling' through,
All my plans depend on you, depend on you to help them grow,
I love you and that's all I know.

When the singer's gone let the song go on...

But the ending always comes at last,
Endings always come too fast,
They come too fast but they past too slow,
I love you and that's all I know .

When the singer's gone let the song go on,
It's a fine line between the darkness and the dawn.
They say in the darkest night there's a light beyond

But the ending always comes at last,
Endings always come too fast,
They come too fast
But they past too slow,
I love you, and that's all I know.
That's all I know, that's all I know.—the song “All I Know” sung by Art Garfunkel

I love music. Songwriter’s labor over one lyric, one line and when it is done well, others place their own gift towards the final product and something mystical and magical emerges. Songs are large investments for the ones who write them, from time to time they emerge in a moment, more frequently they are born out of a great deal of paying attention and writing. They are like drops of blood sometimes squeezed out in the lonely night of a garden. When others hear the beauty of the song and put their hand to the production it becomes better. Songwriters sweat…so I honor them in this book—often.

G. K Chesterton once said: “I don’t deny that we need priests to tell us that one day we will die, I only say that we need another kind of priests called prophets to remind us that we are not dead yet.”

I believe songwriters and movie makers serve this function in our society. They have the greatest audience and are listening to the reverberations of the earth. They are like prophets speaking oracles, suggesting tempos, calling out names, when they are at their best. They are the watchers of any society; the hearts cry of the beat up and bedraggled. Songs and stories are narrative that engage and change us. They have a way with words and stories that makes your ears sing or sting.

Art Garfunkel’s silky voice makes Jimmy Webb’s lyrics shine in the song that introduces this chapter. The arrangement augments the tender message that emerges; the cello in the background illumines the composition, the clarity of the piano and the touch of the artists that hold these tools create in the end a masterpiece.

It is a collaborative effort.

I have visualized it as pertaining to God and His heart at last. “When the singer’s gone let the song go on—there’s a fine line between the darkness and the dawn—they say in the darkest night there’s a light beyond” is deeply poetic and quite inspired. Following the tragedy of the cross I imagine Jesus as the singer gone, the wood stands lonely. God who has been in the darkest night of His soul as the Tanakh closes, weeps. And the thin line—that fine line—is the time of silence almost mourning that occurs between the testaments that divide the dying Jewish God and the emerging Christian God, essentially One and the same, but somehow quite different as we shall see. Hundreds of years to us, but a drop in the bucket to the Eternal One. From Friday till Sunday a moratorium of sadness drapes the universe.

In the darkest night for God there is a light beyond, but it is none the less a cold night prior to the dawning of this a new day.

When Israel defects, the one He placed His heart in for the sake of the world gone awry, he loves them.

It’s All I Know.

When the one he depends on to make the plans happen falls through; there is a light beyond, a final remnant of hope, a dove that descends. It comes because He loves.

It’s All I Know.

When the dawn breaks at last and He is the Light that is revealed, it is because He loves.

It’s All I Know.

And when He sorts it all out with “drops of blood squeezed out in the lonely night of a garden” it is because He loves. And He is loved. Even in the dark night when all of the plans of God seem to be falling through the light is at hand, about to break forth. The trail from Eden to Gethsemane has been a long, long journey. But there is a light at dawn on Sunday.

I think about God all the time. Where ever I am He is somehow present in all I see, think, and do. I don’t take breaks because He is in me, around me above me, before me—I can get what Paul means when he says to the Athenians “in Him we live and move and have our being” because for me it is true. It is not that I am always good, or good at all, in fact when I falter, miss the mark, sin, He is there still. And I know it then too. I can’t just shake him off or put Him away till it is safe to come out. Rich Mullins said that "when we sin we just hope that God blinks just enough to miss it". Perhaps He will turn His head to cough and miss the event. But He doesn't. I know that to be true.

In some ways the fact that I think about God all the time ought not surprise me or anyone else for that matter since I have been a pastor most of my life. But in truth not all pastors think that much about God since they have so many other pressing needs coming across the board and competing for their attention. In all honesty once I resigned as pastor I thought a lot more about God somehow. He fascinates me. I tell my wife I talk to myself a lot these days and the conversations are quite good. I should clarify that. What I mean is that for so long much of my job or vocation has been to ingest information, assimilate the input, and somehow try to bring the product to others in an inspiring manner. It was all a bit tiring and the same questions came up again and again. It was like starting at square one all the time. It’s not like that when I talk to myself though. Myself knows the same input that I know and together we can sort it out when we have conversation. I know it sounds odd, perhaps even a little imbalanced and it does bother me a bit to say it so bluntly, but we all have our function in the world. Others don’t have it to the same level; they have told me so, although I know some do since I can see it in them.

Most drive by the forest and hardly look aside, but I dwell in the woods. I think about this story.

But in the end I conclude it is better for me to walk deep into the woods of God conversations than drive by the forest pausing from time to time to marvel at the beauty of the trees and such. It is just how I am. I judge no one for what they are.

My wife Debbie who knows me well says, I am a type of Jeremiah which translates into—“I have been given something to say, that burns within, that is a curse as much as a blessing”—to bring it out is like “drops of blood sometimes squeezed out in the lonely night of a garden”.

But when the singer sings I can’t help but listen. May you hear the songbird sing, too.

Crossroads

I woke this morning with Don McLean in my bed. Not in a literal way. No, He came somewhere in the night and slipped songs in my subconscious. I imagine them as the songs of God, songs of Jesus, songs of man, and finally, songs of me. I consider all things are spiritual and God is always somewhere near me, speaking, in movies, songs, scenes, emotions, and words.

And my mind has been singing these songs all morning. Together they formulate a prelude to the next section in this book. The songs are gifts I can’t help but hear.

Crossroads by Don McLean

I’ve got nothing on my mind: nothing to remember,
Nothing to forget. and I’ve got nothing to regret,
But I’m all tied up on the inside,
No one knows quite what I’ve got;
And I know that on the outside

What I used to be,

I’m not

Anymore.

Can you remember who I was? Can you still feel it?
Can you find my pain? Can you heal it?
Then lay your hands upon me now
and cast this darkness from my soul.
You alone can light my way.
You alone can make me whole once again.

Because

I’m all tied up on the inside,
No one knows quite what I’ve got;
And I know that on the outside

What I used to be,

I’m not

Anymore

At the close of the Old Testament, referred to as the Tanakh from the translation of the Jewish Scriptures, I imagine God as a bit weathered by the weight of the world and his ongoing unresolved conflict with His chosen people Israel. He is all tied up on the inside, stomach in knots, quiet, a bit withdrawn. What He was in the initial stages of the lower story was so different. What He used to be, brash, confident, and young—He’s not anymore. The walking of the road has beaten him down. He sings the song to Himself and They listen together. Then He turns and speaks to Himself--actually to the One we know as Jesus, for God is One, saying;

Can you remember who I was? Can you still feel it?
Can you find my pain? Can you heal it?
Then lay your hands upon me now

And cast this darkness from my soul.
You alone can light my way.
You alone can make me whole once again.

And the Other, which is always at His side, a faithful friend, consistent lover, responds, and rises up voluntarily in support of His Soul mate. He is a companion like no other. He is a lover. He is unlike Job’s friends who accuse and place blame on the broken vessel that sits here with them. No, this One is unlike any other friend. He understands the wounded God and will touch Him and “complete Him”. So intimate this relationship.

Pretty Woman

In the final scene of "Pretty Woman" starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, Gere’s debonair character Edward Lewis, the prince, turns to 'Cinderella' and asks Vivian:

"So what happens after he climbs up and rescues her?"

To which Roberts character Vivian replies; "She rescues him right back."

This is the best ending for all true love stories. We rescue and save one another. We need one another--male and female. I imagine this exchange and relationship between God the Father, more male than female as we will see and God the Son, perhaps more nurturing, female, as we will see. He is not she but carries some of the sacrificial qualities so prevalent in the feminine face, and I believe, if culture had permitted, could well have been a she. And Jesus comes 'out of' the bosom of the Father God much like Eve came out of the side of Adam.

So for the sake of imagination let's envision God as the wounded, weathered, character in the film, Edward Lewis. He has made a name for himself by conquering others. He is a conqueror but He is so unsatisfied. He really wanted to be a builder, a creator, and never dreamed of being a rogue. One who plans takeovers and sells off others for profit. He is at a difficult stretch in life and needs a change; his successes have a steep price.

And let's imagine for a moment, realizing the shortcomings of analogy, Jesus as Vivian. Vivian comes and lays her hands on Edward to relieve the tensions. Edward, like God, is renewed, given new life, new perspective. He is for all intents and purposes 'born again' by her touch. He opens up. He takes his shoes off and actually walks in the wet grass.

And yet Vivian is rescued by the prince. She is also set free, raised to a new place. This is a love story lived well.

In the same way I can see Jesus. He lays his hands upon God and heals the wound, He lays His hands upon us and heals us, He lays His hands upon creation, upon all things and casts the darkness from our souls. Coming from God, He is God, and He is about the “setting God free” and unraveling His wounded heart. He is close to God, the begotten Son of God, the final faithful friend of God, and of man, and of me, so close He and God are actually One. One came out of the bosom, the side of the other, so close as to be One.

He is Jesus. Healer of wounds, repairer of the breech.

Hero.

The rescuer and rescued One, all at once. He alone can make God whole once again and restore life in God’s beautiful creation. And only God can 'save Him right back' which, of course, He does when he raises Jesus from the grave itself.

In Him, Jesus, new life comes forth. New creation begins. And new starts are filled with grace. We can walk barefoot in the grass and feel good. And God needs Jesus and Jesus needs God.

And I need Him, too.

Because I’m 'all tied up on the inside and no one knows quite what I’ve got'. It's true and I know it. Call it mid-life crisis, or what ever you please, I just know that the road I’ve taken in life to set me free hasn’t delivered. You see, the journey has weathered me and what I used to be—I am not—anymore, either. No longer am I so brash and confident, but a bit more tentative and thoughtful. And it’s true for us all. We hit this quiet crisis and try to work it through. Our plans have not gone as planned. Like God as he sits in the crisis of the silent close of the Old Testament, Tanakh, we think.

And that is all right. Because He is still saving me—and the crossroads I’ve come to is getting clearer. The fog is lifting and I can begin to say with Paul, not the Apostle, but the Beatles Paul—'It’s getting better all the time' because slowly, but surely, it is. I am working it out. But it is so uncomfortable for those around me. I think they fear for me. When I look deep into the abyss of my soul will I come out ok?

And when it seems all others have gone I notice one remains. When the smoke clears, the shroud rises, I see Debbie, my wife, still there. And she patiently walks by my side gently soothing my wounds. And the crisis in my life is being healed. Many men hit a wall in life. Some work it out. When we read of the “mid-life crisis” of God and I am not being irreverent here, we are seeing our own reflections. The story of scripture is deep if we have ears to hear.

The second song that Don Mac Lean gave me with this morning is Vincent. It is a song about Van Goth who was driven by his sadness to finally end it all. In it I see familiar patterns. This is: Like God. Like me. Like Jesus. We do long for it to end, to go away for the chord to resolve to a major. And upon the end the beginning rests. It is a fine line between the darkness and the dawn. I love the imagery.

Vincent by Don McLean

Starry, starry night
Portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget
Like the strangers that you've met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
A silver thorn, a bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow

Jesus has been called The Ragman, a titled bestowed by Walter Wangerin’s short story of the same name. He is the Ragman, and even more the Rag Man, the Son of Man, the Son of God, a son given, who represents all mankind.

And He is God who watches the world with eyes and can’t forget, who inhabits the distressed who can’t forget, who sees it all with empty, hollow eyes. You can find Him in those to whom you give a cup of cool water, or visit in prison, or feed. He is in them for they are His image. The least, the last, the lost, all those frameless heads on nameless walls, He knows them and sees them and can call them by name. They are beckoned to His side so that they can know Him and live.

The elder son in us resists. But He stills beckons—come out of the field, with its thistles and dirt and its devils and dust and join us inside at the celebration called redemption and resolution.

He, Jesus, God, me, you, we are all a bit ragged you know. No matter. Jesus, on the cross, saves us all. And He saves himself as well. And the rags one day all fall off.

What we shall see is that He resembles Van Gogh, who is the subject of this song Vincent. He is like Vincent when He, in a maze of confusion, not so much His, but others, experiences a type of suicide. He doesn’t commit it as much as encourage it. Perhaps martyrdom is a better choice of word. This Man, who is confusing in His multiplicity of character, takes His own life, or is it Israel’s, or Satan’s? Or is it all three? I know it is always a bit more politically correct or theologically kosher to say that He lay down His life.

But I believe something. Something which says He is more intentional in this event than just that. He is not a victim but He is victimized. What we will see is a man true to his vocation. He believes and enacts just what He says—unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies.

He is the bloody rose that lay crushed and broken on the virgin snow. The snow is new fallen and virgin, unstained. He fits the description of the one who McLean sings of. The spirit is the same that haunted, in a positive sort of way, Vincent Van Gogh. And the 'world was never meant for One as beautiful as you' is true of Him. The suicide is sudden. This all happens quickly. Abruptly it comes. On one day it is done.

Zechariah 3:1 Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan [1] standing at his right hand to accuse him. 2 And the Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, O Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand [2] plucked from the fire?” 3 Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. 4 And the angel said to those who were standing before him, “Remove the filthy garments from him.” And to him he said, “Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments.”

5 And I said, “Let them put a clean turban on his head.” So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with garments. And the angel of the Lord was standing by.

6 And the angel of the Lord solemnly assured Joshua, 7 “Thus says the Lord of hosts: If you will walk in my ways and keep my charge, then you shall rule my house and have charge of my courts, and I will give you the right of access among those who are standing here. 8 Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, you and your friends who sit before you, for they are men who are a sign: behold, I will bring my servant the Branch. 9 For behold, on the stone that I have set before Joshua, on a single stone with seven eyes, [3] I will engrave its inscription, declares the Lord of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of this land in a single day. 10 In that day, declares the Lord of hosts, every one of you will invite his neighbor to come under his vine and under his fig tree.

'There’s a fine line between the darkness and the dawn…they say in the darkest night there’s a light beyond'. Lyrics are courtesy of Jimmy Webb. The fine line is a thin life amongst many lives and the light that has invaded the darkness. In the end He is the fine line that separates the living and the dead.

Paul Simon sings that “God keeps His eyes on us all” and He does. But not in the way we have been told. He is not Big Brother of George Orwell fame. He does not lean upon me, like He seemingly does to those who believe that sort of thing imagine. The God of our fathers may have presented Him that way but it’s inside out. He doesn’t lean on us—we lean on Him.

As the Ragged Man, He comes and takes on the shame of all the broken hearted. He is the High Priest Joshua, (a translation of name Jesus), the One who is crushed and broken from the silver thorn and bloody rose, who is bleeding on that cross for all the brokenness of the world gone mad. On his shoulders which stretch from one end of this timber to the other, rests all of the pain of the fallen lower world. Sin is found here and now resides here evermore. And here is where its protagonist breaths his last breath.

When it is “over” God raises Himself up and enters His rest. And one more important item we need to consider. We may have glossed over it unintentionally. If so, it will take intentionality to fix it. This landmark voice, cries out, declares that, “In that day when the Lord removes iniquity, he, we (those of this kingdom) will invite neighbor to come under his vine and under his fig tree.”

What is being said is this: one indicator that the kingdom has come, a sure sign indeed, is this generous spirit of inclusion that follows. It marks the recipients of the kingdom. They don’t create boundaries to “keep others out” and they refuse to insulate themselves so as not to touch “them, the unclean”. More will be said about these tendencies in the next book: Watershed.

Why is this important? Because there are no “others” and there is no “them” in this new kingdom which is resurrected in Jesus. They are One, as He is One. It was a final request of the broken Son, that you are One, as I and the Father are One. And one fine Day it will be granted. And if the Kingdom is indeed here at all we should be quite far along in the process. But sadly…we have not heard.

But they would not listen, they did not know how, Perhaps they’ll listen now.

I’m listening now.

Part Two: Jesus

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Wednesday 25Mar

jesus (DRAFT)

Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 12:18AM

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“The kingdom of heaven is at hand”
—Jesus first sermon

The curtain opens and a lone figure emerges and begins his part. “The time has come; the kingdom of god is near. Repent and believe the good news.” This is the gospel as Jesus understands it. Something has come, is happening right now that will alter the course of the world. This is a watershed moment. To be a follower of Jesus means that you believe that something very real happened when he entered the world. So we begin here with a discussion about that announcement. What was the gospel or “good news? What he had in mind is radically different form the popular viewpoint in westernized Christianity. It is not just a little different it isn’t really that close.

“Up To”

“I am Aurelious Maximus...”
—The Gladiator.

He knew who he was and what he was about. I believe Jesus came as a prophet to his own people. He was like Hosea and Ezekiel as he called out for Israel to stop being unjust and unrighteous (righteous having to do with “setting things that are crooked straight). He knew what he was doing, he knew what he was saying and his steps in that final week were not incidental or accidental to who he was. We need to reconsider Jesus view of himself and his vocation or unique call. When we look at who he was it will have strong implications fro what the church, kingdom people, should be.

On the Way to Jerusalem

In order for us to get into the mind of Jesus we need to walk alongside him as he made his way towards Jerusalem for what I call the final showdown. In the minds of many Jews the showdown was going to be with the Romans who were the current oppressing nation. God would come to deal with them, to set them straight so that the righteousness of God, also known as vindication of the Jew, would be seen by the entire world.

What they did not expect was that Jesus would so strongly confront them.

I believe that Jesus had come as a last resort to deal with the sins of Israel in relation to covenant keeping. Promise keeping. Fidelity. In fact in the end he was the last man standing as faithful. He saw Himself as the final remnant, the only person who was a true companion of God.

The major question Jesus posed to Israel was, “Will Israel repent?” That is, will you turn around from your current way of doing things to way that would be consistent with God's heart for the world as was expressed through them as the oracles of God. Consider what is sometimes seen as a very odd or strange passage in Scripture. Many commentators are completely taken aback by Jesus response to a woman who comes to ask that Jesus would heal her demonized daughter.

Matthew 15:21 Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out,

"Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly."

23 Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us." 24 He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel." 25 The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said. 26 He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs." 27 "Yes it is, Lord," she said. "Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table."

When you first read the Scripture it is stunning. What is wrong with Jesus? It is a shock to observe Jesus' response to this woman who literally comes and throws herself at his feet and begs him to do something to help her daughter. The response of Jesus is indifferent silence.

In fact, it's absolute indifferent silence.

Its the kind of indifference that says I care nothing about your plight. This is what Jesus appears to be communicating to this woman. Martin Luther said “now he is as silent as a stone” and so He is. Can any of us imagine treating someone who is pleading at our feet with this type of cold silence? Why is Jesus doing this? I studied several commentaries and none seem to have a satisfactory answer to this question.

I believe they are speechless because they start at the wrong place in regards to what Jesus was up, that is, his vocation. Beginning wrong lends to misunderstanding. If we have no concept of who he was or what He was for we have no clue as to what he was doing in this story. Often forgotten is that Jesus came as Paul would say, to the Jew first and then to the Gentile. Jesus was moving his face towards Jerusalem in order to have a confrontation and a showdown with the nation, through its leaders. A gunfight is on the horizon. It's a showdown and one will remain standing; one will die.

One commentary, Exploring the Gospels: Mark by Jerry Vines says this about Jesus strange behavior in chapter 7, verse 27.

“One of the amazing passages about Jesus in the entire Bible comes next. Look at what happens in verse 27, Jesus said unto her, let the children first be filled for it is not good to take the children's bread and cast it on to the dogs. That sounds brutal, doesn't it? It doesn't sound like Jesus and all. Matthew’s account of the same incident sounds still harsher. Matthew gives a fuller account of what was said here is what it says in Matthew chapter 15 verses 22 and 23. “Have mercy on me oh Lord, thou son of David, my daughter is vexed with the devil. But he answered her, not a single word. He wouldn't even answer her? It's not like Jesus. We know that no person coming to him is denied. Obviously they cannot be what it appears to be on the surface.”

What I beleive is that it is exactly what it sounds like it is.

If you know Jesus, and what his vocation was, and the context he lived in, this isn't surprising. Jesus understands who he is and what He is for. He understands that He's come to confront Israel about how she had consistently disqualified herself from her true vocation. He treats this Gentile woman as a second-class citizen because at this point in the narrative--she is a second class citizen in the eyes of Jewish people. If his actions aren’t convincing enough his words certainly are, 'I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs.' Knowing the compassion that is in Jesus’ heart should make these words stand out all the more as truly puzzling. What Jesus understands is that she is a Gentile woman outside of the covenant. She doesn't deserve to have the bread from the table. She is outside the covenant. How confounding? How utterly enlightening.

Disciples Too

And what's even more surprising is she doesn't even question it nor do any of the disciples. Conversely. they tell Jesus to send her away, to get rid of her, to treat her as an inconvenience to them. Unless we understand what they believed we will be forced to try to make sense of the situation that simply does not make sense. Are the disciples really that hard hearted, or do they find themselves in the Meta narrative that comes out of the Hebrew tradition and is told from a Hebrew perspective. The story doesn't make sense--unless.

Unless we know what Jesus is “up to”?

What I'm saying is: If we don't view this story from the perspective of the people that lived during the time of the story, we simply miss the meaning of the story. We then force unnatural senseless meanings onto the scripture. And then it takes the most clever and resourceful of us all to explain away the difficult passages such as this.

Now let's just say that Jesus is meaning exactly what he says. Let's let the story speak for itself. Let's not do anything to somehow whitewash what's being said or done, but instead let the story speak. What is it that Jesus is up to? Why does he say this? The answer is simple: Jesus understanding of his mission was to come and invite Israel to return to their promises, their call, their first love, their commitments, their vows. And if they would not return to their vocation Jesus understood that his role was to become Israel as God had intended Israel to be in their stead.

The reason Jesus gives for his behavior is simple, his mission is to confront the house of Israel with their misuse of their vocation to be the light of the world, the salt of the earth, and the people that God intended them to be.

Make no mistake about it. Jesus came to the house of Israel to deal with the house of Israel.

Every picture tells a story and every story paints a picture

Matthew 21-23-32
In this story, the chief priests and the elders come and ask Jesus, By what authority he was doing the things that he was doing particularly the clearing of the temple in Jerusalem. What Jesus does is ask questions to see if they're really serious He inquires of their position regarding John the Baptist. The response they give is typical for the political system that they were a part of; they simply say in true political overtones, “we don’t know” which really means we don’t want to commit to any answer because of pressures from outside forces. Jesus answers the question by telling the story we know as the parable of two sons. The father came to them and asked them if they would go work in the vineyard. The first said no but later, went and worked. What he did was repent. The second son said that he would go and work in the field but never did. This correlates with Jesus understanding of Israel saying “yes, we will be the light of the world, the salt of the earth, Israel as God intends us to be”, but they actually never were and never really intended to. “These people say with their lips but their hearts are far from me”. When Jesus asked them clearly, which of the two sons did the will of the father they replied, “The first one”? To this Jesus says; the tax collectors and the prostitutes (that is, the Mafia and the porn industry), the worst people that were in the nation of Israel, were coming to a place where they would repent and turn away from their sin. The underbelly of the culture was turning around. The astounding thing, to Jesus who rejoiced at this change, was that these elders and chief priests could watch this happening and simply fold their arms and do nothing. They could view the nation turning around and repenting and they would not “rejoice” as one was in heaven. They would not rejoice because they were like “the elder son”, who believed that they were justified in their behavior so their was no joy over the lost sheep now found, the lost coin now found, the lost son now found.

So Jesus says, even when you see the nation turning and repenting you will not repent of your position and believe me.

Jesus then tells another story or parable. It is the kingpin of the final parables of Jesus. To me this is the most eloquent parable that Jesus told. He speaks so clearly that no one could miss his intent.

The Parable of the Tenants Matthew 21:33-43
33 "Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. 34 When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit. 35 "The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. 36 Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. 37 Last of all, he sent his son to them.

'They will respect my son,' he said.

38 "But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, 'This is the heir. Come, let's kill him and take his inheritance.' 39 So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. 40 "Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?"

41 "He will bring those wretches to a wretched end," they replied, "and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time."

42 Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the Scriptures:
'The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes'?

43 "Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.

The landowner is God and He rents, leases, gives charge over, leaves management and stewardship of his Vineyard to landowners. When he comes to see how the people are doing with the land that he gave them to manage He is faced with a severe problem. The tenets, representing the Jewish nation seize the servants; one they kill, one and a stone, another they murder. God responds by sending more servants to them. Same response.

Then comes the clincher, the prophetic Jesus, where last of all, he sends his son to them;

“Surely they will respect my son,” he said.

And of course, Jesus is saying that the Father has sent him and he is that Son. When Israel sees the son they say to one another “This is the heir, let's kill him, and we will take the inheritance for ourselves”. In other words, what God has loaned out to us, given us to manage, we will steal from him. So they took the son and they threw him out of the city. And they killed him.

Jesus then asks the question when the owner the vineyard comes how is he going to feel about those tenets; those managers. They respond, 'He will bring those wretched to her wretched and in a given they need to of their people, who gave him a share of the harvest at harvest time. To this Jesus replies. “Therefore I'm going to tell you the kingdom of God will be taken from you. And given to people who produces fruit”

This, of course, is the story that Jesus believes is coming true in his life and death. He will be taken out of the city. He will be executed on a hill, the place of the “skull”, where the outcasts are put to death as a warning to other criminals that dishonor and shame their own people. Dishonor awaits you if you do not conform to the message as we understand it. This exile will be his fate and he will go alone, as the last man standing, the final remnant of Israel, and the one true seed that will give birth to a new creation. Exiled from his own Jesus is reenacting the story of Israel's exile and will enact the surprising restoration when he rises from the ash as well on the third day.

That languages sound very familiar to us because is the same language to John the Baptist used when he first came to baptize people in the Jordan River. Matthew 3 tells us how John the Baptist prepared the way for the Christ by saying repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. When the Pharisees and the Sadducees come out of where he is baptizing. He tells them that they are to produce fruit in keeping with repentance and do not say to yourselves. “We have Abraham is our father, because I tell you out of the stones got to raise up children of Abraham the ax is already laid to the root of the trees and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” Clearly Jesus is just repeating the message of John in the wilderness. This is a consistent message.

Arrogance that blinds

The tragic thing is Israel's leaders can not receive this message. One of the reasons they can't receive the messages because they are blinded by their anger and hatred. Their ears are smothered by their smug notion that they know what the answers are, that they know what God wants them to be that they understand how to be the light of the world the salt of the earth, Israel as God intended them to be, but if they had understood they had a funny way of showing it.

They were so intent in putting Jesus on the spot and somehow pinning him down. That they could not even hear what he had to say. They were so positive in their convictions. So angry at this one that brought another way, a different way from what they expect a Messiah to bring. There is no way this could be the Christ in their mind.

So the extortionists and the whores respond to the message of repentance. But Israel’s religious leaders simply would not. Jesus saw they were angry, he knew they would reject them, but he loved them so much he kept telling stories so they could “come to themselves” and change. But they did not. So we see Jesus courageously walking into the fire, setting his face to the cross, the eye of the hurricane.

Missing the mark

And I want to suggest something that you just consider for a while. Don't respond to quickly. Try not to be defensive or closed off. Just consider the impact of what this might be supposed the evangelical message that has been preached in so many of our churches for a long time now has missed the mark. Suppose the “good news” is more than what we have settled for? What if we have been living in the wrong story? Would we be able to change our minds when confronted?

Another story

Let's look at another story. On the way to the cross we see Jesus in the temple at the Gentiles court where the money changers are seated.

Matthew 21: 12 Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13 "It is written," he said to them,” 'My house will be called a house of prayer,' ^[e] but you are making it 'a den of robbers.' ^[f]"

When we look at that Scripture and we see that Jesus clears the temple, that his righteous anger came out against the money changers, we are inclined to believe that it's all about the economics of ripping people off by selling pigeons and doves and sacrificial animals at inflated prices. And indeed it was about that, but it was about much more. We can see that by the context of the passage and the questions that the Pharisees and Sadducees had for Jesus about authority that follows. They clearly understood that his action in the temple was meant as a judgment towards them. So they asked by what authority you do these things that you've been doing. So it is an issue of authority.

What Jesus was saying as he clears the temple is “your house is being judged, and it is a final judgment that has come from a God who has been patient and forbearing for a long, long time. And you no longer have the authority of God to be in this place, to be the people that are given the task and the responsibility to bring the gospel to the entire world, that is, the Gentiles. Your license has been revoked.” It was truly an act of judgment upon Israel when he enters the temple and clears the court. It escalates the need for the showdown. And one is just around the bend; the cross is now in sight. Jesus presses into the eye of the hurricane, the impending storm. He seems to be unable to let up.

Final straw

When Jesus was accused of blasphemy in Mark 14:58 (Today's New International Version) the accusers said,

"We heard him say, 'I will destroy this temple made with human hands and in three days will build another, not made with hands.”

What is interesting is Jesus stands silent. We always wonder why he doesn’t straighten them out. Perhaps it is because they were correct. He simply kept quiet. He never denied making the claim. The fact is according to the gospel of John He did say and believe just that. (John 2:19) To Jesus his body is the temple, the new place where God’s people will tabernacle, where heaven and earth in the words of theologian NT Wright “interlock and overlap”.

It is intriguing that those who mocked him while he was on the cross mocked him with these words. Matthew 27:40 (Today's New International Version) saying, "You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!" And of course we know that he did. He came to life. And the temple that had been rent in two (again a clear sign of judgment) would be raised. He didn't stay on the cross, but ascended to heaven. The truth is Jesus saw himself as the new temple of God, as the cornerstone for new people of God, as the new covenant of God. He was to be the foundation of a new humanity, who by the Spirit of God would bring good news of the righteousness of God to the entire world. This is now the vocation of the new community of God, which has replaced the nation of Israel, whose ministry, or work, or vocation was "weighed and found wanting”. You who are “in Christ” are now that building.

Let us not fail in that vocation

Many of us are familiar with the personal narrative of Esther that spoken about in the Bible. We often in an effort to inspire one another quote the familiar passage where Mordecai comes to speak to Esther about her particular call, in this particular place, at this particular time. “Who knows? Perhaps you've come to royal dignity for just such a time as this” Often though, we forget what Mordecai had to say just before that. As Esther was contemplating whether or not to get herself personally involved in stopping this horrendous plan to annihilate the Jewish people Mordecai gave her some sound advice. According to Paul in Romans chapter 11, we need to heed the advice as well. Here is what Mordecai said:

“Do not think that in the king's palace, you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father's family will perish. ” In this last showdown between Jesus and Israel, one had come from the place of Israel in order to rescue Israel, a Jew into the Jews. His name is Jesus, and they killed him and in that last remaining remnant, that final one, Israel died, too. That was their judgment. They were no longer “given the keys to the kingdom” for the sake of the world. They failed in their vocation (call). Let us not fail in our vocation as they did.

Gods view

“One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do”
—Three Dog Night

I think we “get it” from our perspective but I'm not sure we understand the perspective of God. I am speaking about the cross. It was a terrible weight to bear. The weight of the world under a curse. The weight of a promise spoken; a vow made. It must have been a terrible burden for Yahweh, for all those years to realize that he has enacted a covenant that he could not keep through his people Israel. The failed enterprise of the people that were not the salt of the earth, the light of the world, Israel has God had intended them to be would prove to be fatal.

To someone.

I wonder if those years of silence, the 430 years separating the writings of the Old Testament and New Testament are similar to the kind of thing that we might do to put off something that's very difficult for us to face. Just one more day and surely the tide might shift. I wonder if the Father in heaven held on to his Son so tightly and each morning rose to the new possibility of giving him away until it became very clear that he had to send him forth. What a bitter release. How difficult it is to send a child to a place where you know he will die. Parents of war are familiar. You know how you might feel if it were your child. And when the time had fully come, He sent forth his Son fully aware that he may return in pine box compliments of a fallen world and a stubborn people.

And the Son came to Israel to plead the case. When Israel would not respond as a people, He became Israel as a man, the last man standing. And in a fascinating twist of irony the words spoken of the high priest Caiphus the year of the crucifixion ring true, “It is better that one man should die than an entire nation”. Oddly enough God probably inspired the words of the prosecuting attorney and then acquiesced to the prophecy that as given. Now as Israel, the last man standing, the final gunslinger, the final breath of the old covenant, the last remnant of God, to his own He came. And his own would not have Him. They said to themselves, “This is the heir” and they seized him and they put him to death. And now at last, the parable of the wicked tenants had come to pass. It was strangely accurate, that they should come and take Jesus, the one and only son, and put him away in the same way that Jesus had said they would when he spoke the parable just a few days earlier.

Still a promise spoken was a promise worth keeping.

And so Jesus becomes Israel as God had intended them to be. He becomes to Israel, what we are to be for the sake of the world. It must have been a strange release for God to finally free himself of the captive chains of that promise when Jesus breathed his last breath. This is the thing that's happening on the cross. This is the time when God is released from the old covenant of the Old Testament. At this very moment where Jesus breathes his last breath, we must understand, realize that God now has been set free from an old promise that wasn't kept through Israel. That as Abraham sleeps between the carcass cut in two, God himself makes the visitation to make good on the promise of a covenant that they have with one another. And now the rest of Israel sleeps and God acts. To me this is the significance of the sleeping disciples in the garden of Gethsemane. They too, though they are not the vicious Pharisees and Sadducees, have fallen asleep. There is no one on the watchtower anymore. Jesus is truly alone. This sheep have been scattered and the Shepherd will now be sacrificed. With this release of responsibility he (God) has now been put in the position to enact a new covenant. And this is what Jesus is doing at the Last Supper.

I recently listened to the song that was the theme song for the Amazing Grace movie. Chris Tomlin who performs the song has written these words:

“My chains are gone; I’ve been set free; My God, my God has ransomed me”.

At the time I was listening to the song I was also looking at the “Tribute to Kings” an amazing artistic rendition of the “Stations of the Cross” that was created by Kevin Rolly, an artist from Southern California. When I came upon the slide (station 11) where Jesus was laying with his face to the side of the ground, with the cross bearing over his shoulder and a faraway hollow look in his eye, it struck me that the words of the song really fit what Jesus was going through at that moment.

God was being set free.

At last.

We always see the cross is the time when we were “set free from our sin”. We always see it as something that is set against a background of our perspective. We are so conditioned by that mindset that it's difficult for us to see it any other way.

It is always about me.

For the first time that I could remember, I saw the cross as something that really sets God free; from a weight, the weight of a promise made, a vow spoken. Finally, after years of turmoil the old covenant and the heavy weight of law had been fulfilled and the burden of that cross could now be lifted.

That is what Jesus means by “I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it”. He is doing the “work of the Father” and He and the Father are of One mind in this task. When Jesus carries the cross to the edge of the city, actually outside the city of Jerusalem in exile from his own, (with significant help from Simon) and is planted as a criminal between two thieves we see it as the substitutionary atonement for us. This is truly self-centered and so American. We don't even consider what it was for God. What I am suggesting is that it's time we look at it from his perspective and realize that it was the fulfillment of the law and the fulfillment of the weight of the covenant. It was a promise that God was now making good. And now he could be released from that obligation to do something new.

And this is what he does, he creates a new people.

He enacts a new covenant (New Testament in my blood) with Jesus at the Last Supper. When the old covenant's fulfilled then all bets are off, all things become new, even you (who are in Christ) are new creations in a new age, and the new has come invading this world with its sacrificial love. In reality, this is what the Bible is; a story divided into two covenants, the old covenant and the new covenant.

When Jesus cries, “It is finished” on the cross He is referring to the end of the long drawn out pilgrimage of two parties to an agreement that could not be reconciled without the shedding of blood. Sometimes when one is boxed in a corner there is no other way. The question is whose blood. The answer is the enactor of the agreement. In one of the most ironic twists of all time Israel will die when they take the gun from the hand of Jesus and turn it on Him. Israel gets what they want but it is not what they really need. It is their demise. This is the end of Israel as the people of God.

Again, when Jesus dies Israel dies.

Now obviously God is not done with Israel in a literal fashion just as God was never really done with the entire world in a literal fashion. Yet this moment has to be seen as the climactic moment in the history of the Hebrew people. They no longer have the privilege that others don't enjoy. At the same time, they're not cursed over and above any other peoples of the earth.

And in his resurrection the true Israel is brought out in a new day in a new and living way through the breath of God. Indeed you cannot put this new wine in the old wineskins, it WILL tear and the wine pours out. Jesus was tore, the wine of His blood spilled and new wineskins were brought in. The new wineskins, of course, are the new people of the Kingdom as God had envisioned them to be. As King Arthur dreamed of pure Camelot God dreams of a kingdom that is coming to pass and is being enacted “in Christ”. Isn't this really the gospel according to Paul and according to Jesus, and according to Scripture? Do we really find out much about the substitutionary atonement in scripture or do we find a lot about the covenant and the keeping of promises in the keeping of vows. I am lobbying for the second because I believe it is a better rendering of what Scripture really is.

It is time to see things from the perspective of God.

I am not the center of the world. But I do count…

Known to Unknown

“Light of the world shine on me love is the answer,
shine on us all sinners we, love is the answer”
—Seals and Crofts

Discovering what I didn’t get based on what I have already gathered.

What I'm dealing with has to do with the need for us to understand the importance of moving from the known to the unknown. Many times when I say to the congregation that I serve “I need you to be here on a regular basis” they interpret that as saying I want you to be here, because we need to have numbers to fill the sanctuary or because it's Sunday morning and God deserves worship because He is worthy of our praise; both of which are probably true. But this is never the main reason why I say that you need to be here on a regular basis on Sunday morning. From my perspective, what I'm trying to do is similar to what Paul and Apollo's was doing in the New Testament. Particularly when Paul talks about how he lays the foundation and Apollo's waters. What he speaking about is moving from the things that are basic or known into the things that are unknown. It's a typical way of learning and understanding that's foundational to education. The foundations laid and we need to move onto things that help us to understand or build on that foundation is what Paul would have us do. It’s what I would have us to do. So I ask people to be here on a Sunday morning. It's not as though I'm saying I need it for my ego or we need it because we need to see one another from time to time, although those things are probably important, what I'm really trying to get at, the heart of what I'm trying to say at that time is this; “I'm trying to build something in to you so you have a working understanding of what theology is and what the Bible is all about.” So it's important that we don't just go over the same foundation again and again and again, but move from that which is known that is the foundation, to that which is unknown, building on that foundation. It is so we have a greater understanding of the kingdom of God as Jesus intended it in our lives. An understanding of why this is important helps us to know why we should not fall into some seeker sensitive type model of doing church.

The typical seeker sensitive model goes over the same salvation message again and again and asks us to receive that message that Jesus came to die for our sins so that one day we might go to heaven. It is extremely popular in our culture that demands instant answers for deep problems. It is of course, church light, and delivers on the promise to create “light Christians”. The next step for that kind of church is to say now that she's got the message you go out and you find people that need to hear this one time message so that they might say a prayer and go to heaven when they die. It's what some of called the gospel of death rather than the gospel of life cause let's face it, what it's really about is can you get into heaven when you die not about how you live your life today as you walk the earth. So it's been titled the gospel of death by people who are proposing a new way of understanding What Jesus is “up to”. What follows simply makes sense. In this model, we come to understand our job is bringing people into the sanctuary to hear a foundational message so that they might receive Jesus and go to heaven when they die. The obvious result is we never really grow up. This is precisely why we have some of the issues that we do in the church today. We've gone over the same ground again and again, and we justify that behavior by saying it's “the gospel” and we need to get “the gospel” out to other people and the way to do that is to have somebody who understands how to speak a message in a way that's palatable to a person so they might receive Jesus. The congregation feeds the audience and the audience in turn brings in new “potential customers”. It is the Amway of religion. And the result is a lot of shallow and anemic Christianity. And then we wonder why is it that our churches and the people of God really don't seem that different from the culture. The answer should be clear. We've not built an understanding of theology of what God is “up to” into their lives so that they might somehow come into contact with culture and have answers that make sense and are well thought out.

They have but one answer. “Accept Jesus into your heart and it'll all be good.”

The problem is that's not the gospel and it isn’t true. Once we have been in the system for awhile we know that. It isn't an adequate rendering at all of the Scriptures.

What we would like to do in this book is to move on to a point where we have a more adequate understanding of what God is up to in the world. And what Jesus was up to when he came to the world. So when I ask people to be a part of church what I'm asking them to do is to become Christians who are mature in Jesus. I want them to think like Paul and the early disciples who let the “good news” alter their lives.

It can happen.

Change

How bad how good does it need to get?
How many losses how much regret?
What chain reaction
What cause and effect
Makes you turn around
Makes you try to explain
Makes you forgive and forget
Makes you change
—“Change” by Tracy Chapman

What is Jesus “up to?”

Today in keeping with that model of trying to go from that which is known to the unknown I want to speak of what I believe Jesus was up to particularly as he came into Jerusalem and is drawing nearer and nearer to the cross. We have plenty of material to choose from on this matter. One thing is clear and that is that there is an impending storm on the horizon as Jesus moves “his face” towards Jerusalem at Passover. I really love that phrase “his face towards Jerusalem” because it indicates that there is this toughness, there is this determination, and there is this resolve to get to this place at this time for this final confrontation. You get that feeling that it's going to be high noon. Those gunslingers are going to meet in the street that this town (Jerusalem) is not big enough for Jesus and Israel or perhaps Jesus and Rome. Most of Israel is under the impression that Jesus is going to come out for Israel and “the righteousness of God” will come in the form of an attack upon Rome. But Jesus doesn't do that, instead Jesus makes his target the people to whom God intended to be the “light of the world and the salt of the earth” (a common phrase I will be using for us to understand who we are to be in Christ) and he comes to confront whether they are performing in the vocation that they've been given. Much of his discussions are targeted directly at the Pharisees and Sadducees. This is no new news to any of us. When Jesus comes in the city on Palm's Sunday the response of the common person is stunning. The reaction of the Israelites as they greet him, the rabble as they're known, is to bring him in as a king, “Hosanna son of David who's comes in the name the Lord, but what’s truly alarming is the condition that Jesus comes into the city. He's troubled, he’s agitated, and he’s angry; he's frustrated, he is on edge, because he's fully aware of what is coming. And he walks directly into the eye of the hurricane and confronts it in a way that is simply confounding. Jesus walks into the storm walks right up to the gunslinger battle and approaches his adversary. What he does next stirs the entire city. He in effect, simply hands the gun to the enemy. What, in essence, Jesus is saying is this: “I'm not going to kill you, I've come to save you, do with me which you will, and the ball is in your court. He looks death right in the eye and he says.

“Do what you do.”

In other words Jesus who has the power to bring down a dozen legions of angels doesn't do that. He could do that and in fact, when he comes to the garden at Gethsemane, and begins to speak to his Father about what is unfolding, He asks, is there any other way that this cup can pass for me. Another way to say this is he's wondering is there any other way this is going to go down. It's plausible that he has this in his mind that the God of all power and all might be able to somehow come down in rescue him in this circumstance in an issue of strength and power. But God will not. He says no son, I have a loaded gun and I'm putting in your hand. But I want you to set it in the hand of the adversary and see what he does with it. You go see if there's any chance that Israel were repent of their ways and receive their call to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth.

This type of thing becomes clear that this is this is in the mind of Jesus his mission. Recall the conversation that he had with the gentile woman who came to him and asked that he might heal her daughter. She said even the dogs can receive from the masters tables. Even the dogs can have the crumbs, can I just have the crumbs from your table, the table of Yahweh. Jesus answer is somewhat astounding to us in our generation. His response is: I have not come for the Gentiles I have not come for those that are considered the outside. I have not come for them on message and this time is for the children of Israel. And we go Jesus, what is wrong with you. How can you be so cold to this woman? The answer lies in the reality that Jesus saw clearly that his call was to those who are of the house of Israel because they had been given a vocation of God. And their metanarrative, their story, was the story that God was going to interact with in order to set to rights all those things that had gone wrong as a result of the fall, and the resulting “lower story”. God was going to correct that which went wrong. So that the lower story was created in Jesus ascended we see God is raising those that walk in the lower story in the lower parts into a place where they might understand and experience heaven. The reality visitor spends so much time that's passed between the ascension of Jesus and the ascension of the church has to do with God finishing his work. It has to do with God’s desire that that kingdom should come so that he might pour his benevolent love into them. This long, stretch of time where the church is confronted with the type of suffering that Jesus had as he went to that gunslinger in laid down his weapon is now to be that fuel, that blood, that sacrifice, that now builds the very kingdom of God on this foundation of forgiveness.

But by no means is the foundation of forgiveness the end of the story.

Fix You

“Lights will guide you home,
And ignite your bones
And I will try—to fix you”
—Coldplay“

That song is so powerful to me. It begins with a single voice and seems to gather power as it unfolds. You get the feeling that it is headed somewhere that a climax is on the horizon. And it ends ever so softly with this:

“Lights will guide you home; and ignite your bones, and I will “fix you”.

How things change?

I live in Michigan. I’m sitting on the deck grilling in sunny weather on Sunday and freezing by Wednesday afternoon. The buds are interrupted by snow falling on my hedge. It happens in one week, actually three days. But nothing changed as quickly as the Passion Week of the Christ. The change was suddenly but it had been a long time coming.

Sometimes as we observe the events and their unfolding during Passion Week we are stunned by how quickly the tide of opinion can turn on Jesus. One day he’s riding into the city amongst cries of “hosanna” and by the end of the week the shouts have turned to the bloodcurdling burst of “crucify”. While I recognize that this was much like a snowball gaining momentum as it flies down a slope I want to suggest this storm, that culminated in the cross and crucifixion, had been brewing for a “long, long time”. And now Jesus comes at last as the final attempt to reconcile God with Israel. The way that Jesus was attempting to do this was by telling stories and doing stuff that would raise reaction. Many times the stories he told and things he did served to exasperate the situation during this final Passover week

He did his part to exasperate the already untenable situation. He’d tell stories and do stuff. Recall the story again of the wicked tenants in Matthew 21.

The Parable of the Tenants

33 "Listen to another parable: "There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. 34 When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.

35 "The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. 36 Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. 37 Last of all, he sent his son to them. 'They will respect my son,' he said.

38 "But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, 'This is the heir. Come, let's kill him and take his inheritance.' 39 So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

40 "Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?"

41 "He will bring those wretches to a wretched end," they replied, "and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time."

42 Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the Scriptures:
" 'The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes' [h]?

43 "Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.

When any Jewish leader would hear this parable they would almost without hesitation recall Isaiah 5. It was a scathing indictment from the poet/prophet Isaiah at the time of the exile towards the Israelites. A prophet functions as a type of messenger to the people much like songwriters and films today. Bob Dylan, Tracy Chapman, Bruce Springsteen, Coldplay and U2 are illustrations of these poet/prophets in our time. G. K. Chesterton once said this about their role in society,

“I don’t deny that we need priests to tell us that one day we will die, I only say that we need another kind of priests called prophets to remind us that we are not dead yet.”

These poet/priest/prophets come to metanarratives to call them towards justice and righteousness, to remind people they can live in truly human ways, they serve many times as “light to the world” that has forgot its way. Isaiah came in this vocation. So does Jesus. That this parable includes such terms as vineyard, watchtower, winepress, and is unique to Matthew who further illustrates that which people of Jesus day might assume. When this metaphorical language is used by Isaiah and later Jesus it was referring to one people—Israel. Jesus was coming in a long line with a redundant complaint. When he looks for justice—bloodshed—when he longs for righteousness (that is for the field to be leveled for all) he hears the cries of oppression. The blood of Abel still cries from the earth.

Isaiah 5 The Song of the Vineyard

1 I will sing for the one I love
a song about his vineyard:
My loved one had a vineyard
on a fertile hillside.

2 He dug it up and cleared it of stones
and planted it with the choicest vines.
He built a watchtower in it
and cut out a winepress as well.
Then he looked for a crop of good grapes,
but it yielded only bad fruit.

3 "Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah,
judge between me and my vineyard.

4 What more could have been done for my vineyard
than I have done for it?
When I looked for good grapes,
why did it yield only bad?

5 Now I will tell you
what I am going to do to my vineyard:
I will take away its hedge,
and it will be destroyed;
I will break down its wall,
and it will be trampled.

6 I will make it a wasteland,
neither pruned nor cultivated,
and briers and thorns will grow there.
I will command the clouds
not to rain on it."

7 The vineyard of the LORD Almighty
is the house of Israel,
and the people of Judah
are the vines he delighted in.
and he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed;
for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.

In that 7^th verse we see the issue—for the “Vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel and the people of Judah when God looked …He expected justice, but saw bloodshed, righteousness, but heard a cry”.

This is an old issue brought up again. It is an issue between God and his beloved Israel. How are they doing as the “house and people” of God? Jesus would continue to beat on the door with story after story.

And a man was on the road towards Jericho and he came upon thieves and robbers and they beat him and left him half dead, a priest came by and he saw his predicament but passed on the other side as if he didn’t see, a Levite came by and he did the same he saw the man passed to the other side and carried on as though he didn’t see it, was supposedly unaware. My grandfather had a curious little stature on his mantle. When I was a little boy I would twirl around their stuffed chairs that would spin so fast and be told to “stop it”. So I would (being a hyperactive yet compliant child), and then I’d sit. As a bored child I would pick up this clay image of three monkeys and study it. The first monkey from left to right had his ears covered he could “hear no evil”, the second one had his eyes covered by his hands and he was known as “see no evil” and the final monkey puts his hand over his mouth, he was “speak no evil”. I often wondered why Grandpa had this, but as time has gone on I have understood. So many people can escape guilt and responsibility by not seeing, hearing, or speaking anything at all. The world if full of “monkeys” who cross the road as though they were oblivious to the plight of others in the human race.

Then, Jesus continues in his story, a Samaritan, (i.e. half breed compromiser from the Northern tribe of Israel who had the audacity to say they were the true Jews of God and the temple was located in the northern tribe settlement of Samaria rather than the OBVIOUS place where God dwelled Jerusalem) came to the man half dead on the road to Jericho. He stopped and had pity and showed mercy…exhibited justice and righteousness to this person. He treated his fully human and was the light of the world to this person. “Who is neighbor?” asks Jesus. “I am looking for folks like that, a new community and I will be the foundation, the rock for that type of people” who are building the true kingdom of God (no matter where they might sacrifice on this mountain or the next, i.e. see John 4). And it doesn’t mean a hill of beans if you have the ancestry right and are born as a son or daughter of Abraham, in fact, God can raise these sons and daughters from these rocks, from stones the true Israel can come forth into a spiritual house and Jesus will be the foundation, cornerstone of that community. He will show the way on the cross.

So Jesus sets his face like a flint towards the eye of the hurricane and in the resilient lyrics of lyricist Tom Petty he “won’t back down, going to stand my ground, you can stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won’t back down”. And he doesn’t. He tells more stories. Unprepared virgins, irresponsible sons, poor stewards. Scathing stories of indictment. Israel is being “weighed and found wanting”, a familiar phrase that is fine if it applies to Babylonians, Persians, or Romans but not so exciting if it is put on Israel…and their license to be the people of God, was being revoked, and they were agitated…enraged. How dare you?

And he did stuff too. On Monday Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem and the first thing he does is visit the temple. He walks in and turns their tables upside down. Sometimes we see this as a protest to the selling of pigeons, doves and sacrificial items at inflated prices. It was much more than that. It was more of a judgment that said people in this place are “evicted, no longer stewards of the place where heaven and earth meet, where God tabernacles with man”, Israel no longer has tenancy but has been removed; “And he won’t back down”.

High noon is just around the bend. It’s time for a gunfight at the OK corral. This town, Jerusalem, is not big enough for Israel “as it is” and Jesus, Israel as “God intended her to be”. That is who Jesus saw himself as. This was his vocation. When Jesus enters the city he comes as “the last man standing, the final remnant, the One and only Son,” who has come to deal with injustice.

The religious establishment reacts predictably. When he “tells stories and does stuff” the religious leaders of the nation of Jews say, “I’ll fix you!” Interesting phrase isn’t it; found in a pop song by Coldplay. We use it when we really want to get someone. We lie in wait, nursing our wound, caressing our hate until the time is right.

And then, “I’ll fix you.

"You come to judge us…
No, no, no we are the powers that rule here.”

The Loaded Gun.

And Jesus hands them a loaded gun and says, “Do what you do”, and they do. “They fix him”. And in that they unwittingly fix themselves, because Jesus is the last Son from the Father and when he dies Israel dies…and the kingdom “will be taken from them and given to another”, just as Jesus said. They, a new Israel will be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, Israel as God had intended them to be.

Gentiles too

Of course they are not the only power players in this drama. In the metanarrative of a Hebrew you are either Jewish or anything else. Anything else was gentile. Rome, representing all the kingdoms before and all the empires ever after has something to say to anyone that dares stand in their presence will deal with Jesus as well. They represent the predominant empire of the day. Empire is a good word because it speaks of any power structure that exists. Not only nations but power structures and systems. Like Donald Trump who takes great delight in saying, “you’re fired” every week on prime time television. He, too, represents a power structure that can be formidable and intimidating if you don’t “kiss up”.

You cross us and we’ll “fix you”. And Jesus seems like that naïve little boy spinning round in grandpa’s stuffed chair not really knowing what the three monkeys are about. He is walking right into the trap. The thing is. He does know. He gets it. This is how the gentiles “rule it over one another”. The great historian Tacit us once said, “They (Rome) have created a wasteland and called it peace”, at what cost this peace. Crosses strewn across the land. Bloody peace, no peace at all. “Step out of line the man comes to take you away, you better stop, hey, what’s that sound, everybody look what’s going down”. Just another upstart self appointed Messiah being handled by Rome for all to see.

Step out of line…and Israel will fix you, Rome will handle you, and you will become strange fruit hanging on the tree.

Strange Fruit

Rome says in the voice of the spirit of threat, control and oppression, “What’d you say boy?” and you’d better kowtow or there will be some “strange fruit” hanging on the tree. If you were a Negro in the Deep South during the lynching years that kind of remark would send a rush of adrenalin down your spine. A phrase borrowed from a Jewish songwriter Abel Meeropol. He’d see the trees in the Deep South and young black men hanging and swaying. It is “strange fruit” for a nation under God, a Christian nation.

Strange Fruit

by Billie Holiday

Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves
Blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
The scent of magnolia sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
for the rain to gather
for the wind to suck
for the sun to rot
for the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop

There is a “Strange Fruit” outside the city walls of Jerusalem on Good Friday. Any hint or rumor of insurrection and Rome says, “I’ll fix you”. And Jesus hands them a gun and says “Do what you have to do”

And in a curious twist the world is one. And as one--Jews and Gentiles alike-- turn the gun on Jesus. And they fix him and handle him with deftly and quickly. God looks down for justice, and sees bloodshed, for righteousness—and hears cries. The cries of the women at the cross.

In that moment when Jesus cries out “it is finished” the covenant is kept, the law is fulfilled, sin is defeated, and God, at long last, is “off the hook” and can begin again. He is set free to begin again.

The Third Player

One more party is playing a part in this passion play. One more will, fix Jesus. As the sky grows dark, a huge tear falls from the face of God, splashing on the barren earth. In Mel Gibson’s moving scene depicting the actual crucifixion called “The Passion of the Christ” I can see it as I sit here, it is etched in my minds eye, a tear splashes on the hard earth. I can imagine the father God as he reaches down and scoops up his son, his One and only son, and he whispers, in a voice that splits rocks and opens graves, “Light will guide you home, and ignite your bones and I will fix you”

And on Sunday, the first day of the week, he breathes on Jesus and everything changes, “all things become new”. After an appropriate 7^th day rests the universe cracks open and out of the egg of the tomb comes “new life” on the “first day of the week” John 20:1,19. It is new life for a new time for a new people and a New Jerusalem.

And the kingdom is being made before our eyes as people from all over the world come, lay down their guns, and say at this very cross where it all happened, “fix me”. Breathe on me, give me life, and make me like you.

And as we come to this new covenant that God establishes through Christ, we come as a new people to this table, created on Maundy Thursday, the cup of the blood covenant as a people endowed with the responsibility to be “in Christ, Israel as God had intended her to be”. We come without power, without pride, with no loaded guns, with humble hearts and we say “Fix me; make me like you”.

This table represents a new beginning for a new community and we are invited to come as a people.

God on the other side of silence.

Hello, darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision
That was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

—Simon and Garfunkel in “The Sounds of Silence”

Jesus is God on the other side of silence. We confess Him as God but have significant confusion about this. We treat Him as God like or God reflective more than very God of very God. I suggest He is God, in the beginning with God as the wisdom of God, the rib of God, the Sophia love of God. He, gender being somewhat insignificant yet in another way quite important, is the One who will set God free, sooth His wound, and begin a new day. All that comes forth from this union will be healed as well. In fact the creation as we know it groaning in travail will open its womb and a whole new creation will emerge. This child and all about her will faintly remember the days of old, the days of death. It will be like Cold Mountain on a sunny day filled with the sweet aroma of magnolia rising from the grounds which once cried out violent with blood of the fathers. The devils and dust of pain have been extracted by this act in the visitation of the Son, who builds a temple where the community can gather again, almost like the family beneath the Magnolia, safe and happy forevermore. This scene is ignited in the presentation and resulting 'work' of the Son.

He bursts onto the scene as a baby, with a fair measure of hoopla, amongst an equal or greater share of humility. Somehow the narrative pulls these two opposites together in a fashion that is astounding, if not a bit puzzling. Following this gloriously humble entrance He all but disappears until He is finally revealed by John the Baptist. When He comes on that scene, somewhere around the age of 30, He does two things which have great meaning for us. He comes to be baptized. And He faces His nemesis, his “demon”. Several things are peculiar about these events.

First, the voice that speaks, “This is my son…listen to Him”. He is the oracle of God and as we come to know, God Himself. Paul puts it this way he is “image of the invisible God”, a purposeful use of words emphasizing the concept of "image", followed up by “the firstborn over all creation”. This son is an image reflector come to reveal the face of God.

Secondly, a dove descends, reminiscent of the recreation of the sons of God following the flood in the days of Noah. The dove flies over the dirty water of the muddy Jordan when He lifts up. The skies are opened and God descends. This shows the interlocking and overlapping of the upper realm and the lower story.

Thirdly, the type of baptism he submits to. It is a baptism of repentance. Based on what has gone on before much can be said about this. Suffice it to say at this point…when He comes up…He comes clean. And a new day dawns.

It is an impressive opening scene that will unveil his work. The baptism of God is almost exclusively seen as His alliance with mankind. I suggest it could be something altogether different. Could it be that the baptism of repentance is a statement about the about face of God. The turning which will be further unveiled in the collection of sayings, 'You have heard it said' (by whom-by God of the Tanakh more experienced), 'but I say unto you', as a new language, a new voice, from the God who is, after a significant time of solstice, emerging on the other side of silence, changed.

Following the baptism He appears on a mountain and is immediately challenged by the underbelly god in the wilderness. They are like two heavyweights gauging one another. Challenges are made, authority, the reach of the tape measured as they joust about. It is all about jabs and jostling and maneuvering for position. It is the prelude of things to come.

Now follows a key interpretive question: When Jesus stands on the muddy banks of the Jordan what is He repenting for?

The answer is this. He is God, the creator of life and He has blood on His hands and He like anyone created in His image needs to 'wash away the blood'. And He can. Through His son, who, like Solomon of old, indeed can build the Temple of God. His father could not. Too much blood. But the Son can. The clean vessel will.

And the vision that was planted in my brain—still remains—within the sounds of silence. But now the silence is broken. Jesus speaks—God talks.

“Worlds apart”

We often hear people say that phrase, “world’s apart”, and know they are referring to two cultures or times or worldviews that are so different that they have difficulty understanding one another in even the most simplistic ways.

In this way we in modern times are worlds apart from the times of Jesus. Most of us never even pause to think about the implications of this. What scripture they had in Palestine at the time of Christ was independent long scrolls that might be gathered together, we can almost picture a bell jar. The longest when unrolled might extend 24 feet or more.

These writings which make up the books of the law and the prophets were hand written and guarded for the eyes of a few privileged people. Of course there are no printing presses at this time in history so the number of copies is very “limited editions”. This was true until the time of the protestant reformation. No one was reading scripture and “applying it” to their lives like we do today. They didn’t lift verses to memorize or prove doctrines they may have developed. To use scripture in that way was foreign to them and never entered their mind. To be Jewish was to live in the way of Torah. They would recite the Schema and perhaps other pieces of the book but most of their life and hope was involved with looking for deliverance from the oppressive outsiders that held them in captivity. This was their understanding of God. He must be moved to set the captives free and the captives were most assuredly the peasant class, the more elite had become cooperative with Rome and had therefore become tributary domination systems under the supreme domination system of Rome.

Scribes were not glorified administrative assistants taking dictation but trusted learned men who had been given access, knowledge, actually keys to the books of God. This was something enjoyed by only a few in the time of Jesus. When Jesus confronts the “Scribes and the Pharisees” he is clearly confronting the accommodation they were involved in. They were the “middle men” that helped Rome keep the peasants’ dependant, poor and docile. They were not troublesome to Jesus because they were legalistic, they were agitating due to their penchant for accommodation to the ruling classes which resulted in oppression from their privileged position. Their role was to keep the people in line, the rabble as they called them, down, but not out. They were masters at squeezing without squashing...if squashing was needed the boot of Rome could and often would do that in a most public and violent form.

Access to the books of the Old Testament was extremely limited. The peasant class was dependant for any word from God from these elite people of position that used their knowledge to their advantage. Most peasants learned about the word of God mostly through oral tradition. And Jesus was most assuredly born a peasant. We read “you have heard it said in scripture” and we scour, literally comb all the books, looking for a sign or clue as to what Jesus was referring to oblivious to this. The truth is what was known was the oral tradition of the “law and the prophets”. Scripture never had this modernity’s approach as an option even in its wildest imagination. We are unaware that much of “the writings”, the third part of the Jewish Scriptures hadn’t been declared yet.

When we hear Jesus speak Psalm 22 on the cross we think he may have read it in devotions that morning. Nothing could be more imaginative than that. He didn’t even have such a book. The truth is Jesus was a peasant in that world with little pedigree. He would relate to oppression of the poor because 90% of the population was poor, with no welfare system. When given the privilege of reading scripture in the small synagogue of Nazareth he didn’t find Isaiah 61 it found Him. There weren’t even chapter and verse…just a long scroll.

His father was a “tekton”, an economically strapped builder who may have been part of the huge task of building Herod’s temple just 4 miles north of Galilee. As a boy Jesus may have seen him trek day in and day out to build a shrine to that “fox” Herod, actually translated “skunk”. More than likely he was worked hard for a meagerly subsistence while Herod ate and drank in opulent luxury. His father Joseph was a good man ruled by a notoriously bad man. To imagine that this didn’t leave some mark on Jesus life is to deny any humanness in the man.

The peasant’s class access to scripture was severely limited in comparison to us. We are worlds apart both in economic status, information sharing, and way of life. The average life span during Jesus time was 30 years. We can take a short ride to the bookstore and find a plethora of information, with a few strokes of the key pad we have access to more information than could ever be read, seen, or imagined. I see people on their way to Sunday morning service Bible in hand, separated by chapters, verses, notes and such and wonder what they would think if they knew. We are worlds apart.

To not let this impact our understanding of the story is incredulous. But many sheltered from these truths never even think about them. Some of the loose translations we see in scripture that sometimes cause us great concern are just the natural result of the imprecise way they were available. It isn’t that no one cared so much as the task is too great. The Bible was drawn together for a purpose that is far different from what we have understood it to be. For this reason narrative theology and informed guessing can open our eyes to a “new view” of Jesus and His task in His time. Once we see we are worlds apart we might actually be able to see what we hadn’t imagined before.

• courage

“There are two kinds of people in this world, Charlie.
The first group are the people that face the music;
the second group are those who run for cover.

Cover is better.”

--Lt. Col. Frank Slade in the movie "The Scent of a Woman”

Dustin Hoffman plays the part of Colonel Frank Slade in the movie 'The Scent of a Woman'. He is a survivor, seen enough of war to know that when you stick your neck out in battle there is a good chance someone might cut it off. Only fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Better to just take cover. If there are indeed, 'two kinds of people in the world' those who 'face the music' and those who take cover Jesus clearly was the first. What He did as He set His face towards Jerusalem could hardly be seen as anything other than instigated homocide. When it came time to 'make a righteous stand', as Springsteen puts it, Jesus clearly, stubbornly, faces the music. The inevitability of being silenced in the most final form did not stop him from doing the right thing.

'Cover is better' if you want to live without trouble. Let someone else take the bullet, sit back, wipe your forehead and sigh 'yet for the grace of God go I'. Be conservative, bend to the Man, don't fight city hall. Don't take unnecessary risk, don't get involved, take care of your own. Insulate and isolate your self from trouble. Create boundaries with enough padding to soften any blow, save for the rainy day, run for cover and perhaps you will get by to live to a ripe old age.

You may lose your pride along the way, you may leave friends on the battlefield, you may walk about blind, but it is the price to pay. At least you didn't die.

Like Jesus did.

He died.

He rushed in.

He risked.

He took the hit.

He did not back down.

The late Mark Heard asks, 'What kind of friend would do you in when the bomb goes off and the shelters his?' Why, of course, no friend at all. We sing 'What a friend I have in Jesus'...but the question which lingers asks 'Are you, am I, a friend like him?'

If there are two kinds of people in this world, as the Colonel observes, then Jesus was the kind who would face the music no matter what the cost.

When God emerges on the other side of silence he sets his face like flint towards Jerusalem. This is the beginning of the end.

And the end which speaks the beginning. Final word. What follows is the story of a courageous man who did the right thing, faced the music, and died. A person who held the power of the atom, the devastating power that could make the a-bomb seem miniscule. He didn't drop that bomb.

He could have.

He didn't.

He emptied the chamber before high noon.

There is a reason.

• ascend

'In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth?'--Paul in the letter to the Ephesians chapter 4 verse 9.

When I say God descended into the lower story in the form of Jesus I am not saying anything unorthodox or particularly new. I am hearing the testimony of Paul. What the people of his day would have taken in so easily during his time has been buried so deeply as to not even show up on our contemporary radar. When Paul said he descended into the lower regions--the earth--he meant just that.

To believe in resurrection demands we believe in a God who comes down. Who enters in. We say it glibly without realizing the sanctity of the moment, the courage of incarnation. After a long silence between the testaments God 'enters the scene' to become the herald of the morn, the confronter of darkness, the messanger of a 'new creation'. And the message when it is heard rightly is; 'I died so that you might have life. Now go and do the same for your brother'.

That Jesus died is not so powerful as what he says in the manner in which He dies. Most powerful God said 'lay the rifle down'. When James Taylor laments (in his beautiful haunting song Belfast to Boston') he speaks as a prophet to us.

'Missing brothers, martyred fellows, silent children in the ground
Could we but hear them could they not tell us
"Time to lay God's rifle down"

Who will say this far no further,'

But we have truncated the gospel, taken it hostage, made it about our own 'personal Jesus'. We have taken what was meant to be freedom for the captive right now and made it about something that we hope happens some day. We need to be reminded that salvation is not about tomorrow as much as it is about today. We have squandered that message, packaged it, and effectively castrated it of its power in the world.

Watershed is about boundaries, insulation and isolation, and a new emerging paradigm that turns on the light bulb. It is about a moment when we say 'I get it'.

And when we turn around (the meaning of the word repentance), when we intentionally bend down the bars that separate, when we purposefully, thoughtfully erase the doctrines and ideologies that justify our isolation and insulation and keep us a safe distance from our brothers, when we stop asking 'so who is my neighbor?' so we can measure how much to care; when we stop saying stupid things like 'am I my brothers' keeper?' hiding behind ignorance with our 'bloody hands' behind our backs, when we stop hearing the gospel just the way we want it, when we turn around and go back to make amends for what we've done along the way...it is then and only then that we will reflect the one who came down and laid down... rights, power, and fear... to embrace a new day. It is then that we can be called Christian.

Less than this is a convenient apparition. Will we ascend?

• God on the other side of silence.

Hello, darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision
That was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

—Simon and Garfunkel in “The Sounds of Silence”

Jesus is God on the other side of silence. We confess Him as God but have significant confusion about this. We treat Him as God like or God reflective more than very God of very God. I suggest He is God, in the beginning with God as the wisdom of God, the rib of God, the Sophia love of God. He, gender being somewhat insignificant yet in another way quite important, is the One who will set God free, sooth His wound, and begin a new day. All that comes forth from this union will be healed as well. In fact the creation as we know it groaning in travail will open its womb and a whole new creation will emerge. This child and all about her will faintly remember the days of old, the days of death. It will be like Cold Mountain on a sunny day filled with the sweet aroma of magnolia rising from the grounds which once cried out violent with blood of the fathers. The devils and dust of pain have been extracted by this act in the visitation of the Son, who builds a temple where the community can gather again, almost like the family beneath the Magnolia, safe and happy forevermore. This scene is ignited in the presentation and resulting 'work' of the Son.

He bursts onto the scene as a baby, with a fair measure of hoopla, amongst an equal or greater share of humility. Somehow the narrative pulls these two opposites together in a fashion that is astounding, if not a bit puzzling. Following this gloriously humble entrance He all but disappears until He is finally revealed by John the Baptist. When He comes on that scene, somewhere around the age of 30, He does two things which have great meaning for us. First of all, He comes to be baptized. And secondly He faces down His nemesis, his “demon” in the wilderness. Several things are peculiar about these events.

At the baptism of repentance the voice that speaks comes from 'above' declaring, “This is my son…listen to Him”. This is His coronation as the oracle of God and as we come to know, God Himself. Paul puts it this way 'He is image of the invisible God', a purposeful use of words emphasizing the concept of 'image, followed up by 'the firstborn over all creation'. This son is an image reflector come to reveal the face of God in a new creation. A turn from one way unto another way.

Secondly, a dove descends, reminiscent of the vow of God to never again punish the sons of God across the entire earth as He had through the flood in the days of Noah. The dove flies over the dirty water of the muddy Jordan when He lifts up. The skies are opened and God descends--reaches down and makes a declaration. This shows the interlocking and overlapping of the upper realm and the lower story.

Thirdly, the type of baptism he submits to is not incidental. It is a baptism of repentance. Based on what has gone on before much can be said abut this. Suffice it to say at this point…when He comes up…He comes clean. God is making a statement. Clearly a new day dawns.

It is an impressive opening scene that will unveil his work. The baptism of God is almost exclusively seen as His alliance with mankind. I suggest it could be something altogether different. It could be that the baptism of repentance is a statement about the 'about face' of God. The turning, which will be further unveiled in the collection of sayings which begin with, 'You have heard it said (by whom was it said-by God of the Tanakh, of course) but I say unto you'. Now God, an experienced God, says through the Son, 'once this was the way'...but in these latter days 'this' is the new way. Jesus is the One who is to be listened to, a new voice, from the God who is, after a significant time of solstice, emerging on the other side of silence. The voice and vocation of Jesus represents this change of God.

Following the baptism He appears on a mountain and is immediately challenged by the underbelly god in the wilderness. They are like two heavyweights gauging one another. Challenges are made, authority is questioned and challenged, the reach of the tape measured as they lock horns. It is all about jabs and jostling and maneuvering for position. It is the prelude of things to come.

Now follows a key interpretive question: When Jesus stands on the muddy banks of the Jordan what is He repenting for?

The answer is this. He is God, the creator of life and He has blood on His hands and He like anyone created in His image needs to 'wash away the blood'. And He can. Through His son, who, like Solomon of old, indeed can build the Temple of God. His father could not. Too much blood. But the Son can. The clean vessel will.

And the vision that was planted in my brain—still remains—within the sounds of silence. But now the silence is broken. Jesus speaks—God talks.

• this far, no further

If I had ever been here before I would probably know just what to do don’t you?, if I had ever been here before on another time around the wheel I would probably know just how to deal, with all of you.—David Crosby of CSNY

If I had been here before I would probably know how to deal—with all of you. If I had experience with this situation I would be able to handle it better. Experience is a master teacher. When Jesus sets his foot on the stage of the earth He created in the final climactic act of the story He is equipped in a way that helps Him ‘deal’ with every situation—and every being—including Satan.

Jesus is God with a history.

When He speaks He speaks with an authority that has been born of knowledge. Jesus isn’t born into the world in the way we are born into the world. Jesus took on flesh and entered the world as ‘God with a history’. He speaks with authority about so many things because He has been here before. He enters with a well thought out plan. He has seen it all before.

Fool me once (in the garden) shame on me—fool me twice (the book of Job) shame on you. Fool me a third time—not on your life. It won’t happen. God will not be fooled again. Jesus is all business on the mount of temptation. Nothing is left alone to chance—there are no wagers—no deals with the devil. No giving of a single inch. No funny business. When Satan comes with His twists and half-truths the experienced God is ready and prepared. His heel is bruised, His reputation wounded, but in the end he will crush the head of the enemy. This is as certain as the foreboding scene in the Passion of the Christ when the snake is stomped down by the heel of Jesus.

This time around the wheel is the last scene.

When CSNY sings, ‘and I feel like I’ve been here before’ Jesus know the lyrics and is familiar with the melody. He knows because He has been here before. Jesus is embodied in flesh and has submitted Himself to the effects of the fall in order to confront His accuser (devil) His lover (Israel) and His enemy (mortality symbolized by death). Don’t be fooled for a moment this ‘Son of man’ has come to defeat the effects of the flesh by dying in the flesh. When He dies death dies with Him.

This time around the wheel He knows how to deal with it all. And He won’t get fooled again. Because 'out on the edge of darkness...there rides the peace train'. And the light comes to the darkness on this thin edge and darkness is no more. Light wins. And we can live in the new daybreak today. The Sunday after dark Friday.

Come take me home again.

This is the place where all the rifles are buried. At the foot of the cross. James Taylor in his thoughtful song Belfast to Boston asks, 'who will say this far, no further' is answered here forever.

Belfast to Boston
by James Taylor

There are rifles buried in the countryside for the rising of the moon
May they lie there long forgotten till they rust away into the ground
Who will bend this ancient hatred, will the killing to an end
Who will swallow long injustice, take the devil for a country man
Who will say "this far no further, oh lord, if I die today"

Send no weapons no more money. Send no vengeance across the seas
Just the blessing of forgiveness for my new countryman and me

Missing brothers, martyred fellows, silent children in the ground
Could we but hear them could they not tell us
"Time to lay God's rifle down"

Who will say this far no further, oh Lord, if I die today.

• the betrayal of doing nothing

'The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal'--Dante

'Come on up to the rising. Come on up lay your hand in mine.'--Bruce Springsteen's song 'The Rising'

A dark night; a cold sweat; followed by a dry day; a long walk. The dry mouth feels like paste. The realization of warm blood running down theface. The taste of salt and iron. And you want to vomit but instead you stand transfixed and gaze at this wreck.

What happened here?

In the end they didn’t want to hear any more from him. They were weary of the tension He brought into their world. They had had it with him. To put him away would be a relief. Why didn't he just let it go? Why did he have to always push the envelope? He caused this, you know, I mean He could see it coming and in fact, invited it in. Those stories. The turning of the tables. To get it over with would allow everyone to get back to normal. The rabble back to their cave, the compromisers to their 'cul-de-sac'. No one changes the system. The system simply takes care of you...handles you.

And I think he knew it, too. Instinctively we know it when they want us to leave the room, to give it up, to settle down and 'let it be'. Tight lip stares on one side and gaze avoidance from the other. Never lock eyes with a 'dead man walking' lest you begin to care.

It was Dante who said, ''The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal'-- and humans held their 'peace' and spoke not a word--and this crisis was met with the silence of the witness. Silence becomes 'betrayal'. Neutrality is the coward's excuse. And everyone excused themselves from the room. They still do.

When you are alone--really alone--you can choose to panic or face this fate with dignity. From the first sweat of blood in Gethsemane to the generous flow of liquid from His spear pierced side at Golgotha, it seems Jesus words were few. What more was there to say?

No one was really listening anyway. He chose dignity.

• at the place, at the cross, on the street, high noon

We just stand there while He wastes away. When I look around this place I am not alone. And some people are washing their hands and making their way to the exits already. The show is over. Final credits roll. The fire flickers and I look your way.

'I saw you there.'

‘No you didn’t'.

'Oh yes I did'.

And you just look away and leave. We all walk away from this mess, this cross, to get on with our lives. From the footprints we leave behind I begin to smell something rising. Out of the ordinary. In the impression where we once trod I see a silver thorn, a bloody rose. And a sweet scent emanates from the mud of the earth. It comes up. Rising ever rising. It is the smell of forgiveness coming up. Forgiveness. Unsolicited, unwanted mercy. Forgiveness is the fragrance that the flower leaves on the heel of the one who crushed it—and it is rising right where you and I walked.

Songwriter Don McLean has crafted a song about Vincent Van Gogh but every time I hear it I see Jesus. I feel Jesus.

Hear the Jesus lullaby. It’s taps for the Son of God.

And when no hope was left inside
on that starry, starry night you took your life as lovers often do
But I could have told you, Vincent

This world was never meant
for one as beautiful as you

Starry, starry night
Portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless heads on nameless walls
with eyes that watch the world and can't forget

Like the strangers that you've met
the ragged men in ragged clothes
a silver thorn, a bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow

Now I think I know what you tried to say to me
and how you suffered for your sanity
and how you tried to set them free
they would not listen, they're not listening still

Perhaps they never will...

Come on up to the rising. Come on up lay your hand in mine.

• outcast

As one from whom men hide their faces he was despised,
and we esteemed him not'.--Isaiah 53

Streets of Philadelphia

I was bruised and battered
And I couldn't tell what I felt
I was unrecognizable to myself

Saw my reflection in a window
I didn't know my own face
Oh brother are you gonna leave me wasting away

Psalm Twenty-two

Roaring lions tearing their prey open their mouths wide against me. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.

My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me.

My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
you lay me in the dust of death.

Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet.I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me.

• The God who fades to the back

I believe one of the best lines from Springsteen's phenomenal song "Streets of Philadelphia" is 'and my clothes don't fit me no more, I'd walk a thousand miles just to slip this skin'. How easily this could apply to Jesus. He is shrouded in flesh by mortality. The flesh doesn't fit him. Mortality is an invader. The blood that runs through His veins is tainted by the infection of the 'fall'. And it is about to take His life. He has a history. If Jesus seems older than the thirty-three years historians have put on Him it is because He is older. He has the wisdom of the ages since time began and even before creation itself. He has walked the many miles that it has taken for Him to climb this hill to Golgotha, the place of the skull, which is an appropriate term for this desolate spot where He will die. He can feel himself fading away. He sees the faces of friends now vanished and gone. He is desolate. He that had no beginning is about to have His 'first' encounter with 'the end'. Jesus' final climb is not found in the city of brotherly love or the place that holds the liberty bell. His freedom is purchased in a place where brothers betray one another with a faithless kiss. The final road is in Jerusalem and known to us as the Via Doloroso. It is here at last where he will shed this skin.

The movie that Springsteen penned the song for is named Philadelphia.

In the film Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks), a gay lawyer infected with HIV, is fired from his conservative law firm who live in fear that they might contract AIDS from him. After Andrew is fired, in a last attempt for personal peace, he sues his former law firm. With the help of a homophobic lawyer, Joe Miller (Denzel Washington) he pleads his case for justice. During the court battle, Miller sees that Beckett is no different than anyone else on the gritty streets of the city of brotherly love. He, a black man who understands prejudice risks all he has gained, sheds his homophobia and helps Beckett with his case confronting the formidable controlling class before AIDS overcomes Beckett. Hanks won an Oscar for his portrayal of the AIDS stricken homosexual man who was marginalized by the powers that be.

Some might think it scandalous to compare the Christ of glory to the despised countenance of a 20th century man, most likely branded with the name of "homo" or "queer", disfigured by the devastation of a disease called Aids. This is in the minds of some his come-up-a-tance. And some gloat over him as he walks the streets of Philadelphia, bones protruding rudely from a body once strong now wasting away. Some in the church certainly did.

But that is the point is it not?

Their stare, their glance, their way, is the same spirit that stood on the way of the Via De La Rosa. The crucifixion was a brutal and shaming end to a human life. There was no dignity on the cross outside the city gates. Christ was most despised and totally rejected by all here. Psalm 22, undoubtedly on the mind of Jesus expresses the scene vividly.

Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet.I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me.

Springsteen gets it… and the real question that lingers is; do we? Do we get it when he says 'when you do this unto the least of these you do it unto me'. Where was everyone when He faced the end? Don't you think He 'heard the voices of friends vanished and gone'

How lonely it must have been at the ninth hour when Jesus shouted in a loud voice, "Eloi Eloi lema sabachthani?" which is translated, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" the first verse of Psalm 22 quoted above. Death, which cannot exist in the presence of God in His dimension, creates this unbearable chasm. This "gulf of separation" that occurs between God the Father and God the Son, in the death of the latter, has been described by the theologian Jürgen Moltmann as 'death in God'.

The night has fallen, I'm lyin' awake,
I can feel myself fading away,
So receive me brother with your faithless kiss,
Or will we leave each other alone like this

I believe Jesus takes his place last in line, at the back of the bus, and fades into oblivion beneath the powers of the world both religious and secular. But He doesn’t stay there. We love that part. And we should. But before we go to the ending we must appreciate the path Jesus trod to get there so that we might follow that path. The descending nature of God is the way of redemption, of renewal, and of deliverance. There is no other way, in a world gone horribly wrong, then to empty oneself, stoop down, step down and...to repent...to lay down "rights". Or as Paul puts it--to crucify oneself...

'I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.' Galatians 2:20

This is the way of salvation and when the world--all the world-- gets this and lives by it--the world will be saved.

But they would not.

It is a dream that I fear will never come true because our nature is violence, The curse of Cain looms like a heavy mist amongst us and nothing will lift the fog. Nineveh with its whole hearted surprising repentance will not repeat and we will not receive the broken Christ at the center of our respective societies. This is the stain that permeates all cultures for all time. The cycle of violence, of power, had to be rendered powerless. Unless the age is interrupted blood will spill and evil will continually prevail.

"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

So when Jesus says "Love your enemies," he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition.The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation." --Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King.

This is one of the key reasons Jesus goes to the cross. In that one act God Almighty laid down His rights, His arms, His power to show us the way. Jesus broke the cycle of hate and violence by willingly going to the cross. The cycle was broken, the chain reaction of evil diffused at the cross--this is the message of God--this is love poured out--this is the message of the cross. This is the reason for the purposeful laying down of "rights" described in Philippians 2 and referenced by Jesus before Pilate in Matthew 26,

"Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?".

Of course He could--but the point is He didn't--and when Peter bears the sword in Gethsemane; Jesus' response is sharp and decisive. When the law courts of Jerusalem and Rome strike His cheek--he turns the other cheek. When James and John ask who will rule on the seat to the right and left Jesus says--you still don't get it do you? This is not about force but about upending force. It is not about being served but serving. It is not about my rights but being right in the eyes of God.

It is the message of God.

This is finally the reason for the return of the Christ. The present evil age with its 'Am I my brother's keeper?' mentality will one day come to a close.

World interrupted.

• love's goodbye

'...never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.'--John Donne Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

It begins in a garden. It finds its climax where it begins. This is the setting for the final scene before the battle. It is here where God and Jesus meet, Father and Son hug, and Man and Woman kiss one last time. The last embrace before one goes off to war lingers as long as it can. And here all things die because the sun has set and darkness rules the night. Once bright and full of life the garden of life is now doused in sweat and blood.

When a soldier goes to war does he go alone? For whom is war hardest? Is it the One who goes to flight or the One who is left behind to wait?

• ending

"We're a long long way from home Bob,
home's a long, long way from us,
I feel a dirty wind a blowing..."--'Devils and Dust' written by Bruce Springsteen

And after the day came the night. And they took him before the council of the Sanhedrin where it was determined that He was a genuine threat to the peace of the community who lived under the tyranny of Rome. It was a sound decision fueled by tremendous fear...with the finger on the trigger. And they all agreed together, they were of one mind, and they made a pact. They were sure of their position. They were 'right'. And this needed to be done for the sake of the community.

We've got God on our side
We're just trying to survive,
What if what you do to survive
Kills the things you love

Fear's a powerful thing
It'll turn your heart black you can trust
It'll take your God filled soul
Fill it with devils and dust

Fear's a powerful thing, it'll turn your heart black you can trust...take your God filled soul and turn it to devils and dust. And they are afraid. Let sleeping dogs lie. And they took him to the steps of 'justice' where it was determined that he had done nothing wrong. And Pilate washed his hands while she dreamed a dream. And the elders went home to rest.

Dawn broke.

And He began a long, long journey home. A long way away from home, home a long, long way from Him. And if I recall there was a dirty wind blowing that night. Something rancid in the air. Rotten in Denmark you say. And it was night on that day in that hour, darker at 3:00 in the afternoon than at the pitchest time of the deep dark night. And the earth trembled as death won the day. And God trembled as He breathed His final breathe. And the earth felt His breathe and shook.

"Where are you going?" asks Pita. "Home, I'm going home" replies John Creasy. And he trudges along the suspension bridge to the other side. But this time someone walks alongside him. I see dead men walking. It is Jesus.

It isn't done. The sun will come up another day. The sun will come up tomorrow. And we will forget this ever happened.

"Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty I'm free at last..." was the whisper of God that would turn to a shout. The peasant who would be King. The pauper that owned the earth. Unrecognized by His 'own' He is handled, managed, and not so discreetly put away. Silenced. In His own words he acquiesced or so it seems...'it is finished'. Well thank God for that. Perhaps we can put it all behind us. Get on with life. This has all been so disturbing to me. But in the night it all comes back to haunt. Your guard drops in the deep sleep of the night. You can't control your dreams or your nightmares. I dreamed of Jesus as 'strange fruit' swaying yet still on a tree. He is spread eagle and the blood runs red.

Well I dreamed of you last night
In a field of blood and stone
The blood began to dry
The smell began to rise

Well I dreamed of you last night, Bobby
In a field of mud and bone
Your blood began to dry
And the smell began to rise

At last it's over. This bloody mess. Who's to blame? Am I my brother's keeper? He should have kept His mouth shut. He put us in a bad situation. You can't defy Lord Caesar and live. There is too much Egypt in all of these criminals.

What kind of friend would pull a knife when it's him or you and his kid needs shoes? What kind of man will do you in when the bomb goes off and the shelter's his? Don't be naive, why, we all know that everyman does these things when pressed into a corner. We all do. But what if what you do to survive, to get by, to stay afloat, kills something deep down inside you. What if your fear kills the thing you love. What of dignity, bravery, courage and all that stuff. Fables, fairy tales and fantasy. When it comes down to it we save our own skin. We look after number one. We are no different than the crowd gathered on the Portico steps.

Still.

Something beckons us to be better than that. Actually if we only knew, it's Someone. And we want to be heroic. We don't imagine ourselves as Peter or God forbid Judas. We dream of passing through the crucible intact.

Now every woman and every man
They wanna take a righteous stand
Find the love that God wills
And the faith that He commands

We want to be heroic. But when the gun is pointed as us. When it's loaded. When it's Rome. When it's your pension. What kind of friends do friends become when the musical chairs are down to one? Will you knock me out of the chair, throw me under the bus, leave me hanging out to dry? And what kind of friend am I? Would I do you in?

Another waits in heaven. With open arms for His one true love.

When Edward asks,"So what happens after he climbs up the tower and rescues her?" Vivian replies; "She rescues him right back."

Mortality loses its grip on this day and has no more strength. Eternity is on the other side of darkness. The deliverer is nigh. God's reputation has been rescued here on this cross...and Jesus...the One who rescues God...He will be rescued right back.

• the rising

Who will bend this ancient hatred, will the killing to an end
Who will swallow long injustice, take the devil for a country man
Who will say "this far no further, oh lord, if I die today"'--James Taylor in Belfast to Boston

'Left the house this morning
Bells ringing filled the air
Wearin' the cross of my calling'--Bruce Springsteen in 'The Rising'

Michael Wittmer describes the hall leading to Michelangelo’s David in the Academy in Florence which holds several of his unfinished statues:

'In some ways these 'prisoner' statues are more interesting than his impressive David, for the chiseled outlines of their half-finished forms offer us a glimpse of a genius at work. They are 'done' but somehow incomplete, unfinished, in need. Their placard says that Michelangelo left these statues unfinished to express his belief that, just as the prisoners’ bodies struggle to emerge from the blocks of marble, so our spirits yearn to escape the confines of our bodies.'*

We are made for something more than dust to dust. We know it deep inside. Something longs to be free. There is more to us than meets the eye. Deep calls unto deep. When Jesus dies He says 'into thy hands I commend my spirit' and something rests. A pause. A folding of the hands. A tilting of the head.

At rest.

• Jesus and God are One

He will be, even as He is, the Great I Am. Sounds confusing but it will soon make perfect sense.

I am persuaded that God emerges in the Old Testament; called the Tanakh in Jewish literature. He emerges into a character that is in a bind, almost stumped, silenced and finished. Israel is in exile. His child, His lover, His people are on the ropes and have been for quite some time. But He will eventually come to a triumphant, surprising renewal. The God who is becoming is getting ready to make His move. The troubled God will make a triumphant return.

At the cross we see God as He emerges on the other side of silence. Jesus is God on the other side of silence. He, God, changes as the story unfolds and like so many great stories rises up just in the nick of time. It comes in the end when all seemed assuredly lost and without hope. Just then resolution comes, that which was a dissonant chord hanging loosely exposed and vulnerable in history's symphony resolves. In the end the crisis is resolved into a soothing, restful conclusion. And just then, at that very moment redemption occurs for heaven and earth.

This is God and He is solving the dilemma of fallen-ness, of sin, of evil, of Israel.

One of Auguste Rodin’s most famous sculptures is The Thinker statue, a piece originally conceived to be part of another work. The Thinker was part of a commission by the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris to sculpt a monumental door based on The Divine Comedy of Dante. Each of the statues in the piece represented one of the main characters in the epic poem.

Initially named the The Poet, The Thinker statue was intended to represent Dante himself at the top of the door reflecting on the scene below. However, we can speculate that Rodin thought of the figure in broader, more universal terms. The Thinker is depicted as a man in sober meditation battling with a powerful internal struggle. The unique pose with hand to the chin, right elbow to the left knee, and crouching position allows the statue to survey the work with a contemplative feel. This poet, this thinker, this One, is God at the close of the Tanakh.

Yes, He “will be” even as He is I am. And He is the image we reflect. And we are like Him.

Something drives Him towards this, and in that way He is like us. We emerge into ourselves and something drives us. We become who we are. We are not born who we will be. We become as we relate and experience our life. Perhaps we are not as noble as God, assuredly we are not as gracious and courageous as Jesus, but we both walk this earthly path seeking resolution and redemption.

I believe God redeemed Himself in Jesus and solved His dilemma along the way. It happened all at once. This moment was and is the most crucial moment for Him, the crucible moment for His people, and the christening moment for you and I and all of creation.

The poem ends here at the cross. Miles to go…no more. Sleep has come.

The journey has come to its end. The many miles He has traveled as God on the temporal time constrained earth from Genesis to the last breath of John have led him to this moment. Death breathes its last sigh.

Like Inman of Cold Mountain the journey has ended. Amidst the cold metaphor of snowy silence the grey clouds settle in. A storm is on the horizon.

And after the rain there's a rainbow. Can you see it? Can you imagine?. These statues will grow arms. Spirits will come alive, dead bones will shake and rise. We no longer have to ponder. The greys will turn to color. The rainbow comes after this storm.

We are made to rise. JT...the question heard from Belfast to Boston has been answered. God has taken the 'devil for a countryman'.

We are stardust...we are golden...and we will find our way back to the garden and it will be better than it ever was because we have walked the road of disappointment. We have tasted the bitter gall of the lower story. We like the Israelites in the wilderness look up and are healed at the sight of the symbol of death wrapped around the cross. What was once a man has turned into a snake. What once was the symbol of death has become the place where life begins again.

It is time to exit. Come on up to 'the rising'.

Hear the news from Belfast to Boston and all places in between. 'Who will say this far no further' is answered. Tomorrow. The sun will come up tomorrow. The dawn is already on the horizon.

Come on up on the wings of God.

"The Rising"

Can't see nothin' in front of me
Can't see nothin' coming up behind
I make my way through this darkness
I can't feel nothing but this chain that binds me

Lost track of how far I've gone, how far I've gone, how high I've climbed
On my back's a sixty pound stone
On my shoulder a half mile line

Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight

Left the house this morning
Bells ringing filled the air
Wearin' the cross of my calling...Come on up for the rising!

"Belfast to Boston"

There are rifles buried in the countryside for the rising of the moon
May they lie there long forgotten till they rust away into the ground
Who will bend this ancient hatred, will the killing to an end
Who will swallow long injustice, take the devil for a country man
Who will say "this far no further, oh lord, if I die today"

Send no weapons no more money. Send no vengeance across the seas
Just the blessing of forgiveness for my new countryman and me

Missing brothers, martyred fellows, silent children in the ground
Could we but hear them could they not tell us
"Time to lay God's rifle down"

Who will say this far no further, oh Lord, if I die today.

The Prestige

'But I was like a gentle lamb that is led to the slaughter; and I knew not that they had devised devices against me,'saying , Let us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof, and let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may be no more remembered.

And I knew not that they had devised devices against me saying...crucify Him...cut Him off from the land of the living...make it so that His name, His legacy, his very existance is made null and void. Make it so that no one will ever remember that he even existed, no children, no grandchildren, no name. Halt his history. Kill his story. Let His time run out. So do it while He is still a lamb--slaughter Him with a device of wood, a ruined tree that will bear fruit no more...crucify Him.

No sand on the seashore Abraham, for Israel has bottled herself in an hourglass of their own choosing, and their time has run out by their own hand.

And so it is...the fig tree bears no fruit, and Israel has no children. “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.” Forgive them for they do not know what they have just done. They built the gallows for themselves. They have turned the barrel of the gun inward. Haman hangs here. Grasp the irony of it all. When they crucify this Man they tear down the Temple, they resist the invitation to tabernacle with God--they kill their own future--For He is Israel. And He is Esther. He is the hope of the world.

But the story does not end...'The Prestige' is coming. The twist will appear in three days time. But a gasp, a drop in time, a moment, the Prestige commands our attention and applause. For here is the crux of time, the place where 'it is finished'. At the crucible, the cross, Jesus as Israel reconstituted, is found faithful and the covenant is complete. When the author of the will, promise, covenant, breathes His last breath the will is broke open and the children receive the inheritance. This is why Friday is good. Something happened here.

But the magic is in the third act on the third day.

The Prestige

In the film, The Prestige, a magician explains the three parts of a magic trick while performing a disappearing bird trick for a little girl.

First, there's "The Pledge," where the magician shows you something ordinary, in this case a bird. Then, there's "The Turn," where he does something extraordinary, like make the bird disappear. It seems to be wiped from the face of the earth. It is no more.

But the magic is found in the third part, this is where the prestige of the magician, the power of his mystique is glorified.

There always has to be a third act, called "The Prestige," where you have a twist, a surprise,and bring the bird back before the audience will clap.

The sequence is astounding. The pledge (promise, covenant)...then the turn (the horrific event) and finally the prestige (glory).

And the dove will come back. Wait Noah, the dove will come back. The 'peace' of God returns unharmed. The bird will reappear. And the audience, attention aroused and amazed, will marvel at this.

Round Here

Round here were carving out our names
Round here we all look the same
Round here we talk just like lions
But we sacrifice like lambs... by Counting Crows in "Mr. Jones"

Those cowards. The gangs that crucified Jesus in the street. They shouted amongst the throng when the numbers were at their back. They beat their chests and garnered there audience. They celebrated in the orchards with white hoods on their heads, with a swagger of intimidation, while strange fruit hung from sweet magnolia trees in the south. They danced in the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia and dragged corpses through the city streets.

And someone was carving out their name on the back of another's flesh...like lions...predators making a name for themselves at the expense of someone else. But get them alone and watch them back down.

Confront them without their 'fellas' their 'homeboys' their 'klansmen' their what ever and watch them fade like so many wilted flowers. When we have the power and the advantage it is easy to roar. When the tables are turned it is easier to fear. Lions become lambs.

Jesus was exceptional. He did not step back. He stood up. He stood out. Who wouldn't honor him? He is the original "Braveheart". His death and the manner of his death speaks volumes if we but listen. He was as much a sacrificial Lion as he was a silent Lamb.

We could use the wisdom of Gordon Lightfoot, an old Canadian folk minstrel, in his haunting song "Sit Down Young Stranger".

'And will you gather daydreams
Or will you gather wealth
How can you find your fortune
When you cannot find yourself

My mothers eyes grow misty
There's a trembling in her hand
Sit down young stranger
I do not understand

Now will you try to tell us
You been too long at school
That knowledge is not needed
That power does not rule

That war is not the answer
That young men should not die
Sit down young stranger
I wait for your reply

The answer is not easy
For souls are not reborn
To wear the crown of peace
You must wear the crown of thorns

If Jesus had a reason
I'm sure he would not tell
We treated him so badly
How could he wish us well

The parlor now is empty
There's nothing left to say
My father has departed
My mothers gone to pray

There's rockets in the meadows
And ships out on the sea
The answers in the forest
Carved upon a tree

John loves mary
Does anyone love me

Love drove Jesus the Lion to make peace like a Lamb. And they will lie down together in the Kingdom that is coming. The answer is in the forest, on the wood, carved upon a tree...love is the answer.

Jesus finishes well

Every artists sings of it, every movie tells of it, every heart longs for it. It is the story of our lives. Love is the thing we are looking for.

And here is where it is found. At the cross. When power empties itself, when God speaks on the cross, (do you hear the irony here...God subject to a cross), He whispers the final words which command the darkness. And here is what they say to the depths of the deep dark sea of despair:

"This far no further, 'it is finished'; time to lay the rifles down."

And if we still haven't found what we are looking for it is because we don't have eyes to see or ears to hear the song of 'the emptied monarch who is a crucified King'. The One of power who looked not to His own interests of power, (could He not of conquered both Rome and Israel?), but instead lays down power 'for the sake of others'...even his enemy whom He blesses with 'father forgive them for they know not what they do', they, most certainly, know not what they are rejecting and on the contrary have no concept of what they are blessing and giving their 'yes' to. If they live by this sword, power, the rifle, they will one day die by the same. Indeed Benjamin Martin of 'The Patriot' has it right, 'Why trade one tyrant 3,000 miles away for 3,000 tyrants one mile away'. Indeed.

Emptied has considerable Biblical relevance as explained in the kenosis 'emptied self' passage of Philippians 2. The concept is described by Paul:

¹If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, ²then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. ³Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. ⁴Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. ⁵Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

⁶Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
⁷but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
⁸And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!

We will not allow swords to be beat into plowshares. We dream of Camelot but in the end we burn the city, we rebel for the sake of survival, we refuse Camelot. We refuse the Kingdom of God where a lamb can lie down with a lion. If the oppressive powers that killed an innocent man on a Friday we call good still rules the day, then we have yet to see the light. The dark storm that covered the land on that most holy (set apart) hour must shroud us still.

Here is the path of peace...the blessing of forgiveness...from the heart of James Taylor...

There are rifles buried in the countryside for the rising of the moon
May they lie there long forgotten till they rust away into the ground

Who will bend this ancient hatred, will the killing to an end
Who will swallow long injustice, take the devil for a country man
Who will say "this far no further, oh lord, if I die today"

Send no weapons no more money. Send no vengeance across the seas
Just the blessing of forgiveness for my new countryman and me

Missing brothers, martyred fellows, silent children in the ground
Could we but hear them could they not tell us
"Time to lay God's rifle down"

Who will say this far no further, oh Lord, if I die today.

And when He died, words were whispered, and here is what we must hear...it is finished.

Handfasting

Handfasting is an ancient Celtic custom, especially common in Ireland and Scotland, in which a man and woman came together at the start of their marriage relationship. Their hands, or more accurately, their wrists, were literally tied together. Recently I watched 'Braveheart' and the handfasting ceremony took place. It was enlightening. The phrase 'unto you and no other' was exchanged as a promise, vow, covenant. It is what the terms 'assensus, fiduciary, fidelity, and viseo' are all about. Lovers are bound together so that they might always remain by each other's side. So much symbolism. So much depth. This is why God despises divorce...it tears apart all that binds us together, rips apart One. The text here is the prophet Malachi speaking about the faithlessness of Judah. This violation of the covenant, the handfasting, the vow, was a deep sadness in the heart of God. And conversely the faithfulness of Jesus was a deep delight. This is the meaning of the wedding at Cana. The best wine is poured out in the end. It is the wine of Jesus blood of the covenant, the promise kept, the vow honored. Jesus did what Israel in her unfaithfulness did not, or could not, do. God does not delight so much in His (Jesus) death, as he delights in the temendous resolve of fidelity under an enormous pressure to renounce, fold, capitulate. Jesus did not, he held fast. This is the 'tie that binds'. Who could not love this story.

We are to be one just as He is bound together in One. Two persons as such with a spirit that binds, holds, and bundles their love together.

Once again, Hollywood gets it right. It often does.

Jesus: God on the other side of silence.

Hello, darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping

And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains…Within the sound of silence —Simon and Garfunkel in the song “The Sounds of Silence”

Jesus is God on the other side of silence. We confess Him as God but have significant confusion about this. We treat Him as God like or God reflective more than very God of very God. I suggest He is God, in the beginning with God as the wisdom of God, the rib of God, the Sophia love of God. He, gender being somewhat insignificant yet in another way quite important, is the One who will set God free, sooth His wound, and begin a new day. All that comes forth from this union will be healed as well. In fact the creation as we know it groaning in travail will open its womb and a whole new creation will emerge. This child and all about her will faintly remember the days of old, the days of death. It will be like Cold Mountain on a sunny day filled with the sweet aroma of magnolia rising from the grounds which once cried out violent with blood of the fathers. The devils and dust of pain have been extracted by this act in the visitation of the Son, who builds a temple where the community can gather again, almost like the family beneath the Magnolia, safe and happy forevermore. This scene is ignited in the presentation and resulting 'work' of the Son.

He bursts onto the scene as a baby, with a fair measure of hoopla, amongst an equal or greater share of humility. Somehow the narrative pulls these two opposites together in a fashion that is astounding, if not a bit puzzling. Following this gloriously humble entrance He all but disappears until He is finally revealed by John the Baptist. When He comes on that scene, somewhere around the age of 30, He does two things which have great meaning for us. He comes to be baptized. And He faces His nemesis, his “demon”. Several things are peculiar about these events.

First, the voice that speaks, “This is my son…listen to Him”. He is the oracle of God and as we come to know, God Himself. Paul puts it this way he is “image of the invisible God”, a purposeful use of words emphasizing the concept of "image", followed up by “the firstborn over all creation”. This son in fleshly form is an image reflector come to reveal the face of God.

Secondly, a dove descends, reminiscent of the recreation of the sons of God following the flood in the days of Noah. The dove flies over the dirty water of the muddy Jordan when He lifts up. The skies are opened and God descends. This shows the interlocking and overlapping, a phrase employed often by theologian NT Wright, of the upper realm and the lower story.

Thirdly, the type of baptism he submits to is significant. It is a baptism of repentance. Based on what has gone on before much can be said about this. Suffice it to say at this point…when He comes up…He comes clean. And a new day dawns.

It is an impressive opening scene that will unveil his work. The baptism of God is almost exclusively by most theologians seen as His alliance with mankind. I suggest it could be something altogether different. It could be that the baptism of repentance is a statement about the about face, turnaround of God. Perhaps the silent God of the Tanakh’s close and the empty intertestimental period is breaking silence. The turning which will be further unveiled in the collection of sayings, 'You have heard it said' (by whom-by God of the Tanakh more experienced), 'but I say unto you', as a new language, a new voice, from the God who is, after a significant time of solstice, emerging on the other side of silence, changed.

Following the baptism He appears on a mountain and is immediately challenged by the underbelly god in the wilderness. They are like two heavyweights gauging one another. Challenges are made, authority, the reach of the tape measured as they joust about. It is all about jabs and jostling and maneuvering for position. It is the prelude of things to come.

Now follows a key interpretive question: When Jesus stands on the muddy banks of the Jordan what is He repenting for?

The answer is this. He is God, since God is One, the creator of life. And He has blood on His hands and He like anyone created in His image needs to 'wash away the blood'. He knows that violence isn’t working and never did. So He comes clean. And He can. Through His son, who, like Solomon of old, indeed can build the Temple of God. Solomon’s father could not. Too much blood. But the Son can. The clean vessel will.

And the vision that was planted in my brain—still remains—within the sounds of silence. But now the silence is broken. Jesus speaks—God talks.

The song remains the same. Exodus. Freedom, Atonement.

“Worlds apart”

We often hear people say that phrase, “world’s apart”, and know they are referring to two cultures or times or worldviews that are so different that they have difficulty understanding one another in even the most simplistic ways.

In this way we in modern times are worlds apart from the times of Jesus. Most of us never even pause to think about the implications of this. What scripture they had in Palestine at the time of Christ was independent long scrolls that might be gathered together, we can almost picture a bell jar. These writings which make up the books of the law and the prophets were hand written for the eyes of a few privileged people. Of course there are no printing presses at this time in history so the number of copies is very “limited editions”. This was true until the time of the protestant reformation. No one was reading scripture and “applying it” to their lives like we do today. They didn’t lift verses to memorize or prove doctrines they may have developed. To use scripture in that way was foreign to them and never entered their mind. To be Jewish was to live in the way of Torah. They would recite the Schema and perhaps other pieces of the book but most of their life and hope was involved with looking for deliverance from the oppressive outsiders that held them in captivity. This was their understanding of God. He must be moved to set the captives free and the captives were most assuredly the peasant class, the more elite had cooperative with Rome and become tributary domination systems under the supreme domination system of Rome.

Scribes were not glorified administrative assistants taking dictation but trusted leaned man who had been given access, knowledge, actually keys to the books of God. This was something enjoyed by only a few in the time of Jesus. When Jesus confronts the “Scribes and the Pharisees” he is clearly confronting the accommodation they were involved in. They were the “middle men” that helped Rome keep the peasants’ dependant, poor and docile. They were not troublesome to Jesus because they were legalistic, they were agitating due to their penchant for accommodation to the ruling classes which resulted in oppression from their privileged position. Their role was to keep the people in line, the rabble as they called them, down, but not out. They were masters at squeezing without squashing...if squashing was needed the boot of Rome could and often would do that in a most public and violent form.

Access to the books of the Old Testament was extremely limited. The peasant class was dependant for any word from God from these elite people of position that used their knowledge to their advantage. Most peasants learned about the word of God mostly through oral tradition. And Jesus was most assuredly born a peasant. We read “you have heard it said in scripture” and we scour, literally comb all the books, looking for a sign or clue as to what Jesus was referring to oblivious to this. The truth is what was known was the oral tradition of the “law and the prophets”. Scripture never had this modernity’s approach as an option even in its wildest imagination. We are unaware that much of “the writings”, the third part of the Jewish Scriptures hadn’t been declared yet.

When we hear Jesus speak Psalm 22 on the cross we think he may have read it in devotions that morning. Nothing could be more imaginative than that. He didn’t even have such a book. The truth is Jesus was a peasant in that world with little pedigree. He would relate to oppression of the poor because 90% of the population was poor, with no welfare system. When given the privilege of reading scripture in the small synagogue of Nazareth he didn’t find Isaiah 61 it found Him. There weren’t even chapter and verse…just a long scroll.

His father was a “tekton”, an economically strapped builder who may have been part of the huge task of building Herod’s temple just 4 miles north of Galilee. As a boy Jesus may have seen him trek day in and day out to build a shrine to that “fox” Herod, actually translated “skunk”. More than likely he was worked hard for a meagerly subsistence while Herod ate and drank in opulent luxury. His father Joseph was a good man ruled by a notoriously bad man. To imagine that this didn’t leave some mark on Jesus life is to deny any humanness in the man.

The peasant’s class access to scripture was severely limited in comparison to us. We are worlds apart both in economic status, information sharing, and way of life. The average life span during Jesus time was 30 years. We can take a short ride to the bookstore and find a plethora of information, with a few strokes of the key pad we have access to more information than could ever be read, seen, or imagined. I see people on their way to Sunday morning service Bible in hand, separated by chapters, verses, notes and such and wonder what they would think if they knew.

We are worlds apart.

To not let this impact our understanding of the story is incredulous. But many sheltered from these truths never even think about them. Some of the loose translations we see in scripture that sometimes cause us great concern are just the natural result of the imprecise way they were available. It isn’t that no one cared so much as the task is too great. The Bible was drawn together for a purpose that is far different from what we have understood it to be. For this reason narrative theology and informed guessing can open our eyes to a “new view” of Jesus and His task in His time. Once we see we are worlds apart we might actually be able to see what we hadn’t imagined before.

A glimpse of the world Jesus came to

Jesus was born a Jew in a very Jewish community. He spoke Aramaic the language of the rural oppressed. He saw the Roman kingdom as oppressive. He considered the Herodians, who acquiesced to the system of as participants of oppression, people who capitalized on their own kind. He owned no land, the symbol of wealth, and as a result really did “have no place to lay His head”. This was not hyperbole, as we in America might imagine, this was fact. It seemed foxes had holes and bird’s had nests but He had very little.

But this He knew. As a Jew, as a Son, he had everything. The Jews considered themselves the owners of God and the world around them outsiders. As owners of God they were of great value, a people of great pride, looking for their recompense, their consolation, their deliverance from the enemy. They had a great heritage. Scripture as written by the Jews has a decidedly Jewish enhancing flavor. It is written from the perspective of Jewish nationalism. It is the Jewish metanarrative and it would serve us to understand something of metanarratives as we continue.

Marianne Maye Thompson in her fine commentary of Colossians & Philemon says this about metanarrative:

“Metanarratives are, minimally “master” narratives of the way things are. But, more specifically according to the definition often used today, a metanarrative is something that is used to legitimate a nation, society, or individual’s behavior or use of power and control.

One example of a “successful” metanarrative is that which supports modern scientific endeavor. Merold Westphal argues that in order to legitimate itself modern science “needs a story of progress from opinion and superstition to scientific truth and onto universal peace and happiness. In other words science depends on a certain construction of reality and the construct that legitimizes it is the very notion of progress. The idea of progress serves science and scientists because it supposes that investigation and experimentation chart a steady path towards a better world. Such a view, of course, attracts funding and under girds continued research, but it also provides a construct within which people view the world, its destiny and their place in it. People accept the metanarrative. Somehow we are all a part of the progress of the world towards its perfection. While science and scientists have a vested interest, if not always acknowledged, interest in the survival of this metanarrative, its consequences are felt beyond the realm of scientific investigation. The “metanarrative of progress” has given birth to the tacit assumption that our lives are better—materially, but also morally and spiritually—than the lives of those who lived fifty, five hundred, or five thousand years before us.

In other words, any metanarrative shapes how we view the world, our place in it, what we value, and how we assess the significance of persons, events, or things. Not only do we think of science as making progress, but we view the morals and behaviors or earlier people as “primitive” or worse—little recognizing that the very metanarrative of progress means that in ten, one hundred, or one thousand years our lives and practices will come under the same scrutiny.

Because metanarratives are said to legitimate an individual, enterprise, society or nation and are thus understood to underwrite self-interest, they are labeled oppressive and triumphalist. A metanarrative gains useful acceptance not because it is true but because succeeds, through power or violence, in silencing all other metanarratives…If the metanarrative of one nation or society is to succeed as a universal metanarrative, it must do so by suppressing the difference of the other, so that this narrative becomes everyone’s metanarrative”

Jews saw their scripture and seasoned their story from their hopes, dreams, and desires. How much is nationalism, how much is God, how much is anything is hard to decipher, but should always linger in the back of our mind as we read these sacred stories. It ought not lesson the intent of Scripture in any way.

Israel had a metanarrative they lived in, it was in form and function oppressive and triumphalist. The entire world would be silenced before them. That is their perspective and the setting in which Jesus entered.

If we don’t get their perspective then we won’t get the story straight.

Jesus in His own eyes

“I am Maximus Decimus Meridius ...”—from the movie The Gladiator.

I love the movie Gladiator and particularly the scene where Maximus confronts evil in the personification of the Roman ruler Commodus and fearlessly declares

“My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.

And you just know he means business and the emperor is visibly shaken.

He knew who he was and what he was about. That’s what Jesus is like.

I believe Jesus came as a prophet to his own people more accurately the people who were in power. He was like Hosea and Amos as he called out for Israel to stop being unjust and unrighteous (righteous having to do with “setting things that are crooked straight”). He knew what he was doing, he knew what he was saying and his steps in that final week were not incidental or accidental to whom he was. We need to reconsider Jesus view of himself and his vocation or unique call. When we look at who he was it will have strong implications fro what the church, kingdom people, should be.

In a later chapter I will discuss more fully what Paul was up to as he presented his gospel. I will present a whole story from the very beginning in Adam through the call of Abraham on to the point of Jesus coming. That time of his visitation is the center point of human history. If there is a climax or a pinnacle or a defining moment this is it.

I believe when Paul uses the term “when the time it fully come” he is not speaking of the stars of the sky aligning, or everything seemed just right in time and space, perhaps because the Roman roads had been built, or the people were ready to receive now that Greek culture had somehow paved the way. It isn't because other indicators have arrived and aligned. I believe that the phrase “the time had fully come” in Galatians 4:4 has much more to do with the mission of God to deal with the stubbornness of Israel, who had refused to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth as God is always intended them to be. It is the time for the gospel to come to fruition one way or another. There comes a time in any relationship when one side or person has been forbearing, tolerant, and extremely patient and the other has seemingly taken advantage of this kindness. If they continue to abuse the relationship, the patient one simply says “that enough, I’ve had it”. We know this if we have lived for any time at all. In these difficult times we usually give it one more try in a last ditch effort to save the relationship. Unfortunately it can not always be saved.

This is what Paul has in mind when he writes about the Jews as guilty before God in Romans chapter 2. Their guilt isn’t so much sin as we have come to define it as a refusal to be what God had called them to be in the Abrahamic covenant:

“Or do you despise the riches of this kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realize the guts kindnesses meant to lead you to repentance? But by your hard, and then impenetrate heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath.”

I believe it is the perspective of Paul that God has arrived, and made his entrance through the person of Jesus Christ to appeal to the Jew first and in that also with the Gentile. Listen to Romans chapter 1 verse 16 “for I am not ashamed of the gospel. It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith.” Notice the sequence of these; to the Jew first and then the Gentile. Ironically it was the sequence of the judgment of Jesus at the time of his crucifixion. He came before the law court of the Jew first and then the Gentile. Maybe that's not an irony after all.

Jew First, and also the Greek

I want to focus on that phrase “to the Jew first and also to the Greek”. Most of are aware that in the Hebrew story all people are either Jewish or “the rest” of the world. Gentile is another way of saying everybody else. There are from the Jewish mind us and them. More than likely, it wasn't meant to be this way it just sort of happened. And if you are not one of the “elite” in this story you are simply the “others”. It's my understanding of Scripture that Jesus saw himself as a person who is coming to the Jew to confront the Jew, to see whether they were going to be the light of the world the salt of the earth, the people that God intended them to be or not. It ordered his steps and his words and helps make sense of stories that are sometimes confounding.

On the Way to Jerusalem

In order for us to get into the mind of Jesus we need to walk alongside him as he made his way towards Jerusalem for what I would call the final showdown. In the minds of many Jews the showdown was going to be with the Romans who were oppressing them, so that the righteousness of God, also known as vindication of the Jew, would be seen by the entire world. What they did not expect was that Jesus would so strongly confront them. Jesus had come as a last resort to deal with the sins of Israel. In fact in the end he was the last man standing, the final remnant. The major question that needed to be answered was, “Will Israel repent?” That is turn around from their current way of doing things to way that would be consistent with God's heart for the world through them as the oracles of God. We need to look at what is sometimes seen as a very odd or strange passage in Scripture. Many commentators are completely taken aback by Jesus response to a woman who comes to ask that Jesus would heal her demonized daughter. Let's turn now to the Scripture found in two places in the Bible, both Matthew Chapter 15 and Mark chapter 7.

Matthew 15:21

Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out,

"Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly."

23 Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us." 24 He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel." 25 The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said. 26 He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs." 27 "Yes it is, Lord," she said. "Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table."

When you first read the Scripture it is stunning. What is wrong with Jesus? We are shocked at the wait Jesus response to this woman who literally comes and throws herself at his feet and begged him to do something to help her daughter. The response of Jesus is indifferent silence.

In fact, it's absolute indifferent silence.

Its indifference that says I care nothing about what happens to you. This is what Jesus appeared to be communicating to this woman. Martin Luther said “now he is as silent as a stone” and the truth is, he was. Can any of us imagine treating someone who is pleading at our feet with this type of cold silence? Why is Jesus doing this? I studied several commentaries and none seem to have a satisfactory answer to this question. My belief is this is because they start at the wrong place in regards to what Jesus was up, that is, his vocation, and therefore have no place of understanding of who he was and what he was doing in this story. They forget that Jesus came as Paul would say, to the Jew first and then to the Gentile. Jesus was moving his face towards Jerusalem in order to have a confrontation and a showdown with the nation, through its leaders. A gunfight is on the horizon. It's a showdown and one will remain standing; one will die.

One commentary, Exploring the Gospels: Mark by Jerry Vines says this about Jesus strange behavior in chapter 7, verse 27.

“One of the amazing passages about Jesus in the entire Bible comes next. Look at what happens in verse 27, Jesus said unto her, let the children first be filled for it is not good to take the children's bread and cast it on to the dogs. That sounds brutal, doesn't it? It doesn't sound like Jesus and all. Matthew’s account of the same incident sounds still harsher. Matthew gives a fuller account of what was said here is what it says in Matthew chapter 15 verses 22 and 23. “Have mercy on me oh Lord, thou son of David, my daughter is vexed with the devil. But he answered her, not a single word. He wouldn't even answer her? It's not like Jesus. We know that no person coming to him is denied. Obviously they cannot be what it appears to be on the surface.”

I am convinced that it is exactly what it sounds like it is.

If you know Jesus and what his vocation was, and the context he lived in, this isn't that surprising. Jesus understands who he is and what He is for. He understands that he'd come to confront Israel about how she had consistently disqualified herself from her true vocation. He treats this woman who is a Gentile woman as a second-class citizen. If his actions aren’t convincing enough his words certainly are, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel." "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs." Knowing the compassion that is in Jesus’ heart should make these words stand out all the more as truly puzzling. What Jesus understands is that she is a Gentile woman outside of the covenant. She doesn't deserve to have the bread from the table. How confounding? How utterly enlightening.

Disciples Too

And what's even more surprising is she doesn't even question it nor do any of the disciples, in fact, they tell Jesus to send her away, to get rid of her, to treat her as an inconvenience to them. Unless we understand what they believed we will be forced to try to make sense of the situation that simply does not make sense. Are the disciples really that hard hearted, or do they find themselves in the Meta narrative that comes out of the Hebrew tradition and is told from a Hebrew perspective. The story doesn't make sense unless.

Unless we know what Jesus is “up to”? What I'm saying is: If we don't view this story from the perspective of the people that lived during the time of the story, we simply miss the meaning of the story. We then force unnatural senseless meanings onto the scripture. And then it takes the most clever and resourceful of us all to explain away the difficult passages like this one.

Now let's just say that Jesus is meaning exactly what he says. Let's let the story speak for itself. Let's not do anything to somehow whitewash what's being said or done, but instead let the story speak. What is it that Jesus is up to? Why does he say this? The answer is simple: Jesus understanding of his mission was to come and invite Israel to return to their vocation. And if they would not return to their vocation Jesus understood his vocation was to become Israel as God had intended Israel to be.

The reason Jesus gives for his behavior is simply this, his mission as He understands it, is to confront the house of Israel with their misuse of their vocation to be the light of the world, the salt of the earth, and the people that God intended them to be. Make no mistake about it. Jesus came to the house of Israel to deal with the house of Israel. There are other indicators on the journey to Golgotha.

So let’s continue to look at what Jesus is “up to”. We want to find out the things that drove his vocation the mysterious thing deep down inside it and it made him do the things he do and say the things he said. One way to make an appeal, as we have argued from the beginning) is through story or parable. Sometimes a narrative can cause one to stop and think about what they are doing or consider “right” and “wrong” and alter their path.

Every picture tells a story and every story paints a picture

Matthew 21-23-32

And when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching, and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”

Jesus answered them, “I also will ask you one question, and if you tell me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man?”

And they discussed it among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘From man,’ we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet.” So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.

“What do you think? A man had two sons. And he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ And he answered, ‘I will not,’ but afterward he changed his mind and went. And he went to the other son and said the same. And he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you.

For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him.

In this story, the chief priests and the elders come and ask Jesus by what authority he was doing the things that he was doing particularly the clearing of the temple in Jerusalem. What Jesus does is ask questions to see if they're really serious He inquires of their position regarding John the Baptist. The response they give is typical for the political system that they were a part of; they simply say in true political overtones, “we don’t know” which really means we don’t want to commit to any answer because of pressures from outside forces. Jesus answers the question by telling the story we know as the parable of two sons. The father came to them and asked them if they would go work in the vineyard. The first said no but later, went and worked. What he did was repent. The second son said that he would go and work in the field but never did. This correlates with Jesus understanding of Israel saying “yes, we will be the light of the world, the salt of the earth, Israel as God intends us to be”, but they actually never were and never really intended to. “These people say with their lips but their hearts are far from me”. When Jesus asked them clearly, which of the two sons did the will of the father they replied, “The first one”? To this Jesus says; the tax collectors and the prostitutes (that is, the Mafia and the porn industry), the worst people that were in the nation of Israel, were coming to a place where they would repent and turn away from their sin. The underbelly of the culture was turning around. The astounding thing, to Jesus who rejoiced at this change, was that these elders and chief priests could watch this happening and simply fold their arms and do nothing. They could view the nation turning around and repenting and they would not “rejoice” as one was in heaven. They would not rejoice because they were like “the elder son”, who believed that they were justified in their behavior so their was no joy over the lost sheep now found, the lost coin now found, the lost son now found. So Jesus says, even when you see the nation turning and repenting you will not repent of your position and believe me.

Jesus then tells another story or parable. It is the kingpin of the final parables of Jesus. To me this is the most eloquent, pointed, direct parable that Jesus told. He speaks so clearly that no one could miss his intent.

The Parable of the Tenants Matthew 21:33-43

"Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit. "The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. Last of all, he sent his son to them.

'They will respect my son,' he said.

"But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, 'This is the heir. Come, let's kill him and take his inheritance.' So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. 40 "Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?"

"He will bring those wretches to a wretched end," they replied, "and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time."

Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the Scriptures:

'The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes'?

"Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.

The landowner is God and He rents, leases, gives charge over, leaves management and stewardship of his Vineyard to landowners. When he comes to see how the people are doing with the land that he gave them to manage He is faced with a severe problem. The tenets, representing the Jewish nation seize the servants; one they kill, one and a stone, another they murder. God responds by sending more servants to them.

Same response.

Then comes the clincher, the prophetic Jesus says, last of all, he sends his son to them; “Surely they will respect my son,” he said.

And of course, Jesus is saying that the Father has sent him and he is that Son. When Israel sees the son they say to one another “This is the heir, let's kill him, and we will take the inheritance for ourselves” . In other words, what God has loaned out to us, given us to manage, we will steal from him. So they took the son and they threw him out of the city. And they killed him.

Jesus then asks the question when the owner the vineyard comes how is he going to feel about those tenets; those managers. They respond will who bring those wretched to her wretched and in a given they need to of their people, who gave him a share of the harvest at harvest time. To this Jesus replies. “Therefore I'm going to tell you the kingdom of God will be taken from you. And given to people who produces fruit”

This, of course, is the story that Jesus believes is coming true in his life and death. He will be taken out of the city. He will be executed on a hill, the place of the “skull”, where the outcasts are put to death as a warning to other criminals that dishonor and shame their own people. Dishonor awaits you if you do not conform to the message as we understand it. This exile will be his fate and he will go alone, as the last man standing, the final remnant of Israel, and the one true seed that will give birth to a new creation. Exiled from His people Jesus is reenacting the story of Israel's exile and will enact the surprising restoration when he rises from the ash as well on the third day.

That languages sound very familiar to us because is the same language to John the Baptist used when he first came to baptize people in the River Jordan. Matthew 3 tells us how John the Baptist prepared the way for the Christ by saying repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. When the Pharisees and the Sadducees come out of where he is baptizing. He tells them that they are to produce fruit in keeping with repentance and do not say to yourselves. “We have Abraham is our father, because I tell you out of the stones got to raise up children of Abraham the ax is already laid to the root of the trees and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” Clearly Jesus is just repeating the message of John in the wilderness. This is a consistent message.

Arrogance that blinds

The tragic thing is Israel's leaders can not receive this message. One of the reasons they can't receive the messages because they are blinded by their anger and hatred. Their ears are smothered by their smug notion that they know what the answers are, that they know what God wants them to be that they understand how to be the light of the world the salt of the earth, Israel as God intended them to be, but if they had understood they had a funny way of showing it.

They were so intent in putting Jesus on the spot and somehow pinning him down. So determined to correct Him that they could not even hear what he had to say. They were so positive in their convictions. So angry at this one that brought another way, a different way from what they expect a Messiah to bring. There is no way this could be the Christ in their mind.

So the extortionists and the whores respond to the message of repentance. But Israel’s religious leaders simply would not. Jesus saw they were angry, he knew they would reject them, but he loved them so much he kept telling stories so they could “come to themselves” and change. But they did not. So we see Jesus courageously walking into the fire, setting his face to the cross, the eye of the hurricane.

Missing the mark

And I want to suggest something that you just consider for a while. Don't respond to quickly. Try not to be defensive or closed off. Just consider the impact of what this might be supposed the evangelical message that has been preached in so many of our churches for a long time now has missed the mark. Suppose the “good news” is more than what we have settled for? What if we have been living in the wrong story? Would we be able to change our minds when confronted?

Another story

On the way to the cross we see Jesus in the temple at the Gentiles court where the money changers are seated.

Matthew 21: 12

Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. "It is written," he said to them,” 'My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it 'a den of robbers.'"

When we look at that Scripture and we see that Jesus clears the temple, that his righteous anger came out against the money changers, we are inclined to believe that it's all about the economics of ripping people off by selling pigeons and doves and sacrificial animals at inflated prices. And indeed it was about that, but it was about much more. We can see that by the context of the passage and the questions that the Pharisees and Sadducees had for Jesus about authority that follows. They clearly understood that his action in the temple was meant as a judgment towards them. So they asked by what authority you do these things that you've been doing. So it is an issue of authority.

What Jesus was saying as he clears the temple is “your house is being judged”, and it is a final judgment that has come from a God who has been patient and forbearing for a long, long time. And you no longer have the authority of God to be in this place, to be the people that are given the task and the responsibility to bring the gospel to the entire world, that is, the Gentiles. Your license has been revoked.” It was truly an act of judgment upon Israel when he enters the temple and clears the court. It escalates the need for the showdown. And one is just around the bend; the cross is now in sight. Jesus presses into the eye of the hurricane, the impending storm. He seems to be unable to let up.

Final straw

When Jesus was accused of blasphemy in Mark 14:58 (Today's New International Version) the accusers said,

"We heard him say, 'I will destroy this temple made with human hands and in three days will build another, not made with hands.”

What is interesting is Jesus stands silent. We always wonder why he doesn’t straighten them out. Perhaps it is because they were correct. He simply kept quiet. He never denied making the claim. The fact is according to the gospel of John He did say and believe just that. (John 2:19) To Jesus his body is the temple, the new place where God’s people will tabernacle, where heaven and earth in the words of theologian NT Wright “interlock and overlap”.

It is intriguing that those who mocked him while he was on the cross mocked him with these words saying,

"You, who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!"

And of course we know that he did. He came to life. And the temple that had been rent in two (again a clear sign of judgment) would be raised. He didn't stay on the cross, but ascended to heaven. The truth is Jesus saw himself as the new temple of God, as the cornerstone for new people of God, as the new covenant of God. He was to be the foundation of a new humanity, who by the Spirit of God would bring good news of the righteousness of God to the entire world. This is now the vocation of the new community of God, which has replaced the nation of Israel, whose ministry, or work, or vocation was "weighed and found wanting”. You who are “in Christ” are now that building.

It happened on the day of wrath—that has already come.

Many of us are familiar with the personal narrative of Esther that spoken about in the Bible. We often in an effort to inspire one another quote the familiar passage where Mordecai comes to speak to Esther about her particular call, in this particular place, at this particular time. “Who knows? Perhaps you've come to royal dignity for just such a time as this” Often though, we forget what Mordecai had to say just before that. As Esther was contemplating whether or not to get herself personally involved in stopping this horrendous plan to annihilate the Jewish people Mordecai gave her some sound advice. According to Paul in Romans chapter 11, we need to heed the advice as well. Here is what Mordecai said:

“Do not think that in the king's palace, you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father's family will perish. ”

In this last showdown between Jesus and Israel, one had come from the place of Israel in order to rescue Israel, a Jew into the Jews. His name is Jesus, and they killed him and in that last remaining remnant, that final one, Israel died, too. That was their judgment. They were no longer “given the keys to the kingdom” for the sake of the world. They failed in their vocation, which is another word for their call or reason for being a people set apart.

What is Jesus “up to?”

How bad how good does it need to get?
How many losses how much regret?
What chain reaction
What cause and effect

Makes you turn around
Makes you try to explain
Makes you forgive and forget
Makes you change
—“Change” by Tracy Chapman

In keeping with that model of trying to go from that which is known to the unknown I want to explain what I believe Jesus was up to particularly as he came into Jerusalem and is drawing nearer and nearer to the cross. We have plenty of material to choose from on this matter.

One thing is clear. There is an impending storm on the horizon as Jesus moves “his face” towards Jerusalem at Passover. I really love that phrase “his face towards Jerusalem” because it indicates that there is this toughness, there is this determination, and there is this resolve to get to this place at this time for this final confrontation. You get that feeling that it's going to be high noon. Those gunslingers are going to meet in the street that this town (Jerusalem) is not big enough for Jesus and Israel or perhaps Jesus and Rome. Most of Israel is under the impression that Jesus is going to come out for Israel and “the righteousness of God” will come in the form of an attack upon Rome. But Jesus doesn't do that, instead Jesus makes his target the people to whom God intended to be the “light of the world and the salt of the earth” (a common phrase I will be using for us to understand who we are to be in Christ) and he comes to confront whether they are performing in the vocation that they've been given. Much of his discussions are targeted directly at the Pharisees and Sadducees.

This is no new news to any of us.

When Jesus comes in the city on Palm's Sunday the response of the common person is stunning. The reaction of the Israelites as they greet him, the rabble as they're known is to bring him in as a king, “Hosanna son of David who's comes in the name the Lord”, but what’s truly alarming is the emotional condition that Jesus bears coming into the city. He's troubled, he’s agitated, and he’s angry; he's frustrated, he is on edge, because he's fully aware of what is coming. And he walks directly into the eye of the hurricane and confronts it in a way that is simply confounding. Jesus walks into the storm walks right up to the gunslinger battle and approaches his adversary. What he does next stirs the entire city. He in effect, simply hands the gun to the enemy. What, in essence, Jesus is saying is this: I'm not going to kill you, I've come to save you, do with me which you will, and the ball is in your court. He looks death right in the eye and he says.

“Do what you do.”

In other words, Jesus who has the power to bring down a dozen legions of angels doesn't do that. He could do that and in fact, when he comes to the garden at Gethsemane, and begins to speak to his Father about what is unfolding, He asks, is there any other way that this cup can pass for me. Another way to say this is he's wondering is there any other way this is going to go down. It's plausible that he has this in his mind that the God of all power and all might be able to somehow come down in rescue him in this circumstance in an issue of strength and power. But God will not. He says no son, I have a loaded gun and I'm putting in your hand. But I want you to set it in the hand of the adversary and see what he does with it. You go see if there's any chance that Israel were repent of their ways and receive their call to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth. If not let her kill You, and in this kill her own self.

This type of thing becomes clear that this is this is in the mind of Jesus his mission. Recall the conversation that he had with the gentile woman who came to him and asked that he might heal her daughter. She said even the dogs can receive from the masters tables. Even the dogs can have the crumbs, can I just have the crumbs from your table, the table of Yahweh. Jesus answer is somewhat astounding to us in our generation. His response is: I have not come for the Gentiles I have not come for those that are considered the outside. I have not come for them; this time is for the children of Israel. And we say, Jesus, what is wrong with you? How can you be so cold to this woman? The answer lies in the reality that Jesus saw clearly that his call was to those who are of the house of Israel because they had been given a vocation of God. And their metanarrative, their story, was the story that God was going to interact with in order to set to rights all those things that had gone wrong as a result of the fall, and the resulting “lower story”. God was going to correct that which went wrong.

“Fix You”

“Lights will guide you home, and ignite your bones and I will try—to fix you”—a song by Coldplay“

That song is so powerful to me. It begins with a single voice and seems to gather power as it unfolds. You get the feeling that it is headed somewhere that a climax is on the horizon. And it ends ever so softly with this:

“Lights will guide you home; and ignite your bones, and I will “fix you”.

How things change?

I live in Michigan. I’m sitting on the deck grilling in sunny weather on Sunday and freezing by Wednesday afternoon. The buds are interrupted by snow falling on my hedge. It happens in one week, actually three days. But nothing changed as quickly as the Passion Week of the Christ. The change was suddenly but it had been a long time coming.

Sometimes as we observe the events and their unfolding during Passion Week we are stunned by how quickly the tide of opinion can turn on Jesus. One day he’s riding into the city amongst cries of “hosanna” and by the end of the week the shouts have turned to the bloodcurdling burst of “crucify”. While I recognize that this was much like a snowball gaining momentum as it flies down a slope I want to suggest this storm, that culminated in the cross and crucifixion, had been brewing for a “long, long time”. And now Jesus comes at last as the final attempt to reconcile God with Israel. The way that Jesus was attempting to do this was by telling stories and doing stuff that would raise reaction. Many times the stories he told and things he did served to exasperate the situation during this final Passover week

He did his part to exasperate the already untenable situation. He’d tell stories and do stuff. Like the parable we have called the wicked tenants. It would be better to call it the greedy, power hungry opportunists.

When any Jewish leader would hear this parable they would almost without hesitation recall Isaiah 5. It was a scathing indictment from the poet/prophet Isaiah at the time of the exile towards the Israelites. A prophet functions as a type of messenger to the people much like songwriters and films today. Bob Dylan, Tracy Chapman, Bruce Springsteen, Coldplay and U2 are illustrations of these poet/prophets in our time. G. K. Chesterton once said this about their role in society,

“I don’t deny that we need priests to tell us that one day we will die, I only say that we need another kind of priests called prophets to remind us that we are not dead yet.”

These poet/priest/prophets come to metanarratives to call them towards justice and righteousness, to remind people they can live in truly human ways, they serve many times as “light to the world” that has forgot its way. Isaiah came in this vocation. So does Jesus. That this parable includes such terms as vineyard, watchtower, winepress, and is unique to Matthew who further illustrates that which people of Jesus day might assume. When this metaphorical language is used by Isaiah and later Jesus it was referring to one people—Israel. Jesus was coming in a long line with a redundant complaint. When he looks for justice—bloodshed—when he longs for righteousness (that is for the field to be leveled for all) he hears the cries of oppression. The blood of Abel still cries from the earth.

Isaiah 5: The Song of the Vineyard

1 I will sing for the one I love
a song about his vineyard:
My loved one had a vineyard
on a fertile hillside.

2 He dug it up and cleared it of stones
and planted it with the choicest vines.
He built a watchtower in it
and cut out a winepress as well.
Then he looked for a crop of good grapes,
but it yielded only bad fruit.

3 "Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah,
judge between me and my vineyard.

4 What more could have been done for my vineyard
than I have done for it?
When I looked for good grapes,
why did it yield only bad?

5 Now I will tell you
what I am going to do to my vineyard:
I will take away its hedge,
and it will be destroyed;
I will break down its wall,
and it will be trampled.

6 I will make it a wasteland,
neither pruned nor cultivated,
and briers and thorns will grow there.
I will command the clouds
not to rain on it."

7 The vineyard of the LORD Almighty
is the house of Israel,
and the people of Judah
are the vines he delighted in.
and he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed;
for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.

In that 7^th verse we see the issue—for the “Vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel and the people of Judah when God looked …He expected justice, but saw bloodshed, righteousness, but heard a cry”.

This is an old issue brought up again. It is an issue between God and his beloved Israel. How are they doing as the “house and people” of God? When He looks for justice why is there bloodshed, why does Abel’s blood still cry out from the ground? When He looks for righteousness which is another term that is similar to justice or fairness he hears cries of distress. This is the point of the parable of the woman who continues to bang on the door of the judge asking for justice, for response, for someone to deliver her son fairly. Jesus would continue to beat on the door with story after story.

And a man was on the road towards Jericho and he came upon thieves and robbers and they beat him and left him half dead, a priest came by and he saw his predicament but passed on the other side as if he didn’t see, a Levite came by and he did the same he saw the man passed to the other side and carried on as though he didn’t see it, was supposedly unaware.

My grandfather had a curious little stature on his mantle. When I was a little boy I would twirl around their stuffed chairs that would spin so fast and be told to “stop it”. So I would (being a hyperactive yet compliant child), and then I’d sit. As a bored child I would pick up this clay image of three monkeys and study it. The first monkey from left to right had his ears covered he could “hear no evil”, the second one had his eyes covered by his hands and he was known as “see no evil” and the final monkey puts his hand over his mouth, he was “speak no evil”. I often wondered why Grandpa had this, but as time has gone on I have understood. So many people can escape guilt and responsibility by not seeing, hearing, or speaking anything at all. The world if full of “monkeys” who cross the road as though they were oblivious to the plight of others in the human race.

Then, Jesus continues in his story, a Samaritan, denigrated as a half breed compromiser from the Northern tribe of Israel, who was one of the people who had the audacity to say they were the true Jews of God and furthermore the temple was located in the northern tribe settlement of Samaria rather than Jerusalem came to the man who was beaten and left half dead on the road to Jericho. He stopped and had pity and showed mercy, in other words he exhibited justice and righteousness to this person. He treated him fully human and was the light of the world to this person. “Who is neighbor?” asks Jesus. “Who is brother’s keeper?” God is looking for folks like that, a new community where Jesus will be the foundation, the rock, the cornerstone. He is looking for that type of people. These are the people who are building the true kingdom of God and it really does not matter where they might sacrifice. This hill, this mountain, Jerusalem, Mecca, it really does not matter. This is implied clearly in Jesus discourse with the woman at the well in John 4. And it doesn’t mean a hill of beans if you have the ancestry right and are born as a son or daughter of Abraham, in fact, God can raise these sons and daughters from these rocks, from stones the true Israel can come forth into a spiritual house and Jesus will be the foundation, cornerstone of that community.

He will show the way to serve, to lay down an agenda, to take the last spot and lift your brother to the place of honor. He will take the last seat at the banquet hall when He dies on the cross. And should you want to drink of the cup of the Lord—guess what.

So Jesus sets his face like a flint towards the eye of the hurricane and in the resilient lyrics of lyricist Tom Petty he “won’t back down, going to stand my ground, you can stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won’t back down”.

And he doesn’t. He tells more stories. Unprepared virgins, irresponsible sons, poor stewards. Scathing stories of indictment. Israel is being “weighed and found wanting” , a familiar phrase that is fine if it applies to Babylonians, Persians, or Romans but not so exciting if it is put on Israel’. And clearly their license to be the people of God, was being revoked, and they were agitated…enraged. How dare you? Don’t you know you peasant Galilean who you are addressing?

And he did stuff too. On Monday Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem and the first thing he does is visit the temple. He walks in and turns their tables upside down. Sometimes we see this as a protest to the selling of pigeons, doves and sacrificial items at inflated prices. It was much more than that. It was more of a judgment that said people in this place are “evicted, no longer stewards of the place where heaven and earth meet, where God tabernacles with man”, Israel no longer has tenancy but has been removed; “And he won’t back down”.

High noon is just around the bend. It’s time for a gunfight at the OK corral. This town, Jerusalem, is not big enough for Israel “as it is” and Jesus, Israel as “God intended her to be”. That is who Jesus saw Himself as. This was his vocation. When Jesus enters the city during Passover he comes as “the last man standing, the final remnant, the One and only Son, God’s Son who will build the temple’. He has come to deal with injustice, and his own “demon”.

The religious establishment reacts predictably. When he “tells stories and does stuff” the religious leaders of the nation of Jews respond saying in effect, “I’ll fix you!”

Interesting phrase isn’t it; one that’s found in a pop song by Coldplay. We use it when we really want to get someone. We lie in wait, nursing our wound, caressing our hate waiting for jus the right time .

And then,

“I’ll fix you. You come to judge us…
No, no, no we are the powers that rule here.”

The Loaded Gun

And Jesus hands them a loaded gun and says, “Do what you do”, and they do. They “fix him”. And in that they unwittingly fix themselves, because Jesus is the last Son from the Father, enacting the story as the beloved, as Israel, and when he dies Israel dies. And the kingdom “will be taken from them and given to another”, just as He foretold. They, this ‘new Israel’ under a new covenant signed with blood, will be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, Israel as God had intended Israel to be.

Gentiles too

Of course they are not the only power players in this drama. In the metanarrative of a Hebrew you are either Jewish or anything else. Anything else was gentile. Rome, representing all the kingdoms before and all the empires ever after has something to say to anyone that dares stand in their presence. They will deal with Jesus as well.

They represent the predominant empire of the day, any domination system that oppresses, any bully that bullies, any King David that uses his influence to put an innocent Uriah in the front lines knowing full well what will happen. Empire is a good word because it speaks of any power structure that exists. When creditors impose exorbitant interest rates on unsuspecting people they are oppressors. It refers not only nations but also power structures and systems. Donald Trump who takes great delight in saying, “you’re fired” every week on prime time television symbolizes oppression in action sprinkled with viscious delight. You can hear Satan cackle in the background. And whenever God confronts this lack of justice, this void of righteousness the bully looks up dazed and confused…what, am I my brother’s keeper? Get real. These illustrations represent a power structure that can be formidable and intimidating if you don’t “kiss up”.

You cross us and we’ll “fix you”. And Jesus seems like that naïve little boy spinning round in grandpa’s stuffed chair not really knowing what the three monkeys are about. He is walking right into the trap. The thing is. He does know.

He gets it.

This is how the gentiles “rule it over one another”. The great historian Tacitus once said, “They (Rome) have created a wasteland and called it peace”, at what cost this peace. Crosses strewn across the land. Bloody peace, no peace at all. “Step out of line the man comes to take you away, you better stop, hey, what that sounds, everybody look what’s going down”. Or pass by, it’s just another upstart self appointed Messiah being handled by Rome, the current empire of the time, for all to see.

Step out of line…and Israel will fix you, Rome will handle you, and you will become strange fruit hanging on the tree.

But Jesus does it with purpose to undo what has been so wrong in all societies for so long. In this act He is dismantling the powers of death.

Strange Fruit

Rome says in the voice of the spirit of threat, control and oppression, “What did you say boy?” and you’d better kowtow lest you become “strange fruit” hanging on the tree. If you were, for example, a Negro living in the Deep South during the Civil War era that kind of remark would send a rush of adrenalin down your spine. These were the ‘lynching years’ when power and intimidation ruled. It was a time following the footsteps of Rome and every other power structure that rules. Either way in either time you could become ‘strange fruit’ at the whim of those ruling in the domination systems. “Strange Fruit” is a phrase describing the type of outcomes seen in a society. Fruit comes from the tree. I borrowed the term from a lyric written by a Jewish songwriter named Abel Meeropol. He’d see the trees in the Deep South with young black men hanging on them swaying. He thought it “strange fruit” for a nation under God, a Christian nation. And, of course, he is right. How could we be so wrong? And so sure of our position.

More like Rome in the first century than Raleigh, North Carolina in the twentieth century.

“Strange Fruit” as sung by Billie Holiday

Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves , Blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
The scent of magnolia sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
for the rain to gather
for the wind to suck
for the sun to rot
for the tree to drop

Here is a strange and bitter crop

There is a “Strange Fruit” outside the city walls of Jerusalem on Good Friday. Any hint or rumor of insurrection and Rome says, “I’ll fix you”. And Jesus symbolically, metaphorically, hands them a gun and says “Do what you do”.

And in a curious twist the world is one. There is no Jew or Gentile. One—in one accord acting in concert to silence Him. What strange bedfellows they are. And as one--Jews and Gentiles alike-- turn the gun on Jesus. And they fix him and handle him deftly and quickly. God looks down for justice, and sees bloodshed, for righteousness—and hears cries. The cries of the women are heard at the cross. The feminine weeps at the violence.

In that moment when Jesus cries out “it is finished” the covenant is kept, the law is fulfilled, sin is defeated, and God, at long last, is “off the hook” and can begin again. He is set free to begin again.

Jesus: The God who fades to the back

“The first shall be last and the last shall be first”--Jesus

As one from whom men hide their faces he was despised,
and we esteemed him not'. --Isaiah 53

Streets of Philadelphia

By Bruce Springsteen

I was bruised and battered
And I couldn't tell what I felt
I was unrecognizable to myself

Saw my reflection in a window
I didn't know my own face
Oh brother are you gonna leave me wasting away

Psalm Twenty-two

Roaring lions tearing their prey open their mouths wide against me.

I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.

My heart has turned to wax;
it has melted away within me.

My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
you lay me in the dust of death.

Dogs have surrounded me;
a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet.

I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me.

The God who fades to the back

I believe one of the best lines from Springsteen's phenomenal song "Streets of Philadelphia" is 'and my clothes don't fit me no more, I'd walk a thousand miles just to slip this skin'. How easily this could apply to Jesus. He is shrouded in flesh by mortality. The flesh doesn't fit him. Mortality is an invader. And it is about to take His life. He that had no beginning is about to have His 'first' encounter with 'the end'. Jesus' final climb is not found in the city of brotherly love or the place that holds the liberty bell. His freedom is purchased in a place where brothers betray one another with a faithless kiss. The final road is in Jerusalem and known to us as the Via Doloroso.

Some might think it scandalous to compare the Christ of glory to the despised countenance of a 20th century man, most likely branded with the name of "homo" or "queer", disfigured by the devastation of a disease called Aids. This is his come-up-a-tance. And some gloat over him as he walks the streets of Philadelphia, bones protruding rudely from a body once strong now wasting away. Some in the church certainly did.

But that is the point is it not?

Their stare, their glance, their way, is the same spirit that stood on the way of the Via De La Rosa. The crucifixion was a brutal and shaming end to a human life. There was no dignity on the cross outside the city gates. Christ was most despised and totally rejected by all here. Springsteen gets it… and the real question that lingers is; do we? Do we get it when he says 'when you do this unto the least of these you do it unto me'. Where was everyone when He faced the end? Don't you think He 'heard the voices of friends vanished and gone'

How lonely it must have been at the ninth hour when Jesus shouted in a loud voice, "Eloi Eloi lema sabachthani?" which is translated, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" That sentence is of course very familiar to the ears that first heard the cry. It is the first sentence of Psalm 22. The Psalm is quoted in the beginning of this section.

Death, which cannot exist in the presence of God in His dimension, creates this unbearable chasm. This "gulf of separation" that occurs between God the Father and God the Son, initiated in the death of the latter, has been described by the theologian Jürgen Moltmann as 'death in God'.

The night has fallen, I'm lyin' awake,
I can feel myself fading away,
So receive me brother with your faithless kiss,
Or will we leave each other alone like this

I believe Jesus takes his place last in line, at the back of the bus, and fades into oblivion beneath the powers of the world both religious and secular.

Wood. Nail. Timber.

This is the way it goes down. This is the beautiful collision.

But He doesn’t stay there. We love that part. And we should. But before we go to the ending we must appreciate the path Jesus trod to get there so that we might follow that path. The descending nature of God is the way of redemption, of renewal, and of deliverance. There is no other way, in a world gone horribly wrong, then to empty oneself, stoop down, step down and...to repent...to lay down "rights". Or as Paul puts it--to crucify oneself...

'I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.' Galatians 2:20

This is the way of salvation and when the world--all the world-- gets this and lives by it--the world will be saved.

But they would not.

It is a dream that appears will never come true because our collective and singular nature is violence. The curse of Cain looms like a fog amongst us and nothing will lift the fog. Nineveh will not repeat and we will not repent. This is the stain that permeates all cultures for all time. The cycle of violence, of power, had to be rendered powerless. Unless the age is interrupted blood will spill and evil will continually prevail.

"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

So when Jesus says "Love your enemies," he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition. ... The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation." --Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King.

This is one of the key reasons Jesus goes to the cross. In that one act God Almighty laid down His rights, His arms, His power to show us the way. Jesus broke the cycle of hate and violence by willingly going to the cross. The cycle was broken, the chain reaction of evil diffused at the cross--this is the message of God--this is love poured out. This is the reason for the purposeful laying down of "rights" described in Philippians 2 and referenced by Jesus before Pilate in Matthew 26,

"Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?".

Of course He could--but the point is He didn't--and when Peter bears the sword in Gethsemane; Jesus' response is sharp and decisive. When the law courts of Jerusalem and Rome strike His cheek--he turns the other cheek. This is not about force but about upending force.

It is the message of God.

This is finally the reason for the return of the Christ. The present evil age with its insistence on the 'Am I my brother's keeper?' mentality will one day come to a close.

World interrupted.

The Third Player

One more party is playing a part in this passion play. One more will, finally, fix Jesus.

"So what happens after he climbs up and rescues her?”

"She rescues him right back.” will come true now.

As the sky grows dark, a huge tear falls from the face of God, splashing on the barren earth. In Mel Gibson’s moving scene depicting the actual crucifixion called “The Passion of the Christ” I can see it as I sit here, it is etched in my minds eye, a tear splashes on the hard earth. I can imagine the father God as he reaches down and scoops up his son, his One and only son, and he whispers, in a voice that splits rocks and opens graves,

“Light will guide you home, and ignite your bones and I will fix you”

And on Sunday, the first day of the week, he breathes on Jesus and everything changes, “all things become new”. After an appropriate seventh day rest the universe cracks open and out of the egg shaped rounded tomb comes “new life” on the “first day of the week’ as the apostle John tells it in John 20:1 and 19.

It is new life for a new time for a new people and a New Jerusalem.

And the kingdom is being made before our eyes as people from all over the world come, lay down their guns, and say at this very cross where it all happened, “fix me”. Breathe on me, give me life, and make me like you.

And as we come to this new covenant that God establishes through Christ, we come as a new people to this table, created on Maundy Thursday, the cup of the blood covenant as a people endowed with the responsibility to be “in Christ, Israel as God had intended her to be”.

We come without power, without pride, with no loaded guns, with humble hearts and we say “Fix me; make me like you”. This table represents a new beginning for a new community and we are invited to come as a people—One people.

Atonement

For God

The movie Atonement released in 2007 was beautifully filmed and unveiled a haunting mystery. The film depicts the life of Briony Tallis who as a young girl was responsible for the eventual tragic ending of two people who dearly loved one another. Briony is an imaginative master storyteller, her gift and her curse. As the story unfolds one is led to believe this is a true story being told, ending after much hardship with a final scene of reunited, unrequited love and passion. We feel the song resolve and are ready to exit the theatre when the final scene unexpectedly emerges. Briony has become a writer, is older now, and being interviewed. In the interview she reveals that she 'made up' the ending of the movie. She imagined it the way she wanted it to be. She reveals that in actuality the two lovers died separately and never experienced their "song of Solomon" moment together.

IMDB describes the final scene.

In 1999, Briony (Vanessa Redgrave), now in her late seventies and dying of vascular dementia, is a famous novelist. Her new book, Atonement, will be published on her birthday. The foregoing narrative had been one she created for her book, as an act of atonement for what she did to Robbie and Cecilia. In real life, she never saw Cecilia after she left the family, and Cecilia and Robbie never had a last tender moment in her apartment before he left with the BEF. Instead, he died at Dunkirk of septicemia, waiting to be evacuated. Cecilia died a few months later when a German bomb burst a water main and flooded the subway tunnel in which she and other Londoners had taken refuge during the Blitz. Briony hopes that, by reuniting them, she gives them the happy conclusion to their lives that they deserved and her readers the hope that everyone needs to survive.

"So, my sister and Robbie were never able to have the time together they both so longed for... and deserved. Which ever since I've... ever since I've always felt I prevented. But what sense of hope or satisfaction could a reader derive from an ending like that? So in the book, I wanted to give Robbie and Cecilia what they lost out on in life. I'd like to think this isn't weakness or... evasion... but a final act of kindness. I gave them their happiness."

And we are left with the real ending. This defies the normal route of movie making and storytelling with its shocking affect of realism. Sometimes things have gotten so out of hand that there is no fixing them. As a final act, seeking atonement, the elderly Briony attempts to make it right by using the vivid imagination that caused all the trouble in the first place. This is at once Briony’s blessing and curse. But she cannot really change the story, alter the ending. It is not in her power. The damage is done. There is no atonement and we are left to deal with it. 'What sense of satisfaction could a reader derive from an ending like that?' implies of course, none. no satisfaction. A whimper and a smoldering burn-out, this is life and destiny, without atonement. No resolution--no satisfaction.

Nothing -- just a tragic conclusion.

We often imagine happy endings for all. We are accustomed to fine phrases and comforting words whenever anyone dies or 'passes away'. 'She's in heaven now', 'I guess God needed and angel and took (fill in the name)', 'One day we will all be together' and so on. Tragically that is not true for everyone no matter what we might say or want to believe. The earth as it is decays, dies. Unless something or better yet someone intercepts there is little to hope for. No matter what we make up, or imagine to make it seem bearable, death is final and unforgiving.

So much reverie only to dissolve in taps.

Except for one event.

That event is the cross event, an event that is pivotal, an event which has become the exodus of the creation from the fall. This one moment broke open the universe and resolved the dissonance of God and the suffering of His entire creation. It was when all the regrets of God were reversed. Atonement and resurrection, actually the entire cross event, are tied at the hip and linked together like lovers--one cannot exist without the other.

Without atonement there are no happy endings no matter what we might imagine. So the story of the cross is neither myth nor mirage. This is the real story and it brought atonement in a real way. It was the atonement of God for Himself. This is the atonement and reconciliation of creation to the garden. This is the atonement for all of us for our own besetting demons. If Briony was haunted by what she'd done she is not alone. We are all haunted, even God. Briony may not have sinned in the story as much as made a horrible mistake. She may not need in the classical form of the word repentance but she stands alone with huge regrets. And regrets when fully grown have an affect similar to "the need to repent". Regret is a less culpable word than repent. But they are cousins to be sure. So if it makes you uncomfortable to imagine that God needed to repent so be it. If it feels just a bit better to say He had regrets, which He most certainly expresses at the flood, and in Nineveh, by all means then employ that strategy. But the song remains the same. Things went wrong east of Eden and God made choices He regretted along the road. And He was living with this burden when the Tanakh closes. 430 years of silence follows. God is contemplating and He, like Briony, wishes to rewrite the ending. The difference is He, unlike the very human Briony, can change the ending. And He does. On the cross many things occur.

Ultimately, God is the One responsible for the failure of Israel and the covenant. He alone spoke it into being and holds court over its success or failure.

In one final act of sacrifice a death occurs. It has several simultaneous effects. One, the death of Israel and thus the fulfillment of the covenant we have discussed already. God substitutes, actually takes the place of Israel on the cross.

The other effect is somewhat less understood and has to do with atonement for that which He has contributed, played a part in. The atonement is substitutionary, yes, penal, no, and it is also atonement for what went wrong,

It is God’s atonement for His “sin”, or if you prefer his “wrong turn”.

In a continuation of the theme of baptism for repentance, God now completes the circle and is “sanctified” in His death. He rescues the covenant, His reputation, and finally the created world. When He dies Satan is judged, when He descends Satan descends.

Satan the potential destroyer, genocidal maniacal deceiver, is finally destroyed on the cross…never to rise again. The underbelly is overcome and he will make “war no more” on the creation of God.

We, as God, like God, imaging God, must deal with “the underbelly” or we have no place in the garden. Our part is the other sides of the coin of atonement, the personal side which I will address in my story or personal narrative, we all have one beneath the grand metanarrative in which we journey. But for now it is time to see things from the perspective of God.

I am not the center of the world.

So click you heels and repeat after me...I am not the center of the world. And yet, don't you feel it...there really is no place like home.

A home with a garden. And this huge tree full of life. Dorothy's right and I long for that place. I am not the center of the world, but I, strangely enough, am part of the plan.

And so are you. You see there are two sides to this coin. The side of God and the side of creation...or me. We will now look at both perspectives.

Deliver me

“One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do”
—Three Dog Night

I think we “get it” from our perspective but I'm not sure we understand the event from the perspective of God. I am speaking about the cross. It was a terrible weight to bear. I am referring to this weight of the world, under a curse. The weight of a promise spoken; a vow made. It must have been a terrible burden for Yahweh, for all those years to realize that he has enacted a covenant that would not be honored through his people Israel. The failed enterprise of the people who were not the salt of the earth, the light of the world, Israel has God had intended them to be. The failure would prove to be fatal.

To someone.

I wonder if those years of silence, the four hundred thirty years separating the writings of the Old Testament, Tanakh (Jewish Bible translation) and the New Testament are similar to the kind of thing that we might do to put off something that's very difficult for us to face. Just one more day and surely the tide might shift. I wonder if the Father in heaven held on to his Son so tightly and each morning rose to the new possibility of giving him away until it became very clear that he had to send him forth. What a bitter release. How difficult it is to send a child to a place where you know he will die. Parents of war are familiar. You know how you might feel if it were your child.

Appeased—hardly.

Compassionate, broken hearted, sad—most likely. So it is, too, for God the Father. He like David before Him cries out, “would that I could take your place”.

And when the time had fully come, He sent forth his Son, fully aware that he may return in pine box compliments of a fallen world and a stubborn people. No, I don't think appeasement was something the Father was seeking when He sent forth His "one and only son". And Jesus was gladly a part of this effort. He loves the Father, His lover, and wants to in the words of McLean ‘take this darkness from His soul’. He, in effect, comes to sooth His beloved. To lay His hands upon the One He loves this One who is so close that they are truly One. In fact, you really don’t know which One came from the other. Whose rib was it? It doesn’t matter, you see, and in reality this is the point. They are One and neither needs prominence. Both promote and care for the other. They are the epitome of ‘brother’s keeper. They want the other to sit at the head of the table. This is heaven.

Appeasement, punishment, vindictivenesss isn't the real reason God dies. God loves the Son. He isn’t looking for justice in a law court. He is showing the Way of love, the Way to be ‘truly human’ as we are meant to be, all along. We, in His image are to mirror His love, for one another, as One.

And the Son comes to Israel to plead the case on behalf of the Father. When Israel would not respond as a people, He became Israel, took on their intended vocation, as a man, the last man standing. And in a fascinating twist of irony the words spoken of the high priest Caiphus in the year of the crucifixion regarding the Christ, ring true,

“It is better that one man should die than an entire nation”.

Oddly enough, God’s love ignited the words of the prosecuting attorney and then acquiesced to the prophecy that was given. He submits to it. Now He, as Israel, the last man standing, the final gunslinger, the final breath of the old covenant, the last remnant of God, to his own He came.

And his own would not have Him.

They said to themselves, “this is the heir” and they seized him and they put him to death. They became the center--at least in their mind they could rule. It was the only way to go. And now at last, the parable of the wicked tenants had come to pass. It was strangely accurate, that they should come and take Jesus, the one and only Son, and put him away in the same way that Jesus had said they would when he spoke the parable just a few days earlier.

Still a promise spoken was a promise worth keeping. Especially for God.

And so Jesus becomes Israel, as God had intended Israel to be. The remnant is One. He becomes to Israel, what we are to be, for the sake of the world. It must have been a strange release for God to finally free himself of the captive chains of that promise when Jesus breathed his last breath. This is one of the things that are happening on the cross. This is the time when God is released from the old covenant of the Tanakh because the covenant is fulfilled, met, enacted when God dies. At this very moment where Jesus breathes his last breath, we must understand, realize, that God now has been set free from an old promise that wasn't kept through, and with, Israel. That as Abraham sleeps between the carcass cut in two, God himself makes the visitation to make good on the promise of a covenant that they have with one another.

And now while the rest of Israel sleeps, God acts. To me, this is the significance of the sleeping disciples in the garden of Gethsemane. They, too, though they are not the vicious Pharisees and Sadducees, have fallen asleep.

There is no one on the watchtower anymore. Jesus is truly alone.

The sheep have been scattered and the Shepherd will now be sacrificed. With this release of responsibility He (God) is now put in the position to enact a new covenant. And this is what Jesus is doing at the Last Supper.

Intentionally.

I was recently listening to the song that was the theme song for the movie which tells the inspiring tale of William Wilberforce entitled Amazing Grace. Chris Tomlin, who performs the song has written these words, importing them into the Newton lyrics:

“My chains are gone; I’ve been set free; My God, my God has ransomed me”.

At the time I was listening to the song I was also looking at the remarkable “Tribute to Kings” gallery which is an amazing artistic rendition of the “Stations of the Cross”. It was created by Kevin Rolly, an artist from Southern California. When I came upon the picture representing station 11, I envisioned something new. Jesus, was dying, He was lying with head cocked, eyes hollow, mouth open, those eyes that once shined with life were now staring balncky almost empty and yet it was somehow... strangely peaceful.

I was over.

Emptied and free at last. I noticed the cross bearing over his shoulder, a heavy, crushing, weight, and it struck me that the words of the song really wrapped themselves around what Jesus was going through right there, right then.

God was being set free.

At last.

We always see the cross is the time when we were “set free from our sin”. We always see it as something that is set against a background of our perspective. We are so conditioned by that mindset that it's difficult for us to see it any other way.

It is always about me. Well, as Annie Hall would put it in a sing song voice, la-tee-da.

For the first time that I could remember, I saw the cross as something that really sets God free; from a weight, the weight of a promise made, a vow spoken. Paul would later declare to the people of Galatia: "at the point at which the will is broke open to be read, in that very moment promise is enacted, is realized. It happens right then, right there, is when it takes effect...when the One who makes the promises dies, the custodian is no longer needed, the heirs receive the inheritance.” (the author’s paraphrase of the letter to the Galatians).

What is truly ironic is this.

The Vineyard, as an inheritance, the kingdom of God actually, is given to the caretakers. The renants didn’t have to seize it at all. When Jesus tells the story of the Prodigal He ends it on an unresolved chord. Will the Son who was in the field pouting because he had not received the party he wanted realize that ‘all the Father has’ was always meant for him? It was His all along. He didn’t have to take it. He just had to believe it, trust in it. This is the kind of belief of old, not so much in a list of statements or credo, but a trust that someone really loves you. It is a kind of belief that sticks in your heat like glue.

Absalom, Oh Absalom, my son, my son, son. We could easily substitute Israel, Oh Israel, my son, my son, my son. You didn't have to undermine me to walk in the kingdom, you didn't have to steal a blessing, you didn't have to contend, to strive, and in the end, you didn't have to kill me. The blessing of the inheritance, it was always right there for you, why wouldn't you come out of the field and celebrate with us, I came to entreat you...but you would not.

Finally, after years of turmoil the old covenant and the heavy weight of law had been fulfilled and the burden of that cross could now be lifted.

The end of one act in this play, this overarching story or drama ahs concluded. Intermission came during silent times. The curtain closed for a bit. But when it draws open again the climax comes suddenly and we are left here in limbo to finish the play.

That is what Jesus means by “I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it”. He is doing the “work of the Father” and He and the Father are of One mind in this task. Not appeasement...but a cooperative effort between Father, Son, and as we soon see, the Spirit.

When Jesus carries the cross to the edge of the city, actually outside the city of Jerusalem in exile from his own, and is planted as a criminal between two thieves, we see it as the substitutionary atonement for us and mainly, perhaps only that. Jesus died for our sins. And while that may be part of the story and the part that concerns us quite a little bit still it is somewhat self-centered and so, frankly, American. Unfortunately these types of attitudes are actually fueled inadvertently, by the modern church, through models such as the seeker-sensitive and the prosperity model.

We hardly think twice. We should.

We don't even consider what it was for God.

What I am suggesting is that it's time we look at it from his perspective and realize that it was the fulfillment of the law and the fulfillment of the weight of the covenant. It was a promise that God was now making good. And now he could be released from that obligation to do something new. Regarding the cross, Pulitzer Prize winning author Jack Miles writes this,

"His purpose is not so much to save humanity from destruction as to rescue his reputation.”

And this sacrifice does just that. No one is honored more in any context than the one who lies down his life for another---who takes the hit for what has gone bad. Now God is set free to do something new. And this is what He does, He creates a new people.

Now it follows, having remade himself, vindicated His promise, being raised to a new beginning, He extends again the offer of the inheritance to the people of the earth. Not one people singular as in the Israelites (these days have passed) but one world for all people. And humanity is saved by "coming out" and responding to that invitation.

The question that lingers in the telling of the Prodigal Son remains--will the elder son get over himself and come into the house and join this celebration. The jury is still out for much of the world. We are the ones deliberating...God has laid His hand on the table.

He enacts a new covenant, the new covenant in my blood at the Last Supper. When the old covenant's fulfilled then all bets are off, all things become new, even you, who are in Christ, are new creations in a new age, Simply understood the new has come invading this world with its sacrificial love. In reality, this is what the Bible is; a story divided into two covenants, the old covenant and the new covenant. Three days in Jerusalem on the week-end of Passover forever stands in the middle.

The Centerpoint. One ends another emerges.

When Jesus cries, “It is finished” on the cross He is referring to the end of the long drawn out relationship of two parties to an agreement that could not be reconciled without the shedding of blood. Sometimes when one is boxed in a corner there is no other way. The question is whose blood. The answer is the enactor of the agreement. In one of the most ironic twists of all time Israel will die when they take the gun from the hand of Jesus and turn it on Him. Israel gets what they want but it is not what they really need. It is their demise. This is the end of Israel, the nation, as the people of God.

Again, when Jesus dies Israel dies, the Old Covenant finishes, Satan as we shall see is killed. All of this happens on the cross, the climax of one story and the soon to be the beginning of another, better story.

Now, obviously, God is not done with Israel in a literal fashion just as God was never really done with the entire world in a literal fashion. He may have considered leaving both--but could not do it. Yet this moment has to be seen as the climactic moment in the history of the Hebrew people. They no longer have the privilege that others don't enjoy. The table becomes very wide, so wide as to include now the whole world. This is the gospel according to Jesus, Paul, and the church. At the same time, they're not cursed over and above any other peoples of the earth.

It is in the past.

It is also, I contend, as the centerpoint of humanity the most trustworthy place, perhaps the only truly safe place, to begin to understand what Christianity does or is al about.

Now, in His resurrection the true Israel and its true residents are to be brought out in a new day, in a new and living way, through the breath of God. Just like a bride readied to make her entrance. Jesus was tore, the wine of His blood spilled, and new wineskins were brought in. The new wineskins, of course, are the new people of the Kingdom as God had envisioned them to be.

As King Arthur dreamed of pure Camelot, God dreams of a kingdom. It is a kingdom, a realm that is coming to pass and is being enacted “in Christ”. The gospel is the invitation to join in this dream and let all other dreams or agendas be found in this dream. To now submit ourselves to that--just as God mysteriously submitted Himself to us.

All of life is theology, the study of how to be "godlike" as we walk the earth. All are invited to the party. Isn't this really the gospel according to Paul, and according to Jesus, and according to Scripture?

Atonement for us

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the flower leaves on the heel
of the one who crushed it.--MARK TWAIN (1835–1910)

Atonement: The first metaphor, epitomized by the “ransom to Satan” theory, was used by the fourth-century theologian Gregory of Nyssa based on verses such as Mark 10:45 – "the Son of Man came … to give his life as a ransom for the many". In this metaphor Jesus liberates mankind from slavery to Satan and thus death by giving his own life as a ransom. Victory over Satan consists of swapping the life of the perfect (Jesus), for the lives of the imperfect (mankind).

A variation of this view is known as the “Christus Victor” theory, and sees Jesus not used as a ransom but rather defeating Satan in a spiritual battle and thus freeing enslaved mankind by defeating the captor.

The satisfaction view of the atonement is a doctrine in Christian theology related to the meaning and effect of the death of Jesus Christ and has been traditionally taught in Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed circles. Theologically and historically, the word "satisfaction" does not mean gratification as in common usage, but rather "to make restitution": mending what has been broken, paying back what was taken. It is thus connected with the legal concept of balancing out an injustice. Drawing primarily from the works of Anselm of Canterbury, the satisfaction theory teaches that Christ suffered as a substitute on behalf of humankind satisfying the demands of God's honor by his infinite merit.

Notice the words describing satisfaction atonement and imagine them applying to the mission of Jesus as sent by God. He is mending what has been broken, paying back what was taken. He is "balancing out an injustice". This is the message of Jesus. He has come to do the work of the Father. He has come to save the reputation of God. He is mending what is broken, paying back for what was taken or lost in the fall (by God and by us). Life swapping. Ransom. Exchange. Liberation. These are words of atonement language. Good so far. May I add a few more now? John Creasy, Jesus, Pita, Peter, the rock, the keys. I’ll explain later. This is where it gets personal, at the point of personal narrative.

I believe in both of the above theories describing the what? of the atonement, by the way.

Atonement is about liberation--being the follow-up to its forerunner sister story, The Exodus--and it is most assuredly, about vindication--God's vindication, and when we grab onto His coattails in Jesus, our liberation and vindication, too.

And Jesus is looking for us. If we don't hide real well, He will find us and invite us to dance with Him. And just like Miriam and the Israelites on the shore of the Red Sea--like David at the revelation of the Ark in the processional--and in a place where it is said that the streets are made of gold, we will dance.

All can dance on these streets that have no name, if we will let ourselves.

I have watched people literally worship when U2 plays "Where the Streets Have No Name". It is fascinating when you realize where the song "came from". The motivation for the song as told by U2’s Bono;

“Where the Streets Have No Name’’ is more like the U2 of old than any of the other songs on the LP, because it's a sketch - I was just trying to sketch a location, maybe a spiritual location, maybe a romantic location. I was trying to sketch a feeling. I often feel very claustrophobic in a city, a feeling of wanting to break out of that city and a feeling of wanting to go somewhere where the values of the city and the values of our society don't hold you down.

An interesting story that someone told me once is that in Belfast, by what street someone lives on you can tell not only their religion but tell how much money they're making - literally by which side of the road they live on, because the further up the hill the more expensive the houses become. That said something to me, and so I started writing about a place where the streets have no name."-- Bono (from Propaganda 5, 1987):

These people get it. They can envision the sketch. It is familiar to them and they crave it. May we break down the walls that hold us back tonight, and work with God as He builds His dream--a place where the streets have no name. A place where people are not bound and insulated by their religion, or valued by their economic status. A place where there are no hills or valleys, no knob hill where we have the "best view" as we look down on others, or the ghetto where we look out and dream of a "Fast Car" to take us to anywhere else, but a place where "the playing field is level" for all. Neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free.

In fact, it is so level you can see a lion lay down beside a lamb in this field, as friends. No one eats the other here. No elite, no peasantry, no prince no pauper, no haves or have nots...but all having peace, shalom-type peace. The meek and the powerful blended together as one.

It is a place "Where the Streets Have No Name" and this, too, is heaven. Kingdom come God’s will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven. This was, and still is, a prayer of Jesus.

Unfortunately we are often like junior high boys waiting at the wall of an ill decorated gym on the night of the first Friday Hop. We are a bit fearful of letting go of our hidden selves because we might be shamed. My hope is that we in the church can get over our hidden shameful self long enough to come off the wall and join in. And that others, too, will accept us on the playground and invite us to join in. It is in honesty that we will taste of liberation and vindication.

This is where we can be truly human. When we can be, metaphorically, naked and unashamed we are free indeed.

The following is the story of one of the ways I did, and am. It is risky. I am really trusting you now. Perhaps at this point you like me. Why else would you have made it this far. And I wish I could stay there. But I really shouldn’t. You are about to see my flaws. What will you do with this information is one of the most significant things in this book. This is where it gets personal. It is where I declare that I am involved. At the point of personal narrative it doesn't take a lot of imagination to see how we are found in the bigger overarching story called the kingdom of God--the dream of God. This is where we want to be found.

It is about... the Homecoming; waking up in the house of God, naked and unashamed. It is about realizing God always wanted you to have the Vineyard, the inheritance, the kingdom and just like any parent is able to handle your flaws with love. No one loves like a father, a mother, a lover and a friend wrapped perfectly in one. The real question is--do we believe this?

The Night Before

When you walked into the room
There was voodoo in the vibes
I was captured by your style
But I could not catch your eyes
Now I stand here helplessly
Hoping you'll get into me

I am so into you
I can't think of nothing else
I am so into you
I can't think of nothing else
Thinking how it's going to be
Whenever I get you next to me

It's gonna be good, don't you know
From your head to your toe
Gonna love you all over, over and over
Me into you, you into me, me into you -- "So Into You" by the Atlanta Rhythm Section

My Story: The Morning After

When I walked into the room, another room the morning after, I was still alone, but someone was there to meet me. I recognized His presence quickly, as if I saw him, so I turned away so He wouldn't see me. I was embarrassed. So He sang to me...through a guy named David Crowder.

I wasn't supposed to go alone, my ally, friend, and ministry partner had planned to come with me. We were both looking forward to the Emergent Conference in Nashville. We were going to ride together but were " interrupted". John's wife, Kristine, miscarried and he obviously needed to be by her side.

Which left me alone.

Very alone. It is not good for man to be alone.

I know that to be true.

So I drove down, twelve hours, alone, and attended the first meeting, so far so good. But, did I mention that I was alone. I should have said lonely because it hit me and sank deep. I went somewhere, a bar actually, and I began to look. And that led to craving, which led to desiring which led to worship...of the idol named woman. And I stayed there for awhile. People may ask--what did you do?--and the answer is nothing really, I observed, I watched, I imagined. The next day I walked in that room, a bit late having tarried too long the night before. That's when I heard it:

Take my heart, I lay it down

At the feet of You who's crowned
Take my life
Letting go
I lift it up to You who's throned

At this point the tears came, no heaving, and no one noticed, just silent tears. I heard 'just You and me here now', a refrain repeated by Crowder several times at the end of the worship song, clearly, it echoed in my soul. Though no one really noticed I felt quite naked by now and ashamed. It felt like people could see right through me. Convicted I stood, just last night I had "worshiped" at another shrine. And here I was at a conference paid for my church, and that is violation number one. Dreaming about some twenty three year old, 'So into You ', (did I mention I have a wife of twenty-nine years at home, working), that is violation number two. And the room was filled with God, who alone deserves our worship, that is, violation number three.

And then there was the girl who, incidentally and casually, I had made into an object for my eyes and she was the violation number four. That's a bunch of violations, which of course, is just a sliver away, from the verb violence. Though I never 'really' hurt anybody, I was a violent man. Violent in the passive aggressive, dismantling sort of way that so many of us are. We imagine that subtlety makes things innocuous, but even small violations wound our own hearts and the cumulative affect is larger than the single scan.

I could go on, but hear the music instead.

And I will worship You, Lord
Only You, Lord
and I will bow down before You
Only You, Lord

I have bold typed "at the feet" and "bow down" . There is a reason for that. What you don't know is that when I worship at the idol, I actually worship at the feet of the idol. I imagine bowing down at the feet. Yes, that is right, you read it right, I don't know where it came from, I don't know why it is, it has been there all of my life, and it is very humiliating. Which unfortunately, as you might imagine, feeds it, the “fetish”?

So when those words hit me "at the feet of you who's crowned" and "I will bow down" I was a bit undone. I suppose the lyrics and the atmosphere had an exaggerated, powerful, effect on me. No song on earth could have hit me harder than this. And I stood there silent, convicted, and direly in need of atonement, for alas, my sin, my very own "demon" had found me out and was here in this room. I stood at the pond and looked down at my own reflection, and I did not like what I saw. So I looked away. But they didn't go away. Like a deep cistern are the pictures and images stashed in the hard drive of my mind. Some were too recent to go away, they simply lingered. Just last night I had rebooted to fill that cistern, that well that is never, ever satisfied. The deep well of the hole in the soul. A black hole I tell you. It is never quenched. Here is the lake of fire.

I stood--alone, really alone, and then slowly entered the room. It took awhile, but soon I was able to look His way again. He seemed to be over it. In fact, His head was popped up and searching around for me. He is so unlike the people I have known.

The scent in the room was overwhelming. Forgiveness is the fragrance that the flower leaves on the heel of the one who crushed it.--MARK TWAIN (1835–1910) Was that my shoe?

Surprise
When my wife first mentioned it, it seemed like an o.k. idea. She had been told of an exhibit that was displayed downtown at the Eyekons gallery. We had lunch at Sundance Grill that Sunday following church and we decided to go, almost as an afterthought, to see the "paintings".

What we were treated to was something else.

It turns out that the paintings are actually "oil graphs" that were created by Kevin Rolly. They were displayed around the room and as luck, or God would have it, Kevin was there presenting a discourse on the process, his creative journey, reflections and the like. I was mesmerized. I am sure it was far better than church that morning. We were ready and full of anticipation.

I spoke with the curator Phil Shaafsma later in the week and asked if we might hold "Good Friday" service right there in the gallery and to my delight he gracious said "yes" . He was actually eager and so excited that a Vineyard would be this interested in the arts. A friendship developed which is treasured to this day. Phil is a friend of God.

When our community came together we were together changed beyond our imaginations . We held a participative journey. Below each piece was a "post it" note with the name of the station on it, stuck against the wall. The community was to be take a station and reflect on what it did to them, or what they saw, as they engaged the station.

And so we walked the Via Doloroso together right there in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

It was memorable. I can still remember what several people said to this day. Interspersed between the vignettes were songs like "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" by North Umbria "Psalm 13 (How Long)" by Brian Doerksen and "Fix You" by Coldplay. I had selected station number ten "Before All: Jesus is stripped" for my part. What came out of my mouth was a surprise.

"There He is naked...and unashamed...would to God that I could be like Him."

It was so brief and to the point that it surprised me. And I knew it. I needed to be like him. I needed to be clean. I had to have forgiveness, atonement for my sin. I remembered Nashville. I owned the shame I carry. And here is the good news; I will be naked and unashamed again. This is where we are heading.

We are stardust, we are golden, we are caught in the devil's bargain and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden- -Joni Mitchell "Woodstock".

I long to be like I was in the garden before the fall and I could get back there again—for the first time. Jesus made sure of that. I need atonement. I suspect we all do.

I think my "demon" helps me to get in touch with the vulnerability I saw in "Before All” . I often feel stripped and am sure that all others see it too. The "demon" haunts me to the point where I know what it is like to want to "cover up" or "hide" . I do it all the time. It is the default position. In fact, pushing the publish button on the computer screen has escaped me several times in just the last hour. I hesitate to push it at all. What will people think, I imagine. The same people that wonder why we can't be transparent or why people seem distant or desire honesty can sometimes in their own snobbery create such conditions amongst us all. And they discount you, brush you away, and seek other cleaner vessels to carry them. When it comes time for honesty and the vessel rides high on the waters unable to step down and listen we question why. We seem unable to grasp the possibility that we sink all the wounded vessels along the way. It is no wonder so many hide and never shows their true heart.

Where are the Smith-Corona, Remington or Underwood typewriters when I need them most? Old books—written by Roy Rodgers, Superman, and Mickey Mantle always painted the great and wonderful me—how else would they sell. America loves that stuff—still does in some circles. But not today—not in these times—not this book. Better to play my own role. What will people think, I imagine, but there it is, I pushed the button and you know it…I am totally flawed and absolutely “emptied” and a bit at your disposal. The question is: What will you do with me now that you have the power?

Why risk? It will only cause others to "wonder" about you even as they protect their own demon.

To me, the simple answer is because I am like God and He risks, He stoops, He runs, and he has learned over time that regrets come along the way. This is the power of divine mercy and grace...it knows and still forgives without looking askance at the sinner. And though I am like God I am still aware of my very humanness. It is a weakness of human frailty that we forgive but never forget...and the forgiven feels this. They know it personally, this tendency to forgive and not forget, their demons follow their waking thoughts accusing them all along the way, and when they feel it from others they nod and agree in shame. And the accusing, wagging heads, whether they are spiritual or physical or even imagined, feel somehow better for that acquiescence.

Dustin Hoffman once said when asked how he gets into the character he portrays, "I have never been at home in the skin I am in" . When you are not at home or at ease with the skin you are in you tend to shed it often. Or cover it always. For him it is easier to be someone else than be at home with himself. I get it. And we can relate to that. Amen, Dustin. It is easier playing other parts, than being the "me" that has this despicable "foot" thing or what ever secret one might harbor. We are ill at ease--longing for home, the garden. So let's lower the lines, the judgment, the averting eyes. Jesus will show us how to get there if we risk following.

Man on Fire

I now return to the ramblings or imaginings of John Creasy, Jesus, Pita, Peter, the rock, the keys that helped open this section. In the movie “Man on Fire” John W. Creasy (Denzel Washington) is a burned-out ex-CIA assassin, who is continuously haunted by the sins that he has committed. Creasy is a mercenary assassin and has regrets, tons of baggage, and is in need of resolution. Extremely violent, good at what he does, a man of blood, he is looking for atonement. He has blood on his hands. He is in the twilight of his life and is intercepted unexpectedly by love—in the form of a striking, inquisitive, vulnerable, delightful feminine creature named Pita (Dakota Fanning), or Peter as I imagine, for she holds the key to his heart. He slowly falls in love and becomes her protector and shelter. He enters into relationship. She saves him from the crisis he feels. And he saves her right back. When He saves her she saves Him. When He lays down His life for her He is delivered. A descriptive plot follows:

Creasy’s best friend Rayburn (Christopher Walken) gets him a job as a bodyguard for industrialist Samuel Ramos' (Marc Anthony) young daughter Pita and his wife Lisa (Radha Mitchell). At first Creasy sees Pita as only a job showing no interest in her whatsoever (except protecting her). But pretty soon he begins to show affection for her as she changes the cold and heartless man in Creasy, and gives him a new purpose in life. But the happiness is broken when Pita is kidnapped. This tragic event ignites something in Creasy He sets out to bring her back.

He becomes a mercenary with a purpose and in the utterly surprising and inviting twist becomes the sacrifice in a final exchange of ransom for Pita. He lays down His life for her dramatically and willingly. In the final scene of exchange on a bridge filmed so poignantly in dark shades, Creasy ascends. It is a long bridge, this Via Delarosa, up the hill to the other side. In the middle he meets Pita and they hug. There is a legend about a woman named Veronica who meets Jesus along the epic march and wipes the tears of Jesus away. She is a symbolic figure in many ways a type of Pita. Pita asks Creasy where He is going.

“Home—I’m going home.”

It has been a long road and he is ready now for resolve—a resolution. And we believe him.

She says “I love you Creasy”. And we believe her.

She runs to the arms of her mother waiting over the bridge, a red dot appears on Creasy and we see the target on his head, we know he is a marked man. Violence will do what it does. But no one fires—instead He slowly makes his way to the other side of the bridge, he carries a heavy load. Once on the other side he is forced, with no resistance on his part, into the car on the symbolic hill of Calvary. He climbs in the car, on the cross, and there Creasy and Christ lay down their lives. A sacrifice is made. As he rides in the back seat of the car the camera comes close—we see him close his eyes—his hand relaxes and he gives up his spirit. And there are tears in my eyes when I watch this scene. This is the story. His story, my story, our story, and the story we find ourselves in when we understand grace. I can’t help but be emotional. Because I am Pita, and I am Peter who represents the Church, and I am saved. The violence has succumbed to the sacrifice. The masculine and the feminine are come together as One, as powerful as the Lion, king of the beasts, and as soft as a Lamb, the figure of a harmless, tender sacrifice. I sense that God is at rest in Jesus, and Creasy is at rest here finally.

I am forgiven, and Jesus is my John Creasy. And I love him…who wouldn’t. And here on this dark screen I am ransomed, and Jesus set free, and Creasy goes home, and Pita is saved. It is the climax of a violent story.

It is ironically, and unpredictably triumphant, in the end.

We are ill at ease--longing for home, Creasy, me, you, Jesus, all going to the unstained garden of the upper story. All ascending when we believe the Story. Jesus will show us how to get there.

We have permission to come back in. We have permission to be like Him, naked and unashamed, redone. When Sheryl Crow sings, “Say honestly you won’t give up on me… and I Shall Believe”, I envision grace. The kind of grace that lifts one up—the kind of grace that saves us all.

"I Shall Believe" by Sheryl Crow

Come to me now
And lay your hands over me
Even if it's a lie
Say it will be alright
And I shall believe

I'm broken in two
And I know you're on to me
That I only come home
When I'm so all alone
But I do believe

That not everything is gonna be the way
You think it ought to be
It seems like every time I try to make it right
It all comes down on me

Please say honestly you won't give up on me
And I shall believe
And I shall believe

Open the door
And show me your face tonight
I know it's true
No one heals me like you
And you hold the key

Never again
would I turn away from you
I'm so heavy tonight
But your love is alright
And I do believe

I see God opening the gate to the garden. He opens the door, shows His face, and heals me. No one can take that away. I may entertain lies like “I am unlovely or unlovable, or too broken, or despised” but they are not true. I experience the lifting of banishment. I doubt that Sheryl Crow had any idea that anyone would see the gospel in her song but it is so clear to me. Redemption, invitation, welcome. We must have it. I get it. I got it. I need it. Even when it seems untrue—I must believe. And Jesus is the Way—home.

Tap together and say with me, "There's no place like home, there's no place like home.” Because there isn't. If I could only get there, back to the garden I would be ok. I will. It is where we can go because of one word.

Atonement. The hope of the world. When the first mortal father tasted the sting of death through the son Abel, the eternal great father, supreme lover, reversed the outcome through the last Son, Jesus. Bloodshed avenged once and for all. Abel lives again, Adam weep no more.

Exile to restoration. Bondage to freedom. Banishment to reception.

Choose the one you like. They all refer to the main thing. They are about rebirth, re-imagined, or redo. They are about permission to come back in, to be like Him, again, naked and unashamed. They are about the lifting of banishment and the invitation of inclusion. They are the Exodus for all.

And even if I don’t kill “my own personal demon” all the way in this life I will taste vindication. Why? It is because God killed His own “personal demon” on the cross. And He is the victory for me. I love this story, I love God, I love Jesus and this is a diamond and…

I will never trifle with it again. God is a diamond, a Lion, a Lamb, a Woman and a Man, One. This is Cold Mountain on a spring day. This is Camelot for real. All that we long for is here.

One.

One life: The centrality of the climax of the cross

One love, One blood, One life,
You got to do what you should

One life with each other
Sisters Brothers
One life

But we're not the same
We get to
Carry each other
Carry each other

One life...The song “One” as sung by U2

"If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied." 1 Corinthians 15:19

If we had to make choices to think things through and were challenged to boil Christianity down to its most basic essential form what would we express as non-negotiable? To make a stand on one word-one verse-one starting point--what would we choose?

My conviction is that when we begin with what is essential to Christianity and move outward from that point we can be grounded without being trapped. Our story can be compelling without being controlling. It can be futuristic without being anchorless. It can embrace imagination without abandoning clear thinking. When pressed for a non-negotiable that communicates the essence of Christianity the word I begin with is resurrection. If there is no resurrection then we are amongst all people most pitiful. This is not exaggeration for effect.

Paul sums it up this way..."If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied." 1 Corinthians 15:19.

He goes on to say that if there is no resurrection (think restoration of that which has been tainted or stained which is what resurrection promises outward) then we may as well be as the stoics "eat, drink, and be merry" for tomorrow we die. In other words if there is no hope for a renewed creation of which Christ is the down payment, first fruits, guarantee then we may as well "go for the gusto", we ought to live for ourselves with little concern for others, we ought to be as satisfied as we can if there is nothing more than this life. To be "Christian" without the resurrection, in order to be nice or good or noble, is such foolishness. That we are to be viewed as "people with unrealized potential that wasted their lives on silly imaginations or causes" is understandable.

If we begin with resurrection as foundation and move outward scripture is illuminated and Jesus begins to make sense. Paul's letters have continuity and presence. Our lives are directed and we are not shaken by new ideas and other controversies because in the trajectory of God we realize we have little to be overconfident in and as a result little to lose or defend.

When we begin at the center and move outward and forward we are less apt to hold onto traditions that don't add up or make sense in an emerging world. So often dogma—or dogmatism-- becomes the unnecessary stumbling block that trips people up along the way. In reality we can become guilty of tying a millstone around their neck or transferring traditions that we can't even keep ourselves. We can be slaves of the code or Pharisees holding the keys so tight. Having keys make us feel as though we own the house. It happened before and it can happen again. Seizing the son to have the Vineyard is a familiar story. Moving from the center helps us not to repeat others mistakes.

We can become less dogmatic and more inviting.

When the table is leveled, those who "knew" they were excluded for whatever reasons are surprised that they may come in. Ask Zaccheus, sinners are always astonished that the table can be for them. Or interview Mephiboseth, son of Jonathon, and discover his amazement that God should ever have mercy “on a dead dog”, a cripple such as he was.

And so come in, set down, the dinner is about to begin and marvel at this, you are most assuredly welcome at this wedding meal.

It may be unnerving at times when we have used traditions for security but in the end of the very end the vindication of the "emptied" Jesus unveiled, not only sets God free, it is, also, amazingly, our emancipation proclamation as well.

Atonement in Paul’s letters

How bad how good does it need to get?
How many losses how much regret?
What chain reaction, what cause and effect

Makes you turn around
Makes you try to explain
Makes you forgive and forget
Makes you change

– The song -”Change” by Tracy Chapman

“The message of the cross was, as Paul ruefully noted, a scandal to Jews (1 Cor. 1.23; Gal. 5.11); the entire gospel was also a scandal to Gentiles, inviting them to abandon their long-held, and sometimes politically useful, allegiances and to give allegiance only to the still-very-Jewish, and therefore scandalous, Jesus. The idea that the early preaching of the gospel carried no particular political implications only shows, I think, how far we have gone in projecting the privatized nature of western Christianity back onto Paul.” – NT Wright.

It is hard to imagine the kind of disruption and exasperation the Jews felt about the inclusion of Gentiles into the Hebrew metanarrative through this Jewish, itinerate, self appointed (from their perspective) “Anointed One” named Jesus and the apostles who followed him. It was, dare I say, as scandalous as if we were to say Christianity ought to receive the Qur’an and the Islamic prophet Mohammad as a true and reliable spokesperson for Christianity. You need to read that again. It was as scandalous as if we were to say Christianity ought to receive the Koran and Islamic prophet Mohammed as a true in reliable spokesperson for Christianity This shift was as seismic as that. What is amazing is that the shift could draw any takers whatsoever.

Somewhere once upon a time…two men once at odds, now embraced. At the house of Philemon long ago.

Paul’s gospel explains the why? Of this scene. The thing that makes it possible for Onesimus to approach Philemon and the house church gathered there with this thin piece of paper as his only "weapon of reconciliation" is called gospel. In this act we will see the 'good news' as really more of a summons with authority, than an invitation with decision.

The question is will it work? Then, and today.

Paul was thunderstruck. Paul did a 180. A complete 180 degree spin and land. It wasn't that graceful or that easy. It took years in the desert. There, as he sat, perhaps sulked, he changed.

Midstream.

What Paul believes is that we need to turn as well. 180 degrees about face... And as a result he provoked people, his own, to change, too. What I'm asking people to do is to consider repentance for the part that we currently play in society. To make right that which is wrong. Whether you carry the letter or receive the letter you have the same challenge. Can you embrace that other guy, again?

Now is the moment when one man, a slave walks up to another man, a master with nothing to protect him or shield him but a piece of paper and the hope of the power of the transforming gospel of Christ. And this is shaky ground...

Repentance can lead to resolution and restitution....for the rift between the daughters of Zion and Abraham's sons, the resentment of north and south, ghetto and suburbs, slave and free, rich and well, mostly the rich. A lying down of arms.

Suppose two men have had a long time feud for one reason or another, they haven't spoken to each other for many years. The bitterness grows within them. And with each occasion for derision or each story open for nuance they spread their poisonous venom of hate. In time, the cancer has included a great many people. The chasm seems too wide to ever heal. Now suppose that one of them is confronted with the truth of the gospel of grace. He realizes he can no longer hold this hate and anger towards his fellow man, and upon introspection he realizes that his greatest enemy is the one that he needs to speak with. If that man were to come to the one he'd hated for all these years and say with sincerity in his heart, “I am sorry for the part that I have played to create this divide between us. I’m sorry.” Is it possible that this could lead to reconciliation?

The gospel of Jesus believes this is possible. The apostle Paul did, too.

This is how the true gospel works. I have a letter before me. It was written by the apostle Paul's own hand. Read the letter and then I will tell you what his dream is as he pens this document. It is a dream that lives on today. I believe this letter speaks.

Letter to Philemon.

1:1 Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother,
To Philemon our beloved fellow worker 2 and Apphia our sister and Archippus our fellow soldier, and the church in your house: 3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

4 I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers, 5 because I hear of your love and of the faith that you have toward the Lord Jesus and for all the saints, 6 and I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ. [1] 7 For I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you.

8 Accordingly , though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required, 9 yet for love's sake I prefer to appeal to you —I, Paul, an old man and now a prisoner also for Christ Jesus— 10 I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, [2] whose father I became in my imprisonment. 11 (Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me.) 12 I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart. 13 I would have been glad to keep him with me, in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel, 14 but I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own accord. 15 For this perhaps is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, 16 no longer as a slave [3] but more than a slave, as a beloved brother—especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.

17 So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me. 18 If he has wronged you at all, or owes you anything, charge that to my account. 19 I, Paul, write this with my own hand: I will repay it—to say nothing of your owing me even your own self. 20 Yes, brother, I want some benefit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ.

21 Confident of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say. 22 At the same time, prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping that through your prayers I will be graciously given to you.

23 Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends greetings to you, 24 and so do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my fellow workers. 25 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

This letter speaks. It speaks first of all about community. We need to know, first of all, that Paul is writing to a man--but not a man who stands alone. He writes to a man who was found in a community. Paul writes this letter as a man in relationship with others who also walk alongside him. He begins the letter “to those that are there” and ends the letter “with these that are with me as I write today”. Paul believes in community and its ability to transform and be transformed.

This letter speaks; of honor. Philemon is a follower of Yeshiva a Messiah. The New photo, facet revealed, of God. Philemon believes in the message of Jesus. He is the leader of a house group that meets right in his home. It's not a small thing in these treacherous times and Paul “gets it” because he is imprisoned not for what he has done so much is what he has said. Ideas can be dangerous to the empire and Paul is seen as a threat to Rome. He knows it takes courage to stand up for Yeshiva in these times of Roman rule. Paul honors Philemon for that and he wants the assembly here to know that. The words written in the beginning of this letter are not just salutations and greetings, prayers and promises, the kind of stuff you do for the sake of etiquette, yada yada yada. It is not simple fodder before the main thing. These words are not appetizers prior to the entrée, but are important to Paul. Anyone who stands for the good news in these days as a leader in this movement has courage and certainly deserves honor. Paul gives him his due respect.

This letter speaks. It speaks of customs and culture, the first thing we notice is that Paul does the right thing by sending Onesimus, who was a slave, to Philemon, who was his master. Some have questioned why Paul doesn't aggressively lash out against slavery. I believe he does but it is not an overt attack. The way that Paul handles this is to speak of the light of the gospel, rather than the darkness of the presiding culture of which Philemon and Onesimus are a part of. In verse 14 Paul says,” I didn't want to do anything without your consent”. David H. Stern in this Jewish New Testament commentary says,

“This self limitation is consistent with Jewish ethical standards defined as desirable behavior of a man toward his fellows in keeping with national practice and accepted social and moral standards, including the rules of etiquette and polite behavior.”

In other words Paul is respecting the culture that Philemon is a part of and that means sending Onesimus back. Paul does the right thing by the culture. He honors standards and mores in the presiding culture while at the same time appealing for the new community of God to live in a new way within that very culture.

A contemporary illustration of this is provided by my postmodern missionary friends Jeff and Becky Waalkes. They have a deep respect for the Islam culture to which they are reaching out. When asked whether they gather on Sunday morning as the norm here in America, they simply replied, “No”. They went on to explain that Friday is the religious day and Kirkastann. So in keeping with the culture they meet on Friday. Now at some point the concept of Sunday as a part of the grand meta narrative can be introduced, but for now in order to win some for Christ they become Jews to the Jews, Romans to the Romans, and the Kirges to the Kirges people they are trying to reach so as not to create issues which would exasperate cultural norms and undermine what they're trying to do. At the same time they can appeal to those who come into the community to behave in a way that respects, say, the treatment of women. One of the illustrations they use is that in their marriage they want to model a certain behavior between husband and wife so that women are cherished and loved and protected rather than seen as second class servants, things to be used or objectified. The culture treats women as second class citizens. Jeff and Becky model something altogether different in their relationship. They are modeling something that they want their followers to emulate.

And in this letter to Philemon Paul is doing the same. On one hand he is respecting the cultural norms and doing the culturally correct thing by sending the slave back to his master. But that isn't the only, or the primary, engine that drives this train of action in Paul. He is at the same time watering and fertilizing a new “way to be human”, wherein there is neither Jew nor Greek, male or female, slave or free. He is intentionally leveling the playing field so that all can play as one. So while Paul wants to respect culture, he has other things on his mind as he sends Onesimus back to Colosse. He, like Jeff and Becky, has bigger fish to fry. One fish has to do with the exercise of power and rights in the community of the beloved. Philemon has the right to punish discipline and even kill Onesimus under the culturally accepted mores and norms, but Paul will ask that he consider laying aside his right to power and consider living in a new and living way. This new and living way is the way of the Christ. By accepting him back not as a slave but as a brother Philemon lives within that culture but as a part of the transformation of the culture.

When Paul says in the letter, “I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart", this is no exaggeration for effect, this is truth as he perceives, it, the gospel that he has come to know. No hyperbole, this is just the type of risk Paul is taking. This is an exercise of his heart because it is the heart of the gospel. If this doesn't work, this appeal, this paper...it will break his heart for then, alas, the gospel does not work.

At this point we might hear the story of the prodigal son and the elder brother. Why that? Because this is the story that Jesus tells which describes the "new" nature of God. This is the story of celebration for one son and an appeal to the other to accept this "new" way of God. In this instance the elder son is without question Israel in contemplation, but it could easily transcend time and culture to fit most all metanarratives including mine.

You might recall the story told in Luke chapter 15. The younger son demands that he be given his inheritance early, which basically means he curses his father as dead, so that he might go out and live his own life outside of his father's home. "Dad, I see you as old news, unable to give me what I need. So just give me the money and I will be gone." After living the high life for a period of time he runs out of money, he loses his friends and finds himself employed in a pigsty. Not the place for a good Jewish boy to work and live. When he “comes to himself”, when it “dawns of him”, he decides that he's going to go home to his father and He carefully rehearses the speech that he is going to deliver when he sees him. It is a speech of repentance, of turnaround, of change, which goes something like this.

“I am no longer worthy to be called your son just let me become a slave in your fields.”

While he is yet far off, his father sees him and as he is rehearsing the speech he intends to give and something happens; this is the moment the father has longed for since the banishment in the garden; the time He envisioned when he bent down, when He tenderly put fig leaves on their nakedness and pushed them into a hard, dangerous world. It has been longer than this story. It is the Story. His heart beats fast. And when the son sees him running towards him his heart beats, expectantly.

This story has been told before. Many times this has been staged and suggested in Jewish lore. One occasion is in the life of Jacob and Esau It takes place on a mountain after the violation of blessing thievery. Jacob all but stole Esau’s life. He killed him, yet here he is—alive and coming up the mountain. What will he do? In a moment of unpredictability Esau embraces the perpetrator Jacob and "blesses him".

33:1 And Jacob lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, Esau was coming, and four hundred men with him. So he divided the children among Leah and Rachel and the two female servants. 2 And he put the servants with their children in front, then Leah with her children, and Rachel and Joseph last of all. 3 He himself went on before them, bowing himself to the ground seven times, until he came near to his brother.

4 but Esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.

Familiar language was of course employed by the master Storyteller. You’d think he was there. We can’t read the story of Jacob the violator and his brother Esau without seeing the Prodigal Son parable.

“I am no longer worthy to be called your son just let me become a slave in your fields, please”

But while he's a long ways off, his father still runs to him, He can not stop, literally, can not as in, is unable to. Throwing his arms around him he says, kill the fatted calf, and put the Signet ring on his finger, and a robe on the shoulders, for my son was lost but now he is found, he was dead, but now he is alive. A great party follows. Good times for all, well, almost all.

One of the people invited to attend the party cannot be found. He is out in the fields. He is upset, distressed, angry and pouting. His father goes out to the field and entreats him to come in. He is to accept this other brother back not as a slave but as brother. He could, of course, command his son to do this, but he chooses not to. Instead of a command an appeal is made for the elder brother to do the right thing. The same appeal is given to Israel over and over again. Force isn't nearly as good as appeal. God knows it, Paul knows it, and we should all know it.

It is also a way to be truly human and truly alive.

This letter speaks. It speaks of power. Paul knows that he is a certain weight of authority which he carries which would allow him to command Philemon and the entire community for that matter to accept this slave back. But somewhere the echo of a voice says “we are not to rule as the Gentiles do” by force or intimidation or command. Violence, says God, and you can trust Him on this, He has learned it Himself, does not work.

We are not to Lord it over them as the Gentiles do. And God once did. It doesn't work.

Like the poet/ lyricist Gordon Lightfoot writes in his intriguing song “Sit Down Young Stranger” we instinctively know that “war is not the answer that power does not rule”. One of my favorite lines in the outstanding movie “The Patriot” is when Benjamin Martin (played by Mel Gibson) says that he does not support the revolution because why “trade one tyrant 3,000 miles away for 3,000 tyrants one mile away.”

He’s got a point.

People who are in the world tend to think in terms of power. But not Paul. Not anymore. No, right here right now, the gospel, good news, must be allowed to do its work. So instead of commanding, Paul appeals to the heart, the transformed heart, to do what is right in the eyes of God and the kingdom. He believes and is banking on the gospel. If Philemon truly is God's, then the heart of stone that once beat inside his breast has been softened to a heart of flesh. So Paul is going to let the good news do its work. And he will not rob the gospel of its power and its authority to change us.

The letter speaks. It speaks of our condition. So Paul sends a letter in the hands of the slave. This slave will take the letter to his master personally. If the good news is only a theory, or a dance of ideas that are interesting but not transforming, then it is a failed gospel. And this is the opportunity for all. This is the test case. This is the moment that we have all been waiting for. This is where the proverbial rubber meets the road. This is when you see if this vessel floats or sinks like a stone.

When Paul says in the letter, “I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart;” this is no exaggeration for effect. No hyperbole, this is just the type of risk Paul is taking. If this doesn't work...it will break his heart for then alas, the gospel does not work.

This is the stage, the drama, the point, where we can see the gospel in action. This is on the Gettysburg trail when north meets south after a painful war, this is in the judges chambers where the lawsuits lie on the table, this is where it is...at the intersection of hurt, on the edge of revenge.

Now is the moment when one man, a slave walks up to another man, a master with nothing to protect him or shield him but a piece of paper and the hope of the power of the transforming gospel of Christ. And this is shaky ground. It is a crucible for Philemon as well. Does the gospel work or not is about to be answered. Is it enough? Paul believes it is and he wants Onesimus to know it, he wants Philemon to know it, he wants the entire house church that meets there to know it. Paul wants his friends and fellow prisoners to know it, he wants us to know it, he wants all who see this new community in action to be amazed and confounded by it. He wants everyone to know that the love of Jesus is something that changes us, transforms us, and makes us into a new community. So Paul closes the letter with confidence. Confident in the people, the gospel, and in the power of community he sends final word; “Refresh my heart” in Christ is the postscript. And he can begin to see the gospel at work while he remains in that prison cell. And in his minds eye the ship does float and behold on the bow of the ship stands two men in warm embrace as the sun settles behind them and Paul smiles with delight for such is the kingdom of God.

The apostle Paul once sent a young man named Onesimus back to his slave owner with nothing but the gospel and a letter in his hand. Paul believed that was enough. He tested the gospel. He tested the good news. It was a real risk. In those days, under Roman law, a slave owner had the right to put to death any slave that had run away and wronged him in the process. Philemon had the right to do away with Onesimus. Paul tested Philemon and the family found with him in Colosse. The letter he sent was a private letter that was read in a public setting, with a man who delivered the letter probably shaking in his boots standing in the midst of the community. Paul had the ultimate confidence that this letter and this gospel was enough to convince the people who heard it that reconciliation was possible, and in fact, a wonderful opportunity.

We must do the same.

Initiation and Consummation: This Day and That Day

I have often explained that when Jesus breathed his last and said “it is finished” Israel died. God’s covenant Old Testament obligation had been fulfilled, and he was set free to a “new” covenant which is the New Testament. Good Friday was really a dark day that needed to happen. On Sunday, the first day of the week God---He “breathed” life into him. It is a moment reminiscent of the first creation when God created all with a “clean slate”. What we learn is that when Jesus was raised from the dead “Israel, Spiritual Israel” was brought to life “in Christ”.

“What God does for Jesus’ body in microcosm, he will do, and is doing, to the entire cosmos in macrocosm.”

When the “end of the end of the very end comes” creation and those recreated “in Christ” are renewed into the image of the creator—which is the image we were created in the garden to be. Paul says this has already begun. We are presently being “renewed into the image of the creator”. We are recreated in the image of God just as we were originally created as image bearers of God in Genesis 1:27.

We are going back to the safe garden.

When Paul say “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” this is what he is referring to: We have our inheritance-- in the guarantee of the resurrection, -- but long for the final Parousia of the King to “set things that are wrong to rights” because it is not all that safe in this age.

The Philippians who were the recipient’s of the letter in that time were living amongst a (Paul’s language not mine), “warped and crooked generation” in other words a society where things are not straight, are not safe, are warped or crooked—opposite of straight or right you see. All things are not “set to rights” all has not yet been set in righteousness and justice.

We long for the time when ‘the wolf lies down with the lamb, the infants can play by the hole of the cobra’ Isaiah 11 and Isaiah 65. This is the dream of God we saddle up to, come alongside of, and long for. This as all metaphorical language so bereft with imaginative meaning.

This is where the male and female embrace perfectly as One.

Favored Son

“Some folks are born silver spoon in hand”
—Credence Clearwater Revival.

Favored. Best. Privileged. Those words have no place anymore in the heart of God. No one is born with a silver spoon in the Kingdom of God. None favored. None despised. All treasured.

By continually letting our prejudices remain while we turn away and ignore their validity is not in keeping with the good news of Jesus. We would do well to follow Paul's example and put the good news to the test. When one man comes with nothing but a letter in his hand and the grace of Jesus in his life, can that make a difference. If we believe in the gospel that is not another gospel, but the good news of Jesus then we have to trust and believe in this Paul was no fool. He knew that the gospel doesn't do its work now then it never will.

Our fellowship once invited a man to come and speak at our deeper meetings. We asked them to come and talk about creativity and worship Rick Beerhorst is an artist who has been a part of my life the last 20 years. He is one of the more entertaining storyteller's, but I've ever heard. He proceeded to tell the class of his exploits in Brooklyn, the last two years Rick had moved there to be a part of the of a riot he of ethnic cultures painted the landscape of Brooklyn. As he began to speak and talked about is longing for the tapestry of culture. I began to understand for the first time how this is connected with the creativity of God. He is the word sterile to describe how we have settled for the homogenous suburban culture in which so many of us find our homes. The landscape is of course dotted with all kinds of franchise type restaurants, stores and gas stations. We sometimes tire of the corporate greed, which drives these different businesses, and at the same time has put our mom-and-pop entrepreneur shops out of business. We lament that our lives are bored at the same times trading at the post of corporate greed and bland, lifeless, unimaginative, sterile environment of the suburbs. As Rick began to paint the picture, I begin to understand that this is an opportunity that we have to live life in a colorful way that God intended it. Although at its very foundation I believe justices somehow been ripped off by the things we've done in the past. At the deepest level, I feel like we've been ripped off, because we have not enjoyed the many colors of Christ, and instead have settled for the white and black on the road of escape.

The Supreme Court of America is our judicial system employed by all of us collectively. One of the landmark decisions of the Supreme Court occurred on May 17, 1954. On that date the Supreme Court voted nine to zero to eliminate the practice of separate but equal, and desegregate our schools. It was an incredible day when our civil government somehow understood and enacted the plan so that there is neither Jew nor Greek male nor female slave or free. The response of much of America was to simply flip off the system, build expressways to circle our cities, and little pink houses to house are people. I know because I lived in one of those houses. As a young boy who lived in the suburbs of Detroit. And I remember clearly the race riots of the middle to late 60s. I can recall pausing from our ballgame in front of my house, standing on Ackley Street and wondering, really expecting the knickers to come down the street at any moment and burn our houses and loot our belongings. I was afraid and the news media, capitalized on all our fears to divide us. It wasn’t their intention; it simple played out that way. Start a snowball down a hill…

In many ways, that was my father and mother's generation's contribution to what we would become later on. Perhaps they were responsible for what they did, but now I'm responsible for what I do. As a Christian I am now called to rise above the many prejudices of the past and become like the people of Colosse. It was one thing for our civil leaders to sacrifice our cities and the people that live there.

It was another thing altogether for the Christians.

One

“All at once the chalice of peace will be raised high…"
—Yusuf Islam .

I played the album (dating myself) over and over again. He was like a soul mate. And I wasn’t alone. Everybody had Cat Stevens “Tea for the Tiller man”. Then he fell off the face of the earth. He became a Muslim and gave up music…for 25 years. He came back into my life two weeks ago. The internet can open 1,000 different portals and while there are some we should never “look in” both for our soul and our heart some will enlighten and engage us along the road.

On YouTube I found his concert clips from the Noble Peace Prize celebration of 2006. Funny, he didn’t seem like a bad guy at all. Probably never really was but the propaganda, well, you know how it goes. So I repented of my prejudices and we’re back together again so to speak. We are on “the road to find out” what we can do as ONE to “set things that are wrong to rights”.

And he doesn’t even know me. The internet will do that. His name is Yusuf Islam now.

Working together through a ceasefire and peace. Yusaf Islam. Rich Mullins. Bono.

Together

"If you want to build a ship,
don't drum up the men to gather wood,
divide the work, and give orders.
Instead, teach them to yearn
for the vast and endless sea."
–Antoine de Saint-Exupery:

Why Settle

“Any religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that cripple them, is a spiritually moribund religion in need of new blood.”

-Martin Luther King Jr.

The Gospel Implications

Isaac Munji is a Kenyan pastor whom I met through my friendship with Jason Anderson. I’ve learned a thing or two from watching and listening to his story. The first time we had a conversation in our little cluster of pastors about racial divide and the problems involved therein one of our group said, “Well we have two persons of color in our midst, let’s ask them what they think’. Isaac was noticeably disturbed and I assumed it was because we were singling him out because he was different from us racially. When I spoke to him following I was surprised that he was upset not because I am white and he is black and he was uncomfortable in this mostly white bread suburban group but because he was tossed into the “American Black Culture” stereotype. I was soon to learn that he like many of his African brothers was resentful towards this indiscretion. He is a remarkable man of vision who desires to see families from his native land equipped to walk in dignity as a people. His life is lived toward that end.

At one point I sat down to hear more of his story. His recollection of the missionary culture from his side of the experience as a young boy was remarkable. He would speak of how missionaries would come, erect a chapel and proceed to disburse the gospel in a westernized way. They installed a huge bell and “rang the bell” for services and worship on Sunday. They seldom were noticeably disturbed by the conditions of poverty in the village—and that caused Isaac pause. It seemed the gospel they preached should ignite a more comprehensive way of caring than simply “ringing the bell”. As a young man he saw the disconnect in “the way” of Christianity. At some point he determined he would do it differently. Ironically, it is the same disconnect we see in our American cities form the eastern seaboard to the western shore. We instinctively “feel” (as all people in a culturalized metanarrative would) an uneasiness when we drive into our inner cities. There has been a disconnect and we know it.

Off the Yellow Brick Road and Onto the Blandness of Highway

Many of us remember the classic tale the Wizard of Oz. Most of us as children watched the story unfold year in and year out in the living rooms of our American homes. I want to call your attention to a particular scene where Dorothy, the tin man and the scarecrow are walking through a deep forest and they began to chant. You remember the chant it goes like this “Lions, Tigers and Bears, Oh my, Lions Tigers and Bears Oh my”!

It doesn't take long for their worst nightmare to face them in the forest a lion; the most feared animal in all of the earth, the king of the jungle confronts them. What they don't know is that this lion is fronting. He's been told that lions roar, he's told that lions are dangerous; he’s told to be lion like, but deep inside he is as fearful as Dorothy and her friends are. What he really needs is the courage to face that reality and embrace it. Fronting won’t do. No one likes to front—we are put in that position by default. What I am saying is that we all still need courage to face the lions we imagine are out there and realize that we can do something about all the fronting from fear that intimidates and influences us all.

May 17, 2004 marks the anniversary of a tremendous decision in our nation. On that date in 1954 the Supreme Court voted nine to zero to eliminate separate but equal in our school system so as to erase and eradicate segregation for all time. On this day at a prestigious Washington gala event to mark the 50 the anniversary of that decision the NAACP invited the best and brightest the black community had to offer to a black tie event. Bill Cosby, an animated, adored, black comedian, highly esteemed in the culture was the keynote speaker for this 50 year celebration of the landmark decision known as Brown vs. Board. What followed was anything but funny. In his scathing address a solemn and serious Cosby began to speak about what had happened since the landmark decision made in 1954 by the Supreme Court, the judicial people of our time; the ones who decide what to deem righteous and fair in our land. The people concerned by their very existence with “justice”. This speech caught many off guard. Most of these prominent black leaders had gathered to celebrate a great day in their history. And Cosby rocked their world with his honest address.

In the address Cosby spoke of the new Lions, Tigers and Bears, oh my, that are in the concrete jungle of the urban populations in the cities of America today. He confronted them. The new “lions, tigers and bears” he explained were “niggers, bitches, and hoes” feared by the Dorothy’s’ of the suburbs and glamorized in many of our urban centers across America. Nobody in that room said a word. In that talk Cosby addressed the tendency of many black Americans to sweep aside their responsibility for what's happening to black society in America. He reminded these people of the true courageous and inspiring history of the black culture who somehow defeated the vilest slavery ever to infect the earth, segregation and prejudice throughout our nation particularly in the deep South in the 20th century, a strong and courageous people who had risen out of these ashes to the landmark decision the civil rights movements that followed in America. He suggested that black America should go back to the strength which carried them through these difficult times. To return to the type of inspiring strong proud past of days gone by he was calling them out and confronting the people with the need for them to become responsible and cease to live in a way that says we’re the victims of the “white man”. To loose those shackles still tying them to a mindset that says “we need whitey to lift us up.” Nonsense. Bill Cosby was asking the black community to own up to the part that they play by the segregation and divisions and victimization mentality which remain in our society to this day. The true Lions of courage are not the violent ones but the ones who lived to strength through spiritual weakness to the point of convincing the powers to be they were “in the wrong”

This morning though I don't have any of the status of Bill Cosby, though I don't have many people listening to what I have to say, though I am not a significant voice to anyone much, I want to ask white America how we are to respond responsibly for what we've done. I am not a politician, I'm not a historian, I don't have all the answers for all the evils in our society, but I know that our God is concerned when injustice continues and would have our pastors and religious leaders bring their head out of the sand and help America to see how we responded to the call for justice in 1954 and do something to “own up”. You are probably wondering what we have done. We hardly realize the offense of preaching one gospel and settling for another in u rations. We are so like the missionaries in Isaac’s little village. We are clueless to what we are doing.

As I was spinning through the TV channels one evening at my home I was intrigued by a PBS special that was being telecast that evening entitled The Supreme Court. I confess my ignorance on many matters in regards to our nation's history perhaps I wasn't paying attention but simply doing what I needed to pass my classes and make the grade and get my diploma. I plead guilty to the accusation that I went through my college years and became an evangelical who would convert people's minds to the truth of Jesus without confronting their actions in regard to the justice and righteousness and peace that he comes to bring through the Spirit of God today. What I'm talking about is the term righteousness and the term gospel and our understanding of what God is up to in these days. According to my training, my investigation, in my study the gospel is good news. In particular of the gospel or good news was news from Isaiah 61 as quoted by Jesus in his first address in the synagogue of Nazareth spoken about in Luke Chapter 4. Listen to what it says.

‘Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and to report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. When he came to Nazareth, where you been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of the sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

Jesus then continued with these words, today the Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

Today is the day of the Lord's favor. Today is the day says the apostle Paul when we celebrate the reality is that we are all called to share one table, one spirit, one baptism, and two cultures. No, my Bible says one culture of grace and forgiveness and mercy, that kind of stuff which motivated the apostle Paul to lay down his sword in regards to persecuting those who are no longer Jewish but had turned to Christ. Paul jumped ship on prejudice, the clarion call went out through his influence that there is no longer Jew or Greek male or female slave or free. Now we are one in Christ.

But somehow we are not.

As I watched this PBS special on TV about the Supreme Court and their decision that separate but equal will no longer be tolerated I marveled that these courageous Supreme Court justices would have the courage to stand up and declare this truth, unpopular as it was, because it was simply the right thing to do. And the response of the white community to this landmark decision the people that I come from was simply this. We flipped them off. We built expressways and we built strip malls and we took our money and we took our influence and we took all that we had, erecting a barrier that shouted “No!” to the notion of One, that two are brothers and sisters in Christ. I would like to say that the churches that I’m a part of were not a part of white flight.

But sadly nothing is further from the truth.

In essence we in the church followed the culture of rebellion that simply said screw you to the law of our land. As I drive in my city, as I drive in the suburbs, as I look around the church is built on endings stretching far and wide while our cities crumble. I wonder what part I play, and if Bill Cosby is to calling the black community out, when is someone to call the white community, the ones who walked away and said in essence “we don't want anything to do with you” out.

I understand that the solution is going to be much more complicated than I could ever really ever imagine. Brighter people in significant roles in the cities will need to act. It will be the task of many people with many gifts and talents and abilities on both sides of the fence to tear that fence down which divides us. It will be a difficult and hard road.

Why Settle

Bill Cosby said that we should continue down that road that was begun with the blood of the martyrs of the great and proud history of Black America. “Why should we sell out,” says Cosby “for some type of cultural life that will make it nearly impossible for our on educated youth to flourish and succeed and show forth the pride of the black man.” And what I'm saying is: ‘Why do we in white America settle for corporate greed and mile after mile of sterile franchise, bland landscape, when we could enjoy the rich diversity that is our inheritance in Christ? Fear, arrogance, and prejudice. The Lions, Tigers and Bears on the news every night. We want to lock that away, get it out of our lives, and build insulation, boundaries and walls to keep us safe.

How can we even “ring our bells” on Sunday and participate in that type of nonsense without someone saying, the emperor has no clothes and the “gospel” we preach is no gospel at all! What I'm really calling for is not just repentance, although repentance is necessary and important, but the embracing of the many colors of Christ here on earth as it is in heaven. I believe that we have settled for a lesser gospel by our misapplication of scripture in the evangelical agenda. In essence that has led us down a road that allowed us to settle for a lesser gospel than God has intended. Why else would we choose to settle for less than the Promised Land as we continue to walk this road “in Christ”?

Does anyone own a black and white TV any more? Isn’t it time we get a new model of Christianity?

Jesus: The God who fades to the back

“The first shall be last and the last shall be first”--Jesus

As one from whom men hide their faces he was despised,
and we esteemed him not'. --Isaiah 53

Streets of Philadelphia

By Bruce Springsteen

I was bruised and battered
And I couldn't tell what I felt
I was unrecognizable to myself

Saw my reflection in a window
I didn't know my own face
Oh brother are you gonna leave me wasting away

Psalm Twenty-two

Roaring lions tearing their prey open their mouths wide against me.

I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.

My heart has turned to wax;
it has melted away within me.

My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
you lay me in the dust of death.

Dogs have surrounded me;
a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet.

I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me.

The God who fades to the back

I believe one of the best lines from Springsteen's phenomenal song "Streets of Philadelphia" is 'and my clothes don't fit me no more, I'd walk a thousand miles just to slip this skin'. How easily this could apply to Jesus. He is shrouded in flesh by mortality. The flesh doesn't fit him. Mortality is an invader. And it is about to take His life. He that had no beginning is about to have His 'first' encounter with 'the end'. Jesus' final climb is not found in the city of brotherly love or the place that holds the liberty bell. His freedom is purchased in a place where brothers betray one another with a faithless kiss. The final road is in Jerusalem and known to us as the Via Doloroso.

Some might think it scandalous to compare the Christ of glory to the despised countenance of a 20th century man, most likely branded with the name of "homo" or "queer", disfigured by the devastation of a disease called Aids. This is his come-up-a-tance. And some gloat over him as he walks the streets of Philadelphia, bones protruding rudely from a body once strong now wasting away. Some in the church certainly did.

But that is the point is it not?

Their stare, their glance, their way, is the same spirit that stood on the way of the Via De La Rosa. The crucifixion was a brutal and shaming end to a human life. There was no dignity on the cross outside the city gates. Christ was most despised and totally rejected by all here. Springsteen gets it… and the real question that lingers is; do we? Do we get it when he says 'when you do this unto the least of these you do it unto me'. Where was everyone when He faced the end? Don't you think He 'heard the voices of friends vanished and gone'

How lonely it must have been at the ninth hour when Jesus shouted in a loud voice, "Eloi Eloi lema sabachthani?" which is translated, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" That sentence is of course very familiar to the ears that first heard the cry. It is the first sentence of Psalm 22. The Psalm is quoted in the beginning of this section.

Death, which cannot exist in the presence of God in His dimension, creates this unbearable chasm. This "gulf of separation" that occurs between God the Father and God the Son, initiated in the death of the latter, has been described by the theologian Jürgen Moltmann as 'death in God'.

The night has fallen, I'm lyin' awake,
I can feel myself fading away,
So receive me brother with your faithless kiss,
Or will we leave each other alone like this

I believe Jesus takes his place last in line, at the back of the bus, and fades into oblivion beneath the powers of the world both religious and secular. But He doesn’t stay there. We love that part. And we should. But before we go to the ending we must appreciate the path Jesus trod to get there so that we might follow that path. The descending nature of God is the way of redemption, of renewal, and of deliverance. There is no other way, in a world gone horribly wrong, then to empty oneself, stoop down, step down and...to repent...to lay down "rights". Or as Paul puts it--to crucify oneself...

'I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.' Galatians 2:20

This is the way of salvation and when the world--all the world-- gets this and lives by it--the world will be saved.

But they would not.

It is a dream that appears will never come true because our collective and singular nature is violence. The curse of Cain looms like a fog amongst us and nothing will lift the fog. Nineveh will not repeat and we will not repent. This is the stain that permeates all cultures for all time. The cycle of violence, of power, had to be rendered powerless. Unless the age is interrupted blood will spill and evil will continually prevail.

"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

So when Jesus says "Love your enemies," he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition. ... The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation." --Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King.

This is one of the key reasons Jesus goes to the cross. In that one act God Almighty laid down His rights, His arms, His power to show us the way. Jesus broke the cycle of hate and violence by willingly going to the cross. The cycle was broken, the chain reaction of evil diffused at the cross--this is the message of God--this is love poured out. This is the reason for the purposeful laying down of "rights" described in Philippians 2 and referenced by Jesus before Pilate in Matthew 26,

"Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?".

Of course He could--but the point is He didn't--and when Peter bears the sword in Gethsemane; Jesus' response is sharp and decisive. When the law courts of Jerusalem and Rome strike His cheek--he turns the other cheek. This is not about force but about upending force.

It is the message of God.

This is finally the reason for the return of the Christ. The present evil age with its insistence on the 'Am I my brother's keeper?' mentality will one day come to a close.

World interrupted.

Does anyone own a black and white TV any more? Isn’t it time we get a new model of Christianity?

Jesus: The God who fades to the back

“The first shall be last and the last shall be first”--Jesus

As one from whom men hide their faces he was despised,
and we esteemed him not'. --Isaiah 53

Streets of Philadelphia

By Bruce Springsteen

I was bruised and battered
And I couldn't tell what I felt
I was unrecognizable to myself

Saw my reflection in a window
I didn't know my own face
Oh brother are you gonna leave me wasting away

Psalm Twenty-two

Roaring lions tearing their prey open their mouths wide against me.

I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.

My heart has turned to wax;
it has melted away within me.

My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
you lay me in the dust of death.

Dogs have surrounded me;
a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet.

I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me.

The God who fades to the back

I believe one of the best lines from Springsteen's phenomenal song "Streets of Philadelphia" is 'and my clothes don't fit me no more, I'd walk a thousand miles just to slip this skin'. How easily this could apply to Jesus. He is shrouded in flesh by mortality. The flesh doesn't fit him. Mortality is an invader. And it is about to take His life. He that had no beginning is about to have His 'first' encounter with 'the end'. Jesus' final climb is not found in the city of brotherly love or the place that holds the liberty bell. His freedom is purchased in a place where brothers betray one another with a faithless kiss. The final road is in Jerusalem and known to us as the Via Doloroso.

Some might think it scandalous to compare the Christ of glory to the despised countenance of a 20th century man, most likely branded with the name of "homo" or "queer", disfigured by the devastation of a disease called Aids. This is his come-up-a-tance. And some gloat over him as he walks the streets of Philadelphia, bones protruding rudely from a body once strong now wasting away. Some in the church certainly did.

But that is the point is it not?

Their stare, their glance, their way, is the same spirit that stood on the way of the Via De La Rosa. The crucifixion was a brutal and shaming end to a human life. There was no dignity on the cross outside the city gates. Christ was most despised and totally rejected by all here. Springsteen gets it… and the real question that lingers is; do we? Do we get it when he says 'when you do this unto the least of these you do it unto me'. Where was everyone when He faced the end? Don't you think He 'heard the voices of friends vanished and gone'

How lonely it must have been at the ninth hour when Jesus shouted in a loud voice, "Eloi Eloi lema sabachthani?" which is translated, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" That sentence is of course very familiar to the ears that first heard the cry. It is the first sentence of Psalm 22. The Psalm is quoted in the beginning of this section.

Death, which cannot exist in the presence of God in His dimension, creates this unbearable chasm. This "gulf of separation" that occurs between God the Father and God the Son, initiated in the death of the latter, has been described by the theologian Jürgen Moltmann as 'death in God'.

The night has fallen, I'm lyin' awake,
I can feel myself fading away,
So receive me brother with your faithless kiss,
Or will we leave each other alone like this

I believe Jesus takes his place last in line, at the back of the bus, and fades into oblivion beneath the powers of the world both religious and secular. But He doesn’t stay there. We love that part. And we should. But before we go to the ending we must appreciate the path Jesus trod to get there so that we might follow that path. The descending nature of God is the way of redemption, of renewal, and of deliverance. There is no other way, in a world gone horribly wrong, then to empty oneself, stoop down, step down and...to repent...to lay down "rights". Or as Paul puts it--to crucify oneself...

'I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.' Galatians 2:20

This is the way of salvation and when the world--all the world-- gets this and lives by it--the world will be saved.

But they would not.

It is a dream that appears will never come true because our collective and singular nature is violence. The curse of Cain looms like a fog amongst us and nothing will lift the fog. Nineveh will not repeat and we will not repent. This is the stain that permeates all cultures for all time. The cycle of violence, of power, had to be rendered powerless. Unless the age is interrupted blood will spill and evil will continually prevail.

"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

So when Jesus says "Love your enemies," he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition. ... The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation." --Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King.

This is one of the key reasons Jesus goes to the cross. In that one act God Almighty laid down His rights, His arms, His power to show us the way. Jesus broke the cycle of hate and violence by willingly going to the cross. The cycle was broken, the chain reaction of evil diffused at the cross--this is the message of God--this is love poured out. This is the reason for the purposeful laying down of "rights" described in Philippians 2 and referenced by Jesus before Pilate in Matthew 26,

"Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?".

Of course He could--but the point is He didn't--and when Peter bears the sword in Gethsemane; Jesus' response is sharp and decisive. When the law courts of Jerusalem and Rome strike His cheek--he turns the other cheek. This is not about force but about upending force.

Wood. Nail. Timber. This is the way it goes down. It is the message of God.

This is finally the reason for the return of the Christ. The present evil age with its insistence on the 'Am I my brother's keeper?' mentality will one day come to a close.

World interrupted.