14 April 2014 - Asking in circles

Readings:
Isa 52:13-15
Isa 53
Phil 2:5-11

Last night my boys requested the Adam and Eve story at bedtime. When reading to them one has to be ready for a constant stream of interruptions in the form of questions, and attempt to bat off the boundless curiosity with one-liners, beaming approval at their healthy curiosity while mounting irritation just under the skin has to be carefully masked. It's quite an art. Full engagement of each and every question has proved very unproductive, as each answer spawns its own set of questions leading the quiet-time to rabbit-hole country. It has to be definitive one-liners. Failing to do so would extend evening quiet-time to way beyond what is reasonable. It is a bit of a challenge, I must admit. The three to seven-year old minds do not yet possess the conceptual, mental or lingual skills to appreciate the complexity elicited by their flagrant questioning. I want to be honest with my answers, and offer explanations worthy of their precious curiosity, but without the language necessary to convey the concepts in question I invariably end up uhm-ing and aah-ing. Anyway, last night my five-year old got stuck on why God put the infamous tree in the garden if He knew beforehand that Adam and Eve would be eating from it. He was insistent. The first two or three one-liners were brushed off with disdain. They failed to satisfy. The bed-time story had to stop. I had some explaining to do. It was becoming a long night.

As Easter draws nearer the daily Bible readings start to get more gritty. One would like to think that Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is a gross exaggeration, an unjustified, gratuitous celebration of bloody violence like a wannabe Tarantino movie. But reading Isaiah 53 dispels such vague hopes. It was first degree torture, and it's not nice to see. Years ago Bruce Wilkerson spoke at our Easter Service, and asked the question; "Who killed Jesus?" The answer? Father God.

But it was the Lord's good plan to crush him

and cause him grief.

Isa 53:10

This is quite something to come to terms with. I can appreciate the bigger picture and all, but in unguarded moments I also toss some careless questions around. God is almighty, and He paid the ultimate price! The way to God is open. He can cause those who do not seek or want Him to find Him - He's done it before (Isa 65:1). In the meantime, the collateral damage is beyond comprehension. Stumped, I shake my head and walk away from my wonderings. "What was He thinking?" It is over two thousand years since the epic event we remember each Easter, and we still have to guard our children in the shopping malls from opportunistic traffickers. Is society really going to become good one day? Or are the redeemed ones going to be fished out of an ever increasing mucky sea of depravity? Should we stop feigning shock at what happens around us, or should we fight to stem the moral mudslide? What did Jesus die for? What should we be fighting for in this war-not-against-flesh-and-blood? It messes with my head every year to be reminded of the price that was paid, the opportunity, and to see the response of humanity. It's that time of the year again. Apparently I do not yet possess the conceptual, mental or lingual skills to appreciate the complexity elicited by my flagrant questioning. 

11 April 2014 - Jesus rocks

Reading:
Mark 13

In 2009, Mel and I had the privilege to visit the ancient city of Segovia, about an hour or so into the mountains north of Madrid in Spain. The most famous feature of Segovia is its beautiful aqueduct, built more or less in the time when Jesus lived in Israel. We've also been to the Pont du Gard (Mel swam under it) - probably the world's most famous aqueduct - in France. The Pont du Gard is a massive, heavy colossal structure. The one in Segovia is by contrast rather slender; elegant rather than imposing. It transported water for 32 km's before entering the city, and stands just under thirty meters high in it's tallest place. It has 167 arches after entering Segovia. This magnificent monument has been standing for 2000 years. For me, the most bewildering fact about it is that it was built without the use of mortar. Its carefully shaped granite blocks just basically balance on top of one another, thirty metres up into the sky - for two thousand years!

Some of Jesus' disciples seemed to have had an appreciation for architecture as well. The temple in Jerusalem was most probably a contemporary to Segovia's aqueduct, but the scale was substantially different. The biggest stone blocks in the temple weighed approximately 600 tons. Most were 'small' by comparison - only 28 tons or so. It would be natural have thought of the temple as a fairly permanent installation, but it was not to be. Forty years later it was gone, and the spoils from the temple were used to fund the building of the Colosseum in Rome. I cannot help but be struck by the irony. The longevity of the mammoth temple and the spindly aqueduct is reversed. The spider-leggy structure looks like it would be hard-pressed to resist a decent gale, where destroying an edifice made out of 100 ton blocks sounds like very hard work.

When his disciples expressed their admiration for the (unfinished) wonder of their day, Jesus came across as a bit dismissive. He spoke of the temple in more or less the same terms as the unfortunate fig tree of Matthew 21, which is surprising, taken into account that the temple represented the centre of human worship of God on earth. God was heading elsewhere though. A new era had come. He was interested in a new, altogether original kind of temple, one built with something substantially different and on a cornerstone that makes a 600 ton monster seem positively diminutive.

As you come to him, the living Stone - rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him - you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood ..

1 Pet 2:4-5