Lk17v1-2 Strong words. Does Jesus have a David Benatar-esque anti-natalism? So serious is the call not to damage others spiritually - which includes every way you can imagine - better to just stay away from them. You're doing it for their good. Jesus suggests, however, that it would be better for the addler not to be born, rather than the addlee. The level of responsibility that Jesus demands of us for others is as strong and offensive as Benatar's, but it demands far more rather than far less from each of us. We are our brothers' keepers, the call is to step up.
Lk17v3-4 https://ifttt.com
This is your API for the moral universe.
If they sin, rebuke. [awkward]
If they repent, forgive. [costly]
If they repeat, repeat. [relentless]
๐ "Pay attention to yourselves!" ~ this links the millstone-for-temptation-indictment with mulberry-tree-uprooting faith. It starts with you. You are the node of faith which upside-downs what the world would otherwise do. You are the point of friction. This verse is the pivot: The money mismanagement approbation of prior verses is easily deflected towards the richer-thans. Pay attention to yourselves! And this feels like a crescendo. v10 "to Jerusalem" looms imminent. As D-Day bears down on you, pay attention to your critical and gracious capacity to be brothers: rebuking, forgiving and repeating. Rebuking, forgiving and repeating.
Lk17v5-6 Mulberry trees apparently have very deep roots and do not usually thrive when planted in water, let alone salt water. Pushing this metaphor then, might we think about the kinds of work that faith can do, as well as marvelling at the miraculous possible in the works of faith? Faith can undo and uproot things previously deeply planted. There is nothing so deeply entrenched in you that cannot be uprooted by the right seed. Faith also makes possible thriving and fruitfulness in unlikely conditions, conditions that you should otherwise avoid. Why would faith plant a mulberry tree in the sea? Presumably not for the hell of it, or to watch the tree drown in saline, but to demonstrate an otherwise unknown and unlikely alchemy. So many things seem inevitable or desperate. A prayer for my own heart this morning, that it would receive the mustard seed needed for the day's faith-work ahead.
Lk17v7-8 ๐จ๐พ Farm Boy.. Know your place in the feudal hierarchy of the cosmos, there are no unionised snowflakes on this farm. The inconvenient power of God's holiness will not be vitiated by a theology of cheap grace.
∞ God is a both-and of two: God's law and God's grace, both are infinite, there are no hyperbolic analogies for either. To the degree that you can make visceral the spectacular distortion and lawless depravity of mankind, that super and prevenient grace which remedies it is made the more brilliant.
๐♀ The Centurion in Mt8v9 knows what it is to ask for the power of healing, because he knows what it is to transact in a realm of power: the rules of the game and the need for harrowing conscientiousness.
๐จ⚖ Why settle for the banality of Christian half-baked servitude rendered part-time with caveats in a negotiated submission presuming compensation on a sliding scale. Count your own holiness and desert as worth less than nothing and a call your own inner lawyer out as a fraudulent distraction. In so doing, and in doing so with all of your being, you will find unprecedented joy.
Lk17v9-10 Jesus' words here seem harsh. I meditate on these the same morning we read Ps78 and Mk7v24-30, which also respectively have divine words seeming spoken harshly. Words that cut and chafe. I am thinking about this at the same time as thinking about my own response to harsh words, to the perception of contempt in others and the way that this tends to undo me completely. Harshness is something I tend to feel I cannot bear. Harshness means I am contemptible in every way and not just in some ways. I experience it as totalising, as something from which I must immediately flee, and do not know how to engage. But Jesus is harsh as well as gentle. The creator pulls no punches. The spirit cuts. And in each of these passages, humanity is asked to be able to bear a little harshness, from both human others and from God. I must learn and develop the muscles with which I can bear the complexity of the God (and the humans) who are both gentle and harsh. I must bear my own complexity and multiplicity, and recognise that I resultingly need to hear a multiplicity of voices, including a harsh voice, on many occasions. To hear the hard word and receive it - and not just the hard word but the hard tone, sometimes - and to not be destroyed by it, to not give up and despair as a result. I was engineered to be more robust, and I can receive the harshness because all that underpins me is more secure than I believe, and I do not need to understand myself as decimated and turned to dirt by the other's harshness. The 78th Psalm takes us to the edge of our being and tells us that there is neverthless still a reason to come back at God, to submit actively rather than to slink away wordlessly. If the Phoenician woman had been so stung by Jesus' words that she refused to allow herself to give her humble challenge, she would not have sparred her way to the healing her daughter needed. If the servant in the parable in this passage chose to close down her heart with feelings of resentment towards the master, a sense of being treated with contempt, telling herself that her unworthiness counts her out, then full particpation in the kingdom of heaven is curtailed. The servant who expects gentleness and harshness and allows both voices to speak will not be destroyed, but will find herself in the throng of all of reality, the beauty of multiplicity, the stretching work of labour, and submission to the Good. May it be with me all the more. Rilke says it better.
Lk17v11-12 What to do with the interstitial verses in scripture?
๐ "Jerusalem.." see also 9v51 and 13v22 this nod towards the climax is well and truly the end of the beginning. Jerusalem, it's somewhere between the New-York-New-York-If-You-Can-Make-It-There-You-Can-Make-It-Anywhere and the One-Does-Not-Simply-Walk-Into-Mordor Cities are a heightening, the city is the coalface, the frontline, the meltingpot, the powderkeg, the colocated zenith and nadir of life, the catalysing accelerator of the human condition. I have attempted a theology cities elsewhere and Jerusalem is paradigmatic, it is the archetypal holy city. What is your Jerusalem? What does the way there look like?
๐ฏ "ten.." incidentally ten, or significantly ten? A full flush, a band, a constituted colony of lepers. Multi-personal and collective uncleanness. At 41, we are ten. Who are you with, who is your ten? Limping through life with tragic solidarity? Is your ten a defensive clustering? I've got not much for you on a theology of tens. Although, Harry&Chris offer a meditation, that we might know ourselves each to be a ten, and as ten of us, perhaps we might be each other's multiplication ~ that's a hundred percent. Not glibly so, but in the light of Christ's sufficiency, we operate on the basis of abundance and so multiply rather than divide.
๐ค "met by ... at a distance.." Back to back they faced each other.. Have you met Jesus? How close did he come? How close did you come? There is a proximate spatiality to the Christ encounter that is offered. Allow it.
Lk17v13-14 "On the way they were made clean." I love this image, and that Jesus heals in so many different ways. So often we are healed by a word Jesus has spoken as we go in obedience on the way, as we carry on, as we embrace the ongoing and the ordinary tasks of life. Few moments in life are a clear tidy point of healing, cleaving time in two. Rather, we are to keep going, having opened ourselves to mercy. So often it is only as we look back that we see how we have been transformed. The Spirit does so much work outside our field of vision. The words that Jesus speaks have a power that follow us even when the next step feels exactly the same as the last one.
Lk17v15-16 ⛺ 1 in 10 lepers. I've thought briefly about the 1 in 10 ratio before, circa 2011 reading Nehemiah 11v1 at the same that the Telegraph reported that only 1 in 10 tents at OccupyLondon was actually occupied.
1⃣ We're currently recruiting for one (of ten places) in the house. Such a one can be sought as a practical addition, a gap on a spreadsheet, a routine replacement in the churning turning over of London's populace. Not so. The dignity of the one is fundamental to Christianity. By love, God, with harrowing specificity pursues the personal person, authors a meaningful destiny, and blazes individuation into an otherwise entropic cosmos of soupy indistinction. Who will be the one? How do we dignify each one-as-one? Only by superabundant love, only with help from beyond, only if God is.
1⃣ At work, as a minnow in the crypto ocean, we are such a one-in-ten or smaller. Likewise in so many other contexts, I am but a one. But one leper in a crowd of lepers, swept downstream on a wave of ingratitude. Unless. Unless I seize the nettle of being, convicted to be such a glorious critical minority, a sufficient counter-culture of one.
1⃣ "Now he was a Samaritan." Consistent with one's experience of self-understanding as an outsider, such are the conditions for counter-cultural gratitude. Never lose the vital mindset of being an immigrant, not from round these parts, non-native and outside of the box. Such a critical Margaret Meadian minority will change the world. It's the only thing that ever has. If only it would.
Lk17v17-18 Where are the other 9? As a non-rhetorical question: where were they? And where are you and where am I when not close to Jesus, explicitly thanking him for the gift? Did some of the 9 perhaps not realise that they had been healed, crazy as that sounds? Psychosomatically bonded to old habits, I can imagine some of these men with leprosy continuing to act as though they were still afflicted, remaining in a cage which has already to been unlocked for them, moving to the next itinerant preacher to ask for healing and mercy, unable, in a perverse way, to accept or recognise the total healing they had already received. Are there ways I fail to respond with gratitude and worship because I don't understand what Jesus has done in me and to me and for me already?
Where were the 9? Did some of them so quickly adapt and assimilate their new healing that they just forgot to be grateful? Did they see themselves as simply restored to something that they were entitled to in the first place, and did gratitude thus just not appear on their radar? Where do I fail to worship the One through dullness of spirit, entitlement or forgetfulness?
I can imagine some of these men failed to return to Jesus in gratitude because of their excitement, joy and enthusiasm at their healing. Perhaps they immediately called all their friends and family and celebrated. Perhaps they told lots of people about Jesus' healing act, perhaps they proclaimed his power to all they met, seeing clearly the narrative of the healing, enjoying the story of it. But the fact that they did not return to the healer to offer thanks and worship in the secret place is telling. When do I fail to return to Jesus because I am too busy 'being missional', telling the story of the thing elsewhere?
Did some stay away because of fear? Did they know in a disruptive new way that Jesus is the Christ, with a power evidenced and resonating through their own flesh, and were they afraid? Healing can be a frightening thing insofar as it requires a recognition of the power of God, and one's responsibility to submit everything to him. Where do I stay away because of fear that Jesus will demand more of me than I am willing to give? Do I resist gratitude because gratitude might open me up and being opened up to the voice of the Christ recognised as such is frightening, much more frightening than staying where I am?
Where were the other 9? Where are you?
๐ "..observed" here is paratฤrฤsis ฯฮฑฯฮฑฯฮทฯฮฎฯฮตฯฯ a word signifying scrupulous, superstitious, captious observation say the commentaries (see usage in Lk6v7 14v1 20v20) The dogmatist's scrutiny is a weaponised look akin to the laser sight of the male gaze, it objectifies the observed, rendering a whole universe as merely and scientistically instrumental, disautonomous, violable, fungible.
๐ The eyes of my heart are jaded lenses reaching foregone conclusions by loaded questions and selective hearing. I tint therefore I am. My reader-response creates its own meaning. I see but do not perceive Mk4v12.
๐ The eyes of my heart are clouded with the fog of a cultural war, the tyranny of urgent and marketised noise. Both the depth and breadth of my scarce attention have been auctioned off to pay for goods and services. With mind full, I am unmindful and inattentive, substituting all for a projection in the image of my siloed self.
๐ The eyes of my heart are looking for the wrong thing in the right place Jn5v39; (or, tenuously, the right thing in the wrong places in the wrong ways Mt23v15)
๐ And yet, God's Kingdom can be observed.
๐ There are ways of looking.
Lk11v9 "..seek and you will find."
Ps34v8 "..taste and see."
๐ Unprejudiced unfiltered attention to what is actually there. Comporting one's whole self towards the whole of reality as it actually is. But how?
- Mt9v29-30 Jesus gives sight to blind Bartimaeus.
- Mk8v22-26 Jesus spits in the blind man's eyes to give sight.
- Jn9v1-41 Jesus anoints the eyes of a man born blind and gives him sight.
- Ps146v8 Is35v4-5 God opens blind eyes.
๐ God, please help me look to Jesus.
Lk17v21-22 People will not be able to say of the kingdom of God 'here it is' or 'there it is' because it will be in our midst. Jesus gets there first in a critique of onto-theology? Or as Rupert Shortt puts it: "God is No Thing". The Kingdom of Heaven's truth is a way and a life, and resurrected beings do not profess their scientific validity so much as live a qualitatively different life. The Kingdom of God is within you, because you are united with Christ, He is in you, and you and in Him and you are one, and so you embody and radiate the kingdom in the way you move. The flavour of the Kingdom can be sensed, but it cannot be pinned down to a particular outcome or piece of evidence that excludes it from other places - you take it with you, and it is the pre-condition of how you engage with the world - like the categories of space and time, which shape everything though they themselves are not seen, like light, which shows up everything else though it is itself invisible. Jesus words here are a great freedom - you are already inside the Kingdom of God and you do not need to be afraid, so stop treating the Kingdom of God as a commodity to be marketed, but relax into it as you home, your identity and your calling.
Lk17v23-24 Marketing's fool's gold gaming the human need for a saviour. Look! Light! Like!0 Unfriend and unfollow, fam.
Lk17v25-26 But first. But first he must suffer. But first he must suffer many things. This is a hard passage but I love what I see Jesus modelling in his recognition, acceptance and orientation towards death and resurrection. We were made for life with God, we are destined to rise in glory and live abundantly, live inside the shimmer and substance of all that is pure. But first. But first suffering. There is no way to resurrection except through death. Jesus shows us this. This is what makes the gospel still the most beautiful story ever heard. We have to die, we have to suffer, we have to be destroyed, in order to be transformed, in order to be renewed. I spend so much of my time trying to be resurrected without first dying. As I enter a new season with new students and a new season of care for those I'm committed to, this is a central truth I wish to model: you can't skip to resurrection without death. You can't skip to growth in Christ without the suffering work of the death of one's ego, as v33 reminds us. Pray for me, that I would be submitted to this reality in all things, and would model it well to those who are watching.
Lk17v27-28 Normal life. October 14th What are you nostalgic for? What changed? What changes? The cosmic calamity has happened and will happen, perennially. Remember. What some of you once were. Remember eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building ~ a graphic asyndeton of anteduliavian participles. How sad it will be to reflect on a life characterised by insufficient urgency. รthelred the unready. Phil the bourgeious, the oblivious. What am I doing that I shouldn't? What am I not doing that I should? And who sees? And what helps? Wretched man that I am.
Lk17v29-30 Fire and brimstone. Interesting facts about brimstone, which we know better as sulfur: while it burns in a way that destroys, sulphur is also known as the 'healing mineral', an anti-inflammatory and needed for metabolism. This reads too much into the text perhaps, but playing with this in the imagination the brimstone of heaven does always have this double function, coming to destroy evil, burning up and eliminating all that is compromised. And further, it comes to heal, to promote life, to create something healthy. Make no mistake, my soul, the Holy Spirit comes to tear you up, destroying what is compromised in you. And the Holy Spirit comes to bring you life, to sooth your inflated spirit and to renew your spiritual metabolism and facilitate your growth.
↩ Remember Lot's wife and think about what you turn to and what that turns you into. Turning back is a turning to salt, deathly inert crystals, dessicated, blanched and ossified. It is Narnia's White Witch casting a Petrificus Totalus on Hans Solo into carbonite. All forms of fantasy, but especially nostalgia, conform you to the static image you worship. So the rigidity of plastic surgery which lusts retrospectively for a form of former self.
๐ฐ Remember Lot's wife and consider your all or nothing. As we comport imaginatively towards the future. As we undertake to be husbands and wives (ruthlessly, Lk14v26). As we engage the very significant risks of the Kingdom (Mt10v38). Remember Lot's wife, starkly, that there is no hedging halves.
⚪ Remember Lot's wife and consider your latent salinity. Life is a hard water, and you are a scaling kettle (to mix my electrochemistry metaphors). You are already becoming salt perpetually. Everyday Sodom, everyday disruption, everyday temptation, find myself rusted into stasis after too long lingering
๐๐ช Dear Phil, the spirit within you offers the substance needed for a desalinised readiness and evergreen perseverance beyond your own ability to conjure them. Don't give up, don't give in.
Lk17v33-34 That in me which will be raptured to glory is found in bed together with that in me which will be destroyed. This is a hideous and unresolvable tension in the heart of human being. My strengths are entwined, married if you will, to my weaknesses. I can be refined, but this side of heaven there will always be a fracture through everything good I do, every good attempt tainted. One day I will be burnt up and burnt through. But over-realising this eschatology leads to perfectionism rather than sanctification.
Lk17v35-[36]-37 - Christianity is regime change. The Christian life is change management.
The passage has moved between two questions:
v20 When will this change happen?
v37 Where will this change happen?
The intervening verses are an essay in change management.
So, consider:
What is the Kingdom?
What does it change?
How?
๐ต♂ v20 "..not in ways that can be observed..” Change is a’happening beneath the surface, it can’t be observed because it is hiding in plain sight in the very midst of you. The change you are looking for has already begun, it is the nascent latent graduated brownian percolation osmosing a concentration - the coming of the kingdom is imperceptible as a slowly boiling frog. The great tide of history, that bends towards justice, it is already underway.
๐ข v23 "..Look Here!..Do not follow them..” Change should not be prematurely announced, because change won’t need to be announced. The revolution won’t be televised, it won’t need to be. Salvation, on this scale, if it needs to be marketed, isn’t the salvation you really need. There’s no fake-it-til-you-make-it. There’s no be-the-change-you-want-to-see. There’s no hustle. There’s no hype. When the flip comes, you will know.
⚡ v24 "..as lightning flashes..” Change is a process, but it culminates in an instant. The caterpillar crysalises, but there will be an event at which point everything changes. There will be a stark contrast between what went before and what follows.
๐ง♂ v37 "..where the corpse is..” Change’s sudden snap will happen around a particular locus. Christianity is placial. As anyone who has wrestled with the obstinate why-thereness of the bible’s Palestinocentricism may have felt in such as Rm1v16. Changes sparks from a node, the hinge crux fulcrum that bends history toward justice. The seed’s spring point. The axis of synergy. Personalism’s singularity that dignifies the responsible individual cannot but be one-to-one and therefore change, in the realm of human persons must start with one.
๐ฆ v37 "..the corpse.. ..there vultures will gather..” Change requires the past to die. Sometimes it is a slow death, sometimes the cadaver can lie in the sun a long time before it is acknowledged. The corpse and the vultures here function in the commentaries with equal prescience whether you read Corpse:Jesus Vultures:Saints OR Corpse:Culture Vultures:Sinners - both are urgent earnest gatherings. Moments of change are anticipated by the mustering of forces, the polarisation of politics, the huddling of HODLers. You will know where the battle line lies, just follow the smell of death, and so follow those species who are most attuned to death’s odour as 2Co2v16. So as Web 3.0 disrupts everything, vulture capitalists gather around the burning platforms of banks, corporations and media giants - it is where the change is happening. We subvert a culture of death by laying down our own lives - as Christ did for us.
These dynamics of change are in play at all scales:
๐♂ - Conversion of one soul
๐ฌ - The reform of a company
๐ - The transformation of a city
- Allow it, that the sea-change of Kingdom generosity and regeneration is a’happening, quietly beneath the surface.
- Don’t believe the hype that changed has already completed. Patiently wait for the moment of conversion.
- Identify the lines of change by vulture-watching - and so place yourself in harm’s way, by being vulnerable at precisely the places the battle is fought most fiercely.
No comments:
Post a Comment