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texting matthew eighteen

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Mt18v1-2 In our storytelling about ourselves, we ask the question about what greatness is, who is great, can we be great? Would you leave each loved one to go on the Mars mission & never come back? A Randian greatness, legacy greatness, lone genius greatness. But Jesus called a child. Babies we know, helpless, dependent, grasping for the Other with open hungry mouth. So childishness & childlikeness & storytelling, what do we think? The child's imagination is vast, unequalled for storytelling, & it is less self-conscious than mine. As a child, world bigger than myself and networks of magic causality were conjured up, but then, there were also fantasies about my own greatness, of the astronaut, adventurer superhero kind. Childlike/childish? Or does the Christ-endorsed dependent storytelling happen where you know yourself to be caught up in a bigger story, a bigger magic. You're in it, but it has you.

Mt18v3-4 What is a child? A 'turning', a 'becoming', an 'entering'. Turn: as orientation you choose, same (Gk) as Ac7v39 'turned back to Egypt' or Jn12v40 'turn to me and be healed'. To turn is to repent Ac3v16, repent and re-turn. .. Become: an ontology you receive, childlikeness is an unselfconscious subtraction, that is, children don't humble themselves, they are humble. But childlikeness here cannot mean innocence/goodness Ps51v5, and should not mean naivete Eph4v14, nor immaturity Hb6v1. What then is a child? I forget. I held a baby on Sunday and I'm already forgetting those tiniest of tiny fingers, the eminently dropable fragility, the simple utter dependence. Oh, have kids, seek them our, beg borrow and steal them, lest you forget, the irreducible quality of child-being. .. Enter: a domain you have access to. 'Child' here is a 'child-of', a begotteness. When I know I'm beloved-by the King, I can do all things.

Mt18v5 A theology of welcome, what is welcome? The giving of hospitality, the invitation of the face, the generosity of the greeting. O'Tuama notes that Jesus' 'peace be with you' on arrival in Jn20v19 is also 'hello', a framing your comportment to the other, your recognition of their place there, which changes everything. Oh mt25v35, welcome I have felt is an invitation into another's ordinary. It requires authenticity, it cannot be added on, or projected like the 'have a nice day' of customer service. It must draw people up close to your reality, which is why the home is the paradigm image of the place of welcome. Welcome tells people they have a place there, so one's life must be rhythmned by porous welcome all the way through, like a stick of rock, otherwise it will be impossible to do authentically, sustainable. Welcome cannot patronise, we should remember especially with children, welcome.

Mt18v6 A theology of causation. It might be Morton-like magic yeah, insofar as the rubbing together of things is to beheld with wonder & more than can be fully know, but do be sure to remember that causes are very real. The laws of physics & the consequences of your life. X exert pressure on Y, & kittens' claws rip curtains, & your lifestyle can confuse. You are a causer, inescapably. You cause things by inaction, of course, as an unwatered plant, but this doesn't mean you should panic & just do something, anything as is sometimes preached. Your actions are not simply to make you feel that you have agency, they have consequences, & it is better to be at the bottom of the sea than to act to would another's faith, even with the best of intentions. So act, but act thoughtfully, prayerfully, humbly, compassionately, reflectively, eyes & ears open.

Mt18v7-8 Woe to the world because of dem tings: repentable things. Woe to the man by whom the offence comes: culpable persons. There is a reason that Things and Persons are philosophically unpopular. Real things have consequences, real persons have responsibilities. You! Phil! Get your things in order! .. Amputees. I ought to walk with a limp. Leaving facebook is as nailclipping by comparison to the real work needed to cut me from the sources of pride, lust, procrastination, jealousy, self-pity in my life and lifestyle choices. .. N serves St Marks by forbidding that we be vague in metaphors untethered from the horror of amputation. .. the difference in gravity here is between euphemising with Di Franco's Both Hands and Piper calling us to Make War: “..there is a mean streak to authentic self-control..” So be guerilla metaphysicians, desperate, willing to forego 1Ti2v8 and Ec9v10, if only we might see Jesus.

Mt18v9 Better to be
maimed, but
really
very
alive.
(Eph5v14)

Mt18v10 'Despise'. Despising others can take the form or admixture of any of Buck's 8 basic emotions: pride, arrogance, guilt, shame, envy, jealousy, pity or scorn. We can feel these things towards children, for their innocence or their original sin, experience or inexperience, privilege or underprivilege, for their days not yet lived, choices unmade, all Mr Nobody's possibilities before them. But God is close to them, & gratitude mitigates all these.

Mt18v[11]-12 God woke up with Sarah on his mind. Leaving the 99% and the occupy paddock movement. In a scandal of particularity, God goes after a minority interest group, small enough to be an artefact of noise in the data. Apt that they should be sheep. Sheep are considered as sheep to be slaughtered Rm3v36. To what more quintessentially hapless and expendable animal could we be compared? Sheep are relegated to an insomnia cure and referred to collectively so frequently that they lose a grammatical distinction in the singular. Disarticled and unthung: sheep, fish, squid, bison, deer are 'zero plurals' – hunted herd nouns waiting to die. Such are we except that God pursues us. (Tangentially, note how behuntedness generates a 'snob plural' in “Carruthers bagged a dozen tiger last year”) .. 'What do you think?' asks Jesus. You. You. See God has an infinite capacity for the indefinite multiplication of these separate acts of love.

Mt18v13-14 v13 'This one'. My most heart-shifting affirmation, & how marriage images God's love, in seeing, recognising, delighting in, choosing, & forsaking all others for this one. A wonder at which I can scarcely breathe. God loves me singly, & loves me by v14 wanting my best. This is how I learn what love is: rejoicing in my holy victories, discoveries, repentances, God wants me best, unselfishly, keeping no record of wrongs. A love I long to image out.

Mt18v15-16 'Rebuke'. Really? Happier to just let the Holy Spirit do the work of conviction. I'll only get it wrong, I'll only be misunderstood, and besides, they were Born-This-Way. I'll only fan the flames of a pious Christian caricature. I'll only dredge up some historic church-pain, salting the wound of a childhood encounter with a problematic, placard-waving fundamentalist. 'Rebuke'. It's a lose-lose. They'll feel bad, I'll feel bad, it's exhausting, I haven't the time. And, secretly, I take comfort in silence, the introvert's license to say-nothing. It is our social contract: 'Judge not that you be not judged'. I'm not my brother's keeper, don't you know. All men are islands. And what's more, now's the time to be one. This is an island age.. I am an island. I am bloody Ibiza. No? Yes? Too much? Too strong? Ti2v15, Ep5v11, Ga6v1. For why? Mt18v15 You'll gain a brother. Please rebuke and enbrother me.

Mt18v17 Treating those who don't listen as pagans & tax-collectors, & Jesus gives us the model for how these: handing out Mt9v10, speaking authentic words of truth & life Jn4v7-26, always inviting Lk5v29. It is true that in some ways one is oriented differently to those one shares faith with, & to the one of this verse who actively doesn't listen, they shut themselves off from this sharing. But the church still always opens itself to the world, the church welcomes the unbelieving, the immoral, & the difficult, to bless them, shelter them & sweep them up in another way. The church always prays for people to see God, as was prayed last night. The church always invites in. So exhausted rebuke changes the dynamic, but it looks like invitation, not segregation.

Mt18v18 On Earth as in Heaven, or in Heaven as on Earth? The space we live in, holding on to both freedom & fate. Godly causation, the weight of glory, ideas & actions have consequences – which reverberate throughout eternity. This power you hence hold in potentiality, what do you promise, prohibit, permit? What do you decide? What do you commit to? Where are you bound (& bounded) & where is loosening a right freedom for free?

Mt18v19-20 'Ask' concerns less the petitions of prayer, rather the pleas in a judicial sense (esv/dc). These verses concern mediation towards a goal of Christian unity, out of contexts as v15's having-been-sinned-against. In our community God is mediating, bridging, going-between, buffering, peace-making, amongsting. God's kingdom extends, not so much by the infinite extension of threads, but by the vast and complex weaving of frayed and fractious threads into a glorious Persian rug. As we agree to bind and loose, we weave and are woven. As the three-cord-rope-not-easily-broken. Woven. As Edith Schaeffer's Tapestry. Woven. v19 'agree' (gk) symphonesosin. What is church? Richly harmonic polyphony. V20 'gathered' (gk) synegmenoi (as Hb10v25 – don't give up!) Relating is hard, synergetic relating is harder still. Tempting to undervalue meeting together, but it is only there that we can sing in four parts. It is only there that we can weave and be woven. v20 'two or three' as opposed to the popular Jewish notion that it is no congregation if smaller than 10, somewhat eg Ps82v1's megachurch. But 'two or three' also opposes solitudinal-sufficiency. God can be present in all of these scales. But, non-negotiably, if you are going to weave a carpet, you have to consider the difficulties of the vulnerable intermediate scale knot, of couplings and triplets.

Mt18v21-22 The journey we are on, of living in the light, is both a circle & a straight line. Levinas was wrong to say there's no Illiad in our Exodus – not all circles are vicious, not all patterns are prisons. (So weaving). The discipline of forgiveness, daily, like the discipline of gratitude, daily: a rhythm, an orientation, a repetition, over & over, which makes the heart alive & not dead. If gratitude is to envy, the forgiveness is to resentment so. Each unforgiveness, each same one, each old struggle & earned indignation – come cup your hands around it & bring it to the alter now, & then once more to worship, free. Glory to God, the Giver Forgiver! Who makes this wrenching repetition a joy, who free us with this Way.

Mt18v23-24 When you try your best but don't succeed, that sick feeling, mercury sliding in your belly, the crawl of creepers, the chokehold of iron bindweed, leadenly locked into the deadend of creativity, the blackhole of hope. Your life is a business that doesn't break even. Keep the curtains closed, you owe your dealer and you can't pay back, a slow rot at your limb's end. Did you forget to charge your phone, did you leave the headlights on last night? Worthless human being. Incompetent and utterly without excuse, stuck out in the cold. They'll take your kids away, v25. You didn't do anything sinful, it wasn't your fault, you were assigned more than you could carry, you were just dealt more than you could repay. Frail and bottomlessly vulnerable, Wonga will eat you alive. .. Is there a king? Is there a kingdom? If he desires a world without debt, it is possible. Go, with what little you have, what justice you're owed, go, set the captives free.

Mt18v25-26 Read in a pub in Lewes yesterday: “A tyrant seized a perfectly innocent man, & after keeping him prisoner for a long time, had him beheaded. Later the sons of the victim conspired against the tyrant & attempted to take his life without success. They were arrested, put in prison & condemned to death. Thereupon their mother went to the tyrant & pleaded for mercy. 'It is strange,' said the tyrant, 'that you ask a pardon for your sons & yet never did so for your husband.' 'I could not ask a pardon for my husband,' the brave mother replied, 'for he was innocent; I ask it for my sons for they are guilty.' Also of mercy justice this week, Levinas, that justice requires 3, but mercy 2. The plea a guilty, personal, face-to-face. So we with God.

Mt18v27-28 'Out of pity..' No one wants to be pitiable. Convicting them of their less-than-worthlessness is half the battle in evangelism, but much more in my own recommitting myself each morning, knowing myself pitiable first of all, before knowing myself pitied, gloriously. Calibrate your self thus: Jesus Christ, Son of God, have pity on me, a pitiable. .. v28 There is a chronology to Christian identity: 'while we were still pitiable..' Rm5v8. But now. Already now! (goo.gl/b65J0X & Sex God p123) 'Already' changes everything, in every debt, in every now. We are working for a debt-free world, trying to pass on the gift of Already, in the strength of Already. Just as the precondition of 'Blameless & Beloved' identity establishes a debt-free marriage. Ahead of time, more than we deserve, Already. Though I am worth nothing, and less than nothing, I am valued at what I cost God, what he was willing to pay.

Mt18v29-30 Struck first by 'refuse', the willful ways I allow others' pleas for mercy & forgiveness to bounce off my turned-over curled-up hedgehog heart. Not only is it true that when you v30 imprison them in this way, you v34 imprison yourself, but there is a bigger truth here: mercy isn't one lifestyle choice among many – the God of the universe prefers mercy to justice. I live in waves of mercy, all the substances I find myself among are new morning's mercies. Each body cell of mine an act of mercy, each experience of joy a mercy. So to be unmerciful is a violence to the basic fabric of the new creation that we inhabit. Unmercy becomes an anomaly, error in the code of the code of (new) creation, an ugly warning beeping like a car alarm left on. We inhabit the first servant's mercy-on-all-sides, let this in, for those stubborn unmercies that remain. Come Lord Jesus.

Mt18v31-32 v32 'You wicked servant..' Does anyone owe you anything? Wicked you! I don't mean to be glib. This is what strikes me this morning. When Phil understands himself as anyone's creditor, claiming my rights is usually thinly-veiled unnecessary powerplay working out bitter unforgiveness. 'Church pain' is a quintessential example, holding that piece of broken glass in a tightly clenched fist is a vanity, it hurts me, and what is more, no church can repay what 'the church' owes me. Yet it is possible to build elaborate therapeutic models of churching to accommodate unforgiveness, never addressing the wickedness of it. .. v31 'fellow servants .. distressed .. told their master all.' This verse is not nothing. When you witness injustice, there are many unhelpful things you could do before praying to your master. Pray for Wonga. Pray for me. Pray for a debt-free home, church and world. Come Lord Jesus.

Mt18v33-34 Torture: contortion, twisting, distortion. So on another kind of turning, following from thoughts on v30's 'refuse' as a turning away, or repentance's turning around. Torture is in-turned, and turned over, wound around phenomenology, incurvatus in se exposed to light: twisting, writhing, torment. Christ, have mercy.

Mt18v35 Everything you do is a theology of God. Thus mine is an extensive theologicology that considers that all things, all your attitudes and actions, are always testimony, always derivative, always evidence for 'God' as you purport him to be. As you understand the character of God to be, so you choose one of two possible totalities: Law or Grace. You place yourself, your identity, your debtors, your values, into one of two possible economies. That of Gift or Market. Sacred or Desecrated. Grace or Works. Cake or Death. The parable's punchline, that how you comport yourself towards others determines God's to you, is not Karmic. How then is it? When I choose not to play in the gift economy, I am constructing a militant market totality in the very midst of a grace-filled universe, ploughing an armoured tank of selfishness through the pasture of possible forgiveness. And thus Hb6v6 I am 'crucifying once again the Son of God'.

texting matthew seventeen

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Mt17v1-2 John got two sneak previews Rv1v17. Glimpses of glory titled the summer of 2001, was it? But I want you anew, Jesus, transfigure & transfigure & transfigure in & through each of these moments, each blah & resignation & familiarity. Transfigure yourself in my experience, dear Christ, for you have many faces & many looks, so for the transfiguring of my mind, from glory to glory. Gift.

Mt17v3 Moses and Elijah. This is not David Beckham endorsing a product. The Old Testament is the powder keg and Jesus is the spark. All law and prophecy are a longing, and Jesus is the longed-for, but, while the longing for a saviour is generic, the saviour himself is specific and his specificity is anticipated in The law and The prophets. Mt5v17 Jesus fulfils the Law and the Prophets, Lk24v27 the Law and the Prophets are concerned, centrally, with Jesus. Christianity is Jewish because God has done an irreducible singular act in history specifically for you specifically.

Mt17v4 Peter and the architect's impulse: with an insatiable pre-emptive nostalgia, he seeks the preservation of the necessarily transient, he seeks the domus-tication of the divine, and so gets lost in the presence-to-hand of this Kodak moment. What do you do with your Holy Moments? Go and tell? Give it away? Or sit on it, abstract it, frame it, pickle it, holy-huddle it. Jesus seeks to transfigure us by also dis-figuring us of our idols (see Mark C Taylor's Disfiguring). Peter has glimpsed a glimmer, but, before a church is built on this rock, a certain stripping away of camping-trip images must occur. Saunders scathingly critiques Alexander as having a taste only for easy-going, leisureable, recreational, vacational architectures. Certainly this is the danger, to wish all of life was Iwerne, as if we could stay at L'Abri forever, as if it were Christmas every day. Don't you know there's a war on.

Mt17v5-6 I felt the word 'holy' in my mouth yesterday, & it felt far away. Holy terror again, & declarations of love. We believe often that the holiness & the love of God are there co-existing, but held in tension, experienced differently. Yet God exposes a rawer form here, both love & holiness as one. They were overshadowed, says the esv. Beholding holiness, beholding belovedness, so every encounter of the true God. Holiness alive knows love. Listen.

Mt17v7-8 Don't be afraid, as texted Mt1v21-22, Mt6v27-28.. Many things to be afraid of, being small before a big God, being small before a big world, a big enemy, a big responsibility. I'm struck by Jesus' “Rise..” Get up, stand up. Fearlessness is for something: for action. As Rise Apparel remind us (Mc7v8) goo.gl/fvWLy6. Samson sermon prep on Jg15v10-13 found this: “If I profess, with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christianity. Where the battle rages the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle-field besides is mere flight and disgrace to him if he flinches at that one point.” Fearlessness is for difficult action. .. v8 reads elegantly, taken out of context. Obviously it means that the Old Testament beardy ones had gone back into the cloud, but taken in isolation: 'When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.' So, we. Ps121v1

Mt17v9-10 Angst at arbitrariness & authority. What do the scribes say? The disciples feel fearful here, trying to resolve the felt incongruities between doctrine & experience that sometimes pierce the heart. What ground do I stand on> Frustrated at the hiddeness of these things today, rather than wondering at the mystery. Made me for a moment want to try atheism for lent (atheismforlent.net), but then, I found, that's not love. It's not love to break up for a bit. Or maybe this is a disanalogy in Eph5 picture of being married to Christ. Oh, I don't know. Faith seeking understanding.

Are there any contemporary prophets?
If there were or are, what would they discuss?

Mt17v11-12 Are there any contemporary prophets? Yes. Always. Although prophets don't so much discuss as declare.. Are there contemporary prophets? Yes. See Jesus claims: (v11) “Elijah does come.” or “Elijah comes.” Present tense, Indicative Mood, Middle Voice. Elijah here stands as a Type, the prophetic mode, which is enduring. Constantly speaking of what the spirit of God is doing, constantly relaying the Father's heart, constantly preparing the ground for the Christ-seed, constantly calling the Ahabs and Herods away from their Jezebels and Salomes, constantly speaking the original truths, the timeless, timely and urgent: the jealous love of God. Indeed, the perpetuation of prophecy is crucial to Jesus' point here, as it is when he speaks a woe in Mt23v29-31. The notion that prophets *were* is what kills the prophets that *are*. Are there contemporary prophets? For those with ears: http://goo.gl/ovlRSf

Mt17v13 This 'understanding' is a key theme of Matthew, Carson and esv tell me. 16v1-12 not understanding, 13v51-52 coming to understand, a bit. The flailings of yesterday & every self-directed 'stupid' a frustration at this gap in my understanding, at the darkly of the glass. But yet, understanding happens, little by little the disciples understand new things in new ways, as I. This week reading Wynn on models of the role of affective experience in 'religious understanding: (i) concepts transforming affects, (ii) affects transforming concepts. (so (i) & (ii) the cirtuous cycle of Jesus' teaching & experience of Jesus) (iii) affectively-laden paradigms which pick out salient features of reality as meaningful, (iv) experience of anticipated resolution, of the not-yet, of yearning. This last one is the dark glass itself, it is an understanding of its own.

Mt17v14 and so, on my patchwork quilt of understanding & not understanding, I kneel.

Mt17v15 'Have mercy' - I seldom pray this way, but it is the Jesus Prayer: 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' Declaring Jesus' God-ness, renouncing any sense of my own entitlement, clinging to grace and graces, acutely aware of my own frailty and the Christ's unique sufficiency. .. I found a strange piece of commentary debating the 'lunatick' translation of epilepsy here, (along with details of the effect of the moon on our condition.) The obscurity of these details perhaps reflects the breadth of our falleness: the many possible ways we are bound up in systems, forces, spirits, diseases, addictions, conditions – united in their effect, that is, self-destruction. Throwing our selfs into the fire, sinking our selfs beneath the waves, imperiling our bodies, wasting our souls, letting it all go to seed and rust, oh the free-fall of despair. 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'

Mt17v16 'they could not cure him' But of course. Are there healings? Is it possible? Not for these disciples, it seems. Why not? There is a supernaturalism-fail going on here. But what does the fail consist in? I think on every not-healing I've not-achieved or not-attempted. What did I lack? At one level I lack sufficient v15-mercy, and at another level I lack sufficient v17-faith, but in-between those, I lack a supernaturalism. Supernaturalism is an unstable isotope, decomposing from you-can-walk-on-water to a vague-theism and then to all-out-naturalism, decaying from CSL's 'I believe..' to 'one does feel..' constantly. I lose sight of Jesus for half a minute, and my faithing switches to automatic autopoietic autorelated, the retractable roof on my Centre Court closes and I run on my own self-summoned magic and ritual, in memory of healings past.. Could you cure this child? No. Epilepsy is yet incurable. No?

Mt17v17-18 In which Jesus is cross with me, for my lack of faith. Perverse of heart, & consequently unable to discern truth to believe rightly or clearly, like our chaotic Jg18. So actions are impaired, a vicious cycle. Caught in my double-mindedness, begrudgingly to ask – what do you want to say to me, God, about my motivation, perversion & perception? It is hard to bear your irritation, as it was hard to hear words of withdrawal last night, my response is to blank out, curl up, resort to manipulative, self-justifying, flailing, wailing ways. I think of the Hollingsworth paper on the patterns of attachment, rupture & repair in prayer, as the infant & caregiver. Do please come back, like the good mother, to bear me again, that I might learn. I can learn from this absence, if I know you'll take my hands back. Ps51v11-12 cast me not away from your presence..restore to me the joy of salvation.

Mt17v19-20 If you've not cast out a demon or cured epilepsy recently.. it could be because your faith is smaller than a mustard seed. Cheery? Convicting? Condemning? Bah!? What am I doing wrongly? Do you still want to receive these text messages? Sigh. And yet, but yet.. Jesus is not in the self-pity business. Contrast Sarah's Key, a literary exercise of calculated wallowing in culpable futility, the export of a drug, cathartic in its emotional pornography. Oh woe is me, I do not have and I'll never learn to ask rightly Jm4v3! Read again, there is Hope. Gill notes mustard seeds as a common Middle Eastern measure of minisculity (ref Al Anbiya' 21:47). A fascinatingly obscure, but unintentionally encouraging comparison. Islam's mustard seeds are inert, a millimetric accuracy regarding the weighing of your sins and virtues. By radical contrast, the seeds here are Ferngully's explosive ingredients. Small is beautiful, sufficient, effective. Start small, move mountains. .. Also, of moving mountains, there is not SMZO's  beleaguered pluperfect 'could have moved..' but rather (niv) 'can' lah.

Mt17v21-22 Of verses edited, throws up the seeming fragility, contingency & ambiguity of the text. Why do you trust yourself to the New Testament? Really though. At one level the clumsiness adds to my confidence of its labour, knowing the Heythropians beavering away in the biblical studies department, obsessing over details – there's an element to which taking the experts' word on historicity etc seems reasonable, & all the more so for footnotes & absentees. Still, in the face of goo.gl/oYsGR can I still defend my trust? I'm still going on a 'you have heard it said', am I not? 'but I say to you...' Afeared of pitting Jesus against scripture problematically, what can be said less reductively than 'because these particular historians said so'? Evoking Wynn again, perhaps my primitive sense of God is given conceptual enrichening by scripture, which in turn allows a testifiably deeper intimacy with this God.

Mt17v23-24 Death and taxes, innit. Being flippant. And such are we when we consider Jesus' death as inevitable, even more so his resurrection. Rising again, it's just what Messiahs do, no? I am more and more convinced that intellectual conversion is necessarily very miraculous. There are two chasms to be vaulted. 1. Historic. 2. Semiotic. So, 1. 'They will kill him..' Jesus died, a real death, in real time, the same real time that is continuous, extending to this morning's sunrise in a stream of causality flowing into my present, a stack of dominoes, billiard balls, consequences. We killed the son of God, the guilt endures. The appeal of popular Occasionalism's mysteriocisation of causality is that, in rendering time as discontinuous moments, we are freed from a debt to history. .. 2. '..raised to life..' and 'twas brillig in the slithy toves..' and 'colourless green ideas sleep furiously..' Dead men don't rise.

Mt17v25-26 Sort of picturing it, the busy, instant claims we make on Christ's behalf, out & about in the world. The confrontation later when the door is 6v6 shut. Here I am, cold coffee, tonkable tumbler,  four walls, what's your question? Thinking also of the recurring question of over-self-consciousness as a destructive way – can Christ's consciousness of his Christology teach me about his Christness, he displays his personality & gifts. Maybe I've read too much philosophy, maybe if I imitated Christ better I'd just think less about being self-conscious, & so I'd be less self-conscious.

Mt17v27 Fishy business? You've heard it said this is a passage about taxes, tithing, the regulatory principle, 1Co8v13.. Yes. But also. Don't lose sight of the fish. This is my dissertation. Parabolic Realism. Close your eyes, and with *why is there anything at all?* in the back of your mind, allow the vast coral reef of delectable thingumies to swim through, as a glittering shoal: Mercury, Venus, fridge magnets, hummus, Spandau Ballet, whiskers on kittens, microchips, hatstands, Harman's party of object-oriented speculators may be playing fast and loose with orthodox continental philosophy, but they do so with such wonder, such vivid colour, such delight! In the next chapter 18v3 and then again in 19v14 Jesus is going to call us to come as children. This is it, Jb38, who put the smiles on the orchids, who taught the honeybee to dance, and who puts the coins in fishes? Love you to text me a list of your favourite things.

Over-sized pig's ears, butterflies, hops, wifi, bikes, yellow roses.

found flowers: 042

tread lightly.

texting matthew sixteen

Red sky at night, shepherd's delight. Text me of a morning a shepherd's warning. 07729056452

Mt16v1-2 Passages aligning as though to answer the request that God teach us how to pray, how to ask & when & why. Even if Pascal's heart-and-reason distinction is not exactly what's at play here we can still say that a wrong heart attitude looks wilfully for reasons of the wrong kind. Conversation on Monday about how the Met Office bracketing rainfall in percentiles of ten was a weird one, giving us 0% chance of rain today, weirder though is 72.4% chance of emotional turmoil. So weather & the heart. So inappropriate measuring sticks. You want a red-sky sign so that you can reason from manifest to manifest, but Jesus wants to reason from manifest to latent. & the heart resists. Jesus, put our hearts in question, that we pray reason of the right kind.

Mt16v3-4 'sign from heaven' (v1) What is your heaven? What are its signs? Idols function at two levels: transcendent & immanent; faraway & near (Dick Keyes); deep & surface (Tim Keller); pie-in-the-sky & cake-on-the-plate; conceptual & tangible; Platonic & Aristotelian; ready-to-hand & present-to-hand.. Does this make sense? We exist in an everyday world of signs, symptoms, appetites, lusts, disorders and addictions, many of them quite conscious, if overpowering. And then there are our gods, more unconscious, but these are the vision of ultimate reality that we have, from which divine signs come, and towards which we spend our energies. Heaven & its signage. Heaven is at the top of a ladder; signs are the rungs we climb by, signs reveal on what wall the ladder is leaning, signs are a foretaste, a derivative, a down-payment from that heaven. Jesus doesn't give the Pharisees a sign and he can't give you a sign, if your ladder of signs is leaning against the wrong wall. There is a God, he does speak through signs, there is a Kingdom of Heaven, it is in-breaking into our present reality, we should expect signs, Jesus says we should have eyes to see the signs which are happening all around us. However, there is a not inconsiderable difficulty of semiotic dissonance, seeking the signs, from the wrong place, and ascribing the wrong meaning. The prosperity gospel is a case in point: if you get the car, this signifies God's approval.. Sign-reading is further addled by ads: the goal of advertising is to forge new, mysterious, convincing associations between Heavens (comfort, approval, power, control) and the advertised product. So Babel's semiotic dissonance frequently affects our assessment of the good as it pertains to salvation, as it pertains to lifestyle. Why 'adulterous generation'? Adultery pursues immanent sexual signage, because the faraway God is also misplaced. Extra-marital or pre-marital sex are efforts to foretaste marriage misconstruing a connection between the present reality and the thing to come, it is a ladder leaning on the wrong wall. Rather seek the sign of Jonah: if heaven is the good life and the good life is death to self, service of others and submission to God, then signage which anticipates that is likely to be of a similar flavour? The idolatry here, just as Samson's serving other gods,  is terrifying places to dabble: see Jesus left them Mt16v4, as he left Samson Jg16v20.

Mt16v5-6 Yeast really can't be compartmentalised aye. It influences the whole. & we are wholes, the images we see, words we hear, anxieties we bury, they touch every point, the replicate in each cell. There is no way of de-yeasting bread, except by transubstantiation. It cannot be extracted, only transformed. Total transformation can noly happen with total surrender. So again again, while foraging through yellow stickers in the 4pm bread bins: surrender.

Mt16v7-8 'O ye of little faith!' In what does 'little faith' consist? Three possibilities: 1. In not grasping the metaphor. The faithing mind is a parabolic mind, it believes in more-than, it understands reality as meaning-laden, pregnant with possibility, an allusive adventure furnished with mustardseeds, pearls-of-great-price, lost-sheep, lamps, bushels, wedding-feasts, fig-trees.. (the Kingdom of heaven is frankly object-oriented..) 2. In not giving due heed to the fearful implications  of yeast. Yeast is an active ingredient. Self-righteousness, spectacle-centred-epistemology, hypocrisy, religione – these are an active evil, even a tiny amount added to the dough of your life will insidiously, infectiously, rot you, actively. 3. In not taking your quandaries to Jesus: 'why are you discussing amongst yourselves?' rather, 16v16 is the response of faith: worship, with open eyes and open mouth.

Mt16v9-10 Knowledge, perception & memory, oh my. goo.gl/VN4Ni  Remembering, repeating & working-through, that too. Goo.gl/AdbGJ the stories we tell? Goo.gl/xlG68 The bread we ate? Teach us, God, how to remember the bread we take? Forgetting Jg8v4, but knowing, the Lest-I-Forget of faith Ps137v5-6

Mt16v11-12 'How is it that you fail to understand..' - What do the disciples lack? How should we judge this lack? Is it possible to condemn them as obstinately bread-obsessed literalists, exegeting with their stomachs, superstitiously following Jesus for selfish reasons. But this takes for granted the luxury of parabolic thinking. They lack the fullness of symbolic awareness, but don't we all, sometimes. Symbolic thinking requires a secure environment during a child's development, such security is a gift now to be taken for granted. Thinking symbolically rightly, associating correctly, this is the gift of interpretation. It is a gift. And, contrary to certain blasé Heideggerians, dwelling poetically is not an obvious thing, or some lost default state, it is miraculous. The disciples are likely adolescent, learning to learn still. Jesus speaks cryptically also because intensive study is rewarding.

Mt16v13-14 Who do they I am? Always already thrown into things other people say about Jesus. Somebody first spoke his name to you. Cultured & conspiracy theoried & caught up. What have they told you about him? Reincarnation, myth, saviour? & why did they say it & what can be discerned? If the elephant can talk though, it makes the difference. The separation of what-others-say-about-Jesus & what-Jesus-says-to-me can become problematically solipsistic & arrogant. Yet. The latter should not be reduced to the former. There is a something leftover when the words have been taken apart, or hidden within that explodes into fierce, behelden surprised by joy. So towards v15-16, this much I know.

Mt16v15-16 “Who do you say I am?” It matters who you think Jesus is, but subtly, that's no what he asks. Who do you say he is? Say is, aloud. To curtains glowing in the sunrise, to your neighbour's armpit on a crowded tube, to your ten free most-dialled numbers, or just text me back. Jesus is... Use words (because you have to). 'legete' (gk): to conclude, pronounce, put forth, declare.. Who is Jesus for you? Who do you say he is? What have you found him to be? Mine is too often too tacit a faith to be useful or authentic or delightful. Encourage me.

Mt16v17-18 Churchly fabric, what is church? Build on a person, based on a declaration, enduring forever. The foundation of the church is embodied persons declaring as best they can (i) the divinity of Christ & (ii) His living salvific relationship with the world. The declaration is Christ's own impulsive joy. Christ loves to be known. Church begins with Seeing Christ, as we Gn16v13 are fully seen. This the foundation, the building is another story..

Mt16v19 Your confessing “Jesus is the Christ” has the power to be bind&loose people (interpreting the 'whatever' as persons (in the context of the 'keys of the kingdom' (via Carson and esvsb)) – persons as opposed to demons or broken-hearts or rules-of-conduct or other bindables etc..) Confessing or proclaiming “Jesus is the Christ” has this dividing power in the same way that magnets have the power to attract and repel; in the way that this heatwave's sunshine both melts the ice and hardens the clay; in the same way that we, in being the aroma of Christ, are death to death and life to life 2Co2v16. Being a keyholder to this garden is a massive massive responsibility, see Mt23v13! Don't get locked out.

Mt16v20 “tell no one..” is about the practical challenge of 'saviour'-subversion and the definitional challenge of non-violent semiotics. Walter Wink makes much of the hegemonic myths of redemptive violence and systemic domination, where all power is for power-over, all heroism is Hollywood, all sufficient victory always entails the violent overthrow of another. Into this unanimous expectation for a bread-making Mt4v3, gravity-defying Mt4v6, militarist mt4v9, Jesus enters as a 'hero', but so radically different a hero as to demand a redefining of the word 'hero'. So his ministry is spent in efforts both to-be non-violent and to-be-understood-as non-violent. Tell-no-one, is a sort of, don't-open-the-oven-door-while-the-cake-is-rising, Jesus is brewing a redefinition, vulnerable at every moment to misappropriate in the hands of our expectations and projections. Such rigorous, non-violent intentionality should mark our own incarnations. Gently now.

Mt16v21-22 Jesus began to show them. Show show show. Show me, God. Show me who you are & what you're thinking. Show me what thoughts & emotions point to. Show me what you're doing & what you will do. Show me the meaning of suffering, show me the meaning of words. Show me things I don't understand. Confound me in your showing, & then fight with me, as I with you, as one who loves you. Show me instances & particulars, show me a bigger song, show me redemption colours. Bear with me when I pronounce otherwise, forgive me when I'm wrong. Good marriage advice for the bride of Christ: never say never, never say always. So the constant fearsome openness to the new dynamic the Other of God. The subversion of even subversion. Here I am.

Mt16v23-24 'Jesus is the Christ' is rockly, you can build a church on it or you can trip over it. 16v18's 'Petra' now becomes the stumbling 'skandalon' (gk) of 1Cor1v23. Carson puts it thus, 'Peter did and did not understand..'. Somewhat as Samson is and is not a type of Christ. Crucial is the fullness: justice & mercy, king & servant. (Eph4v13 similarly encourages pursuit of fullness in your grasping, imaging, representing Christ) If you make a part truth a whole truth, the resulting untruth may not merely be unfortunate, it may be Satanic. This is not an argument for obsessing over obscurer extremities of the 'fullness', but rather those toughest, most subversive aspects: Jesus death. 'Set your mind' on those things, Rm8v6. Set your mind on the things of God. Set your mind on Ph1v21: to live is Christ, to die is gain. Set your mind on Christos kerdos. Be set on that.

Mt16v25-26 I am inclined to think about this in terms of lived subjectivity vs self-objectification, one of my favourite drums to bang, the 'saving' of one's life the 'Save As' of a CV-accruing blogged-subjectivity I am still at war in myself over. It is this, but more than this. 'Deny' & 'lose', says Jesus. He asks for more than life in the present, He asks that my here-&-now be kenotic, that it be self-emptying. This is the overcoming of one's ugly totalising self. It is a new orientation not only to the now but to the other, human & divine. It is the active unlearning of inherited niceties so that this orientation can be authentically wrenched out of oneself. It is unto death. I agree with Carson that this is an eschatological orientation, but that that orients us towards the end. If Bultmann is right as to the eschatological slumbered in the present, the orientation is here. Both then.

Mt16v27-28 When? Ps13v1-2 How long, how long, how long? The Christian life is lived in the tensions of tenses, learning patient participles. Amongst the concepts wrestled-with-during and imaged-by premarriage are the difficulties of time, teleology and reward. Reward. V27 'then he will reward..' render, repay, requite.. This is not a mercenary's abstract remuneration, but the proper reward of a lover's delayed gratification. Over-realised eschatology applied to engagement plays out an over-reaction against the supposed (and sometimes evident) world-negation of apocalyptic eschatology. Reward. We live at The World's End, amongst a dying, distracted, and impatient people, for whom there is no reward, no not-yet, nothing worth waiting for in their world-view. However, under-realised eschatology is equally damaging. v28 promises Life before death. For to live is Christ – it's own reward, but one for which you will be yet further rewarded.

200words: summer shows

 "And one more thing: The phenomenological similarity of all the results of parametricism exists only in its shared contrast with all prior, static, discrete architectures." Patrik Schumacher, Log28, Summer 2013

Architecture is faith, hoping in things unseen, and nowhere more ambitiously than in the summer shows. Here is the future wrought unfettered by pragmatics or planning: the promises made for the Jerusalem that we, the next generation of designers, will build for you.  Pray tell me, what is today's kingdom of heaven, and who does it belong to?

Bartlett Unit 17's models milled out of ore and coal wallow in pitch gloomth, a cadaver of a landscape, the texture of death, snarling a pessimism, apocalyptically but impeccably. The architect-as-undertaker offers a cinematic macabre deliciously manufactured, rendering a superior brand of the popular bleakitecture.  Elsewhere and at the AA, the future belongs to scripters, architects are but midwives to a world already programmed to be made by robots made by robots; tomorrow's buildings increasingly conform to the trope of Grasshopper's polkadot geometries mapped parametrically across impossibly complex, infinitely variable, contortionist NURBic facades. Some corners of this show are so supersaturated with these doilie weavings, swooping and squiggly, romantic, rhapsodic and baroque, as to proclaim a glorious, or tedious, renaissance of mannerist ornament. The Cass, by contrast, knowingly, wants architects as the diggers and dreamers of the family: lots of graphite and plaster, lots of tea stains and texture, less cybernetics, more ontology. Are we?

img: AA drl