In Remberance of You - Lest We Forget

'God of our fathers, known of old,

Lord of our far-flung battle line,

Beneath whose awful hand we hold

Dominion over palm and pine —

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

            Lest we forget—lest we forget!'

Someone left some ANZAC biscuits, beautifully wrapped in baking paper with a sprig of rosemary, on our door knob. Many would know the symoblic signifance of red poppy flowers as those who fought for us in the Great War would have died, whose crimson blood would have stained the battlefields with a shade of red in Flanders Field. Rosemary also has a particular significance to Australians and New Zealanders as it's found growing wild on the Gallipoli peninsula where Australians and New Zealanders landed early on the morning of 25 April 1915 with allied forces in Ottoman Turkey that marked the start of the Gallipoli Campaign. Rosemary is for remembrance.

"Remembrance is a personal, therefore a subjective, process. It matters all the more to nuture it collectively" wrote Erik Varden in his book the Shattering of Loneliness. This is in rebembrance of Christ who died for us. The Christian condition unfolds within the certainty that ultimate reality, the source of all that is, is a personal reality of communion, not a metaphysical abstraction. Men and women, made 'in the image and likeness' of God, bear the mark of that original communion stamped on their being. The Scripture repeatedly exhorts us to 'remember'. The remembrance enjoined is partly introspective and existential, partly historical, for the God who took flesh to redeem our sins and shattered our loneliness, leaves traces in history.

At the heart of this is the idea of remembrance whereby we must properly remember that we are created, that we are led and guided by God (since Genesis and Exodus) and that Jesus bids us (through the four gospels' description of the last supper and the passion narrative) to do something in memory of Him. The communion of saints is, importantly, a shared and collective experience in remebrance of Christ. As Varden describes, "My capacity for truth, however blessed it may be by nature, however extendable by grace, is inadequate to fathom truth in its fulness. My remembrance, too, is limited. Even the memory of God, maintained in solitude, can disappoint. Anyone who prays the psalms will have been struck by this honest admission: I remembered my God and I groaned (Psalm 76:4). To be consoling and complete, remembrance in truth has to be shared. The spirit performs his consoling, illuminating work ecclesial. His operation is all of a piece: he consoles by creating concord; he leads us towards truth by drawing us out of our cloistered selves into a shared remembrance that sweetens even bitter memories with gratitude. He enables a gradual passage from what is piecemeal towards what is whole. This process, amazingly, embraces the future as well as the past: [The spirit of truth] will declare to you the things that are to come, says Jesus, before he goes on: 'He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you' (John 16:13-14), even though to pursue truth is to swim upstream from Hades, to choose light over darkness, to refuse disintegration." A constant battle. Yet, only by remembering the past will we move forward in the present and continue in our pursuit of truth into the future. As the old testament reminds us, "Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life" (Deuteronomy 4:7-9), we are reminded that a nation never fogets the true source of its sorrow and success in rembrance of the sacrifice for us to have what we have today on this ANZAC Day.

So we pray on this ANZAC Day that: 

O Lord, our ruler and guide in this life and the life eternal, in whose hands are the destinies of this and every nation, we give you thanks for the freedoms we enjoy in this land and for those who laid down their lives to defend them. We pray that all the people of Australia, who are gratefully remembering the courage and sacrifice of those who died for us, may have the grace to live in a spirit of justice, generosity, and peace through Jesus Christ our Lord. Above all, let us be reminded that Christ has been raised from the dead. In the words of Corinthians, since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being - for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. Let us properly remember that Jesus Christ has bid us in the communion of saints, to do so in remembrance that as often as we eat the bread of your body and drink the cup as the new covenant in your blood, we do so remembering your sacrifice for our sake to proclaim death, redeem us and rise again forevermore. We pray all this in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

For Want of Justice

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from saving me,
    so far from my cries of anguish?

...

I am poured out like water,
    and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart has turned to wax;
    it has melted within me.  My mouth is dried up like a potsherd,
    and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
    you lay me in the dust of death.16 Dogs surround me,
    a pack of villains encircles me;
    they pierce my hands and my feet.17  All my bones are on display;
    people stare and gloat over me.  They divide my clothes among them
    and cast lots for my garment.
(Psalm 22:1-18)

As a lawyer, I have a cynical veiw of what justice means. The hope of what were once young ambitions for social justice erode overtime as we witness the icy reality of this world. People we look up to as role models sometimes manifest morally dubious behaviours and at worse, unsettling judgements of human iniquity, bringing into question basic ethics in those who are purportedly the guardians of the justice system and admitted under oath before the court into the legal profession. 

When 2 Thessalonians looked at the man of lawlessness as an antichrist who will oppose Christ and substitute himself in Christ's place beofre the Second Coming, the man of sin is described as "The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, 10 and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved." (2 Thessalonians 2:9-10). Perhaps the man of lawlessness embodies the satan within all of us as no one on earth is righteous except for Christ. Yet in the lead up to Christ's passion and crucifixtion on Good Friday, Jesus went through four trials and three declarations of innocence as the man-made system of justice sought to judge a man of God unjustly. In the gospel narratives, Jesus was taken to the private residence of Caiaphas (the sadducee high priest) after his arrest then presented before Pontious Pilot who found no basis for a charge against him and dispensed him to Herod who then sent Christ back to Pilate for an ultimate charge of crucifiction. 

The Sanhedrin is meant to be an established court based in Jerusalem with strict guidelines on how to function, including a prohibition against trials after dark, and a requirement that they occur in a public venue. The gospel accounts paint a picture of the Sanhedrin violating all these and the Torah during the trial of Christ. Matthew 26:57 states that Jesus was taken to the house of Caiaphas the High Priest of Israel, where the scribes and the elders were gathered together. Matthew 27:1 adds that, the next morning, the priests held another meeting. Luke 22:54 states that Jesus was taken to "the high priest's house", where he was mocked and beaten that night. It is added that as soon as it was day, the chief priests and scribes gathered together and led Christ away into their council. John 18:12-14 described that Jesus was first taken to Annas, the father-in-law of Caiaphas, who was the high priest at the time so it appears that Caiaphas sought Annas' confirmation of Caiaphas' actions. So John's gospel has the added scene where Jesus was sent from Annas to Caiaphas the high priest, and Pontius Pilate in the Praetorium.

By the time Jesus was before Pilate, we witnessed a series of weak and cowardly attempt by the Pontious Pilate to be fair but who ultimately succumbed to the damning demand of Jesus' own people. When Pilate said "take him yourselves and judge him by your own law (John 18: 30), he was met by the response of "But we have no right to execute anyone" as the Jews objected and condemned Christ to death. As the religions professed by the Jews and the Romans were different and since at the time Jerusalem was part of Roman Judea, the charges of the Sanhedrin against Jesus held no power before Pilate and only the Roman court had the jurisdiction to crucify a defendant. From the three charges brought by the Jewish leaders (perverting the nation, forbidding the payment of tribute, and sedition against the Roman Empire), Pilate picked up on the third one, asking: "Are you the King of the Jews?" to which Jesus replied with "You have said so" (Matthew 27:11, Mark 15:2, Luke 23:3). Then the hearing continued and Pilate finally asked Jesus "What is truth?". This was said after learning that Jesus did not wish to claim any terrestrial kingdom. He was therefore not a political threat and could be seen as innocent of such a charge. Stepping back outside, Pilate publicly declared that he found no basis to charge Jesus, asking them if the Jews wanted Jesus freed, which they declined, preferring the freedom of Barabbas the criminal. This meant capital punishment for Jesus. The universal rule of the Roman Empire limited capital punishment strictly to the tribunal of the Roman governor and Pilate decided to publicly wash his hands as not being privy to Jesus' death through his declaration of Christ's innocence. Nevertheless, since only the Roman authority could order crucifixion and since the penalty was carried out by Roman soldiers, Pilate (in reflecting the demands of the Jews) was responsible for Jesus' death, a judgment imposed on the innocent lamb through a clear miscarriage of justice.

The trial of Jesus at Pilate's court (according to Luke also briefly at the court of Herod Antipas) showed the wavering of Pilate and his consideration of the crowd's opinion to give Barabbas amnesty and condemn Jesus to death. The abduction of Jesus by Roman soldiers and the mocking mistreatment of Jesus unmistakably point to the sins of Christ's own people who brought about his death as prophesied by Isaiah. Israel's problem was also humanity's problem yet abandoned and alienated by his own people and later by his own Father, “it is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.” (Psalm130).  Despite the farcical trial of injustice, God forgave us as Christ pleaded and made intercessions for us to reconcile with God who judges rightly to "forgive them for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34). As Isaiah 53 accounts:

Surely he took up our pain
    yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.
⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.
⁶ We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
    each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and afflicted,
    yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
    and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
    so he did not open his mouth.
⁸ By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
    Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
    for the transgression of my people he was punished

So Christ, trialed, humiliated, flogged twice, carried the cross literally and figuratively to his own death for God's atonemnet of humanity's sin. Through the lense of Psalm 69, we are provided with a fleeting glimpse into this moment endured by messianic son of man: "Insults have broken my heart, so that I am in despair. I looked for pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none. They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink." So Christ, poured out like water,  went to the cross for our sake yet sinners like Barabbas walked free. The resounding constrast highlights a divine injustice and love from the Father for us as he sent Christ who was stripped naked to hang on the Cross in utter humiliation whilst other sinners like us divide Christ's clothes among them to cast lots for his garment in caupable ignorance. Yet, the cry of direliection due to the unfathonable abandment by God to let his Son of Man die physcally and spiritually on the Cross in Psalm 22 is followed by an unwavering faith and prayer: "But you, Lord, do not be far from me. You are my strength; come quickly to help me. Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs. Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the wild oxen...  I will declare your name to my people."

So when there is no faith in any justice of this world, we can have faith in a world that will be and in the righteous judgement of God the Father. For He nailed the only Son of the man on the cross as atonement for our sins so that we can reconcile with God in the Holy Spirit out of an abundance of love we do not deserve. And in this we have faith, Amen. 

With acknowledgement of copyrights subsisting in the St Marks Good Friday service and the sermons by The Rev Dr David Peterson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM2EbDtkfJ0

Glory to God

Hallelujah (הַלְלוּיָהּ)

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding,  he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory. (Ephesians 1:4-14, NRSV)

Evening Prayers in 2020

Almighty and merciful father,

You have brought us together this evening in remembrance of your glory and your grace. Against the worldly pleasure of our day and age, you have redeemed us by the blood of Christ and made us holy and blameless in your sight. Please use us as instruments of your will and as you see fit, because we exist to glorify your name and not ourselves or this world. Thank you for your unconditional love that you have bestowed upon us who are your children. Please forgive us for our trespasses and turn our disgrace into the grace of your miracle. We pray that you will shape and mould us into the men and women you have created us and called us to be, so that we might be for the praise of your glory and walk with you in this world and the world eternal. Let us delight in you as you delight in us, and weave us into your tapestry of grace and your divine plan for all things that you have created under the heavens and on this earth.

As we gather together at church and at home tonight, we pray for each other and for your Holy Spirit to strength us when the uncertainty of this pandemic lingers on. Have mercy on this world our Lord, on this nation and on us. Please bring help to Victoria that has now recorded 237 new cases as of today, please bring peace to Israel as thousands gather in protest at Tel Aviv over economic hardship and please bring wisdom to world leaders as global cases passed 12.6 million and as the US has seen over 66,000 cases over the past 24 hours again with fatalities. Father, we pray for your miracle, a solution to this and a vaccine for this virus, as we gather in your name and pray for those who have turned away from you. In Christ, we have obtained an inheritance so that we can set our hope in Him and live to be the praise of your glory. We thank you that you have sent your only Son into this world and that in Christ, we have become your children and your treasure.

As we belong to you, our Heavenly Father, please have mercy on us and help us glorify you in all that we do as we enjoy you forever. 

Amen

Sweet Sorrow of Au Revoir?

Never to bid good-bye  

Or lip me the softest call, 

Or utter a wish for a word, while I 

Saw morning harden upon the wall, 

Unmoved, unknowing 

That your great going 

Had place that moment, and altered all.

- Thomas Hardy

Why does goodbye bring its moments of sadness to our hearts? I have always thought that the French has got it right in the words "au revoir" rather than "goodbye" for having hope until we meet again. Until now. Interestingly, the English word "goodbye" has its origin in "Godbwyes" as a contraction of the phrase of "God be with ye" used in as late as the 16th century.   

And we see this in Christ's ascension. Forty days after Easter, Jesus ascended into the heavens after his death and resurrection from the Cross. As Leon Morris has put it, there is an air of finality about Christ's ascension in Luke's portrayal as part of the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts that followed. "It is the decisive close of one chapter and the beginning of another" because it is the consummation of Christ's earthly work, the indication to followers that His mission is accomplished and His work among them has come to a decisive end. Yet, it is not a parting forever but simply that  they can expect to see Him in the old way no more.

Jesus took the initiative and led the disciples as far as Bethany in the lead up to Easter then forty days after the resurrection, the ascension also took place in Bethany on the slopes of the Mount of Olives. Luke described this event rather simply. His gospel speaks only of Jesus as being parted from the disciples during the act of blessing them and 'they worshipped him' (in Greek). Whatever their view of His Person during His ministry, the passion, resurrection and now ascension of Christ had convinced the disciples that He was divine. It is interesting that their feeling at this final parting was not one of grief but of great joy. Worship is their response to His ascension as Christ was worthy to be worshipped and they gave Him His due with more understanding, far more than what they had previously. 

Leon Morris has pointed out that Luke began his gospel in the temple. Now he brings it to an end with the disciples continually in the temple blessing God. It is a fitting acknowledgement of the grace that God has shown so singularly in the events he has narrated. For "it is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority" (Acts 1:7, NRSV). Yet, all does not end here. Far from it, Jesus continued to say "but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8, NRSV). So "when the day of Pentecost came", we see the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles and other followers of Christ while they were celebrating the Feast of Weeks (Shavuot, חג השבועות) in Jerusalem. 

Pentecost celebrates the incoming wheat harvest which marks God's provision for new life and renewal every year in the Jewish tradition. So the timing of the Pentecostal narrative symbolises both continuity with the giving of the law in Jewish tradition and the central role of the Holy Spirit in the Christian faith that marks a separation from the traditional Jewish faith grounded in the Torah and Mosaic laws, because the spirit is now understood as an aspect of Christ poured into followers of Christ in fulfilment of the prophecy (Joel 2:28-32). Pope Leo I has drawn an analogy between Jewish practices and the Christian feast day in the 5th century. "As once to the Hebrew people, freed from Egypt, the law was given on Mount Sinai on the 50th day after the sacrifice of the lamb, so after the Passion of the Christ when the true Lamb of God was killed, on the 50th day from His resurrection, the Holy Spirit came down on the apostles and the community of believers" whereby such descent of the Holy Spirit upon disciples on Pentecost was "the fulfilment of a long-awaited promise."

So with the departure of Christ from earth to the heavens and the descent of Holy Spirit to earth from the heavens, a new era of renewal and salvation by God began in Trinity. Even though the Father and the Son are now in the heavens, the Holy Spirit, sent by God and the risen Lord Jesus, is their very presence among his people and the same spirit that had filled and empowered Christ for his ministry. In contrast to the Tower of Babel where different languages were used by God to divide men as his judgement fell upon their prideful efforts of building a tower of advancement in arrogance to live without God, here, different tongues united people in God to mark the beginning of a new community of God's people.

Just as theologians see in the ascension a taking into heaven the humanity of Jesus as he is seated on the right hand of God, the ensuing Pentecost sees the descent of Holy Spirit so that God and Christ can be with us in spirit on earth. The incarnation is not something casual and fleeting but a divine action with permanent consequences. The theologian Moule once argued that if the ascension means the taking of Christ's humanity into heaven, "it means that with it will be taken the humanity which Christ has redeemed - those who are Christ's, at His coming. It is a powerful expression of the redemption of this world, in contrast to mere escape from it". So at Pentecost, God brought to us a new life of renewal through the Holy Spirit so we can rejoice and join in with Christ under trinity in this world after his departure from it.

The hymn "God be with you till we me again" is written by Jeremiah Rankin as a Christian goodbye. The etymology of this now modern English word was the basis for this song as Christ does not desert us. “For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call and with the sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever." (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, NRSV).

So here's hoping it is au revoir and goodbye, because we will always have hope in Him.

All moral rights belong to the author except for other works quoted or referred to.

On Solitude and Solidarity

"Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” (Luke 9:58, NIV)

In crisis do we see humanity at its worst. On a daily basis, we have seen much of the COVID-19 fear and fatigue in response to relentless news and government measures to date and for months to come. For some, it has brought about an upsetting level of upheavals in life including loss of job, family and loved ones. Others suffer from social isolation in very real ways. At times, I am exasperated at how much better we can or should be. Perhaps we have all seen enough of behaviours driven by self-interest on a national and international scale, which manifest themselves sometimes in a disappointing lack of basic human decency in community, personal lives, workplace practices and the mass reaction of utter panic (some are simply unwarranted).

Yet at times, we also see glimpses of humanity at its best. Instead of self-interest, we see self-deprivation for the good of others. Our frontline fighters continue to battle on, in wards and intensive care units, to save patients in public and private hospitals. Beautiful tales of love, compassion and kindness are also not lost, least amongst some churches and communities, even when the church doors are firmly closed. Frankly, the church is never about its building but the body of Christ and us, who are members in the body of Christ.

And Easter is a true reminder of that. Whilst there are no gatherings to recall the fear and foreboding in the Son of Man's last hours alone on the cross or to celebrate the resurrection of the Son of God, perhaps and rightly so, the solemn solitude and solidarity of Easter 2020 should be remembered in our individual psyche as to what the passion narratives actually tell us if we delve deeper. From Christ's triumphal entry into the city of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, we saw the countdown to calvery in six days that culminated in Christ's death, desolation and deprivation on the Friday in the synoptists of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. 

I have disliked the name "Good Friday" because there is nothing good about the Friday that Jesus, on the cross, breathed his last as the Son of Man. In Old English, the day was called "Long Friday" (Langa frigedæg), and this term was adopted and is still used in Scandinavian languages and Finnish. In Latin, the name used by the Catholic Church until 1955 was Feria sexta in Parasceve ("Friday of Preparation [for the Sabbath]"). In the 1955 reform of Holy Week, it was renamed Feria sexta in Passione et Morte Domini ("Friday of the Passion and Death of the Lord"), and in the new rite introduced in 1970, shortened to Feria sexta in Passione Domini ("Friday of the Passion of the Lord"). The word Passion is the short final period in the life of Christ and derived from the Latin verb patior, passus sum, which means "to suffer, bear, endure".

And the Passion narratives tell of a man who was welcomed by the great crowd that spread the palm branches in front of him as he rode into Jerusalem to celebrate a royal King of Israel on a donkey in fulfilment of Zechariah's prophecy, and who, six days later, was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities on the cross labelled the King of the Jews, in fulfilment of Isaiah's prophecy. 

This very man was alone in agony at the garden of Gethsemane in the Mount of Olives after the last supper at the upper room. The day of Unleavened Bread marked when the Passover victims or sacrifices were killed according to the calendar of Jesus' time as some such as Leon Morris suggested in Tyndale New Testament Commentaries. As his soul was "overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death" (Mark 14:32, NIV), Jesus knelt down and prayed alone to the Father that "if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." (Matthew 26:39, NIV). In Luke's gospel, we get a glimpse of Jesus "being in anguish, prayed more earnestly and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground" (Luke 22:39, NIV). And so the Son of Man, who has nowhere to lay his head in this world, prayed alone and was worn out by grief whilst his disciples that followed him simply could not stay awake let alone to truly understand the personal trial of Christ on that sorrowful night. As the cup in the Old Testament has associations of death, suffering and the wrath of God, it was no easy task to which Jesus shall go forth, alone, to the cross. Yet, his prayers centered on the Father's will rather than his own so that God's will may be done and not his will to be spared of what was to come. Frédéric Louis Godet sees this incident with significance for it, amongst many things, differentiates the sacrifice of the freely consenting Jesus from those of sacrificed animals who had no say in the matter. According to Godet, "At Gethsemane, Jesus did not drink the cup but he consented to drink it." A real internal battle was fought there where in true human agony, Jesus, the only person who knew what was to come, did not flee from or forsake the path on which he, and him alone, proceeded.

This is a man, passed over by Judas the Iscariot, disowned three times by Peter, and deserted by all other followers who fled and took flight from him in the moment that Jesus went to the cross alone so that the scriptures must be fulfilled (Mark 14:49, NIV).  And it was on the cross, dying by crucifixion, and often those who were crucified would die by asphyxiation whilst trying to pull oneself up in order to breathe against the gravity of one's own bleeding body through nailed wrists and feet, did Christ cry out "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani", knowing why. In affliction and abandonment, the Son of Man cried out to the Father, “my God, my God, why have you foresaken me" because Christ was human, even though he knew why he must be forsaken by God so the curtain of the temple can be torn in two, so that we can have a direct relationship with God the Father, and so that our sins can be wiped clean by the only innocent man who ever lived and died for us, who cried out in despair and direliction from the worst psychological and physical suffering that there can ever be because he is man, albeit the son of God. In addition to the tormenting and torturous penalty of crucifixion that was known and intended as the cruelest capital punishment at the time, the death of Christ on the cross is one in which after mockery on a man and messiah who performed miracles to save multitudes, he was forsaken by his people, his disciples, his very own Father in which God made him to be sin for us. He was alone, alienated and in the darkest hours, abandoned. 

Yet, in Easter there is hope. Christ is risen and he is risen indeed on Easter (also called Pascha in Greek and Latin or the Resurrection Sunday). So Easter is also about hope because "He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that free from sins, we might live for righteousness" as "by his wounds you have been healed." (1 Peter 2:24).  Just as the Pharisees, Sanhedrin, Caiaphas, Herod and Pilate plotted against Christ and his rise at the time, perceived as a threat to their political and religious rule that may lead to unrest and uprising, ironically, it is in Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection do we see the most powerful Christian message from God and ever since, the widespread message of Christ that has become truly worldwide. 

These 'kingly' authorities which represented law, religion and governance at the time were a stark contrast to Christ, who, as he approached Jerusalem and saw the city six days before the coss, wept over it.  As Jesus said to a city of his own people upon his triumphal entry that marked the beginning of his Passion, "if you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace - but now it is hidden from your eyes...because you did not recognise the time of God's coming to you." (Luke 10:42-43). It is against a backdrop of the joy in the unknowing crowd that Jesus wept and lamented lost opportunity. The Jerusalemites did not know the things that make for peace, which in the Hebrew understanding of peace, lies its emphasis on peace with God, the right relationship between the creature and the creator as a necessary ingredient in the true peace of Shalom (שָׁלוֹם ). It was this that the men of Jerusalem had failed to come to know and their failure to get to grips with the message of God was now final for "nation will rise aginst nation and kingdom against kingdom" (Luke 21:10). Yet, Christ died due to and rose for precisely the people like the Jerusalemites and us. This is because "at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person, someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:6-8)

And there is no greater hope to this broken world than this.

All moral rights belong to the author except for other works quoted or referred to.

On Shedding Tears

"Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters; and God shall wipe away tears from their eyes." (Revelations 7:15-17, KJV)

I never cried much growing up. In fact, I never quite understood why girls cry and shed tears so often and over somewhat trivial things, from receiving a sinister comment, wanting what she did not have, manipulating emotions of others to get what she wanted, to generally, wasting tears over guys. I remember attending my dad's funeral at the age of 8 and not having shed a single tear but stood silently beside my weeping mother, holding her hands in mine and hearing so called adults saying that I am too young to understand what is going on, all the while wishing I will hold it all together and wondering why no one understands the hurricane hurling inside my heart. But as I grew older, the flood gates to my tears seemed to have loosened or lost their strength. Either that or the lacrimal glands of my tears have become a lot more active.

Needless to say that not many ever saw my tears as I always try to hide them and almost never cry in front of people, other than my parents. Almost. Embarrassingly, tears rolled off my cheeks two days ago over a lovely dinner with a dear friend for no reason when a question triggered so much of what I still do not understand.

Da Vinci once said, "tears come from the heart and not from the brain." As an anonymous writer puts it and paints a more personal picture: "sometimes, memories sneak out of my eyes and roll down my cheeks." So perhaps, tears are how our heart speaks when our lips can't nor can the heart bear? Or perhaps, tears are the words our hearts express when our heads do not yet understand?

A simple and single most powerful moment in John's gospel is that "Jesus wept." (John 11:35). This famous verse occurs in John's narrative of the death of Lazarus, a follower of Jesus, as a prelude to Jesus' own death and resurrection in the later part of John's gospel in the New Testament of the bible. Lazarus' sisters sent word to Jesus of their brother's illness and impending death, but Jesus arrived four days after Lazarus died. After talking to the grieving sisters and seeing Lazarus' friends weeping, Jesus was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. When others asked "could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?" (John 11:37, RSV), Jesus came to the tomb of Lazarus and said "Did I not tell that if you would believe, you would see the glory of God?" (John 11:40, RSV) and brought Lazarus back to life. There is much said and written about the Lazarus of Bethany outside of the scripture, including in medieval Islamic tradition in which he was honoured as a pious companion of Jesus. These days, the name has connotation in science and popular culture as a literary term that is far from the theological view that as the subject of a prominent miracle of Jesus in the gospel of John, Lazarus points to the death and resurrection of Christ from the cross or as we know it, Jesus' crucifixion.

Yet, knowing that he can resurrect Lazarus, why did Jesus shed his tears? In contrast to most translated versions of our bible, the biblical Greek is perhaps the most moving in its encapsulation of emotions through a description of an action that "Jesus, he shed tears" (ἐδάκρυσεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς). What that action embodies is extremely profound. The shortest verse in the bible for all its simplicity is perhaps packed with emotional complexity. Some scholars say that one reason for Jesus' tears is the deep compassion that he felt for those who were suffering, and as "the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15, RSV), in Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus, we get a glimpse of how the Father feels over the affliction and grief the children of God experience. Linked to that is the origin of sin. Sin grieves God deeply, and so do the wages of sin, death (Romans 6:23, RSV). Ever since the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden eastward in Eden, God, not just mankind, had endured sin's or men's horrific destruction and relentless rebellion, from the early murder of Abel by Cain in Genesis, through raising heroes to their rise and eventual downfall in Judges and to the demise of kings including the best of them in 1 & 2 Kings. Death had consumed almost all human beings that God had created.

As someone with artistic interests and tendency, sometimes we have to start afresh with certain mistakes on a canvass. And what may come of it may never be the same as the original work in a moment of inspiration. So an artist would understand the frustration of a serious mistake that ruins hours of work, especially water colour or acrylic where there is no recourse or remedy other than to start afresh because there is no painting over it or erasing a pencil stroke.  From time to time, it may pain the artist to do this, knowing the work output will never be the same but the best way forward is a clean canvass. So I read the flood in Genesis with a saddened heart because it is a poignant act of God who had little choice. Somewhere along the line in His creation, by giving free will and choice to man, created in His image out of an abundance of love, something went terribly wrong that everything is irreversible except to wipe away creation clean and start again. It pains me personally to read that "The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that He had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the Lord said, 'I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth - men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air - for I am grieved that I have made them.' " (Genesis 6:5-7, NIV).

If all things evil and their temptation are embodied by the biblical reference to "Satan", we recently wandered from the book of Revelations during our bible study discussions and wondered why God allowed this. Why did God not defeat Satan in the very beginning? Jonathan D. Sarfati's view on why Satan was "created" by God in Genesis and why God did not destroy Satan immediately comes back somewhat to love. The reason is the power of contrary choice in the way God created and allowed that in Adam and Eve where they were made in His image and in the image of each other. This power of choice or voluntary will is good or as Sarfati puts it, not actual evil, but the possibility of evil exists in temptation. It is out of love that God said to Adam "you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die." So in a world of perfect paradise with an abundance of fruits and all other goodness, Adam and Eve chose not to believe in God but the words of the serpent instead perhaps, and in so doing, disobeyed God that led to the fall of man and the origin of sin. Yet, the true wisdom of God appears in that, though His creation and creatures fall, God is still able to achieve His original purpose through the redemption which is in Jesus. And it is through the covenant with a good man Noah after the flood, that God said in his heart "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease." (Genesis 8:21-22). So the related question of why God did not destroy Satan is, according to Sarfati, because it isn't that "Satan will ever repent, but that if God were to immediately destroy evil, He would destroy all of us as well, with perfect justice." This makes perfect sense to me personally at least as Satan can be a simple voice in our head that does not align with words of God.

So this is the biblical creation story that culminated in God sending his only son, Jesus Christ, into this world to die for our sins. This is in stark contrast to other myths of creation, for example and even the grandest of all, Greek mythology that, as beautifully written by Stephen Fry in Mythos, originated from Chaos then "peopled as it was by primal deities whose whole energy and purpose seem to have been directed towards reproduction" and stories of epic dramas filled with "murderous, cruel, rapacious and destructive" Gods and later demi Gods as "where divine blood fell, life could not help to spring forth from the earth". Nothing compares to the story of God's perfect creation and the gospel of Jesus Christ who simply wept at the reality of this world knowing what it was meant to be.

Someone once said to me that feelings are like temperature which you can test or measure even if they do not tell of why or the underlying reasons. Yet, feelings can be controlled but tears never lie. So perhaps in tears, we know that we have a heart and love is in that heart. And there is nothing greater than God's love for us.

All moral rights belong to the author except other works quoted or referred to.

Art of Apology, If It Ever So Exists?

‘Tis thine to pity and forgive.' - Robert Burns

As someone who sees sorry perhaps said too often, I sometimes wonder if the art of apology is fast becoming an apparatus for absolution in our day and age. When David cried out to God in Psalm 51 that: "against thee, thee only, have I sinned", I used to wonder what about the broken Bathsheba and murder of Uriah? Why does the Bible omit description of, say, David's apology of a profuse and profound proportion in recognition of others and the gravity of his sins in rape and murder? If David pleaded for mercy from God to wash him thoroughly from his iniquity and cleanse him from his sins (Psalm 51:1-2), has he restored the relationships with those he sinned against? The scriptural message cannot be clearer on God's words being "if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them, then come and offer your gift." (Matthew 5:23-24). Yet, David seemed to emphasise that "the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart" (Psalm 51:17)? In truth, Bathsheba's first child by David was struck with severe illness and died unnamed a few days after birth, and Nathan the prophet noted that David's house would be punished for killing Uriah then marrying Bathsheba, which we saw unfolded in 2 Samuel. There are times in life when we may have no recourse to restore a relationship. We may respect the other we have wronged who may not wish to hear words of sorrow or sorry for our sins. In my case, falling short of the fruits of the spirit is far less than what we ought to be, having just understood, at least in theory, that "love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." (1 Corinthians 13:4-7). So when we are less than who we are or ought to be, and are lost in the labyrinth of lament where we cannot present an apology to the one against whom we have wronged and yet who may be the only one able to forgive what we have done, we can only perhaps present penitence to God with a contrite heart. "For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another...let us not live in word or speech, but in deed and in truth. By this we shall know that we are of the truth, and reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us, for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything." (1 John 3:11-18). So in remorse and repentance did David turn to God in acknowledgement of his transgressions in one of the famous Psalms. Perhaps after attempts to apologise, undocumented by the scripture, or knowing no apology in this world would ever mend what he broke, David turned to Him in prayers.
A short piece born out of sorrow. All moral rights (including copyright) belong to the author.