11. Transformation

Dear children,

If Yahweh is sufficient, and this is a true statement - Yahweh is sufficient, then why should we need another testament? Why do we need to learn about Jesus?

If you pick up the Jesus puzzle piece, he looks like a regular human. When you examine his words and actions, he is unique, but so is each of us. When he lets himself be killed by the Roman system, he looks like any of millions of slaves and warriors who have been destroyed by raw human power taking for itself whatever it wants. This is what was unleashed when the world began, raw power in gravitation and nuclear forces creating stars and galaxies and light and worlds. And raw power in the animal. It is power that can easily say "Who cares? I'll do what I want".

Light exposes movement, and even the least creeping creature that crawls on the ground will run for cover when it sees a shadow. Its programming includes self-protection. Others will stand and fight with whatever weapons nature provides them with. What creature lets itself be killed? It is contrary to self-protection. The story of Jesus shows that he could see trouble coming. He chose to face it and destroy its power by letting himself be killed. How is this even a possibility? And what possible good could it do?

His students didn't get it. This too is a theme that is consistent in us humans. It's in that old psalm 78 that is before the beginning of these letters.

In a nutshell, it's history, and it's trouble. We didn't get the instruction right - we don't do things well - and we are not happy. Jesus - whose name means Yahweh saves - provides help to us and points us back to Yahweh. It's a circle. Through this sacrifice of his life, we can get direct aid from the mysterious glory that is in him and in God.

If we want to be happy and take part in the prodigality of God and God's sufficiency, then we need to listen closely to this complex history and hear how we have received it, but most importantly, we ourselves need to turn to God with thanksgiving for creation and for help, and we will get the help we need to govern ourselves well even if we don't understand how this gift works.

So if a problem is up to us to fix, then we ask for the necessary help to fix it. If it is not up to us to fix, because we did not cause the problem, then we ask for help to work with God in the problem space while it resolves itself or it gets resolved in one way or another. We have seen that life is wonderful but it is also difficult.

Given our laws, some problems are what we call intractable. They don't stretch the way we would want them to, so we have to grow and stretch so that we can learn the hard lessons that these problems reveal to us.

Here we have three more pieces of the puzzle, sin, cover, and transformation. We understand sin when we are hurt or we hurt others. We take cover through the self-giving of Jesus. And we work transformation from death to life through the glory of this work that Jesus did for us. The name this is given is resurrection. We live in the life of Jesus, a life that is always in glory with God. He suffered and died, but that glory raised him from death. And in that same glory we live by faith.

In this, the spirit shows us how Jesus lives in the name, Yahweh saves. And we live in him. We are not without weapons, but they are not weapons of war for our self-protection only. The saving act of Yahweh gives us our helmet, helping us clarify all our thoughts. Trusting God is like a shield and like water against fire. Our chain mail that protects our heart is to do what is right. The belt that holds us together is truth. We wear shoes of peace to protect our feet and the toes of others that we meet. These are weapons of that allow self-giving.

Even seemingly impossible problems can be worked through. We look back to rules, laws, and instructions and we look at the ones that don't work well to change how we think about them, and we redevelop them or put them aside as we learn more. We are defining ourselves, given the constraints we discover, so that we can live together in the temple that has been created for us and that we share with all life.

We are bound in time and space. So we test, measure, design, measure, and build the creation itself. I repeated measure to show that we don't just measure once. We measure again and again because things change and this or that puzzle piece may not fit where we seemed to put it. When we measure, things that were uncertain lock into place both 'in earth' and 'in heaven'.

Image of the black hole
at the centre of the Milky Way

Our transformation allows us to present our whole selves, body, heart, and spirit as a living gift to God. It is complete in the completeness of Jesus. And God accepts the gift. When it comes to the gritty details, this self-giving often requires us to give up something we want. The power we have is that anything that troubles us or that delights us can be offered. - I use these words as metaphor and as a promise. - We give it into the death of Jesus, this unique child who gave its life for the life of the world. Such self-giving is called a libation, something poured out. Effectively, his life in glory was poured out for us. And we can also pour out our lives for him.

Whatever we give, it is like it has died. It is gone. Jesus' death absorbs it like a black hole absorbs even light. In this act of giving, we have suffered and died with him. And - surprise - we learn some new aspect of his original glory that was always entangled within the problem we gave away, but we couldn't see it. As he says himself, give and it will be given to you, full measure, pressed down, and overflowing.

As the old psalm 78 goes, when we do this, it might seem foolish, but we set our 'folly' in God. And we wait for the nudge that says to us - "Go this way. I am with you."

There is something about Jesus and Yahweh that ties the one to the other as a mirror reflects the likeness of an image. Jesus is the likeness of Yahweh and Yahweh is the likeness of Jesus. Their characters are compatible. They speak as one. To trust the one is to trust the other.

Till the next letter ...