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 ...

10. Happiness

Dear children,

I want you to be happy. There's a great deal about happiness in the Bible - both the old and the new parts of it. It's another competition between our view of Yahweh and our view of Jesus.

First though, remember that we have already seen the invitation in the first psalm. Happy the person who delights in the instruction of Yahweh and in his instruction he mutters day and night.

Snoopy - Happy

These 'happy are' phrases are called beatitudes after the word beatus, the Latin for blessed. Really they should be called happiness-phrases. The Hebrew is awri roughly pronounced asheri - and it's a really happy word - insider joy - joy in the relationship with this mysterious God. (Yes, it’s a blessing too, but a different word, bruç, would be used for blessed.)

Jesus taught his students and everyone with them several such happiness phrases. In the first book of the New Testament, the Gospel of Matthew, we have five large sections of his words (a reminder perhaps of the five books of Moses). In the first section, Jesus speaks to the crowd several 'happy are you' statements. These are tricky - we are supposed to like them, but each one is a puzzle, sometimes saying the opposite of what we might expect. This can be troubling.

And like the 10 words, they are variously ordered - depending on which text was chosen for the translation. Matthew probably wrote in Hebrew or maybe Aramaic, but the texts we have for him are Greek and Latin - and different languages give us a different way of thinking. So treat these as puzzle pieces too.

We don't know what it means till we have thought about it, mulled it over, maybe conversed with the author of life more fully - with the wind of God brooding over the formless and empty state that we are in ourselves. All 7 days of creation run concurrently and are present to us.

Here's my paraphrase:

Happy are the poor of spirit, for the realm of heaven is theirs.

We would expect ‘happy are the rich’ - but it's not there. Instead it is 'of the poor in spirit (in Luke, the third Gospel, it is just the poor), God is with them and things are good for them even in their poverty.

Happy are those who lament, (or weep or mourn) for they will be consoled.

Happy and lament or weeping are not considered the same thing, are they! Who will console them? Someone who really cares.

Happy the afflicted, for they, they will possess the earth.

Afflicted is not a traditional translation - tradition has 'meek' or ‘gentle’. I think the thought is people in trouble, not people who are calm and collected or passive (the modern idea of meekness).

Who is it who really cares for the poor or the weeping or the afflicted? We know that Yahweh does. So Jesus is channeling Yahweh via the Psalms for these words. I count 27 happiness-phrases in the psalms and a few more elsewhere in the Old Testament. (If this was tennis, that would be a lot of points.)

Happy those hungering and those thirsting for righteousness, for they, they will be satisfied.

Ah - this one is not hard to imagine. We do want things to be right. And it's hard work getting there.

Happy are the compassionate, for they, they will be shown compassion.
Happy are the pure of heart, for they, they will gaze on God.
Happy those who make peace, for they, they will be called the children of God.

These four are not so difficult to get.

Happy those who are persecuted with foot planted for their righteousness, for the realm of heaven is theirs.

Happy the persecuted! That's unexpected. Something I try to avoid.

Happy are you if they reproach or persecute you, or they bring falsehood, your defamation, evil over my name. Be glad and rejoice, for your wage is very abundant in the heavens, for so they persecuted the prophets who are in your presence (or who were before you).

You are the salt of the earth. And if the salt is insipid, in what way will it be made salty? It is no longer useful for anything much except to cast outside and to be trampled under foot.

Hey! - you love salt and salt in sweat is what measures CF. So do you want to be the salt of the earth and make salty - interesting - the things that happen among us?

You are the light of the era. A city resting on a hill cannot be hidden. Furthermore, there is no one who will light a lamp to put it under a barrel, but rather for the lamp stand to light for all who are in the house.

We need light to do these puzzles. I counted the ones in the New Testament. The famous ones to Christians are the 8 (or 9) above. There are 7 more (8 if you count a double) in Matthew, 1 or 2 more in Mark, the second Gospel (good news), 12 in Luke some of which overlap with Matthew, 2 in John (the last gospel of the 4 that are included in the New Testament), in the book called the Acts of the Apostles - maybe 1. Romans cites the Psalms - so I won't count them. James has 1. Revelation has 7. A total score of 32 or so. And how about the Old Testament? I count 38 in total. (The Old Testament has many more words than the New.) Happiness is a puzzle piece of course.

Anyway - enough salt for the day.

Till the next letter ...

9. Glory

Dear children,

We see stars as pinpricks of distant light. Remember when we looked at a planet - and in our little 4-inch telescope we saw Venus as something like a dime in a sea of darkness. We were stymied by the light around us in the city. We just don't see the sky at night the way the ancients did when they had no electricity.

I think the new Webb telescope is one of the most amazing things I have ever come across. Thousands of people from all over the world for the past 25 years have worked together to complete this project. The creation and launch of the telescope is one astonishing thing after another, at least it is for me, because I know how things go sideways in a complex project. There were in this project so many parts that had to be folded up to get them into the rocket, and then unfolded flawlessly after getting into space where they had room for the immense mirrors to focus light from ancient times. There has to be such precision and coordination of the parts. The final telescope operates at ultra cold temperatures - near absolute zero (-273°C) where flesh would instantly freeze and disintegrate. And we will see the images when all is set up this summer on our home TV screens.

The language they use to explain what they have done is more language that you will learn as you study science. And it is directly related to time. This telescope will be able to peer into deeper and deeper space to observe the formation of galaxies from near the beginning of time.

This makes me ask ‘What happened before the start of everything?’ Will we be able to see the whole puzzle?

A brief interruption in the thought process.

No wine for you at present, but here is a saying of Jesus - in the old English - No man having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better.

That's how I feel about the old and new testaments. I must make the move from old to new, but I want to come through the front door - moving from old to new - rather than going in through the kitchen door - assuming the conclusions in the new and then reading these into the old. Whichever door we enter, we must be shrewd about how we deal with the ancient texts - because both parts of the Bible are old from our point of view. I also like to play with language and imagination.

As in tennis, one asks who is going to win the match, the old or the new, and we can study the two players and their history. Yahweh plays for the old and Jesus for the new.

Tennis - love all

Yahweh, apart from a few stories of appearances, is invisible. Yahweh is called God and Lord in the first testament in the Bible.

The 39 mostly Hebrew books (or 24 volumes depending on how you count them) are written, collected, and copied by people from ancient Israel over a long period approaching if not exceeding 1000 years. Lord is the word used instead of Yahweh in Greek and English Bibles. Yahweh is God, Lord, and Sovereign. In the Hebrew tradition, people substitute adonai (Hebrew for my lord, or master) when reading or reciting the name in the text - or they say HaShem, the Hebrew word meaning "the name".

Jesus is called the Messiah - a word meaning anointed. In the old days - and still now, people pour oil on the head of the king or the queen when the king or queen is about to be crowned. This is what is meant by anointing. In Hebrew mwk (the k is chet, a strong h). Jesus was born and died about 2000 years ago. You can see that we number our years from his birth (roughly speaking - mistakes were made in the calculations and calendars changed and so on). He was anointed before his death and he was crowned with a crown of thorns. We remember his birth on Christmas day - but December 25th wasn't his birthday exactly. The stories of the shepherds and the magi are as famous as the stories of Yahweh at creation and at the rescue of his people from slavery in Egypt.

We remember Jesus' death as he asked us to in the churches and particularly each year on Good Friday. The New Testament that tells his story and the story of the birth of the church is a collection of 27 books: 4 gospels, a history, and various letters all written in Greek by students and followers of Jesus. Messiah becomes Χριστός in Greek, Christ in English. Jesus is also called the Word of God, and the Son of the Living God. So Jesus Christ is a child of God like you and like me, an older brother of sorts. But he has been considered almost if not equal with God these past 1700 years. Some of these beliefs are formulas - not necessarily meaningful from a practical point of view.

So how can I compare Jesus the Anointed (Christ, Messiah, and also called Lord) with Yahweh - God - who is known by The Name - remember Yahweh said: "this is the name by which I will be remembered. This is my name forever and this is my memorial generation by generation."

Imagine - another course correction

Mass limits our speed along spatial dimensions. If we are heavy, it takes a lot more effort to move faster. The speed of light is constant. Photons have zero mass. There is no passage of time for a photon. Time stands still. The clock never changes for a photon. Nothing moves faster than the speed of light. (But there are odd questions about quantum entanglement.) At the beginning of all things, all time and space could have been held in one hand. What then was before the beginning when there was no time to measure because there was neither light nor any material thing that was moving? So the whole idea of was or before is senseless.

Suppose there was a God who could hold the whole of time and space in its imagined hand. What solitude! What quiet! As quiet as space is at L2 where the Webb telescope is, 10 million miles from us?

Was there conversation - even if silent, within this God?

'Let our glory be present into this potential in our hands'.

And one fluctuation answers, 'Let it indeed'.

And the other says, 'But what will we let loose?'

And the other says, the communication being mediated by spirit, 'Wisdom will find a way to its origin'.

And the mediator responds, 'Let such a pouring out come to birth. She will stand and call continuously, upright, without guile or deviousness.'

And the original fluctuation agrees, 'We will be in the whole effort. I buy this beginning of my way. Let it be.'

And the other before the beginning says 'From everlasting, I am the libation poured out from the beginning, out of the precedents of earth, an ambit engraved on the face of the abyss.' And they inscribed the ball with an endless interlocking pattern of circles.

And they as one agree that there will be play, the one next to the other as confidante, reveling in the created day by day, reveling with the children of humanity, circles of glory entangled in all their ways.

Happy they will be who keep the ways of this glorious unity of persons.

And then in anticipation, together, the stars of the morning shout for joy, and all the children of God shout in triumph.

So there was a fluctuation out of the hand of the One and into a created reality of time and space that is always occupied by a unity of information, word, spirit, being, wave after wave, the created order seeking its own understanding.

And in due time, the word that was from the beginning became flesh and knew what God had let loose firsthand. And the mediator knew. And God knew. Occasionally he was impatient: How long must I put up with this generation? And he was rejected. He suffered as we suffer - so now he knows. And the mediator knows. And God knows. And he died. A temple destroyed. A sanctuary destroyed. But God rebuilt it. Jesus was seen in his body after his death.

And people tried to make sense of this at the time and for generations after. Over the next 300 years, speaking humanly now, formulas were established and governance over what was right or wrong to believe. This was not done flawlessly. The full puzzle was not complete.

Glory, however, is not so easily banished from its own creation, nor is it so easily controlled. The same spirit of Christ is still present even as Yahweh is present, whatever rules were made up. All time and space is present to glory, and there is no limit to its speed or its presence.

So those who experience time moment by moment and call within our space time world, will find these puzzle pieces within it, holiness, compassion, and completeness. The puzzle will be revealed in the fulness of its patterns. What is endless is not time but the glorious origin of all time and space. And we are given the privilege of discovering this creation and participating with its creator.

There is a poem that begins like this: The heavens proclaim the glory of God. What if all those elemental particles and forces are infused in glory? We are certainly observing God's handiwork - of course we do not expect to find 'an old man in the sky'. No graven images or imaginations necessary.

I think we are teachable, perhaps, like a lively horse.

So here is a link to the new telescope and its unfolding.

And this short video gives a reasonable overview.

We still don't know who will win the tennis match. I think it is time to deal with some smaller puzzle pieces. 

Till the next letter ...

Word Puzzle 2

Here's another Word Puzzle.

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bad, chess, complete, covenant, contract, covet, Egypt, glory, good, government, holy, honour, image, instruction, jealous, law, likeness, mercy, pogo stick, pray, process, regulation, rule, vengeance, wrestle,