I am just a tad obsessed. I believe we are called to participate in the transformation of this world and that call is not some kind of carrot before the donkey to keep us moving in that direction without ever seeing any change. I also believe that small acts are the key. The books I wrote last year, those best sellers on every book list (cough, cough, splutter), were not made available on Amazon as that company has exhibited the Imperial spirit. A choice that makes purchasing and downloading them a lot more difficult. By not making them available there I am sure the whole economics of that company is being threatened. OR NOT! However I think small choices do make a difference, nay I suggest the difference. The two coins in the temple treasury seems to have released the prophetic revelation and declaration that resulted in one of the most magnificent buildings of the New Testament era coming down.
[Sidenote confession not to be read: I of course close my eyes to the complicit nature of my behaviour and choices in keeping the system intact, and focus on the one or two things that don’t cost me, but make me feel good… Though I think amidst any hypocrisy I do seek to make conscious small choices.]
So what am I open to that shocks me? Let’s take a step back.
Animals were used to portray nations from a Jewish perspective in Scripture. Domesticated (= good / Israel) and wild animals (= bad / Gentile nations), and then by extraction Imperial powers were portrayed by animals that could not be tamed, often termed ‘beasts’. (One of the reasons I do not read Daniel into the lion’s den as literal… something stronger than facing a literal wild animal was at stake, and given that the latter part of Daniel is written in Greek it served as a very powerful stimulus to resist the Greek / beastly occupation of the land.)
Mark’s short Gospel seems to be written to get us from A to B as quickly as possible, hence the continual use of ‘and immediately’, which becomes so repetitive that the English translations tend to obscure it passing over it as such repetition does not read well. And into the breathlessness of Mark there are significant pauses when he adds detail, detail often omitted by the other writers. If detail is added it is certainly not insignificant. One such detail comes in the temptation narrative.
He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.
He was with the wild beasts. Those beasts somehow had found a place in the shalom that Jesus brought – and of course an eschatological snapshot of the future referred to in such Scriptures as ‘the wolf will lie with the lamb’. The future was taking place in Jesus, in the resistance to the devil – this is why an ‘open heaven’ is much more complex than ‘I had 12 overcoming testimonies before breakfast’.
The picture does not seem to be one of opposition… it does not appear that the wild animals were eliminated… so if beasts (Daniel’s visions, Revelation and the sea / land beasts) represent Empires what are we to make of all this?
Part of what has provoked me in these past 6 months was the understanding that COVID was to give us a hard reset, and yet statistics show that the big corporations have simply steamed ahead, with the gaps between the wealthy and the not-wealthy having increased, so I have been asking what kind of reset have we seen?
As always being a believer in the priestly call of the body the real reset that I think we were to focus on was within the body. We, the small people, become the widow with the two coins to bring about a different future. I wonder if we have submitted / experienced the reset or are simply coming out the other side to return to singing our songs, while there is something much more significant that we can engage with (a kind of side-reference to my dream in 2010 of the façades opening up). I really hope we have and are ready to go through the doors that we can choose from that are in front of us.
Part of what will indicate we have gone through the reset will be a new wave of apostolic and prophetic presence at a foundational level where there is currently no building, no building that is somewhat reflective of that New Jerusalem.
It seems cos of our abuse of nature that pandemics will become something of the future landscape, but in spite of that I think it is now time to call ‘time up’ for this particular pandemic. Sufficient has taken place for the reset to be responded to by those who can / should respond… and the wild beasts continue.
Who is going to ride on the back of the wild beasts?
Revelation gives us an image of who rides on the back of the beast, and Jesus refused the offer of the ready made structure of the Roman Empire (the offer of the kingdoms of this oikoumene). In the light of that image and the clear refusal I can hardly believe what I might be open to consider.
Could it be that we are supposed to learn how to co-habit space with the beasts, so that the shalom we live in means they are not destructive?
I probably need to click publish real soon, before either deleting this post, or completely selling my soul.
Well I’m real glad you didn’t delete this! So much here that rings true!
Thanks Duncan… I write as finger hovers over ‘delete’ button. I have to admit the world we live in is just so much more complex than the world that I create where I have all the answers!!!
Dolphins playing in the Bosphorus in Istanbul, wild boars in the streets of Haifa, mountain goats in the streets of Llandudno, Wales, a puma on the streets of Santiago…coyotes were stalking people in San Francisco…
I mean there’s plenty of googly eyed hits in the search engines to verify that the wild beast responded to the reset…
Then there Jesus himself claiming that Elijah had indeed come and the kingdom as well and nothing about the empire of Rome was changed until it became domesticated by the church…or the other way around depending on how you look at it.
Love your train of thought! It does strike me that what has changed since COVID is not the outer map of reality – the widening gap between rich and poor, the rise and rise of tech etc. – but the inner map, which is where repentance or shift in mindset, takes place.
The outer shell of our world – the Amazon and Googles – has become the chrysalis where the secret work of inner transformation is taking place, namely in the very people that work for these organisations. During COVID, the distance between people has shrunk, largely because of the very technology that has created these giants. As a result, the people of peace within these organisations have connected like never before and are dreaming together of a fresh new world – will there be code, matrix-like, in the New Jerusalem, I wonder? And when the new emerges, then the old shell will have outgrown its purpose and a new outer reality will take its place – a city on a hill perhaps, resplendent in light.
Living with the wild beast could make you more beastly, but the reverse can also be true – that the wild beasts find their shalom and are themselves transformed – the lion lying down with the lamb.
Thanks Andrew… I think the options in your last paragraph are so provocative. And I like the thought of the chrysalis being some of the institutions that naive people like me rave against, while of course needing to use a search engine designed by… and a few other beneficial tools along the way.
Code in the NJ. Why not? Maybe a current inspired writer sending out an apocalypse to the seven churches might describe the NJ just a bit different to how we read it… though I am not sure that anyone could really conjure up imagery to ‘improve’ on what we find there.
Oh Martin, you are such a hoot! Of course we must learn to cohabit with the beasts. What else could we do? And the good news is that it really makes no difference to how we live if we are pursuing the kingdom and shalom. With beasts, without beasts. No difference. So we just hunker down and train them to behave better. Personally, with my feline beast (no relation to imperial beasties) I use target training and lots of food reinforcement. I can teach an old cat anything in a few lessons. Something to think about when cohabiting space with the beasts.
And I am sure we are all ready to call time on the pandemic. . . just avoid doing it like a rabble rousing Canadian trucker. They have exhibited beastly behaviour! Come to think of it, a bit of target training and food reinforcement might help them with a more peaceful outlook too.
OK… target training and food reinforcement. Got it.
PS: I really am enjoying how your thinking is moving along. It is refreshing. Realistic. Grounded. Challenging. And Exciting. Keep on keepin’ on. And always carry a treat in your pocket. You never know when you will need to reinforce good behaviour!
I came to feedback to you that your dream from 2010 in which it was indicated that our sung worship, according to custom, causes problems to the required warfare and change, and thereby found this post. Interesting…
So that dream of yours became relevant this morning in the context of a little private artisan project between few friends I continue to engage with in the UK northwest, where we draft a re-reading of Psalm 97 (with a portion from Psalm 93 for the bridge) onto the music from a fairly well-known worship song from about a decade ago.
Not only did this lift some sense of heaviness which may link in with moving on foreign, and as such swampy, grounds beyond a shipwreck which is the pandemic (amongst other stuff at least I didn´t ask for). There seems an additional task that we identified just this morning: of cleansing, or reducing, our churchy culture(s) of singing with this exercise.
Considering Daniel moving in the midst of imperial heat and amongst lions, it doesn´t sit quite right with me when you exclaim at such a moment, and if just for the rhetorics of it, that the leviathans and behemots of this age don´t see us as we do our little crafty thing just in the midst of the current mess. One must consider that big beasts, once their time is up, tend to trip up and fall just within a very few weeks or even days; not just in the horizon of the Daniel book but also within our life time.
1989/90 was such an eyeopener to many of us here in Germany, and this currently feels just like another moment approaching very fast.
Thinking about it in response to your post Jesus spent his whole life co-habiting with ‘beasts’/the Roman Empire. He didn’t destroy them/it but carried out his whole ministry within it’s context. That was partly what brought him into disrepute in the eyes of the people who had followed him during the height of his ministry, but then called Pilate to crucify him when he didn’t look like a messiah who would destroy the imperial power of the Roman Empire and deliver them in the way they had wished. He became an offence to them because they didn’t understand and we can fall into the same trap. I find it hard to accept that it shouldn’t be at least part of aim as believers to dismantle such equivalent ‘beasts’ in our time – maybe it is, but perhaps not!. Then throughout the New Testament Paul also conducts his whole ministry without directly opposing the empire ‘beast’ he was somewhat pragmatic about spreading the gospel. It came down eventually but took a while. I hope I haven’t missed the point but that came to mind.
Humans have a long history with beasts/animals. Supposed to have dominion over them (acknowledge problematic language) yet are deceived by the first ‘beast’ serpent. The snake had more wisdom, but we interpret ‘crafty’- definitely the losers perspective. It seems to me a world of delight with enough to go around became a world of competition where in order to win others have to lose. Enter Cain, ‘pounced’ on by another beast and goodbye Abel. People become the beasts and some like Nebuchadnezzar grow their hair and claws and eat grass. Now the rich get richer and the poor poorer and from the poor perspective the beasts are rewarded by the system. David played his lyre to Saul when Saul’s beast took over, perhaps we need to find (reset) the song that changes the beast where we are. This means occupying the same space and opting for a different tune. Win through renewal and reform and love rather than songs of dominion and defeat. Enemies disarmed and defeated but even some beasts reform- hope for transformation, could we sing some good news?