Privilege

The privileged world-view

If you have time this is more than worth a view. Greg Boyd at his best addressing the George Floyd situation. Very powerfully exposing the dominant white-supremacist perspective. And of course that is not a comment on the situation in north America… so many of us (OK so many of me) are part of the elite who see the world so distorted yet think we see it clearly.

What a era in history… I suggest maybe on some of these big issues, a watershed.

I am not looking to add to Greg’s material, but if you did not have time to watch, consider the following:

  • The word of the Lord comes to address the privileged. The word is ‘repent’. His word comes first to us.
  • Then the word of the Lord, ‘I am with you, and found among you’, comes to those who have been oppressed.
  • Jesus in the Incarnation has privilege and lays them all down. As a Jew, he refuses to allow Jewish privilege to position him nor others; as a male he treats and responds to women establishing equal status, indeed the Gospels seem to indicate that some key redemptive doors were opened to him through his submission to women; perhaps having some financial resources he chose a path of ‘the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head’.
  • Because of the above I now consider that Jesus is no longer a Jew nor a male. Those were the two key elements that were nailed to the cross, and if we include dying as a insurrectionist lawbreaker, dying among thieves and in the place of a thief (Barrabus), we have the three elements of race / religion, class and gender all nailed to the cross. Life post-resurrection is therefore ‘neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, nor male and female’.

The USA is a mirror for us in Europe and the West. There are some key issues rising to the surface in the West. I need sight, sight related to history, so that genuine fresh sight can come for the future.

Exoduses and Pentecosts

My powers of interpretation

They come round each year and, although I did not grow up with a ‘church calendar’, I always value the focus they bring. I think there were also a few prophetic words surrounding Passover and Pentecost this year. I am pretty convinced, on the basis of Scripture, that whenever a new paradigm is coming that 1) there is prophetic revelation concerning it and 2) we normally MISS the outworking as our interpretation has an algorithm that was put in place based on PAST data. (Not a good way to assess future events… but no big deal as we are in biblical company when we do this… just important that we continue to be open.)

Of course if I make the statement that our interpretation is often awry and I am about to make an interpretation all readers will instantly pick up that I am the one exception. If you picked that up then continue to read…!!!!!

I have already hinted at the content of this post in previous posts but I will try and put it out here in clearer form. There are two Exoduses in Scripture. One that took the people out from the exploitation of Imperial rule to travel to a ‘Promised Land’. The 10 commandments (words) can best be understood as 10 instructions that totally undermine the way of life that they had been subjected to in Egypt, setting them up to be a free people. Off they trot… but not all goes well. A king come along, starts humble, next one with some major faults at least is ‘after God’s own heart’, next one Mr Wisdom who subjects the people to an Egyptian-style regime, kingdom divides, king for the north ‘comes up from Egypt’ establishing two golden calves! Freedom?

Not surprisingly the second Exodus is in Jerusalem (Lk. 9:31… the word ‘Exodus’ is used). There has to be a release from the bondage of Jerusalem to travel to the world that was promised (Rom. 4:13, written by a Jew). Here we are having celebrated the ‘passover’. But which Exodus has it been? My interpretation – and remember you are only reading this cos mine is correct – is that the passover in the midst of the lockdown in 2020 marked an Exodus from Jerusalem.

And Pentecost? Could there be something in the following sequence? Last day of 19th Century and we have the first occurrence of speaking in tongues in our ‘modern’ world (from there the movement goes to the West Coast and Azusa Street). 60 years later Dennis Bennet (of ‘Nine O’Clock in the Morning’ fame) on April 3, 1960 announced from the pulpit that he had been baptised in the Holy Spirit. That marked for many the beginnings of an era when the experience of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian community was felt outside of ‘pentecostal’ settings.

1900… 1960… + 60 years = 2020.

Probably coincidental, but I have a terrible habit of making what is coincidental significant. I like that – I deeply suspect God quite likes it too. If we make it significant probably he gets on board to do something with the coincidence.

Now given that interpretations are far from fallible, and often downright unhelpful, I submit the above.

But I leave with ‘passover’ will be significant and ‘pentecost’ will be unprecedented in 2020 (or words to that effect) all come together to say although the interpretations were very suspect, there was a distinct before and after. Now that is worth pursuing even if we do so with blinkers on.

Have I lost God?

Too easily done

I’ve never (as far as my memory stretches) lost god. Now the former sentence is not a typo with the small ‘g’. I understand what is meant by the question ‘Is Jesus God?’, but at a very real level because of Jesus we can’t ask that question. The problem with the question it presupposes we know who God is then can decide if Jesus matches up. There is God… then there is ‘god’. My god looks a little like God but on the days I lose perspective looks a little less like God than I would like to believe.

Two days ago Gayle and I had a very refreshing zoom call to a couple of guys who have made, and are continuing to make, an incredible transition in an institution that could have so easily become irrelevant to today’s world. During the conversation I realised how far away from God I had travelled and how focused I was on god.

There was no financial crisis in 2008. The market soared back and the gap between the incredibly wealthy and the ‘others’ increased dramatically. There was no financial crisis – at least not for a great number of those who were very well off prior to the ‘crisis’. Of course there was a huge crisis for many.

Here we are now at the early stages of the signs that are pointing to a global reality yet to come, and this is the context where I lost God. I was particularly pee’d off by the huge increase of money into the personal and corporate account of Amazon. (Not saying he and they are the most guilty – I just happen to know some of the figures as they are public.) I realised I went through days of internal groaning with little else on my mind, swinging between, ‘how do we pray judgement?’ and ‘if I am responsible what do I need to do?’

However… I now realise that quoting Scripture is great. Luke 3, a kind of pattern in these last 20 years, ‘In the fifteenth year of the Emperor Tiberius… the word of the Lord came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.’

How many times have I said – God does not replace Tiberius with a born again, nor even a ‘Christian friendly’ Caesar, if we look for a ‘Christian friendly person in the White House, Number 10, Moncloa, or wherever we will not be deceived we will simply reveal we have already been deceived…’ A lot of blah, blah, blah there.

So? Well I realised I have been focused on god doing something with Amazon, the big corporations that can hold nations at bay, that can decide how much (much = how little) tax they will pay. So working hard on a current translation of Luke 3 I came up with:

In the years of global crisis that began to be noted in 2020, when the big corporations who had grown to immense levels, many more powerful than nations, when they had developed without shame into huge people-eating machines, Martin looked to god to sort it all out, as he knew that it had gone too far. Meanwhile in those years God was looking to a whole bunch of unimportant people to live differently. In those years it left Martin with a choice. Would he try to align with God or would his own personal god become ever so much bigger? The years that followed would tell a tale.

Shepherding the Field

This is the Field

Here is the first post from Gaz Kishere. I have known Gaz n Vic (Gaz is the rather tall gentleman in the photo… and Vic – come on you can work it out!) for some 20 or so years, back when they lived in Bournemouth, and in recent years have heard bits and pieces about what they are up to in Athens. I asked Gaz if he would stick a few posts up here this month. Enjoy!


By way of an introduction my name is Gaz Kishere, dunked a Baptist at 18, Anglicanised because they let me play drums at 22, then a decade exploring the 90’s phenomenon of youth church in club culture and all things church unity.

Somewhere in there we managed to have 4 children and now have 4 grand children.

What I write below are really glimpses of my journey which I hope will provoke interest and folks will push me to draw down my learning. Till now, in terms of speaking back to the body, I am largely silent.

It was 1993, I was told that I had a face like a slapped arse when Roger and Sue Mitchel prayed a Pastoral anointing over me. To me it seemed that during the secret Santa hand out i’d been given a Mrs Miggins Pie Shop embossed tea towel. Nothing of that title spoke of daring adventure or dynamism.

The last three years of my life in organised Christianity was spent as pastor of our ragamuffin crew of co-workers and people we had helped navigate a way from institutionalism to find, for me, we had only travelled a few feet from such ideas.

It was a beautiful human being from YWAM called Jeff Pratt showing up in town which was the final nail in the coffin. He was one of those troubling empathic Jesus types who asks actual questions, ones where everything in you rushes to your mouth to share the truth. ‘Hows things with you guys’? he asked ‘Awful’ I replied , ‘we are burned out and feel total fakers, do we wait to be found out or just confess that we don’t really do people’.

We had considered stepping back for a few months now, doing it all properly, a smiling face handover masking the trauma. Jeff asked how long do you have left in you… my answer ‘Two Weeks !’

It was unfair of me as an extreme introvert who has learned to engage for the sake of others, to suggest I don’t enjoy being around people. I would not discover for another decade that it was simply the wrong context, the fold. We had overstayed beyond our shelf life and my memory of it is that we left with our hair on fire, running.

After 6 years working in community development and counter human trafficking (sex exploited children), my wife and I felt compelled to work in Athens where we have been engaged in the refugee crisis for the last 4 years.

I would like to suggest that this dislodging from the known and the inherited was prophetic and at no point was born out of a desire to leave church, but to pursue it. It was and continues to be a revelation to me what constraints I have had to cast off along the way. I would though have to confess that as one who organised the body to gather in prayer and seek prophetic pathways, I could no longer pray for God to make a space for us, the saints, and for nobody to walk in and occupy it. This was a conflicted time for me trying to live more holistically, move forwards and at the same time not wanting to cause more wounds in the land or to the body.

My first formal meeting in Athens to discuss Child Protection from exploitation would set the scene for most of our time here. I met a young lady in a coffee shop to discuss doing a workshop with unaccompanied Iranian and Afghan minors.

15 minutes into conversation she broke down in tears, talking about burn out and dysfunctions in team and the project.

Have you ever felt made for a moment? I felt like the accumulation of everything I had done, every season I had walked through, my dislodging from inherited thinking and structures was for now.

I simply said ‘I can help with that, I can help with all of that if you let me’.

Since that moment I have been working with grass roots projects, workers, leaders, founders in what I can only refer to as helping them come to fullness.

I invest in them, and I work with them to challenge and uproot ‘life and outcomes limiting structures and organisational cultures’.

I view all of these people, none of them Christian, to be about the work of the Kingdom. All of whom fight for justice, stand between the oppressor and the oppressed, people who break themselves at the feet of the least and the disinherited.

It is in this field, I can finally accept the words ‘shepherd’, and I have.

Everything that is both right and wrong about organised Christianity has prepared me to arrive here and be useful. Having said this, it is my current opinion that very little of organised Christianity can help me stand here. It is not the well that I drink from, nor the context of my learning.

I have deeply imbedded myself amongst those who have not needed to re enter the land nor come from no such alternative universe as the church. They have only, always dwelled fully in the creation, responding to its groans.

I have undergone an immersion, a re baptism back into culture, back into society alongside Kingdom people. The reality of those I see, and what they do, it screams to me that these were their works, prepared in advance for them to do at their conception. I know there is no kingless kingdom, but I cannot ever say they do not flow from the same king as I.

I stand with ordinary extraordinary people who are getting on with it.

This is the field.

Systemic sin

personal or systemic

I do read a number of posts each morning, one of which is by Scot McKnight or a contributor on his site. This morning, Patrick Mitchel, from Ireland wrote a very powerful piece, writing humbly from Ireland looking in on the current street scenes in the USA. Here is the article link:
https://www.christianitytoday.com/scot-mcknight/2020/june/americas-original-sin-irish-perspective.html

There are so many great points in it but I simply want to pull out two here. Writing that sin is a virus that God will eradicate (our eschatological hope) he says that sin is deep in the structures, and then this very astute observation:

And those who don’t have this everyday experience (generally those with White privilege) tend to resist systemic analysis of sin – they tend to limit sin to the individual sphere.

And in particular responding from his own experience and observation from Ireland he writes:

The primary calling for brothers and sisters in America is to embody a different story to the story of racial division, hatred, violence, suspicion and fear that is tearing the country apart. The church is to be a ‘window’ into God’s new creation, not a mirror reflecting back the sins of the world.


Worth a read!! And the good news I too will have a guest author this month. I have read the first contribution, and hopefully tomorrow you can read it.


And finally, being clear. I am very cautious about writing about what is very visible globally regarding the streets of the USA. I used to travel fairly extensively there and have many good friends who are pioneering in so many healthy ways. There came a point though where the Lord said clearly that ‘you are not responsible for what takes place there… find and focus on your places of responsibility.’ We have our work cut out here, and some days it is pretty painful to see how little impact we are making. Currently there is what looks like a huge movement inside the Guardia Civil (militarised police) to get the current government out. By huge movement I am not talking numbers, but drawing on the sources deep in its roots. So we have our focus. It is not a ‘I don’t have time for something else’, but there is a task to be accomplished.

2020… what a year

A before and an after

At the start of the year as we gave ourselves to get some idea of shape into it, we realised that we were unable to do so. Sensing strongly that it was a year of disruption… how understated that conviction will prove to be!

It is unlikely we will have many people out to see us this year. Last year we hosted people for around 120 days and nights… this year? And we are not convinced we will be travelling outside either with the various restrictions. This week we had some restrictions lifted. We can now be outside during the day at any hour (previously it was before 10.00am and after 8.00pm). Yesterday no COVID deaths were recorded in Spain so the hard line has produced fruit, but for so many who have no income, or reduced income for weeks / months, so much has changed. There will be a before and an after.

Looking forward, I still maintain that this year will not be as shocking as 2022. There are ripples and major shocks this year, and currently the street voice in the US is being responded to globally (Photo at the top is of Liverpool FC taking a knee while training. Liverpool has a call to be a city of reconciliation… Cities can follow where we go.)

I am deeply grieved by what is exploding in the US. And given that north America is the child of Europe there is no way that we can look and point a finger. What we see is an image of the fruit of the past 500 years of exploitation from Europe. What is for sure is that there are crises that come to all dominating systems, and in spite of not believing in wrath in the sense of ‘personal’ when applied to God the biblical usage of the term might well be applied into this phase of Western history.

The biggest challenge is seeking to understand what it means to be those who see a new ‘creation’. That is the gift of the Spirit (pertinent as we celebrated Pentecost Sunday) and the challenge from the Spirit – what do you see?

Easy to say, not easy to embrace, but we have to look to see what God is making beautiful in this season. I, for long, have considered that we prophesy without having much clue as to what it means. The Bible is full of it, and we should not expect to do much better. I have read some of the words about ‘Passover’ and ‘Pentecost’ for this year. My only comment is that words like that are not given to confirm us to stay on the merry-go-round. I wrote a few days ago about the Exodus from where (Passover) and I believe there is a before and after this Pentecost – but the after is going to be as shocking as the fulfilment of Peter’s prophecy on the day of Pentecost. In my great and awesome writings (as if!!) I wrote that before every shift forward there is a conversion of the church to the world. Such a conversion is preceded by traversing the ground of breaking with the good that has brought us thus far.

I have been ever so tempted to write some of the prophetic statements I have made in the USA since 2001, particularly concerning presidential terms (I spoke of a time-line appointed in 2001 that was tied to the Bush presidency and that a second term would indicate extended time to idea with a root issue; in 2005 I spoke of the outcome in 2008 and 12). I have held back and will continue to do so as the Lord made it clear that we are not ‘responsible’ for that land; there are others who have to take that stand and bring the land through to a different future. Same as we have to do here. Suffice to say through that what is taking place now is a pretty natural follow on from those words.

Finally, not aimed where it might seem to be aimed. When we hold up the cross, or a Bible in certain contexts (Spain and the Valley of the Fallen) we disempower and nullify the very reality that lies behind the symbol. That is deeply worrying. It is the lie of Imperial power – the altar to peace was established on Mars Hill in the days of the New Testament in Rome. Altar to peace established on the mountain of war.

The signs are there for those who wish to look, and this is not about left or right in politics. I still hold out that when we understand the good/bad line does not run between me and you but THROUGH you and me that we can pull something incredible out of this time.

Which Exodus and where?

An Exodus in Jerusalem

I am currently writing, my fingers getting a little worn out, but enjoying it a lot. I am on to ‘volume 3’ (though they are really ‘volumetes’ so don’t be overly impressed). My writing today coincided with my readings which took me to the Transfiguration stories. There Moses and Elijah (the law and the prophets?) came to meet Jesus and glory was revealed as they talked.

The part that stood out to me was in Luke 9: 31 where they talked of Jesus’ forthcoming Exodus in Jerusalem. The normal word for ‘The Exodus’ is used and I consider very deliberately. Then I thought – cos it lined up with what I am writing about, the ekklesia released / commissioned with the p-small ‘p’ political gospel that means the public sphere is where the good news that Jesus is Lord is to be outworked… an exodus where?

Back up. Original exodus was so that a people called by heaven (and in those designations the people were called an ekklesia, hence Moses was with the ekklesia in the wilderness (Acts 7)) could go to their destiny, to a land flowing with milk and honey. They could escape the place that supplied all their needs… but at a price. The imperial rule of Egypt. Fast forward some 1500 years (from one possible date for the exodus…) and the Exodus is now not in a ‘foreign’ land but in a land that has become foreign to the ways of God, overrun by all kinds of foreigners, or maybe better by one kind of foreigner, the ones who represent the power of Babylon!

An Exodus in Egypt so that there can be a departure.

Now an Exodus in Jerusalem, so that…

Yes I think so! So that there can be a departure to the always-desired destination. As Paul says in Romans 4:13, the descendents of Abraham are not defined by race but by faith (always was the case just radically more so post-cross), and that Abraham was promised not a land but the world (ho kosmos).

The Exodus in Jerusalem was to free a people from all bondage. Nowhere was more in bondage than Jerusalem at the time of Jesus, hence he comes at the fullness of time. There is an Exodus and there is a departure. No lockdown in that city at that time!

The demonic elite

Probably in us all?

Ah yes a gentle little title there! How else can I get your attention?

And just to soften it a little, and only a little, how often am I a servant of the wrong ‘side’? In my infallible writings that I have started to go through with a few who hopefully will help me with feedback I have tracked how Peter withstood Jesus on the basis of revelation, only to be told to ‘get behind me Satan!’

I have been pushing a high view of humanity, because that is where God is invested. The spirit of antiChrist denies the humanity of Jesus, to sin is to fall short of the glory of God (as a human)… so I have been pushing to dehumanise is to act on behalf of the demonic world. Sadly I can do that in the name of Jesus, in attitude or action.

It is this high view of humanity that is restored in Christ so that ‘there is , neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, nor male and female’. A new humanity, where the bar is raised but the field is level. [Little side-note the text is actually ‘male and female’ not as is often translated ‘male nor female’. I think this is a deliberate quote from Genesis – thus creation is not the model…]

Now given that the human partnership with the demonic is on a sliding scale with none of us absolutely free, in reality or potentially, I have been thinking about the ‘elitist’ attitudes and behaviour that ‘rules apply to…, but not to me’. The effect is to set up a slave / free division and if I am one of the elite then I am above you. I am more human (???) and thus you are less so.

In my deep ponderings I decided ‘Not good.’ So good to have one conclusion a day I think.

This elitism is something becoming ever so more visible in society. If the body of Christ shapes society, I wonder what seeds have we been sowing so that there is a visible harvest like this now appearing.

A sign of the times

The end is definitely nigh

Writing about any crisis is difficult. I am not a medic, nor a scientist, nor a historian. I read a few reports, even the horrendous statistics in Spain (though thankfully improving) but have not talked first hand to someone in Spain who has had the virus. It is easy to write when it has not been in your home. I do know people who have had it and recovered, I also know (not know of, but know) people who have passed away from the virus. So at times writing seems a cheap and easy thing to do, and maybe it is.

I am glad I am not a politician. Open up, get the economy back; keep it shut down the risks are too high. It can be easy to say, typical money over people. But in this world life is a compromise. Choices are of what is the better / best choice looking forward. Or in more theological language ‘what is the most redemptive choice we can make.’ With faith in Jesus, and eyes and voice raised heavenward that is not easy, so for those who do not profess faith and probably do not really believe in any help from heaven this is a time of huge crisis that they are seeking to help steer us through.

‘It is a sign of the times’. Read Matthew 24, and that wonderful future predicting book, the last one. Read it and how can you not join the dots. The end is nigh, for sure, this time. Well it is not an unexpected response. Remember Y2k? Computers will crash, airplanes will fall. Stock up, make sure you have enough beans (did we ever get a thank you from Heinz?). I am glad for the prophets who later apologised. Yet it got many people. Add to the Y2k that the earth is 6000 years old (splutter, splutter!!!!!). 1000 years as a day and… oh yes there is that final 1000 years at the end. Quickly count the fingers. The year 2000 and a crisis.

In my youth the writer who explained all things was Hal Lindsey. His books were fascinating. But so many signs of the times, so much so that 1988 was going to be absolutely cataclysmic, and certainly he had no expectation of being around for the millennial celebrations as the year 2000 rolled in – the blessed rapture would have seen to that, the ultimate ticket out of here! [A cheap comment that is just that… but one I adhere to. The secret rapture was such a close guarded secret that not even a whisper got out to any New Testament writer.]

All of this signs of the times of course is not new. Martin Luther, Christopher Columbus… and the writers who lived when Napoleon was marching around Europe had a field day; not to mention the days of Hitler, the rise of communism… and so it goes on.

By all means refer to the Bible to get some guidelines as to how we should respond in a time of crisis, but I just don’t think it wise to try to get the pen out with a ‘look here it is, written here some x-thousand years ago’ and then draw a line to ‘and here is what was predicted’. A little reading of history and the odds are so stacked against anyone coming close to getting it right are so high.

But a sign? For sure. A sign that creation eventually calls a halt to the abuse that those who are responsible for it have messed up. Will we take note of the sign? (And I have for some time said there is something / some things combining that will have a far greater impact in 2022.

We have entered a new era, or maybe much better to suggest we are entering a new era as it is not happening in a moment, maybe over a decade there could be a clear before and after.

Scripture says that God makes all things beautiful in its time (Eccl. 3). Does not mean that all times are beautiful, but God is working to pull something through in all times. I do not see this time as some form of judgement in any sense that might suggest God has said, ‘I’ve had enough’. And it does not mean that this time is going to be easy.

For entrepreneurs it is such a new time. The journey for former entrepreneurs might be drawn on to find some pointers but the world is changing, and entrepreneurs now are not simply going to follow in the footsteps of those who have gone before, they are pioneering for a new world.

There are great surprises coming with regard to where we see the Spirit at work. A while ago I spoke of three phases of any outpouring: immediate, generational and then those ‘afar off’. I think it can also be put into the big picture of Asuza Street (and the immediate years before), the charismatic into the historic churches some 60 or so years later, and then another 60 years on and here we are. Surprises, and some of what has got us here (‘we have never eaten anything unclean’) will be challenged, and not challenged in a gentle manner.

My post then is hopefully gentle. We are not exempt from difficulty. Those who survive are not the ‘goodies’ and all other ‘baddies’. We are all contributing to the future in these days. There is an era passing and a new one here. I think it is fruitless to look back to find these days in the Bible, and as we look forward we can only see as if we are looking through obscure glass.

Human

Fully and Truly Human

The second chapter in the awesome first volume is going head on with a view on humanity. (I am on zoom with a small group Sunday and we will be gradually working through this booklet. The full booklet I will publish here in due course.)

I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous,
your hand-made sky-jewelry,
Moon and stars mounted in their settings.
Then I look at my micro-self and wonder,
Why do you bother with us?
Why take a second look our way? (Ps. 8).

Many views of post-fall have humanity as basically evil, totally depraved. Better forms might suggest that totally depraved means affected in every area, but the final result is whatever good is done it is but ‘as filthy rags’. Having no value before God. It is easy to pull together Scriptures that prove a point (I would never do this!). filthy rags has a context, and it the context is not – regardless of who you are it is all rubbish whatever you do. The context was concerning religious behaviour.

Jesus is fully human, not semi-human. Although never ceasing to be God he becomes full human, sharing in our humanity (for those interested I am pretty much in the kenotic camp that he does not draw on his divinity while on earth). Beyond that, and unlike all of us, Jesus is also TRULY human. Coming to faith is a journey toward being truly human, final transformation will be ‘we will be like him’.

In this chapter I am seeking to establish (from my bias) that humanity is not evil but fallen. What is fallen can be redeemed, what is evil needs to be judged. Hence all behaviour that humanises is ‘Godly’ behaviour. dehumanisation is the work of the demonic. So sadly we can do ‘Christian’ things in a way that dehumanises and therefore does not resonate with godly behaviour. And by way of contrast, even someone who expresses no faith, can do genuine good, godly acts.

Where this is going is not in a therefore ‘all are saved’ direction. I want to take it in a value of human life; and beyond that the ‘ekklesia’ (this will be volume 2) is responsible to create a shape where the good that is in people comes through and the bad held back. Of course if we have a Gospel that is but if people are bad they need salvation and we don’t reach those who are ‘good’. For me that is a challenge to the gospel we believe and present.

This chapter is to bridge us into the next ones – Judas comes first, the disciple who is very like us, but whose human weakness was exploited. Then to Peter and with both of those disciples how their view of the Messiah is what messed them up. Our tendency is to be always on hand to be there to help Jesus out. Good motivation!! However, gets us in trouble every time. Passion + (our) vision of the kingdom = trouble.

Perspectives