Category: Theology

Resurrection appearances

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

As per many of you I have been reading of the resurrection this morning. None of it reads as if the disciples were having a series of hallucinations, nor is the belief simply in ‘he is alive’ but that ‘his body is not to be found in the tomb’… resurrection.

There were so many cosmic occurrences that surrounded the death and resurrection of Jesus and one that has caused puzzlement is the tombs that were emptied in Jerusalem:

The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many (Matt. 27:52,53).

It has puzzled some commentators and the report is reduced to a ‘theological’ statement separating it from a historical event (R.T. France) – partly because it is only recorded in Matthew. But the language is so similar to that of the language used for the resurrection of Jesus with the ‘appeared to many’ statement.

I think Matthew is very careful in his language – the tombs are opened at his death, but it is only after his resurrection that they are raised. This is not a ‘Lazarus’ resurrection’ but an experience of the resurrection, something that is our hope beyond the grave and seemingly always coinciding time-wise with the parousia of Jesus. Something happens that causes a very real disruption to time in this event.

The dramatic, visible shift to time, the physical manifestation of the ‘new creation’ was present. Our challenge is that ‘new creation’ is here; that we do not have to simply wait for linear time to arrive at the future.

The early disciples did not suffer from hallucinations; they did not need to imagine he was alive; they were rooted in the experience something has visibly and tangibly changed. Easter Sunday – then and now.

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A community that eats

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

I heard recently that the ‘magic’ of Jesus was ‘meals and miracles’. And yesterday I gave a cursory glance at the 72 being sent out – meals and miracles were to go hand in hand. Today this text:

For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here in a good place, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit by my footstool,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor person. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into the courts? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?

What comes to mind? If you are like me then for many years I kinda imagined a ‘church’ setting with formal or even informal seating but that a notable person comes in and everyone makes sure that they have a decent seat. However… that necessitates a building of some sort and fails to grasp that the context of the meal was huge in the first Century. Huge in both the Graeco-Roman and the Jewish world, and where people were seated at the meals was a big deal, based on a hierarchy. Maybe the nearest we have in our culture is something like a wedding reception – to some extent where people are seated is important. In the culture we are engaging with in the New Testament hierarchy was ever-so-present in these settings. Think about the words of Jesus:

When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host, and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Lk. 14:7-11).

The banquet is set out hierarchically – the place of honour. Jesus then follows this on to describe how meals were to operate with his followers:

He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers and sisters or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (Lk. 14:12-14).

In the world of that day the concept was to invite those who were important then give them a place of honour and guess what – they would repay you the honour. The instructions of Jesus over meal invitations was nothing short of a political resistance to the status quo and a turning of the world upside down! The meal table, and for sure Jesus was as much in trouble for his meal table practice as he was for his teaching. The whole aspect played out in the wider non-Jewish world with meals that honoured Caesar and the gods, look after those who carried power and influence and you too could climb the ladder socially and be successful.

This again plays out in the meal that honoured the Lord. I appreciate that there are now traditions such as mass, eucharist, or more lower church terminology such as communion, but the NT setting (‘tradition’ could be a Pauline word for this) was of a meal. It might be termed the agape meal, it was based on the Passover meal, but also sat totally within the wider meal context of that era. At the Lord’s table no place of honour was to be reserved for the rich and famous, everything was equalised. In that setting each person brought what they could for the communal meal and of course the wealthy could bring the wine and finer cuts, the poorer among them (many from the slave class) by contrast could not bring too much. But it was all presented and declared to be the ‘Lord’s table’ then all were invited to eat and drink. In Corinthians this demonstration of equality was not present, so he simply said that ‘when you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper’. The old divisions were maintained, those who had much consumed much while ignoring the others – and surely this must division, this failure to see the wonderful equalisation through the cross, has to be at the heart of ‘whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner’.

What a community Jesus imagined. This is the gift to the world. Meals, or whatever might carry a similar meaning in our setting, being the gift. And miracles – for in the absence of this egalitarian demonstration in Corinth Paul indicated that ‘for this reason many of you are weak and ill, and some have died’. Sobering words, and the opposite would bring words of hope and healing.

The magic of Jesus – meals and miracles. The lamb with the wolf. The gift to society – a Jesus’ people who do not offer the best seat to the one who is categorised as important; a people who live in a new creation and see no one according to any category, other than the creational / new creational description of ‘image and likeness’. A Jesus people who might not rise to the places of influence, but as our first quoted Scripture above says ‘Is it not the rich who oppress you?’ Not simply the individual rich person, but the system that rewards a pattern of living and that is not the pattern that is to be among us.

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A video on the ‘Second Horizon’

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

I recorded an interview that Steve Watters did with me a few days back and it is now uploaded to YouTube. I have also an expanded written piece (10000 words) that go with it. The pdf article is in more detail, the video picks up why I believe Matt. 24 (maybe famous for such statements as ‘wars and rumours of wars’) is not written addressing our future but the future of those who were the immediate recipients of the words of Jesus. He made it clear that all the signs he gave would be fulfilled within the lifetime of ‘this generation’. In the pdf I also give my take on Paul’s rather cryptic reference to ‘the man of lawlessness’, again a fulfilment in the period 66-70AD seems to fit this best. The pdf is found here – read or download:

Eschatology: The Second Horizon

I will set some dates soon when for those interested I will give a short reflection on the material related to Matt. 24 and then – well who knows where the discussion will go – hopefully not to ‘wars and rumours of wars’!!!

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Power or… weakness

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by Simon Swift
Posted in Theology

Simon Swift wrote me a few days ago with what follows that I have published as a post with his permission. We might react when we read ‘the weakness of God’, but we struggle (or should) when we read about ‘the power / all-powerfulness of God’. Simon wrote:

Over the last few weeks I have been drawn to the idea of the weakness of God as an alternative to the power of God. This is the idea that Jesus went to the cross in powerlessness.

In church we often sing of the power of God and there are lots of images of a small child with a large lion behind them in a kind of, ‘My Dad is bigger than yours’, way. I wonder if we miss something important when we fall into this type of thinking.

Recently I watched a news article in which a middle aged Palestinian woman on the west bank while attending a protest march was asked if they should continue an armed struggle. In her answer she stated that, ‘The rest of the world only knows power.’ This is the power of empire is about domination and control with the ultimate sanction of death for those that oppose it.

The best definition of love I have ever heard is: Making room in your own life for someone else to be themselves. This does carry a risk and makes you vulnerable; a weakness that can be exploited for sure but it is also the way of freedom, creativity and growth without the control that power tries to exert. It is I believe what Jesus practised. A good example is the woman who anointed his feet at the dinner party; talk about an awkward moment but Jesus loved her enough to let her do it and even defended her.

Jesus seems to have refused to side with power. At the forty day fasting he refused it; When arrested he refused to use the power he had (legion of angels); His sermon on the mount included teachings on what to do when someone had power over you (turn the other cheek etc.) All seems to show he chose, and invites us, to walk the narrow path of weakness. Ultimately the cross is the best expression of this; allowing death to take him but not hold him. Not so much he defeated death but went through death and came out the other side; now death cannot touch him.

I feel that we should not confuse power and weakness. In a lot of action films there is a cliche where the hero is fighting the bad guy. At some point the hero seems to be losing and the evil dude stops to monologue on how weak the hero is, usually because he has loved ones or friends he cares about and in his attempt to defend them he has made himself vulnerable. Of course as usual in Hollywood, the hero then finds some extra strength and goes on to defeat the bad guy so we can have a happy ending to the film. This seems to nicely show what weakness is about: love and caring for others.

The Church unfortunately has often opted for the easy option of power and has been corrupted by it. When it has done so it has joined in with empire, tragically losing its way off the narrow path. No wonder there has been so many reformation and revivals! As Christians is power all we know? Perhaps in these troubled times where we see power being used in devastating ways, we should stop calling ourselves Christians and instead become the People of Easter choosing not sides but becoming instruments of reconciliation. That though invites misunderstanding and persecution and we will have to decide if we are ready for that.

A Reflection That Asks a Question

An image so clean, so pure, we sing
Dressing him in clothes of white and gold
With strength to wield a sword
It hides the wounds we give him

Do you dream of being a courtier
To a king sat in grandeur
With jewelled crown and silver sceptre
An aura of majestic power

Look in the mirror, ask your reflection
Are you a thief who would be courtier
To a king lifted up naked and bruised
Who’s crown draws blood for you to drink from

Would you hear his invitation
To share in his glorious pose
Or mock in indignation at his critique
Of power and its grotesque exhibition

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Pretty close

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

So Jesus came proclaiming ‘Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’ – really close.

I said recently that the solution to the Gaza / Israel conflict is not difficult. Of course by that I did not mean it is likely to be solved or that I have any skills to offer into the mix, but that the Jesus-way is always close. It is the way of reconciliation, the way of peacemaking, of meeting – whether that is at the ultimate level of meeting in Jesus name, or simply in the name of humanity, for humanity (and ultimately true eschatological humanity) is in the midst.

The kingdom of heaven ultimately comes down – and the Greek for ‘at hand’ is translated metaphorically well with ‘at hand’ but it is the verb ‘come near’. It does not simply arise from the earth, though the land groans for it, it has to arrive from heaven, and one day it will arrive in fullness from the throne of God out of heaven and ‘descend’. The trauma that the earth holds and we tap into releases memories that hold the past so that they repeat in the present; our eyes have to go higher and in doing so our sight horizontally changes. Palestinians (many of whom of course have Jewish blood) and Israelis are family at the ‘big’ picture of ‘one ancestor’ and ‘one God’. Can they see one another? Sit in a room and hear the story, the trauma that they relate to, sit where the other sits. In that sense we are always so close to the kingdom coming.

Of course I am not suggesting that the solution is simple, but I am struck by how close the kingdom is, and how close the ‘non-kingdom’ is. The history, the guilt, shame and trauma of course does not give way easily. The good news of the Gospel is that the cross which occured at the low point (the fullness of times) makes it possible. I am continuing to pray into ‘God is waiting for a human movement’ as we need to move beyond something that is transcendental, and something that is beyond human, to something that is incarnational.

So close. And as we approach Christmas – demonstrably close.

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Different approaches

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

I have been reflecting (arguing within my own head?) about how there are different approaches to engagement and focusing in on the business world, as that is where Gayle is focused in at this time. I don’t know if it would be helpful to put it on a spectrum though one approach I consider is dubious / out of bounds so to put it on a spectrum would not be helpful, but for a moment let me suggest we might use that as a way in.

  • Involved in business but it is a ‘trojan horse’ as the real issue is the spread of ‘the Gospel’.
  • Kingdom business that has a different set of values toward mammon, employment, fair wages, working condition, effect on the planet, thus the business is explicitly Christian.
  • Involved in business and immersed not with the agenda of evangelising, but of helping create an environment for healthy inter-relationships, that promote humanisation and each person becoming the best (a better?) version of themselves.

No guess for which one I remove from the spectrum! The first gives me enormous difficulties as the real motivation is hidden. Of course in situations where one is called to be involved in a geography where there is no freedom for Christian expression of faith business might be the only way in. And in every situation, regardless of the approach, we should always be ready to give an answer for the hope that is within us. If our hope is not ‘I go to heaven and not hell’ (not the hope of the NT) we need to work out what our hope is and how we express it. Assuming we can get beyond life is evangelism to good news is living energised by the Spirit, then of course all of life becomes sacred and nothing we are involved in becomes ‘secular’.

There is significant space for the second approach, but sticking the adjective ‘Christian’ or ‘kingdom’ in front of business is not enough. By our fruit we are to be known. As indicated in the bullet point on some very key issues there has to be a difference. Maximising profit was always prohibited in Scripture; marginalised benefitting from what we are involved in, at no cost to them, was always desirable; and we need to add – though biblically it was always there – the improvement of the planet is highly necessary. If such a business is ‘Christian’, truly kingdom (not perfect, but redemptive within all aspects of the world God has made, thus moving things in a ‘New Jerusalem’ direction) then we might be able to use the metaphor of ‘light’ to describe it. That certainly was a metaphor to describe the calling of Israel and one that Jesus used of himself and gave to the disciples. Light to light up a path, to show the way. So I think there is a place in God’s economy for this approach.

The third approach is a challenge. Salt enters (for salt would be the metaphor for this) and is largely unseen. But the purpose of the salt is to bring about change, and if the focus biblically is on the salt of the dead sea it was to promote good growth (high in phosphates hence a fertiliser) and to hinder disease (used to protect the environment from human excrement). If that was the central purpose of salt (we can add the savouring of food etc…) then what we have here is the binding and loosing activity – what is permitted and what is forbidden.

No surprise that I favour the last two. All of the above challenges our world-views, our eschatology and our views regarding the good news of Jesus. Or maybe we can reverse that: our world-view, eschatology, and our view of the good news of Jesus will help us critique how we consider we should be involved in the world.

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One of my perplexed questions

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

For a long time I have pondered concerning the actions and prayers of ‘believers’ – if we are pushing in a wrong direction does that cock things up, does it even work against a godly resolution – I will come to Gaza and Israel before I finish this post, but maybe start a little back from that. Of course what I write are ‘perspectives’ but they are based on certain presuppositions (I hesitated to write ‘truths’!!):

  • I do not believe that God controls the future in the sense of exercising omnipotence over all things. For sure God works in all things for a good / the best outcome. God is love, and that love is non-controlling (although I struggle with certain aspects of Oord’s ‘God can’t’ I certainly go with the premise of ‘Uncontrolling Love’). To believe in ‘sovereignty’ in the sense of control runs up against the justifiable ‘problem of evil’ objection.
  • There is no divide between the God of the OT and the God of the NT, but we are not invited to read OT genocidal commands as coming from heaven… we are invited to continue to read and in reading discover that the God who is one (Old and New Testaments) is the ‘Christlike God’. We must engage with the intra-canonical dialogue and disagreement of Scripture. Scripture disarms us as much as parts of it need to be disarmed.
  • (Relevant to Gaza / Israel – surely it is remarkable that there are no NT Scriptures that seek to pull on Ezekiel-type passages concerning Armageddon, the land as promise etc… The only way to get there is to start with a system and then fit the passages into that – something completely absent in the NT… and I include Revelation as apocalyptic (and certainly far from literal) literature in that assertion, which of course does mention the mythical place of Armageddon.)

We spent much time praying into the effects of the Civil War in Spain – and into some of the underlying history from centuries prior to that. A big concern was the burial of Franco inside a huge ‘cathedral’ hewn inside a mountain with the largest cross of its type above the tomb – some 200 metres high. That raised the question as to whether by placing the cross there corrupted the meaning of the cross but co-opted some of the power it symbolised. That is a huge assumption and if true (I think so) indicated why it was such a battle to see Franco’s body exhumed and moved. That experience and journey left me with a conviction that when something that is genuinely ‘of Christ’ is used (abused) it is not something neutral but co-opts what should be present for transformation and reconciliation for something that stands against genuine transformation and reconciliation. Moving on…

This then has given me my perplexed question. What happens if I as a believer in Jesus start to pray for (say) judgement against my enemies – does that in some way release something spiritual that has an outworking against my ‘enemies’, all the while Jesus is saying ‘Martin, love your enemy, bless those who curse you’?

What if, prayers that are ‘wrong’, in the sense of not flowing with the Christlike God and for the kingdom to come on earth as in heaven, actually frustrate the coming of that kingdom or indeed go further and they actually resist the kingdom of God coming? This is the heart of my perplexed question… and if (as I suspect I am partly on to something) it really troubles me.

My guess is that since so much of evangelical Christianity is shaped by (a modified) form of Dispensationalism there are huge amount of prayers that are along the lines of ‘give Israel victory, restore the boundaries to them’ being offered up to heaven in the current war scenario. If not prayers, then I doubt if from that quarter there are prayers being offered up for peace and reconciliation, or if peace is viewed as a good outcome it is as per Rome who built their temple dedicated to the god of peace (Pax) literally on the field that was dedicated to the god of war (Mars). Peace but how? Through war and subduing all the enemies – the way of all Imperial kingdoms / basileia . So different to the path of peace forged through the blood of Messiah – the way of the kingdom / basileia of heaven.

Into Gaza and Israel we have generational trauma on both sides; both groups have been wronged, and of course until we are healed of such wrongs we tend to believe that any wrong that we are now involved in comes under the heading of ‘justice’ – two wrongs making a right / a justice.

The kingdom does not advance and rejoice when blood is shed – blood shedding being one of the primary actions that pollute land and polluted land draws demonic strongholds to it in increasing measure.

I wish I could resolve my perplexed question with the answer that God does not listen to ‘wrong’ prayers, but sadly and painfully I have not been able to do that. If I am only partly right I pray God have mercy on us, forgive us as we do not know what we are doing. I have to increase my faith that God works in the midst of all the mess we have helped create.

God have mercy on… Israel, Jews, Gaza, Palestinian Arabs (many of whom have Jewish ancestry), God have mercy on us who claim to follow the Prince of Peace.

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Humanity in the midst?

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

I finished with a small group that have journeyed through the four books on ‘Explorations in Theology’. I always benefit a lot, and as a result began to think about the Jesus’ phrase ‘where two or three are gathered together in his name then he is present between them’. Given that the first book was on Humanising the Divine, thus emphasising the similarity of God and humanity, that God was fully present in the muman manifestation of Jesus, then maybe we can explore something…

If two people who do not profess faith in God genuinely meet each other and ‘see’ each other then what manifests is something that approximates to true humanity. If in their coming together they objectify / dehumanise the other then what manifests is that which we term ‘demonic’.

If we were able to facilitate in the current climate a Palestinian and a Jew meeting and truly meeting so that hopes, fears and story can be heard by each other then in the space in between humanity would be manifest – the image of God not simply being indivdual but corporate (make ‘them’ in the image of God). That is how close we are to genuine transformation… and why we are so far from it.

While we were enemies of God (‘love your enemy’ not simply being a command but a way of life that God has manifest since the beginning) God sat ‘opposite’ us – not objectifying us but seeing us… we however, unable to see God (eyes of our heart blinded) there was no reconciliation. So God, in Christ, becomes human and incorporates us in Christ through the cross, swallowing up all death, sin and the powers.

If we meet into (eis) his name, come toward his name, representing / manifesting Jesus, to the extent we can do that is the extent that Jesus is manifest. This is much more than a prayer ‘we meet in the name of Jesus’ for we can meet and proclaim that but not manifest the name / character of Jesus… and conversely those without faith could meet, not proclaim any such thing, but there be a manifestation of humanity, Jesus being the fullness and trueness of humanity. This concept of Jesus as the fullness / trueness seems a sensible way to go… loving friends is a genuinely good thing, the fullness is loving one’s enemy; not committing adultery / murder is a genuinely good way to go, the fullness is the total humanising of the other, seeing the other (I-Thou of Martin Buber), not obejcitfying them.

So trying to summarise my babble… all genuine relationships manifest something of what it is to be humanity. Where that which is expressed is not genuine the space is created for the demonic to manifest. We should encourage all relationships to move toward being genuine (not all that is expressed by humanity is unclean and as filthy rags – the ‘righteousness’ provoked by religion is that which is ‘as filthy rags’). Then if we claim to have been reconciled to the Father through the Son the huge challenge is to move into the very character of Jesus (to gather into his name) for humanity will be manifest in that space, but not simply humanity as we know it, but humanity as expressed in Jesus; the fullness and trueness of what it means to be humanity.

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Tough old book

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Reading Scripture? Love doing that. Imagine doing that though as a Palestinian (and currently when both Netenyahu and certain nationalistic prophets equate Palestinians with the Amalekites!!!)… or reading certain parts as a woman… or as a host of other people. What if one grew up with the pain of definitely not being the ‘favourite’, then go on to read about choice within family, such as God being quoted as saying:

I have loved Jacob,
but I have hated Esau.

Yes it is a tough book at times.

I love to think (and sometimes love to say a little tongue in cheek, ‘the author of Hebrews, she says…’) that a woman (Priscilla) wrote Hebrews. It certainly does not seem that any of the other New Testament books are likely to have been written by a woman so let’s at least claim this one. (Paul does not seem an option – the style and content is just not like his. Maybe Barnabas?)

A woman? Maybe… but we read,

And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel… (Heb. 11:32).

Who was ‘Barak’. In Judges 4, we read of Barak:

At that time Deborah, a prophet, wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel. She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the Israelites came up to her for judgment. She sent and summoned Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali and said to him, “The Lord, the God of Israel, commands you, ‘Position yourself at Mount Tabor, taking ten thousand from the tribe of Naphtali and the tribe of Zebulun. I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin’s army, to meet you by the Wadi Kishon with his chariots and his troops, and I will give him into your hand.’ ” Barak said to her, “If you will go with me, I will go, but if you will not go with me, I will not go.” And she said, “I will surely go with you; nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.”

The hero(ine)? Deborah. The ‘judge in Israel?’ Deborah. The one who gets rebuked? Barak! Yet we come to Hebrews 11 and not a mention of Deborah, and Mr. Barak is promoted to the list of heroes of faith. What on earth do we do with this? A re-writing of the history? A deliberate erasure of a woman’s part in the story?

This absence of Deborah’s name probably means Priscilla was simply not the author, but it also further highlights that there are biases in Scripture.

Scripture written in another era and not written to us. Not to be judged by our era, and for us not to live in that era. Live within the story but do not be confined to that time as if the story has been fully written, with nothing further to be said. The letters are typical of that era (genre wise) but they are ever so radical. What about Paul’s claim that we are ‘letters’? Ever so radical in our era or nothing to say?

I appreciate why people bang the drum of ‘back to Judea-Christian values’ by which is meant ‘back to the Bible’… but what if we began to think backwards to our day from the future rather than forward to our day from the past? That just might make us highly creative, provocative but deeply relevant to the situations aruond us.

It is a tough old book; but the story being told (even when the wrong names appear and Deborah does not get a mention) if we follow that story will make the book difficult to read but the rewards will be incredible.

Commands to commit genocide; damning whole people groups; gender divisions… all of that is present within what we read… but let’s read about the past and read from the future.

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Family? Who is your mother?

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Ever been in a situation where you meet those who are ‘born again’, quote the same Bible, but something troubles you? Probably troubles you about how they talk about those who ‘need to be saved’ and in their approach to evangelise treat such people as objects, not seeing the other as a person and someone to walk with regardless of their response to what is termed the ‘gospel’. Or perhaps in the current scenario of Gaza / Israel? I have been there many times and often leave asking the question – are they my ‘brother / sister’? Do they know the same God (acknowledging that we all have a ‘sub-God’… for the one and true God is the one who ’emptied himself’ as the one who manifested that did so ‘being in the form of God’).

Recently with some major perspectives from VIctor Lorenzo I understand that in Abrham’s family there were a number of descendents. Ishmael and Isaac we are well acquainted with, but after the death of Sarah there were another ‘batch’ born:

Abraham took another wife, whose name was Keturah. She bore him Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. Jokshan was the father of Sheba and Dedan. The sons of Dedan were Asshurim, Letushim, and Leummim. The sons of Midian were Ephah, Epher, Hanoch, Abida, and Eldaah. All these were the children of Keturah. Abraham gave all he had to Isaac. But to the sons of his concubines Abraham gave gifts, while he was still living, and he sent them away from his son Isaac, eastward to the east country (Gen. 25:1-6).

At least another 6… same father, and at least 3 different mothers; descendents from a different womb.

In John 3 Jesus has a dialogue about being ‘born again’ (the only time recorded he had such a dialogue so the context is important) with Nicodemus. He was a significant person within Israel, a member of the Sanhedrin, and over the course of John’s Gospel we can see how he moves from visiting Jesus ‘at night’ to being one of two men who bury Jesus’ body, surely a path to clear discipleship. Nicodemus asks if he has to enter his mother’s womb again… To enter the same womb again (physically) is impossible but to enter the same womb again metaphorically would not bring about a birth from above.The womb to be entered is the womb of the Holy Spirit. [The virigin birth is just that – there is nothing in common with ancient mythological gods having intercourse with a woman, such as in the founding story of Europe; the Holy Spirit comes upon / overshadows suggests the concept of two wombs – that of a yielded young woman and a nurturing protective Spirit of God.]

Unless one enters the womb of the Holy Spirit one cannot see nor even enter the kingdom of God. To come from another womb might not mean we are not of the same ‘Father’ but we might not see the nature of the kingdom of God. Surely that is what we often encounter when we meet fellow ‘believers’. Even when the talk is of the ‘kingdom’ the nature of what is described is different. Maybe all of us are ‘children’ but perhaps many of us are related to one another as ‘half-brothers/sisters’. And of course, as always it has less to do with others than it has to do with ourselves, with our visit to Jesus ‘at night’ and we find ourselves entering not the womb of our mother again, but the womb of the Holy Spirit again. I need to see the ‘upside kingdom of God’ more clearly than yesterday… if I am to be transformed from glory to glory then the process has to continue.

I certainly do not need to be arrogant, labelling others as ‘half-sisters/brothers’, but neither do I have to accept when others speak of those who are ‘outside’ as less than ‘us’ that this is family talk. And in the current situation in Gaza where there is little pain displayed when we read of Palestinians losing their lives, but there is plenty of noise made outside an abortion clinic, surely even I can see the discrepancy. We must be within a different ‘segment’ of the family at that point – and to each ‘segement’ there are gifts available, for Abraham gave to each offspring from the concubines ‘gifts’.

As always it seems less about salvation from, but far more about salvation for, which always is about what I manifest… Manifesting a family likeness?

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