Wednesday 23 November

Ezekiel 43:1-44:31

Continuity and discontinuity.  The continuity is bafflingly beautiful.  The roar of the voice of God, the land radiant with his glory, the only possible response of falling face down.  We see this and we know this.  There is continuity between what Ezekiel is saying and what we experience under this exhilarating new covenant.  Wow, God is ferociously amazing and he is bringing his amazingness to bear on our lives.  We can see God and that is bafflingly beautiful.  But there is also some discontinuity.  Ezekiel speaks about sacrificing goats and the dimensions of the temple and priests keeping their hair trimmed.  What is all that about?  That smacks of the old covenant, of the Mosaic legislation that Ezekiel could see had failed.  Surely Ezekiel wasn’t prophesying that we would be returning to all of that?  Well I think we come back here to that age-old problem with prophecy, what Paul described as seeing in a glass dimly.  Ezekiel saw that God was going to show extraordinary mercy and lavish his presence upon his people but he had no thought channels to send that down nor any language to express it other than his experience of the temple.  Ezekiel was seeing the truth of God’s commitment to his people and the fact that he was going to do something new, and he was faithfully testifying to it.  But the capacity of his brain - and indeed of his listeners’ brains - meant that it came out as imagery, as familiar imagery that would convey the truth of God’s plans.  So I have no expectation of the temple in Jerusalem being rebuilt.  Those days, I am sure, are passed. But I do expect that God will always surprise me.  God will always exceed my expectations.  God will always prove to be way beyond my capacity to comprehend or to explain.  God will always convey his truth to me, he will always lavish his mercy and his goodness upon me.  But he will always baffle me.  My faith will be one long tale of continuity and discontinuity - of seeing familiar and amazing things and new and incomprehensible things all at the same time.  That is the glory of our God.  That is the joy of faith.

1 Peter 2:4-25

Here is some more food for you lambs of Jesus; you were chosen.  The Father chose you.  He didn’t have to.  He certainly didn’t need to.  He didn’t do it because he felt guilty.  It wasn’t a half-hearted act in response to the feeling that you were left out.  He chose you because he wanted you.  He wanted you.  And so he chose you.  And he chose me as well.  He chose us together.  Out of the sludge and slurry of our own making he plucked us and cleaned us off.  He wiped us down and took the dirt out of our mouths.  He healed us and called us his own.  He chose us and he is choosing to shepherd us.  He is choosing to oversee our souls today.  That is a meal worth eating slowly.  That is food that we want to digest well.  For this food can transform our whole experience of life.  This food can underpin a whole sense of identity and confidence to persevere.  We were chosen by the Father.  We didn’t deserve it but that is not the issue.  He chose us.  And he has brought us out into his wonderful light.  O how incomprehensibly generous is our God.

Psalm 132:1-18

Cor, that was quite some vow that David made to God.