girl power

so we have:
a female monarch (QEII)
a female governor general (quentin bryce)
a female premier (christina keneally)
a female lord mayor (clover moore)
and now*, a female prime minister (julia gillard)

perhaps, for those still not sold on the 'noughty generation' (as the one which comes after gen-y), we label all those born now as gen-w, or maybe even gen-XX"

* i realise there is a handover period but it's as good as now

Acts 1 Chiasm

Luke-Acts exam in a few hours.
a little chiasm to keep you going:

Acts 1.2

a   ἄχρι ἧς ἡμέρας
b       ἐντειλάμενος τοῖς ἀποστόλοις
c           διὰ πνεύματος ἁγίου
b'      οὓς ἐξελέξατο
a'  ἀνελήμφθη

... until the day he was taken up (a,a')
after commanding the apostles he had chosen (b,b')
by the holy spirit (c)

you like?

Matthew 18 (reprieve) - forgiving one another

part 2 of my 2 part series on forgiveness yesterday. again, like last week, i had to change it up a fair bit. but that was a good thing, it meant it was fresh, and didn't feel like a recycled talk.

it was good to read the lead article in the catechist, on forgiveness in the face of unrepentance.

i think the issue is that we have one word, 'forgiveness', and we use it to cover two semantic fields:

1. forgiving the person who repents, holding no bitterness, no grudge, but freely forgiving as we have been forgiven
2. a readiness to forgive, to stand, arms outstretched, again holding no bitterness, but in the face of unrepentance, never shutting off the possibility of a reconciliation, although that is not at the present time a real possibility

thankfully there was a question in question time precisely on this, which meant i was able to draw the two threads of the talk together - both the readiness, as well as the actual forgiving.

a good case study is forgiving the dead person - you can't actually forgive them, in that a relationship is restored. but what you can do is give up the bitterness and hatred that would otherwise destroy you.

psalm 32 (reprieve) - forgiven by God

i had the privilege of preaching from Psalm 32 again on sunday just gone. in a preaching group at college i got some great feedback leading into it. in thinking about 'exegeting your congregation', it was a completely different congregation. from the north shore to a city asian congregation was in many ways a whole different world.
i think the main change was from challenging the average north-shorer's expectations of the good life, to what the psalm promises - freedom from guilt and shame.

i'm still struggling with the both-and of exegeting the passage and exegeting the congregation, but having the talk already (from 18 months ago) and then rethinking it with a different group in mind really helped me to hone the message.
perhaps preparing a talk for one group and then redoing it for another is a good way to check if you're on message (God's) or just trying to target what you see as the particular traps a stereotyped group fall into.


this sunday: i'm redoing matthew 18vv15, the same congregation shift. just rereading the talk means there's a lot of change to do!

religion in the classroom

here's another piece of gold from onn

Christian Groups: Biblical Armageddon Must Be Taught Alongside Global Warming
what i really like is you're not heaps sure who they're having a go at. it starts off having a go at the cousin of the young-earth creationist, the premillenialist (maybe once removed? i can never work that out). but by the end of the clip, i'm not so sure. what do you think?

h/t byron, who is back with a whole bunch of stuff thinking about this world.