“But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.”

:: Malachi 4.2

Imagine you’re a Jew living 400 years BC when this was written. It’s been nearly 200 years since your people had anything like freedom or their own country. You live under the oppressive rule of the Persian empire. They’ve allowed you to rebuild your temple, but it’s a shameful effort, and it’s obvious that God is nowhere to be seen. Not even your people take him seriously any more. He promised peace and prosperity, but it looks like he’s abandoned those promises and abandoned you.

And then Malachi says something like this. Even after all that: stick with God and he will stick with you. Morning will come and everything sad will come untrue and then you will dance.

Like a young calf that’s been cooped up all night in the stalls, you’ll frollick in the field; you’ll strech your legs and jump about and eat the dew-drenched grass and squint in the sunshine as you feel it thaw your legs and warm your back.

I wonder if the pun was intended. It only works in English, of course, but you can imagine the Spirit chuckling to himself as he thought about how it would sound when, eighteen centuries later, it would be translated. “The son of righteousness will rise.” More true than Malachi could have imagined.

Not to mention the sublimely mixed metaphors. So the sun, which make things right, is also a bird, whose wings will heal stuff. Which of course, given the pun, is also a guy in a tomb in 400 years’ time, who will do exactly that.

Mixed metaphors were more acceptable back then, and it’s not that strange, really, that the sun should be a bird. They both rise and soar over the landscape, stretching out their arms to envelop it. Healing wings are like rays of sunshine, washing over the countryside as dawn breaks. Everything the rays touch is renewed, filled with the hope of a new day.

The future looked pretty hopeless in Malachi’s day. Three verses later he says that the prophet Elijah will come, and after that God will act. Yeah, right, Malachi. But Elijah did come, wearing his trademark camel hair, and God did act. The son has risen and the sun has risen. A new day has dawned when God will bring righteousness and healing to the world. The long cold night is over and he’s released us from that stall. It’s time to stretch our legs and skip about.

Until this year. This year I agreed to read four chapters of Bible every day. And it turns out it’s not as scary as I thought. It can even be fun. Here’s five things I’ve found about the Bible:

1. It’s not magic. The Bible is a book just like any other book. It isn’t a magic book that answers every question or makes you more Christian. It’s a normal book; it just happens to be the book about God and what he’s done.

2. It’s not big. The Bible isn’t one big book; it’s lots of little books. Actually, most of them aren’t even books. They’re all sorts of different writing, from letters to poetry, from history to fables.

3. You don’t need to get it. The Bible is more like Lord of the Rings than a maths textbook. You don’t have to puzzle over it until you ‘get it’. You can just read it. Immerse yourself in the story and enjoy watching it unfold.

4. Read it like a novel. You can’t just read a few pages of Lord of the Rings and know what’s going on. The Bible isn’t any different. Don’t just read a few verses. Read a whole book, or at least a few chapters at a time. Then you’ll get what’s going on.

5. It’s not boring. This is the most surprising – sometimes the Bible really is unputdownable. When you read the Bible like a normal book, you can really get into the story. Sometimes I find I’ve read more than my four chapters, and I want to keep reading.

The Bible is a normal book. It’s not magic, it’s not big, it’s not hard to understand. Don’t let your Bible sit on the shelf shouting insults at you. You wouldn’t take it from your flatmate, so don’t take it from a book.

Imagine you’ve done a study, and now have a massive amount of data – let’s say ten thousand dots on a grid. You need to test whether there’s a pattern in the dots. So you think of a possible pattern, then test it against the data.

Back in the day, this would have taken you hours and days of painfully complicated calculations with pencil and paper. And if it turned out your pattern was wrong, you had to start all over again.

These days, with computers to do all the work for us, you can test hundreds of different patterns in minutes.

Sounds great, but it’s actually a big problem. If you can test as many possible patterns as you like, with almost no work, it won’t be long until you find a pattern that fits the data, even if the data is random.

Back in the day, you would think really hard about what kind of pattern you expect, why you expect it, and what it means. Because if you got it wrong it was days of work down the drain. But now that you can test every crazy pattern, you’ll just take the first pattern that fits, no matter how crazy it is.

This is why the results of 80% of all medical studies don’t work in real life. (But that’s another story.)

Anyway, the point is I think it works the same with the Bible. Back in the day, you couldn’t just pull your Bible off the shelf. You had to go to a big church or library. You had to get permission to pull down the big hand written scroll. You had to pour over it, search through it, think hard. Because you might not get another chance to see it. And that’s if you’re one of the few who are educated enough to know how to read.

These days you can look up a passage, search the Greek words on software, get all sorts of opinion in hundreds of cheap paperbacks or on thousands of blogs. We can hear every crazy idea with almost no work. And pretty soon we’ll find a idea that seems to fit, no matter how crazy it is.

I think we’ve need to be bit more careful. When we’ve got to write a Bible study (or kids’ church or youth talk) it’s really tempting to take the first idea that pops into our head, or the first idea in the commentary, and teach it. Even if it’s crazy. I’ve taught crazy ideas so many times, just because I was too lazy to think hard about the passage.

Here’s a suggestion. Next time you look at the Bible, don’t worry about the notes or commentaries or blogs or software. Just set aside a few hours, make a pot of coffee, and think really hard about what it means. I bet you’re smart enough to work it out.

Jesus is all about power.

He hung around with prostitutes, touched people with leprosy, washed his disciples’ feet. But the first Christians didn’t tell everyone how nice he was. They told everyone how powerful he was. They said he was the ruler.

Paul to the Philippians: “He has been exalted to the highest place, and given the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven, on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Ruler).”

It was this message that got the first Christians killed. They were saying Jesus was in charge, not Caesar. And one day he would come back, bring justice, and rule everything. He would reward right, punish wrong, vindicate the oppressed, destroy the oppressors. And it was pretty clear who that was going to be.

And if there’s one person you would want to have power, wouldn’t it be Jesus? Some people have a lot of power: dictators, CEOs, celebrities. Some people have none: the uneducated, the unemployed, the poor. And people without power always get a hard time from the people with.

But not any more. There’s only one person we can trust to care for the poor instead of exploiting them. And now that he has all the power – the power to protect and provide for the vulnerable, the power the punish the oppressors – he’s going to do it.

Love without power is useless; power without love is tyranny. That’s why it’s such great news that Jesus has the power. He’s the only one who’s loving enough to use the power for good, and powerful enough to make the world right.

Your job is about power. Your boss gets the power to tell you what to do and you get the power to buy stuff.

Your degree is about power. The power to get the job you want. The power to have the status you want. And all the power that status brings.

TV is about power. Producers get the power to sell advertising, and advertisers get the power to sell products.

And sadly, a lot of friendships are about power too. When you choose who to spend time with, do you think about what you could get out of it? Whether they’ll be fun? Or make you look good?

The French philosopher Louis Althusser had this big insight: it’s all about power. Everything we do, he said, has only one basic goal. To get power. And he was right. Except for one thing.

Jesus was never about power. He never accrued any wealth. He never accepted any position. He never lashed out at his enemies. Where Jesus was from, the first would be last and the last would be first. The greatest is the servant of all.

In Jesus kingdom, it’s not about power. It’s about love. It’s not about serving yourself. It’s about serving others. It hasn’t fully come yet, but you can get a preview.  You can see Jesus’ kingdom in the community of his people, the church.

The question out in the world is, ‘How can we get ahead of you?’ But the question in the church is, ‘How can we do what’s best for you?’ They’re completely opposite.

I think this is often the case at Unichurch. Our community isn’t perfect, but I think that when you come to Unichurch, the usual question isn’t ‘what can you do for us?’ but ‘what can we do for you?’

This is completely countercultural. The whole world is out for itself. Everything is about power. Except this one little island where things are turned on their head. In Jesus’ kingdom, the greatest serves the least. And one day, it will take over the world. Until that day, Jesus’ people are showing the world what that’s like.

What is it? I asked my Scripture class at Hollywood PS this afternoon, and they came up with all sorts of answers. Was it a pencil sharpener? A toy pet? A paperweight?

But when they pushed down on the bird, it became clear.

It’s a toothpick dispenser. The interesting this isn’t really the bird (although it’s awesome), it’s the question. When I asked the kids, “what is it?” they all assumed the question meant, “what is it for?” They made a few guesses, but once I showed them what it did, there was no more argument. Everyone in the room agreed it was a toothpick dispenser.

So why did the kids assume, “what is it?” means, “what is it for?” They could have just as easily answered the question by describing it: it’s a black plastic cylinder with a red pointy bit on top. Or what they would do with it: it’s a paperweight, cos that’s what I would use it for.

But they didn’t. They unconsciously recognized that the thing was defined by its purpose, and that its purpose was defined by its designer.

Today’s lesson was on creation, and that’s why we looked at the bird. We discovered that everything has been made for a purpose, and finds its meaning in fulfilling that purpose. It would be undignified to use the bird as a paperweight, because it’s a toothpick dispenser.

Of course it’s not every thing’s purpose is so obvious. What’s the purpose of a tree? A star? A person? But we need to ask the question, because otherwise we’ll end up abusing it.

P.S. I found the bird in the stuff for the garage sale. This means it will be for sale at St Matt’s this Saturday morning. So if you fancy it, it could be your’s!

Make it illegal to meet in groups of more than twenty-five.

That’s what the Chinese government has done. So whenever a Chinese house-church tips over to twenty-six, they are forced to split. Suddenly there are two churches where there used to be one, and there’s space for twenty-five new Chinese Christians.

On last night’s LNL I heard a very interesting interview with John Micklethwaite, author of God is Back (see last week’s post). You can hear the audio here – it’s worth a listen just to hear Philip Adams writhing in discomfort.

Among many excellent points, Micklethwaite told us about the Chinese church. There are now far more Christians in China than members of the Chinese communist party, he said. Their numbers are exploding – into the hundreds of millions – not least because house churches are so good for evangelisation. As Michlethwaite points out, It’s exactly the same principle the Roman empire hit upon the last time the church grew at such an astonishing rate.

What’s interesting is that neither Micklethwaite or Wooldridge are especially religious themselves, nor do they uncritically accept religious assumptions. They recognise that religion is not always a force for good, especially when coupled with the power of the state. But, with thorough research and analysis, they argue that God is alive and healthy in the twenty-first century, and that’s not such a bad thing.

The Australian carried an interesting excerpt from God is Back a few weeks ago. Read it here.

Married guys: ignore this post.

Unmarried guys: READ THIS POST.

Introducing the the Guys Guide to Marrying Well. If you plan to ever get married, download it and read it. It is gold. (And looks pretty cool, too.)

READ IT NOW.

July 15 Return to Pontianak. Sightseeing, shopping and eating out.

July 16 Travel from Pontianak to Jakarta. Sightseeing in Jakarta.

July 16-17 Return to Perth.