April 13 2022
BLIND AND DEAF
Jesus repeatedly emphasized to his disciples that his ministry would be of a short duration. But the disciples were so fixed on Jesus establishing an earthly kingdom that they were blind and deaf to his words: instead, they believed in a totally different scenario: a war of liberation, using Jesus’ miracles to overcome the two problems all armies have, (1) providing food, (Jesus would solve that by making bread and fish almost out of nothing), and (2) restoring death and healing wounds: both conditions would make their army invincible. That’s why they were immune to Jesus’ message of his death and resurrection.
His disciples were warned alright: On three different occasions – in Mark 10, in Matthew 20 and in Luke 17 – Jesus told them that soon his ministry would end, because the Temple establishment saw him as a threat to their carefully constructed system of laws and regulations involving worship and Sabbath regulations, all of which Jesus openly defied. Even his very last miracle, when dying on the cross, pointed to abolishing “religion’, when the heavy curtain separating the Holy from the Holy of Holies, was ripped from top to bottom, signalling the END of worship by rote, which is still going strong today.
In spite of all his miracles and divine powers, Jesus found few true converts, not even among his disciples, who thirsted for ‘worldly power’. His immediate support group had grandiose ideas about the future, openly debating who would get what portfolio, such as Secretary of the Treasury – Judas being a prime candidate there – while the most belligerent, Peter, would be in charge of the Defence department.
Nothing has changed.
Today it is no different: we too we are blind and deaf to Jesus’ words, blind and deaf to the crying of creation, blind and deaf to the alarm bells God’s Earth is ringing loud and clear. We too are in the grip of ‘worldly’ power, which has caused air pollution to spread everywhere so that there is not one single spot on the earth left with pure and unaffected air, and not a single spot where plastic has not penetrated, including the very lungs of you and me. These two events alone foreshadow a future where Matthew 24 has become the most up-to-date chapter in the Bible:
For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again. (verse 21).
The immediate future looks Ukraine-like for the entire world. When, once we are in the New Creation, and able to look back to our time, we will see a planet basically uninhabitable because of extreme heat and desolation, with polar ice gone, with methane released from permafrost, causing mass extinction and the final fire of which 2 Peter 3 speaks.
Take the Covid Pandemic.
We now are at the stage where we are sick of regulations and restrictions, and so made a new rule: ‘learning to live with’, just as we are sick of Climate Change where too, we ignore it and are ‘learning to live’ with it until the bitter end.
And then there are Russia and China, the two most secular states in the world. They are not bound to reductions in Green House Gases. Without their cooperation, any UN agreement is useless. Russia wants to sell its oil and natural gas, the more or better. China wants to see its 1.3 billion people attain middleclass status. Considering these conditions, will The West – us – really cut back its oil use?
Expect Climate Change to turn into Global Heat: this year! The war in Ukraine has changed the entire picture: gone are all good climate resolutions, gone are windfarms and solar projects. Now priority is given to war production, tanks, bazookas, drones, yes, tactical nuclear devices, while there will be cutbacks on ‘climate-saving’ incentive, all because Climate Change is a future event, while the Russian – and Chinese – threat is immediate.
Just as Temple worship in Jesus’ day saw him as a threat, so the church today fails to see that redemption of creation and personal redemption go hand in hand: we, in general, and the church in particular, is blind and deaf to God’s Created Word.
It took the disciples a totally new conversion to grasp what the entire Bible, especially Isaiah 65 and actually all of Scriptures, proclaims: we wait for New Heavens, totally cleaned of all space junk and radio and TV waves and satellites and polluted air; we wait for a renewed earth.
It all started in the Garden of Eden. It will end in the New Earth where “the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations”, as Revelation 22 so poetically tells us.