Fog

Sure enough, it's fog season, time is after seven o'clock and the fog is retreating, maybe as the air is warmed by the sun, but still out there. From 7H porch, looking across StAndrewsBay, past Davis Point and onward into the whiteness. 

Our bible story for this coming Sunday is John's account of the baptism event in which he, John, skirts any mention of Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist. So, if John was our only canonized gospel, it would be arguable at best. Gospel John slides by the baptism to the next day and the next, when, both days, John the Baptist sees Jesus walking by and remarks to his disciples, "Behold the Lamb of God", which sets one element of Gospel John's agenda in which Jesus is crucified on the day of preparation for the Passover, when the lambs were slaughtered for the feast, thus becoming the Lamb of God. John's gospel is far different to the Synoptics in almost every way and of the four, at least to me, Gospel John has the best control of his agenda, his story about Jesus, Christ, Logos. That still does not steer me off my path in which my favorite books of the Bible are Genesis, Mark, and Revelation. 

Do I have least favorites? Come to think of it, I never thought about it that way, but maybe Joshua with its presentation of a murderous people driven by their scorched earth Deity. So, yes, Joshua. 

And maybe Acts, which, Luke's great adventure stories leave us feeling we have a definitive historical account of Paul. Writing what? thirty years or more after Paul's death?, Luke is so convincing that it doesn't occur to us to wonder if what Luke writes about Paul in Acts ties to what Paul tells us about himself in his own letters. Luke is likely close enough to Paul, though he, Luke, develops his adventure stories in more detail and verbatim than one might reasonably expect from stories passed down for several decades. Granted, tradition takes over to answer questions and close disconnects.

At any event, I appreciate this coming Sunday's gospel story from John that also lets us explore Simon's Aramaic name Κηφᾶς and it's translation Πέτρος Peter, and trace to the Matthew 16:17f exchange when Jesus names and commissions Simon as Peter the Rock, and what the Christian church has done with that. And the relationship between our Collect for the Day that calls Jesus the Light of the World, and our Old Testament lesson from servant song Isaiah 49 in which the oracle says You are too great to be just my servant and save Israel, I'll make you a light to the gentiles so you can save all the world. And to Luke's character Simeon who calls the infant Jesus "a light to enlighten the Gentiles". And circle back to John 8:12 I AM the light of the world, where Jesus, again central to John's agenda, offends his Jewish audience with his I AM sayings by which Jesus blasphemously ties himself to God naming himself I AM as He speaks to Moses from the burning bush in Exodus 3; and back to the Collect. 

After eight o'clock and still foggy out there, the foggy foggy dew dripping from the scaffolding.

T

Exodus 3:14 καὶ εἶπεν ὁ Θεὸς πρὸς Μωυσῆν λέγων· ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν. καὶ εἶπεν· οὕτως ἐρεῖς τοῖς υἱοῖς ᾿Ισραήλ· ὁ ὢν ἀπέσταλκέ με πρὸς ὑμᾶς. (LXX)