Sublime

Peace, Walter Brueggemann

Some have seen ‘the one who can cast into Gehenna’ as YHWH; but this is unrealistic. Jesus did not, to be sure, perceive Israel’s god as a kindly liberal grandfather who would never hurt a fly, let alone send anyone to Gehenna.47 But again and again—not least in the very next verse of this paragraph—Israel’s god is portrayed as the creator and sust

But there is no sense that this “age to come” is “eternal” in the sense of being outside space, time, and matter. Far from it.

there is to be a place where the living God will dwell forever among his people, it will not be in a building of bricks and mortar; it will be in and as a human being, the ultimate son of David. Somehow everything that might be thought and celebrated about the Temple and about God’s intention of dwelling with his people would come into a new world

For far too long now Christians have told the story of Jesus as if it hooked up not with the story of Israel, but simply with the story of human sin as in Genesis 3, skipping over the story of Israel altogether.

They are to hold fast to Wisdom, which is to be found in Torah, and their god will deliver them, judging the nations and exalting Israel as his people. This is substantially the same message as can be found in much apocalyptic writing.