A Silver Breast plate used to decorate a Torah Scroll.
On John 14:6
I am continually returning to the starting point with John 14:6, where I know nothing at all. What I may have known before and shared with you I do not know now because my knowledge and my learning do not lead me to the Father. Jesus – Yehoshua – only, personally, leads me and us all to the Father. He is not my knowledge and he is not my learning. He is my Master and the power of my life, the true light of my consciousness.
What I learned before may have prepared me for the lesson that he is setting before me today, but today I sit at his feet as empty of knowledge as a newborn. I may have come a great way already but it is not far enough. He has set before me another day and another lesson. I am a frail and failed human being, unable to return to fellowship with my Creator, unable to be thankful to Him like a child to its Father and Mother. No skill, no orthodox beliefs, no lessons learned can enable me to be the master of this day, no more than the first day that I met the Messiah of Israel for the first time. Facing this whole new lesson that I must face today, I am helpless to learn it, helpless to know anything at all without my Master.
Yehoshua has come all the way to where I am in my failed and failing flesh and blood condition. He has come with salvation as a Jew. He has come from the Father revealing the grace of the Father’s Torah in his eyes, in his face, in his hand, as he reaches out to me, as he draws me toward him, up toward him on the cross, up toward his prayer to the Father from the cross, toward him in the centre of the earth, toward him in the centre of time for three days and three nights, toward him in the garden of eternal resurrection, as he lifts my eyes toward him as he ascends to be hidden with the Father.
And I, as I am drawn to the Father by him, see that I am not alone. I see that my heart and spirit are in the company of a great cloud of other witnesses of his grace, and our soul is one, waiting in the hidden chambers in Jerusalem’s heart.
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem
Lift up your gates and sing!
Hosanna in the highest,
Hosanna to your king…”
Jerusalem’s hope is not the hope of Athens or Rome, New York or London, Singapore or Beijing. Jerusalem’s hope is not stored in parliaments or banks, military headquarters or academies of science. Jerusalem’s hope is stored in the hearts of Jewish girls and boys from long ago and from this day and tomorrow. And she fears, she shakes and trembles, to lift up her gates, lest she let those girls and boys down. Yet their hope builds in her and burns in her and stirs her passions like the fire of stars swirling within her. And her gates move and her thoughts hear melodies like thunder far away. Seven thunders send their echos near her and she reaches out with her soul to hear their sound, if it might be that she hears any song that is a song of her beloved that she might sing to him. She hears the echos but cannot quite hear the notes. She strains toward the east and toward the north, toward the west and toward the south. Almost she hears. Almost her lips move. Almost her gates begin to rise.
