From the very first verses of Luke 11, it is obvious that the pace of gospel has changed. There is an unmistakable urgency, a ratcheting up of tension. Where before Jesus seemed content to fulfil the nomadic role of an itinerant preacher, going where the wind blew, we are left under no illusion that the Jesus of Luke 11-18 is on a journey with a very definite end. Jerusalem looms large on the horizon, and you get the sense that time is running out.

There is lots and lots of material in these chapters; much to be pondered, much to challenge. I want to pick up just one main theme which runs through these chapters; the theme is Israel.

In these chapters, Jesus is challenging the nature of Israel’s vocation. As we have seen in previous chapters, Jesus has been doing this since the start of his ministry. However these chapters crystallize the challenge. As we shall see by the end of the passage, Jesus is offering the people a stark choice; continue to live as you are and face utter destruction, or repent and follow his way of being Israel.

We’re continuing with Moses’ speech to Israel this week, following its middle section through Deuteronomy 12 – 26 which outlines the details of the law, including both new regulations along with a development of some of the ideas we found in the three previous books. Though the speech has moved from a focus on learning from the past to addressing the future, its latent passion is no less compelling.

What we find in these pages is a law that has no regard for the sacred / secular divides of our modern times. Here is a national Constitution that is concerned with worship of Yahweh in the same breath as economic policy, judicial regulations, marriage, war and civil rights. There is no ‘private’ sphere for worship and a ‘public’ sphere for politics; this nation’s life and faith is all part of one whole. It is a masterful work of integration.

In some ways, this integrated national code is more dissimilar from today’s western worldview than it was from its neighbours’ set-up. After all, the gods of the Egyptians bestowed power to their Pharaohs and the local pagan deities demanded sacrifices for economic and national protection. Our a-religious system has long banned God-talk from the corridors of power, eschewing the despotic travesties of political theocracy. What we miss, however, and what Deuteronomy holds out, is a way of living faith in the workplace, the bedroom, the playground and the public square that doesn’t relegate God to some optional extra, but lets him influence every aspect of our lives.

We re-join Luke at chapter 9, a hugely important chapter in Luke’s whole Jesus’ story. Luke uses this chapter as a hinge for his gospel, neatly bookending the first part of Jesus’ ministry and signalling a change of focus. After Lk 9 we begin the long journey to Jerusalem and the inexorable sense of the story moving to its climax. But before we begin this journey, Luke’s Jesus poses the fundamental question ‘who am I’? What follows is some pretty dense Jewish theology – so hang on to your hats as we enter some murky waters of apocalyptic, inter-testamental literature. Again I would encourage us to try to suspend our inherited systematic propositions, and listen closely to what Luke might be saying.

In this chapter, Jesus is again characteristically challenging inherited ideas, giving them a new twist, and fusing together previously unfriendly nouns and adjectives to create new meanings. The first one he introduces is Messiah.

And so we come to Deuteronomy, the fifth and final book of the Pentateuch (the Book of the Law, or Torah). Most of Deuteronomy is the speech made by Moses to the people of Israel as they camped on the plains of the Jordan, anticipating the invasion of Canaan.

We’ll look at Deuteronomy in three parts, the first being chapters 1-11. Essentially, this is just one big recap on the previous two months readings! But much more than that, it is a powerful example of how the act of corporate remembering can fashion and fortify a community’s identity.

Moses’ gripping recount is a masterful display of political rhetoric. Highlighting all of Israel’s significant failures he recaps with lucidity the dire consequences metered on the community. From the Golden Calf at Horeb (Sinai) to the Baal of Peor, infidelity is recalled and from the Rebellion at Kadesh Barnea to his own mistake at the Rock at Meribah, disobedience is retold. The punishments suffered by his listeners, their parents and grandparents – still, no doubt, raw in their memory – are emphatically linked to the stubbornness and defiance of this ‘stiff-necked people’.

Imagine yourself an Israelite at this juncture in history. Before you lies the Promised Land towards which your whole life has been geared. Behind you lies the wilderness in which such great suffering met you and your family. You know that your parents were made to turn back into the desert because they didn’t have the guts to face the Anakites. Yet, you don’t feel you have the guts either!

It was dark. She slipped from shadow to shadow, from house to house, always getting closer to her destination. Normally, she skulked, fearful of prying eyes and ears, and hushed disapproving tones. But tonight, her steps were light as they had not been since she was a little girl, flying down hills after her brother. Those days had long since faded into another life. Skipping had turned to plodding, and rushing wind to heavy, stagnant air.

She paused as she reached the main street, her memory whirring to the left and to the right. Which way, had he said? If only she was able to ask someone. Impossible. This was not her patch. People here didn’t speak to people like her. Men – who in her experience were blind and mute at the best of times – hustled by, seemingly oblivious. But she knew they noticed – their backs stiffened and steps quickened. No-one in their right mind would want to be seen with her. Too much was at stake – so much that not even a yearly pilgrimage could absolve. She knew even her breathless presence could smear reputations, as blood soaks wool. But it was the faces of the women which stung the most. Some tried to dress pity up with banal words of meeting and greeting. Other hollow eyes followed her up and down, boring into her past until she saw her own shame reflected. She avoided women.

My two-year old son is struggling with change. Nappies to potty, cot to bed; things in his life are shifting and he’s not altogether pleased. But change he must, or be stuck in a rut. He joins the great multitude of humans who would resist an important development of some sort and risk ending up far worse off as a result.

This is what happened to the Israelites in early Numbers. Faced with intimidating rumours of the descendents of Anak, they bottle it and refuse to enter the Promised Land. The path to freedom they should have taken appeared too difficult so they opted instead for safety and mediocrity, and ended up with a far worse challenge than the giants of Canaan: to survive the fierce ire of the desert.

We often face choices where the path ahead appears dangerous and threatening. Staying put seems the sensible, even prudent course. But life is rarely static, and what seems like level-headed caution, can often become a snare itself, without our realising it, until it’s too late.

I am neither black nor oppressed nor American. I have not known discrimination on the basis of colour, creed or class. I am the most median of middle class; the virtues (and vices) of my aspirational forefathers are visited on me. I am, despite my best efforts, educated. I read the Guardian and share many of its prejudices. The only badges currently missing are 1.4 children, a Volvo and a mortgage.

All of which made my reaction to Barack Obama’s election win and acceptance speech in Grant Park more than a little surprising to me. Having stayed up on election night with friends, wine and cheese (!), I found myself with tears in my eyes as Obama accepted America’s decision to elect him. I had very little personally invested in seeing Obama win, beyond an obligatory distain for George W. I shared none of the history but still felt an upsurge in hope, an optimism that for once a politician might be able to deliver change.

It was against this backdrop and with these feelings still fresh that I approached Luke 3-6. I think that recent events in America offer us a helpful window into what is happening in these chapters. Perhaps the most illuminating parallel is the way in which both Obama and Jesus were able to gather their nations stories around themselves but give them a new twist.

As we continue with Numbers, we, finally (after a whole month), get back to the narrative flow of the Israelite’s journey. Though as we will find, Numbers is a great example of a well redacted (edited) hotchpotch of JE and P material. This means that we’ll continually break from the story to learn numerous and varied details regarding census and regulatory data.

This week we’ll look specifically at Chapters 10 – 26. There’s a lot of very disparate material in these chapters so it’s hard to make out broad-brush themes. But I think we see more of what has been an increasingly emerging theme in the Old Testament: that the people of God must have no other gods but Yahweh.

What we have to try and get our head round is the incredibly polytheistic nature of all the cultures with which Israel was in contact at this time (polytheistic means belief in many gods rather than just one). Israel’s growing monotheism was so radical in its day that it was nothing short of crazy! Try telling people who’ve lived all their lives seeing a spectrum of colours that there is only one colour. Or try telling a food-lover that there are only carrots. People who had grown up assured that there were many gods would find this Yahweh really overbearing, exclusive and ‘by Molech, if this ‘God’ is so much better, he’d better prove it!’

‘ if speaking is silver, then listening is gold…’

The greatest compliment you can pay a person is to listen to them. To seek to put aside your own agenda, your own cherished opinions and be genuinely open to another person – these are the commitments on which healthy relationships are built.

And it is this challenge which faces us as we read Luke’s gospel. Having been immersed in Matthew and Mark for the past couple of months, the temptation when we reach Luke is to skim read, assuming that we have heard the stories before and that Luke is simply regurgitating old material. Our culture has taught us to reduce knowledge and truth to the bare minimum – get the facts and move on. So reaching another gospel with seemingly the same material packaged up again is a challenge to faithful reading.

However, an encouragement – Luke is well worth the effort of listening to! His Jesus story is carefully thought through, crafted, subtle and multi-layered. He drops hints and clues throughout his story like the best detective writer. Luke is also a profoundly challenging gospel, especially for us in the affluent West. So, over the next few weeks, let’s try to feel the texture of his Jesus story, get caught up his sights and sounds, his peculiar motifs and emphases.

Just when you thought we’d be out of tedious regulations and into some exciting storylines, we’ve got one more week engrossed in the various facts and figures of Numbers 1-9

But I want to look at this all from a completely different angle now and use this short passage as a springboard for exploring more generally how we should understand the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) and it’s various contributors.

It’s long been a tradition of the church that Moses himself wrote the Pentateuch, or at least the bulk of it (it includes the story of his death!). There are various references in both Old and New Testament to indicate that these writings are indeed his work. However, during the 20th Century, biblical scholars were wrestling with a theory put forward by a German bloke called Julius Wellhausen. Basically, Wellhausen argued that the Pentateuch was compiled from four primary sources. These he called J, E, D & P.

Now if you’re thinking that this is probably going to be the most irrelevant thing you’ve ever read, please bear with me, because I believe exploring this gives us a much richer understanding of the bible.