Kristian Heal Wonder of Scripture Lecture

Transcript

Oh, how lovely to see you all. It was beautiful walking in today. It's lovely to see the mountains resplendent in their kind of winter wear. Phil, thanks for that wonderful introduction, overly generous, and thanks for the prayer, and thanks for coming. Hopefully, this will be fun. Possibly the best bits of it will be the bits I'm not reading, as Phil suggested, but we'll see if what we can do.

I always tend to bury the lead when I write a paper, so that you have to kind of wait all the way till the end, until you kind of get the point. So I thought I'd read a bit of my conclusion first, because I know some of you need to leave halfway through. So I realized, as I was going through this again this morning, that I did really, actually bury the lead. So I put this is me like this is what kind of thing I do all the time. Some of you will have hopefully noticed that the rhetorical structure of this paper is recapitulation, with the five parts of the first half mirroring the five parts of the second. You wouldn't have noticed that at all. Why would you have noticed that? Rosalynde would have noticed that, but no one else. You might have even noticed the verbal links between the heart the first half and the second half. As I say this, you would be perfectly justified in thinking that this might have been useful information to have at the beginning of the talk. So see, I'm like, I put that at the end. What am I doing? But this is part of the point. Educating the scriptural imagination is an iterative process. I'll read the rest of that at the end. Educating the scriptural imagination, that's what we're here to talk about today, and it will be in two parts. The first part is the way that God has educated my scriptural imagination, and the second part is the way that the text that I study, the Syriac, these texts from Christian late antiquity written in Syriac, help us educate our scriptural imagination. Unfortunately, this is something I also do. I'm not going to define what any of those words mean. What does it mean to educate the scriptural imagination, but by osmosis and through the sheer power of my accent, by the end of this, you will understand what all of these things mean. It will be a beautiful experience. And if it's not, there are mint truffles on your way out. So that's all I can promise.

So I was sitting in my parents’ bedroom reading a mission letter from my older brother when I was when I experienced my first revelation. I was 16 years old. My brother was serving in Haiti, and his letters and tapes home were filled with adventure and the excitement of the work and some terror, to be honest. But it wasn't that that moved me. It was a photo of my brother dressed in white with a Haitian convert about to be baptized, both smiling with pure joy. That scene, that joy, seemed to unlock the windows of my mind, and light flooded in. I wept, but more importantly, I knew that light was pure intelligence, and it transformed my life. I was earnest before this moment, eager to please, to be seen, to obey, but after this moment, I felt the convert’s hunger to learn, to testify, and to serve. I saw the world and my place in it differently. I was part of God's Church, and the scriptures were the Word of God, a source of knowledge and certainty. I studied them and used this new knowledge to teach and testify. The scriptures gave me sure answers to life's biggest questions. I shared these answers with a friend in high school who questioned the existence of God, and he joined the church. I wanted more of this. I wanted to serve a mission. I wanted to have those experiences that my quorum leaders shared with me from their missions, and gain the mastery of the Scriptures and the doctrine that they had acquired while serving.

Part Two: I entered the London MTC in October 1989. I was going to do this whole thing as a sort of era's tour, beginning in 1989, and I thought I was such a bad singer that that would have been really, and the costumes, I just could never fit into them, really. We were a small International Group. Several of us, including my Swedish companion, were heading for the England Bristol mission. That's the mission that was told by Elder Holland. Oh, I can't tell that story. Sorry. I'm being recorded. Afterwards, when we stop the recording, I'll tell you the story. So we studied hard, attended the temple, learned, laughed, and prayed together. As I think back on that wonderful and brief experience, however, it is not those things that I recall first. What I remember most was an internal, transformation, the experience of my heart and mind opening. I can only describe it as discovering additional parts of a house that you've lived in all your life, parts filled with long corridors and high ceilings and a library. It was like moving from a terrace house to Downton Abbey. I spent a good portion of my mission trying to fill this new fans or me, actually, I love Downton Abbey. I spent a good portion of my mission trying to fill this new fan space with treasures from the Scriptures, the words of the prophets, and insights from the great scholars of the restoration. I read the Journal of discourses and the biographies of Parley P Pratt and Wilford Woodruff. I listened to talks by Cleon Skousen, Paul H Dunn, and Truman Manson, some of them aged better than others, which were passed around the mission. I was struck by the apocalyptic clarity of Ezra Taft Benson and followed his admonition to immerse myself in the Book of Mormon. And I discovered and devoured the works of Hugh Nibley and other BYU scholars.

A few months into the mission, excuse me, a few months into the mission, I started a district newsletter so that I could share my newfound wisdom. I was, as you can imagine, insufferable. I would sit on the sidelines of basketball games deep in conversation with similarly obsessive missionaries. I remember one particularly engaging conversation about Joseph Smith that took place in the middle of a soccer pitch while the game was happening around us. I read everywhere, at bus stops, in the car, between doors, while contacting, to put it in terms that make sense here at BYU, at the MTC, God transformed me into someone for whom intellectually enlarging was spiritually strengthening. I must have been horrible to serve with. I had 16 companions, and I always thought, ‘Oh, the mission president is using me to’ but I was probably just, I was the problem, wasn't he? I'm the problem. It's me. Some of you will get that.

My third revelation happened while street contacting in Helston, a little town on the south coast of Cornwall, about 20 miles from Land's End, this was another transformative encounter with the divine. I was in my last area, confident in my message, ready to build relationships of trust and teach the restored gospel to anyone who would let me. But just when I thought I had figured everything out and felt that I could just focus on reaching my contacting goals. On that beautiful, sunny afternoon, my entire worldview changed as I looked around in that busy street I had the overwhelming feeling that God loved all of his children and was working to bring them all back to him. To paraphrase the English apostle, which is how I think we should refer to him, I learned through revelation that the father's design, his plan, His purpose, His intent, His wish and His hope was to heal his children and bring them home. But most wonderfully and somewhat disconcertingly, with this overwhelming feeling of the love of God for His children, came the insight that even though I was part of that plan, and this beautiful, restored Church that I was representing was part of that plan, God's work in the world was much bigger and more diverse than I had ever imagined. This revelation shaped my view of God's work and his children for the rest of my life. My previous encounters with the divine had led me further into my faith had led to increased knowledge and certainty that God was at work in my church and this was where I belonged. This last revelation was different. There was like lifting a veil on the world and seeing God at work everywhere. It completely changed the way that I did missionary work, and to be honest, it was probably a good thing that I only had a couple of months left to serve. I stopped being solely, or even primarily interested in finding people who wanted to listen to my message and instead wanted to know how God was working in people's lives. The results were remarkable. People told me about dreams and visions. People shared their hopes and faith and their doubts and fears. I had real conversations with people of faith who listened to me and who I listened to with real intent. All of those encounters stemmed from this revelation: that God was at work in the world.

Next part: Despite all this, all that reading I did as a missionary, when I got home, I couldn't help feeling that I had only scratched the surface of the scriptures, which is true. What I needed, like Joseph Smith, was to learn the ancient biblical languages so that I could really plumb their depths. Now we're getting into the good stuff. The ancient scribes, whose manuscripts I now read, often, often began a new Codex with a prayer and divine aid, and that is what I sought as I transitioned from the mission field to life after. I felt like I was starting a blank Codex, and I wanted to fill it with the study of the Scriptures in the original. I was determined to go to BYU and study classics, and very nearly did I. I felt this urge to gather with the saints and did everything I could to come here. But after enrolling at BYU and while choosing classes, I had another revelation. It wasn't about being in a particular place; it was about being where the Lord wanted me to be.

This revelation was once again, transformative. I stopped asking what I thought was best for me and started seeking what the Lord wanted for me. I started to act on the Council of President Benson, and as I turned my life over to God, I did indeed discover, as he promised, that he could make a lot more out of my life than I could, and the parlance of our current Prophet, this revelation taught me to let God prevail in my life. So I changed my prayer from, ”Help me to get to BYU, O Lord,” to, “Where should I go?” And a few months later, I was enrolled in University College London, pursuing a degree in Jewish history in Hebrew. I was off to join the company of scholars.

Next bit, my pre modern Hebrew class was taught by a brilliant, believing Jewish scholar of blessed memory when he started to introduce us to the Hebrew Aleph Bet on that first day in class, I experienced the last of the five revelations that brought me to where I am today. I distinctly remember sitting in that Hebrew class feeling the divine presence as intensely as I had in my parents’ bedroom as a young man. Accompanying that feeling was the knowledge that I was in the right place and that there was something holy and profound, not simply in the study of the Hebrew language, which there is everyone should be a Hebrew major, shouldn't they? Or a Greek major, or not a Hebrew major, Hebrew minor, accounting major. That's, that's the BYU way, but in this educational journey that I'd started. So here we go. It did not seem strange to me that this revelation occurred at University College, an avowedly secular institution that was the first university to admit students, regardless of religion or gender. God was at work there too. In my case, God was at work shaping my understanding of Scripture and the history of the Jewish people. I was especially thrilled by the intellectual vigor of the academic field of Jewish Studies, Jüdische Studien, as the Germans call it. This was fueled in part by discovering the joy of the library. If I can't, I cannot, I would take me 1000 words to explain to you the joy of the library in the pre-Internet age. What a beautiful place to be, what a marvelous place of discovery. It was where all the books gone in this. No, this is not that place. Sorry, I will repent. When I, so the joy of the library when I wasn't in class, I was most often found in the Jewish Studies Reading Room, surrounded by the profound scholarship produced by the previous three previous centuries. Pioneering scholars such as Leopold Zunz and Heinrich greats from the 19th century, and Salo Baron and Gershom Sherlock from the 20th applied modern philological and historical methods, originally developed by humanists for classical Greek and Latin texts and later extended to Christianity, and they applied this to Jewish texts and history. The work of these scholars and their students and successes in the 19th and 20th century transformed every aspect of Jewish history, literature, and experience. These historic giants of Jewish Studies joined with the faculty of the Jewish Studies department, where I was learning in teaching me how to read texts. Just around the corner from my department was the Dr. Williams Library, a private theological library housed in a grand, Victorian building with a beautiful, ornate Reading Room. It's like episodes of Sherlock and things that are filmed. Lots of TV shows go there and scholars, I see a very few number of scholars. This became a second home and a place where I discovered and explored 19th and 20th century Christian scholarship on the Bible and the early church. Christian scholars also began applying modern philological and historical methods to the study of the Bible and early Christian texts in the 19th century, and the results were similarly transform, transformational for the Christian tradition. I mean, I should say I'm not always good, but they were transformational. So, because of my classes and immersion in these libraries, I became a careful philologist, thrilled by the incremental knowledge that comes from looking things up, chatgpt must be so happy just constantly looking things up for us, it's a wonderful thing. The study of the Bible was the study of textual difficulties, an immersion in textual source and redaction criticism. I immersed myself in erudite commentaries, and with them learn to understand the text in ever greater detail, to dissect it and study its constituent parts in the context of the ancient Near Eastern world. This study was exhilarating and informative. I learned that reading scripture as text required my whole mind and strength, and felt like an extension of my love of God.

My Hebrew professors set a high bar. They knew much of the Bible by heart. Had a deep and exacting knowledge, not only of the Hebrew language, but also of the major cognate languages. They had mastered modern scholarship, as well as the deep traditions of Jewish biblical scholarship from the rabbis to the present. I wanted to follow suit, so I started with Assyriology, which is where all true scholars of the Bible go to understand the historical and linguistic context of the Old Testament. At least, I spent my second year studying Sumerian language and literature, planning to continue to the next phase of Mesopotamian culture in the following year, I was on the path to become an Old Testament scholar, how exciting. Wonderfully in all of this, Vic, you put your hand up, this wonderful woman here took me on and decided to marry me, even though I was doing crazy things like this, which shows you, there is hope for all of us. I did tell her that I was going to become a lawyer, but, you know, but sometimes you have to, you know, embellish a little bit. But as I look back on this period, I realized that I was curiously unconcerned that what I was learning was different from what I had been taught in Sunday school, the old certainties were replaced by new possibilities, and I was open to the new ideas because I'd been taught the dictum of Joseph Smith that the first and fundamental principle of our holy religion is that we believe that we have a right to embrace all and every item of Truth without limitation or without being circumscribed or prohibited by creeds or superstitious noses of men or the dominations of one another. I celebrated the beauty, profundity, truth and wonder to be found from reading scripture in its historical context, and I admired the faith, the intelligent faith of my professors, which enabled them to engage thoughtfully with their religions, embracing the good and rejecting whatever was intellectually indefensible. But that was not the end of the education of my scriptural imagination. God had other plans for me and set me on a different but no less exciting path. Though my intellectual foundation was in the philology and historical study of the Hebrew Bible in its ancient, Near Eastern setting, the building itself would be inspired by the translation and reading of the Bible in another ancient, Near Eastern language.

I jumped forward over 2000 years in Mesopotamian history from the study of Sumerian finding myself drawn to the Syriac language in its rich literature. This Christian dialect of Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke, is close enough to Hebrew to feel almost like a sibling, which it is. So I spent the next two years studying Syriac as an undergraduate, went on to Oxford to continue for another year, and then did a PhD in this wonderful literature, and finding all through this brilliant believing scholars. This journey started with another chance encounter filled with light. I went to visit a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, which was right next door to UCL, to ask about learning Syriac, and an hour and a half later, came out aglow with the splendor of early Syriac symbolic theology. I hope that all of you have an experience like this. It doesn't matter what field, what it is of going to visit a question, going to visit a professor to ask what you think is a simple question, and just not having them shut up until you are fully converted to the wonder of their field, it's a wonderful thing.

What I found so compelling in early Syriac literature was the mystery and symbolism of Scripture. I learned that within these words are worlds. In reading early Syriac literature on the Bible, I learned not to simply exert my mind and strength to understand the text of Scripture, but also to read Scripture with my heart and soul. It was the next step in educating my scriptural imagination. That's the halfway point right now we're in for this is, this is like going up the roller coaster now we're now we're going down. This is where the fun really begins. So we're going to do the whole thing over again, but with different things.

So, seeking. To educate the scriptural imagination, according to the Syriac tradition, means first seeking and then seeing Scripture as a pearl. Scripture is that which we sell everything else to obtain. A misreading of Jesus's parable suggests that the pearl is something we seek and ultimately possess. But for Ephraim, the Syrian, the pearl is something we see and see with he used the pearl to introduce the idea of polyvalence to unlock the manifold meaning of Scripture. Ephraim gazed at the pearl and did not see one thing, but many. This realization of possibility is the key to developing a scriptural imagination in. To seek the pearl is to seek the love of God. To see the pearl is to see Scripture as the word of God, no longer simply texts or books. Scripture is God at work in the world. To turn the pearl and see that Scripture is trustworthy. To turn the pearl and see that Scripture is trustworthy, consoling, redemptive, powerful, useful, polyvalent, interconnected, revelatory, deeply personal, broadly communal, and protective. This is not simply a way of reading, but a way of life, requiring one's heart and soul to read the Bible as scripture is to read as a believer. It is to believe the miracles and promises and the warnings and blessings, the prophecies and the instruction. It is to read openly with hands outstretched. It is to read expectantly, trusting that God will give liberally and abundantly. It is to read with a willingness to be surprised or reminded or instructed or chastened. It is to see ourselves as the audience and every character. It is to read with the desire to understand the will and work of God, and it is to and it is to be read with a willingness that we might never understand. For “the Lord's thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are his ways, our ways.”

Such reading requires us to cultivate both love and awe. To borrow an idea from the fourth century Syriac Christian Ephraim, the Syrian, in his hymns on Paradise, as he contemplates reading the opening pages of Genesis, he tells us the following, I took my stand halfway between awe and love, a yearning for Paradise, inviting me to explore it, but awe at its majesty restraining me from my search. I find this beautiful and instructive. Standing between love and awe means being ready for a divine encounter. It also means that we are propelled back into Scripture day after day, out of a sense of love, we become lovers of the word, but our sense of awe stops us from taking these texts for granted, and reminds us to treat them as sacred. This is the Word of God, after all, and our God is a consuming fire, and the Word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow.

Entering paradise. The cultivation of love and awe followed Ephraim. Allowed Ephraim to enter paradise as he read Genesis, this is what he says, joyfully, did I embark on the tales of a tale of paradise, a tale that is short to read but rich to explore. So he's reading the book of Genesis. My tongue read the story's outward narrative, while my intellect took wing and soared upwards in awe at its perceive as it perceived the splendor of paradise, not indeed as it really is, but in so far as humanity is granted to comprehend it, so he's both reading and imagining. This verse is from Ephraim, hymns on Paradise, a beautiful work of scriptural imagination that engages with the paradise of Eden, the full and the redemptive work of Christ. Part of this work is an imagined journey into paradise. Here's an example from this description from the second hymn in the collection, who is capable of gazing upon the garden splendor, seeing how glorious it is in all its design, how harmonious in its proportions, how spacious for those who dwell there, how radiant with its abodes, its fountains, delight with their fragrance. To enter paradise like this is to live into Scripture. This idea of living into Scripture is quite a common contemplative practice in Christian tradition. It's practiced in Catholicism, for example, is Lectio Divina. It is also practiced in the Anglican tradition. There is a traditional and a quite simple form of prayer, or, shall we say, private worship, says Austin Farrar, the brilliant Anglican theologian, and this prayer consists of taking gospel scenes and living oneself into them. There's even a traditional and quite limited set of scenes, he says, “The joys of Christmas, the sorrows of Holy Week, the glories of Easter, into heaven itself.” So, living into Scripture is mostly done when we feel wonder. Consider the opening verse of a Syriac poem on the thief at the right hand of Jesus at the crucifixion. So, imagine this is something we can read over very quickly. This moment at the crucifixion. This poem says, I beheld a wonder Tehran in Syriac when the thief cried out to the Lord, “Remember me, Lord on the day when you come to that kingdom which does not pass away.” In the author’s imagination, this scene. Jesus's answer, which is all, which is which we all know well, is expanded and becomes this. Our Lord replied, “since you have acknowledged me this very day, you shall be in the Garden of Eden in very truth, man, you will not be kept back from the kingdom to which you are looking. Take with you the cross as a sign and be off. It is a great key whereby you might gain the gate of the garden, which will be opened and Adam, who was once expelled, shall enter again.”

Take a moment to think about this promise for Syriac Christians, Paradise was not part of the spirit world, as we often think of spirit paradise. But the paradise of Eden is returning back from whence we came. So let your minds now begin to put these stories together. Jesus has promised this thief entrance into the Garden of Eden. But there's a problem, of course, the cherubim and the sword flaming and turning to guard the way of the tree of life. So this poem then becomes a lively dialog that goes off for 40 stanzas between the thief trying to enter into Paradise and the cherub trying to keep him out. They both have their own admonitions. So ending with the thief presenting the cross as the sign of his entry and gaining entry. So imagine the catharsis of a congregation singing and imagining this poem and seeing themselves enter paradise beside the thief. So these examples of living into Scripture abound in the Syriac tradition and teach us another way of encountering God as we educate our scriptural imaginations. The first time I ever spoke about that poem here in Utah was at the Utah State Penitentiary, and I thought having a convicted felon engaging with Jesus would be a good story to tell, especially as they end up in paradise. So went down quite well, actually, and they let me out, which was definitely the best bit of that story.

So lifting the veil: Syriac Christian How we doing? Syriac Christians teach us to educate our scriptural imagination so that we can see the abundant types and symbols of Christ in the Old Testament. This aspect of the Christian imagination was taught to the apostles by the resurrected Jesus. When Jesus walked with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, he found them unaware of the full shape of His redeeming mission. In response to their ignorance, quote beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures, the things concerning himself. It is here that we find the foundation of the Christian reading of the scriptures then only comprising what we today call the Old Testament, the good news of Jesus, His birth, life, and ministry, suffering, death and resurrection became the interpretive key to understanding scripture and the basis of all Christian reading and preaching of the Old Testament and reading of the Old Testament. For early Christians, the Old Testament became a treasury of prophetic words and types. This perspective is especially true for the fifth century Syriac preacher and Bishop Jacob of Sarug, who was a prolific author of hundreds of hominies.

Jacob was convinced that Jesus was to be found everywhere in the Old Testament, and the one story that he used to illustrate this was the story of the veil of Moses. Moses, ascending to heaven, comes down, his face is shining so brightly that it has to be veiled over. And for F for Jacob, the veil over Moses face was the hiddenness of Jesus, and the shining light underneath the veil was Jesus shining through the Old Testament. So when Jesus is crucified, the veil was rent, and then Jesus continues to reveal the content of the Old Testament to the people, and this becomes the basis of Jacob's hermeneutical principle, as he teaches the Old Testament again and again in homily after homily showing how Jesus is there. Jesus taught that only in the life and ministry of Christ, oh, Jacob taught that only in the life and ministry of Christ did the Old Testament become comprehensible to the Christian reader. The veil over it was removed and the coming of Christ, in whom all mysteries were explained to the entire world. He says, When Christ came, he uncovered Moses face and let the light of Christ shine out over the whole earth, thereby explaining the symbols and figures and parables of the Old Testament. Jacob is trying to educate our scriptural imagination, inviting us on to a richer exploration of the Old Testament, one filled with the treasure of Christ.

So Jacob's teacher, Narsai, introduces us to another aspect of the scriptural imagination, namely the invitation to join the company of the saints. Narsai often described the biblical saints as. Company or companionship, and he admonishes his audience and himself to go out and set out with them and to travel in this company. Thus, in the opening of a beautiful hominy on Joseph Nasai describes in striking terms how the love of the just ones encouraged him to set out on their path by calling out to him, “Get up, you lazy man, and set out in the company of the industrious ones.” I think there's a they were less politically correct in those days. This see, if you talk to any Syriac kind of Christian from the mid educated in the Middle East in the late 20th century, they all would have they would all have been beaten for not studying hard enough. This it was just one of those practices that we don't get to use today to the detriment of you guys. Positive? Maybe not. This is a company on the move. This company that we're joining, and the path upon which they're traveling is described both by its attributes in terms of the journey that's taking place on it. This is the path, of course, this path, of course, is in origin the straight path of the teachings of Jesus and the way of earliest Christianity. But in Narsai, the attributes of the path proliferate. In his hominy on Joseph, Narsai uses a favorite collocation, referring to this clear path, like most likely implying both a path unencumbered by obstacles and refer and a path that is serene. Elsewhere is the path of sweetness, the path in the to the kingdom, the path of faith, the path of the ancients trod, the path the just ones trod. And the path of the Scriptures to us is the covenant path. Upon this path saints pursued their various courses living in a manner of life that is exemplary and worthy of emulation. The path to which Narsai was calling in the opening of his homily on Joseph is precisely the way of life of the saints. However, Narsai was not called upon a physical journey, for as one early Christian scholar, Georgia Frank observed, in connection with early Christian pilgrimage, the first step for any pilgrim lands, not on the road, but somewhere in the imagination. However, whereas pilgrims sought to walk where the saints had walked, Narsai sought to walk as the saints had walked in the mind or in the imagination. Narsai teaches us to view the way of the life of the just ones and journey with them. The principal objective of Narsai’s teaching on the biblical saints is to take us on this journey, to join this company, to become a numbered among this group. The words of this Syriac teacher are a sustained invitation to educate the scriptural imagination.

Finally becoming a scriptural self, one of the many things that we learn in the temple, of the many things that we learn in the temple, a central message has to be that scriptural narratives are paradigmatic, in other words, that we can learn about ourselves and better understand our place in this world and our relationship to the next if we live ourselves into one of these seemingly remote and alien biblical stories, interestingly, is the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon narratives that are most thoroughly redolent with paradigmatic details, Adam Eve, Abraham, Sarah Enoch, Noah, Lehi, Nephi, Sariah, King, Benjamin and Abinadi. These are our teachers. There's the lives that plot the trajectories for our own spiritual development. We are to do the works of Abraham, seek the Zion of Enoch, prepare for the flood like Noah. Stand in the garden like Adam and Eve and ever strive for a promised land like Nephi, take these scriptural figures as model. To take these scriptural as figures as models, is to make a scriptural self, a term I borrow from the Middle English scholar, old John Alford. In essence, the scriptural self is the self modeled upon scriptural exemplars. Christians recognize from the earliest period that the Bible offered an abundance of exemplary figures who could serve as patterns of the Christian life. Gregory the Great said of the lives of such figures, we ought to transform what we read into our very selves. The Old Testament, narratives and figures thus served as a spiritual schoolmaster to the maturing Christian. As Jesus instructed us, and as Joseph Smith affirmed, to become a scriptural self is to live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Some of you will have hopefully noticed that the rhetorical structure of the paper was of recapitulation, with the five parts of the first half mirroring the five parts of the second. Did you see that? Did that start to come through? Did you notice the button? No, it still didn't work. Did it even though I warned you, I told you it was coming, right? But that is part of the point. It's recapitulation. This is how we learn again and again, how to educate our scriptural imagination. Educating the scriptural imagination is an iterative process, such like so much of discipleship. As T.S. Eliot puts it, “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” Thank you.