Written by T. M. Suffield |
Sunday, September 19, 2021
The days in the Old Testament seem to be backwards. Of course, I’m sure we can all grasp that they count time differently, so it’s not wrong but different. Except, I would like to contend that the Old Testament’s way of counting days is instructive to us. Honestly, it’s also better. The day starts in the evening as the Sun sets and then continues into the daytime after the night, ending at sunset the subsequent evening. Think, perhaps, of the Jewish observation of the Sabbath to see this in practice: beginning on Friday evening and following through to Saturday evening.

Have you ever noticed that in Genesis chapter one, the days are the wrong way around?
When I say the wrong way around, I mean backwards to what we expect, and before you rush off to compare the order of creation and question whether it means anything meaningful that the sun and moon come so late (it does, but that’s not our topic today), look at each day.
They’re backwards.
“And there was evening and there was morning, the first day” and each day thereafter. Evening, then morning. That’s backwards. We all know that days start in the morning, unless we’re pedantic enough to insist that they start in the middle of night. If we are that pedant, we are a prime example of what happens when you give a scientist a poet’s job, or when we let people learn the natural sciences before they’re thoroughly grounded in real subjects, like poetry.
But the destructive results of carving the day into twenty-four sections and thinking we’ve done something clever aside, the days in the Old Testament seem to be backwards.
Of course, I’m sure we can all grasp that they count time differently, so it’s not wrong but different. Except, I would like to contend that the Old Testament’s way of counting days is instructive to us. Honestly, it’s also better.
The day starts in the evening as the Sun sets and then continues into the daytime after the night, ending at sunset the subsequent evening. Think, perhaps, of the Jewish observation of the Sabbath to see this in practice: beginning on Friday evening and following through to Saturday evening.
Ok, they count days differently, so what?
Little things like this shape the way we see the world. They subconsciously tell us stories. Day, followed by night tells us a story: we have limited time to work, then our death will come. Make the most of your days in the sun while you can, for they are brief. The best comes at the beginning, the worst at the end: or in other words, youth is better than old age. This is as good as it will get, or nearly, once you hit a peak it’s downhill from there. There is nothing to hope for, for the Sun is dying, slowly, inexorably, and we will perish with it. We are brief. Life is short.
This is the liturgy of the hours, day, then night. It is a story of swelling sadness, of endings, and of the death of God. Everything that is good withers and perishes.
You might think that you are not affected by this, but you are, we all are. The smallest of things done day after day will shape the way we see the world.
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Written by T. M. Suffield |
Sunday, September 12, 2021
He spat on the ground and made mud. Since Jesus frequently heals with a word or a touch it seems oddly specific, and convoluted, to mix spit and dust and then send the man to a specific pool. How strange. While John’s narrative and the theological points he wants to make carry on despite how Jesus accomplished the man’s healing, it always makes me sit up and start to think.  It’s possible its just a detail, “because that’s how it happened” that has no further import, but the Bible never works like that.

John wants us to see Jesus as the light that brings sight to dead eyes, physically and spiritually. To compare the arrogant Pharisees who condemn Jesus for healing on the Sabbath to the blind man who confesses that he does not know who Jesus is, but he must be from God. To compare the physical healing to the spiritual healing as Jesus forgives the blind man when they later meet after revealing himself as Daniel’s ‘Son of Man’, the divine Messiah coming to rescue and rule.
It’s majestic, with sweeping theological themes I’ve barely touched written lightly across the story. It’s not difficult to dive deeply in many directions—the Bible is usually like that, but John wears it more obviously than the other gospel writers. I always get caught on one detail though:
Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing.
John 9:6–7
He spat on the ground and made mud. Since Jesus frequently heals with a word or a touch it seems oddly specific, and convoluted, to mix spit and dust and then send the man to a specific pool. How strange. While John’s narrative and the theological points he wants to make carry on despite how Jesus accomplished the man’s healing, it always makes me sit up and start to think.  It’s possible its just a detail, ‘because that’s how it happened’ that has no further import, but the Bible never works like that.
Here are some initial reflections on what we can speculate was going on:
Dust
He takes dust, the material the God uses to affect the curse against humanity, that cannot enter Holy ground (hence all the foot-washing and shoe removing) and works healing with it. Jesus has been asked whether the man sinned to be born blind, he’s already answered (no), but then picks up the stuff of the curse to make his point clearer. Jesus takes the material that speaks the curse to us to use it to bring new life. He has declared himself the seed of the woman. (Genesis 2-3)
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