It’s not often we see promise in emptiness, is it? Promise, potential, possibility – it’s usually associated with fullness the roundness of a woman’s womb full of child; the fatness of a letter stuffed with many pages; the groaning of a table laden with a feast.

This is the promised redemption of the cross. Whether we find ourselves on the cross, or at its foot, or on the judgement seat – Jesus is there with us, either in loving opposition or in loving consolation, but with us, in love.

Christian hope is found in the willingness to face death, in all its costliness, because we trust in the promise of the resurrection. And resurrection is impossible without death.

The Samaritan woman is the kind of Christian our world needs today – not afraid to spar with Jesus, not afraid of the stirrings of the Spirit in her own soul; not afraid to tell other people about her experience and not afraid to invite them to come and see for themselves and tell her what they think is going on.

The judgment, it seems to me, is not about what you or I mean when we say “belief in Jesus”. The judgment is about deeds that people don’t want exposed – dangerous secrets, wicked acts, hidden selves. Things of death that people will not raise up to be transformed, by repentance and forgiveness, into a doorway to true life.

We know what this scripture is calling for. We may not know the best way to accomplish everything it is calling for – though some of it is pretty straightforward – but we understand it nonetheless. Real worship – real experiences of God’s presence – relationship with God – is found in joining in the work of God.

None of these “blessed” are people who anyone – in Jesus’ time or in ours – would normally call blessed or happy or favoured.

But Jesus does, kicking off his teaching about the upside-down nature of the kingdom of heaven with a bang and leaving his disiples – then and now – with the problem of making sense of what he said.

baptism is where it all begins – the foundation of our identity as members of the Body of Christ – his hands and feet; his eyes and ears; his heart and even his soul. Like him, we are beloved children of God. Like him, we are raised to new life. Like him, we are sent to the world. It doesn’t matter whether you remember the moment of your baptism itself – because your baptism is still working in you.

By Christ’s incarnation and by God’s grace, a path has been opened for us to become fully human, as Christ is fully human.

Jesus belongs in the line of Joseph – for this is the line of David. And, since Jesus is the whole point of this lineage (from Matthew’s perspective, at least), Joseph belongs in the line of Jesus. Joseph and Jesus belong to each other.

Which wouldn’t be worth making a fuss about except for the questionable parentage of Jesus, which made the relationship far from a sure thing.