The leaves are turning and on sunny days it looks beautiful. This is the tree I can see from my bedroom window:

And this is the pumpkin we carved on Saturday:

There are a lot of pumpkins of all sizes and colours around at the moment. Some people even have huge inflatable pumpkins lit up in their gardens. Which is at least preferable to the graves, skeletons and vampires that other people seem to think are fun to decorate their houses and gardens with.

This is our house. We have the top floor (first for my British readers, second for the Americans). There isn't always a man on a ladder.

And this is my car. Notice the absence of a front numberplate - doesn't it look strange?

Robert Jenson again:

It is universal among humankind that, second to sexual intercourse, eating together is the most binding communal act.

Now read Song of Songs 5:1

Robert Jenson in 'Visible Words' suggests that

there would be reason to identify a Christian as someone who regularly joins a meal-fellowship of bread and loving-cup, to give thanks for Jesus.

Of course, he doesn't specify how regularly...

Here's the first few lines of the text we're translating in Ugaritic this week:

ktmefBltnBbAnBbrx
tklyBbAnBoqltn
vlytBdBvbotBracm

Roughly translated, this gives something like:

When you [i.e. Baal] killed the sea-dragon [Litan], the fleeing serpent,
destroyed the twisting serpent, the seven-headed tyrant...

Now have a look at Isaiah 27:1

In that day, the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.

Coincidence?

At church yesterday we had the fourth (?) in a series of sermons thinking about the church's vision for the city.  One of the key texts driving this vision has been Jeremiah 29:7 

But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

Yesterday's sermon specifically addressed the task of praying for the city.  The preacher suggested that the Jewish exiles would have known how to pray for the city by virtue of the prayers they used for Jerusalem.  So the example of Psalm 122 was taken, with a focus on vv.6-9:

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!
May they be secure who love you!
Peace be within your walls
and security within your towers!
For my brothers and companions' sake
I will say "Peace be within you!"
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
I will seek your good.

Now, it's true that the word for 'welfare' in Jer 29 and for 'peace' in Ps 122 are the same: shalom. 

But it seems to me that there are serious problems with suggesting that the prayer for Babylon should be modelled on the prayer for Jerusalem. 

Just a few psalms later, the exiles express the different ways they relate to Jerusalem and Babylon (Ps 136):

By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept,
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there we hung up our lyres.
For there our captors required of us songs,
and our tormentors, mirth, saying
"Sing us one of the songs of Zion."

How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill!
Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.

Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem,
how they said, "Lay it bare, lay it bare, down to its foundations!"
O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed,
blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us!
Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!

There is a fundamental difference between Babylon and Jerusalem.  The two are consistently opposed throughout the bible story.  One cannot be substituted for the other.  Babylon can never become Jerusalem, the place of peace and security, because Babylon is not the home of the Lord.  Babylon does not have the temple of which Ps 122 speaks with such joy.  Babylon is the place destined to be 'thrown down with violence.'  In Babylon 'was found the blood of the prophets and of saints, and of all who have been slain on earth'.  (Revelation 18:21, 24)

Now, to be fair to the preacher, he did suggest other ways in which Ps 122 could be prayed - for the historical city of Jerusalem; for the spiritual Jerusalem, the church; for the heavenly Jerusalem.  But he was very clear that an appropriate application would be to pray Ps 122 for Babylon - and by extension, whatever city we are 'exiled' to, e.g. Philadelphia.

But my reading of the bible suggests that such a prayer is an invalid application of Ps 122 to Jeremiah 29.  Certainly the exiles were exhorted by Jeremiah not to treat the city of their exile with hostility and to pray for its shalom.  They had to learn to make their home their and to make the best of it.  They were to engage in its society and influence it for good insofar as they were able.  But to pray for it as if it were Jerusalem?  As if it could be a place of true security and wellbeing?  Without the presence of God in its midst?  Surely not.