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Isaiah 65-66, Psalm 62, John 3

John 3:12-15

12I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? 13No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.^[d] 14Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.^[e]

“No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven – the Son of Man.”

This is one of those interesting verses that we often skip on our way to the more well-known ones. John 3:16 is waiting right around the corner, so we blow past these in order to get there. But wait, stop a moment, and investigate. What is Jesus saying here? “No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven – the Son of Man.” No one? Angels? Satan? No humans? Elijah?

I believe that the death and resurrection are definitely a New Testament / New Covenant teaching, and didn’t exist in the Old Testament, so perhaps what Jesus is doing here is saying that no one has entered into Heaven as a result of salvation and the resulting eternal life. He refers to this in :15. Perhaps when the saints of the OT died, they went to a waiting place of some kind, “under the earth” where Jesus is said to have traveled to and preached to them.

I found this amongst my various music files… it’s a first-pass mix of our First Wednesday worship team, back in 2004 or 2005. I believe the setting was the last First Wednesday of the year, out at the Bontrager Barn. The band was Kim Bontrager on vocals and keys, Neil Bontrager on electric guitar and vocals, Kayla Vix and Jamie Warkentin on vocals, Nick Schrock on bass, Jordan Nuss on acoustic guitar, and Ryan Knudsen on drums.

The band played a much longer set, but these three are the only songs that I have mixed.

And so, here’s a flashback for you:  jump-you-aint.mp3

Jamie Warkentin sang several years’ worth of music in one hour last Sunday, and I had the privilege of listening in on it. She did several opera selections, and one of her choices was the aria from Monteverdi’s ”Lamento D’Arianna”. As I listened, I realized that I had heard this many times before in a different context, as it is also the opening cut from Cafe Del Mar’s Aria 2 compilation. Cafe Del Mar is probably better known for their summer Ibiza chill-out lounge/downtempo/world music DJ sets, but I have collected the Arias as well and they are thoroughly enjoyable. The idea behind Arias is to take the 400-year-old opera music and reframe it in a modern popmusik setting. The strings and orchestration and lush harmonies are underscored by a sometimes delicate, sometimes pompous drum and synth backing. It can be opera “lite”, but I like it.

Download Arianna here.

So I’m listening to Victorialand, by the Cocteau Twins, as I’m doing my evening’s work… and suddenly I thought about how old my collection is… This album is from 1986. However, I didn’t actually buy the album until 2003, and I didn’t listen to it at all in high school or college. I’m not sure why I bought it; it must have been in one of my ambient music phases. The music is pretty dated, although not nearly as much as The Serpent’s Egg, a Dead Can Dance album that I got around the same time.

Actually, now that I think about it, I got the Cocteau Twins albums because of my further explorations into Massive Attack’s collaborations and side projects. That’s where Elizabeth Fraser did vocal work, and I followed her to Cocteau Twins. I listen to her Massive work far more than her Cocteau work. Strange how I follow the rabbit trails of memory just listening through my music collection.