Michael is currently a PhD candidate in Religious Studies at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington studying digital religion in New Zealand. He also serves as Public Theologian for the Student Christian Movement Aotearoa.
Sometimes, there are no cosmic answers to the cosmic questions around us. Jesus demonstrates that the answer to that question, ‘who are you?’ can only be lived out in relationality to the divine one moment, one temptation at a time.
John the Baptist paves the way for a new ecclesiological model that pushes the church beyond a reproductive model of mission insistent on its own futurity. Embracing an ecclesiological ‘death drive’ can open doors to see the unexpected God-over-there within the present.
Jesus’ saying about the destruction of the temple gives us a way to view human structures as the powers they are but also as provisional—as all human things are.