6th April 2020

Well how do you like that! Jason Bourne is actually an Aussie. Found it out last night as I came to the conclusion of Robert Ludlum’s novel ‘The Bourne Identity’. Here I was thinking that Jason Bourne was an American, since that’s Matt Damon’s nationality. But no. Jason Bourne was born in Sydney, Australia. Says so on page 563. Perhaps I should not have been surprised, since the whole book is one continuous narration of mistaken identities.

However before making myself some vegemite toast in a spirit of patriotic celebration, it turns out… (spoiler alert).. that Jason Bourne – the real Jason Bourne from Sydney that is, not the Jason Bourne from America who stole his identity – was a double-crossing, trigger-happy, military extremist who seriously spoiled an important mission and was deservedly shot for his treachery. Burn! The guilt by association was a hard pill for me to swallow, and quickly took the ‘Oi Oi Oi’ out of my ‘Aussie Aussie Aussie’.

What a relief then to find, after persevering through hundreds of pages of Biblical text, that the character they call Jesus in the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, is not a different character in the final book, Revelation, but the same. The same perfect holiness. The same radical love. The same warm grace. The same uncompromising truth. The same penetrating justice. The same resplendent glory. Joy! And so I will keep the Amen in my prayers, and the ‘Oi’ in my praises.

DM 6^th April 2020