1. I am strongly inclined now to see the New Testament argument about Christ’s exaltation to the right hand of the father as having a key polemical aspect: Christ is confessed as Lord, saviour and God in defiance of an imperial ideology that proclaimed a ‘gospel’ about Caesar as Lord, saviour and god. I think this polemic lies behind Philippians 2:6-11, for example, as well as the more obviously apocalyptic texts.

A forward-looking eschatology asks what really mattered to the early believers who took the risk of making this anti-social and subversive confession. I would argue that what really mattered to them was that they would ultimately be ‘vindicated’ (or, we might say, justified) for having taken this radical step. That vindication would mean different things. It could be internalized - the inner conviction of faith. It also took the form - to use John’s language - of a ‘first resurrection’ of those who would lose their lives because of their testimony to Jesus. But I think we must also allow for a real political dimension in the form of the collapse of the culture that supported the supremely blasphemous and ultimately satanic claim to rule the world and the emergence of the suffering community from oppression.

2. I would read the ‘your will be done’ petition under the heading of the coming of the kingdom of God. It is eschatologically contextualized in Jesus’ prayer. The will of God is that his people should be delivered from oppression and restored to worship YHWH without fear (cf. Luke 1:74). The prayer is precisely that something should happen, be changed, on earth, but this is limited (in this case at least) to Israel’s immediate condition. It is a prayer for God to intervene for the sake of his people, but (this is crucial) he intervenes through the self-giving and suffering of the Christ. He disarmed the principalities and powers that ruled over Israel not through military action (or for that matter through torah observance) but through the cross. It is through the confession that the crucified one has become the anti-Caesar, has been given the name which is above every name, that the people of God has its freedom from all forms of totalitarianism - political, intellectual, cultural and religious.

It is in this particular sense that God’s will was done. It does not mean that God’s will is always now done on earth. Sorry for the lack of clarity.