1 February 2009 - Candlemas
1Sam 1:20-28, Lk 2:22-40
In my old parish church in Kent, there is a painting behind the altar depicting the Presentation of Mary in the Temple (a purely legendary event, but one to which there is considerable devotion among Roman Catholics). The striking thing about that painting, and the reason why I mention it today, is the way in which the child Mary is welcomed: by the High Priest, formally, and as someone already singled out as special.
You couldn’t imagine the Mother of God being received into the temple by the under-doorkeeper, could you? This is legend, and legends always conform to the laws of imagination. Special arrangements must always have been made for her. She must have been raised in the Temple, and she must have been received there in a special way. There have been attempts to create legends around Jesus, too, of course: the first ones were the apocryphal gospels, and the genre continues to this day. But these legends are powerless, because we have the gospels, and we know that Jesus was not received as someone special, that he was not even noticed until he began his public life. We find this difficult, but it is indisputably true.
I was talking recently to a man whose ideas are, shall we say, a little unusual. For example, he believes that we were created 300,000 years ago by aliens from outer space. I was finding it a bit difficult to feign interest, but I was suddenly jerked out of my glazed non-listening when he began on the subject of Joseph, Jesus’ foster father. “Of course,” said Hamish, “we have got it quite wrong. Joseph wasn’t a carpenter at all”. “Yes he was,” I protested, “the Greek has tektwn, the Latin faber. A joiner and builder. A jack of all trades. A brickie.” “Oh no” said Hamish. “that’s not what the original word meant. He wasn’t a craftsman, he was a ‘man of the craft’. The craft of the kings, the secret craft passed down from King David to his kingly descendants. What we are being told is that Joseph knew the craft of the kings”. I rolled my eyes. It’s not surprising that this idea appealed to Hamish, what with Rosslyn chapel and the Da Vinci Code and all. It is of course nonsense; by the time of Joseph there were innumerable descendants of David, and there is no reason to suppose that Joseph was in direct line to the throne. He knew he was of David’s line because the Hebrews, like the Scots, had a very strong sense of tribe and clan. I have at least two friends in Edinburgh who can tell me exactly which thrones they are heir to and why. The English are not at all like this, but most Scots can at least tell you their clan, especially if they are Highlanders. Freddy, who “should be” the present king of Scotland (and possibly England and France as well) is a businessman like any other; he has no arcane kingly knowledge. Things do not work that way, except in the fevered brain of the Hamishes of this world. But he is not totally wrong. We instinctively feel that someone who is significant in the supernatural sphere must also be so in the natural sphere. Something in us rebels against God incarnate being an insignificant, unnoticed brickie, son of the same. I remember how shocked we were as children when our scripture teacher suggested that Mary might have been a bad seamstress (going by the parable of the patches which came undone). How much more shocking would it be if I suggested that Jesus Christ might have been a relatively unskilled brickie; reliable and honest, of course, but not top-class otherwise. But after all, it’s no big deal whether God incarnate could build a wall straight or cut an accurate tenon joint. It doesn’t matter whether Jesus was a dicky brickie or a master carpenter. What is interesting to me on this feast of his presentation in the temple is that it is so different from that painting in Kent. The presentation of Jesus that we are given in the gospel is not a parallel to the legendary and much-embellished presentation of his mother.
There was no priest there to greet the Lord when he suddenly came to his temple. Someone handed over the two turtle-doves for the sacrifice, and someone took them back; but no-one even glanced at the little bundle in Mary’s arms. Until, on their way out, they met Simeon, and later Anna, the only two people who realised what was going on. Now, Simeon and Anna were not “personalities”. They were not a prophetic double-act. They may never have met before. They were, so far as anyone knew, in the temple by chance. They weren’t the dignified, almost Moses-like types we imagine, generally recognised as saints by the inhabitants of Jerusalem. We haven’t even any evidence that Simeon was old and venerable. He may well have been a nondescript middle-aged man whom no-one had ever noticed. God had noticed him; he was of great significance and importance to God. He was given the grace not only to sum up in a few words the mission of Christ and his Mother, but also explained exactly how it affects and changes our lives. As for Anna, she was the first person known to have brought the Good News to the Chosen People. But how would her words have been received? We know how the apostles received the women’s announcement of the resurrection, despite knowing, surely, that they were serious and respected people: “their words seemed to them to be idle tales; and they did not believe them”. And would Anna have been believed, Anna, one of the countless babushkas around in the temple, the equivalent of the little old ladies who irritate us by muttering their devotions and knocking over their walking sticks?
This was not because the Lord could not have arranged for a priestly or angelic reception-committee, he who could ask his Father and he would send more than twelve legions of angels. If the first Candlemas was very different from today’s, there was a reason.
Because this baby grew into the man who said: Be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before men, to be seen by them. When you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.
It is so difficult to do this. Not necessarily because we want praise, but because, somehow, unless someone notices what we do, we don’t entirely feel that we have done it. We have a need to be official, to be seen, almost to have our very existence affirmed. The extreme version of that is the culture of celebrity. It takes serious faith to need no other witness but God.
This feast, paradoxically, is a feast for the little people, the unseen people. Most of us, most of the time. Just like Jesus, most of the time.
People sometimes complain that it’s ridiculous to expect us to “imitate Christ”. How can we imitate God incarnate? But yet again, as always, all we have to do is look. Of course Jesus loved preaching and teaching and healing. But I rather think that he was happiest, most himself, when he was alone with his father, silent, unnoticed. And it’s the best place for us to be if we want to be like him, and the safest: hidden with Christ in God.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Jonah Man Jazz
Nineveh City was a city of sin,
The jazzin’ and the jivin’ made a terrible din;
The beat groups playin’ the rock an’ roll:
And the Lord he said: Well bless my soul!
The people wouldn’t listen, danced night and day,
No time to work, no time to pray:
The beat groups playin’ both day and night:
And the Lord he said: Well, this ain’t right!
It’s a pity that when we hear of Jonah, the first thing we think of is the whale. You might argue that that is partly Jesus’ fault: when he refers to Jonah it is to use his stay in the whale as a symbol of Jesus’ own death and resurrection. To be frank, I don’t think Jesus meant us to take this reference quite as seriously or as literally as we seem to have done. It was surely not a serious parallel, as if Jonah had been swallowed “in order to foretell” – or even foreshadow – the Son of Man’s sojourn in the heart of the earth. And it makes me tired when scholars argue at length about the “problem” of the “three days and three nights”. All Jesus meant, I suspect, was that for God nothing is impossible. Jonah, once swallowed by the whale, was a s good as dead – indeed, under normal circumstances would have been dead – and yet emerged miraculously unscathed, through the power of God, to go and fulfil his task. Jonah does not foreshadow Jesus; he is certainly not a type of Jesus except in the very loosest sense. He is a cross between Jeremiah at his most recalcitrant and the elder brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son. Though I suppose that if Jesus could compare the Father with an unjust judge, he wouldn’t have had any problem with being himself compared with the elder brother. As I’ve suggested before, the phrase used by the father in the parable “You are always with me, and all I have is yours” is highly significant in that regard.
The point about the Book of Jonah – and that’s why it doesn’t matter in the least whether or not it “really happened” as told – of course it didn’t – is repentance. And sin. The sin, I think, not so much of the Ninevites, who did not know their right hand from their left, as of Jonah. If anyone is a sinner in this book, it is its “hero”. The Ninevites, in the Book of Jonah, far from being an example of sin, are an example of conversion, of faith, of obedience to God. When we say “Nineveh”, we should feel not as if we had said a slightly less shocking version of “Sodom and Gomorrah”, but as if we had said “Jerusalem” or “Rome”. When we say “Jerusalem” we do not think of the Jerusalem that persecuted and crucified the Lord, and when we say “Rome” we do not think of the corrupt centre of a corrupt Empire, or of the immorality and corruption which have existed in it since, and not only in its secular part. We think of the Jerusalem which foreshadows the Kingdom of God, and we think of Rome, which was, and to some extent still is, the heart of the Church. Nineveh’s sin, like the sin of Jerusalem and Rome, like all repented sin, has been wiped out by the glory of its conversion. We know that all the righteous who died before the coming of Christ are, all the same, redeemed by his blood. And so Nineveh, like the church which is symbolised by Jerusalem and Rome, has, in her conversion, been sanctified by Christ, who loved her and delivered himself up for her, that he might present her to himself glorious, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. The idea that God was primarily angry with Nineveh – as the king of Nineveh believed – has no basis in the text of the book. Its wickedness “was come up before him”, but he shows clearly at the end of the book that his motive was quite different. I suppose that, had Nineveh not repented, God would have carried out his threat to destroy it, just as he did – finally – to Sodom and Gomorrah, but his desire is that all should be saved; he is not only slow to anger and rich in mercy, he is love itself. And love is what he feels for Nineveh. Incidentally, you will search in vain for any suggestion that he was “angry” with Sodom and Gomorrah, except in the words of Abraham as he sought to persuade God not to destroy the innocent with the guilty.
If God threatens retribution for sin, it is not because he is angry. Or rather, he is angry, in the way one might be angry with a small child who is poking a metal skewer into an electric socket. God threatens when the love he has shown has not had the desired effect in leading his beloved back to him – or back to whatever, in their knowledge of the natural law, they understand of him. Jonah would have rather liked to see Nineveh destroyed – what a demonstration of the power of the God of the Hebrews! He was, he felt, a righteous man – though, as we know, God’s choice does not always, or even usually, fall upon the righteous – and therefore he should be the only one to receive God’s favour. More: he was a Jew, a member of the chosen people, and the Ninevites were Gentiles. I nearly said “goyim”. That is certainly how Jonah regards them. however, unfortunately God does not, and Jonah does not approve of Him. Why exactly did he refuse to go to Nineveh in the first place? Could he have been afraid of the king of Nineveh and how he would respond? He does not seem a very terrifying character. No; I think that from the first Jonah was so disgusted at the thought of God taking any notice of these sinners – other than to send down fire from heaven upon them – that he flounced off to Tharsis in a sulk. It did not occur to him. I suggest, that God would disagree with him or rebuke him, let alone punish him. He was, after all, a privileged person…And despite his superb canticle, and despite his very effective preaching, he did not emulate the Ninevites’ conversion. It did not occur to him that he needed to be converted; even when he had been punished for his disobedience, he believed that all God wanted was that his command should be obeyed. Jonah did not know that – as St Benedict says – if we murmur, not only in words but even in our heart, our work will not be pleasing to God, who sees that our heart is murmuring.
Yes, God was pleased at the obedience without delay of the Ninevites. But he was not pleased with Jonah, although he had been the material cause of that conversion. There are in God’s eyes two capital sins: idolatry, and lack of love. Or perhaps I should say there is one; what is idolatry but lack of love towards the God who made us? And here was Jonah committing both: lack of love towards his brothers the Ninevites, and idolatry in placing himself before God. The Douay version, in its heading to Chapter 4, gives: “Jonas, repining that that his prophecy is not fulfilled”. What mattered to Jonah was the fulfilment of his own prophecy, not the fulfilment of God’s loving mercy. It is perhaps worth noting that it was Jonah’s own fault if his prophecy was not fulfilled; had he preached what, by his own admission, he knew to be true, namely that the city would be destroyed IF its inhabitants did not repent, his prophecy would indeed have been fulfilled.
God’s final attempt to convert Jonah can be interpreted in may ways; but one thing it certainly is is an attempt to teach him about love. God's method is to keep giving, whether we respond or not; it did not seem to penetrate Jonah’s thick skull – or heart – that he in no way deserved this special treatment, or did he have any justification for complaint when God’s free gift was withdrawn. He was not “grieved” for the ivy, but for himself. I doubt whether he would have been capable of grieving for anyone, or anything, else. God’s suggestion that he might be was a final attempt, by irony, to get him to see the true situation. And there follows what is, to me, one of the most precious verses in the Bible, surpassed only by that same God’s cry on Calvary: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”. God says to Jonah: “But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?” Ignorance may not be a defence in human law, but it is with God, who will go to almost any lengths to exonerate his children.
But it is “almost”. A cut-off point does exist, and then as the tree falls, so shall it lie. We do not know what happened to Jonah, and it is none of our business. What is our business is to look to ourselves and apply the lesson. While we shouldn’t be tax-collectors, sinners or idolaters, while we should learn to tell our right hand form our left, it is better to be all these things and repent, than to be the “righteous” person who believes he has no need to repent, and that he has no responsibility for seeing that others repent. Had God destroyed Nineveh, he might well have had the same message for Jonah as he later had for his descendants: “Do you think that they were sinners above all men because they suffered these things? No, I tell you; but unless you do penance, you shall likewise perish.” It is not only in connection with “outsiders” that God says, again in the words of “Jonah Man Jazz”
Take my warning
early in the morning,
as early as you feel inclined:
Shout to the people,
Shout from every steeple,
tell them the judgement bell has chimed;
And I will smite ‘em
Ad infinitum
If they do not turn to Me once more!
The jazzin’ and the jivin’ made a terrible din;
The beat groups playin’ the rock an’ roll:
And the Lord he said: Well bless my soul!
The people wouldn’t listen, danced night and day,
No time to work, no time to pray:
The beat groups playin’ both day and night:
And the Lord he said: Well, this ain’t right!
It’s a pity that when we hear of Jonah, the first thing we think of is the whale. You might argue that that is partly Jesus’ fault: when he refers to Jonah it is to use his stay in the whale as a symbol of Jesus’ own death and resurrection. To be frank, I don’t think Jesus meant us to take this reference quite as seriously or as literally as we seem to have done. It was surely not a serious parallel, as if Jonah had been swallowed “in order to foretell” – or even foreshadow – the Son of Man’s sojourn in the heart of the earth. And it makes me tired when scholars argue at length about the “problem” of the “three days and three nights”. All Jesus meant, I suspect, was that for God nothing is impossible. Jonah, once swallowed by the whale, was a s good as dead – indeed, under normal circumstances would have been dead – and yet emerged miraculously unscathed, through the power of God, to go and fulfil his task. Jonah does not foreshadow Jesus; he is certainly not a type of Jesus except in the very loosest sense. He is a cross between Jeremiah at his most recalcitrant and the elder brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son. Though I suppose that if Jesus could compare the Father with an unjust judge, he wouldn’t have had any problem with being himself compared with the elder brother. As I’ve suggested before, the phrase used by the father in the parable “You are always with me, and all I have is yours” is highly significant in that regard.
The point about the Book of Jonah – and that’s why it doesn’t matter in the least whether or not it “really happened” as told – of course it didn’t – is repentance. And sin. The sin, I think, not so much of the Ninevites, who did not know their right hand from their left, as of Jonah. If anyone is a sinner in this book, it is its “hero”. The Ninevites, in the Book of Jonah, far from being an example of sin, are an example of conversion, of faith, of obedience to God. When we say “Nineveh”, we should feel not as if we had said a slightly less shocking version of “Sodom and Gomorrah”, but as if we had said “Jerusalem” or “Rome”. When we say “Jerusalem” we do not think of the Jerusalem that persecuted and crucified the Lord, and when we say “Rome” we do not think of the corrupt centre of a corrupt Empire, or of the immorality and corruption which have existed in it since, and not only in its secular part. We think of the Jerusalem which foreshadows the Kingdom of God, and we think of Rome, which was, and to some extent still is, the heart of the Church. Nineveh’s sin, like the sin of Jerusalem and Rome, like all repented sin, has been wiped out by the glory of its conversion. We know that all the righteous who died before the coming of Christ are, all the same, redeemed by his blood. And so Nineveh, like the church which is symbolised by Jerusalem and Rome, has, in her conversion, been sanctified by Christ, who loved her and delivered himself up for her, that he might present her to himself glorious, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. The idea that God was primarily angry with Nineveh – as the king of Nineveh believed – has no basis in the text of the book. Its wickedness “was come up before him”, but he shows clearly at the end of the book that his motive was quite different. I suppose that, had Nineveh not repented, God would have carried out his threat to destroy it, just as he did – finally – to Sodom and Gomorrah, but his desire is that all should be saved; he is not only slow to anger and rich in mercy, he is love itself. And love is what he feels for Nineveh. Incidentally, you will search in vain for any suggestion that he was “angry” with Sodom and Gomorrah, except in the words of Abraham as he sought to persuade God not to destroy the innocent with the guilty.
If God threatens retribution for sin, it is not because he is angry. Or rather, he is angry, in the way one might be angry with a small child who is poking a metal skewer into an electric socket. God threatens when the love he has shown has not had the desired effect in leading his beloved back to him – or back to whatever, in their knowledge of the natural law, they understand of him. Jonah would have rather liked to see Nineveh destroyed – what a demonstration of the power of the God of the Hebrews! He was, he felt, a righteous man – though, as we know, God’s choice does not always, or even usually, fall upon the righteous – and therefore he should be the only one to receive God’s favour. More: he was a Jew, a member of the chosen people, and the Ninevites were Gentiles. I nearly said “goyim”. That is certainly how Jonah regards them. however, unfortunately God does not, and Jonah does not approve of Him. Why exactly did he refuse to go to Nineveh in the first place? Could he have been afraid of the king of Nineveh and how he would respond? He does not seem a very terrifying character. No; I think that from the first Jonah was so disgusted at the thought of God taking any notice of these sinners – other than to send down fire from heaven upon them – that he flounced off to Tharsis in a sulk. It did not occur to him. I suggest, that God would disagree with him or rebuke him, let alone punish him. He was, after all, a privileged person…And despite his superb canticle, and despite his very effective preaching, he did not emulate the Ninevites’ conversion. It did not occur to him that he needed to be converted; even when he had been punished for his disobedience, he believed that all God wanted was that his command should be obeyed. Jonah did not know that – as St Benedict says – if we murmur, not only in words but even in our heart, our work will not be pleasing to God, who sees that our heart is murmuring.
Yes, God was pleased at the obedience without delay of the Ninevites. But he was not pleased with Jonah, although he had been the material cause of that conversion. There are in God’s eyes two capital sins: idolatry, and lack of love. Or perhaps I should say there is one; what is idolatry but lack of love towards the God who made us? And here was Jonah committing both: lack of love towards his brothers the Ninevites, and idolatry in placing himself before God. The Douay version, in its heading to Chapter 4, gives: “Jonas, repining that that his prophecy is not fulfilled”. What mattered to Jonah was the fulfilment of his own prophecy, not the fulfilment of God’s loving mercy. It is perhaps worth noting that it was Jonah’s own fault if his prophecy was not fulfilled; had he preached what, by his own admission, he knew to be true, namely that the city would be destroyed IF its inhabitants did not repent, his prophecy would indeed have been fulfilled.
God’s final attempt to convert Jonah can be interpreted in may ways; but one thing it certainly is is an attempt to teach him about love. God's method is to keep giving, whether we respond or not; it did not seem to penetrate Jonah’s thick skull – or heart – that he in no way deserved this special treatment, or did he have any justification for complaint when God’s free gift was withdrawn. He was not “grieved” for the ivy, but for himself. I doubt whether he would have been capable of grieving for anyone, or anything, else. God’s suggestion that he might be was a final attempt, by irony, to get him to see the true situation. And there follows what is, to me, one of the most precious verses in the Bible, surpassed only by that same God’s cry on Calvary: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”. God says to Jonah: “But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?” Ignorance may not be a defence in human law, but it is with God, who will go to almost any lengths to exonerate his children.
But it is “almost”. A cut-off point does exist, and then as the tree falls, so shall it lie. We do not know what happened to Jonah, and it is none of our business. What is our business is to look to ourselves and apply the lesson. While we shouldn’t be tax-collectors, sinners or idolaters, while we should learn to tell our right hand form our left, it is better to be all these things and repent, than to be the “righteous” person who believes he has no need to repent, and that he has no responsibility for seeing that others repent. Had God destroyed Nineveh, he might well have had the same message for Jonah as he later had for his descendants: “Do you think that they were sinners above all men because they suffered these things? No, I tell you; but unless you do penance, you shall likewise perish.” It is not only in connection with “outsiders” that God says, again in the words of “Jonah Man Jazz”
Take my warning
early in the morning,
as early as you feel inclined:
Shout to the people,
Shout from every steeple,
tell them the judgement bell has chimed;
And I will smite ‘em
Ad infinitum
If they do not turn to Me once more!
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be
18 January 2009
is 62:1-5, 1 Cor 6 11-20
What are we intended to learn from these readings? The answer is not as obvious as it might appear. Yes, the obvious subject of the reading from Paul is sexual immorality, and you could certainly leave it at that. His advice is perfectly good, if not exclusively Christian except in its manner of expression, and we would all do well to follow it.
However, there are a few hints in that passage as to what the two readings, taken together, are really about, and the passage from Isaiah clinches it. As always, the meaning is love, God’s love for us and the love that that should elicit from us.
Undoubtedly it is faith that saves us, and not good works, but of the three dispositions that Paul lists as necessary later in this epistle, the greatest is love, and love in us human beings is a response and necessarily shows itself in action. In God, of course, love is not a response; it is part of his nature. God does not love us because we are lovable; we are lovable because he loves us into being and loves us into lovableness.
The phrase I used then: “God loves us into being” is a clue to why these two readings go together so well. In the Old Testament the relationship between God and humankind is seen as analogous to that between a husband and wife; and that is what Paul has in mind when he writes to the Corinthians. The classic text here is Ezekiel 16:
“This is what the Sovereign Lord says to Jerusalem: On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised. Then I passed by and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, "Live!" I made you grow like a plant of the field. You grew up and developed and became the most beautiful of jewels. Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign LORD, and you became mine. You became very beautiful and rose to be a queen. And your fame spread among the nations on account of your beauty, because the splendour I had given you made your beauty perfect, declares the Sovereign Lord. But you trusted in your beauty and used your fame to become a prostitute.”
This is a recurring theme in the prophets, if not usually expressed with quite such forcefulness (and what I have given you is an expurgated version). We would not now look on the relationship of marriage as being so unequal, but if we can see it in the context of the time we will understand why it is such a good analogy for God’s relationship with us. In Biblical times it was difficult for a woman to manage unless she was under the care of either a father, a brother or a husband. The father would in the normal way of things die before her; the brother might have more than enough to cope with with his own family; the husband therefore was in a way the woman’s saviour, and she owed him gratitude for making her life possible. He was not, of course, her creator, but without him she might well be destitute, and destitute in a world without health service and benefits; he had not brought her into life, but he certainly preserved her in life. That, I believe, is the background to the double standard that still exists today regarding adultery or sexual misconduct. A promiscuous man is seen as “sowing wild oats”; a promiscuous woman is seen as “no better than she should be”. It is not so long since having a child out of wedlock was enough to ruin a woman’s whole life. Similarly, a man having an affair is seen as “having a bit on the side” while a woman is seen as a home-wrecker. In the west in the 21st century this is ridiculous. In biblical Israel it wasn’t. In the west in the 21st century describing the church (or the individual Christian soul) as the bride of Christ is misleading and confusing. In biblical Israel describing Israel as the bride of YHWH was an extremely clear and hard-hitting metaphor.
It’s because of this huge change in culture that it is even necessary to explain what these readings are about. And what they are not primarily about is sexual immorality. They are about faithfulness and gratitude. And, of course, about God’s love.
When King David repented of his adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of her husband, he said “I have sinned against the Lord”. He did not say he had sinned against Bathsheba or Uriah, although he most certainly had done. Because all our sins are ultimately sins against God, and that is why they matter even if no other human being is hurt by them. What is the reason Paul gives when he adjures us to “flee from sexual immorality”? It is that our bodies are members of Christ himself and we are not to take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute; and that our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in us, and whom we have received from God. We are not our own; we were bought at a price.
It is impossible adequately to grasp what we owe to God. Our creation, our preservation in being, our salvation. Everything. The biblical writers all struggled, using metaphor and allegory and analogy, all of which finally date and become incomprehensible or at least liable to be misunderstood. There is only one Word that does not date or change, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, Christ yesterday and today and the same for all eternity. We cannot live up to his fidelity, but that is the example we have been set.
Of course we must be faithful to our earthly partners. But fidelity to God comes first, because it is from our relationship with God that everything else flows. And it is not as if we had to do it all ourselves. As Paul said in his second letter to the Corinthians, our sufficiency, our capacity, is of God. You’ll find it summed up in Lamentations Chapter 3:
Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion therefore I will wait for him."
The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him;
it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.
is 62:1-5, 1 Cor 6 11-20
What are we intended to learn from these readings? The answer is not as obvious as it might appear. Yes, the obvious subject of the reading from Paul is sexual immorality, and you could certainly leave it at that. His advice is perfectly good, if not exclusively Christian except in its manner of expression, and we would all do well to follow it.
However, there are a few hints in that passage as to what the two readings, taken together, are really about, and the passage from Isaiah clinches it. As always, the meaning is love, God’s love for us and the love that that should elicit from us.
Undoubtedly it is faith that saves us, and not good works, but of the three dispositions that Paul lists as necessary later in this epistle, the greatest is love, and love in us human beings is a response and necessarily shows itself in action. In God, of course, love is not a response; it is part of his nature. God does not love us because we are lovable; we are lovable because he loves us into being and loves us into lovableness.
The phrase I used then: “God loves us into being” is a clue to why these two readings go together so well. In the Old Testament the relationship between God and humankind is seen as analogous to that between a husband and wife; and that is what Paul has in mind when he writes to the Corinthians. The classic text here is Ezekiel 16:
“This is what the Sovereign Lord says to Jerusalem: On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised. Then I passed by and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, "Live!" I made you grow like a plant of the field. You grew up and developed and became the most beautiful of jewels. Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign LORD, and you became mine. You became very beautiful and rose to be a queen. And your fame spread among the nations on account of your beauty, because the splendour I had given you made your beauty perfect, declares the Sovereign Lord. But you trusted in your beauty and used your fame to become a prostitute.”
This is a recurring theme in the prophets, if not usually expressed with quite such forcefulness (and what I have given you is an expurgated version). We would not now look on the relationship of marriage as being so unequal, but if we can see it in the context of the time we will understand why it is such a good analogy for God’s relationship with us. In Biblical times it was difficult for a woman to manage unless she was under the care of either a father, a brother or a husband. The father would in the normal way of things die before her; the brother might have more than enough to cope with with his own family; the husband therefore was in a way the woman’s saviour, and she owed him gratitude for making her life possible. He was not, of course, her creator, but without him she might well be destitute, and destitute in a world without health service and benefits; he had not brought her into life, but he certainly preserved her in life. That, I believe, is the background to the double standard that still exists today regarding adultery or sexual misconduct. A promiscuous man is seen as “sowing wild oats”; a promiscuous woman is seen as “no better than she should be”. It is not so long since having a child out of wedlock was enough to ruin a woman’s whole life. Similarly, a man having an affair is seen as “having a bit on the side” while a woman is seen as a home-wrecker. In the west in the 21st century this is ridiculous. In biblical Israel it wasn’t. In the west in the 21st century describing the church (or the individual Christian soul) as the bride of Christ is misleading and confusing. In biblical Israel describing Israel as the bride of YHWH was an extremely clear and hard-hitting metaphor.
It’s because of this huge change in culture that it is even necessary to explain what these readings are about. And what they are not primarily about is sexual immorality. They are about faithfulness and gratitude. And, of course, about God’s love.
When King David repented of his adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of her husband, he said “I have sinned against the Lord”. He did not say he had sinned against Bathsheba or Uriah, although he most certainly had done. Because all our sins are ultimately sins against God, and that is why they matter even if no other human being is hurt by them. What is the reason Paul gives when he adjures us to “flee from sexual immorality”? It is that our bodies are members of Christ himself and we are not to take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute; and that our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in us, and whom we have received from God. We are not our own; we were bought at a price.
It is impossible adequately to grasp what we owe to God. Our creation, our preservation in being, our salvation. Everything. The biblical writers all struggled, using metaphor and allegory and analogy, all of which finally date and become incomprehensible or at least liable to be misunderstood. There is only one Word that does not date or change, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, Christ yesterday and today and the same for all eternity. We cannot live up to his fidelity, but that is the example we have been set.
Of course we must be faithful to our earthly partners. But fidelity to God comes first, because it is from our relationship with God that everything else flows. And it is not as if we had to do it all ourselves. As Paul said in his second letter to the Corinthians, our sufficiency, our capacity, is of God. You’ll find it summed up in Lamentations Chapter 3:
Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion therefore I will wait for him."
The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him;
it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Glorious now behold him arise; King and God and Sacrifice
The Baptism of the Lord
Until very recently there was no feast of the Baptism of the Lord; Epiphany was the end of Christmastide and commemorated three very disparate events: the visit of the Magi, the Baptism of the Lord and the Marriage at Cana. So far we haven’t been given a separate feast for the Marriage at Cana, but I live in hope.
It is a good thing that our attention is now properly focussed on the Baptism; only liturgical geeks like me knew that it was one of the vents celebrated on 6 January; most people never thought about it at all, although it is one of the most important events in Jesus’ life, and is the source of arguably the most important event in our lives, our own baptism. This event was not only important to Jesus as an experience, as confirmation – if he needed it, and I suspect that it was at least welcome, if not necessary – that he was who he believed himself to be, but it was an event which actually made a difference to his status, and certainly marked the official opening of his mission as Messiah. It would be wrong, in fact it would be heretical, to suggest that it had an ontological erect on his person: he did not begin to be the Servant of God at his baptism, and he certainly did not become Son of God at his baptism. But I think there is a sense in which he did begin to be the Messiah, King, Priest and Sacrifice at his baptism. A parallel might be like this: the infant son of a king, when his father dies, does become king in fact – ontologically, one might say. But the exercise of his kingship does not take effect from the moment of his father’s death. A regent will rule on his behalf until such time as he is declared capable of ruling and – this is the point – anointed, or crowned, or whatever the ritual is. There was never a time when he was not king; but his reign was, all the same inaugurated at his coronation. It’s an imperfect parallel, but you see what I mean. That is why St Peter could say that “God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ”. Jesus is the Son of God incarnate. There was no time when he was not Lord and Christ. But it was from his baptism that this actually took effect. “Christ”, like “Messiah”, means the anointed one, and this was his official anointing, the official anointing as King, Priest and Sacrifice of him who had always been so. It is clear from the sequel that it made a difference: Luke says “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert”. He had always been full of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. But he was now full of the Holy Spirit to a purpose: for his mission, for his messiahship. Something new had begun.
So it was central to Jesus as a person. It was also central to us. Just as I said at Christmas that when Jesus entered into his inheritance, it was not he but the inheritance that came of age, just so when he was baptised, it was not he but baptism that was regenerated, and ourselves with it. Although the baptism Jesus received was John’s, he was himself instituting a new baptism, the sacrament of Christian baptism. God has always been our Father. But at this moment that fatherhood came into effect in its completeness. No, Jesus didn’t “become God’s Son” at his baptism. But I think we did; and our own baptism, the baptism of each one of us individually, is simply an individual application of what took place at the Jordan. It was the inauguration of Jesus’ mission; it was also the beginning of what he referred to as “his baptism”, for whose accomplishment or completion he longed.
It is interesting that the feast of the Baptism holds the same place in relation to Christmas as the feast of the Trinity does to Paschaltide. The feasts conclude the seasons, and herald the return of Ordinary Time the following day. They also do not seem to have much to do with the seasons to which they act as finale. Our own baptism day may be closely associated with our birth day, but Jesus’ wasn’t; it took place, Luke tells us, thirty years later; and I think that’s a bit of a red herring. The point is, I think, in both cases, to remind us that God is the Trinity. In Paschaltide we have been attending largely to the risen Christ, with a nod to the Holy Spirit at Pentecost; although Christ is glorified, we do still run the risk of forgetting, so to speak. “the rest of God”, especially since we’d previously spent six-odd weeks fighting our way through Lent in company of a very human Jesus. The risk is still greater during Advent and Christmastide, when we are looking at a human family with a baby – and babies bring out the human and sentimental in all of us. There are miracles, yes; there are the magi; and there are frequent reminders that this baby is more than he seems. But it isn’t enough. Whatever our intellects do, our devotion remains by the crib. It needs something to shake it back to the whole picture, not for the sake of cold realism – there is nothing cold about the Trinity, as St Augustine could tell you – but in order that we should not forget why we are celebrating at all. The Baptism of Jesus is the only clear manifestation of the Trinity. If the Transfiguration or possibly the Sermon on the Mount is the new Testament Sinai, then the Old Testament foreshadowing of the baptism is not Ezekiel and the waters flowing from the Temple or any such thing, but Abraham’s hospitality to the three mysterious beings at the vale of Mambre.
Whether it was a manifestation that all or some could see and hear, or whether it was for Jesus alone, is not clear in Luke’s version. But both Matthew and Mark say he saw the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit descending. It isn’t very important. I once heard a sermon on this depicting the event as a wet young man standing in the river surrounded by a flock of doves, one of which settled on his shoulder. All right; maybe it did look like no more than that to bystanders, but it was more than that, and Jesus made sure his disciples – and we – knew it. I say “Jesus made sure”. Because if no one else saw what really happened, then this event joins those texts of the Gospel which one considers either most suspect or – as I do – most privileged, because they can come only from Jesus himself. It joins those precious moments of the Temptations and the Agony in the Garden. That is most suitable, because it shares another vital characteristic with them.
If the Baptism of the Lord is a clear manifestation of the Trinity, it is also a clear statement of the two natures in Christ, as are those two other occasions witnessed and transmitted by him alone. “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil…For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted…For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin.” However, if he had not been God, he would not have been able to redeem us – the devil knew that, which is why he was so keen to find out whether or not he was the Son of God. In Gethsemane the same applies. His weakness – his agony indeed – highlights his true humanity; his total obedience shows his unique sonship; and again, the magnitude of his suffering. paradoxically also show his Godhead. However, the Baptism is perhaps the clearest manifestation: he is the Son, the Second Person of the manifested Trinity; but he is also human, as he shows by submitting to the baptism of John. He does not suggest thereby that he has sins to repent of: as John says, he is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. He takes away the sins, yes, but takes upon himself, too; that is what Gethsemane is. No man, therefore could have suffered as he did. And that was what the Temptations were: in him the devil was tempting the whole human race. All this began at the Baptism.
He regenerated the baptismal waters and the human race: may God fulfil the grace of our own baptism and conform us perfectly to the image of his beloved Son.
Until very recently there was no feast of the Baptism of the Lord; Epiphany was the end of Christmastide and commemorated three very disparate events: the visit of the Magi, the Baptism of the Lord and the Marriage at Cana. So far we haven’t been given a separate feast for the Marriage at Cana, but I live in hope.
It is a good thing that our attention is now properly focussed on the Baptism; only liturgical geeks like me knew that it was one of the vents celebrated on 6 January; most people never thought about it at all, although it is one of the most important events in Jesus’ life, and is the source of arguably the most important event in our lives, our own baptism. This event was not only important to Jesus as an experience, as confirmation – if he needed it, and I suspect that it was at least welcome, if not necessary – that he was who he believed himself to be, but it was an event which actually made a difference to his status, and certainly marked the official opening of his mission as Messiah. It would be wrong, in fact it would be heretical, to suggest that it had an ontological erect on his person: he did not begin to be the Servant of God at his baptism, and he certainly did not become Son of God at his baptism. But I think there is a sense in which he did begin to be the Messiah, King, Priest and Sacrifice at his baptism. A parallel might be like this: the infant son of a king, when his father dies, does become king in fact – ontologically, one might say. But the exercise of his kingship does not take effect from the moment of his father’s death. A regent will rule on his behalf until such time as he is declared capable of ruling and – this is the point – anointed, or crowned, or whatever the ritual is. There was never a time when he was not king; but his reign was, all the same inaugurated at his coronation. It’s an imperfect parallel, but you see what I mean. That is why St Peter could say that “God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ”. Jesus is the Son of God incarnate. There was no time when he was not Lord and Christ. But it was from his baptism that this actually took effect. “Christ”, like “Messiah”, means the anointed one, and this was his official anointing, the official anointing as King, Priest and Sacrifice of him who had always been so. It is clear from the sequel that it made a difference: Luke says “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert”. He had always been full of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. But he was now full of the Holy Spirit to a purpose: for his mission, for his messiahship. Something new had begun.
So it was central to Jesus as a person. It was also central to us. Just as I said at Christmas that when Jesus entered into his inheritance, it was not he but the inheritance that came of age, just so when he was baptised, it was not he but baptism that was regenerated, and ourselves with it. Although the baptism Jesus received was John’s, he was himself instituting a new baptism, the sacrament of Christian baptism. God has always been our Father. But at this moment that fatherhood came into effect in its completeness. No, Jesus didn’t “become God’s Son” at his baptism. But I think we did; and our own baptism, the baptism of each one of us individually, is simply an individual application of what took place at the Jordan. It was the inauguration of Jesus’ mission; it was also the beginning of what he referred to as “his baptism”, for whose accomplishment or completion he longed.
It is interesting that the feast of the Baptism holds the same place in relation to Christmas as the feast of the Trinity does to Paschaltide. The feasts conclude the seasons, and herald the return of Ordinary Time the following day. They also do not seem to have much to do with the seasons to which they act as finale. Our own baptism day may be closely associated with our birth day, but Jesus’ wasn’t; it took place, Luke tells us, thirty years later; and I think that’s a bit of a red herring. The point is, I think, in both cases, to remind us that God is the Trinity. In Paschaltide we have been attending largely to the risen Christ, with a nod to the Holy Spirit at Pentecost; although Christ is glorified, we do still run the risk of forgetting, so to speak. “the rest of God”, especially since we’d previously spent six-odd weeks fighting our way through Lent in company of a very human Jesus. The risk is still greater during Advent and Christmastide, when we are looking at a human family with a baby – and babies bring out the human and sentimental in all of us. There are miracles, yes; there are the magi; and there are frequent reminders that this baby is more than he seems. But it isn’t enough. Whatever our intellects do, our devotion remains by the crib. It needs something to shake it back to the whole picture, not for the sake of cold realism – there is nothing cold about the Trinity, as St Augustine could tell you – but in order that we should not forget why we are celebrating at all. The Baptism of Jesus is the only clear manifestation of the Trinity. If the Transfiguration or possibly the Sermon on the Mount is the new Testament Sinai, then the Old Testament foreshadowing of the baptism is not Ezekiel and the waters flowing from the Temple or any such thing, but Abraham’s hospitality to the three mysterious beings at the vale of Mambre.
Whether it was a manifestation that all or some could see and hear, or whether it was for Jesus alone, is not clear in Luke’s version. But both Matthew and Mark say he saw the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit descending. It isn’t very important. I once heard a sermon on this depicting the event as a wet young man standing in the river surrounded by a flock of doves, one of which settled on his shoulder. All right; maybe it did look like no more than that to bystanders, but it was more than that, and Jesus made sure his disciples – and we – knew it. I say “Jesus made sure”. Because if no one else saw what really happened, then this event joins those texts of the Gospel which one considers either most suspect or – as I do – most privileged, because they can come only from Jesus himself. It joins those precious moments of the Temptations and the Agony in the Garden. That is most suitable, because it shares another vital characteristic with them.
If the Baptism of the Lord is a clear manifestation of the Trinity, it is also a clear statement of the two natures in Christ, as are those two other occasions witnessed and transmitted by him alone. “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil…For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted…For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin.” However, if he had not been God, he would not have been able to redeem us – the devil knew that, which is why he was so keen to find out whether or not he was the Son of God. In Gethsemane the same applies. His weakness – his agony indeed – highlights his true humanity; his total obedience shows his unique sonship; and again, the magnitude of his suffering. paradoxically also show his Godhead. However, the Baptism is perhaps the clearest manifestation: he is the Son, the Second Person of the manifested Trinity; but he is also human, as he shows by submitting to the baptism of John. He does not suggest thereby that he has sins to repent of: as John says, he is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. He takes away the sins, yes, but takes upon himself, too; that is what Gethsemane is. No man, therefore could have suffered as he did. And that was what the Temptations were: in him the devil was tempting the whole human race. All this began at the Baptism.
He regenerated the baptismal waters and the human race: may God fulfil the grace of our own baptism and conform us perfectly to the image of his beloved Son.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Quis enim mihi est in caelo? Et a te quid volui super terram?
What can I give Him
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man
I would do my part;
But what I can I give Him:
Give my heart.
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man
I would do my part;
But what I can I give Him:
Give my heart.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Jesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio, oro fiat illud quod tam sitio: ut, te revelata cernens facie, visu sim beatus tuae gloriae
Epiphany 2009
Not much attention is paid to Epiphany in the UK, especially now that it simply falls on the second Sunday after Christmas rather than having its own special day on the sixth of January. It is simply Twelfth Night, the day when you are supposed to take down the Christmas decorations, on pain of appalling bad luck in the year to come. In Spain, it is the day when presents are given, the equivalent of Christmas Day in the UK; in Italy it is celebrated as Befana (though what witches have to do with Epiphany I do not know) and in France they eat, with much ritual, the Gateau des Rois – very much nicer than Christmas Pudding – and the person who gets the bean in their portion becomes King or Queen for the day. But I’m not sure that they are more concerned than we are about the significance of the feast, which is a pity. Epiphany is perhaps the richest of all the feasts of the Church’s year. I don’t say it’s the most important; it clearly isn’t that; but first, it is the only feast that celebrates more than one event: the coming of the Magi, the Baptism of Christ, and the Marriage at Cana; and, second, it is suggestive as no other feast is, overflowing with so many and so varied themes. It has been called the Feast of Light, and seen as a celebration of the stars and of the angels which belong to them. It is the justification of lavishness and riches in the service of God; it is the distant prophecy of the entry of the Gentiles into the Church; it tells of Christ’s triple nature as God, mortal, and universal priest-mediator; it contains both the Blessed Trinity and the Holy Family, it is a celebration of life and joy in the Marriage at Cana – and it is an indisputable expression both of Mary’s care for us and of her power with her divine son.
But you couldn’t exhaust Epiphany with a list, however long. And the wonderful thing about the feasts of the Church, a characteristic they share with the Bible, is that they say different things to you each year. I am no mystic, despite my monastic past. I am never rapt in ecstasy, and I do not have an intense or palpable sense of the presence of God – not most of the time, at any rate. My prayer is mostly just like yours is mostly: as disturbed and dissipated, as seemingly useless, as boring and unsatisfying for the one praying. But one thing I have been given – as can be guessed from the fact that the last verse of the hymn “Adoro te” most fully sums up my spirituality – is a longing, at times an almost unbearable longing, for God. Not even for the “heavenly homeland”; not a nostalgia for a golden age; for God. I suspect that the dismal failure of so many of my hour-long prayer-times is due to the fact that one can’t just sit and long for an hour at a time without becoming both distracted and self-conscious. For what, precisely, do I long? That I can’t tell you. I know that when in the psalms I come across verses such as “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water”, I am saying something profoundly true, not in the abstract, not with an undertone of “wouldn’t it be nice”, but very specifically true for me.
But I can’t tell you what are the characteristics of this Person for whom I long. I have never met him closely enough to know that; I can only tell you what he is not. I lose interest pretty quickly when people list the lovable or adorable characteristics of God. I suppose they are right, though at times I feel like crying (in an echo of my History supervisor at Cambridge) “Evidence! Evidence!”. Those characteristics are just not interesting. They are not gripping. They do not hold my attention. They feel abstract and irrelevant. I know that Jesus is the Good Shepherd. I know that God is Love. I know that Jesus is the Wisdom of God and the Power of God. And I know that he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And these are things which he has said about himself and which are, therefore, true: no lack of evidence there: Truth himself speaks truly, or there’s nothing true. I have been known to wrestle with these during prayer time, trying to squeeze some spiritual or even emotional response from myself. It cannot be done, except insofar as I succeed in not thinking about the concepts but connect with the One about whom all these words are used. Because spiritual response does not take place in the brain but bypasses it; and the only way words will ever elicit it is if they are allowed to go straight to the soul, where a response undoubtedly takes place, but not one that can be explained, rationalised, or, sometimes, even perceived sufficiently for it to be comprehensible, recognisable, or make any sense at all. The other things, the non-biblical things that people say because they like or approve of a certain characteristic or feel the need of it in their own lives (under this heading come not only personal devotions, some most odd, but also all the groups who have hi-jacked Jesus and him into one of them), all these I can only ignore. They do not speak to me, the more so because, as doctrines and teachings of human beings, they risk misrepresenting the One for whom I long.
I can feel you getting restive. This insight into the spiritual life of the blogger is gripping, I hear you say, but what has it got to do with Epiphany? As Paul would say, much in every way. Let me return to what I said earlier: the feasts say something different every year, and something different to every person. This year, and to me, Epiphany is the feast of longing, the feast of those who consider no effort too much in their search for their heart’s desire. To me there can be no more potent symbol of longing than those Magi, whoever they were, from heaven-knows-where, following a star on the slimmest of evidence to heaven-knows-where, in search of a shadowy king of a mysterious tiny nation whose significance on the world stage was almost nil. Why? They could not have told you why, they could not have told you what they hoped he would do for them, what would happen if they did find him. All they knew was that they were drawn so forcible that they could not resist; and the pull was not on their bodies but on their hearts and souls. They did not know what it was for which they longed. But they longed, unbearably; nothing could compete.
Today or maybe not today
Tonight or not tonight,
All voices that command or pray
Calling me,
Shall kindle in my soul such fire
And in my eyes such light
That I shall see that heart’s desire
I long to see.
Not much attention is paid to Epiphany in the UK, especially now that it simply falls on the second Sunday after Christmas rather than having its own special day on the sixth of January. It is simply Twelfth Night, the day when you are supposed to take down the Christmas decorations, on pain of appalling bad luck in the year to come. In Spain, it is the day when presents are given, the equivalent of Christmas Day in the UK; in Italy it is celebrated as Befana (though what witches have to do with Epiphany I do not know) and in France they eat, with much ritual, the Gateau des Rois – very much nicer than Christmas Pudding – and the person who gets the bean in their portion becomes King or Queen for the day. But I’m not sure that they are more concerned than we are about the significance of the feast, which is a pity. Epiphany is perhaps the richest of all the feasts of the Church’s year. I don’t say it’s the most important; it clearly isn’t that; but first, it is the only feast that celebrates more than one event: the coming of the Magi, the Baptism of Christ, and the Marriage at Cana; and, second, it is suggestive as no other feast is, overflowing with so many and so varied themes. It has been called the Feast of Light, and seen as a celebration of the stars and of the angels which belong to them. It is the justification of lavishness and riches in the service of God; it is the distant prophecy of the entry of the Gentiles into the Church; it tells of Christ’s triple nature as God, mortal, and universal priest-mediator; it contains both the Blessed Trinity and the Holy Family, it is a celebration of life and joy in the Marriage at Cana – and it is an indisputable expression both of Mary’s care for us and of her power with her divine son.
But you couldn’t exhaust Epiphany with a list, however long. And the wonderful thing about the feasts of the Church, a characteristic they share with the Bible, is that they say different things to you each year. I am no mystic, despite my monastic past. I am never rapt in ecstasy, and I do not have an intense or palpable sense of the presence of God – not most of the time, at any rate. My prayer is mostly just like yours is mostly: as disturbed and dissipated, as seemingly useless, as boring and unsatisfying for the one praying. But one thing I have been given – as can be guessed from the fact that the last verse of the hymn “Adoro te” most fully sums up my spirituality – is a longing, at times an almost unbearable longing, for God. Not even for the “heavenly homeland”; not a nostalgia for a golden age; for God. I suspect that the dismal failure of so many of my hour-long prayer-times is due to the fact that one can’t just sit and long for an hour at a time without becoming both distracted and self-conscious. For what, precisely, do I long? That I can’t tell you. I know that when in the psalms I come across verses such as “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water”, I am saying something profoundly true, not in the abstract, not with an undertone of “wouldn’t it be nice”, but very specifically true for me.
But I can’t tell you what are the characteristics of this Person for whom I long. I have never met him closely enough to know that; I can only tell you what he is not. I lose interest pretty quickly when people list the lovable or adorable characteristics of God. I suppose they are right, though at times I feel like crying (in an echo of my History supervisor at Cambridge) “Evidence! Evidence!”. Those characteristics are just not interesting. They are not gripping. They do not hold my attention. They feel abstract and irrelevant. I know that Jesus is the Good Shepherd. I know that God is Love. I know that Jesus is the Wisdom of God and the Power of God. And I know that he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And these are things which he has said about himself and which are, therefore, true: no lack of evidence there: Truth himself speaks truly, or there’s nothing true. I have been known to wrestle with these during prayer time, trying to squeeze some spiritual or even emotional response from myself. It cannot be done, except insofar as I succeed in not thinking about the concepts but connect with the One about whom all these words are used. Because spiritual response does not take place in the brain but bypasses it; and the only way words will ever elicit it is if they are allowed to go straight to the soul, where a response undoubtedly takes place, but not one that can be explained, rationalised, or, sometimes, even perceived sufficiently for it to be comprehensible, recognisable, or make any sense at all. The other things, the non-biblical things that people say because they like or approve of a certain characteristic or feel the need of it in their own lives (under this heading come not only personal devotions, some most odd, but also all the groups who have hi-jacked Jesus and him into one of them), all these I can only ignore. They do not speak to me, the more so because, as doctrines and teachings of human beings, they risk misrepresenting the One for whom I long.
I can feel you getting restive. This insight into the spiritual life of the blogger is gripping, I hear you say, but what has it got to do with Epiphany? As Paul would say, much in every way. Let me return to what I said earlier: the feasts say something different every year, and something different to every person. This year, and to me, Epiphany is the feast of longing, the feast of those who consider no effort too much in their search for their heart’s desire. To me there can be no more potent symbol of longing than those Magi, whoever they were, from heaven-knows-where, following a star on the slimmest of evidence to heaven-knows-where, in search of a shadowy king of a mysterious tiny nation whose significance on the world stage was almost nil. Why? They could not have told you why, they could not have told you what they hoped he would do for them, what would happen if they did find him. All they knew was that they were drawn so forcible that they could not resist; and the pull was not on their bodies but on their hearts and souls. They did not know what it was for which they longed. But they longed, unbearably; nothing could compete.
Today or maybe not today
Tonight or not tonight,
All voices that command or pray
Calling me,
Shall kindle in my soul such fire
And in my eyes such light
That I shall see that heart’s desire
I long to see.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Sermon for the Feast of Mary, Mother of God
Germinavit radix Jesse: orta est stella ex Jacob; Virgo peperit Salvatorem: te laudamus. Deus noster.
The root of Jesse has flowered; a star has risen out of Jacob: the Virgin has given birth to the Saviour: we praise thee, our God.
Whose fest is this? Is it Our Lord’s; are we celebrating his circumcision” Is it Our Lady’s; are we celebrating her motherhood It’s both; but this year, perhaps because the earthly Israel is involved in such terrible bloodshed, it seems to me that we are celebrating something which is at the root of both, and which. as the world calculates time, goes back far beyond either. We are celebrating the true Israel. The chosen people, God’s election. As Paul insists, the New Covenant has not abolished or deleted that election. Mary is the daughter of Zion, and Jesus is – well, Jesus is both the summation of Israel which was chosen, and the God who chose Israel. As he did not come to destroy the Law but to fulfil it, so he did not destroy Israel but fulfil it. his own received him not; but that does not change the ontological effect he had on his own, and also on those sheep who were not of that fold.
From the time of Moses and long before the time of Moses, Israel is a blessed nation, and in its name were all the nations of the world to be blessed.. It might seem hard to understand why God – who is God of the whole earth, should choose one particular nation out of all nations to be his own; why he should, in the early days, choose one man out of all to be the vehicle of his blessing. We can hardly imagine it: Abraham was the only believer in the entire world: he had no support or affirmation from any other human being. That is why he is the father of faith = he’s almost faith personified. The reason, I think, is not that God prefers or chooses any person or nation to the exclusion of any others. He is infinite and therefore capable of preferring, absolutely, each one of us, and does. However, we can’t grasp that; indeed, if God hadn’t begun by choosing Abraham and not Lot, Israel and not Esau, we simply couldn’t have grasped the concept of being “chosen”. And it is only once we have grasped that concept that we can begin to grasp the fact that all creation, and each member of creation, is his chosen – in just that “preferential” sense.
“What advantage then has the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision? Much in every way. First indeed because the words of God were committed to them. For what if some of them have not believed? Shall their unbelief make the faith o God without effect? God forbid. But God is true.” there has grown up – though I think it is less strong now – a form of “replacement theology” in which Christianity is seen as the replacement of Judaism, the Church the replacement of the synagogue. There is a small amount of truth in this, in that present-day Judaism is incomplete; it needs the Christian revelation to complete it. Christianity is not the replacement but the fulfilment of Judaism. Jesus himself said so; and Paul who might be accused of being at the origin of the replacement theology, insisted that there is one God who justifies circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision by faith. “Do we then”, he asks. “destroy the Law through faith? God forbid; but we establish the Law”. A possible analogy, it seems to me, is the relation between an engagement and a marriage. When the couple have married, they could say with equal truth “The engagement is at an end, it is over it is not longer relevant”; and “The engagement has been fulfilled, has come to full flowering, in the marriage.” So too with Judaism and Christianity. The flower that came forth from the root of Jesse is the full flowering of Judaism. Christianity is simply the full faith implicitly contained in Judaism, and is named after its full flowering. Jesus was not a Jew by chance. “For the end – in both senses – of the Law is Christ, unto justice to everyone that believes”.
the motherhood of Mary contains all we need to know about the new dispensation: the Virgin overshadowed by the Holy Spirit gave birth to Jesus Christ, God incarnate, true God and true Man, who was born to save his people from their sins. Yet that same Jesus was circumcised according to the old dispensation, thus sealing his identity as a Jew. The Apostle of the Gentiles used very strong language in order to insist on this, to stress the continuity between the two Testaments. It would certainly never have occurred to him that he had ceased to be a Jew because he accepted Jesus as the Christ. “I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit—I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised!” I have no doubt that although Mary suffered greatly at the sufferings of her son, that sword which Simeon predicted would pierce her heart was made up largely of that same great sadness and continual sorrow of which Paul speaks. She too was an Israelite, and could see that blindness in part had happened in Israel. The will of her heart, indeed, and her prayer to God, was for the unto salvation. For she could bear then witness that they had a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they, not knowing the justice of God, and seeking to establish their own, had not submitted themselves to the justice of God.
Blindness in part. justification by faith and not by law. And yet, it was an Israelite, a daughter of Abraham, whom God chose as his mother. “It is not as though God's word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham's children. On the contrary, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." In other words, it is not the natural children who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring.” No, God had not cast away his people. Mary also was an Israelite of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Judah.
We are told that God is able to bring good out of evil, and there is no doubt that Mary believed this, and so did Jesus – except during those agonising hours in Gethsemane. No, the Israelites have not ceased to be children of God. “As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God's gifts and his call are irrevocable.” What has happened is that those who were not Israelites according to the flesh have received the sonship which previously appeared reserved only to Israelites. it is as if the failure of part of Israel had opened a breach in that dividing wall which Jesus cam to destroy, and allowed the Gentiles to enter Somehow, by their offence, salvation is come to the Gentiles; that blindness in part is temporary: it is to last only until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, and so all Israel will be saved.
There’s a homily for the feast of St Stephen by Fulgentius of Ruspe which seems to me to express beautifully the end result of all this. “This is the true life, in which Paul is not brought to confusion by the murder of Stephen, but Stephen rejoices at the company of Paul, and charity gives joy to both. Charity in Stephen overcame the ferocity of the Jews; in Paul, charity covered a multitude of sins. Charity has given to both the possession of the Kingdom of Heaven.” Paul, the Jew, and Stephen, the Gentile, will be joyfully united in the Kingdom of Heaven. “For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? If the part of the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; if the root is holy, so are the branches. If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you…And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?”
“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of the children of God.” Children of God, and with the Only-Begotten Son, children of Mary, mother of God, and mother of the Church.
Venerunt nobis vere omnia bona pariter cum illa!
The root of Jesse has flowered; a star has risen out of Jacob: the Virgin has given birth to the Saviour: we praise thee, our God.
Whose fest is this? Is it Our Lord’s; are we celebrating his circumcision” Is it Our Lady’s; are we celebrating her motherhood It’s both; but this year, perhaps because the earthly Israel is involved in such terrible bloodshed, it seems to me that we are celebrating something which is at the root of both, and which. as the world calculates time, goes back far beyond either. We are celebrating the true Israel. The chosen people, God’s election. As Paul insists, the New Covenant has not abolished or deleted that election. Mary is the daughter of Zion, and Jesus is – well, Jesus is both the summation of Israel which was chosen, and the God who chose Israel. As he did not come to destroy the Law but to fulfil it, so he did not destroy Israel but fulfil it. his own received him not; but that does not change the ontological effect he had on his own, and also on those sheep who were not of that fold.
From the time of Moses and long before the time of Moses, Israel is a blessed nation, and in its name were all the nations of the world to be blessed.. It might seem hard to understand why God – who is God of the whole earth, should choose one particular nation out of all nations to be his own; why he should, in the early days, choose one man out of all to be the vehicle of his blessing. We can hardly imagine it: Abraham was the only believer in the entire world: he had no support or affirmation from any other human being. That is why he is the father of faith = he’s almost faith personified. The reason, I think, is not that God prefers or chooses any person or nation to the exclusion of any others. He is infinite and therefore capable of preferring, absolutely, each one of us, and does. However, we can’t grasp that; indeed, if God hadn’t begun by choosing Abraham and not Lot, Israel and not Esau, we simply couldn’t have grasped the concept of being “chosen”. And it is only once we have grasped that concept that we can begin to grasp the fact that all creation, and each member of creation, is his chosen – in just that “preferential” sense.
“What advantage then has the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision? Much in every way. First indeed because the words of God were committed to them. For what if some of them have not believed? Shall their unbelief make the faith o God without effect? God forbid. But God is true.” there has grown up – though I think it is less strong now – a form of “replacement theology” in which Christianity is seen as the replacement of Judaism, the Church the replacement of the synagogue. There is a small amount of truth in this, in that present-day Judaism is incomplete; it needs the Christian revelation to complete it. Christianity is not the replacement but the fulfilment of Judaism. Jesus himself said so; and Paul who might be accused of being at the origin of the replacement theology, insisted that there is one God who justifies circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision by faith. “Do we then”, he asks. “destroy the Law through faith? God forbid; but we establish the Law”. A possible analogy, it seems to me, is the relation between an engagement and a marriage. When the couple have married, they could say with equal truth “The engagement is at an end, it is over it is not longer relevant”; and “The engagement has been fulfilled, has come to full flowering, in the marriage.” So too with Judaism and Christianity. The flower that came forth from the root of Jesse is the full flowering of Judaism. Christianity is simply the full faith implicitly contained in Judaism, and is named after its full flowering. Jesus was not a Jew by chance. “For the end – in both senses – of the Law is Christ, unto justice to everyone that believes”.
the motherhood of Mary contains all we need to know about the new dispensation: the Virgin overshadowed by the Holy Spirit gave birth to Jesus Christ, God incarnate, true God and true Man, who was born to save his people from their sins. Yet that same Jesus was circumcised according to the old dispensation, thus sealing his identity as a Jew. The Apostle of the Gentiles used very strong language in order to insist on this, to stress the continuity between the two Testaments. It would certainly never have occurred to him that he had ceased to be a Jew because he accepted Jesus as the Christ. “I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit—I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised!” I have no doubt that although Mary suffered greatly at the sufferings of her son, that sword which Simeon predicted would pierce her heart was made up largely of that same great sadness and continual sorrow of which Paul speaks. She too was an Israelite, and could see that blindness in part had happened in Israel. The will of her heart, indeed, and her prayer to God, was for the unto salvation. For she could bear then witness that they had a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they, not knowing the justice of God, and seeking to establish their own, had not submitted themselves to the justice of God.
Blindness in part. justification by faith and not by law. And yet, it was an Israelite, a daughter of Abraham, whom God chose as his mother. “It is not as though God's word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham's children. On the contrary, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." In other words, it is not the natural children who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring.” No, God had not cast away his people. Mary also was an Israelite of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Judah.
We are told that God is able to bring good out of evil, and there is no doubt that Mary believed this, and so did Jesus – except during those agonising hours in Gethsemane. No, the Israelites have not ceased to be children of God. “As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God's gifts and his call are irrevocable.” What has happened is that those who were not Israelites according to the flesh have received the sonship which previously appeared reserved only to Israelites. it is as if the failure of part of Israel had opened a breach in that dividing wall which Jesus cam to destroy, and allowed the Gentiles to enter Somehow, by their offence, salvation is come to the Gentiles; that blindness in part is temporary: it is to last only until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, and so all Israel will be saved.
There’s a homily for the feast of St Stephen by Fulgentius of Ruspe which seems to me to express beautifully the end result of all this. “This is the true life, in which Paul is not brought to confusion by the murder of Stephen, but Stephen rejoices at the company of Paul, and charity gives joy to both. Charity in Stephen overcame the ferocity of the Jews; in Paul, charity covered a multitude of sins. Charity has given to both the possession of the Kingdom of Heaven.” Paul, the Jew, and Stephen, the Gentile, will be joyfully united in the Kingdom of Heaven. “For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? If the part of the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; if the root is holy, so are the branches. If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you…And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?”
“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of the children of God.” Children of God, and with the Only-Begotten Son, children of Mary, mother of God, and mother of the Church.
Venerunt nobis vere omnia bona pariter cum illa!
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