Legend and devotion has it that the Risen Christ appeared first to his blessed Mother. Maybe; it would have been a fitting reward to her unshakable faith. But the first recorded appearance, the first appearance we are sure of, was to – of all people – Simon. That is, of course, Peter, though he hardly deserved the name and I expect he shuddered if anyone used it. “Simon”, though, was as bad: no-one had used it for three years, and here it was surfacing again. He knew why he was being denied his Christian name, and knew too well. Another legend says that for the rest of his life, after complete forgiveness, after leading the Christian community, after becoming the first Pope, after being imprisoned in Rome in the sure hope of dying with the Lord as he had sworn he would do (that was Jesus’ last desperate attempt to make him grasp that his sins had been flung into the depths of the sea) he still never ceased to weep for that moment of madness in the High Priest’s courtyard, until the tears wore furrows in his cheeks.
I can understand Peter’s lifelong sorrow. There is something in the life of each one of us that we cannot look back on without flinching, as if a sore spot had been touched. It may have been a sin – it is a fact concealed but well-documented (and I know it directly, though, thank God, not in my own person) that abortion leaves lifelong psychological and spiritual damage. It may have been a moment of great shame; it may have been a hut done to us – it may be another person, or even circumstances or God, that we cannot forgive, rather than ourselves. Or it may be something for which we “cannot forgive ourselves” even though we know perfectly well we were not to blame. A common example is having failed to be present at the moment of death of someone we love. Maybe we were there day and night for weeks; but we will never forgive ourselves for having been elsewhere at that instant. Some of us find that we can scarcely look back at any moment in the past without flinching for one reason or another. So Peter was simply reacting in a normal human way. But, as I said sadly on Good Friday, there is still a lot of the human, as opposed to the superhuman, in Christianity, and it should not be there. it should not have been there in Peter, and it should not be there in us.
The Lamb of God takes away our sins; He takes away our guilt as well, and we should also allow Him to take away our guilt or otherwise painful memories. A lot of emphasis is placed now upon the “healing of memories” by psychotherapists, counsellors and others. They are quite right: our memories do need healing. But I do not believe anyone can heal what is within us except the One who knows what is in humankind. Human beings can soothe the pain of them and help us to understand them (and that is already something) but no more. It’s not that difficult to make someone feel better but only a miracle can heal the scars: and a miracle is precisely what the Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection was. it is not impossible that God chose Peter precisely in order to hammer home the completeness not only of forgiveness, but also of healing, that is offered to us. if Peter did carry the scars of his memories with him to the grave, that was not God’s will, nor was it for want of trying on His part.
I arrived at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper this year with my usual burden of painful memories. I am such a fool, so inclined to say and do the wrong thing, to react sharply, to let pride run away with me, to be complacent, petulant, selfish, sulky, cowardly…shall I go on? As quite often happens, when I settled down to pray afterwards, one of the memories rose up from nowhere and gave me a kick in the solar plexus. I winced. Then by association of ideas another joined it, and another, until I felt that I was being assailed by a hail of missiles. I suppose I could have prayed to St Stephen; instead I thought of Peter, and began to enter into his memories rather than my own. And I flinched in sympathy as I ran through his appearances in the Gospel.
Since it was Maundy Thursday, what sparked off my train of thought was his behaviour at the Last Supper: he managed to get it wrong in two opposite directions in the space of thirty seconds. I suspect that when Jesus returned to the table and asked “Do you know what I have done to you?” he gave Peter a quick but searching stare; and Peter either nodded vigorously (having, al the same, not a clue) or else shook his head mournfully. Never could he have looked back at that event without an embarrassed shudder. but he never did twig, poor Peter. After ceaselessly hammering home his teaching of giving without expecting any reward, Jesus found himself being asked by Peter “And what shall we have?” Patient as ever, he gave Peter the answer. But maybe not without an ironic shake of the head. Which is what Peter remembered. “Oh dear, I should never have said that”. And he had forced Jesus into a rather unusual miracle by his over-confident declaration (prompted by extreme nervousness) that oh yes, of course Jesus paid the Temple tax. Jesus’ rebuke on that occasion was very gently: it has the tone of one explaining something to a rather thick six-year-old. But that was not the case when Peter, in horror (quite reasonably, humanly speaking) at the prophecy of the Passion, protested. He’d put his foot in it many times, and Jesus had been calm, gentle and, mostly, patient. But now! Peter quailed and backed off under the onslaught, finding himself addressed not as Peter, not even as Simon, but as Satan. “Oh dear” thought Peter many years later. “I think he was right…and it doesn’t help that it was I who confessed him as the Christ, the Son of the Living God. He as good as told me that it wasn’t me saying it at all.” And who was it, when Jesus said that they should sell their cloaks and buy swords (I am not sure exactly what he meant, but I am sure he did not literally mean what he said), who produced a sword, and waved it about? There were four of them, but we know one of them was Peter. And when he tried to use it, he was told in no uncertain terms that he had got the wrong end of the stick…or the sword…again. “Well,” he consoled himself (as I console myself) at least my faults mean that I am tolerant and forgiving. I have obviously taken on board at least that essential piece of teaching.” No, Peter, unfortunately not, as your memory will tell you in a split second. Your generous offer to forgive your brother seven times made Jesus, figuratively or actually, throw his hands up in despair.
Peter sighs. “I warned him,” he says. “I told him to go away from me for I am a sinful man.” You did, Peter; and what would have happened to you if he had taken you at your word? “Oh dear,” he mutters again. And unfortunately, thinking about boats brings up another uncomfortable memory. Who was it that (a) did not believe that the walker on the sea really was Jesus (b) was confident that he could do it too (c) sank at the first puff of wind and (d) was informed, by One who knew, that he hadn’t any faith to speak of. And looked a right idiot, too, being hauled, drenched, into the boat. By now Peter, as I visualise him, is sitting hunched up in exactly the same position as my soul, and maybe my body too, adopts once Sister Mind has been allowed to wander among her memories. And I feel a great deal better.
But I feel better not for the obvious, human reasons. It’s not a sort of Schadenfreude, pleasure that St Peter was as bad as I am or even worse. or even consolation that someone like Peter could be so hopeless and make it all the same. it is the knowledge that “by His stripes we are healed” and that God has provided a cure for all our dis-eases. He did not create Peter, with his character and vocation, specifically for me; but then He did not create penicillin specifically for me either, and I have every right to thank him when my sinusitis clears up after a course of it. It seems logical that I can thank him for Peter.
You are about to complain that, today of all days, I haven’t even mentioned the Resurrection. What do you think I have been talking about all this time? Because our whole life is in the image of the Lord who died and rose again. We have been buried together with him in our baptism, and we rise with him to glory. But for us it is usually a long process, and at every moment he is with us and gives us the help we need, with us himself and with us in the companions he has given us for the way. We do not go to God alone, but in that great company, spread through time and space, which makes up the Church Militant. For my companion is not St Peter in glory, but Simon son of Jonah, surnamed Peter, struggling on earth, together with me, both of us led, not in spite of but by way of our weakness, to the glory of the Resurrection.
Alleluia!
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
Consepulti sumus cum illo in baptismate
10 April 2009 – Good Friday
Since the Fall, we have managed to ruin or misunderstand everything, and we have turned the following of Jesus Christ into two things it is not: first, an ideology; second, a religion of success. We Scottish Episcopalians have not yet got to the point reached by those American churches which encourage their embers to become as wealthy as possible and achieve as much worldly success as possible as an integral part of their religious practice, but I am not sure that we look at things in a fundamentally different way. It is human to try and get rich, and to need approval, and there seems to be a lot of the human – as opposed to the superhuman – in Christianity.
Look at the cult of the saint; look, above all, at hagiography. have you noticed how they were all beautiful, talented, intelligent, and successful at everything they put their hand to? I usually complain about this because it seems to put the saints out of our reach, and absolve us from trying to become saints ourselves. But today I’m complaining because these are just the characteristics which a saint does not need – I almost said: these are unchristian characteristics. I suppose it is inevitable that most of the canonised saints were in some way successful, or we’d never have heard of them, and they would never have been canonised. Thank God, I say, for saints like the Cure d’Ars and Benoit-Joseph Labre. Especially the latter, that most glorious of failures. A failure, you could say, in the image of his divine Master.
And that, you see, is why our cult of success is all wrong. That is why I like to see a “failure” saint. Not because it makes me, in my mediocrity, feel better; but because the most outstanding thing about Jesus’ life, looked at humanly at this time on the first Good Friday, was his resounding failure. In the old days those of us who were reluctant about penance and asceticism were scolded and admonished to remember that we were “members of a thorn-crowned Head”. True, of course, though Jesus was no ascetic. His life was, as it happens, very hard, but never, I am sure, just for the sake of it. But we should remember that we are members of a Head who was condemned as a criminal and executed, betrayed by one of his disciples and denied by another, and deserted by all of them – except, needless to say, by the women; because woman, in her natural state, understands and values failure. The Cross we are to carry daily was the instrument of execution for the lowest class of criminal. It is not just that we’ll be accepted even if we fail. But that the more we are failures by the world’s standards, and those standards encompass everything except holiness, the more – yes, the more – we will be like our Lord.
God does not stand at the end of our road watching us struggle, tutting when we go off the road, smiling approvingly when we do not, and occasionally cheering us on. He is there on the road with us, at all times, especially in our failures (he who failed), even in our sins. If when the two of us reach the end of the road our sins have brought us to the point at which we choose to turn away from him, that is another matter. But he will never leave us: our life is a series of choices, or one enormous ongoing choice, whether to leave him. We need to realise who it is we are choosing to cleave to, whose road we are choosing to walk, and see things with his eyes; but conversely, we must realise that it will never be failure that will separate us from the Crucified One, whose only success was being God; for that is what he offers us by his own free gift, he who became man that we might become gods.
St Benoit-Joseph Labre, pray for us!
Since the Fall, we have managed to ruin or misunderstand everything, and we have turned the following of Jesus Christ into two things it is not: first, an ideology; second, a religion of success. We Scottish Episcopalians have not yet got to the point reached by those American churches which encourage their embers to become as wealthy as possible and achieve as much worldly success as possible as an integral part of their religious practice, but I am not sure that we look at things in a fundamentally different way. It is human to try and get rich, and to need approval, and there seems to be a lot of the human – as opposed to the superhuman – in Christianity.
Look at the cult of the saint; look, above all, at hagiography. have you noticed how they were all beautiful, talented, intelligent, and successful at everything they put their hand to? I usually complain about this because it seems to put the saints out of our reach, and absolve us from trying to become saints ourselves. But today I’m complaining because these are just the characteristics which a saint does not need – I almost said: these are unchristian characteristics. I suppose it is inevitable that most of the canonised saints were in some way successful, or we’d never have heard of them, and they would never have been canonised. Thank God, I say, for saints like the Cure d’Ars and Benoit-Joseph Labre. Especially the latter, that most glorious of failures. A failure, you could say, in the image of his divine Master.
And that, you see, is why our cult of success is all wrong. That is why I like to see a “failure” saint. Not because it makes me, in my mediocrity, feel better; but because the most outstanding thing about Jesus’ life, looked at humanly at this time on the first Good Friday, was his resounding failure. In the old days those of us who were reluctant about penance and asceticism were scolded and admonished to remember that we were “members of a thorn-crowned Head”. True, of course, though Jesus was no ascetic. His life was, as it happens, very hard, but never, I am sure, just for the sake of it. But we should remember that we are members of a Head who was condemned as a criminal and executed, betrayed by one of his disciples and denied by another, and deserted by all of them – except, needless to say, by the women; because woman, in her natural state, understands and values failure. The Cross we are to carry daily was the instrument of execution for the lowest class of criminal. It is not just that we’ll be accepted even if we fail. But that the more we are failures by the world’s standards, and those standards encompass everything except holiness, the more – yes, the more – we will be like our Lord.
God does not stand at the end of our road watching us struggle, tutting when we go off the road, smiling approvingly when we do not, and occasionally cheering us on. He is there on the road with us, at all times, especially in our failures (he who failed), even in our sins. If when the two of us reach the end of the road our sins have brought us to the point at which we choose to turn away from him, that is another matter. But he will never leave us: our life is a series of choices, or one enormous ongoing choice, whether to leave him. We need to realise who it is we are choosing to cleave to, whose road we are choosing to walk, and see things with his eyes; but conversely, we must realise that it will never be failure that will separate us from the Crucified One, whose only success was being God; for that is what he offers us by his own free gift, he who became man that we might become gods.
St Benoit-Joseph Labre, pray for us!
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Sermon for Palm Sunday
It isn’t usual to give a sermon on Palm Sunday, and you can see why. There are two possible responses to someone getting up to talk after the reading of the Passion: either “We have just heard the most tragic and mind-blowing narrative there is, and I am shattered: and YOU think you can add anything to it? Shut up and sit down.” Or” “We have already had to endure an endless reading, and are we to have to endure a sermon as well? Shut up and sit down.” I think that is fairly conclusive, don’t you? There can in my opinion be no other possible response. If you have entered into the reading of the Passion and it has entered into you, anything added can only be a best irritating and at worst crashingly insensitive and painful. if you have not, if even the Passion has not moved you, then a sermon certainly won’t. But I just want to reflect briefly on something peripheral to the Passion, or possibly peripheral to its reading.
It used to be the norm to stand for the reading of the Passion There was no special reason for that: we always stand for the reading of the Gospel. I was told by the good nuns who taught me that if you stand without moving for the whole of the Passion, you will get a soul out of Purgatory. Now, this is no more or less than superstition. In fact, God is so pleased with us whenever we do anything out of love that it is quite possible that he would indeed free a soul from Purgatory if we asked for it I that way; but not because there is any virtue in the act itself. You’d be much better off wriggling and shifting a bit and concentrating on what the reading has to say to you than standing stock-still meditating on the twinges in your lower back and wondering whether blinking counts. I do think that God looks a little sadly on some of our observances, customs and usages, which make life even more burdensome and annoying than it is anyway. Maybe that is more true nowadays of the religious life, since lay Christianity has shed a great deal of that sort of thing. Most of these customs and usages – and I’d say many of the observances and ways of doing things within the church – are neutral in themselves, or can even be positively bad if the correct motivation is not there. It is perfectly true that whatever one does out of Charity is pleasing to God. But the fact that the Jongleur de Dieu pleased God by standing on his head and turning cartwheels does not mean that we should now found a new Religious Order of Tumblers or introduce handsprings into the offertory procession. The action itself is neutral; only the lve that is put into it gives it worth. I think it is true to say that the very Passion of Christ would have had no value if – to imagine the impossible – it had not been done out of love.
I think it is a pity we do not stand for the Passion for a different reason: standing as a mark of respect is just about the only naturally meaningful symbol we have left in our service; partly because the service has changed but partly also because we have changed. We no longer kneel or even genuflect in normal life; even the curtsy to the Queen has, I believe, been abolished. We do not bow – which is, incidentally, the reason why the small bow at the name of Jesus has gone: the present generation can’t understand why the Name should provoke a nod – that’s all it is to them and so cannot possibly take hold. Holy water? Most of us no longer know what it is like to have a bath or wash because we are genuinely dirty and need cleansing. The sign of peace? It is a very mixed-up piece of symbolism. Originally it did signify making peace (see its Gospel origin) and the handshake will just about pass for that. But now it is (wrongly) understood as a sign of fellowship, and a handshake is the last way we would express that; it is reserved for the most distant and formal greetings. And so on. But we do still stand as a mark of respect: when someone comes into the room, or even when, at a theatre or concert hall, an artist surpasses himself. Yes, that’s partly enthusiasm, but the two are linked.
The Jews have it right when, at the Passover meal, they ask a series of questions about what distinguishes this night from all other nights. We need reminded. The fact that by standing we treat the Gospel differently from all other readings is of great significance” we could perhaps ask the reluctant, or our squirming children (who squirm, incidentally, at least as much when they are seated): “What distinguishes this reading from all other readings?” and let them think about it. Why is this reading more worthy of respect than any other? The answer of course is that the Gospel not only speaks of the life of Jesus Christ but it symbolises him. He is as truly present in the Gospel, though in a different way, as he is in the bread and wine we receive at Communion. Would we sit to receive Communion? I don’t stand to hear the Passion because it is a salutary asceticism, or even in order to magic a soul out of Purgatory. I stand out of respect for the Lord present in the Gospel, and if it so happens that it is a Gospel passage that takes ten minutes (or whatever it is) to read, so what?
I have been rambling. But you take my point. Of course the service is boring if we reduce it to a series of meaningless actions and words. And it is of no help whatever to think up new meanings if the real ones have been lost. They will not be true, will not feel true, and will not have the effect that only the truth can have. The truth is frightening because it is too big for us; and as so often, we shy away from the very thing we should face. We attend the eucharist, we hear the Passion read and we are scared. We retreat from its reality, from its true meaning, and find – naturally – the superficial level boring. We shield ourselves from the re-presentation of the sacrifice of Calvary, the presence of God and the act of our salvation through history – and there is nothing left. We have lost the soul of the thing. It is essential that we search for that soul ceaselessly, like the woman with the drachma, until it is found. And I think that this is a good time to do it, now when the historical events which are the core of the eucharist and are re-presented in it are about to be enacted before our eyes. Maybe after the events of Maundy Thursday – and if you can’t remember them, it would be no bad thing to supplement the liturgy by reading them for yourselves – the reading of the Passion of Good Friday, and the Vigil Mass on Easter Sunday, might feel a little different from those same things today. If so, thank God for it and take that to the eucharist with you from now on. Never mind the rite, the denomination, the translation, the version, the vagaries of the priest or minister; remember what you are doing, at what you are assisting, and hold fast to what is good – and true.
It used to be the norm to stand for the reading of the Passion There was no special reason for that: we always stand for the reading of the Gospel. I was told by the good nuns who taught me that if you stand without moving for the whole of the Passion, you will get a soul out of Purgatory. Now, this is no more or less than superstition. In fact, God is so pleased with us whenever we do anything out of love that it is quite possible that he would indeed free a soul from Purgatory if we asked for it I that way; but not because there is any virtue in the act itself. You’d be much better off wriggling and shifting a bit and concentrating on what the reading has to say to you than standing stock-still meditating on the twinges in your lower back and wondering whether blinking counts. I do think that God looks a little sadly on some of our observances, customs and usages, which make life even more burdensome and annoying than it is anyway. Maybe that is more true nowadays of the religious life, since lay Christianity has shed a great deal of that sort of thing. Most of these customs and usages – and I’d say many of the observances and ways of doing things within the church – are neutral in themselves, or can even be positively bad if the correct motivation is not there. It is perfectly true that whatever one does out of Charity is pleasing to God. But the fact that the Jongleur de Dieu pleased God by standing on his head and turning cartwheels does not mean that we should now found a new Religious Order of Tumblers or introduce handsprings into the offertory procession. The action itself is neutral; only the lve that is put into it gives it worth. I think it is true to say that the very Passion of Christ would have had no value if – to imagine the impossible – it had not been done out of love.
I think it is a pity we do not stand for the Passion for a different reason: standing as a mark of respect is just about the only naturally meaningful symbol we have left in our service; partly because the service has changed but partly also because we have changed. We no longer kneel or even genuflect in normal life; even the curtsy to the Queen has, I believe, been abolished. We do not bow – which is, incidentally, the reason why the small bow at the name of Jesus has gone: the present generation can’t understand why the Name should provoke a nod – that’s all it is to them and so cannot possibly take hold. Holy water? Most of us no longer know what it is like to have a bath or wash because we are genuinely dirty and need cleansing. The sign of peace? It is a very mixed-up piece of symbolism. Originally it did signify making peace (see its Gospel origin) and the handshake will just about pass for that. But now it is (wrongly) understood as a sign of fellowship, and a handshake is the last way we would express that; it is reserved for the most distant and formal greetings. And so on. But we do still stand as a mark of respect: when someone comes into the room, or even when, at a theatre or concert hall, an artist surpasses himself. Yes, that’s partly enthusiasm, but the two are linked.
The Jews have it right when, at the Passover meal, they ask a series of questions about what distinguishes this night from all other nights. We need reminded. The fact that by standing we treat the Gospel differently from all other readings is of great significance” we could perhaps ask the reluctant, or our squirming children (who squirm, incidentally, at least as much when they are seated): “What distinguishes this reading from all other readings?” and let them think about it. Why is this reading more worthy of respect than any other? The answer of course is that the Gospel not only speaks of the life of Jesus Christ but it symbolises him. He is as truly present in the Gospel, though in a different way, as he is in the bread and wine we receive at Communion. Would we sit to receive Communion? I don’t stand to hear the Passion because it is a salutary asceticism, or even in order to magic a soul out of Purgatory. I stand out of respect for the Lord present in the Gospel, and if it so happens that it is a Gospel passage that takes ten minutes (or whatever it is) to read, so what?
I have been rambling. But you take my point. Of course the service is boring if we reduce it to a series of meaningless actions and words. And it is of no help whatever to think up new meanings if the real ones have been lost. They will not be true, will not feel true, and will not have the effect that only the truth can have. The truth is frightening because it is too big for us; and as so often, we shy away from the very thing we should face. We attend the eucharist, we hear the Passion read and we are scared. We retreat from its reality, from its true meaning, and find – naturally – the superficial level boring. We shield ourselves from the re-presentation of the sacrifice of Calvary, the presence of God and the act of our salvation through history – and there is nothing left. We have lost the soul of the thing. It is essential that we search for that soul ceaselessly, like the woman with the drachma, until it is found. And I think that this is a good time to do it, now when the historical events which are the core of the eucharist and are re-presented in it are about to be enacted before our eyes. Maybe after the events of Maundy Thursday – and if you can’t remember them, it would be no bad thing to supplement the liturgy by reading them for yourselves – the reading of the Passion of Good Friday, and the Vigil Mass on Easter Sunday, might feel a little different from those same things today. If so, thank God for it and take that to the eucharist with you from now on. Never mind the rite, the denomination, the translation, the version, the vagaries of the priest or minister; remember what you are doing, at what you are assisting, and hold fast to what is good – and true.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Sermon for Passion Sunday
“When Christ came into the world, he said: "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, 'Here am I; I have come to do your will, O God”
I have been thinking a lot about sacrifice this Lent. Not sacrifice in the colloquial sense, the sense we use it in, but in the real sense. Today is the fifth Sunday of Lent, sometimes called Passion Sunday. The whole of Lent is intended to lead up to the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but it is today that what is going to happen is really brought home to us. The readings at the 9.45 service are designed to make the actual events live for us, most especially the gospel passage in which Jesus faces his own death: “Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name! Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” His task, which had been before him all his life but placed somewhere in a vague future, is suddenly weighing heavily upon him. He suddenly has to wrestle his human will into conformity with his divine will, or, if you like, come to terms with what was before him and what was within him. That is what the devil – “the prince of this world” is doing in the scene. Had Jesus felt no reluctance about the job and the way in which it was to be carried out, the devil would have had no handhold, no point of attack; and he clearly had. Of course; because Jesus may have been true God, but he was also true man; one would have to doubt his humanity had he never run up against the devil. We are now in the deepest part of Lent, and the time for speaking, for preaching, for healing, is at an end. All that is left is God’s glorification through the sacrifice of the Son, and he knows it.
And that’s where the readings we have heard at this service fit in. They are the theological commentary on the event narrated in the 9.45 gospel. If, as the poet Hopkins says, each mortal thing expresses its self in what it does (Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:…myself it speaks and spells, Crying What I do is me: for that I came) that is even more true in the case of Jesus, the Son of God who became incarnate to do what he is: to be God to us, God with us. And to be the sacrifice that sums up, completes and ends all the sacrifices offered until then.
The sacrifice we heard about in the first reading was not the first sacrifice; but it was one of immense significance, as it sealed the first covenant, the Old Covenant, which is summed up, completed and ended by the New Covenant in the blood of Jesus.
As to our second reading, the letter to the Hebrews is a poetic explanation of how the life, and specifically the death and resurrection of Jesus both fulfils and ends that Old Covenant and everything that it comprised. You need to know your Old Testament very well indeed to understand all the points it makes, but once you do, it changes from a beautiful but rather obscure piece of poetic writing to an extremely clear and rigorously thought out treatise. What it really is is a sermon, though I’m not sure how people nowadays would take to a densely argued sermon taking a good hour to deliver. It may, or may not, have been actually sent as a letter. It has been attributed to St Paul, but honestly the Greek is simply too good for it to have been written by someone who thought in Aramaic, as he did. Various authors have been suggested, from Apollos to Priscilla (writing as a man so that people would not dismiss the piece as worthless). I don’t think it really matters who wrote it. It has been in the Canon of the Scriptures since the earliest days, and that is enough for me.
If you want to know how the Jews of the first century struggled to reconcile what they had learned at their mother’s knee, from their teachers and in their synagogues with what they were now hearing from Jesus and his disciples, the letter to the Hebrews is the place to go. Over and over again the author gives a well-known event or character from the Old Testament and then its fulfilment in Jesus. At the end of the book a receptive Jew could be in no doubt that the Lord really had visited his people.
But for those of us who have never been Jews, who are not really that bothered whether Jesus perfectly fulfilled the prophecies and types of the Old Testament (because for us it is the New Testament that matters and the Old Testament that we read for context and background) …is the epistle to the Hebrews just a historical religious curiosity, with not a lot of relevance to our lives? Well, you might say so if you are the sort of Christian who thinks that all we need to do is be reasonably nice people and go to church occasionally. God is unbelievably merciful, so that may even be true, but how much such people miss!
In fact, it is relevant in two very different ways: in what it tells us about Christ and how our salvation was achieved; and what it tells us about how to deal with suffering. Both are particularly appropriate in Lent and most particularly today as we move into Passiontide.
The death of Abel at the hands of Cain is extremely important. We are told the myth of the fall of Adam and Eve – the first sin being depicted as a refusal of love and a move towards pride and disobedience – but it is with the first murder, of Abel by his brother Cain, that we see its effects. Effects that are reversed, objectively for all of us, and subjectively for each of us as we accept Christ’s grace, by the death of another innocent at the hands of his brothers. God heard Abel’s blood crying out from the ground where it had been spilt, but the blood of Christ, true God and a willing sacrifice, outshouts it, so to speak. That sacrifice reversed everything, turned everything upside down. God’s mountain is no longer the physical Mount Sinai, but the spiritual Mount Zion; God’s presence is no longer seen in darkness, thunder, terror and death but in the brilliance of heaven – or rather, of eternal life, a life in which we already live if we so choose. Because Jesus Christ willingly walked through the darkness, the thunder, the terror and the death, it no longer has any power over those who follow him. Our life makes sense because God lived it. Our sufferings make sense because God suffered. And our death made sense because - God died.
So let us enter into Passiontide with gratitude and mindfulness, and show our willingness – no, our longing – to be with him and follow him wherever he goes.
O God of endless mercy, by our annual celebration of these mysteries you rekindle the faith of the people consecrated to you; increase the grace which you have given us, so that we may fully understand what baptism has cleansed us, what Spirit has given us new life, and by whose Blood we have been redeemed. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
I have been thinking a lot about sacrifice this Lent. Not sacrifice in the colloquial sense, the sense we use it in, but in the real sense. Today is the fifth Sunday of Lent, sometimes called Passion Sunday. The whole of Lent is intended to lead up to the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but it is today that what is going to happen is really brought home to us. The readings at the 9.45 service are designed to make the actual events live for us, most especially the gospel passage in which Jesus faces his own death: “Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name! Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” His task, which had been before him all his life but placed somewhere in a vague future, is suddenly weighing heavily upon him. He suddenly has to wrestle his human will into conformity with his divine will, or, if you like, come to terms with what was before him and what was within him. That is what the devil – “the prince of this world” is doing in the scene. Had Jesus felt no reluctance about the job and the way in which it was to be carried out, the devil would have had no handhold, no point of attack; and he clearly had. Of course; because Jesus may have been true God, but he was also true man; one would have to doubt his humanity had he never run up against the devil. We are now in the deepest part of Lent, and the time for speaking, for preaching, for healing, is at an end. All that is left is God’s glorification through the sacrifice of the Son, and he knows it.
And that’s where the readings we have heard at this service fit in. They are the theological commentary on the event narrated in the 9.45 gospel. If, as the poet Hopkins says, each mortal thing expresses its self in what it does (Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:…myself it speaks and spells, Crying What I do is me: for that I came) that is even more true in the case of Jesus, the Son of God who became incarnate to do what he is: to be God to us, God with us. And to be the sacrifice that sums up, completes and ends all the sacrifices offered until then.
The sacrifice we heard about in the first reading was not the first sacrifice; but it was one of immense significance, as it sealed the first covenant, the Old Covenant, which is summed up, completed and ended by the New Covenant in the blood of Jesus.
As to our second reading, the letter to the Hebrews is a poetic explanation of how the life, and specifically the death and resurrection of Jesus both fulfils and ends that Old Covenant and everything that it comprised. You need to know your Old Testament very well indeed to understand all the points it makes, but once you do, it changes from a beautiful but rather obscure piece of poetic writing to an extremely clear and rigorously thought out treatise. What it really is is a sermon, though I’m not sure how people nowadays would take to a densely argued sermon taking a good hour to deliver. It may, or may not, have been actually sent as a letter. It has been attributed to St Paul, but honestly the Greek is simply too good for it to have been written by someone who thought in Aramaic, as he did. Various authors have been suggested, from Apollos to Priscilla (writing as a man so that people would not dismiss the piece as worthless). I don’t think it really matters who wrote it. It has been in the Canon of the Scriptures since the earliest days, and that is enough for me.
If you want to know how the Jews of the first century struggled to reconcile what they had learned at their mother’s knee, from their teachers and in their synagogues with what they were now hearing from Jesus and his disciples, the letter to the Hebrews is the place to go. Over and over again the author gives a well-known event or character from the Old Testament and then its fulfilment in Jesus. At the end of the book a receptive Jew could be in no doubt that the Lord really had visited his people.
But for those of us who have never been Jews, who are not really that bothered whether Jesus perfectly fulfilled the prophecies and types of the Old Testament (because for us it is the New Testament that matters and the Old Testament that we read for context and background) …is the epistle to the Hebrews just a historical religious curiosity, with not a lot of relevance to our lives? Well, you might say so if you are the sort of Christian who thinks that all we need to do is be reasonably nice people and go to church occasionally. God is unbelievably merciful, so that may even be true, but how much such people miss!
In fact, it is relevant in two very different ways: in what it tells us about Christ and how our salvation was achieved; and what it tells us about how to deal with suffering. Both are particularly appropriate in Lent and most particularly today as we move into Passiontide.
The death of Abel at the hands of Cain is extremely important. We are told the myth of the fall of Adam and Eve – the first sin being depicted as a refusal of love and a move towards pride and disobedience – but it is with the first murder, of Abel by his brother Cain, that we see its effects. Effects that are reversed, objectively for all of us, and subjectively for each of us as we accept Christ’s grace, by the death of another innocent at the hands of his brothers. God heard Abel’s blood crying out from the ground where it had been spilt, but the blood of Christ, true God and a willing sacrifice, outshouts it, so to speak. That sacrifice reversed everything, turned everything upside down. God’s mountain is no longer the physical Mount Sinai, but the spiritual Mount Zion; God’s presence is no longer seen in darkness, thunder, terror and death but in the brilliance of heaven – or rather, of eternal life, a life in which we already live if we so choose. Because Jesus Christ willingly walked through the darkness, the thunder, the terror and the death, it no longer has any power over those who follow him. Our life makes sense because God lived it. Our sufferings make sense because God suffered. And our death made sense because - God died.
So let us enter into Passiontide with gratitude and mindfulness, and show our willingness – no, our longing – to be with him and follow him wherever he goes.
O God of endless mercy, by our annual celebration of these mysteries you rekindle the faith of the people consecrated to you; increase the grace which you have given us, so that we may fully understand what baptism has cleansed us, what Spirit has given us new life, and by whose Blood we have been redeemed. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Laetare, Ierusalem
A while ago I heard this comment on the radio: “Well, that’s what Lent is about, isn’t it: to discover how strong we are.” I was so distracted by that phrase that I hardly heard the rest of the programme. Strangely, Lent, like Christmas, has entered secular culture (“what are you giving up for Lent?” people with no Christian connection ask, rather as they ask about New Year’s Resolutions), while Easter seems almost entirely confined to the shops; I can see the mounting panic in the shops already, as they advertise cut-price Easter eggs. They won’t sell, of course - they don’t sell - and after Easter chocaholics swoop on Scotmid and make a killing.
I am not sure why Lent has caught on. Perhaps it is a cover for, and a spur to, dieting - the most common thing for people to give up being chocolate, closely followed by alcohol.
But if there is one thing Lent is not about it is “discovering how strong we are”. It is also not about increasing our self-control by practice. Stoics and Buddhists may cultivate “apatheia”; it is not a Christian virtue. Christian indifference is something quite distinct. We do not reach the point at which we have risen above joy and sorrow pleasure and pain, to such an extent that we no longer feel them or even no longer care about them. or maybe some do, but they have no advantage, Christianly speaking, over the rest of us Christian indifference is this: first, we know that whatever God sends or permits it will ultimately turn out to our advantage; as Paul said, all things work together for good to those who love God. So if something unpleasant happens we dislike it, and would have preferred if the contrary pleasant thing had happened. God knows what he is doing and while I do not believe that he ever sends troubles principally “to try us”, he is not put off by their troublesome nature if he knows that they are the best thing for us. And secondly, as St Ignatius pointed out, we want to be as like Christ as possible, and he had a pretty rough time of it. So if we have a rough time we may not enjoy it (we are certainly not required to enjoy it, and most certainly, short of a special vocation not required to ask for it) but it is OK by us, because although we have the bad experience of having the rough time, we have the good experience of being like the Lord.
“How strong we are” is not of any real interest to the Christian, except insofar as learning that contributes to our self-knowledge. As Paul said, “our sufficiency is of God” - the sufficiency that matters, that is. If he asks a particular thing of us, whether it is martyrdom or keeping the Lenten fast, he will provide the required strength; but there is no reason to suppose that he will give me the strength to keep off olive oil for six weeks just because I on a whim think it might be a good thing to give up for Lent. “Strength” has nothing to do with God; look at the people who have the “strength” to put themselves through misery and suffering to win an Olympic medal or look like a catwalk model and apparently find it quite easy. They have “discovered how strong they are” - and where does it get them, Christianly speaking?
There is no harm in fasting or performing ascetic practices, but it must be for the right reason, or, Christianly speaking, it is worthless. The other bad reason for fasting is indeed religious, or quasi-religious, and pretty poor religion it is too. It is to punish ourselves, to make ourselves suffer. Because that is what God likes, isn’t it? I am afraid that is indeed the impression that many Christians have given throughout the ages, but it is not Christian; it is perhaps a basic human instinct and stems from our fallen natures. We know, in a very confused way, that we are sinners, and to us sin means punishment. And so we punish ourselves; but we generally pin it on the wrong thing - think how guilty a thirty-something feels when she eats a slice of chocolate cake! - and we misunderstand the purpose and nature of punishment. To God, sin does not call for punishment; sin calls for healing.
I think one of the main lessons of the Bible is just that: our sufficiency is of God. Pharaoh could persecute the children of Israel as much as he liked; Moses the chosen one not only survived, but was suckled by his own mother, infiltrated Pharaoh’s very palace, and finally robbed him of his entire contingent of Hebrew slaves. You could of course argue that while God’s overarching Plan was no doubt behind all this, the instruments he used were the midwives and the mothers. And I guess that is quite topical today, because, of course, it is Mothering Sunday.
Jesus told us that we must be like little children if we are to enter the kingdom of heaven. Those of us who have dealings with children, or can remember our own childhood, know that children are not innocent little darlings absolutely all of the time. What he meant to evoke was the trust that children have in their parents, their awareness (most of the time!) that they can’t go it alone. Our sufficiency is of God - we should know it, and live by it, as Moses must have known throughout his life that had it not been for his mother’s courage and right decision, he would not have survived.
Christians of the Reformed traditions are perhaps less likely than Roman Catholics or Orthodox to regard the Church as their mother, but it wouldn’t do us any harm to think, occasionally, of God as our mother. God is certainly our father; but God has no gender; God is also our mother. The concept presented no problems to Julian of Norwich, Indeed, she went further; not only God, but Jesus himself, is our mother. She says, for example: “What does Jesus, our true mother do? Why, he, All-love, bears us to joy and eternal life…The human mother will suckle her child with her own milk, but our beloved Mother Jesus feeds us with himself, and with the most tender courtesy does it by means of the Blessed Sacrament, the precious food of all true life.”
Is that so strange? When we make a list of the ways in which Jesus described himself, we remember the True Vine, the Way, the Truth and the Life, the Good Shepherd, but do we remember the mother hen? It is one of my favourites. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered together your children as a hen gathers her chicks uner her wings, & you would not”.
We are safe under the wings of Jesus. I am aware that there is controversy around exactly how much we have to contribute to our salvation, but I think we will all agree that, firstly, we could not have done it for ourselves, and, secondly, Jesus’ sacrifice was sufficient, once for all. Our sufficiency is of God.
That is what Lent is about. Not discovering how strong we are. Not punishing ourselves by suffering. But discovering, or reminding ourselves of, the true relationship between ourselves and God. Of course that will involve some sadness, because, like the publican, we are sinners, & our salvation required great suffering & the ultimate sacrifice from God. But Lent is, as the Orthodox have it, a time of “bright sadness”, because it leads, through Good Friday, to Easter. In Christianity, everything is ultimately joyful because however much our Lord suffered for our sins, the fact remains that he died to free us from them & that he rose again in glory & is seated at the right hand of the Father, where we shall join him when our own personal Lent is over.
What do we need “strength” for? We have the Lord.
I am not sure why Lent has caught on. Perhaps it is a cover for, and a spur to, dieting - the most common thing for people to give up being chocolate, closely followed by alcohol.
But if there is one thing Lent is not about it is “discovering how strong we are”. It is also not about increasing our self-control by practice. Stoics and Buddhists may cultivate “apatheia”; it is not a Christian virtue. Christian indifference is something quite distinct. We do not reach the point at which we have risen above joy and sorrow pleasure and pain, to such an extent that we no longer feel them or even no longer care about them. or maybe some do, but they have no advantage, Christianly speaking, over the rest of us Christian indifference is this: first, we know that whatever God sends or permits it will ultimately turn out to our advantage; as Paul said, all things work together for good to those who love God. So if something unpleasant happens we dislike it, and would have preferred if the contrary pleasant thing had happened. God knows what he is doing and while I do not believe that he ever sends troubles principally “to try us”, he is not put off by their troublesome nature if he knows that they are the best thing for us. And secondly, as St Ignatius pointed out, we want to be as like Christ as possible, and he had a pretty rough time of it. So if we have a rough time we may not enjoy it (we are certainly not required to enjoy it, and most certainly, short of a special vocation not required to ask for it) but it is OK by us, because although we have the bad experience of having the rough time, we have the good experience of being like the Lord.
“How strong we are” is not of any real interest to the Christian, except insofar as learning that contributes to our self-knowledge. As Paul said, “our sufficiency is of God” - the sufficiency that matters, that is. If he asks a particular thing of us, whether it is martyrdom or keeping the Lenten fast, he will provide the required strength; but there is no reason to suppose that he will give me the strength to keep off olive oil for six weeks just because I on a whim think it might be a good thing to give up for Lent. “Strength” has nothing to do with God; look at the people who have the “strength” to put themselves through misery and suffering to win an Olympic medal or look like a catwalk model and apparently find it quite easy. They have “discovered how strong they are” - and where does it get them, Christianly speaking?
There is no harm in fasting or performing ascetic practices, but it must be for the right reason, or, Christianly speaking, it is worthless. The other bad reason for fasting is indeed religious, or quasi-religious, and pretty poor religion it is too. It is to punish ourselves, to make ourselves suffer. Because that is what God likes, isn’t it? I am afraid that is indeed the impression that many Christians have given throughout the ages, but it is not Christian; it is perhaps a basic human instinct and stems from our fallen natures. We know, in a very confused way, that we are sinners, and to us sin means punishment. And so we punish ourselves; but we generally pin it on the wrong thing - think how guilty a thirty-something feels when she eats a slice of chocolate cake! - and we misunderstand the purpose and nature of punishment. To God, sin does not call for punishment; sin calls for healing.
I think one of the main lessons of the Bible is just that: our sufficiency is of God. Pharaoh could persecute the children of Israel as much as he liked; Moses the chosen one not only survived, but was suckled by his own mother, infiltrated Pharaoh’s very palace, and finally robbed him of his entire contingent of Hebrew slaves. You could of course argue that while God’s overarching Plan was no doubt behind all this, the instruments he used were the midwives and the mothers. And I guess that is quite topical today, because, of course, it is Mothering Sunday.
Jesus told us that we must be like little children if we are to enter the kingdom of heaven. Those of us who have dealings with children, or can remember our own childhood, know that children are not innocent little darlings absolutely all of the time. What he meant to evoke was the trust that children have in their parents, their awareness (most of the time!) that they can’t go it alone. Our sufficiency is of God - we should know it, and live by it, as Moses must have known throughout his life that had it not been for his mother’s courage and right decision, he would not have survived.
Christians of the Reformed traditions are perhaps less likely than Roman Catholics or Orthodox to regard the Church as their mother, but it wouldn’t do us any harm to think, occasionally, of God as our mother. God is certainly our father; but God has no gender; God is also our mother. The concept presented no problems to Julian of Norwich, Indeed, she went further; not only God, but Jesus himself, is our mother. She says, for example: “What does Jesus, our true mother do? Why, he, All-love, bears us to joy and eternal life…The human mother will suckle her child with her own milk, but our beloved Mother Jesus feeds us with himself, and with the most tender courtesy does it by means of the Blessed Sacrament, the precious food of all true life.”
Is that so strange? When we make a list of the ways in which Jesus described himself, we remember the True Vine, the Way, the Truth and the Life, the Good Shepherd, but do we remember the mother hen? It is one of my favourites. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered together your children as a hen gathers her chicks uner her wings, & you would not”.
We are safe under the wings of Jesus. I am aware that there is controversy around exactly how much we have to contribute to our salvation, but I think we will all agree that, firstly, we could not have done it for ourselves, and, secondly, Jesus’ sacrifice was sufficient, once for all. Our sufficiency is of God.
That is what Lent is about. Not discovering how strong we are. Not punishing ourselves by suffering. But discovering, or reminding ourselves of, the true relationship between ourselves and God. Of course that will involve some sadness, because, like the publican, we are sinners, & our salvation required great suffering & the ultimate sacrifice from God. But Lent is, as the Orthodox have it, a time of “bright sadness”, because it leads, through Good Friday, to Easter. In Christianity, everything is ultimately joyful because however much our Lord suffered for our sins, the fact remains that he died to free us from them & that he rose again in glory & is seated at the right hand of the Father, where we shall join him when our own personal Lent is over.
What do we need “strength” for? We have the Lord.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Better late than never
3rd Sunday of Lent 2009
The most terrifying moment of my childhood was on a holiday in Yugoslavia, when my father, finally driven to the end of his tether by a half-witted switchboard operator who kept inanely instructing him to “dial 9” on a telephone that possessed no dial, ripped the telephone out of the wall and smashed it upon the floor.
When I read today’s gospel and imagine myself in it, I am reminded of that moment of terror. Perhaps that is not surprising if I am seeing myself as an unconcerned bystander (I’ve never seen myself as one of the money-changers, but that is not so much because I’m convinced of my virtue as because I have never been engaged in business). But even when I do see myself as one of those who are being ripped off by the money-changers, desperate to buy the smallest of birds for a sacrifice and realising that the coins I am getting back amount to barely half of what I have brought with me – and therefore should feel grateful to this man who is revenging himself, and us, on these criminals who are using their position in the religious establishment to make life difficult for the faithful – I still find that my primary reaction is fear. I think there are two reasons for this. Firstly, any violence frightens me because violence means anger that has lost control, and you never know what might happen next; and secondly, this is just not going to help. Violence rarely does. he is only going to make things worse. The traders will not only become angry and vindictive themselves they will increase their prices to make up for their losses and their inconvenience. What is the point of this action? No doubt the man will feel better for having goy it out of his system, but even he won’t get any benefit – he’ll probably end up being lynched or thrown into prison.
this last was perfectly true, and Jesus knew it, which suggests that we ought to look deeper for his motivation. To begin with, in this case violence did not signify anger that had lost control. Strictly speaking, Jesus never lost control – indeed, could not lose control. St Thomas explains that although Christ’s soul was passible, yet he did not have passions as we do; he certainly had passions in the sense of “affections appetitus sensitivi” (so his soul was passible, subject to suffering) because that is part of being a human being. However, says Thomas, his passions differed from ours in three ways: as regards their object: he could not be led by passion towards illicit things; as regards their origin: his passions always arose according to the judgement of reason; and as regards their effect: in us our passions overcome our reason and lead us to do things we should not; in him that could not happen. In other words, his passions were real and he felt them (they arose in “the appetite of his senses”) but they never went further than that. St Jerome seems to be the one who coined the word “propassion” to distinguish Christ’s passions from ours. This long theological digression is not a digression at all; it attempts to explain my statement that Jesus’ passions could never lead him to lose control: anger, sadness and the rest were there, but always within the control of his reason. And there is an interesting fact to add to that: although we are frequently told in the gospels that Jesus was sad, or angry, or had some other emotion or passion, none of the four accounts of the cleansing of the Temple suggest any such thing.
So perhaps we should see the scene differently: not according to that famous painting in which a furious Christ is laying about him with a whip, incensed beyond measure with what is going on, but rather as a calm authoritative Christ, in control not only of himself, but of the whole scene. He is not whipping the traders, much less the animals. He is walking quietly through the Temple, pushing over the money-changers’ tables as he goes, pausing to open the birdcages, and driving the sheep and oxen ahead of him. That’s what the whip is for – it is the language they understand. All this fits far better with the reaction he received: bewildered, hostile certainly, but not violent. it is not as if the people were reluctant to abuse Jesus, try to arrest him, stone him or throw him over cliffs when he made them angry. Had he barged through the Temple in an unseemly rage, attaching respected members of the public and scattering terrified livestock all over Jerusalem, I can’t imagine that they would simply have politely asked Him: “What sign can you show us to justify what you have done?”
This is an important point; because upon Jesus’ behaviour in the Temple depends the meaning of the whole episode. Of course he did intend to show that what was going on in the Temple was an abomination; but there was a lot more to it than that. his action is yet another of those acted parables which I have mentioned before. He is pointing out the unsuitable behaviour of the traders in the Temple, yes, but almost in passing; it is the occasion, not the message. he is not telling us primarily about the Temple but about himself. Because the request from the Jews “What sign can you show us to justify what you have done?” was completely the wrong request; this WAS the sign. Jesus only once, according to the gospels, used, unqualified, the phrase “I AM”, the pointer to identity with God. “Before Abraham came to be, I AM”. But that does not mean he never otherwise made that point. The Hebrew mind does not say “My essence is the same as my being” or “I possess my being entirely and not by participation” or such Greek ideas. The Hebrew mind says: “I lay down my life that I may take it again. No man taketh it away from me; but I lay it down of myself, and I have power to lay it down; and I have power to take it up again” or, perhaps even more significantly, “Although I give testimony of myself, my testimony is true; for I know whence I can, and whither I go; but you know not whence I come or whither I go”. Which is precisely the sort of thing he is saying in this acted parable. The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath, and we see here that the Son of Ma is also Lord of the Temple; something greater than the Temple is here.
He did not give a new sign, but he explained the one he had already given, wen he said “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up”. He was speaking, we are told, of the temple of his body. Well, yes, he was. But he was also questioning whether there was any difference between the two temples, and challenging his hearers to follow his answer to its logical conclusion. His body and the Temple were one: both were the place where God was. As John Austin Baker has put it, “When God enters our space and time, a man is what he becomes”. A temple can be a privileged place to find God, but only a human being can truly be what he becomes. Jesus was the true Temple; the other one was only a shadow. He did explain his sign, but you could have understood it without the explanation as he walked through God’s house, rearranging it to his liking, as if it were his own dwelling – which is exactly what it was. “The Temple and I are one”? He did not need to say it.
And so we return to the point of the whole episode. Of course Jesus knew that he wasn’t going to “achieve” anything by disrupting the money-changing and selling on one day. he wasn’t a fool, to think that the shock would convert the traders or would give the punters the courage to stand p to them. And he certainly wasn’t overcome by rage. The point of the episode is to tell something about himself, and so aout God. The message was not so much about the traders as about the Temple, and about the od of the Temple. The message could e summed up as: “Look at me, and see what and who I am” but Jesus, who was meek and lowly of heart, had no interest in being recognised as God for the sake of it. He had come to earth not only to redeem us – we could have been saved without all that blood, sweat and tears, had God so chosen – but to show us, we who, as Thomas said, can grasp nothing in our mind unless it has first passed through our senses, what God is like. As the Jesuit van Breemen put it, “The epitome of the Good News is not that Jesus is God, but that God is as he appears in Jesus”. Quite so; and that is why it is important that we should grasp that he is God; and it should have been enough to convert the lot of them at a stroke. And, incidentally, if we could leave it at that and stop picking at it, it might well solve a great many of our interdenominational squabbles, which are no less of a scandal than the most dishonest of the money-changers in the Temple.
The most terrifying moment of my childhood was on a holiday in Yugoslavia, when my father, finally driven to the end of his tether by a half-witted switchboard operator who kept inanely instructing him to “dial 9” on a telephone that possessed no dial, ripped the telephone out of the wall and smashed it upon the floor.
When I read today’s gospel and imagine myself in it, I am reminded of that moment of terror. Perhaps that is not surprising if I am seeing myself as an unconcerned bystander (I’ve never seen myself as one of the money-changers, but that is not so much because I’m convinced of my virtue as because I have never been engaged in business). But even when I do see myself as one of those who are being ripped off by the money-changers, desperate to buy the smallest of birds for a sacrifice and realising that the coins I am getting back amount to barely half of what I have brought with me – and therefore should feel grateful to this man who is revenging himself, and us, on these criminals who are using their position in the religious establishment to make life difficult for the faithful – I still find that my primary reaction is fear. I think there are two reasons for this. Firstly, any violence frightens me because violence means anger that has lost control, and you never know what might happen next; and secondly, this is just not going to help. Violence rarely does. he is only going to make things worse. The traders will not only become angry and vindictive themselves they will increase their prices to make up for their losses and their inconvenience. What is the point of this action? No doubt the man will feel better for having goy it out of his system, but even he won’t get any benefit – he’ll probably end up being lynched or thrown into prison.
this last was perfectly true, and Jesus knew it, which suggests that we ought to look deeper for his motivation. To begin with, in this case violence did not signify anger that had lost control. Strictly speaking, Jesus never lost control – indeed, could not lose control. St Thomas explains that although Christ’s soul was passible, yet he did not have passions as we do; he certainly had passions in the sense of “affections appetitus sensitivi” (so his soul was passible, subject to suffering) because that is part of being a human being. However, says Thomas, his passions differed from ours in three ways: as regards their object: he could not be led by passion towards illicit things; as regards their origin: his passions always arose according to the judgement of reason; and as regards their effect: in us our passions overcome our reason and lead us to do things we should not; in him that could not happen. In other words, his passions were real and he felt them (they arose in “the appetite of his senses”) but they never went further than that. St Jerome seems to be the one who coined the word “propassion” to distinguish Christ’s passions from ours. This long theological digression is not a digression at all; it attempts to explain my statement that Jesus’ passions could never lead him to lose control: anger, sadness and the rest were there, but always within the control of his reason. And there is an interesting fact to add to that: although we are frequently told in the gospels that Jesus was sad, or angry, or had some other emotion or passion, none of the four accounts of the cleansing of the Temple suggest any such thing.
So perhaps we should see the scene differently: not according to that famous painting in which a furious Christ is laying about him with a whip, incensed beyond measure with what is going on, but rather as a calm authoritative Christ, in control not only of himself, but of the whole scene. He is not whipping the traders, much less the animals. He is walking quietly through the Temple, pushing over the money-changers’ tables as he goes, pausing to open the birdcages, and driving the sheep and oxen ahead of him. That’s what the whip is for – it is the language they understand. All this fits far better with the reaction he received: bewildered, hostile certainly, but not violent. it is not as if the people were reluctant to abuse Jesus, try to arrest him, stone him or throw him over cliffs when he made them angry. Had he barged through the Temple in an unseemly rage, attaching respected members of the public and scattering terrified livestock all over Jerusalem, I can’t imagine that they would simply have politely asked Him: “What sign can you show us to justify what you have done?”
This is an important point; because upon Jesus’ behaviour in the Temple depends the meaning of the whole episode. Of course he did intend to show that what was going on in the Temple was an abomination; but there was a lot more to it than that. his action is yet another of those acted parables which I have mentioned before. He is pointing out the unsuitable behaviour of the traders in the Temple, yes, but almost in passing; it is the occasion, not the message. he is not telling us primarily about the Temple but about himself. Because the request from the Jews “What sign can you show us to justify what you have done?” was completely the wrong request; this WAS the sign. Jesus only once, according to the gospels, used, unqualified, the phrase “I AM”, the pointer to identity with God. “Before Abraham came to be, I AM”. But that does not mean he never otherwise made that point. The Hebrew mind does not say “My essence is the same as my being” or “I possess my being entirely and not by participation” or such Greek ideas. The Hebrew mind says: “I lay down my life that I may take it again. No man taketh it away from me; but I lay it down of myself, and I have power to lay it down; and I have power to take it up again” or, perhaps even more significantly, “Although I give testimony of myself, my testimony is true; for I know whence I can, and whither I go; but you know not whence I come or whither I go”. Which is precisely the sort of thing he is saying in this acted parable. The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath, and we see here that the Son of Ma is also Lord of the Temple; something greater than the Temple is here.
He did not give a new sign, but he explained the one he had already given, wen he said “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up”. He was speaking, we are told, of the temple of his body. Well, yes, he was. But he was also questioning whether there was any difference between the two temples, and challenging his hearers to follow his answer to its logical conclusion. His body and the Temple were one: both were the place where God was. As John Austin Baker has put it, “When God enters our space and time, a man is what he becomes”. A temple can be a privileged place to find God, but only a human being can truly be what he becomes. Jesus was the true Temple; the other one was only a shadow. He did explain his sign, but you could have understood it without the explanation as he walked through God’s house, rearranging it to his liking, as if it were his own dwelling – which is exactly what it was. “The Temple and I are one”? He did not need to say it.
And so we return to the point of the whole episode. Of course Jesus knew that he wasn’t going to “achieve” anything by disrupting the money-changing and selling on one day. he wasn’t a fool, to think that the shock would convert the traders or would give the punters the courage to stand p to them. And he certainly wasn’t overcome by rage. The point of the episode is to tell something about himself, and so aout God. The message was not so much about the traders as about the Temple, and about the od of the Temple. The message could e summed up as: “Look at me, and see what and who I am” but Jesus, who was meek and lowly of heart, had no interest in being recognised as God for the sake of it. He had come to earth not only to redeem us – we could have been saved without all that blood, sweat and tears, had God so chosen – but to show us, we who, as Thomas said, can grasp nothing in our mind unless it has first passed through our senses, what God is like. As the Jesuit van Breemen put it, “The epitome of the Good News is not that Jesus is God, but that God is as he appears in Jesus”. Quite so; and that is why it is important that we should grasp that he is God; and it should have been enough to convert the lot of them at a stroke. And, incidentally, if we could leave it at that and stop picking at it, it might well solve a great many of our interdenominational squabbles, which are no less of a scandal than the most dishonest of the money-changers in the Temple.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Frygt og Bæven
Sermon for the 2nd Sunday of Lent, Year B
Genesis 22:1-18
I have chosen the Roman Catholic readings for today, simply because this passage from Genesis has always been regarded as a problem, and I do not think it is. It has caused much heart-searching and hair-tearing among people of all shades of opinion. There seem to be two reasons for this: some feel that Abraham should not have done what he did, and some feel that God should not have done what he did. Some, of course, hold both opinions. Kierkegaard devoted an entire closely argued book to explaining that there can be “a teleological suspension of the ethical” (in more simplistic terms, that the end can sometimes justify the means). I agree with him that there can, though I am not sure either that that is the issue, or that Abraham regarded things in quite that way. In general I have no problem with this passage. Apart from anything else, we do not know enough about things to criticise the actions of an omniscent, omnipotent being; and we do not know anything about Abraham’s state of mind – or Isaac’s, for that matter. The Mystery Plays portray him as begging Abraham to spare him and/or accepting his fate with holy resignation; I wonder about both, and does it really matter? What we do know is that in fact, or for the purposes of the story, the communication between God and Abraham and vice versa was quite other than what we are used to; and, indeed, Abraham’s world-view and view of himself as part of it was quite different from ours.
“For the purposes of the story” is the operative phrase; for that is what this is: a story. By saying that I am not making any statement at all about whether it “really happened” or not; sometimes a story is pointless unless it is a story about what really happened. Don’t forget that God the Father and God the Son are, with the Spirit who proceeds from them, one God. Indeed, that as far as their actions towards creation are concerned, there is no distinction between them. God the Son taught by preference in parables, both spoken parables and acted parables, of which there are more than you might think: from his birth in the stable in Bethlehem to his taking a repentant criminal with him into Paradise, from the cleansing of the Temple to the cursing of the fig tree. And the Father and the Spirit do exactly the same thing. In words through the prophets God tells parables, and in actions – and sometimes in the prophets’ actions – God acts them. God was acting a parable when he sent the plagues upon Pharaoh and drowned the Egyptians in the Red Sea while Israel crossed dry-shod; and he was acting a parable when he instructed Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.
It is said that we are an individualistic and selfish lot, we at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; my instinct is to deny it, to say that human nature doesn’t change much. But I think, when I compare us with Abraham, that it might just be true after all. It is certainly true that we are desperately concerned about our rights and our dignity; Abraham would, I believe, not thank us for our concern for his rights as against God. Perhaps we are not to blame; I don’t know whether more rights have been violated in or time than in others, but it is certain that we hear more about it. had there been a Hitler, somewhere away in the barbaric North, Abraham would never have heard about him. The only violation of human rights that he was aware of were those close to him: the capture of Lot, for example. And these were fairly straightforward affairs, which he could generally do something about. Abraham was a confident man, sure enough of himself to be humble and obedient; he was a good man, honest and loving enough to be trusting. We are like frightened animals, seeing predators, tamers and domesticators behind every bush, fearing always that our very nature as the animals we are is at any moment to be negated. How could Abraham think that? Only God who had made that nature could touch it. We are, I suppose, less at the mercy of the natural world than Abraham; but our aeroplanes and air-conditioning and our super-hygienic environment have made us more, not less, aware of our vulnerability, and more at a loss when we do lose control. Isn’t that why we respond as we do to terminal illness and death? To Abraham these things were part of life: floods, hurricanes, droughts; these things happened, but could not fundamentally alter the nature of things. We have lost our sense of the nature of things and live on perpetually shifting sands in the midst of a hostile sea; we are unable to receive eents as they come, and peacefully wait to see what will come of them, in this world and the next.
Not only did Abraham have a more correct view of the universe than we do – we have no view of it at all except as a subject for investigation and as something to protect ourselves against – for the purposes of the story we are to understand that he did not misinterpret the Lord’s messages. he had, as we would say, a hotline to the Holy Spirit. Few of us could be sure we heard a clear message from God, especially if it were something outrageous like an instruction to sacrifice our only son. There is therefore a whole ethical question for us which does not arise for the Abraham of the story. When Job said “God has given and God has taken away”, he meant it in a literal way that we cannot begin to conceive: and for Abraham it was clearer yet: as clear, indeed, as it was for Mary when she returned to God – no ram-substitute there! – the son whom she had received from him thirty-three years earlier. For Abraham as for Mary the son of the promise belonged to God. Everything he himself was or possessed was of God. God’s rights over himself and over Isaac were absolute; and God would never act in a way that contradicted himself, that violated his promise. Paul tells us that God’s promises are without repentance, and Abraham knew that. Isaac was his heir; through him he would be the father of many nations; how God chose to achieve that was up to him. Abraham’s only task was to obey, and obey one whom he knew from experience to be his protector and so by definition the protector of his descendants after him.
So for the purposes of the story, Abraham has no problem with the command – which is not to say that it didn’t hurt. I had no problem, more than a quarter of a century ago, with the command to enter religious life, but that didn’t mean I enjoyed causing my parents pain and my friends bewilderment. Abraham knew that if the episode ended as, humanly speaking, it ought to have done, he would have to cope with a distraught Sarah, quite apart fom his own feelings. But I think that his faith in God was such that he did not look ahead, did not make assumptions.
No problem for Abraham, then. And certainly no problem for God. It may be unfashionable to say this, but there can be no question, ever, of seriously judging God’s actions to be wrong or immoral. We can cry out “God, why?” and we can challenge Him after the manner of Job. But it is essential that we know throughout that there is an answer, and that our bewilderment is due to our limitations and not to God’s failure. Did God have the right to command Abraham to sacrifice his son? Without any doubt. And he would have had the right to let him do it, too. He would even have “had the right” to break his promise, but he does not do that, by his very nature. God is truth, not in the sense that “he really exists” or that he dictates truths to which we must assent, but in that he is totally true to himself, totally reliable, totally faithful.
I’ve spent quite a lot of time justifying God and Abraham. But in fact, what really justifies this episode is something quite different: it is, quite simply, the true meaning and significance of the episode. That is on two levels: the effect God intends it to have on Abraham and Isaac; and its status as “a Scripture” which is to be remembered and believed when shadows are chased away by reality. God knew perfectly well that Abraham would obey him without fail. But, I am sure Abraham didn’t. We all doubt our fidelity, and that doubt detracts from the vigour we bring to our Christian lives. Not just “will I let God down?” but “God, who knows me, can’t possibly trust me”. After this, Abraham had no such handicap. It was he, not God, who was reassired, he who now knew that nothing could come between God and his love and obedience. If he had not known that, he would not have shown himself worthy to be the father of many nations, the beginning of God’s own people. His will and God’s were one, and that was something he had to know. I think Isaac had to know it too: to know that God had to come first, and that he could be trusted in all circumstances, terrible though they might seem. Abraham and Isaac would not have come out of this as we might, feeling like the playthings of God, but rather they would have felt honoured to be confirmed as the pillars of God’s plan.
God is not Zeus; Abraham is not Agamemnon, nor Isaac Iphigenia. No human being could have such value or be so close to God’s heart as to renew all things. But there was to be a father whose broken heart was not spared, and there was to be an Iphigenia, a child who was not substituted; and it was when Abraham (and Isaac) saw his day that they understood, and rejoiced.
Genesis 22:1-18
I have chosen the Roman Catholic readings for today, simply because this passage from Genesis has always been regarded as a problem, and I do not think it is. It has caused much heart-searching and hair-tearing among people of all shades of opinion. There seem to be two reasons for this: some feel that Abraham should not have done what he did, and some feel that God should not have done what he did. Some, of course, hold both opinions. Kierkegaard devoted an entire closely argued book to explaining that there can be “a teleological suspension of the ethical” (in more simplistic terms, that the end can sometimes justify the means). I agree with him that there can, though I am not sure either that that is the issue, or that Abraham regarded things in quite that way. In general I have no problem with this passage. Apart from anything else, we do not know enough about things to criticise the actions of an omniscent, omnipotent being; and we do not know anything about Abraham’s state of mind – or Isaac’s, for that matter. The Mystery Plays portray him as begging Abraham to spare him and/or accepting his fate with holy resignation; I wonder about both, and does it really matter? What we do know is that in fact, or for the purposes of the story, the communication between God and Abraham and vice versa was quite other than what we are used to; and, indeed, Abraham’s world-view and view of himself as part of it was quite different from ours.
“For the purposes of the story” is the operative phrase; for that is what this is: a story. By saying that I am not making any statement at all about whether it “really happened” or not; sometimes a story is pointless unless it is a story about what really happened. Don’t forget that God the Father and God the Son are, with the Spirit who proceeds from them, one God. Indeed, that as far as their actions towards creation are concerned, there is no distinction between them. God the Son taught by preference in parables, both spoken parables and acted parables, of which there are more than you might think: from his birth in the stable in Bethlehem to his taking a repentant criminal with him into Paradise, from the cleansing of the Temple to the cursing of the fig tree. And the Father and the Spirit do exactly the same thing. In words through the prophets God tells parables, and in actions – and sometimes in the prophets’ actions – God acts them. God was acting a parable when he sent the plagues upon Pharaoh and drowned the Egyptians in the Red Sea while Israel crossed dry-shod; and he was acting a parable when he instructed Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.
It is said that we are an individualistic and selfish lot, we at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; my instinct is to deny it, to say that human nature doesn’t change much. But I think, when I compare us with Abraham, that it might just be true after all. It is certainly true that we are desperately concerned about our rights and our dignity; Abraham would, I believe, not thank us for our concern for his rights as against God. Perhaps we are not to blame; I don’t know whether more rights have been violated in or time than in others, but it is certain that we hear more about it. had there been a Hitler, somewhere away in the barbaric North, Abraham would never have heard about him. The only violation of human rights that he was aware of were those close to him: the capture of Lot, for example. And these were fairly straightforward affairs, which he could generally do something about. Abraham was a confident man, sure enough of himself to be humble and obedient; he was a good man, honest and loving enough to be trusting. We are like frightened animals, seeing predators, tamers and domesticators behind every bush, fearing always that our very nature as the animals we are is at any moment to be negated. How could Abraham think that? Only God who had made that nature could touch it. We are, I suppose, less at the mercy of the natural world than Abraham; but our aeroplanes and air-conditioning and our super-hygienic environment have made us more, not less, aware of our vulnerability, and more at a loss when we do lose control. Isn’t that why we respond as we do to terminal illness and death? To Abraham these things were part of life: floods, hurricanes, droughts; these things happened, but could not fundamentally alter the nature of things. We have lost our sense of the nature of things and live on perpetually shifting sands in the midst of a hostile sea; we are unable to receive eents as they come, and peacefully wait to see what will come of them, in this world and the next.
Not only did Abraham have a more correct view of the universe than we do – we have no view of it at all except as a subject for investigation and as something to protect ourselves against – for the purposes of the story we are to understand that he did not misinterpret the Lord’s messages. he had, as we would say, a hotline to the Holy Spirit. Few of us could be sure we heard a clear message from God, especially if it were something outrageous like an instruction to sacrifice our only son. There is therefore a whole ethical question for us which does not arise for the Abraham of the story. When Job said “God has given and God has taken away”, he meant it in a literal way that we cannot begin to conceive: and for Abraham it was clearer yet: as clear, indeed, as it was for Mary when she returned to God – no ram-substitute there! – the son whom she had received from him thirty-three years earlier. For Abraham as for Mary the son of the promise belonged to God. Everything he himself was or possessed was of God. God’s rights over himself and over Isaac were absolute; and God would never act in a way that contradicted himself, that violated his promise. Paul tells us that God’s promises are without repentance, and Abraham knew that. Isaac was his heir; through him he would be the father of many nations; how God chose to achieve that was up to him. Abraham’s only task was to obey, and obey one whom he knew from experience to be his protector and so by definition the protector of his descendants after him.
So for the purposes of the story, Abraham has no problem with the command – which is not to say that it didn’t hurt. I had no problem, more than a quarter of a century ago, with the command to enter religious life, but that didn’t mean I enjoyed causing my parents pain and my friends bewilderment. Abraham knew that if the episode ended as, humanly speaking, it ought to have done, he would have to cope with a distraught Sarah, quite apart fom his own feelings. But I think that his faith in God was such that he did not look ahead, did not make assumptions.
No problem for Abraham, then. And certainly no problem for God. It may be unfashionable to say this, but there can be no question, ever, of seriously judging God’s actions to be wrong or immoral. We can cry out “God, why?” and we can challenge Him after the manner of Job. But it is essential that we know throughout that there is an answer, and that our bewilderment is due to our limitations and not to God’s failure. Did God have the right to command Abraham to sacrifice his son? Without any doubt. And he would have had the right to let him do it, too. He would even have “had the right” to break his promise, but he does not do that, by his very nature. God is truth, not in the sense that “he really exists” or that he dictates truths to which we must assent, but in that he is totally true to himself, totally reliable, totally faithful.
I’ve spent quite a lot of time justifying God and Abraham. But in fact, what really justifies this episode is something quite different: it is, quite simply, the true meaning and significance of the episode. That is on two levels: the effect God intends it to have on Abraham and Isaac; and its status as “a Scripture” which is to be remembered and believed when shadows are chased away by reality. God knew perfectly well that Abraham would obey him without fail. But, I am sure Abraham didn’t. We all doubt our fidelity, and that doubt detracts from the vigour we bring to our Christian lives. Not just “will I let God down?” but “God, who knows me, can’t possibly trust me”. After this, Abraham had no such handicap. It was he, not God, who was reassired, he who now knew that nothing could come between God and his love and obedience. If he had not known that, he would not have shown himself worthy to be the father of many nations, the beginning of God’s own people. His will and God’s were one, and that was something he had to know. I think Isaac had to know it too: to know that God had to come first, and that he could be trusted in all circumstances, terrible though they might seem. Abraham and Isaac would not have come out of this as we might, feeling like the playthings of God, but rather they would have felt honoured to be confirmed as the pillars of God’s plan.
God is not Zeus; Abraham is not Agamemnon, nor Isaac Iphigenia. No human being could have such value or be so close to God’s heart as to renew all things. But there was to be a father whose broken heart was not spared, and there was to be an Iphigenia, a child who was not substituted; and it was when Abraham (and Isaac) saw his day that they understood, and rejoiced.
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