Normal service will (I hope) be resumed next week...
(not unwell, just overworked)
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Sanctus sanctus sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth
7 June 2009: Ez 1:4-10, 22-28, Rev 4
The readings we have just heard strike me as quite surprising, and perhaps unhelpful ones for the Feast of the Trinity. When I hear about the four living creatures it is the four evangelists I think of: Matthew the man, Mark the lion, Luke the bull and John the eagle. Not the Trinity. What I think the church is trying to convey by choosing these passages is the awesomeness, awe-inspiringness of God. God, the Trinity, is altogether too much, too high for us, a mystery before which we must bow down and hide our faces.
OK. You can approach the Trinity like that: “Fear God” – you get that right down into the New Testament. And it’s true that the moment we lose that, the moment we forget that we are creatures and have a Creator – is the moment that we cease to be believers, cease to be followers of Jesus Christ. But – should we leave it at that?
Who, after all, is God to us? Who is God to you? Who is the Trinity to you? It’s God the Father, who created us: not some terrifying emperor figure but our father; God the Son, who dwelt among us as one of us; and God the Holy Spirit, who dwells within us. I’ve said many times that if you want to see what God is like, look at Jesus – well, he said so, didn’t he? “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father”. But I’d go further than that, especially for us who do not see Jesus in his day-to-day life. Do you believe that we are made in God’s image and likeness? Do you believe that YOU are? In which case, if you want to see what God is like, look at yourself.
Yes, the angels hid their faces and said “Holy holy holy”; but I venture to say that our relationship with God is different. The angels say holy holy holy, but Isaiah confesses his sinfulness and is cleansed, chosen and given a mission by God. As Paul said, “unto which of the angels said he at any time “Thou art my son, this day I have begotten thee”?
God the Son did not become an angel. He became incarnate as one of us. Like us. Like you. Like me. It is extraordinary and incredible, but after all not so extraordinary and incredible; who, according to Genesis, is “made in the image and likeness of God”? That already suggests something. the Trinity includes Jesus Christ who has been and eternally is one of us. We, the human race, are part of, intimately part of the Trinity.
The Son is not less than the Father because he has been incarnate. The Son is not intrinsically more visible than the Father. Don’t imagine that the OT God is the Father, the NT God the Son, and the God of the era of the Church is the Holy Spirit No. All three are the Trinity. God is the Trinity. YHWH is the Trinity.
All God’s actions external to himself are actions of the Trinity – there is no distinction. It is only in the relations within the Trinity that there is a distinction. Undoubtedly, when it comes to incarnate life on earth, to crucifixion, that blows your mind. but – of course God blows your mind. And that is the sort of awe, the sort of “too much for us” that we should feel about the Trinity: not that God is so far removed but that God is so intimate, so close to us, so much part of us and we of God. Jesus prayed “that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me.” So – hang on to your pews here – God is not just close to us because the Son was incarnate. God, the Trinity, is close to us because we are made in the image and likeness of the Trinity.
I think that was what St Augustine was getting at when he devoted a large part of his book on the Trinity to a discussion of our own internal being and to searching for the trinity within. He found it in many places, but settled for the mind’s self-memory, self-understanding and self-willing or self-loving, and the way in which these mental acts proceed from one another or are generated or conceived one by another. The Trinity, far from being something utterly remote from us, is in fact the blueprint of our being, just as the design of the Temple was supposed to be a copy of a heavenly original. The Feast of the Trinity is our feast. If you feel inclined to argue that we cannot understand the Trinity, that it is a great mystery, indeed it is. But – are we much less of a mystery? I understand myself better than I did twenty or thirty years ago, but there are still deep recesses of mystery within myself, and I think there always will be; and I am just a finite created being. The infinite uncreated God whose finite created image I am will be infinitely, uncreatedly more mysterious than I am, but not in an entirely different way. I don’t think it is a coincidence that Augustine, utterly fascinated by his own being and psychology, made the Trinity the subject of his major work, a work he spent his life writing and rewriting until his friends, impatient with the endless revisions, pinched the manuscript and published a pirated edition.
All this is babbling. Of course we cannot understand the Trinity. But all the people over all the centuries who have tried, suggest to me two things. One: that it is worth trying; and two: that the Trinity is indeed closer to us than we are to ourselves. We try to grasp the Trinity with the same hunger with which we try to understand ourselves. And since we cannot look into the Trinity and we have been told that we are made in its image, all we can do to “feel after him and find him” as Paul says, is to look into ourselves.
Augustine is saying that if you are interested in looking for God and finding him, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you must look within yourself, through a glass darkly. You must in fact also be engaged in a quest for your true self. And conversely, your only hope of finding your true self is in finding, or at the very least in continually seeking, the true God, who is eternally Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
This trinity in us is not static; as the Blessed Trinity is anything but static, being constituted by relationship and the ceaseless ebb and flow of the love which is God, which generates God and which is the God who is generated. Augustine sees the action of the Trinity in our souls, turning our self-understanding, self-memory and self-loving towards God, when it becomes God-understanding, God-memory and God-love. Our mind or soul reflects the Trinity not just in its structure but in its proper sphere of activity, which is union with God.
So might I suggest, as a hymn to accompany our thinking about the Trinity, our praying to the Trinity, not “Holy Holy Holy” but this one:
Lord, your summons echoes true when you but call my name
Let me turn and follow you and never be the same.
In your company I’ll go where your love and footsteps show.
Thus I’ll move and live and grow in you and you in me.
The readings we have just heard strike me as quite surprising, and perhaps unhelpful ones for the Feast of the Trinity. When I hear about the four living creatures it is the four evangelists I think of: Matthew the man, Mark the lion, Luke the bull and John the eagle. Not the Trinity. What I think the church is trying to convey by choosing these passages is the awesomeness, awe-inspiringness of God. God, the Trinity, is altogether too much, too high for us, a mystery before which we must bow down and hide our faces.
OK. You can approach the Trinity like that: “Fear God” – you get that right down into the New Testament. And it’s true that the moment we lose that, the moment we forget that we are creatures and have a Creator – is the moment that we cease to be believers, cease to be followers of Jesus Christ. But – should we leave it at that?
Who, after all, is God to us? Who is God to you? Who is the Trinity to you? It’s God the Father, who created us: not some terrifying emperor figure but our father; God the Son, who dwelt among us as one of us; and God the Holy Spirit, who dwells within us. I’ve said many times that if you want to see what God is like, look at Jesus – well, he said so, didn’t he? “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father”. But I’d go further than that, especially for us who do not see Jesus in his day-to-day life. Do you believe that we are made in God’s image and likeness? Do you believe that YOU are? In which case, if you want to see what God is like, look at yourself.
Yes, the angels hid their faces and said “Holy holy holy”; but I venture to say that our relationship with God is different. The angels say holy holy holy, but Isaiah confesses his sinfulness and is cleansed, chosen and given a mission by God. As Paul said, “unto which of the angels said he at any time “Thou art my son, this day I have begotten thee”?
God the Son did not become an angel. He became incarnate as one of us. Like us. Like you. Like me. It is extraordinary and incredible, but after all not so extraordinary and incredible; who, according to Genesis, is “made in the image and likeness of God”? That already suggests something. the Trinity includes Jesus Christ who has been and eternally is one of us. We, the human race, are part of, intimately part of the Trinity.
The Son is not less than the Father because he has been incarnate. The Son is not intrinsically more visible than the Father. Don’t imagine that the OT God is the Father, the NT God the Son, and the God of the era of the Church is the Holy Spirit No. All three are the Trinity. God is the Trinity. YHWH is the Trinity.
All God’s actions external to himself are actions of the Trinity – there is no distinction. It is only in the relations within the Trinity that there is a distinction. Undoubtedly, when it comes to incarnate life on earth, to crucifixion, that blows your mind. but – of course God blows your mind. And that is the sort of awe, the sort of “too much for us” that we should feel about the Trinity: not that God is so far removed but that God is so intimate, so close to us, so much part of us and we of God. Jesus prayed “that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me.” So – hang on to your pews here – God is not just close to us because the Son was incarnate. God, the Trinity, is close to us because we are made in the image and likeness of the Trinity.
I think that was what St Augustine was getting at when he devoted a large part of his book on the Trinity to a discussion of our own internal being and to searching for the trinity within. He found it in many places, but settled for the mind’s self-memory, self-understanding and self-willing or self-loving, and the way in which these mental acts proceed from one another or are generated or conceived one by another. The Trinity, far from being something utterly remote from us, is in fact the blueprint of our being, just as the design of the Temple was supposed to be a copy of a heavenly original. The Feast of the Trinity is our feast. If you feel inclined to argue that we cannot understand the Trinity, that it is a great mystery, indeed it is. But – are we much less of a mystery? I understand myself better than I did twenty or thirty years ago, but there are still deep recesses of mystery within myself, and I think there always will be; and I am just a finite created being. The infinite uncreated God whose finite created image I am will be infinitely, uncreatedly more mysterious than I am, but not in an entirely different way. I don’t think it is a coincidence that Augustine, utterly fascinated by his own being and psychology, made the Trinity the subject of his major work, a work he spent his life writing and rewriting until his friends, impatient with the endless revisions, pinched the manuscript and published a pirated edition.
All this is babbling. Of course we cannot understand the Trinity. But all the people over all the centuries who have tried, suggest to me two things. One: that it is worth trying; and two: that the Trinity is indeed closer to us than we are to ourselves. We try to grasp the Trinity with the same hunger with which we try to understand ourselves. And since we cannot look into the Trinity and we have been told that we are made in its image, all we can do to “feel after him and find him” as Paul says, is to look into ourselves.
Augustine is saying that if you are interested in looking for God and finding him, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you must look within yourself, through a glass darkly. You must in fact also be engaged in a quest for your true self. And conversely, your only hope of finding your true self is in finding, or at the very least in continually seeking, the true God, who is eternally Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
This trinity in us is not static; as the Blessed Trinity is anything but static, being constituted by relationship and the ceaseless ebb and flow of the love which is God, which generates God and which is the God who is generated. Augustine sees the action of the Trinity in our souls, turning our self-understanding, self-memory and self-loving towards God, when it becomes God-understanding, God-memory and God-love. Our mind or soul reflects the Trinity not just in its structure but in its proper sphere of activity, which is union with God.
So might I suggest, as a hymn to accompany our thinking about the Trinity, our praying to the Trinity, not “Holy Holy Holy” but this one:
Lord, your summons echoes true when you but call my name
Let me turn and follow you and never be the same.
In your company I’ll go where your love and footsteps show.
Thus I’ll move and live and grow in you and you in me.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Et renovabis faciem terrae
Send forth thy Spirit and they shall be created; and thou shalt renew the face of the earth.
What is preaching for, anyway? My favourite preacher asked me that a few weeks ago, and I have been worrying at the question ever since, and the answer I have come up with – not very earth-shaking, I think you’ll agree, but appropriate for Pentecost - is that it is has to be about communication – real communication. Thomas Aquinas insisted that if we reach the heights of contemplation of God, it is our duty to come back down and transmit to others the fruits of our contemplation. We are not all contemplatives – I am not – but all the same, preaching must be along these lines.
When I was studying Ancient History at university – so long ago as to be almost ancient history itself – our supervisor’s main strategy to make us THINK was to cover the margins of our essays with the word “Evidence?” interspersed with “Was it?” “Did he?” and so on. They say a good teacher can make all the difference to your entire life, and Liz Rawson certainly did to mine.
Her insistence on evidence and her refusal just to accept bald statements (which were in any case probably pinched from a book she knew far better than we did – or indeed, had written herself) have had profound effects on me.
One of those effects was to make me rather picky in what I read and hear, whether it is an academic book, an article on fishing, or a sermon. Very often, when I listen to a sermon (and if there are any preachers here, may I reassure you by telling you that it sometimes happens to me with St Paul’s epistles too) I find myself silently arguing with the preacher. “Evidence! Evidence! Evidence!” “How do you know?” Or when they say “We so often think...” “Aren’t we all inclined to...” I silently shout “No, I don’t!” “Well, I’m not” and so on.
Don’t you? Ah, yes, I see you do. Or at least, you are now.
I think this is a good thing. I think a sermon should come out of serious engaging with the Word of God and with the Christian life as lived; and sermon-hearing should also be a serious engaging; with the Word just heard (it is not by chance that the sermon immediately follows the readings) and with the words of the preacher, in the context of one’s own experience. The sermon should not be a ten-minute slot of extreme boredom, of half-listening to stuff you have heard a thousand times before (Guilty as charged, m’lud).
You can’t get up in the middle of a sermon and challenge the preacher, despite Edinburgh’s honourable tradition of stool-throwing, and I have only known one preacher who invited comments at the end of his sermon (you can, maybe, guess who was the only person to get up and make a comment on that occasion!). But if you are carrying away with you a niggle, a disagreement, or even just a cry of “Evidence!” you can stop her as she tries to slink away un-noticed or you can get her e-mail and argue with her that way. If her sermon has come from something real in her, and your niggle has come from something real in you, then at least one of you is going to gain something.
We can’t all be “original thinkers” in the usually accepted sense of the word. But since we are all unique, we are all original liv-ers, and if we think at all, we think “originally”. Each life is different, each mind is different and each soul is different. Which can make communication incredibly exciting; and I believe that real communication is part of the purpose of life.
God appears to think so too. Looking at the Bible, one of the things that leaps out at me (and very definitely in the two readings we have heard this evening) is just how important it seems to be to God to communicate effectively with us, and to get us to engage with him. To the extent that the Second Person of the Trinity is called The Word. It has been said – and I wish I remembered by whom – that if the Son is the Word, the Holy Spirit is the Voice.
If we are to understand the Trinity in any way but the most academic and theoretical – and I am not sure that it is worth bothering to understand it at all in that way – then we have to see it as an expression of the truth that relationship, and communication, are essential to the very nature of God and of ourselves. You know the blessing – “may the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you”. In Latin the last part of this is “et communicatio Sancti Spiritus” “the communication of the Holy Spirit”. If you take that word communicatio apart, you will get “the making-one”. The very nature of the Holy Spirit would appear to be communication, or “making one”; within the Trinity, and between the Trinity and creation.
That seems to be God’s main purpose: by his very own unity to make us one. His own unity, his own love, is so – dare I say “solid”? - as to be a Person in its own right. That is who the Holy Spirit is. That is the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity whose visible descent we celebrate, and whose spiritual descent we pray for, today.
But in what sense do we pray for the Holy Spirit to “come down”? The Holy Spirit does not come again every Pentecost as if she had been absent. The Spirit of Jesus, is “with us always, even to the end of the age”; and indeed always has been, ever since she brooded over the formless void that she hatched into our universe. It is for us to tap into the ceaseless ebb and flow of the love within the Trinity; and tapping into that union, that comm-unicatio within God, is what we call prayer.
Prayer is, for many, a scary word. It’s hard enough to communicate properly with another person without hiding behind ready-made phrases and opinions, behind talk of the weather and the price of cheese, without censoring our thoughts and the less attractive or interesting parts of ourselves. And that’s when you can see the person you are communicating with – though, be it noted, you can’t see their thoughts. But God is worse. God does not answer in a way we are used to; he can’t be seen (unless you are Moses); he knows us better than we know ourselves, and he knows our needs before we tell him. How are we supposed to communicate with God?
No. Prayer is not scary and it is not difficult. What is difficult is praying in a way that does not suit us. Just as I find maths difficult, while you might find languages difficult. Maths may be a breeze for you. I pick up languages out of the air. Well, I spent nearly twenty years faithfully trying to “do” contemplative prayer. And it was only towards the end of those twenty years that I began to understand what “my” way of prayer is, and to discover that it has a respectable history, in both the Eastern and Western parts of the church. Some of you may have been faithfully trying to “meditate”, or to “recite prayers” or to “practise the presence of God” – or whatever. And failing. Because we have been “told” that this way, or that way, is the only way, or the best way, to pray. Nonsense. The best way to pray is the way that suits you; the way in which, as Walter Hilton put it in the fourteenth century, you “find most savour”. Prayer – like preaching, and like responding to preaching – has to come from something real within you. As soon as you stop listening to “the authorities” and instead do some research into the myriad ways in which people have prayed over the millennia and then...TRY IT...you will discover the language in which you and God communicate. It may be silent contemplation. It may be imaginative meditation. It may be walking in the Pentlands and responding to him in communion with the natural world. It may be a ceaseless conversation, as if he was walking next to you wherever you go. But find out for yourself, and don’t worry about doing or saying the right thing – Paul tells us quite plainly that God isn’t bothered about that: “"Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness: for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words" . As the slogan from that famous brand of sports clothing has it: JUST DO IT!
..........and so:
may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communication of the Holy Spirit be with us all.
What is preaching for, anyway? My favourite preacher asked me that a few weeks ago, and I have been worrying at the question ever since, and the answer I have come up with – not very earth-shaking, I think you’ll agree, but appropriate for Pentecost - is that it is has to be about communication – real communication. Thomas Aquinas insisted that if we reach the heights of contemplation of God, it is our duty to come back down and transmit to others the fruits of our contemplation. We are not all contemplatives – I am not – but all the same, preaching must be along these lines.
When I was studying Ancient History at university – so long ago as to be almost ancient history itself – our supervisor’s main strategy to make us THINK was to cover the margins of our essays with the word “Evidence?” interspersed with “Was it?” “Did he?” and so on. They say a good teacher can make all the difference to your entire life, and Liz Rawson certainly did to mine.
Her insistence on evidence and her refusal just to accept bald statements (which were in any case probably pinched from a book she knew far better than we did – or indeed, had written herself) have had profound effects on me.
One of those effects was to make me rather picky in what I read and hear, whether it is an academic book, an article on fishing, or a sermon. Very often, when I listen to a sermon (and if there are any preachers here, may I reassure you by telling you that it sometimes happens to me with St Paul’s epistles too) I find myself silently arguing with the preacher. “Evidence! Evidence! Evidence!” “How do you know?” Or when they say “We so often think...” “Aren’t we all inclined to...” I silently shout “No, I don’t!” “Well, I’m not” and so on.
Don’t you? Ah, yes, I see you do. Or at least, you are now.
I think this is a good thing. I think a sermon should come out of serious engaging with the Word of God and with the Christian life as lived; and sermon-hearing should also be a serious engaging; with the Word just heard (it is not by chance that the sermon immediately follows the readings) and with the words of the preacher, in the context of one’s own experience. The sermon should not be a ten-minute slot of extreme boredom, of half-listening to stuff you have heard a thousand times before (Guilty as charged, m’lud).
You can’t get up in the middle of a sermon and challenge the preacher, despite Edinburgh’s honourable tradition of stool-throwing, and I have only known one preacher who invited comments at the end of his sermon (you can, maybe, guess who was the only person to get up and make a comment on that occasion!). But if you are carrying away with you a niggle, a disagreement, or even just a cry of “Evidence!” you can stop her as she tries to slink away un-noticed or you can get her e-mail and argue with her that way. If her sermon has come from something real in her, and your niggle has come from something real in you, then at least one of you is going to gain something.
We can’t all be “original thinkers” in the usually accepted sense of the word. But since we are all unique, we are all original liv-ers, and if we think at all, we think “originally”. Each life is different, each mind is different and each soul is different. Which can make communication incredibly exciting; and I believe that real communication is part of the purpose of life.
God appears to think so too. Looking at the Bible, one of the things that leaps out at me (and very definitely in the two readings we have heard this evening) is just how important it seems to be to God to communicate effectively with us, and to get us to engage with him. To the extent that the Second Person of the Trinity is called The Word. It has been said – and I wish I remembered by whom – that if the Son is the Word, the Holy Spirit is the Voice.
If we are to understand the Trinity in any way but the most academic and theoretical – and I am not sure that it is worth bothering to understand it at all in that way – then we have to see it as an expression of the truth that relationship, and communication, are essential to the very nature of God and of ourselves. You know the blessing – “may the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you”. In Latin the last part of this is “et communicatio Sancti Spiritus” “the communication of the Holy Spirit”. If you take that word communicatio apart, you will get “the making-one”. The very nature of the Holy Spirit would appear to be communication, or “making one”; within the Trinity, and between the Trinity and creation.
That seems to be God’s main purpose: by his very own unity to make us one. His own unity, his own love, is so – dare I say “solid”? - as to be a Person in its own right. That is who the Holy Spirit is. That is the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity whose visible descent we celebrate, and whose spiritual descent we pray for, today.
But in what sense do we pray for the Holy Spirit to “come down”? The Holy Spirit does not come again every Pentecost as if she had been absent. The Spirit of Jesus, is “with us always, even to the end of the age”; and indeed always has been, ever since she brooded over the formless void that she hatched into our universe. It is for us to tap into the ceaseless ebb and flow of the love within the Trinity; and tapping into that union, that comm-unicatio within God, is what we call prayer.
Prayer is, for many, a scary word. It’s hard enough to communicate properly with another person without hiding behind ready-made phrases and opinions, behind talk of the weather and the price of cheese, without censoring our thoughts and the less attractive or interesting parts of ourselves. And that’s when you can see the person you are communicating with – though, be it noted, you can’t see their thoughts. But God is worse. God does not answer in a way we are used to; he can’t be seen (unless you are Moses); he knows us better than we know ourselves, and he knows our needs before we tell him. How are we supposed to communicate with God?
No. Prayer is not scary and it is not difficult. What is difficult is praying in a way that does not suit us. Just as I find maths difficult, while you might find languages difficult. Maths may be a breeze for you. I pick up languages out of the air. Well, I spent nearly twenty years faithfully trying to “do” contemplative prayer. And it was only towards the end of those twenty years that I began to understand what “my” way of prayer is, and to discover that it has a respectable history, in both the Eastern and Western parts of the church. Some of you may have been faithfully trying to “meditate”, or to “recite prayers” or to “practise the presence of God” – or whatever. And failing. Because we have been “told” that this way, or that way, is the only way, or the best way, to pray. Nonsense. The best way to pray is the way that suits you; the way in which, as Walter Hilton put it in the fourteenth century, you “find most savour”. Prayer – like preaching, and like responding to preaching – has to come from something real within you. As soon as you stop listening to “the authorities” and instead do some research into the myriad ways in which people have prayed over the millennia and then...TRY IT...you will discover the language in which you and God communicate. It may be silent contemplation. It may be imaginative meditation. It may be walking in the Pentlands and responding to him in communion with the natural world. It may be a ceaseless conversation, as if he was walking next to you wherever you go. But find out for yourself, and don’t worry about doing or saying the right thing – Paul tells us quite plainly that God isn’t bothered about that: “"Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness: for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words" . As the slogan from that famous brand of sports clothing has it: JUST DO IT!
..........and so:
may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communication of the Holy Spirit be with us all.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Beati mortui, qui in Domino moriuntur
Hear what comfortable words our Saviour Christ saith unto all that truly turn to him:
So God loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
John 17, and indeed John 15-17, tends to scare people. So many words, so many tangents, so much said. I suppose I could try to give a nice meaty exposition of it; but then we’d be here until Christmas, & you’d be much better to go home and get out a good commentary.
So I’m not going to do that. I was considering doing something like it, until a friend rang me to tell me that his cancer has spread and that the best they can offer him is palliative chemo.
And then this passage took on quite a different meaning for me.
I think we can all sometimes be mesmerised by the mass of words and the apparent difficulty of certain passages of the Bible. It is so easy to burrow into the words and forget about the meaning - and, perhaps even easier, to forget the context, to forget who is talking; and, in the case of John 17, who is talking to whom, and when.
It’s very simple really: this is a prayer, a prayer from the man who gave us the Lord’s Prayer; the man who also happened to be God and so knew how God wants to be prayed to.
St Augustine said of the Psalms: “So that we should know how to praise God, God first praised himself.” That’s even more true of the few examples that have come down to us of Jesus’ own way of praying: what we call “The Lord’s Prayer”; the various very short prayers scattered through the Gospels; and this one.
And this one teaches us two basic things: how to pray - and it isn’t necessarily what we would expect - and how to face death.
Well, yes: this is a relatively young man, in full health and lucidity, facing death, undoubtedly the most significant and well-prepared death in history, praying his last thought-out prayer to God; it is a prayer that sums up his life, mission and teaching, and his dearest wishes. The last testament of a person is a thing of great significance; if it is actually spoken as they face death its significance is hugely increased. Many of us, when we get to that stage, and if we are not too incapacitated, are so scared of death that we are not capable of articulating any such thing.
I am not generally too keen on Radio 4’s Thought For the Day, but I make an exception for Rabbi Lionel Blue. A while ago, having just come home from a stay in a hospice he was musing on the NHS, the lessons that his hospital stays had taught him, and finally - briefly - he referred to the debate about assisted dying. I paraphrase: “I hope I will be free to choose to end my life when the time comes,” he said, “but I am not sure that I will actually do it. I have found that God comes closest when I am at my lowest...and I wouldn’t want to miss out”. “And I wouldn’t want to miss out.” Three years later I am still in awe over that phrase. It shows the most astonishing courage, and the most astonishing faith - the courage and faith, properly speaking, of the martyr. A willingness to endure absolutely anything to find God, or, as another Rabbi put it, to be found in him: “I count all things to be but loss for the excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord; for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but as dung, that I may gain Christ and may be found in him.”
Dying is not a pleasant process, and facing death is terrifying. Most of us would like to avoid both, and most of us, if we were honest, would prefer a sudden death. However, in the old Litany of the Saints we read: “From a sudden and unprovided death, deliver us, Lord.” We are not to desire a sudden death: “in case we miss out”.
That’s quite a good answer to those who accuse Christians of seeking out suffering or making themselves miserable in the name of their religion. No - by no means. Jesus came that we might have life, and have it in abundance. But some of us find - I think many of us find - that God is closest to us when we are at our lowest; and while we rightly hate the lowness, still...if we have courage, and if we truly seek God, do we really want to risk “missing out”?
“Blessed are the dead, who die in the Lord.” (Rev 14:13:)
Kierkegaard believed you could build an entire spirituality around the word “as” (forgive us our sins AS we forgive, be ye perfect AS your heavenly Father is perfect). I think you could construct an entire spirituality around the word “in”.
And the place to find it is in these “difficult” chapters. We are in Christ, and he is in the Father, and God is in us, and we are made for glory.
People often stress, and rightly, that there is no glory without the cross. But I wonder whether Jesus wouldn’t prefer us to say that with the cross there is glory. As he makes this prayer he knows what he’s on his way to, but it’s the glory he sees, the glory which is his by nature and ours by gift.
I am not sure there is one “correct” Christian position on “assisted dying”. I don’t think my friend would want to make use of such a thing, even if it were available - because he knows he is in the Christ who descended to the depths and is with us in the depths, and he wouldn’t want to miss out. But we are not all so brave, and we shouldn’t condemn those who hang on to their faith by the skin of their teeth, or be ashamed if that is true of us.
But isn’t there something exhilarating about going all the way? About descending with Christ - no, in Christ - all the way to the depths, to the very door of eternity, in his way and in his own time, and finding him far, far closer than we had ever dreamed, far far closer than he had been even at our lowest during our life?
In the words of John Tavener’s Funeral Ikos:
With ecstasy are we inflamed if we but hear that there is light eternal yonder; that there is Paradise, wherein every soul of Righteous Ones rejoiceth. Let us all also enter into Christ, that we may all cry aloud thus unto God: Alleluia!
So God loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
John 17, and indeed John 15-17, tends to scare people. So many words, so many tangents, so much said. I suppose I could try to give a nice meaty exposition of it; but then we’d be here until Christmas, & you’d be much better to go home and get out a good commentary.
So I’m not going to do that. I was considering doing something like it, until a friend rang me to tell me that his cancer has spread and that the best they can offer him is palliative chemo.
And then this passage took on quite a different meaning for me.
I think we can all sometimes be mesmerised by the mass of words and the apparent difficulty of certain passages of the Bible. It is so easy to burrow into the words and forget about the meaning - and, perhaps even easier, to forget the context, to forget who is talking; and, in the case of John 17, who is talking to whom, and when.
It’s very simple really: this is a prayer, a prayer from the man who gave us the Lord’s Prayer; the man who also happened to be God and so knew how God wants to be prayed to.
St Augustine said of the Psalms: “So that we should know how to praise God, God first praised himself.” That’s even more true of the few examples that have come down to us of Jesus’ own way of praying: what we call “The Lord’s Prayer”; the various very short prayers scattered through the Gospels; and this one.
And this one teaches us two basic things: how to pray - and it isn’t necessarily what we would expect - and how to face death.
Well, yes: this is a relatively young man, in full health and lucidity, facing death, undoubtedly the most significant and well-prepared death in history, praying his last thought-out prayer to God; it is a prayer that sums up his life, mission and teaching, and his dearest wishes. The last testament of a person is a thing of great significance; if it is actually spoken as they face death its significance is hugely increased. Many of us, when we get to that stage, and if we are not too incapacitated, are so scared of death that we are not capable of articulating any such thing.
I am not generally too keen on Radio 4’s Thought For the Day, but I make an exception for Rabbi Lionel Blue. A while ago, having just come home from a stay in a hospice he was musing on the NHS, the lessons that his hospital stays had taught him, and finally - briefly - he referred to the debate about assisted dying. I paraphrase: “I hope I will be free to choose to end my life when the time comes,” he said, “but I am not sure that I will actually do it. I have found that God comes closest when I am at my lowest...and I wouldn’t want to miss out”. “And I wouldn’t want to miss out.” Three years later I am still in awe over that phrase. It shows the most astonishing courage, and the most astonishing faith - the courage and faith, properly speaking, of the martyr. A willingness to endure absolutely anything to find God, or, as another Rabbi put it, to be found in him: “I count all things to be but loss for the excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord; for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but as dung, that I may gain Christ and may be found in him.”
Dying is not a pleasant process, and facing death is terrifying. Most of us would like to avoid both, and most of us, if we were honest, would prefer a sudden death. However, in the old Litany of the Saints we read: “From a sudden and unprovided death, deliver us, Lord.” We are not to desire a sudden death: “in case we miss out”.
That’s quite a good answer to those who accuse Christians of seeking out suffering or making themselves miserable in the name of their religion. No - by no means. Jesus came that we might have life, and have it in abundance. But some of us find - I think many of us find - that God is closest to us when we are at our lowest; and while we rightly hate the lowness, still...if we have courage, and if we truly seek God, do we really want to risk “missing out”?
“Blessed are the dead, who die in the Lord.” (Rev 14:13:)
Kierkegaard believed you could build an entire spirituality around the word “as” (forgive us our sins AS we forgive, be ye perfect AS your heavenly Father is perfect). I think you could construct an entire spirituality around the word “in”.
And the place to find it is in these “difficult” chapters. We are in Christ, and he is in the Father, and God is in us, and we are made for glory.
People often stress, and rightly, that there is no glory without the cross. But I wonder whether Jesus wouldn’t prefer us to say that with the cross there is glory. As he makes this prayer he knows what he’s on his way to, but it’s the glory he sees, the glory which is his by nature and ours by gift.
I am not sure there is one “correct” Christian position on “assisted dying”. I don’t think my friend would want to make use of such a thing, even if it were available - because he knows he is in the Christ who descended to the depths and is with us in the depths, and he wouldn’t want to miss out. But we are not all so brave, and we shouldn’t condemn those who hang on to their faith by the skin of their teeth, or be ashamed if that is true of us.
But isn’t there something exhilarating about going all the way? About descending with Christ - no, in Christ - all the way to the depths, to the very door of eternity, in his way and in his own time, and finding him far, far closer than we had ever dreamed, far far closer than he had been even at our lowest during our life?
In the words of John Tavener’s Funeral Ikos:
With ecstasy are we inflamed if we but hear that there is light eternal yonder; that there is Paradise, wherein every soul of Righteous Ones rejoiceth. Let us all also enter into Christ, that we may all cry aloud thus unto God: Alleluia!
Friday, May 22, 2009
Nunc, Christe, scandens aethera, ad te cor nostrum subleva tuum Patrisque Spiritum emittens nobis caelitus.
21 May 2009
Ascension Day
Ego veritatem dico vobis: expedit vobis ut ego vadam: si enim non abiero, Paraclitus non veniet, alleluia
I am telling you the truth: it is better for you that I am going away; for if I do not go away, the Paraclete will not come, alleluia.
The word “alleluia” has a special atmosphere for us which it cannot have for Eastern Orthodox Christians; because we give it up for Lent. It keeps that Paschal feel about it even, say, in Advent, just as a food which we give up for Lent retains a festive feel even if it is not, as such, notably festive: I gave up olive oil for Lent once, and it took some months to regard it as a perfectly normal part of my diet. Just as we tend to commit excesses with that food in Paschaltide, so the church commits excesses with the alleluias, especially in the monastic liturgy. The word is tacked on to every text, sometimes in clumps, whether or not the text calls for the cry of “Praise the Lord!”. One of my favourites for sheer illogicality and unreasonable optimism is: “Mercenarius est, cuius non sunt oves propriae: vidit lupum venientem, et dimittit oves, et fugit, et lupus rapit et dispergit oves…Alleluia!” “The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it…alleluia???”
The Ascension is certainly a joyful feast, and the thought of the coming of the Paraclete certainly one to provoke alleluias. But I confess to having a battle with this every year when I read the text “While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem WITH GREAT JOY”. There are only two other occasions in the Gospel where such joy is expressed: “When the Magi saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy” and “The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord”. In both cases the joy is caused by the sight of Jesus, either immediate or imminent, while here, at the end of Luke’s gospel, it is Jesus’ disappearance which precedes – surely we cannot say causes – the joy.
Jesus has already assured us that the father is greater than he is; now he seems to be saying that the Holy Spirit is greater than he is, and that, therefore, we will be better off with the Spirit than with him. That isn’t what he’s saying; the Father, as underived, as origin of the Godhead, is “greater” than both Son and Sprit. it is true that if Jesus were speaking as man then the Spirit would indeed be greater than he, but I do not think that is what he is doing. The Holy Spirit is “better for us” largely because of our weakness and our fleshly nature, because we are all Thomases at heart and we cling to what we can see hear and touch; unless that is removed, we will never rise higher. In the beginning it was not so and perhaps in the greatest saints it is still not so, but for most of us the flesh is an impediment to the spirit. So what we need is the Spirit. But also because of our weakness and our fleshly nature we would prefer to keep Jesus. I can imagine that even after the resurrection somewhere in the disciples’ heart there was the unspoken cry – unspoken, but heard by Jesus nonetheless – “Lord, never mind this unknown Paraclete – just don’t you go away!”
That, I confess, is how I feel on this feast. The Collect says that it is Christ’s ascension that raises us to the heights, and that the hope of the Body is to be called to the glory of the Head, but for the moment I feel bereft. We know that Jesus tells the truth – Truth himself speaks truly, or there’s nothing true – and so we do have to accept that somehow this Paraclete is at least as good to have around as Jesus is himself, But I am not a pure spirit, and neither were the apostles, and it is undoubtedly easier when it is Jesus, the Incarnate Son, who is there.
This sense of bereavement, impending or completed, is heightened by the antiphons that are sung at this season. “Peace be with you, it is I, alleluia! Fear not, alleluia!” And, worse still at this point for those of us who are only to aware of it, “A spirit has not flesh and bones, as you see that I have: now believe, alleluia!” The Holy Spirit isn’t warm and solid (pace Hopkins) and she can’t smile, or overturn the tables of the money-changers in the temple, or take your hand, or say things in just that characteristic tone of voice, or with those well-known verbal habits and that facial expression – or die for us. Nor can she at once be God and speak to us in a human voice from human vocal chords authoritatively what she has seen with the father. And even she is not present with us on this feast, even for her we have to wait; and the disciples did not know, as we do, that the wait will be only for the space of a novena.
The joy of this feast is an exclusively spiritual one. more so than any other feast in the calendar. It is a feast of complete. and literally blind, trust in God, in the words of the Lord. What it looks and feel like to us is the final disappearance of the one we love It is, it’s true, a disappearance in triumph, a disappearance in joy, the joy of all the heavenly choirs –I think it’s St Gregory the Great who points out that it is at the Ascension and not at the Nativity that the angels are see robed in white, the colour of rejoicing, because at the Nativity the divine nature is humiliated, while at the Ascension the human nature is exalted. But a disappearance which takes all but altruistic and anticipated joy away from us and leaves the present moment, the only moment that really exists, feeling drab indeed.
So why must Jesus go before the Holy Spirit can come; why was the coming of Jesus, indeed, a prerequisite for that of the Spirit; and why should it be “better” for us that Jesus should go, to be “replaced” by the Spirit? I’d say that the second question gives a good part of the answer to the first. one cannot see – that is, receive, the Holy Spirit, unless one has seen Jesus – and so, as he explained, seen the Father also, with that same capacity. The Incarnation was necessary in order to draw us, via bodily sight, to spiritual sight, not as if we saw Jesus with bodily sight and the Spirit with spiritual sight, but that although we once knew and saw Jesus according to the flesh, we now know him so no longer. it was during his lifetime on earth, and of course more specially after the resurrection, that he taught his disciples to move from one form of sight to the other. By the time the Spirit came, their spiritual eyes were ready for her; and she is the consummation of the work of the incarnation and our confirmation in spiritual sight. The world cannot see, cannot receive, the Spirit, because it has not seen Jesus. As Jesus implied, it is only in, through the Spirit, that we can fully see Jesus: because there are so many things we could not bear (the Greek word is the same one as that used for carrying the Cross) before Pentecost, and because we cannot even hold in our minds and hearts all that we have received from the Lord. we need the Spirit to recall this to us, and so to keep Jesus with us. That is why it is to our advantage if Jesus goes and send the Spirit; not that the Spirit is greater than Jesus but that only in the Spirit do we truly possess Jesus.
There’s another reason, and a sadder one. As Dostoevsky, among others, pointed out, human nature (and therefore the church as human institution) being what it is, we would never really accept the Incarnate Son of God. We would continue to find him and offence and a scandal, and we would keep crucifying him, or using whatever method of semi-judicial murder was in vogue at the time. It is instructive that the Baha’I religion, which holds that, in some sense, God has been incarnate several times, teaches that he has een killed – murdered – in all his successive incarnations; he has never been accepted. I hold no brief for the Baha’is; but that is a sound perception of the nature of God and humankind. We can’t crucify the Holy Spirit. We can certainly ignore and blaspheme her – and we do – but we cannot affect her activity in the world, as was possible in the case of the Word Incarnate.
That means that, just as no-one can snatch us from the Father’s hand, no-one can take the Holy Spirit from us. Jesus Christ chose to be at the mercy of humans, and he still chooses to be so in the eucharist. They could take him away from his disciples, even if only for a time; and now they can deny us the eucharist if they wish and are powerful enough. But the Holy Spirit cannot be touched. So perhaps we can even see how the presence of the Holy Spirit I one that gives us the greatest safety and confidence in this unspiritual world. And we mustn’t forget that she is not any old spirit, She is the spirit of the Father and the Son; and, specifically, as St Paul calls her, the Spirit of Jesus. To meet her is to meet Jesus. I think that when the disciples first encountered the Spirit, on the day of Pentecost, they at once recognised her as the one with whom they had lived all those years. It has been said that the Old Testament times were the era of the Father, New Testament times the era of the Son, and Church times the era of the Spirit. That’s oversimplifying and over-categorising, and I’m not sure it’s true anyway. But one thing is true: these three Persons are one God, one and the same God; and I don’t think the three Persons have three personalities in the loose sense in which we use the word nowadays. More of this maybe on Trinity Sunday; but I think these Persons have one personality in that sense: that they are recognisably one God. At the risk of being burned at the stake I might say “Three Persons, but one person”. If you knew Jesus, you’d recognise his Spirit. if you had really known YHWH, you would have recognised Jesus – as many did. And I suspect that those who so much dislike the God of the Old Testament have never really known Jesus.
On the day of Pentecost, then, the disciples were not presented with an unknown Paraclete They were reunited with Jesus, though in a different way. And it is in our relationship with the Holy Spirit that we will know not only the Spirit but the Incarnate Word and the Father.
Ascension Day
Ego veritatem dico vobis: expedit vobis ut ego vadam: si enim non abiero, Paraclitus non veniet, alleluia
I am telling you the truth: it is better for you that I am going away; for if I do not go away, the Paraclete will not come, alleluia.
The word “alleluia” has a special atmosphere for us which it cannot have for Eastern Orthodox Christians; because we give it up for Lent. It keeps that Paschal feel about it even, say, in Advent, just as a food which we give up for Lent retains a festive feel even if it is not, as such, notably festive: I gave up olive oil for Lent once, and it took some months to regard it as a perfectly normal part of my diet. Just as we tend to commit excesses with that food in Paschaltide, so the church commits excesses with the alleluias, especially in the monastic liturgy. The word is tacked on to every text, sometimes in clumps, whether or not the text calls for the cry of “Praise the Lord!”. One of my favourites for sheer illogicality and unreasonable optimism is: “Mercenarius est, cuius non sunt oves propriae: vidit lupum venientem, et dimittit oves, et fugit, et lupus rapit et dispergit oves…Alleluia!” “The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it…alleluia???”
The Ascension is certainly a joyful feast, and the thought of the coming of the Paraclete certainly one to provoke alleluias. But I confess to having a battle with this every year when I read the text “While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem WITH GREAT JOY”. There are only two other occasions in the Gospel where such joy is expressed: “When the Magi saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy” and “The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord”. In both cases the joy is caused by the sight of Jesus, either immediate or imminent, while here, at the end of Luke’s gospel, it is Jesus’ disappearance which precedes – surely we cannot say causes – the joy.
Jesus has already assured us that the father is greater than he is; now he seems to be saying that the Holy Spirit is greater than he is, and that, therefore, we will be better off with the Spirit than with him. That isn’t what he’s saying; the Father, as underived, as origin of the Godhead, is “greater” than both Son and Sprit. it is true that if Jesus were speaking as man then the Spirit would indeed be greater than he, but I do not think that is what he is doing. The Holy Spirit is “better for us” largely because of our weakness and our fleshly nature, because we are all Thomases at heart and we cling to what we can see hear and touch; unless that is removed, we will never rise higher. In the beginning it was not so and perhaps in the greatest saints it is still not so, but for most of us the flesh is an impediment to the spirit. So what we need is the Spirit. But also because of our weakness and our fleshly nature we would prefer to keep Jesus. I can imagine that even after the resurrection somewhere in the disciples’ heart there was the unspoken cry – unspoken, but heard by Jesus nonetheless – “Lord, never mind this unknown Paraclete – just don’t you go away!”
That, I confess, is how I feel on this feast. The Collect says that it is Christ’s ascension that raises us to the heights, and that the hope of the Body is to be called to the glory of the Head, but for the moment I feel bereft. We know that Jesus tells the truth – Truth himself speaks truly, or there’s nothing true – and so we do have to accept that somehow this Paraclete is at least as good to have around as Jesus is himself, But I am not a pure spirit, and neither were the apostles, and it is undoubtedly easier when it is Jesus, the Incarnate Son, who is there.
This sense of bereavement, impending or completed, is heightened by the antiphons that are sung at this season. “Peace be with you, it is I, alleluia! Fear not, alleluia!” And, worse still at this point for those of us who are only to aware of it, “A spirit has not flesh and bones, as you see that I have: now believe, alleluia!” The Holy Spirit isn’t warm and solid (pace Hopkins) and she can’t smile, or overturn the tables of the money-changers in the temple, or take your hand, or say things in just that characteristic tone of voice, or with those well-known verbal habits and that facial expression – or die for us. Nor can she at once be God and speak to us in a human voice from human vocal chords authoritatively what she has seen with the father. And even she is not present with us on this feast, even for her we have to wait; and the disciples did not know, as we do, that the wait will be only for the space of a novena.
The joy of this feast is an exclusively spiritual one. more so than any other feast in the calendar. It is a feast of complete. and literally blind, trust in God, in the words of the Lord. What it looks and feel like to us is the final disappearance of the one we love It is, it’s true, a disappearance in triumph, a disappearance in joy, the joy of all the heavenly choirs –I think it’s St Gregory the Great who points out that it is at the Ascension and not at the Nativity that the angels are see robed in white, the colour of rejoicing, because at the Nativity the divine nature is humiliated, while at the Ascension the human nature is exalted. But a disappearance which takes all but altruistic and anticipated joy away from us and leaves the present moment, the only moment that really exists, feeling drab indeed.
So why must Jesus go before the Holy Spirit can come; why was the coming of Jesus, indeed, a prerequisite for that of the Spirit; and why should it be “better” for us that Jesus should go, to be “replaced” by the Spirit? I’d say that the second question gives a good part of the answer to the first. one cannot see – that is, receive, the Holy Spirit, unless one has seen Jesus – and so, as he explained, seen the Father also, with that same capacity. The Incarnation was necessary in order to draw us, via bodily sight, to spiritual sight, not as if we saw Jesus with bodily sight and the Spirit with spiritual sight, but that although we once knew and saw Jesus according to the flesh, we now know him so no longer. it was during his lifetime on earth, and of course more specially after the resurrection, that he taught his disciples to move from one form of sight to the other. By the time the Spirit came, their spiritual eyes were ready for her; and she is the consummation of the work of the incarnation and our confirmation in spiritual sight. The world cannot see, cannot receive, the Spirit, because it has not seen Jesus. As Jesus implied, it is only in, through the Spirit, that we can fully see Jesus: because there are so many things we could not bear (the Greek word is the same one as that used for carrying the Cross) before Pentecost, and because we cannot even hold in our minds and hearts all that we have received from the Lord. we need the Spirit to recall this to us, and so to keep Jesus with us. That is why it is to our advantage if Jesus goes and send the Spirit; not that the Spirit is greater than Jesus but that only in the Spirit do we truly possess Jesus.
There’s another reason, and a sadder one. As Dostoevsky, among others, pointed out, human nature (and therefore the church as human institution) being what it is, we would never really accept the Incarnate Son of God. We would continue to find him and offence and a scandal, and we would keep crucifying him, or using whatever method of semi-judicial murder was in vogue at the time. It is instructive that the Baha’I religion, which holds that, in some sense, God has been incarnate several times, teaches that he has een killed – murdered – in all his successive incarnations; he has never been accepted. I hold no brief for the Baha’is; but that is a sound perception of the nature of God and humankind. We can’t crucify the Holy Spirit. We can certainly ignore and blaspheme her – and we do – but we cannot affect her activity in the world, as was possible in the case of the Word Incarnate.
That means that, just as no-one can snatch us from the Father’s hand, no-one can take the Holy Spirit from us. Jesus Christ chose to be at the mercy of humans, and he still chooses to be so in the eucharist. They could take him away from his disciples, even if only for a time; and now they can deny us the eucharist if they wish and are powerful enough. But the Holy Spirit cannot be touched. So perhaps we can even see how the presence of the Holy Spirit I one that gives us the greatest safety and confidence in this unspiritual world. And we mustn’t forget that she is not any old spirit, She is the spirit of the Father and the Son; and, specifically, as St Paul calls her, the Spirit of Jesus. To meet her is to meet Jesus. I think that when the disciples first encountered the Spirit, on the day of Pentecost, they at once recognised her as the one with whom they had lived all those years. It has been said that the Old Testament times were the era of the Father, New Testament times the era of the Son, and Church times the era of the Spirit. That’s oversimplifying and over-categorising, and I’m not sure it’s true anyway. But one thing is true: these three Persons are one God, one and the same God; and I don’t think the three Persons have three personalities in the loose sense in which we use the word nowadays. More of this maybe on Trinity Sunday; but I think these Persons have one personality in that sense: that they are recognisably one God. At the risk of being burned at the stake I might say “Three Persons, but one person”. If you knew Jesus, you’d recognise his Spirit. if you had really known YHWH, you would have recognised Jesus – as many did. And I suspect that those who so much dislike the God of the Old Testament have never really known Jesus.
On the day of Pentecost, then, the disciples were not presented with an unknown Paraclete They were reunited with Jesus, though in a different way. And it is in our relationship with the Holy Spirit that we will know not only the Spirit but the Incarnate Word and the Father.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Christo omnino nihil præponamus, qui nos pariter ad vitam æternam perducat
"Just as there is a bitter and evil zeal, which separates us from God and leads to hell, just so there is a good zeal, which separates us from sin and leads to God and to eternal life. This is the zeal that we should use with the most fervent love: that is, that we should seek to outdo each other in showing respect, tolerate each other’s weaknesses, whether of body or behaviour, with the utmost patience, and give way to each other. No-one should do what seems to be to his own advantage, but should consider what is to the advantage of others. We should love each other with chaste and brotherly love; fear God; and prefer nothing whatsoever to Christ. And may he lead us all to eternal life. Amen."
That is the seventy-second chapter of the Rule of St Benedict: “Of the good zeal which the monks should have”. Zeal is a word we don’t use much nowadays. If we were to refer to someone as zealous, and, even more, as a zealot, we would mean that he is a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and probably dangerous. It’s interesting that Jesus included among his apostles a Zealot, one of those Jews who rebelled against Roman taxation, and finally, by their open rebellion, led to the destruction of Jerusalem. He didn’t mind zeal, but I think it’s a safe bet that, in line with the message to the church of Laodicea, he minded lukewarmness, and minded it a lot. If you described the apostles he chose, lukewarmness is not a characteristic you’d mention, and zeal is one that you probably would. Even though I must die for you, I will not deny you! Lord, shall we call down lightning from heaven to strike them? You shall never wash my feet! Show us the Father and we shall be satisfied! And when Jesus called James and John from their fishing, they dropped everything, left the boats and nets and fish and their father, and followed him.
I need hardly say that Jesus was zealous. “Zeal for your house has consumed me”. Let the dead bury their dead! Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! My food is to do the will of the Father. And, in another vein, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; but not my will, but yours be done”.
Sometimes I think that one of the most important things Jesus ever said – for me at any rate – was a throwaway line, spoken to Peter who had shown curiosity about what was to happen to John. Jesus replied: “If I wish him to remain until I come, what is that to you? As for you, follow me.” That has become a sort of mantra with me when I find that I am becoming too concerned about the things of this world, or if I find myself being envious of, or over-curious about, another person. What is that to you? As for you, follow me.
That is what we are here for. Seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness. Being a Christian, following Christ, is not something that we do in our spare time, it is not an optional extra tacked on to a life in which we try to be nice and honest people (though that’s a start). It is life. It is our whole definition. It is easier to remember that in a monastery, since all you need to do is glance at one of your fellow nuns or monks, and their clothing will tell you what they are and what you are. There is a saying in monastic circles: The habit may not make the monk, but it helps to keep him. It does; it helps to remind him and to keep him faithful. We lay people do not have such helps. We live in a world that reminds us of almost everything else at every turn. It is not a wicked world, but our part of it is largely indifferent to Christ, and we are lucky if it is not actually hostile to Christians. Or perhaps I’m wrong there; perhaps hostility is better than indifference. “I wish you were either hot or cold! But because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” At least hostility reminds us of what we are, we who bear the name of Christian.
Today’s reading from the Song of Songs contains one of the great biblical misquotations. When a beloved person dies, there is sure to be someone who says “The Bible says that love is stronger than death”. The Bible does not say that love is stronger than death. What the Bible says is that “love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave.” Very different. It means not that love endures beyond death or overcomes death, but that love is as strong, as unconquerable, as death. No connection is being made between love and death; the author simply couldn’t think of anything more powerful or uncompromising than death. And that word “jealousy” – in Hebrew it is from the same root as zeal. It’s the same word, really. The phrase does not mean that a jealous person will never forgive; it means that love’s zeal is boundless, its strength comparable only to the strongest thing there is – death.
That’s why these two readings are put next to each other: the exhortation not to be lukewarm but zealous, and the poetic explanation of where that zeal comes from. From love. We have been told that “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us”; but love elicits love, and love – not hard work, not weekly attendance at the eucharist, not preaching or teaching – is the only appropriate response. Imagine if the Bride in the Song of Songs had responded with anything but love; even if she had offered the Bridegroom all her possessions “it would be utterly scorned”. Just so with God. As so often, it is Paul who puts it in the clearest and most extreme form: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”
It is worth noting that we are given these readings on the Sunday before Ascension Day, when the disciples all had to move out of the realm of sight into the realm of faith, which is the one we all live in, and the one that Jesus called blessed: Blessed is the person who has not seen, and yet believes. Jesus is no longer visibly there to remind the disciples of their mission, of their purpose in life, of what it means to be a follower of Christ. And as we see, lukewarmness set in for them too. As I’ve said, there is nothing exceptionally wicked about today’s world. And there’s nothing exceptionally lukewarm about today’s Christians. But we have waited a long time for the coming of the Bridegroom. It is hard to keep our first fervour and our first love. But he will come, to the world at the end of time, and to each of us at our own death.
Christ does not stand at the door and knock, physically, as the bridegroom did in the Song of Songs. But, interestingly, that, and the word “zeal”, is the only phrase common to the two readings, and I think we are meant to notice that. Christ’s presence, and his love, is always there. And the only response he asks is – love; and the zeal which manifests it.
And so let us use this zeal with the most fervent love; let us love each other with chaste and brotherly love; fear God; and prefer nothing whatsoever to Christ. And may he lead us all to eternal life. Amen.
That is the seventy-second chapter of the Rule of St Benedict: “Of the good zeal which the monks should have”. Zeal is a word we don’t use much nowadays. If we were to refer to someone as zealous, and, even more, as a zealot, we would mean that he is a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and probably dangerous. It’s interesting that Jesus included among his apostles a Zealot, one of those Jews who rebelled against Roman taxation, and finally, by their open rebellion, led to the destruction of Jerusalem. He didn’t mind zeal, but I think it’s a safe bet that, in line with the message to the church of Laodicea, he minded lukewarmness, and minded it a lot. If you described the apostles he chose, lukewarmness is not a characteristic you’d mention, and zeal is one that you probably would. Even though I must die for you, I will not deny you! Lord, shall we call down lightning from heaven to strike them? You shall never wash my feet! Show us the Father and we shall be satisfied! And when Jesus called James and John from their fishing, they dropped everything, left the boats and nets and fish and their father, and followed him.
I need hardly say that Jesus was zealous. “Zeal for your house has consumed me”. Let the dead bury their dead! Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! My food is to do the will of the Father. And, in another vein, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; but not my will, but yours be done”.
Sometimes I think that one of the most important things Jesus ever said – for me at any rate – was a throwaway line, spoken to Peter who had shown curiosity about what was to happen to John. Jesus replied: “If I wish him to remain until I come, what is that to you? As for you, follow me.” That has become a sort of mantra with me when I find that I am becoming too concerned about the things of this world, or if I find myself being envious of, or over-curious about, another person. What is that to you? As for you, follow me.
That is what we are here for. Seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness. Being a Christian, following Christ, is not something that we do in our spare time, it is not an optional extra tacked on to a life in which we try to be nice and honest people (though that’s a start). It is life. It is our whole definition. It is easier to remember that in a monastery, since all you need to do is glance at one of your fellow nuns or monks, and their clothing will tell you what they are and what you are. There is a saying in monastic circles: The habit may not make the monk, but it helps to keep him. It does; it helps to remind him and to keep him faithful. We lay people do not have such helps. We live in a world that reminds us of almost everything else at every turn. It is not a wicked world, but our part of it is largely indifferent to Christ, and we are lucky if it is not actually hostile to Christians. Or perhaps I’m wrong there; perhaps hostility is better than indifference. “I wish you were either hot or cold! But because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” At least hostility reminds us of what we are, we who bear the name of Christian.
Today’s reading from the Song of Songs contains one of the great biblical misquotations. When a beloved person dies, there is sure to be someone who says “The Bible says that love is stronger than death”. The Bible does not say that love is stronger than death. What the Bible says is that “love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave.” Very different. It means not that love endures beyond death or overcomes death, but that love is as strong, as unconquerable, as death. No connection is being made between love and death; the author simply couldn’t think of anything more powerful or uncompromising than death. And that word “jealousy” – in Hebrew it is from the same root as zeal. It’s the same word, really. The phrase does not mean that a jealous person will never forgive; it means that love’s zeal is boundless, its strength comparable only to the strongest thing there is – death.
That’s why these two readings are put next to each other: the exhortation not to be lukewarm but zealous, and the poetic explanation of where that zeal comes from. From love. We have been told that “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us”; but love elicits love, and love – not hard work, not weekly attendance at the eucharist, not preaching or teaching – is the only appropriate response. Imagine if the Bride in the Song of Songs had responded with anything but love; even if she had offered the Bridegroom all her possessions “it would be utterly scorned”. Just so with God. As so often, it is Paul who puts it in the clearest and most extreme form: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”
It is worth noting that we are given these readings on the Sunday before Ascension Day, when the disciples all had to move out of the realm of sight into the realm of faith, which is the one we all live in, and the one that Jesus called blessed: Blessed is the person who has not seen, and yet believes. Jesus is no longer visibly there to remind the disciples of their mission, of their purpose in life, of what it means to be a follower of Christ. And as we see, lukewarmness set in for them too. As I’ve said, there is nothing exceptionally wicked about today’s world. And there’s nothing exceptionally lukewarm about today’s Christians. But we have waited a long time for the coming of the Bridegroom. It is hard to keep our first fervour and our first love. But he will come, to the world at the end of time, and to each of us at our own death.
Christ does not stand at the door and knock, physically, as the bridegroom did in the Song of Songs. But, interestingly, that, and the word “zeal”, is the only phrase common to the two readings, and I think we are meant to notice that. Christ’s presence, and his love, is always there. And the only response he asks is – love; and the zeal which manifests it.
And so let us use this zeal with the most fervent love; let us love each other with chaste and brotherly love; fear God; and prefer nothing whatsoever to Christ. And may he lead us all to eternal life. Amen.
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