VICTOR -- Daily Images of God—Lent 2022 Day 43 EASTER SUNDAY April 17

 

Daily Images of God—Lent 2022

Day 43 EASTER SUNDAY

April 17

VICTOR

 

The Easter Homily of St. John Chrysostom preached in Constantinople around the year 400 CE is known by many as the best Christian sermon ever preached. Here is my own translation from the Greek:

 

If any of you are devout and God-loving,

take joy in this kind and bright Feast of all Feasts.

If any are wise servants, come rejoicing into your Lord’s joy.

You who are worn out by fasting, receive your wages.

You who have worked from sunrise, come now to the party!

You who came at nine o’clock in the morning, rejoice!

You who waited until the noon, celebrate!

You who came at 3 p.m., do not be sad!

You who arrived barely in time for sunset, don’t worry about how late you are.

No one will be deprived of heavenly joy.

Our generous Lord welcomes those who come last

in the same way as those who come first.

He shows mercy to the first and rejoices in the last.

He comforts those who came at sunset

just as if they had worked hard from sunrise.

He gives to everyone, both those who worked

and those who merely wanted to work.

He welcomes with open arms our service and hugs our intentions.

He values not just our works,

but praises our mere desire to do well also.

All of you enter into the joy of the Lord:

First and last, receive the reward!

Rich and poor, one with another, dance for joy!

You who are hard on yourselves, and all you slackers, celebrate this day!

You who have fasted and you who have cheated in the fast, be glad together.

The table is groaning, overloaded with the finest food: eat your fill!

Each and every one of you enjoy the rich banquet of faith and God’s loving kindness.

Do not go off still hungry or offended at something or other.

No one should regret their poverty, for God’s Reign is now here—for everyone!

No more weeping over our sins—forgiveness for all has burst with light from the grave.

No more fear of death, for Jesus’ death has freed us all.

Death grabbed onto him tightly, but He subdued it.

He descended into hell, but took hell captive.

When Death tasted his flesh, it found him bitter on the tongue.

Isaiah foretold it: “Hell was overcome, having met You in the underworld!”

Hell had to mourn, for it was undone!

Hell panicked, for it was condemned!

Hell went hungry, for it was put down!

Hell was destroyed, for it was bound!

It thought it was taking in one more corpse, but touched God instead!

It thought it was seeking earth, but met heaven.

It took what was there for the taking, but found itself falling into unexpected oblivion!

Death! Where is your sting?

Hell! Where is your victory?

Christ is risen; you are brought down.

Christ is risen; the demons have fallen.

Christ is risen; the angels rejoice.

Christ is risen; life triumphs.

Christ is risen; no dead are left in the grave.

Christ is risen from the dead, the first fruits of those who sleep.

To Him be glory and power now and forever. Amen

 

Image: Christus Victor mosaic in the archbishop's chapel in Ravenna, 5th century CE.

HELL HARROWER -- Daily Images of God--Lent 2022 Day 45 HOLY SATURDAY April 16

Daily Images of God--Lent 2022

Day 45 HOLY SATURDAY

April 16

HELL HARROWER

 

In the statement of belief framed in the 2nd-3rd century as a Baptismal Symbol called “the Apostles’ Creed,” we read “[Iesus Christus est] passus sub Pontio Pilato, crucifixus, mortuus, et sepultus, descendit ad inferos, tertia die resurrexit a mortuis” (“[Jesus Christ] suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended >>ad infernos<<, and on the third day rose from the dead.” "Infernos" means “the lower things” or “the lower ones,” and has been translated variously as “the dead,” “into the underworld,” or even “into Hell.” The idea of a descent to the underworld grew from a reference in Ephesians 4:9, “And what does ‘he ascended’ mean if it is not because he first descended into the lower parts of the earth.” This was understood together with 1 Peter 3:18-20 “For Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous, that he might lead you to God. Put to death in the flesh, he was brought to life in the spirit. In it he also went to preach to the spirits in prison, who had once been disobedient while God patiently waited in the days of Noah during the building of the ark, in which a few persons, eight in all, were saved through water,” and 1 Peter 4:6, where “good tidings were proclaimed to the dead.” The descent of Christ in spirit to the dead while his body lay in the tomb was called the “Harrowing [or Frightening of, Despoiling of] Hell” first in a homily of Aelfric of Eunsham in about 1000 CE. “Harrowing of Hell” expressed hope that Christ’s victory over death and was, in fact, to the benefit of all. I grew up in farm country, where “harrowing” had a different meaning that perhaps captures this hope better than the idea of “terrorizing Hell”: harrowing was the turning over of the soil in the early spring to help it capture more water and make it more fruitful.

 

Poem

Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell

Denise Levertov—1923-1997

 

Down through the tomb's inward arch

He has shouldered out into Limbo

to gather them, dazed, from dreamless slumber:

the merciful dead, the prophets,

the innocents just His own age and those

unnumbered others waiting here

unaware, in an endless void He is ending

now, stooping to tug at their hands,

to pull them from their sarcophagi,

dazzled, almost unwilling. Didmas,

neighbor in death, Golgotha dust

still streaked on the dried sweat of his body

no one had washed and anointed, is here,

for sequence is not known in Limbo;

the promise, given from cross to cross

at noon, arches beyond sunset and dawn.

All these He will swiftly lead

to the Paradise road: they are safe.

That done, there must take place that struggle

no human presumes to picture:

living, dying, descending to rescue the just

from shadow, were lesser travails

than this: to break

through earth and stone of the faithless world

back to the cold sepulchre, tearstained

stifling shroud; to break from them

back into breath and heartbeat, and walk

the world again, closed into days and weeks again,

wounds of His anguish open, and Spirit

streaming through every cell of flesh

so that if mortal sight could bear

to perceive it, it would be seen

His mortal flesh was lit from within, now,

and aching for home. He must return,

first, in Divine patience, and know

hunger again, and give

to humble friends the joy

of giving Him food—fish and a honeycomb.

 

Image: 14th century wood panel from England "Christ frees the dead from Hell."

VICTIM OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE -- Daily Images of God--Lent 2022 Day 44 Good Friday April 15

 

Daily Images of God--Lent 2022

Day 44 Good Friday

April 15

VICTIM OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE

 

Sometime close to Passover in 33-35 CE, Jesus of Nazareth was executed in Jerusalem by soldiers of the Roman Imperial Forces occupying Palestine using a method of death by abuse reserved for slaves and non-Roman citizens thought to have worked for the overthrow of Rome: crucifixion.  This involved horrific beating and whipping followed by being affixed to a gibbet in a position designed to induce severe agony and eventually asphyxiation.  The condemned was affixed to the gibbet (which took various forms) by ropes or spikes through the wrists and heels.  After the siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE, according to Josephus, “the soldiers out of rage and hatred, nailed those they caught, in varying ways, another after another, to crosses [fixed upright gibbets with portable crossbeams], as sort of a joke.”  The horrific punishment, deemed by the orator Cicero to be so disgusting and gruesome that Roman citizens should not even have to think about it, let alone witness it or suffer it, was above all intended to dehumanize and humiliate the condemned as a warning to others.  The condemned was almost always stripped naked and exposed throughout the beating, the dragging of the crossbeam to the fixed upright, and the time actually affixed.  A small ridge attached to the upright at the level of the buttocks was intended to relieve the body weight restricting breathing and prolong the suffering.  It was occasionally called a cornu, or “horn” because often it was sharpened so that a victim forced to rely on it to breathe would have to impale themselves, a horrific detail recorded by Seneca the Younger.  Recent archeological discoveries of the ankle bones of crucified slaves show that the victims were placed spread-eagled on the upright with heels affixed to the two sides of the upright.   

Modern historians and theologians, inspired by feminist Biblical Studies and critical gender theory, have begun treating this Roman brutality as a form of sexual violence aimed primarily at humiliating and dehumanizing the victim by stripping them of any private, intimate space (and not necessarily giving physical gratification to the abuser).  Stripping the victim, flaying them alive with whips, making them beg for mercy when no mercy was to be had, spreading their legs to nail them on the sides of the cross, and publicly watching them squirm naked in agony, making a joke of their sufferings: all these elements suggest that indeed crucifixion was a form of sick sexual violence.   

The traditional Christian faith is that God on the Cross is a fellow victim with our human sufferings in this world, no matter how horrific.  These new readings of the crucifixion of Jesus make him a fellow sufferer with victims of sexual abuse as well.  The story of the resurrection to follow in two days thus becomes also a story of hope for recovery from abuse.

 

THE BODY SERVANT -- Daily Images of God--Lent 2022 Day 43 Maundy Thursday April 14

 

Daily Images of God--Lent 2022

Day 43 Maundy Thursday

April 14

THE BODY SERVANT 

 

Today is Maundy ("new commandment") Thursday, the traditional Christian memorial day of Jesus’ final meal before his death. In the synoptic Gospels, this is a Passover meal characterized by Jesus changing the blessings over the unleavened “Bread of Affliction” and the festal wine to suggest that they are, in fact, his own body and blood, about to be violently separated to cause his death. In the Gospel of John, however, the meal is one last supper >>before<< the Passover which in John occurs as Jesus is "lifted high" on the cross. In John, the only mention of bread at the meal is that Jesus dips the (presumably leavened) loaf in gravy and shares it with the one who is about to turn him in. Much of the meal is taken up with a long intercessory or high priestly prayer. But before any of this, Jesus is portrayed as performing an act most often done by menial household servants: washing the feet of the dinner guests, dirtied by walking to the meal in sandals on the packed dirt paths that served as ancient Palestine’s “paved” roads. Here is what John 13 says: 

 

Before the feast of Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father. He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end. The Accuser had already put it into the heart of Judas, son of Simon Iscariot, to turn him into the authorities. So Jesus during supper, fully aware that the Father had put everything into his power and that he had come from God and was returning to God, rose from supper, took off his outer garments, and took a towel and tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and dry them with the towel around his waist. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Sir, are you actually going to wash my feet?” Jesus replied to him, “What I am doing, you do not understand now, but later on you will.” Peter replied, “There is no way you are going to wash my feet!” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.” Simon Peter replied, “Sir, if that is so, have at it—not only my feet, but my hands and head as well!” Jesus replied, “If you bathe regularly, you don’t need to wash except for your feet, since everywhere else you are clean. That’s what it’s like for you all: most of you are clean, but not everyone.” For he knew who it was who would hand him over—that is why he said, “Not all of you are clean.” When Jesus had finished washing their feet, he put his clothes back on, reclined at table with them again, and said, “Do you realize what it is I have done for you? You call me 'Sir' since I'm your teacher, and rightly so, for that is indeed what I am. However, if I—the teacher you call “Sir”—have washed your feet, how much more should you wash each other’s feet! I have given you a model here to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do. Truly I say to you, there is no slave who is greater than master nor any messenger greater than the one who sent. If you understand this, blissful you will be if you actually put it into practice. (John 13:1-16; The Ashland Bible) 

 

Image: Jesus Washing His Disciples' Feet by Bhanu Dudhat, 30" X 24" Acrylic on Canvas

INCLUSIVE COMMUNITY -- Daily Images of God--Lent 2022 Day 42 April 13

 

Daily Images of God--Lent 2022

Day 42

April 13

INCLUSIVE COMMUNITY 

 

Speaking of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, Liberation theologian Leonardo Boff said:

 

“God is communion rather than solitude… [A]t the root of everything that exists and subsists there is movement; there is an eternal process of life, of outward movement, of love. Believing in the Trinity means that truth is on the side of communion rather than exclusion; consensus translates truth better than imposition; the participation of many is better than the dictate of a single one.”

AN ABUSED ABSENTEE LANDLORD -- Daily Images of God--Lent 2022 Day 41 April 12

 

Daily Images of God--Lent 2022

Day 41

April 12

AN ABUSED ABSENTEE LANDLORD 

 

The Parable of the Desperate Farmers (Mark 12:1-12 // Matt 21:33-46 // Luke 20:9-19 //Gos. Thomas §65) on the lips of the historical Jesus was probably a critique of rapacious land rental practices of the age that dispossessed most farmers and left them with less than a living wage. The Gospels, however, recast and understand it as an allegorical story about how God is misrepresented and abused by those whom God has left to manage God’s affairs. Specifically, they see it as a critique of the Jerusalem religious leadership at the time of Jesus: the vineyard is Isra’el (Isa 5:1-7), the tenant farmers are the religious leaders, God is the owner of the vineyard, God’s servants are the prophets, and the beloved son is Jesus (Mark 1:11; 9:7; Matt 3:17; 17:5; Luke 3:22; 9:35). In Mark, the punishment of the tenants refers to the anticipated destruction of the religious leadership along with the Temple and Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE. The transfer of the vineyard to others refers to the people of the reconstituted Isra’el of the Age to Come, Jews and gentiles who accepted the Happy Announcement. 

 

 Unfortunately, the parable has been used over the centuries as a proof-text for the false and pernicious doctrine of Supercessionism that sees Judaism as rejected by God and replaced by the Church (an idea that St. Paul, for all his emphasis on faith in Christ, would never had accepted!) Such abuse of scripture historically was often driven by overt hatred of Jews seen as “Christ Killers” because of the Blood Libel in Matthew 27:26 (“His blood be upon us and our descendants!”) or the Gospel of John’s characterization of “Judaioi” (“Judeans?” “Jews?” “religious leaders?”) as “children of the Devil" (John 8:44), a Johannine sentiment driven by the trauma of having been “put out of the synagogue” (John 9:22). This way of misunderstanding the passion story disregarded the fact that crucifixion was a gentile Roman punishment rather than a Jewish one, and overlooked the clear motivation in the synoptic Gospels to reduce Roman culpability in Jesus' death at the expense of his coreligionists as a means of portraying Christianity as not subversive to the Empire.

 

The harm of such abuse of scripture is seen in the fact that over the centuries, most of the worst pogroms and atrocities committed against Jews by Christians occurred on Good Friday, by mobs leaving churches enraged by preaching against “Christ killers.” It is thus important to remember that the basic story of the parable is about how those left in charge of God’s affairs—of any ethnic or religious tradition, including such "Christian" preachers—often abuse and harm the very God they seek to serve. 

 

Here is the parable as it appears in Mark 12: 

 

Jesus began to speak to them in parables. “A person planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press, and built a tower. Then they leased it to tenant farmers and went abroad. At the due time they sent a servant to the tenants to collect from them a percentage of the vineyard’s produce. But they seized, flogged, and sent the servant away, empty-handed. Again the landowner sent them another servant. And that one they beat over the head and humiliated. When yet another was sent, they killed that one. So, too, many others; some they beat, others they killed. The landowner had one other to send, a beloved son. He sent him to them last of all, thinking, ‘They will respect my son.’ But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ So they seized him and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come, put the tenants to death, and give the vineyard to others. Have you not read this scripture passage:

‘The stone that the builders rejected

has become the keystone;

by the Noble One has this been done,

and it is wonderful in our eyes’? ”

When they realized he had addressed the parable against them, they wanted to arrest him, but feared the crowd. So they left him and went away. (The Ashland Bible) 

 

Image: The Gospel Parable of the Wicked Vinedressers, by Gala Sobol

THE SUNDIAL -- Daily Images of God--Lent 2022 Day 40 April 11

 

Daily Images of God--Lent 2022

Day 40

April 11

THE SUNDIAL

 

"The Dial" is by Anglican Bishop, Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), one of the main scholars who produced the King James Bible. "The Dial" was part of a manuscript of his own personal devotions for daily prayer that was published posthumously in 1675 as Preces Privatae (Private Prayers).

 

THE DIAL by Lancelot Andrewes, 1675 

 

Thou who hast put the times and seasons in thine own power: grant that we make our prayer unto Thee in a time convenient and when Thou mayest be found, and save us.

 

Thou who for us men and for our salvation wast born at dead of night: give us daily to be born again by renewing of the Holy Ghost, Till Christ be formed in us unto a perfect man, and save us.

 

Thou who very early in the morning while the sun was yet arising didst rise from the dead: raise us up daily unto newness of life, suggesting to us ways of repentance which Thyself knowest, and save us.

Thou who at the third hour didst send down thy Holy Ghost on the apostles: take not away the same Spirit from us, but renew Him daily within us, and save us.

 

Thou who at the sixth hour and on the sixth day didst nail the sins of the world with Thyself on the cross: blot out the handwriting of our sins which is against us and taking it out of the way, save us.

Thou who at the sixth hour didst let down a great sheet from heaven to earth, a figure of thy Church: receive us up into it, sinners of the gentiles, and with it receive us up together into heaven, and save us.

Thou who at the seventh hour didst will that the fever should leave the nobleman’s son: if aught abide of fever or of sickness in our soul, take it away from us also, and save us.

 

Thou who at the ninth hour for us sinners and for our sins didst taste of death: mortify in us our earthly members and whatsoever is contrary to thy will, and save us.

 

Thou who hast willed the ninth hour to be an hour of prayer: hear us while we pray in the hour of prayer and make us to obtain our prayer and our desires, and save us.

 

Thou who at the tenth hour didst will thine apostle, when as he found thy Son, to declare with great joy WE HAVE FOUND THE MESSIAH: make us also in like sort to find the Messiah and when He is found in like sort to rejoice, and save us.

 

Thou who at eventide didst will to be taken down from the cross and buried in the tomb: take away our sins from us and bury them in thy sepulchre, covering with good works whatsoever we have committed ill, and save us.

 

Thou who didst vouchsafe even at the eleventh hour of the day to send men into thy vineyard and to fix a wage, notwithstanding they had stood all the day idle: do unto us like favour and, though it be late, as it were about the eleventh hour, accept us graciously when we return to Thee, and save us.

 

Thou who at the hour of supper didst will to institute the most sacred mysteries of thy body and blood: make us mindful of the same and partakers thereof, and that, never unto judgement but unto remission of sin and unto acquiring of the bequests of the new testament, and save us.

 

Thou who late in the night didst by thy breathing confer on thine apostles the authority as well to forgive as to retain sins: make us partakers of that authority, yet that it be unto remission, not unto retention, o Lord, and save us.

 

Thou who at midnight didst awaken David thy prophet and Paul the apostle to praise Thee: give us also songs by night and to remember Thee upon our beds, and save us.

 

Thou who with thine own mouth hast avouched that at midnight the Bridegroom shall come: grant that the cry THE BRIDEGROOM COMETH may sound evermore in our ears, that so we be never unprepared to meet Him, and save us.

 

Thou who by the crowing of a cock didst admonish thine apostle and make him to return to penitence: grant us also at the same admonition to do the same, to wit to go forth and weep bitterly the things wherein we have sinned against Thee, and save us.

 

Thou who hast foretold that Thou wilt come to judgement in a day when we look not for Thee and at an hour when we are not aware: make us prepared every day and every hour to be ready for thine advent, and save us.

For Our Sins (Palm/Passion Sunday C)

 Georges Rouault, Christ Mocked by the Soldiers

“For Our Sins”

Palm/ Passion Sunday C
10 April 2022 8:00 a.m. 10 a.m. Sung Eucharist

Mission Church of The Holy Spirit, Sutherlin (Oregon)

The Rev. Fr. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

Isaiah 50:4-9a ; Philippians 2:5-11 ; Luke 23:1-49 ; Psalm 31:9-16

God, give us hearts to feel and love,

take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

 

When my second son David was about nine, he asked me: “Why did God have to kill his Son Jesus off to pay for our sins? Doesn’t that make him a very bad Father? Why couldn’t he have just been bigger-hearted and forgiven us when we’re sorry?”

 
I tried to give an answer, something like that of the Evangelical Alpha Course:  God is just and fairness demands that sin be punished.  We are sinners.  It was God’s mercy and love that demanded that he send Jesus to suffer such punishment in our stead if only we have faith in him.  

 

David would have none of it: “If God is really boss of everything, he can make things any way he wants. So why did he make them so that he had to kill his own Son?  It just isn’t fair, and it certainly isn’t loving.”   

I replied that Jesus and the Father enjoyed unity in the Godhead, and this meant that actually God himself was volunteering to die for us on the Cross because of his love.  No go: “Then why does Jesus pray, ‘Please don’t let this happen to me?’” 

 

David was thinking of the prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane.  He wasn’t alone in seeing the problem.   John’s Gospel, alone among the four, drops any reference to Jesus’s prayer in Gethsemane from the Passion story it has received.  Rather, just after Jesus arrives in Jerusalem in the triumphal parade of palm branches, Jesus baldly declares, “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!’ (John 12:27)

 

As we go into Holy Week it is important to remember that many of the images, affirmations, and thanks we express in these stories are symbolic, using metaphors, limping and imperfect, to express what is beyond our ability to conceive of, let alone express.

 

From the beginning, we Christians have seen the death of Christ on the cross as not simply a case of miscarried justice or persecution, but something much more.   St. Paul, writing just 20 years after Jesus’ death, quotes the apostolic tradition that he received from others and affirms, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins” (1 Cor. 15:3-5) and “in Christ, God was reconciling the world unto Himself” (2 Cor. 5:19).  But Paul never says exactly how this was so.  And neither has the Church. 

 

The idea that the Cross was transferred punishment, Jesus tortured and put to death in our stead to satisfy the honor of, or placate the anger of a Deity demanding violence and blood as punishment for sin, is never taught as such in the New Testament, nor defined by any of the early Councils of the Church.   The idea first arose in the late Middle Ages in the writings of St. Anselm of Canterbury.  In Anselm’s society, a feudal lord’s honor could only be upheld by a social equal.  For him, God became man because man couldn’t satisfy the debt of honor to God caused by human sin.  Anselm’s theory of Atonement is known as “satisfaction”; this later evolved into a doctrine of judicially transferred punishment.  But the feudal idea is still at its core.  The idea is not biblical, but it became a cornerstone of Calvinist and Evangelical doctrine. 

 

The hymn “In Christ Alone” puts it this way, “… on that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied, for every sin on Him was laid, here in the death of Christ I live. ”

 

I now reject this doctrine, root and branch.  It sees God as bloodthirsty and unrelentingly demanding violence as a way of fixing what is wrong with the world.   Further, it confuses and corrupts the idea of the self-sacrifice of Jesus.   The ancients never viewed ritual sacrifice as a transfer of deserved pain and suffering onto the sacrificial victim.  Sacrifice was never about suffering.  Rather, it was food offered to God to create a common sharing and reconciliation.  Jesus’ self-sacrifice in his pursuing the kingdom even at the cost of his own life is far from the idea of transferred punishment.  Early Christians felt it was like a ritual sacrifice because in it God in Jesus shares with us and we humans in Jesus share with God, all as a means of creating communion and reconciliation between us and God.  Calling Jesus’ death a sacrifice was never intended to be some sort of sick expression of Mel Gibson-esque sado-masochism and suffering for suffering’s sake.

 

I would prefer that hymn read, “...on that holy cross so blessed, God’s love for us was manifest: our savior died as one of us, here in the death of Christ, I live.”   

 

When the New Testament says “Jesus died for our sins,” it does not mean “died to pay the punishment for our sins” but rather, “died because of our human failings, our systems of imperial power, our desire always to divide and to scapegoat, and our violence.”

 

The New Testament uses many differing metaphors to try to get a handle on what Christ accomplished for us and in us:  

 

·      justification (declare or make morally upright),

·      salvation (rescue on the field of battle),

·      reconciliation (restoring a personal relationship),

·      expiation (driving away ritual impurity or 
            ‘covering over’ guilt),

·      redemption or ransom (purchasing someone 
            back from slavery or prison into freedom),

·      liberation to freedom (restoring full-citizenship 
           to someone)

·      new creation (being made anew)

·      sanctification (being made or declared holy)

·      transformation (changing shapes)

·      glorification (being endowed with the light 
              surrounding God)

 

None of these are completely adequate descriptions of what “Christ died for our sins” means.   But they all agree that Jesus’s death and resurrection is the great victory over what is wrong with us and the world, a mystery just too glorious to reduce to a single image.  

 

The fact is, the “wrath of God” describes more how our relationship with God feels to us when we are alienated from God than it describes God’s heart.   And it is we human beings who tend to think that violence can make things right, not God. 

 

In this light, our belief that Christ “died for us” takes on deep meaning. In Jesus on the Cross, we see God suffering right along with us, dying as one of us; in Jesus in Gethsemane, a human being alongside us, praying fervently with us, and, with us, not getting what he asks for.  

 

Today’s reading from Philippians is one of the earliest passages in all the New Testament. Paul quotes an early Christian hymn describing Christ lowering himself. Such emptying, kenosis, understands the Cross as part of the same act of God we call the Incarnation. 

 

Though Christ was in the form of God,
he did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped at,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became heedful to the point of death--
even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name...

Paul quotes this hymn to say we must cultivate the same mind that Christ had.  Kenosis is something we too must make a lifetime practice.  Empty ourselves, humble ourselves, become heedful and attentive in all things, even when it may lead to the worst possible outcome.  It is in emptying ourselves that we are filled, in being heedful that we find empowerment.   It is in losing ourselves that we find ourselves, it is in dying that we are born to life.

When it says that Christ was “obedient, even to the point of death on the cross” it is not saying that God willed the death of Jesus.  It is simply saying that Jesus accepted the inevitable.   The Greek word hypokuo means “to listen attentively” under the authority of someone or something other than ourselves.   If David asked me that question today, "Why did Jesus have to die?", I would answer, "because God became fully human in him, and all human beings must die." 

 

Attentiveness and kenosis means accepting hurt. But it is not about the suffering or the horror.  It is about the continued heedfulness through it all.   As Paul writes, it is about the mind of Christ: the Christ who emptied himself and left the realms of light to become one of us, and then beyond that, actually lowered himself beneath us all.

Kenosis says God emptied himself to become human, and then further emptied himself to descend far below what most of us humans expect.  Christ himself went beneath all things so that no matter how far we might fall, he is always there beneath us to catch us. As St. Athanasius said, "God became Man so Man could become god," or according to 2 Peter, that "we might become partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4).   

Christ’s death on the cross rescues us not through substitution, but through participation.  He did not die to pay with suffering for our sins.  No:  he, God made flesh, participated in all that it means to be human, including unjust wrongful suffering and death.  He invites us to follow him: as we participate in his life, sufferings, and death, we participate also in his resurrection.  That’s the biblical doctrine of atonement. 

 

Let us follow Jesus through dark Gethsemane and stark Calvary into Easter morning.  May the same mind and heart that was Christ’s be ours, so that his life also be ours.  Thanks be to God. 

 

SIMPLICITY -- Daily Images of God--Lent 2022 Day 39 April 10

 

Daily Images of God--Lent 2022

Day 39

April 10

SIMPLICITY 

 

The basic credo of Judaism, the Shema, repeated each day in morning and evening prayer, quotes the irreducible affirmation of monotheism in Deut. 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: YHWH is our God, YHWH is one" (שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָֽד׃). Though the last phrase of the verse probably had the original sense of “YHWH alone,” the affirmation of the oneness of God has always been understood as an affirmation of the indivisibility and uniqueness of God, an idea often expressed by the phrase, “the simplicity of God.” Despite passages in the Hebrew Bible where God is described in very human terms for narrative purposes, and the Christian Testament’s portrayal of God being fully present in the human person of Jesus, there are dozens of passages in both bodies of Scripture affirming or at least hinting that God is one, simple, unchanging. 

 

The oneness and simplicity of God is found at the start of the historic formulations of the Christian faith, the Nicene Creed and the Apostles’ (or Baptismal) Creed: “We believe in One God.” Drawing from Augustine and other early church writers, the Calvinist Westminster Confession of Faith (2.1) expressed it this way: “There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will … most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth…” The refined air of such theological formulation can at times make one gasp, wondering whatever became of the anthropomorphic God of Genesis 3-4 or the God Jesus taught us to call “Abba” or Papa. But the point such theologizing is trying to make is absolutely congruent with the faith of Jesus: God is one; God is simple; God is ever-present and undeflected Love.

Leonard Bernstein expressed the idea of the oneness and simplicity of God in one of the preparatory prayers for his theater piece Mass+” which draws from Psalms 86, 98, and 121. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYf-51HB2_k

 

“Sing God a simple song:

Lauda, Laude …

Make it up as you go along:

Lauda, Laude …

Sing like you like to sing

God loves all simple things

For God is the simplest of all

I will sing the Lord a new song

To praise Him, to bless Him, to bless the Lord

I will sing His praises while I live

All of my days

Blessed is the man who loves the Lord

Blessed is the man who praises Him

Lauda, Lauda, Laude

And walks in His ways

I will lift up my eyes

To the hills from whence comes my help

I will lift up my voice to the Lord

Singing Lauda, Laude

For the Lord is my shade

Is the shadе upon my right hand

And the sun shall not smite me by day

Nor thе moon by night

Blessed is the man who loves the Lord

Lauda, Lauda, Laude

And walks in His ways

Lauda, Lauda, Laude

Lauda, Lauda di da di day …

All of my days

 

Jesus taught that to enter God’s Reign, we must become helpless and simple as a child. He instructed us to be like God, in Matthew teleios (wholly conforming to our ideal self, often mistranslated “perfect”), understood in Luke as oiktirmon (compassionate). The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, more commonly known as the Shakers, in the 1800s applied the concept the Simplicity of God to the Christian moral teaching of imitating Jesus to become more God-like.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccHfDX9GChc

 

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,

'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain'd,

To bow and to bend we will not be asham'd,

To turn, turn will be our delight,

Till by turning, turning we come round right.

MYSTERY -- Daily Images of God--Lent 2022 Day 38 April 9

 

Daily Images of God--Lent 2022

Day 38

April 9

MYSTERY 

 

The Greek word μυστήριον (mysterion, from which we get the English word “mystery”) comes from the verb μύω “shut the mouth, be silent, be an initiate to sacred rites about which one vowed to remain silent,” related to our word “mute.” A mystery was something about which you had to remain silent, either because you were forbidden to speak of it, or because of its surpassing depth unable to express.

One of “the ten words” written on the tablets of the law given to Moses on Horeb was “You shall not lift up the name of YHWH your God falsely” (Exod 20:7). This was originally simply a prohibition on using the Deity’s name in an oath sworn falsely, but early on was understood with “You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above, the earth below, or the waters under the earth” (Exod 20:4) and understood as a prohibition of pronouncing the tetragrammaton (the four-lettered name of God). It was ineffable, unspeakable. 

 

YHWH (יהוה) was written using only consonants as in most Semitic language writing systems, and read from right to left. It is based on the Semitic three-letter root HWH in the simple measure or verbal inflection meaning “to be,” “to exist,” or in in the causative measure “to cause to become”, or “to bring into existence.” The letter י (yod) at the start of the name is a typical marker of the “he is, he will” conjugation of a verb, where an א‎ (’aleph) in the same position marks “I am, I will”: this form of the name shows up in Exod 3:14, אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה [’Ehyeh ’asher ’Ehyeh] “I am what I will be.” Given words in the Hebrew Bible that use shortened forms of the name with preserved vowels such as “Hallelujah” (hallelu-Yah “Praise Yah”) and forms preserved in Greek that wrote down the vowels (some LXX and Old Greek versions of the Hebrew Scripture as well as 3rd century CE Christian theologian Theodoret), almost all scholars today believe the name YHWH was, when said aloud, voiced “Yahweh.” The “a” in the first syllable (with the Y) indicates the causative measure, having the sense “the One who brings everything into existence.”

 

Because the Tetragrammaton was not to be pronounced, when the books of scripture including it were read aloud, pious substitutions like “my Lords” (’adonai) or “Our God” (’eloheynu) were used. When vowel points were added to the text centuries later, the Tetragrammaton was pointed with the vowels for “’adonai,” slightly altered due to the phonetic rules of written Hebrew. This resulted in the otherwise impossible consonant/vowel combination of YeHoVaH , from where the English word “Jehovah” arose, though this was never a name for God before ignorant Christian readers of the Hebrew scripture took it as such, not knowing how the orthography arose. In common Jewish usage today, Ha Shem (“the name”) is used instead of the Tetragrammaton in ordinary speech, and the orthodox often will not even write the word “God,” preferring “G*d” as a pious substitution to maintain the ineffability of the references to the Deity. 

 

The basic idea of God as mystery—as ineffable, beyond our ability to understand, picture, or adequately express—remains a steady feature of most God-talk world-wide. Even in traditions as far removed from the monotheism of the ancient Near-East as Taoism, you have such sayings as 道可道非常道,“The Dao (pattern, reason, way) that can be Dao’ed (expressed, or reasoned), is by no means the ever-present Dao.” And you have in Buddhism the trope that expresses the idea in graphic, even horrific, terms: "If you see the Buddha walking toward you on the street, kill him."

THE HOLDER OF A HAZELNUT -- Daily Images of God--Lent 2022 Day 36 April 7

 

Daily Images of God--Lent 2022

Day 36

April 7

THE HOLDER OF A HAZELNUT 

“And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered generally thus, ‘It is all that is made.’ I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God. In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it.” –Julian of Norwich, Divine Showings. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NLnlPs-m58 Official Music Video for "Be Alright" by Evan Craft, Redimi2 & Danny Gokey, the official English version from "Todo va a estar bien," which uses the meme “The whole world is in God’s hand.”

COMMANDER OF SEEN AND UNSEEN HOSTS -- Daily Images of God--Lent 2022 Day 35 April 6

 

Daily Images of God--Lent 2022

Day 35

April 6

 

COMMANDER OF SEEN AND UNSEEN HOSTS

 

Yahweh Tsabaoth is a name for God used commonly in the Hebrew Scriptures: it comes from צבאות‎ (tsabāʾōth), plural of צבא‎ (tsābāʾ, a group of armed soldiers). The name sees God as the real head of armies of human soldiers when they are at war for the right, as well as of the varied unseen forces that drive forward human affairs. It stresses the power of God, saying that God is mightier than any human general or warrior. It can be abused if we are saying that God is on our side rather than our enemy’s in an armed conflict, reducing the All-nurturer to a bit of war propaganda. But in one of its first appearances in Biblical narrative, the name is introduced is such a way as to suggest the heavenly hosts transcend and are indifferent to tribal or national warfare. Other passages point to the possibility that God will side with those whose intentions and actions are pure in human conflict. 

 

“Once when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing before him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went to him and said to him, ‘Are you one of us, or one of our adversaries?’ He replied, ‘Neither; but as commander of the army of Yahweh I have now come.’ And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped, and he said to him, ‘What do you command your servant, my Lord?’ The commander of the army of Yahweh said to Joshua, ‘Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy.’ And Joshua did so.” (Joshua 5:13-15)

 

“Then Hannah made a vow and said, ‘Yahweh of hosts, if You will indeed look on the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me, and not forget Your maidservant, but will give Your maidservant a male child, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall come upon his head’” (1 Samuel 1:11).

 

“Then David said to the Philistine, ‘You come to me with a sword, with a spear, and with a javelin. But I come to you in the name of Yahweh of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied’” (1 Samuel 17:45).

 

"In the year King Uzziah died, I saw Yahweh seated on a high and lofty throne, with the train of his garment filling the temple. Burning beings were stationed above; each of them had six wings: with two they covered their faces, with two they covered their genitals, and with two they hovered. One cried out to the other: “Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh of hosts! The fullness of the earth is Yahweh's glory!” At the sound of that cry, the frame of the door shook and the house was filled with smoke" (Isaiah 6:1-4).

 

Image: Pieter Bruegel I: Fall of the Rebel Angels.