BON APPETIT

On a Friday night as Yeshua, head of the family, was preparing to bless the bread -- baruch atta Adonai Eluhenu --, he looked at the pile of inviting, freshly-made blond loaves and thought: Yes, that too has its place in the prayer I'm building. We harvest the wheat, we thresh it, we mill the grain, we bake the flour; but without the wheat, and the millet, and the rest, what should we do? It was you, Father, who brought forth lechem min ha'aretz, bread from the earth. Nothing is so basic: it is 'bread', but sometimes we use it to mean simply 'food'. It is your gift, not our right.  And sometimes You withhold it, or seem to; sometimes rains or drought spoil the  harvest, and we go hungry. You have not given, but You have allowed, great famines. It would be proper to ask for it: "Give us today today's bread, today's food." Only today's, he thought; it would be wrong to demand tomorrow's, too like hoarding, control, security. Abba, you have taught us to care and not to care, to live lightly, loving only you so that we may the better love all else. Give us, just for today, the lechem we need.

And, he reflected, as every thing here below is itself but also an image, how true this is of the lechem! It is the warm bread we eat and enjoy this Shabbat, but at the same time it is the unleavened bread that reminds us of our flight from Egypt; it is the food that God provided for Israel in the desert -- and remember, they were told to gather only each day for that day (except for Shabbat). And the food God gives is not only that of ha'aretz, is it? 

As he meditated, walking in the fields that day, the subject opened out and out in his mind. What feeds us? What feeds our bodies? What feeds our souls? `What has fed my mind, that now I can access so many treasures of thought? And the Word of God swam into his mind: all those riches of Torah, Tanakh, all the words of the prophets, all the overflowing beauty of the Psalms -- what a banquet!

The Psalms brought him to the Meshiach, that supreme gift from God that we are promised. Meshiach, who will repair the great Ill and heal Israel of its wounds. Will not Meshiach be like bread also, not today's but eternity's?

NOT THE WILL TO POWER

Orthodox icon: Christ and Moses

In his meditation on the perfect all-purpose prayer, I imagine Yeshua, having hallowed the Name (Baruch HaShem) and expressed hope for the coming of the malkut, the kingship, the Reign, now turning to the Divine Will. This flowed naturally from its predecessor: if a king reigns, his subjects do his will. What is God’s will? The Hebrew ratzon, when linked to the Deity, leads one directly to the Torah: God’s Will for Israel – and, eventually, for humanity – is that they keep his commandments, his statues, his testimonies. By itself the prayer that this be done is large and seems adequate for a Divine instruction; but Yeshua here added “on earth as it is in heaven” (ba’arets ka’asher na’asah vashamayim). In a sense this multiplies it: we pray that His will may be done on earth, not imperfectly in our usual sloppy human way, but the way it is done in Heaven, in His own presence, where the Reign is eternal and accomplished. There, we may imagine, His will is naturally done; and since His nature is Love, the natural doing of His will is a permanent activity of love, involving all the inhabitants of Heaven. Although we cannot equal this, we can strive for it.

Whether, when he composed the prayer, he already knew it or not, Yeshua was (to be) the new Torah: the divine commandments became two, then eventually one: first, to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind and strength, and to love our neighbours as ourselves; then, simply, to love and follow Yeshua Meshiach in everything.

 For earthling humans, though, questions remain. If we are to help bring about that Reign where his Will is done, we nevertheless ask ourselves, on almost a daily basis, what God’s will is. In this or that situation, hypothetical, actual or urgent, what should A do? Similarly, and sometimes even more anguishingly, what, in all that happens, does so by God’s will? If we say to someone “I’ll see you next month, Deo volente”, what does that imply?

It is comforting for us to remember that Yeshua himself faced this problem. When, in Gethsemane, he prays that the bitter cup he faces may be taken from him, he ends, “Yet not as I will, but as Thou wilt”. In that case at least, the Father’s will was clear: the Son’s sacrifice had to be carried through to the end.

We are often, and rightly, taught not to confuse our desire with God’s will. Even in an apparently good cause, Deus vult is more often than not a projection and thus an error. Sometimes an attitude of suspicion, particularly toward ourselves, is salutary. On the other hand, neither should we fall into the trap of assuming the Divine will always to be the opposite of our own. It is independent of us, and of our desire. How to discern it, then?

I think that the best way is to remember the nature of the God who wills. His nature is Love. Whatever is congruent with Love at its highest may safely be considered congruent with His will. Which brings us back to the conflation of commandments in the new Alliance: 10 > 2 > 1. The eu-angelion, the authoritative good message, is precisely that: that doing God’s will is no longer a matter of memorising and following detailed rules, but of being definitively touched by the absolute, sacrificial Love of the Anointed One, and transforming one’s heart, mind and life accordingly. We are still stumbling earthlings, and will never do it as completely or as elegantly as the angels: but that, we may be assured, will be taken into account.

Once we have been touched by that Love, all we really need to do is (as I wrote before) to keep our shutters, our windows, and our doors wide open to the grace that is poured upon us unceasingly: Grace Abounding. It will fill us gradually, until perhaps one day, like Myriam Yeshua’s Mother, we will be gratia plena.

OCTOBER BEAUTY

The jeweller: Thomas Cranmer

On the Twenty-First Sunday after Trinity, I often put up a praise to that day’s Collect, the most perfect in the whole Book of Common Prayer. The Collects, for those who are not familiar with the term, are the prayers that in Anglican Matins and Evensong come after the Creed and some responses, and conclude the Office; in the current Roman Catholic Mass, they correspond to the prayer that follows the Absolution and introduces the readings. A Collect is a prayer said, usually, by the priest on behalf of the congregation, and from very early days on Collects were highly developed in form. A typical Collect has five sections: Invocation, Acknowledgement, Petition, Aspiration and Pleading. Moreover, the Latin Collects from the early Sacramentaries were very structured in their sentence rhythms and forms; and this was recognised and adopted by Thomas Cranmer, the author of the first Book of Common Prayer and of the Collects that survive from that 1549 text to this day.

Of all the BCP’s marvellous Collects, the finest is that for Trinity 21:

Grant, we beseech thee, merciful Lord, to thy faithful people pardon and peace; that they may be cleansed from all their sins, and serve thee with a quiet mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

This is as beautifully crafted as a sonnet. Observe:

Gránt, we beséech thee,

Mérciful Lórd,

To thy fáithful péople

Párdon and péace;

That they may be cléansed from áll their síns

And sérve thee with a qúiet mínd.

First, four two-stress phrases give the Invocation (‘Lord’), the Acknowledgement (‘merciful’), and the Petition (‘grant pardon and peace’). Then each of the two things asked for is elaborated (in the Aspiration) in a three-stress phrase: pardon results in their being cleansed from all their sins, and peace, in their being able to serve God with a quiet mind. Finally, the usual Pleading: per Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum, ‘through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ The stress-patterns form perhaps the greatest beauty; but the vocabulary also plays, with the two objects of the petition being alliterative: that and their order relates them and makes it clear that the one must precede the other. There can be no peace without pardon. 

The 1662 Book of Common Prayer – in England still the BCP stipulates that, when Matins or Evensong is said by lay people, this prayer replaces the Absolution; thus recognising its particular power, compact riches, and beauty. We are sometimes told that ‘O Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness’ (Psalm 96:9) should never mentally be inverted to ‘the holiness of beauty’; but it is perhaps not forbidden to suggest that liturgical texts, images, music and rituals of seriously great comeliness are the result of some kind of true blessing or holiness in their creators. Trinity 21 is an annual jewel in the crown of October.

BON APPETIT

On a Friday night as Yeshua, head of the family, was preparing to bless the bread -- baruch atta Adonai Eluhenu --, he looked at the pile of inviting, freshly-made blond loaves and thought: Yes, that too has its place in the prayer I'm building. We harvest the wheat, we thresh it, we mill the grain, we bake the flour; but without the wheat, and the millet, and the rest, what should we do? It was you, Father, who brought forth lechem min ha'aretz, bread from the earth. Nothing is so basic: it is 'bread', but sometimes we use it to mean simply 'food'. It is your gift, not our right.  And sometimes You withhold it, or seem to; sometimes rains or drought spoil the  harvest, and we go hungry. You have not given, but You have allowed, great famines. It would be proper to ask for it: "Give us today today's bread, today's food." Only today's, he thought; it would be wrong to demand tomorrow's, too like  hoarding, control, security. Abba, you have taught us to care and not to care, to live lightly, loving only you so that we may the better love all else. Give us, just for today, the lechem we need.

And, he reflected, as every thing here below is itself but also an image, how true this is of the lechem! It is the warm bread we eat and enjoy this Shabbat, but at the same time it is the unleavened bread that reminds us of our flight from Egypt; it is the food that God provided for Israel in the desert -- and remember, they were told to gather only each day for that day (except for Shabbat). And the food God gives is not only that of ha'aretz, is it? 

As he meditated, walking in the fields that day, the subject opened out and out in his mind. What feeds us? What feeds our bodies? What feeds our souls? `What has fed my mind, that now I can access so many treasures of thought? And the Word of God swam into his mind: all those riches of Torah, Tanakh, all the words of the prophets, all the overflowing beauty of the Psalms -- what a banquet!

The Psalms brought him to the Meshiach, that supreme gift from God that we are promised. Meshiach, who will repair the great Ill and heal Israel of its wounds. Will not Meshiach be like bread also, not today's but eternity's?

ROYALTY, OR, IS RUNNING THE WORLD BEYOND US?

British Library MS K90049-89 Royal 6 E ix ff. 10v-11

As he was composing the Abun Dbashmayo (“Father in Heaven” in Aramaic), Yeshua began with Ha Shem, the Name. The Name is as close as earthlings can come to the essence of the Deity. What should come next? “Thy Kingdom come” says Yeshua. I have previously written about the curious optatives in the first half of the Lord’s Prayer; now, of course, we have to put right a noun. What is desired here is not the coming of a place or even the transformation of a place: the word malkuth, with the same MLK root as melech, would be much better translated in this context as “kingship” or “reign”. May/let Thy reign come.

Now this is a petition we can understand and wholeheartedly support. A dear friend of mine is always sad, sorry and frustrated that God, in His omnipotence, does not one day simply appear on all TV stations and all social media at once, say “Playtime over, you little horrors!” and close the whole show of our sorry planet down. And I suspect that many people would be in more-or-less agreement with that. Let Him take over. Let Him wipe out poverty and sickness and misery in one mighty stroke, and magically transform our squabbling messy billions into the sweet harmonious societas we think He must have had in mind when He created us. Thy reign come – please!  Ours has made such a spectacular mess of things; do please take over!

God, of course, softly but definitively says “No” to that. That frustrates us, and it makes us try to work out why. Why does God let all the evil in the world happen, why does He not set up his reign once and for all, now? There are two reasons, which I’ve mentioned here before. In the first place, God does not, I think, micromanage our planet. Not a sparrow falls, says Yeshua, but God sees it; but He doesn’t stop it falling. Shit happens. Earthquakes happen. Hurricanes happen. Secondly, God’s omnipotence has only one limit but it is huge: He cannot go against His own nature. Since his nature is love, and since love by its nature implies freedom, He cannot force us to love Him back, or love our neighbour. Auschwitz happens. And God weeps burning cosmic tears as he takes the souls of massacred innocents to Himself.

Having thus understood why he does not impose his reign, we may still ask why, then, we can and should beg for it to come? I imagine, again, Yeshua meditating on this, perhaps at night on a Nazareth rooftop, and coming gradually to the realisation that our prayer for God’s reign to come means that we are asking for, begging for, his institution as our Ruler, the ruler of our land, of our polis, of our oikos, of our collective and individual lives. And this is not something God will do on his own: rather, it is we who will nominate and install Him – evidently through His grace, through His Holy Spirit. If we ask Him – and in so far as we ask Him – He will, as he has promised, come and dwell with us, in us. So the prayer is turned back on us: it is our praying, our asking, our begging, that will make His reign come.

This is true both individually and collectively. If I ask Him with all my heart and soul and mind and strength to rule me, He will, although it may take time; if we, “We the People”, so far get our shit together that we ask him unitedly and insistently and with our whole collective heart and mind and soul and strength to rule us, He will. Of course, as we even begin to think about the possibility we see how staggeringly unlikely is such a unanimity. But maybe it has to start with small collectivities: an oikos, a household or family; a club; a group of friends; a charitable institution; even a political party. The petition “Thy reign come” is a compass that gives direction to out hope, a sense to our work in the world, and a course to our praying.

HALLOWING

In my continuing meditation on the life, activities and thoughts of Yeshua Bar-Yosef before he began his ministry, I've begun to think about the moment, and the way, he began to imagine what we call the Lord's Prayer or the Pater Noster. For I do not believe that this prayer which, as Bonhoeffer and others have said, sums up all the prayers we could conceivably pray was born fully formed at the moment when the disciples asked him how they should address the Father. 

I imagine him, then, in that slow eighteen-year runup from twelve to Cana, gradually forming and evolving his interactions with the Father -- learning, in fact, to pray. As, indeed, we all must, but in his case it must have been very different. I do not imagine him, for instance, having the problems we face, which were so beautifully expressed by John Donne: "I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call in and invite God and his angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his angels, for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door." But I do imagine the composition of the Pater Noster as having taken much time and meditation.

So, to begin: "Hallowed be thy Name." Sanctificetur nomen tuum. We have trouble with this, as we don't hallow much, and we are't used to attached serious weight to a name. We can look it up, and find that to hallow or sanctify is to set apart, to venerate or honour. And what about the Name itself? Most of us know that the Hebrew name for God is something like "Jehovah", and that it is in fact "Yahweh", a name too sacred to be pronounced unless furnished with the vowels of "Adonai" the day-to-day name of the Deity. In Hebrew it is written YHWH, four letters, in Greek a tetragrammaton, shown in Goya's painting above. Richard Rohr has said that this name was not spoken but breathed; as such it was, and is, a Name that lives in wind and water, in the gusts and ripples of creation, in the sweetness and the sorrows of humanity.

I have imagined Yeshua, in his late Twenties, spending a Shabbat away from the family, perhaps on the edge of the rock hard by Nazareth, lost for an entire day in an Act of Adoration of the Name, of the Tetragrammaton. I imagine him having a miniature basket filled with a wax medallion of the Name; seeing it in the shape of tree-branches, hearing it in the autumn wind. And out of such a day grows quite naturally the very first petition, or commandment, of the Great Prayer: "Hallowed be Thy Name." For unlike ourselves, who are known but not defined by our names, God is his Name. Its root is the verb "to be". So to hallow the Name is to worship the Father. 

How do we, then, hallow it? First, by never using it disrespectfully. I was brought up as a very liberal Protestant; but my parents came down heavily on any casual use of the Name. In the Dutch streetcars of my youth, among the advertisements were nailed little enamel signs of the League Against Swearing: "Speak freely about God, but never abuse His name." So we could begin by banishing "OMG" from our and our children's texts. 

Secondly, we could follow the League sign's other suggestion, and hallow the Name by talking about it, and about Him, with others, even those who don't agree with us. This is hard, but it may be one of the ways we can help our world come back to civilised behaviour and conversation across divides of conviction and belief. 

And thirdly, we could perhaps best hallow the Name by imitating Yeshua and praying intimately and often. A Carthusian wrote that we should not think that we can bring to God only the best of ourselves: on the contrary, He can only heal us and love us better if we bring him everything, all the time. Something we would not do even with our best friends; but then, He and his Name are sanctified --- set apart.