SALT AND LIGHT

 

Humeis este to halas tès gès: ean de to halas mōranthèi en tini halisthèsetai? eis ouden ischuei eti ei mè blèthen exō kai katapateisthai hupo tōn anthrōpōn (Matthew 5:13-16)

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt becomes flat, insipid, in what will it be salted? It will be good for nothing except be thrown outside and trampled under foot by people.

In this passage of the Sermon Yeshua gives his talmidim two metaphors of compliment and responsibility that describe them and their function: salt and light. They are the salt of the land, and/or the light of the world. Let us think about those elements and their contexts.

 

Salt was not only that which gave food flavour, it was also the only known and reliable preservation agent for food. As such, it reduced the dependence on seasons and, as late as the 19^th century, sailing-ships carried barrels of salted meat for months, sometimes years, of the sailors’ rations. So that when the disciples are compared to salt, they are shown to be essential: essential for life’s flavour, essential for its preservation. 

    They give flavour to life. Life without faith, without God, is tasteless, meaningless, and flat. With God, meaning springs up everywhere, hours and days are tart, are savoury, are nourishing. Human beings are made to enjoy strong flavours, lively experiences, powerful emotions. 

    They preserve, also. Those who spread the eu-angelion, the good and authoritative message, are essential for preserving it and its values in the community. They preserve nourishment against moments of drought, of famine, of darkness, of need: at such times, the community can count on them for spiritual food.

    Moreover, they are the salt of the earth. The Greek word Gè is not the planet but the soil, the land, the country, where people live, move, and have their being; where men carry on their activity, where children are born and the dead are buried. The ‘real world’.

   We don’t usually think of Christians, of those that follow Yeshua, as being those that give savour, spice, to life; so it is useful and interesting here to be invited to do so. But at once, the talmidim are given a warning. Because when salt itself goes flat, when it loses its saltiness, when it can no longer keep food edible, what’s the use of it? Throw it out into the street, walk all over it. 

    How could a disciple of Yeshua lose his flavour? By losing the intensity of his commitment. ‘The excellence of every art,’ wrote Keats, ‘lies in its intensity.’ If they become lukewarm, if they put God on the back burner, they are not redeemable transgressors: they are simply useless, and good only to be thrown out and walked upon.

Humeis este to phōs to kosmou. ou dunatai polis krubènai epanō orous keimenè

You are the light of the world. A city that lies on a mountain cannot be hidden.

Oude kaiousin luchnon kai titheasin auton hupo ton modion all’epi tèn luchnian kai lampei pasin tois en tè oikia

 

Neither do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel tub, but on a lamp-stand; and it gives light unto all that are in the house.

 

But this is not all. They are compared also to light. ‘You are the light of – not of the Gè but of the Kosmos.’ Not of the earth, but of the world. The Gè is the earth in the sense of solid belonging; the Kosmos is the world in the sense of space. And this space (which was originally the universe, the cosmos as we still call it) is dark by default, unless and until light arrives, is lit. The world’s light is of course the sun; and by calling his pupils the ‘light of the world’, Yeshua is comparing them to the sun, and to whatever source brings light. Essentially, light is brought by fire. The sun is fire: daylight comes from its fire. The light of the moon is reflected fire. And when men learned how to make fire, they could light up the night. At first with a bonfire; later with a wick steeped in, and fed by, a flammable material like oil.

     If the disciples are likened to light, that implies a world of darkness. Not an optimistic view. The world is a dark room. But when a man of God[1] comes into it, he lights it up like a well-trimmed oil lamp. ‘I,’ implies Yeshua, ‘am lighting you up like oil lamps: you will lighten the dark places that for the inhabitable world.’ More than that, now that I have lit you, you will continue to light yourselves. And as lamps lighting the world’s habitats, you will enable people to see: to see the point, the meaning, the path, the direction, the sense, the purpose, of life. 

    And light shows: a city (a place full of light in the evening) that moreover lies on a hill or mountain can’t be hidden. Nor should it be: there follows a hypothetical and ridiculous negative. If people light a lamp, they do not put it under a nine-gallon tub; they put it on a lamp-stand so that it lights up the house. 

     There is a subtle difference in the negatives of the two metaphors. Salt can lose its saltiness: if the supply is not maintained and renewed, it just naturally goes off and is useless. In the case of light, he might have used the same image: if a lamp is not periodically fed with oil it will go out and the room be plunged back into night. And indeed he did use that image, in the parable of the foolish girls going to the wedding. Here, though, he uses a more peculiar one: an idiot lighting a lamp and putting it, deliberately, under an upturned bowl or vat. This is hard to grasp: why would anyone do that? The only thing I can think of is, out of a crazy desire to protect and preserve it. But the point is clear: if you have the faith that creates light, don’t hide it but let it shine and be useful to all. 

Outōs lampsatō to phōs humōn emprosthen tōn anthrōpōn hopōs idōsin humōn ta kala erga kai doxasōsin ton patera humōn ton en tois ouranois

 

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your lovely deeds, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

     And the next sentence makes it clear: let it shine in front of, in full view of, people, so that they may see your kala erga, the beautiful things you do; and since they know you do them out of faith, their reaction will be, not to praise you but to glorify your father in heaven.

     So when combined, the salt and light images tell the talmidim that their faith must remain tasty and lively to be useful, and that it must be out in the open, creating beautiful actions.

     Again, we need to interpret this in the light of the new Torah, the Torah of inwardness, the fulfilled Torah. It culminates in the kala erga, but it emphasises the inward and spiritual work that needs to be done in order that such beautiful deeds may be produced. This work consists, first, of prayer, because that is what keeps faith lively and full of flavour; and secondly of courage, to put it on a lamp-stand and let it shine in front of all kinds of people who may neither like nor think they want it, but who may be helped by your actions and won over by your transparent faith and end up praising the Author of that faith.   

 

---

[1] I know. But the disciples were all men.

GETTING CLOBBERED AND SUMMING UP

Egyptian Christians cleaning up after their chapel was looted and burned in 2013

"Fortunate are you, when they reproach you and persecute you and say all wickedness about you, lying, because of me. Be joyful and rejoice exceedingly, because your reward is great in heaven; for so did they reproach the prophets before you."

Makarioi este hotan oneidōsin humas kai diōxōsin kai eipōsin pan ponèron kath’umōn pseudomenoi heneken emou. Chairete kai agalliasthe, hoti ho mismos humōn polus en tois ouranois: outōs gar ediōxan tous prophètas tous pro humōn.

 

This final Beatitude elaborates the previous one, and confirms the movement away from character traits towards events and behaviour. The fortunate are no longer ‘they’ but ‘you’; and the persecution is made more specific. Meanings of the verb diōkō can range from ‘pursue’ as a deer in the hunt, via ‘prosecute’ in the courts to ‘persecute’, so that the place where the lies and the reproaches are uttered may well be the courts, where followers of the Meshiach might be charged with blasphemy in a Jewish tribunal or with nonconformity in a Roman one.

 

It may, now, be time to put the nine Beatitudes together and consider them as one Torah, or teaching. (Note that it is given to his disciples, not to the multitude.) The first element is the ninefold anaphora of makarioi. It translates the Hebrew ashrei which, because it opens in anaphora (from Psalm  84:5-6) the central daily Jewish prayer, has given to that prayer its name. As so often, Yeshua’s teaching is very close to the Book of Psalms.

 

Secondly, each example of the makarioi’s fortunate condition is a reward, mostly for enduring what seems unfortunate in an earthly human context – with the exception of being pure in heart. In this way they form part of the central Christian paradox: the last shall be first. The Meshiach and his teaching deliberately disrupt and overturn a great deal of received wisdom. So far from being the new King David, arriving with an army to liberate Israel from Rome by chasing out the occupiers, this unlikely Saviour is an itinerant rabbi in Galil-haGoyim, ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’, not really thoroughly Jewish at all, who wanders around with a dozen talmidim, ‘disciples’, pupils, and whose teaching is as disconcerting as it is paradoxical. How can he be the Meshiach? How can he liberate Israel? Well, his idea is that Israel needs liberating from sin more than from Rome; and that such liberation applies as much to the ‘nations’, the Goyim, as to the Chosen People. 

 

The makarioi themselves fall into two categories. There are those who have certain characteristics, and there are those to whom certain things happen. The first are the poor in spirit, the gentle, the caring, the peacemakers, and the pure in heart; the second are those who mourn, those who hunger for justice, and those who are persecuted, especially those persecuted because of Him. The former are cited as examples of a way to be and to live; the latter are cited to show that the miseries of humanity are seen and recompensed by the Father.

 

A picture emerges. The new Torah shows the new Chosen as being not of a tribe but of a kind: not warlords, not brave fighters, not conquerors, not even prophets: they are simple in the best sense, one-fold, not multiple; their love for, and obedience to, the Father is uncomplicated and unquestioning; they care for and help the unfortunate, not sentimentally but effectively; they heal the wounds of conflict in their surroundings; and they avoid what, and whom, they know to be evil. Very simple, and un-glamorous. Yet as such, they will be – they are -- Ransomed, Healed, Restored, Forgiven; and they will see God, they will rule in Heaven. And when things go pear-shaped, when their loved ones die or when they are pursued, persecuted, prosecuted, and sometimes tortured and executed, they will be given consolation, they will receive a Paraclete, a Spirit to defend them, they will be granted joy and in turn astonish those who see them. And they pray, constantly, like the Meshiach Himself. 

 

One does, finally, see St Jerome’s point. For such people, in such a relation to their loving Father, ashrei, makarioi, may perhaps indeed be translated as ‘Blessed’. 

Samuel Palmer, 'Coming from Evening Church' (1830)

FACING STONES, CLAWS, AND TEETH

 

Fortunate are they who are persecuted because of righteousness, because theirs is the kingship of the heavens.

Makarioi hoi dediōgmenoi heneken dikaiosunès, hoti autōn estin hè basileia tōn ouranōn.

 

Interestingly, the second part of this sentence is an exact copy of that in the first Beatitude: the kingship of heaven there belonged to the beggars in spirit, here to those who are persecuted for their righteous, or just, behaviour. So either these two share the heavenly reign, or they are the same people; or, conceivably, there is poetry and hyperbole at work here. For later on, in Matthew 14:19, he says of the little children that “the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these”.

 

There is no confusion about the words. Basileia means ‘kingdom’ in the sense of the office, not the geography – so ‘kingship, dominion, reign’. The heaven, or heavens, is/are the seat of divinity. So if this basileia is variously attributed to the poor in sprit, the righteous victims of persecution, and ‘such as’ little children, it is the thought, not the words, that needs to be teased out. Let us try to imagine that it might refer to the same people. Who would they be?

 

We have seen that the ptōchoi tōi pneumati are likely to be those who in their love for the Father tend to be simple, uncomplicated; and in fact the expression that instinctively occurred to me was ‘as children’ who trust their parent without complication. So the first and the third indications of who is referred to here agree.

But what about the persecution?

 

Why are they being persecuted? hekenen dikaiosunès: for the sake of – the translations say ‘righteousness’ but the noun can also mean ‘justice’ of ‘(the things of) the law’. They are being persecuted (the verb can also mean ‘prosecuted’) for the sake of, because of, justice – being just, being righteous. They practice that which, in an earlier Beatitude, people hungered and thirsted for. And for doing so, they are persecuted. By whom? The answer is not given, but there are plenty of examples in the New Testament (and in the Old, for that matter). It might be the religious authorities, the Scribes and Pharisees, the High Priests, who after all were on the way to persecuting Him for the very same reason; it might be the Romans, whose persecution of Christians reached a paroxysm under Diocletian and Galerius (303-311 AD), but who persecuted them for nonconformity to new Romanising edicts: among the Christians themselves, such nonconformity may well have been considered ‘righteous’.

 

So what it amounts to is that the simple, the innocent, the poor in spirit are those who know instinctively how to react to the Father’s love, and who therefore are likely to be victims of the kind of authority that demands obedience over any other behaviour, and punishes those who obey a different lordship: ‘my basileia is not of this world’ says Yeshua to Pilatus. 

 

What we see happening at this point in the Sermon on the Mount is the movement away from the declaration of good fortune to those of a certain nature or those in a certain condition, and toward a similar declaration toward those to whom certain grim realities are happening. Yeshua is modulating toward the beginning, and in future overwhelming, pattern of opposition that He will undergo first, and that awaits His followers afterwards. We see here the seeds of the martyrs’ blessedness.

Image: Execution by wild beasts (Ziten mosaic ca. AD 200)

LOOKING BOTH WAYS IN NO MAN'S LAND

 

Fortunate those who make peace, because they shall be called sons of God.

Makarioi hoi eirènopoioi, hoti huioi theou klèthèsontai.

 

The peacemakers are not difficult to understand. The Greek word is exactly the same, composed of “peace” (hence the name “Irene”) and “makers” (the same root as “poesy” and “poet”). However, their connection with the “sons of God” is a little trickier, especially if one sticks to the Greek. If one goes through to the Hebrew, though, some clarity emerges. First of all, the original peacemaker is God. In the important Amidah prayer, the ending is “He Who makes peace in His heights, may He make peace for us and for all Israel. Now say, Amen.” This authoritative, divine making of peace makes Him the osef shalom; but it is of course not easily imitable by fallible humans. 

 

The human way of making peace is what is meant in Psalm 34:14, which says “seek peace, and ensue (pursue) it.” And “peacemakers” in that sense are rodfei shalom. And the full quotation tells how this may be done: “Come, O children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord. What man is there who desires life and loves many days, that he may see good? Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.” And in the Mishnah tractate Avot, Rabbi Hillel says “Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving your fellow creatures and bringing them close to the Torah.” (m.Avot 1:12) Why Aaron? In another version of Avot, Avot de Rebbe Natan, this is explained in a, for us, very useful way: “So, too, when two men had quarreled with each other, Aaron would go and sit down with one of them and say to him: “My son, mark what thy fellow is saying! He beats his breast and tears his clothing, saying, ‘Woe unto me! how shall I lift my eyes and look upon my fellow!  I am ashamed before him, for I it is who treated him foully.’ “ He would sit with him until he had removed all rancor from his heart, and then Aaron would go and sit with the other one and say to him: “My son, mark what thy fellow is saying!  He beats his breast and tears his clothing, saying, ‘Woe unto me! how shall I lift my eyes and look upon my fellow!  I am ashamed before him, for I it is who treated him foully.’ “ He would sit with him until he had removed all rancor from his heart.  And when the two men met each other, they would embrace and kiss each other.  That is why (of Aaron’s death) it is said, They wept for Aaron thirty days, even all the house of Israel (Num. 20:29)”

 

So now we can understand much better what Yeshua meant with this fundamentally simple, but huge, saying. Those who pursue peace can make peace, and so become osei shalom; and when they make peace, as Aaron did, they shall be called “sons of God”. They will, by making peace among men, do what God does. Now, does that make them the equals of the Meshiach, who is the Son? Uncertain; but I find it significant that “they shall be called sons of God”. In other words, they will be regarded by others of their human kind as almost divine, so precious is the making of peace. 

 

In the Latin oratio that is the original for the Second Collect of Anglican Matins, God is called auctor pacis et amator, which Cranmer expanded to “author of peace and lover of concord”. God makes peace, and loves peace when humans make it. So those who do are fortunate, indeed “Blessed”. 

 

NB: for the Torah and Mishnah citations in this post, I am indebted to the website Emet haTorah at www.emethatorah.com .

 

 

SEEING ON A WINDY DAY

Fortunate are the clean in heart, because they shall see God.

Makarioi hoi katharoi tèi kardiai, hoti autoi ton theon opsontai.

 

This Beatitude seems simple. Katharos means, at bottom, simply ‘clean’ but goes on to a host of further kinds of cleanliness: ‘purified’ as in water or grain, ‘free of pollution’, ‘free of additions’. And it quickly goes on to the human, where it can mean ‘free of debt’, ‘free of defilement’, ‘honourable’ and even, as for a priest, ‘ceremonially pure’. Kardia is the heart, the seat of feelings and passions, but also the inclination, desire or purpose, and the kardia of wood is its core or pith. And opsontai is the future of horaō, which means ‘to see or behold’.

 

So just as those who are poor in spirit will inherit the earth, so those whose heart is clean, pure, free of pollution, honourable, will see God. Simple.

 

Yet the Gospel of Yochanan, John, says ‘No one has seen God at any time’. (John 1:18) Has there never been one who is pure in heart? If this were so, the Beatitude would not be a joyous promise but at worst a savage criticism and at best a Yeshuan hyperbole, like ‘If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.’ Surely this is not what is meant here.

 

I suspect that we have to ponder and probe the seeing. We know that here on earth we see ‘as through a glass, darkly’, and that sin, the lack of love, can make us blind to many things. We also know that in such a condition grace may help us: ‘I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.’ Note that we do not help ourselves: Christianity is not like Buddhism, a constant activity of scrupulous self-help to eliminate the dross, to make oneself pure. We are dependent, even for our daily bread. Only grace can make us pure, only the Spirit, the pneuma, the ruach, can make us katharoi. What we can do, what we need desperately to do, is to clear away the junk blocking the doors and windows, and to open them as wide as we can to let the pneuma (which is breath, wind, and spirit) in.

 

And when we do that, when He, that third person of the Trinity, does enter, when the wind blows where it listeth in our soul, then it brings with it the sun: the sun that is also the Son, and the glorious sun that is the emblem of the Father. And then we see God. Not with the eyes of our lurching, rebellious body, perhaps; but with the inward eye that is the bliss, not only of solitude but of faith.

 

 

 

BE VERY CAREFUL

 

Fortunate are the merciful, for they shall experience mercy in return.

Makarioi hoi eleèmones, hoti autoi eleèthèsontai.

 

The Greek text translates with eleos the Hebrew chesèd (ch as in ‘loch’), one of the three words that could become English ‘mercy’. In one sense it can mean ‘kindness’, but not, like praios, as a character trait but rather as a form of action. Chesed is taking care of someone else’s need: Jonathan protects David from Saul in an act of chesed. It is always seen as reciprocal: someone who receives chesed from another is expected to return it. 

 

So this Beatitude does not really introduce something new or unexpected, but rather reminds the audience of the way conventional relationships ought to be. It is really a form of ‘do as you would be done by’. And yet it goes beyond that also. God shows chesed to his people, both collectively, as the people of Israel whom he feeds in the wilderness, and individually in persons such as Abraham, Jacob, David and Job. For human beings it is of course impossible to return this to the Father himself; but He expects them in return to show it to others. So there may well also in this Beatitude be a sense that those who are merciful to others may receive the mercy of the Father, just as in the Lord’s Prayer those who forgive others’ debts to them may receive the forgiveness of their own debts to the Father.

 

In Psalm 85/86:11, ‘Mercy and truth are met together’, it is chesed that is joined to emet; and the ‘truth’ that is also characteristic of the Father is not so much ‘truth’ in the sense of conformity to a factual norm as ‘truth’ in the sense of faithfulness, of being ‘true’ to a loved one, one’s lord, or one’s country. So if that is joined to chesed, it means that Fidelity is joined to Care. 

 

It is both interesting and useful to pursue these words a little, because the English word ‘mercy’ has a connotation of opposition to ‘justice’ which in this case is not present. Our ‘mercy’ is usually closer to ‘compassion’, which translates the Hebrew racham/rachamim. The latter is word that does not imply as much reciprocity as does chesed: its root is linked to the Hebrew word for ‘womb’, hence the otherwise curious English term ‘the bowels of compassion’. So in the case of the fifth Beatitude, one might almost translate the text as ‘Fortunate are those who care, for they shall experience care in return’. And one should always remember that this does not refer merely, or even especially, to human interactions only, but to the very real Care and aid we children receive from our Father in heaven, and which we must pass on.  

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

 

“Fortunate are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be fed.”

Makarioi hoi peinōntes kai dipsōntes tèn dikaiosunèn, hoti autoi chortasthèsontai.

 

In our time, in Western societies, those who ‘hunger and thirst for justice’ tend to be those we see on television demonstrating in the streets for a righteous cause, usually on behalf of some group of people less fortunate. But in simpler societies, the people indicated in this sentence are the downtrodden, the oppressed, the cheated themselves, hungering and thirsting for justice. And the ’justice’ referred to here is not ‘social justice’ but downright legal justice as meted out by a righteous judge. We get a picture of the situations meant when we read the Psalms. Time and again we meet references to false witnesses, to the poor being robbed of what little they have, of unjust judges and neighbourhood tyrants: the overall picture is more that of some Neapolitan slum with its slumlords and its judges in the pocket of the Mafia. Here it is the poor who are the victims and who hunger and thirst for equitable justice, for honest judges, for witnesses who will tell the truth. They do not ask for charity; all they want and need is for decent institutions manned by decent people who will award them what they are entitled to. And this need goes right to the bone. It is not something that it would be nice to have: it is as necessary as the most basic food and drink.

 

The victims are turned out of their meagre lodgings, they are impoverished by being forced – sometimes at sword- or gun-point – to pay the vig on a desperate loan, they are jailed for stealing food for their children. So, in the Psalms that are so often the background, the score, the text for Yeshua’s words and actions, they cry to the heavens: ‘Up, Lord, do something!’ ‘Lord, judge thou my cause: thou seest that I am innocent!’ And all too often, nothing happens, the heavens do not open, the oppressors are not struck by lightning.

 

This, I think, is the background to this Beatitude. In the Reign of God that is now beginning; under the new Torah, the new Law that will go further than the old because it is a Law of Inwardness; the poor who hungerand thirst for justice, for righteousness, for simple decency, will be fed. Again, this metaphor of feeding is so often met in the Psalms -- ‘my soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness’ – and in the closely-related Isaiah: ‘And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined.’ For those who often go hungry, in a world where the rich are fat and the poor mere skin and bones, the promise of being fed, well fed, richly fed, is a pleasure and a joy. 

 

Now: why and how ‘will’ this happen under the new Law? Is it a promise for some unimaginable time in the future, to be realised in one great sweep by a distant Saviour? Is Yeshua’s audience being promised ‘pie in the sky’? I think we should read it differently. The basileia tou Theou, the regnum Dei, the Kingship (not ‘Kingdom’!) of God is that of the Meshiach; the Meshiach in question is Yeshua; therefore, it is here and now. On the other hand, it has to be realised by humans. So the key is the new Torah of Inwardness. What will feed the hungry is the fact that a judge who believes in Yeshua and ‘follows his words’ cannot give unjust judgements; a man who believes in Yeshua, if he is called as a witness, cannot give false testimony; a landlord who believes in Yeshua cannot cheat or brutally evict a tenant family. Once again, what is spoken here is the description of a situation that has not hitherto been brought about but that will be – and in the English translation shall, must be – brought about. 

GENTLY NOW . . .

 

Makarioi hoi praeis, hoti autoi klèronomèsousin tèn gèn: ”Fortunate are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.”

 

In his television series (later a book) “Civilisation” Lord Clark wrote “We are so much accustomed to the humanitarian outlook that we forget how little it counted in earlier ages of civilisation. Ask any decent person in England or America what he thinks matters most in human conduct: five to one his answer will be "kindness." It's not a word that would have crossed the lips of any of the earlier heroes of this series. If you had asked St. Francis what mattered in life, he would, we know, have answered "chastity, obedience and poverty"; if you had asked Dante or Michelangelo, they might have answered "disdain of baseness and injustice"; if you had asked Goethe, he would have said "to live in the whole and the beautiful." But kindness, never. Our ancestors didn't use the word, and they did not greatly value the quality — except perhaps insofar as they valued compassion.”

 

I used to agree with this, and think that it was perhaps the Victorians who made the change; and broadly I still do. But there is a precedent, and I believe it is in the Third Beatitude. It is usually remembered, because of the Authorised Version, as saying that “Blessed are the meek”, and that translation has caused untold harm. “Meek” is not an adjective most people sense as positive or attractive: it conjures up images of a donkey bowing under a rain of blows from a cruel master’s stick; of oppressed or tyrannised people too passive to rebel; of Nietszche’s characterisation of Christianity as “slave morality”. But if we look at the Greek praos, the meanings given are subtly different. Of things, it is “soft, mild” as in a mild breeze; of animals, it is “gentle, tame” as of a horse not restive; of persons, it is “mild, gentle, meek” – in a case in Herodotus, of one who has been toweringly angry and subsides into being praos again. 

 

So I think it would be much better to translate its use in the Beatitude as “gentle” or “kind”, thus providing a precedent for that long-underrated value mentioned by Lord Clark. The praeis, then, are the “dear hearts and gentle people” that Bing Crosby sang (nostalgically) about as living in his home town in Idaho. And who, indeed, live everywhere, though they are only very rarely in the news. And being gentle, they are of course often taken advantage of, trodden upon, ignored, looked down on, sneered at, the butt of those (like Nietzsche) with “stronger, tougher” values. 

 

They also live, though, in all our memories. Almost all of us remember one or more truly gentle persons we knew when we were young. And we are certainly right in that, because the young have an unerring feeling for true gentleness in adults. And later we remember amusing posters calling for “random acts of kindness” which resonated because we had known such acts, and perhaps even from time to time performed them. 

 

Now, why are the gentle fortunate? Because, says Yeshua in a breathtaking sweep, “they shall inherit the earth”, no less. The planet, the whole kit and caboodle. Inherit it, as heirs; take possession of it, as the Children of Israel took possession of Canaan; be given it,  be left it, take possession of it, own it. And, my children, this is the new Law. This is the new Torah. The earth will no longer belong to the strong, the mighty, the superrich, the One Percent, the strongmen and dictators, the Führers and the corporations. It will belong to the gentle, the kind. In a way, this continues the First Beatitude, in its reversal of the values we take for granted. The basileia, the kingly rule, of Heaven will belong to the Beggars of the Spirit, while the earth will belong to the Gentle, the Kind. 

 

And while the Greek leaves it at that, the English translators added a twist that Yeshua himself might have approved: they changed “will” to “shall”. Now those of us old enough to remember prescriptive grammar recall that “shall” can mean a simple future only in the first person, singular or plural: in the third person, as here, “shall” combines future with imperative in a uniquely compact way. So, faced with the new Law, we should not simply wait for it to happen, but get on with making it so, in every small way we can. 

 

GOOD GRIEF

 Makarioi hoi penthountes, hoti autoi paraklèthèsontai. ”Fortunate are they that mourn: for they shall be consoled.”

            Very different from the first Beatitude, this one. It refers, not to the nature or character of the fortunate ones, but to a condition arising from a specific situation. 

 

            The situation involving the verb pentheō is usually death; and the root of the consoling verb is the same as that of the Paraclete: the Defender sent to help us when we are the prisoner at the bar: the Holy Spirit. This may help us understand what is meant. All of us are mortal; hence all of us except the loneliest will at some time be mourners. Mourning is not the same as grief: it is a reaction to grief. Psychologists speak of the “work of mourning” – a task that needs to be undertaken and accomplished before life can go on. And in traditional societies it is a very outwardly-evident work, undertaken collectively by family, friends and acquaintances; visible and audible in wearing black (or, in the Far East, white) and keening or wailing, in keeping vigil, in sitting Shiva: a work of the community of which the deceased was a part. This is added to, and partly absorbs, the individual grief of the nearest and dearest, thus already providing a level of consolation: a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved or at least reduced.

 

            Beyond this comes the Paraklètos. Why, here, a Defender? A friend summoned to help us in court? In the modern, psychological sense because guilt is always a part of mourning. We feel we could have, should have, been closer, more supporting, more positive, a better friend, lover, spouse to the deceased. In mourning, a part of us is always the prisoner at the bar. And the Judge is He ‘in whose sight no man living is justified’. As always, for now, He is silent, which only increases our apprehension. Someone once wrote that Hell is the confirmation of all our worst thoughts about ourselves as  definitively true.

 

            But here comes the Defender. As invisible to earthly eyes as the Judge, he wraps himself around us and brings to remembrance all that is good in us, and notably the fact that we have been bought back – at a high price. Bought back: “redeemed”, like a pledge, or a hostage. And bought back by that other Person of the Trinity: the Judge’s own Son. If we were worth buying back, redeeming, by him at the cost of his own life, and if we recognise and accept that, then surely, says the Defender, we are free? Free, and consoled. For moreover, those for whom we mourned are now in the direct presence and care of Him who loves them as He loves us. 

 

            “Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted” says the Authorised Version. And perhaps here that version of makarioi is truly a good one.

 

ADVENT AND BLESSEDNESS

In the Advent of this most peculiar calendar year, and thus in the beginning of a new liturgical year, it seemed to me that a few thoughts on the Sermon on the Mount might not be out of place. The Sermon, after all, is, we are told, the new Torah, the new Law; so that just as in Lent , before the celebration of the Redeemer we may usefully study the Law the obedience to which we invariably muck up enough to need redeeming. 

As in the New Testament, specifically Matthew's Gospel, I thought I would begin with what are usually known as the Beatitudes; of which the first is

BLESSED ARE THE POOR IN SPIRIT, FOR THEIRS IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

We do not know what Yeshua said in Aramaic, but whoever translated the shorthand notes of ‘Matthew the Exciseman’ into clear if clumsy Greek said it thus: ‘Makarioi hoi ptōchoi tōi pneumati, hoti autōn hè basileia tōn ouranōn.’  Let’s try to parse this. Makarios (some us are old enough to remember a Greek political bishop of that name) means ‘fortunate, lucky’ more than religiously ‘blessed’: but St Jerome clearly thought this unworthy of both the speaker and the occasion and translated it as Beati; and all English translators from Wyclif on followed him. A ptōchos in ordinary Greek is a beggar: here, though, it is at once metaphorised by being followed by ‘in the spirit’ (spiritus/pneuma/ruach, the great noun of which the meaning runs from Him Who brooded over the primeval waters in Genesis to the breath that comes out of our nose or mouth.  So it does not necessarily limit itself to the beggar in rags at the gate: a rich man may well be ptōchos tōi pneumati.

            Considering that these people, whoever they are, are fortunate, because theirs is the rule of the heavens, it seems important to find out who and what they are. How is one poor in spirit? To start with the highest: one cannot imagine that the Heavens will be ruled by those who have little of the Holy Spirit. Poor, perhaps, in divine inspiration? In a year of Covid-19 there are of course many who are poor in breath and hooked up to respirators; but those surely also are not meant. (If I sound deliberately obtuse it is because I’m trying to recover the way this must have read to those original readers who were not already converted.) The consensus among theologians is that those who are meant are those who are spiritually poor, and especially who are so in their own estimation: those who know that they have few resources and that they are dependent on the Father for literally everything. It is those who have that kind of humility, and therefore that kind of instinctive trusting dependence on the Father, who – beggars as they feel themselves to be – are fortunate, He reassures them. Why? Because theirs is – to them rightfully belongs – the basileia, the kingship, the rule, of the heavens. (ouranos in daily Greek was the sky, the vault of heaven, but also the heaven of the deities, a heaven which in the Old Testament’s Psalm 96/7 had become plural.)

            Goodness. The last shall be first, indeed. At least, those who see themselves as the last, those who do not think much of their powers, those who are, in fact, ‘as little children’, utterly dependent on their parent and content to be so because living in complete unquestioned trust. Those who, as Yeshua puts it later on in the same discourse, do not take thought for the morrow, but take each day as the Father sends it. Those who, like the Samaritan trader, interrupt their business trip when they chance upon a bleeding robbery-victim, take him to the nearest pub, tell the landlord to see to him, promise to pay all costs on the return journey, and go on to their destination. Those who, working in a hospital, do not think much about being saintly but just do their job and say a prayer while doing it. Those who, without metaphysics or other philosophy, can see that ‘heaven and earth are full of Thy glory’ because they are so little occupied with their career plan that they have eyes to spot glory, divinity, in all the tiny nooks and crannies where it lodges. 

            They are makarioi. Already here on earth, because being what they are they are happier than others: not given to bitching, kvetching, grouching, glooming, weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. And this happiness, this good fortune, this makaria, follows them to heaven. To heaven where, true to the ancient Athenian wisdom that governance should be given only to those who do not desire it, they will be placed in charge. It is a comfort to think that Heaven will be ruled by the simple, the einfach, the onefold, those for whom one Father, whose Will they happily do from day to day, is enough. 

            Now, who are they? Referred to here as a class, they might appear to us as people with a specific gift. Poverty of spirit: well, A has it, B doesn’t. Like blue eyes, or an inborn talent for mathematics. But the whole trend of the Sermon is not that way. The Sermon is the new Torah. The fulfilled, not the abolished, Torah. The Torah fulfilled in inwardness. So it is filled with what we should learn, learn to do, learn to understand, learn to become, as was the old Torah: see Psalm 119, which is a lingering love-song to that old Torah. Hence the ptōchoi tōi pneumati, those lucky, fortunate people, those makarioi, are Us. They are what we could be. What we should be. What we may be, if we learn not to be too clever or too ambitious or too rebellious for our own good.  

SO WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT, THEN (AND NOW)?

a nasty dogma (cf Psalm 59)

A recent discussion with a friend about religion, church, and dogma set me thinking about such things, and trying to work them out. I post the result here in case it may be helpful to some. (NB: A None is not a canonical Hour, but someone who to the pollster’s question about one’s religion answers “None”. A Vaguist is, well, vague.)

 

A. What was the Eu-angelion, the content of Yeshua’s teaching?

 

1.     The Law is fulfilled.

2.     Yeshua bar Yosef from Nazareth is the Meshiach.

3.     Yeshua Meshiach is the (new) Law, and the new Temple.

4.     Our role is to be as children: in the innocence of trust, and the trust of innocence.

5.     Yeshua is present with us, in the Eucharist and in prayer.

6.     Our childlike life is to be governed (as He said to Nicodemus) by the two Great Commandments.

7.     The first we obey in prayer (and sometimes in fasting).

8.     The second is exemplified in the Samaritan: we obey it in giving (as he did).

 

 

B. How does one discuss faith with a 21C None? Very difficult. If the occasion arises, perhaps say “Let me tell you my faith, and then you tell me your reactions to those points.” And tell it more or less in the above form. 

 

The points the None will almost certainly make are 1) Auschwitz and 2) earthquakes or the equivalent.  Possible answers:

1) God is Love, and as such his omnipotence is limited (only) by the nature of Love itself, that cannot suspend freedom.

2) God does not micromanage nature. He has left Nature to us, to our care and our intelligence.

 

C. Now, how does one answer a 21C Vaguist? The Vaguist will say “I believe in a Higher Being [perhaps even God]; I am a very spiritual person; but my contact with the Higher Being happens in surroundings of natural beauty. Do NOT ask me to go to, still less to join, a church – they are full of DOGMAS [which, it is understood, are things that bark, bite and – as the Psalmist says -- grin and run about the city].” Again, very difficult.

 

I might start by saying that I too find surroundings of natural beauty congenial to contact with God: after all, He provided them, so addressing Him when in them seems natural, if only to give thanks. 

 

But then one does have to tackle the topic of the church. I might point out that while Creeds are in the singular, all the ancient Christian prayers, beginning with the one taught us by Yeshua, are couched in the first person plural. The early Christians lived their faith most strongly in a community. “Where two or three are gathered together, I will be in the midst of them.”

 

Yes, but what about those horrid DOGMAS? 

1.     Try to imagine what the first centuries of the Christian community were like. Not only were they persecuted, hunted down and killed, but they were trying to work out just what it all meant. What did the Resurrection mean? What is the God we worship like? Father? What kind of a father? And if Yeshua was the Son of God, what does that mean? And if he said, I will send you the Holy Spirit, who is that? They were totally absorbed in a terrible problem of definition: terrible, because their – eternal – lives depended on it. 

2.     So every time they managed to reach some sort of agreement on one bit of the enormous subject, they would file it with a sigh of relief, saying, OK, this one we can now see as settled, let’s go on to the next one. And so the settled one was filed as “something we are sure enough of to teach it”, the Greek word for which is dogma.

 

Of course the real trouble, for a Vaguist, is not with dogmas as such but with the idea of the Church as a spiritual authority. Which means, supposedly, that it can tell – order – you what to believe. No effing way!

 

This is of course nonsense. Only you know what you believe and whom you trust, unless you tell someone. And the Church – the community of the faithful – cannot tell you what to believe. However, it has (after many centuries and a very great deal of debate) set down the core of its faith, in the Creed – from credo, I believe. The Apostles’ Creed is the simplest: it says

 

I believe in God, the Father almighty, 
    maker of heaven and earth; 
And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; 
    who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, 
    born of the Virgin Mary, 
    suffered under Pontius Pilate, 
    was crucified, dead, and buried. 
    He descended into hell. 
    The third day he rose again from the dead.
    He ascended into heaven, 
    and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father almighty. 
    From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. 
I believe in the Holy Ghost, 
    the holy catholic Church, 
    the communion of saints, 
    the forgiveness of sins, 
    the resurrection of the body, 
    and the life everlasting. Amen.

 

This, of course, may need some explanation to those who are new to the material, which is why the various churches created catechisms. But simply speaking these are the essentials:

 

1) God exists. God is the Maker of everything and the Father of everyone. He is all-powerful. Jesus of Nazareth is His (only) Son. Together with the Holy Spirit (the old word was Ghost from Germanic Geist, spirit) they form the Trinity: three Persons, one God. (That one is notoriously difficult to get one’s mind around. But never mind.)

2) Jesus was conceived by the Spirit, he was born of (as the child of) Mary, who was virgin at the time. He was a real man, a real human being (not a disguised god): he suffered at a specific time and place in history: in Jerusalem, under the government of Marcus Pontius Pilatus (d. ca. 38AD). He was a real man, and so he died a real death: he was buried, and he went down (according to Jewish belief) to the “hell”, Sheol, the place of the dead. 

But on the third day after his burial, he was resurrected. After a brief return to earth and to his disciples, he went to heaven, where he recovered his place as God’s Son “at the right hand” of the Father. 

At the end of time, he will return, and there will be a final judgement of those then alive and the dead. 

3) The Holy Spirit exists – he is the third Person of the Trinity. He is the one who is always with us to defend us. 

·      The universal (“cath-holica”) ecclesia, church, community of believers, exists for all who believe. It has been entrusted with a communal (not individual) and historic (grown over the ages) knowledge of God, which gives it a certain authority, a certain claim to respect and attention.

·      All those who trust in God are part of one organism, and share their strengths: the living and the dead. (The “communion of saints”.) This means that we can benefit not only from each other’s spiritual experience and wisdom but also from that of those who have gone before and who are now close to God: I, now, can learn from St Theresa of Avila (1515-82), from St John of the Cross (1542-91), and from the late Michael Lonsdale (1931-2020).

·      Sins – offences against love, against God’s love – are grave but can and will be forgiven if that is sincerely asked for. 

·      We shall all die, but that death is not definitive. We too shall be resurrected, and with some sort of “body”, though we do not know where or with what kind of “body”.

·      And finally, if we truly want it, we will live in God’s presence (“Heaven”) where there is no such thing as time (“the life everlasting”).

 

This is not what the Church tells you to believe, but a complex of astounding truths it invites you to discover, to ponder, the pray about (on your mountain top, for instance), and eventually to take on board, with the extraordinary joy of knowing that you are loved: “Ransomed, Healed, Restored, Forgiven”. Every single day.