FROM WHAT OPPRESSION?

"And now, Lord, what is my hope : truly my hope is even in thee.

Deliver me from all mine offences . . ." (Psalm 39)

This Psalm text illustrates with startling precision the difference between two concepts of the Meshiach current at the time of Yeshua's youth. The first was the image of the new King David, a David returning at the head of an army to rout the Romans, deliver Israel, and institute a new reign of peace, justice, and devotion to the Lord. This was probably the dominant image, and it corresponds to similar dreams in other nations: in Portugal, for instance, there was long a legend of a return of the good King Sebastian, and in England, of the great magician Merlin. 

In contrast to this, Yeshua delivered a new image of the Meshiach: an itinerant rabbi in a remote Northern provice, walking from town to town or arriving by fishing-boat, preaching in small-town synagogues and showing a miraculous talent for healing the sick. Admirable, of course, but in what way could this be The Meshiach? One can see why a number of educated people found it unlikely. Only those who were deeply permeated by the Scriptures yet at the same time of an open mind would have understood. They would have seen that he had based his idea of the Saviour on an eclectic reading of Zechariah, Ezekiel and especially Isaiah and the Psalms. From such a reading he would have deduced that, in the first place, the Meshiach would be a man of deep humility and simplicity, who would arrive riding on a donkey; that his basileia, his kingdom, his kingship or reign, would not be that of a worldly king but in and of some other dimension; and that any liberation he would bring would not be political or involve the Roman occupation. 

If we ask ourselves what, then, that "liberation" would be, what oppressor it would unseat and in what way it would do so, the above text from Psalm 39 gives us a clue. "Deliver me," the Psalmist begs, not from Rome and its armies; not from the Assyrian kings, not from the bulls of Bashan; no, "deliver me from all mine offences". The tyrant, in other words, is Sin; and the oppressed are not just the Jews but all humankind. And so this mild provincial itinerant with his modest program of teaching and healing turns out to be a giant, with a giant's ambition: to deliver the whole of humanity from the tyranny of Sin.

He can do this by taking the Law, that immense gift of God to His favourite nation, and "fulfilling" it. Fulfilling, in this case, means internalising it. I have written a series of posts on the Sermon on the Mount that show this. Concomitantly, the Temple is no longer central: upon Yeshua's death on the Cross, the Temple veil rips apart. Yeshua himself is the new Temple; and he is the Temple not just for the Jews but for all humanity. He contains in himself the Law and the Temple, and fulfils both in an immensity of divine Love that has become immediately accessible to ordinary humans.

This accessibility is confirmed as permanent by his Resurrection; which means that this Meshiach’s liberation is no longer limited to one moment in history but continues to operate even now, just as the Adversary does. Each of us can and does feel the tyrant’s grim presence in our life; but each of us can also pray the Psalm verse above and thus, in being heard, reach safety. 

 

NOT KING DAVID?

On many occasions in the Gospels, we are told that Yeshua travelled the length and breadth of the country preaching the eu-angelion, which in Greek means “the good message” but which, as Joseph Ratzinger has reminded us, can also mean something like “the authoritative message”, being used for messages from the king. I wonder how often we stop to consider what the content of that message might have been. 

   For later writers, the authors of the Gospels and the Pauline epistles, the answer seems obvious: the evangelium is Christ Himself. But what, at the time, was the content of His preaching? A hint – a very large hint – is given in what we call the Sermon on the Mount, which may in fact be the conflation of several preachings. It has to do with His relation to the Old Testament commandments, which are not to be abandoned but ‘fulfilled’: internalized, as the Ten Commandments are fulfilled/internalized in the Two. 

   This ‘matter’ of the Sermon is profound and of the greatest possible importance; but is it ‘good news’? I can imagine hearers going home having heard it, in a reflective frame of mind as they apply what they have heard to what they had been taught and then to their own lives; but do they go home rejoicing or, as the modern French Psalm translation puts it ‘quivering with joy’?

   I was led to this meditation by reading all the Old Testament, and particularly the Psalms’, mentions of ‘rejoicing’, ‘shouting and dancing for joy’, and comparing them to the behavior of most believing Christians I know, who tend to live their faith with a profound happiness perhaps but on a daily basis tend to be sober, slightly austere, somewhat worried, and more apt to say ‘Lord, I believe: help thou mine unbelief’ than to quiver with joy.

   Yeshua, of course, wrought miracles of healing almost constantly; yet it often strikes me that he doesn’t seem to consider it central to what his does. He frequently tells those he has healed to keep quiet about it, which in anyone but him would seem disingenuous but which in him seems sincere; on several occasions he forgives the patient his sins and only when challenged about that does he heal him, as an outward and visible sign comprehensible even to the dolts who disputed him.  When Yochanan the Baptist sends to know if he is really the Meshiach, he lists the miracles as evidence – again, not as the core of meaning but as outward and visible signs comprehensible to anyone. 

   So if the healing is the outward and visible sign, what is the inward and spiritual grace? It can only, I think, be the message that the long-awaited Meshiach, the Anointed – both king and priest – has now come; that He is here, in the here and now; that the anxious, hopeful but occasionally almost despairing, waiting is over.

   This must itself have caused a great deal of confusion as well as joy. After all, the general view of the Meshiach was that he would be a new King David, a great political and military leader who would liberate Israel from Roman rule; and here was an itinerant preacher with a small band of disciples, who heals the blind and the lame and comes from Dogpatch, claiming to be Him! Where are his divisions? Where are his battalions? Yet that seems to have been the reaction mainly of the Establishment: the crowds that followed him around the Sea of Galilee appear to have taken this redefinition of Messiahship in their stride. We know that part of his teaching – as in the Nazareth synagogue – was an explanation of his actions in terms of the Book of the prophet Isaiah, which would have at least in part made clear to his hearers that this new and real Meshiach was a king of humility, come to serve rather than be served, and who would not confine liberation to freeing Israel from the Romans but extend it outward to include all nations and deepen it to free people not from political oppressors but from the tyranny of sin.

   Once that sinks in, we can see the healing for what it was: a by-product and an outward and visible sign. What matters is that the Meshiach, who is the new Torah, is here, and that anyone who believes and trusts in him is, as Henry Lyte’s hymn wonderfully puts it, ‘ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven’. That is a matter for quivering with joy – almost unimaginable for reasonable and worldly adults living in a world that oscillates between catastrophe and cynicism. That is what we should meditate upon and ponder. It is eu-angelion: good news from an authoritative source. The ultimate good news from the ultimately authoritative source. Blow your mind.

early image of Christ from the Nunziatella Catacomb, Rome

(?3rd century AD)

THE NIGHT VISITOR

Henry Ossawa Tanner, "Jesus talking with Nicodemus"

I have always been fascinated by Nicodemus. This Pharisee with the Greek name, who came and visited Jesus by night and discussed the faith with him, who was clearly if discreetly convinced and converted, who spoke up at the planned lynching of the adulterous woman, who may have watched the Crucifixion and who afterwards provided an astonishing quantity of costly spices for the funeral -- "a royal burial" as Pope Benedict XVI calls it --, is someone I should have liked to know.

What, I often wonder, was said that night? We know a little: a couple of gently ironic remarks, one by him and a reply by Jesus, about being born again, lead to a long and magnificent discourse by Jesus, which is often cited separately, without our remembering to whom it was said.  But I suspect it was a longer conversation, there on the roof of a house in Jerusalem. I think they talked for most of the night.  

Nicodemus was either a Judaized Greek (there were quite a few) or a Hellenized Jew, of the Pharisee persuasion, which was that of precise ritual and scrupulous devotion. Jesus calls him a "master of Israel", in other words a prominent man, learned and presumably wealthy. So what would Jesus have said to him, before the exchange noted by John? 

I imagine Jesus explaining the essence of his role, and of his relation to the Jewish scriptures. In the first place, Nicodemus, you know the prophet Isaiah, and you know that in the second part of his remarkable book he draws a gripping picture of someone we think of as the Suffering Servant, often seen as a poetic image of the people of Israel. Secondly, you know that we are living in one of those periods when people talk about the coming of a Meschiach, a royal personage who will save and deliver Israel, God's chosen nation, from all oppression: a descendant of David, who will be the new and possibly the eternal King. 

Now we come to the difficult part, Nicodemus. First, the Meschiach and the Suffering Servant are the same person. Second, he is already here and you are talking to him. He is not a king as you imagine one: he is in appearance, and in reality, a perfectly normal human being, one of millions, with a normal human name and place of origin. Yeshua bar-Yousuf from Nazareth [a real town, as real as Buffalo: my daughter got married there]. 

This means that the salvation of Israel now needs to be reinterpreted. The Meschiach is not going to sweep in on a mighty chariot and drive all Israel's enemies into the sea. Did anyone tell you, Nicodemus, about the image I used the other day to explain how all this is going to come about? I said it was like mustard-seed, one of those tiny, tiny seeds that invariably jump out of any pan in which you try to use them for cooking. You plant it, and you have the impression that you've planted nothing much. Yet it grows, and it grows. That's the way the regnum Dei is happening. Notice my tense: I didn't say it will happen, it is happening. It's here. Now. But it's happening quietly, quietly, in a corner of the Eastern Mediterranean. It will probably take long time -- but then, what is time to my Father?

And another thing, Nicodemus. Since this Meschiach is not politically involved with the nation of Israel, you may need to stretch the envelope of that concept very far. Because if "salvation" comes through a man, and one (incidentally) who is likely not long for this world -- dark clouds are gathering over the city down below --, then "Israel" also will be a new term, not limited to a nation or a people. The Israel the Meschiach saves is open, not only to born and circumcised Jews, but to anyone who recognizes Him and draws the consequences. The consequences include being born anew. 

And that is where John and his Gospel begin -- one assumes that Nicodemus had related the rest to him at or shortly after the burial, and that he omitted the first part because both John and most of his readers already knew that. 

I have known Michelangelo's Pieta since I was a teenager; but I never knew the standing figure (some say the sculptor's self-portrait) was Nicodemus. The thought is deeply pleasing. And that intelligent, discreet and generous man may, somewhere, be smiling.