SCANDALOUS AND IDIOTIC

I was struck, again, by the text of today’s reading in the French Prions en Eglise, which really is very powerful, and also touched by one of the commentaries on it, which seemed to me extremely perceptive. (I have retranslated the Pauline passage from the French, because it comes across strongly that way, but not without rechecking it against a few English versions and the Greek.)

“Brothers, Christ did not send me to baptise but to announce the Gospel, and that without having recourse to the language of human wisdom, which would make vain the cross of Christ. For the language of the cross is folly to those who perish, but to those who are saved, to us, it is the power of God. Indeed, the Scripture says, I will make the wisdom of the wise to perish, and the intelligence of the intelligent I will reject. Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the rational man of earth? As for the wisdom of the world, has God not made it folly? Indeed, since -- by a disposition of God’s wisdom -- the world, with all its wisdom, was not able to recognise God, it has pleased God to save those who believe by the folly that is the proclamation of the Gospel. While the Jews demand miracles and the Greeks look for wisdom, we proclaim a Messiah crucified: a scandal for the Jews, a folly for the pagans. But for those whom God calls, whether Jews or Greeks, this Messiah, this Christ, is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the folly of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”  (1Corinthians 1: 17-25)

Commentary by Roselyne Dupont-Roc, Hellenist and Bible scholar:

The text operates a series of reversals, from folly to a higher wisdom, from weakness to a higher strength. This reversal Paul had himself experienced on the road: an encounter had made the persecutor, sure of his rights and of his power, into the passionate disciple of the Crucified, announcing the Good News in the midst of the dangers and the sufferings of the voyage.

How can one say, faced with the Cross, that object of horror and disgust, that the wisdom of God and his power are at work? Only, surely, by experiencing in our deepest self that His love comes to us and sustains us in our distress and anguish, and by bearing witness toward those who have not known this experience, through an attentive and loving accompaniment of their crucified lives.

Image: the Crucifixion, from the Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald (ca. 1470-1528)

UPDATE ON QUINQUAGESIMA

Thonas Cranmer, with his Prayer Book

 I've been neglecting this blog, not because of a falling-off but because I've been too busy trying to incorporate daily Matins and Evensong into my life. A pity in a way, because I notice that readership has been diminishing as well; and as thinking and writing about thinking are one of the few things I can do to take my faith beyond the walls of my skin, this is clearly a message that I should pick it up again.

Daily Matins and Evensong (from a 1662 Book of Common Prayer stamped "property of York Minster" -- sorry, York Minster) is an interesting experience. It makes you read the Psalms in an intens(iv)e way, and the old Lectionary gives you longer and more consecutive readings that most modern ones. Also, as is always the case when you repeat old and trusted liturgical texts on a regular basis, they acquire a slightly different content each day. Why?

A liturgical text is a score for performance. The real "text", in other words, is not the words as written but the written words pronounced, said (or sung) by your voice in the context of a service, even if it is a private one, said within the walls of your own inner room. And as such it consists of two parts: the words, the score, as written by Thomas Cranmer and/or Miles Coverdale on the one hand, and what your mind, heart and soul bring to those words at this time on this day on the other. And since that part changes each day, the liturgical text is never the same two days running.

Things you notice: first, the readings, being more or less consecutive, take you through stories in the form of a coherent narrative in longer sections than you are used to, which is not only salutary but pleasant and interesting. Second, you keep getting blown away by the Psalms, those strange haunting poems that keep changing the person of the speaker and therefore keep upsetting the manner and level of your own identification with them.

At the moment, the Old Testament readings are from Exodus, and recite the interminable and depressing story of the Plagues of Egypt. It goes on, and on, and on, and you occasionally feel a certain sympathy for Pharaoh, the more as we are told that it is the Lord who keeps hardening his heart so that even after the frogs, the hail and the locusts he still won't let the Israelites go, when it comes to the crunch.

The Morning Prayer New Testament readings are from Matthew and show us Jesus in conversation with Pharisees and Sadducees, with the ordinary folk listening in and oscillating between fanzone crowdcrushing of the Meshiach and politely urging him to go somewhere else. Again, sometimes you can see their point: when he lets the Legion (of) demons move into the herd of pigs at Gadara, which then plunge off the cliff into the lake and drown, that herd was presumably someone's livelihood.
There is a directness about Jesus' healing which can be disconcerting.

The Evening Prayer New Testament lessons are from Acts, and currently concern Paul's interaction with two Roman governors-general and the local King Agrippa, culminating in his being sent to Rome to bejudged by Cæsar because he has insisted that he is a civis Romanus as our school books called it. Great narrative, that has you wondering (because you had forgotten) what comes next, as in any good thriller.

As for the Psalms, they are demanding a separate post and I think I will indulge them, because there is a lot to be thought and said about them. I will try to be more regular about all this, so stay tuned.
 

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD RELAX . . .

Here, in the middle of summer, it would be nice to give our minds a break. But today's reading comes from Paul's letter to the congregation in Rome, whose intelligence and alertness he never underestimates. And accordingly, the awesome Sr Emmanuelle Billoteau, Benedictine hermit in Provence, has provided a "meditation" to comment on it which equally refuses to underestimate us. How refreshing. I've chosen J.B. Phillips's New Testament translation to represent the current official French one, which mostly fits. Read with care, because this is not easy. But very, very rewarding.

“Moreover we know that to those who love God, who are called according to his plan, everything that happens fits into a pattern for good. God, in his foreknowledge, chose them to bear the family likeness of his Son, that he might be the eldest of a family of many brothers. He chose them long ago; when the time came he called them, he made them righteous in his sight, and then lifted them to the splendour of life as his own sons.”

(Romans 8:28-30; tr. J.B. Phillips)

GOD, GREATER THAN OUR HEART

Sr Emmanuelle Billoteau, Benedictine hermit

In the space of three verses of extreme density, Paul sketches our ultimate destiny. Thus he opens up for us a horizon that goes far beyond what our spirit can conceive. Moreover, he deals cleverly with the experiences where we have trouble understanding that everything contributes to our good.

Preparation

Lord, “let, I pray thee, thy merciful kindness be for my comfort” (Ps. 119:76)

Observation

Right from the start, Paul sets us on another plane than that of feelings, even religious ones. To speak of those who love God he chooses, from among the words available to him, the verb corresponding to “agapè”: the love that has its wellspring in God and has been “flooding through our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us.” (Rom. 5:5) So it takes on a level of depth and stability that allows it to withstand storms. Then, Paul mentions those whom God “chose long ago”, thereby expressing his conviction that our being in the world did not happen by chance: we were thought and willed by God before our creation. Finally, there are those whom he “made righteous”: a specifically Pauline approach to salvation, seen as the opposite of condemnation, in other words as reconciliation with God (cf Rom. 5). Hence the restoration of the image and of the resemblance; hence our participation in the very glory of the God who calls for our response of faith.

Meditation

By means of these words we understand that our “good” is not only that which is “pleasant” to us, but also that which is “useful” and “salutary”, in a view that goes beyond the limits of our present horizon and of our singular person. It is not that Paul passes over the sufferings of our current state, but by the standard of this ultimate future he sees them as labour pains (cf Rom. 8).  This connotes a dynamic of life awaiting its fullness. This dynamic we can already experience in our existence when, like Job, we move from a hearsay knowledge to a personal knowledge of God as a result of a drama in our life. Or when, like Paul, we find that our murky ways can, by God’s grace, end up in the light: yes, “though sin is shown to be wide and deep, thank God his grace is wider and deeper still.” (Rom. 5:20)

Prayer

“I called upon the Lord in distress: the Lord answered me, and set me in a large place. The Lord is my strength and song, and is become my salvation.” (Ps. 118:5,14).

ἀγάπη

In the Church of England as it was, today is Quinquagesima Sunday, the last Sunday before Lent, and the Epistle is one everyone knows: 1 Corinthians 13. Everyone knows it; but as I reread it, I was struck all over again by the sheer power of the Authorized Version. I checked my Jerusalem Bible, often the best of the modern translations, but found it flabby and vulgar. So I thought I would put up the 1611 version in all its glory, so that we can all learn from it, reading it aloud: here, for once, the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty do not contradict one another.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; 

charity envieth not; 

charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,  doth not behave itself unseemly, 

seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;  

rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; 

beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. 

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: 

now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

Here is Cranmer's Collect that goes with it:

O Lord, who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are nothing worth; Send thy Holy Ghost, and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee; Grant this for thine only Son Jesus Christ's sake. Amen. 

And just in case that word "charity" for agapè still bothers us, here is the finest exposition of it I know:

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,

                   Guiltie of dust and sinne.

But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack

                   From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,

                   If I lack’d any thing.

A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here:

                   Love said, You shall be he.

I the unkinde, ungratefull?  Ah my deare,

                   I cannot look on thee.

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

                   Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame

                   Go where it doth deserve.

And know you not, sayes Love, who bore the blame?

                   My deare, then I will serve.

You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat:

                   So I did sit and eat.* 

Whatever we each do about Lent and its usages, these three passages are as good a preparation for it as I can imagine.



*George Herbert, "Love (III)" from The Temple.