(PIANISSIMO)

 

 ⁵ `And when you pray, you shall not be as the hypocrites [lit. “play-actors”], because they love in the synagogues, and in the corners of the broad places -- standing -- to pray, that they may be seen of men; verily I say to you, that they have their reward.

⁶ `But you, when you pray, go into your chamber, and having shut your door, pray to thy Father who [is] in secret, and thy Father who is seeing in secret, shall reward you.

⁷ `And -- praying -- you must not ?babble like the goyim [the ethnikoi, lit. “nations”] for they think that in their much speaking they shall be heard,

⁸ be not therefore like to them, for your Father doth know those things that you have need of before your asking him;

 

The target of Yeshua’s criticism here is a certain kind of observant Jew, most likely a member of the perushim or “pharisee” movement but not necessarily typical of them. The pharisees were liberal in some aspects of their theology but very strict in the minor observances they called “the fence around the Law”. For prayers, they wore on their forehead and their left arm large tefillin or phylacteries containing tiny texts telling men to do that (Deut. vi. 8, xi. 18; Ex. xiii. 9, 16), as well as prayer shawls. The morning prayers or Shacharit were lengthy and had to be recited at the proper time, wherever the observant person happened to be. And all this, combined with human nature, clearly led upon occasion to role-players (hupokritoi) or pretentious men showing off their perhaps quite real piety with unctuous ostentation: “For the hour of the phylacterical prayers being come, their care and endeavour was, to be taken in the streets: whereby the canonical hour compelling them to their prayers in that place, they might be the more seen by all persons, and that the ordinary people might admire and applaud both their zeal and religion. To which hypocritical pride they often added this also, that they used very long pauses, both before they began their prayers, and after they had done them: so that very usually, for three hours together, they were seen in a praying habit and posture. See the Babylonian Talmud” (17^th-century commentary by John Lightfoot)

            In criticising such manners, Yeshua is of course not alone; and when he enjoins us to retire to our most private places and pray in secret, he is reminding us that, as Proverbs 15:3 says, “the eyes of the Lord are in every place”. Again, he is emphasising the movement from the outward to the inward, this time in the act of prayer itself, for Him the most intense and permanent contact with the Father. This inwardness is shown throughout the Gospels when Yeshua himself prays, which most often he does by himself in a place to which he retires from the crowd and even the disciples. 

            He adds a comment on the form of prayer to be avoided, and for this, Matthew the exciseman (or his ghostwriter) used a word found nowhere else in Greek: battalogein. Most translators refer to “vain repetitions” perhaps thinking of Hebrew batel which means “vain” plus the polulogia or much, or repetitious, speaking referred to later. It may denote prayers of repeated incantations, or simply the fact that Jews considered pagan prayers to be a useless babble compared to their own prayers, which their Deity heard at once. 

            What is more interesting is the assurance with which Yeshua ends: the Father knows what we need before we ask. This is both welcome and reassuring; and yet it leaves us with the question, In that case why ask? Why pray? If we know (as we often do) what our child needs before (s)he asks for it, that fact pleases us, and we would rather the child did not ask.

            I think the point he is making is that the Father takes pleasure in our asking for what He wants in any case to give us, because our asking restores the intimacy, the presence of us with Him, that was His joy in creating us and our breaking or ignoring of which is His abiding grief. It is true that we can give Him nothing that He has not already created and provided, but we can give Him back what He gave us in the first place: love and trust. 

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.