FAREWELL THE TRUMPETS

A Zedakah Shofar

6 `Make sure you do not do your justice/charity before men, to be seen/admired by them, otherwise -- reward have you not from your Father who [is] in the heavens;<sup>2</sup> whenever, therefore, you do charity, do you not sound a trumpet before you as the pretentious do, in the synagogues, and in the streets, that they may have glory from men; verily I say to you -- they have their reward!<sup>3</sup> `But you, doing charity, let not your left hand know what your right hand is doing,⁴ that your charity may be in secret, and your Father who sees in secret Himself shall pay you back.

 

This part of Yeshua’s new-Torah discourse seems simple and to a certain degree is so. We are urged not to show off when we are doing the things God has told us to do, but to do them where only God can see them. Those who show off, those who solicit and receive admiration, are already rewarded in the here and now; those who keep it hidden will be seen by God only and rewarded by Him.

            But there are a few details which, when understood, greatly increase our understanding and appreciation of what’s being said. The first is those trumpets. We find it hard to imagine even a flashy nouveau-riche magnate having a trumpeter precede him when he goes to make a gift to the poor. And we are right: that never happened.  Something got lost in translation. The Hebrew word that was translated by “trumpet” is shofar. A shofar is a ram’s horn, blown in Biblical times for religious announcements and on solemn occasions: you can still buy Kosher shofars on the Internet. So the translators thought that was what was meant and, not knowing all the customs, translated it as a trumpet. But the Mishnah tells us that in the Temple there were thirteen shofarot for the collection of alms. These were in fact horn- or trumpet-shaped boxes, broad at the bottom, narrow at the top, where the zedakah or charitable contributions were deposited. And the verb used in this passage was probably leba’avir, “to cause to pass”: “when you do charity, do not call [loudly] for the collection box to be brought to you, in the synagogue or in the street”.  The image that is being evoked, then, is of a showy rich man, in the synagogue or even in the street, calling for a shofar or zedakah box to brought to him so that he might in full gaping view deposit one or more precious gold coins in it. This, obviously, was deprecated, and not only by Yeshua: there was a saying that “he who gives zedakah in secret is greater than Moses”, and in the Temple – and in every city – there was a Vestry of Secret Givers, where alms could be deposited discreetly and respectable people who had come down in life could go for help. It is of such a saying, and of such a practice, that Yeshua is here reminding his audience. 

            And it is interesting that the Matthew’s Greek employs dikaiosunè for the first use and eleèmosunè for the subsequent ones. This shows that the author was sensitive to the shades of meaning in Hebrew (or Aramaic), where zedakah originally meant “justice” but gradually, in Yeshua’s time, was coming to mean “alms” or charity.

            If we now connect this with Yeshua’s “completion” of the old Torah in the direction of inwardness, we see that once again he moves from an emphasis on the act of giving to the mentality of the giver who, if he has fully integrated the new Torah, will do his zedakah discreetly, secretly, not only because ultimately he does it for the love of God but also, if he gives directly, to avoid humiliating the receiver and thus to show his love for that neighbour.

 

 

I am indebted to Samuel Lachs’ A Rabbinic Commentary on the New Testament (New York: Ktav, 1987) for much of the information cited above. 

SPRING CLEANING?

The current Catholic guidelines for Lent emphasise its triple nature: fasting, prayer and sharing. I have never been good at fasting, perhaps because there was a famine in occupied Holland when I was 3. Giving up chocolate and similar tiny deprivations have always seemed jejune, yet one should do (without) something. The best Lenten fast I ever had was a few years ago when, recognising myself to be choleric in nature, I gave up anger: not only did it work but it was of genuine spiritual value. This Lent I’ve gradually given up Scotch whisky, though abandoning prejudices would have been even harder and much more valuable . . . .    

The Catholic texts I’ve read stress the fact that all three exercises, and Lent generally, are intended to clear our inner decks of the clutter that comes between us and God. This I sympathise with. Prayer, the second item, would appear at first to be a much more direct line to God than fasting; yet John Donne already noted in his Devotions how difficult silent prayer on one’s own can be. “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.” The mind’s capacity for distraction is so extensive that one wonders if it is not diabolical.

            As for sharing, enough envelopes from worthwhile charities turn up in my mailbox that an increased level of giving is easy; yet then one wonders if that ease itself is not a snare and delusion. Shouldn’t it be harder, less pleasant, more sacrificial? That depends, I conclude, on the purpose of the exercise. If the purpose is to torment oneself, as in flagellation, then indeed one should do something more painful or at least demanding, like working in a soup-kitchen or hospital visiting. If the purpose is to bring the greatest possible amount of help to many, significant giving to good and well-run charities probably accomplishes that better. If the underlying (Lenten) purpose is to bring one closer to God and His values, each such gift should perhaps be accompanied by a serious and prolonged meditation on the people it is helping.

            Can one wish people a “Happy Lent”? It seems like a contradiction in terms, or even a sarcasm. Yet spring cleaning a house, while tiring, is a joyful experience, as everyone who has tried it knows. If we see  Lent not as a gloomy penitence but as a spiritual spring cleaning before Easter, it takes on a different colour.

            But. 

            But, says an inward voice, what about the Cross? The recent CNN documentary on  Jesus used what looked to me like clips from Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” to remind us of the sheer gory and humiliating horror of crucifixion. They were perhaps overdoing it: the expression on the Roman soldiers’ faces is likelier to have been one of bored distaste than the Gothic leers we saw on the screen. But it was a useful reminder that elegant crucifixes hide a damned unpleasant truth. Being nailed to two chunks of wood and left to die of choking was the execution method for rebellious slaves. In some way or other, we need to share in this, however great the distance.

            The prayer of the Angelus asks “that, as we have known the incarnation of thy son Jesus Christ by the message of an angel, so by his cross and passion we may be brought unto the glory of his resurrection.” Our cheerful spring cleaning metaphor breaks down on Good Friday. So what do we do?

            This, I think, is where prayer shows itself to be superior to all but the most extreme forms of fasting and almsgiving. For through prayer we can move to Galilee, to Jerusalem, even to Golgotha. Prayer, when supported by the twin pillars of reading and meditation, is the temple where we can share in the suffering, the silence, and finally the morning joy of Easter. It is the house of the Lord which we must first clear of its merchants, its money-changers, its ox and ass, its doves, its noise of fly and its rattling of coach; when we have done that, it is the house of the Lord into which, with the Psalmist, we can be full of joy to go.

            On Good Friday I try always to follow the old Dutch Protestant custom of listening to Bach’s St Matthew Passion. Doing this with real concentration is one of the finest ways I know of living that extraordinary day of pain, sacrifice and salvation. At its end, one is emptied of all emotion as the church’s tabernacle is empty of the host, and open as its door. I’ll try and write a little more about this in the days to come.    

HAPPY LENT?

For much of my life, Lent has found me feeling rebellious. The fruit trees are in bloom, the forsythia glows golden, the Japanese quinces are patches of Oriental red, you wake to a dawn chorus of newly-joyful birds. You feel like Swinburne’s chorus:

For winter's rains and ruins are over,

And all the season of snows and sins; 

The days dividing lover and lover,

The light that loses, the night that wins;

And time remember'd is grief forgotten,

And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, 

And in green underwood and cover

Blossom by blossom the spring begins. 

And then you are put to school to grief and repentance, you are told to remember what a general misery you are and to acknowledge and bewail your manifold sins and wickedness, in flagrant contradiction of the season. So you half-heartedly try to give up chocolate, occasionally feel, and fight, a twinge of guilt, and roll on Easter.

            It is only since, at 70, I decided that it was time for a new adventure and that the one befitting my age was faith, that I have begun (and only begun) to understand the meaning, and the richness of Lent. As a French clergyman put it recently, one might look at it as an athlete’s training period. Or, to quote an American Benedictine, see it as an annual opportunity to concentrate on what needs doing to become a better recipient of all the grace that stands ready to be poured into one.

            Does anyone still do spring cleaning? I remember it from my youth. The house gets turned upside down, one room at a time, and cleaned to within an inch of its life. (And no one thought that contradicted the season.)

            You are not meant to go around feeling guilt and gloom. But on the other hand, you are encouraged to face up to yourself. Like alcoholics in AA, you are meant to take this opportunity of looking your whole self in the face, including those things that weigh upon you in the night time, those things you wish you had or hadn’t done or said or even thought, those things you’d much rather ignore but which, as any psychologist will tell you, come back through the kitchen door after being chased out the front.

            Faith isn’t psychology, and – again as in AA – you are not expected to deal with all this by yourself. The house to be cleaned is yours, but not only yours; and the Master of the house is ready to lend a hand. So where to begin?

            Like many good things, I learned, Lent is divided into three parts: prayer, fasting, and giving. The big difference with the old days of giving up chocolate is prayer. It’s the joyful basis of the whole thing. Because in conversation with a loving Father, you can look at yourself with complete honesty and see what needs changing and what needs forgiving.

            Fasting I am terrible at, perhaps because we went through a period of famine near the end of WW II when I was 3. Explanation, not excuse. But perhaps there are ways, even for a 21^st-century far-from-monk, to learn. In the first place, it helps to know what it’s for. I only learnt how to give up smoking when there was something I wanted more – rock-climbing – that was incompatible with 16 cigarettes a day. Fasting, or in any case selective abstinence, helps to remind you on a daily basis of the spring cleaning that is going on. As when cleaning house, you are reminded of all the stuff you don’t really need. And it also shows you how much you still have to learn. Christian fasting isn’t Ramadan; but when I see Muslims keeping Ramadan faithfully even in the scorching days of summer, I feel a kind of rueful respect for them, and I’m not proud of myself or most of my supposed co-religionists.

            So to learn fasting, you turn to prayer, again. Prayer is the basis of Lent, I’m finding. Prayer, and reading. This Lent, I’m reading the Psalms in Coverdale’s Prayer Book version (often inaccurate, but delightful: ‘Why hop ye so, ye high hills?”) as the BCP prescribes, morning and evening daily. Also the brief daily readings in a little French Lent booklet; and occasional forays into some Benedictine and Carthusian texts. For one usually more given to James Lee Burke, Robert Harris or Reginald Hill, this is refreshing, and provides far more profound insights into this Lenten business than one would normally have.

            The third pillar of Lent is almsgiving. The etymology of “alms” is from Greek eleos, meaning mercy or compassion. Alms are the material aspect of mercy and compassion, of a fellow-feeling with those who lack. Apart from the fact that it is always good to show solidarity with the needy, you can see how this fits into the Lenten process of spring cleaning. Prayer and reading connect us to God, thus helping us fulfil the First Commandment; almsgiving connects us to our neighbour, thus helping us with the Second.

           And both remind us that Lent is not just about Me, about Becoming a Better Person, like New Year’s resolutions: it is about something far deeper. A Carthusian letter about God’s nature as Love puts the whole thing in a vertiginous perspective: God is Love, and thus has only one desire: to give. To give Himself completely, to us. Too often he finds our houses closed: doors shut, shutters tight. So he knocks. Do we hear? Only if we have taken off our skull candy headphones. Only if we aren’t texting. Only if we are in a condition to hear, and to open ourselves. That’s what Lent is about: getting into condition to be helpless, humble, receptive, and open. So that we can receive the huge joy He can’t wait to give.