ROYALTY, OR, IS RUNNING THE WORLD BEYOND US?

British Library MS K90049-89 Royal 6 E ix ff. 10v-11

As he was composing the Abun Dbashmayo (“Father in Heaven” in Aramaic), Yeshua began with Ha Shem, the Name. The Name is as close as earthlings can come to the essence of the Deity. What should come next? “Thy Kingdom come” says Yeshua. I have previously written about the curious optatives in the first half of the Lord’s Prayer; now, of course, we have to put right a noun. What is desired here is not the coming of a place or even the transformation of a place: the word malkuth, with the same MLK root as melech, would be much better translated in this context as “kingship” or “reign”. May/let Thy reign come.

Now this is a petition we can understand and wholeheartedly support. A dear friend of mine is always sad, sorry and frustrated that God, in His omnipotence, does not one day simply appear on all TV stations and all social media at once, say “Playtime over, you little horrors!” and close the whole show of our sorry planet down. And I suspect that many people would be in more-or-less agreement with that. Let Him take over. Let Him wipe out poverty and sickness and misery in one mighty stroke, and magically transform our squabbling messy billions into the sweet harmonious societas we think He must have had in mind when He created us. Thy reign come – please!  Ours has made such a spectacular mess of things; do please take over!

God, of course, softly but definitively says “No” to that. That frustrates us, and it makes us try to work out why. Why does God let all the evil in the world happen, why does He not set up his reign once and for all, now? There are two reasons, which I’ve mentioned here before. In the first place, God does not, I think, micromanage our planet. Not a sparrow falls, says Yeshua, but God sees it; but He doesn’t stop it falling. Shit happens. Earthquakes happen. Hurricanes happen. Secondly, God’s omnipotence has only one limit but it is huge: He cannot go against His own nature. Since his nature is love, and since love by its nature implies freedom, He cannot force us to love Him back, or love our neighbour. Auschwitz happens. And God weeps burning cosmic tears as he takes the souls of massacred innocents to Himself.

Having thus understood why he does not impose his reign, we may still ask why, then, we can and should beg for it to come? I imagine, again, Yeshua meditating on this, perhaps at night on a Nazareth rooftop, and coming gradually to the realisation that our prayer for God’s reign to come means that we are asking for, begging for, his institution as our Ruler, the ruler of our land, of our polis, of our oikos, of our collective and individual lives. And this is not something God will do on his own: rather, it is we who will nominate and install Him – evidently through His grace, through His Holy Spirit. If we ask Him – and in so far as we ask Him – He will, as he has promised, come and dwell with us, in us. So the prayer is turned back on us: it is our praying, our asking, our begging, that will make His reign come.

This is true both individually and collectively. If I ask Him with all my heart and soul and mind and strength to rule me, He will, although it may take time; if we, “We the People”, so far get our shit together that we ask him unitedly and insistently and with our whole collective heart and mind and soul and strength to rule us, He will. Of course, as we even begin to think about the possibility we see how staggeringly unlikely is such a unanimity. But maybe it has to start with small collectivities: an oikos, a household or family; a club; a group of friends; a charitable institution; even a political party. The petition “Thy reign come” is a compass that gives direction to out hope, a sense to our work in the world, and a course to our praying.

YONGE HAELETH, OR, A YOUNG HERO

In a further pondering on the Passion, I was suddenly struck by a curious doubleness. On the one hand, of course, Yeshua suffers: he undergoes, he is the victim. Yet on the other hand, I’m fascinated by the way he commands the situation. At every point, the initiative, the essential action, is his. Admittedly, it doesn’t, at first, seem so; yet once you regard the whole event as something he had foreseen, and foreseen as necessary, the whole perspective changes.

First of all, he initiates the event himself. He knows that in declaring himself to be the new Temple (which, if destroyed, he will rebuild in three days), and in declaring himself to be (the son of) God, he will push the Jewish authorities over the edge. So we have to assume that when he does this, he has chosen his moment, in full consciousness of the consequences. He acts: they re-act.

Next, he stands before Pilate. the Roman governor, doubtless with some irony, asks him if he is the King of the Jews. He stands there, silent. Finally, he replies, also with some irony, “It’s you who says it.”

Next, he is crucified. Apart from the excruciating pain, it’s demeaning: the death penalty for runaway slaves. Yet no slave he. ‘He nothing common did or mean/Upon that memorable scene [i.e. stage].’ He utters two quotations from the Psalms, his lifelong prayer-book. ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Ps. 22) is a cry of grief and pain, but not one of despair: the Psalm ends in praise, and in trust that future generations will serve the Lord. ‘Into your hands I commit my spirit’ (Ps. 31) moves beyond the pain and grief to the completion of what his whole life has been: a returning of the Father’s gift into the Father’s hands. And finally: ‘It is finished’: in the Gospel’s Greek tetelestai, which was used in accounting to mean ‘complete, paid in full’.

Throughout, in spite of the pain, he is command of the situation. This is what he knew had to be done, and he is doing it. He is the Meshiach, in the Isaian sense: he is saving Israel and the world by being the Paschal sacrifice.

It is not just courage: it’s authority.

Looked at this way, the Passion becomes even more awesome. Yes, the Dream of the Rood was right: he is the ‘young hero’, and in the deepest sense: the hero is one whose acts go well beyond what the ordinary person is capable of, and whose acts, moreover, are always done for the sake of, for the delivery of, ordinary people.   

FOR PRESIDENTS AND SMALLER FRY

 

At the inauguration of President Macron of France, it seems appropriate to think briefly of those who labour and travail in what we call "politics". Somebody asked Macron how he could hope to run a country if, as he had admitted at one point, he doesn't love himself. An idiot question, to which, as is his wont, he gave an intelligent and perceptive answer. One shouldn't confuse, he said, self-love and self-esteem. Without self-esteem, self-respect, one can do no great thing. Self-love, though, is a form of narcissism and -- I forget his exact words, but his point was that it prevents one from serving.  

Clearly he is not a devout man: his answer, which is a very good one, ignores the love for oneself which the Christian receives through, and because of, being loved by God. Who am I to refuse to love the one whom God loves and for whom his son died? And how can I love my neighbour as myself unless I love myself?

 On the other hand, seeing the inauguration reminded me of the burden that political service, and political authority in whatever degree, place upon those who undertake them. And as such, they need our prayers. At the time of the French election, the admirable little daily prayer-book Prions en Eglise printed a prayer for politicians, composed by Fr Laurent Stalla-Bourdillon, the chaplain to the members of the French parliament (he cannot, of course, in France, be Chaplain to the Parliament because the Republic is secular). I found it interesting, and translate it here. 

 "I thank thee, O Lord, for all them that labour in politics. Through the intercession of Saint Thomas More, I commend to thee most especially our leaders, their families and those who work with them. Deliver them from the daily pressures of media and lobbies, of money and public opinion. May they do thy will with the help of thy Holy Spirit, in their function, their decisions and their commitments, doubting neither themselves nor the gifts thou hast given them. May they attend to the care of all thy Creation, conducting affairs with discernment of truth and justice, respecting all persons as well as the common good. May thy love allow them to love others as themselves; and lastly, may they know thee at their side, and with thee go forward in faith and in courage. Amen."  

 Such a prayer, were we to incorporate it in our regular prayers, may help to defend us from cynicism, bitterness and hardness of heart when it comes to those we elect and appoint to manage our affairs.