SO WHAT DO YOU GO HOME WITH?

 

 

Trying to sum up the Sermon on the Mount is like trying to put Paris into a bottle. Which doesn’t mean one might not try. The reason for undertaking it is that, however it was originally delivered, it has been passed on as a single if complex discourse, and it does sum up Yeshua’s teaching, the eu-angelion, the Good as well as the Authoritative Message, better than almost anything. And it matters.

 

So let us look back over it all and try to imagine what a good but not necessarily sophisticated listener, there on that truly lovely hill, full of flowers and overlooking Lake Kinneret, might have taken away on his or her way home, and remembered in the next few days. Remember it would have been part, not all, of their memory of the man: the healing he performed was in some ways more spectacular. But if the Meshiach’s task was to redeem Israel, and the ‘nations’, from the appalling condition of the systemic refusal of, or indifference to, the Father’s love – i.e. sin -- , then the two pillars of that task were Healing and Teaching, and the essence of the Teaching is in the Sermon. So what, finally, does it amount to?

 

A picture emerges. The new Torah shows the new Chosen as being not of a tribe but of a kind: not warlords, not brave fighters, not conquerors, not even prophets: they are simple in the best sense, one-fold, not multiple; their love for, and obedience to, the Father is uncomplicated and unquestioning; they care for and help the unfortunate, not sentimentally but effectively; they heal the wounds of conflict in their surroundings; and they avoid what, and whom, they know to be evil. Very simple, and un-glamorous. Yet as such, they will be – they are -- Ransomed, Healed, Restored, Forgiven; and they will see God, they will rule in Heaven. And when things go pear-shaped, when their loved ones die or when they are pursued, persecuted, prosecuted, and sometimes tortured and executed, they will be given consolation, they will receive a Paraclete, a Spirit to defend them, they will be granted joy and in turn astonish those who see them. And they pray, constantly, like the Meshiach Himself. 

 

Perhaps we can break it down into who we should try to BE and what we should try to DO. 

 

Who we should try to be is:

·      simple people, going about our lives, doing our work, kind, caring, with our heart clean and uncluttered. 

·      Feet on the ground, pragmatic, using our mind for discernment, fair and trustworthy. 

·      Not boring: we should be good company, amusing, interesting, but discreet – not showing off. 

What should we do? 

·      Know that we have been redeemed (bought back, ransomed) at a great price and so give thanks daily. 

·      Make shalom whenever and wherever we can, in small things as in large.

·       Avoid like the plague the Pandora’s boxes of ira (rage) and luxuria (lust), and avoid judging our neighbours’ faults before we have judged our own. 

·      Do unto others as we would have them do unto us. 

·      Keep Yeshua before our eyes all the time, integrate His teaching completely into our selves, get our priorities straight: seek FIRST the Kingdom, at all times. 

·      Don’t be fooled by wide and easy gates and spiritual snake-oil salesmen: build our house on His rock. 

·      Pray, inwardly, all the time, in any way we can, from the simplicity of Brother Lawrence to the sublimity of St Teresa of Ávila.  

 

An example of the simple, pragmatic, caring person is the Samaritan businessman. Levi the tax-collector, with whom Yeshua dined, was probably witty and amusing, even after his metanoia.

Notice that there are very few mystics here, and no sentimentalists. Even the glorious St Teresa was, as she herself relates, a simple, solid, hardworking nun, unimaginative by nature if given to fetching images from daily life. And she said that for people living in the world (not in a convent) simple and constant prayer without aspiration to mysticism is much the best way to salvation.

So finally: do your job, pray a lot, and make shalom. And find consolation, and joy, growing unobtrusively but gloriously, on your path.

THE SMILE OF FAITH

In his admirable television series “Civilisation”, Kenneth Clark titled the chapter on the eighteenth-century Enlightenment “The Smile of Reason”. Virtually all the portraits of the time, he claimed, wore a smile: neither gloom nor outright laughter, but a smile of intelligent amusement. 

Pondering this, it struck me how rarely one sees the smile of faith, and how surprising that is. We are not encouraged to think of Jesus as laughing or smiling, nor indeed of the saints as doing so. After all, the Gospels seem to deal mainly with the halt and the lame and the miserable, and their penultimate chapters deal in some detail with the gruesome horrors of crucifixion. As Stanley Holloway lamented, “Nuthin’ to laff at, at all”. 

And yet. Let’s try a different regard, Begin with the incredulous joy of Myriam, once she has understood what is happening to her. Go to the jubilation of the angels and the broad smiles of the shepherd folk who came to congratulate. Go to the attendrissement on the severe and thoughtful faces of the Magi. Fast forward to the wedding at Cana. “Yeshua, they’re running out of wine. Can’t you do something?” “Hush, Mother – my time has not yet come.” I see a faint smile there. And then, Myriam to the servants: “Do what he tells you”, again with a very maternal smile. 

Now take any of the countless episodes of his life from then on in Galilee. The formerly lame man, dancing with an idiotic grin on his face. The parents of a little girl, brought back from near death, embracing each other, and Yeshua, with huge smiles through their tears. Why do we forget that this man brought sheer blinding JOY wherever he went? Happiness. Amazed laughter. 

OK, there were exceptions. The owner of the herd of pigs at Gadara probably wished him to the devil. The people of Nazareth wondered who he, Josh, the son of the local builder, thought he was, preaching at them like a learned rabbi. And the religious professionals found him positively dangerous. But the ordinary folk who crowded him everywhere seem to have found true happiness in his company; and E.V.Rieu the Hellenist even found what he thought was the confused memory of a joke on Yeshua’s part: when he tells Peter to look in the mouth of the next fish he catches to find there a tribute-coin.

We Christians have as the symbol of our belief an instrument of torture. But the essence of our faith is Easter, is the Resurrection. Imagine the slowly dawning smile, wide as the horizon, of Myriam of Magdala once she recognises the man in the gardener’s hat. Imagine the incredulous laughter and embraces of the disciples eating grilled fish on the beach at dawn with the man they had seen slaughtered and buried only days before. 

In Lent we are asked to think seriously about our shortcomings in faith, in hope, and in love. To stop repressing them, and to beg that they may be forgiven. Perhaps one of those shortcomings may be our forgetting of the sheer, real happiness, the joy, of a faith “looks through death”. At best, the smile of reason and the smile of faith should be found on the same face. Ours.

Image: St Julie Billiart (1751-1816), founder of the order of the Sisters of Notre Dame.

"THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS"? OH, SURE

I am currently translating into English a book on prayer by a French Carthusian monk, and though it might be useful to share one or two things I have learnt from it. Today, a word about prayer of intercession. All of us who pray know what it is to pray for others, from the most intimate prayer for a loved one to the prière universelle that is part of every Mass and other church services. And all of us know, and grieve at, the fact that so many of those prayers seem to go unheard or at any rate unfulfilled. We know that our reaction must be “Thy will be done,” but we still wonder at that will and at what look like its vagaries. 

My Carthusian suggests we look at this differently. First, we should cease to imagine intercessory prayer as an attempt to influence, push or divert the Lord, to change His mind, to alter what He was originally going to do. All prayer, he says, is originally God’s initiative. St Paul says that it is the Spirit that prays in us; and so in the fact that at this moment I am praying for X I am aligning myself with God’s initiative. 

Secondly, just as the air around us is filled with waves of all kinds that we do not perceive unless we have a receiver and turn it on, so that same air is filled with prayers, a kind of quærosphere. God hears all prayer, but it must also be received by the beneficiary – a fact which, in the name of love and its necessary liberty, God cannot guarantee. 

Thirdly, as Huck Finn found and as I have mentioned several times in these posts, it is no use praying for fishhooks. God does not micromanage His creation. The extreme conclusion from this is that all we can truly pray for, concerning someone else, concerning X, is X’s salvation. And that prayer’s efficacy depends on whether X’s receiver for such prayers is turned on. If it is, the prayer will be granted. 

To add a point of my own: what about the prayers for healing and so on? Apart from the fact that God does not micromanage Creation, I am convinced that they are nevertheless effective in a certain way, especially if the beneficiaries know that they are prayed for. I believe that such prayer creates a small or large tidal flow of spiritual support that in itself helps the healing process.

I believe it was St Thomas Aquinas who wrote that the only way prayer can be effective is if it is a) for oneself, b) pious, and c) insistent. I see the point of this, and b) and c) are important; but a) should not be abandoned, even in the face of what sometimes seems to be a great and uncaring silence. Intercessory prayer, after all, is a genuine form of loving. Perhaps for a) we should substitute “with our eyes open,” clear-headedly, intelligently and without illusion. Then b) piously: we should put our whole hearts into it, in hope and trust; and c) insistently: like the widow in Jesus’ parable who importuned the unjust judge till he gave her what she wanted just to get rid of her, God smilingly allows us to bother him.

JOYS WE FORGET

Rereading an old hymn the other day – humming it, remembering boyhood chapel services – I was suddenly struck by one line that leapt out at me. As Henry Francis Lyte wrote: “Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven,/ To his feet thy tribute bring;/ Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,/ Who like me his praise should sing?”

And those past participle adjectives have been haunting me ever since.

            “Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven.” How many of us manage to remember that, and/or live as if it were true? What, in any case, does it mean, exactly? 

            Let’s begin with “Ransomed”. It’s a simpler way of saying “redeemed”, and much more understandable. We humans are all sinners. True, when we’re 16 we resent that thought, but as we grow older we realise that it’s perfectly true. If we were not we should live daily in perfect union with God. Obviously, we don’t. Some people are close; but we all sin, in the sense that we do not perfectly return God’s love. In so far as we sin, we give IOUs to Old Nick, who loves lending us opportunities to sin, as he collects paper from all of us in return. But: what happened, one unique time in Israel? Meshiach came, and bought all our debts, making Old Nick an offer he couldn’t refuse (much as he wanted to). What did he buy them with? His life, no less. So he, the Anointed one, the Son of God, risen from the dead, tore up our IOUs – and still does so, for all who entrust themselves to him. Hence we are bought back: Ransomed.We were hostages; we are free.

            “Healed.” A character in a Charles Morgan novel says to another, “The world is very sick, Mr Flower, but you will not cure the patient by kicking him out of bed.” We are sick, many if not all of us: sick unto death. Some of us know it, and awake each morning with a little less vigor, a little less taste for life, a little more gray sadness. Some of us don’t, and live feverish lives “distracted from distraction by distraction”, as Eliot put it. But do we remember that we were baptized? Alternatively, do we realise that we can be baptized? And that that very process heals us, at least begins a cure? A cure that, admittedly, needs to be completed by a daily life of practical thanksgiving, but a cure nonetheless. We are, we really are, Healed.

            “Restored.” Restored to what? Well, if we are both ransomed and healed, we are restored to freedom and health. Anyone who has spent any considerable time deprived of either of these knows what it means to be restored to them. It is the day you walk out of prison and know you can go anywhere in the morning sunshine. It is the day you walk out of hospital, or your sick-room, take a deep breath, listen to the birds, and walk and walk, because you can. Restored indeed.

            And finally perhaps the greatest, or at least the most moving. “Forgiven.” The hardest to remember, because we have been taught that, sinning as we do constantly, we keep needing to ask for forgiveness. “Forgive us our trespasses.” It seems utterly presumptuous to behave as if we had beenforgiven. And yet. We have been told, have we not, that if we sincerely repent and pray wewillbe forgiven. So we need to remind ourselves that even if the process will likely reoccur, we have beenforgiven. And someone who has been forgiven feels as if a huge weight is removed from bowed and lacerated shoulders. Stretches, curls, sighs, smiles, and leaps. Forgiven. What joy. 

            If we could believe all this, really. If we could live, one, or two, or three days a week as if all four of those adjectives were true and applied to us; would there not be a noticeable change in our behavior? Surely there would. Who, we might say, like us His praise should sing? I we were young enough, we might tattoo on the four fingers of one hand, R H R F . As it is, let us tattoo it in our consciousness.                      

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)

JOY OF FORGIVENESS

Reading today’s Psalm, I was filled with joy as I always am when it turns up. Although I suspect most people who read this blog know it, I also think that in this time toward the end of Lent and in the midst of the usual grim news cycle, it may be worth rereading, both for its deep spiritual healing and for its sheer beauty. Could this be “the beauty of holiness”?

Psalm 103. Benedic, anima mea.

Praise the Lord, O my soul : and all that is within me praise his holy Name.
Praise the Lord, O my soul : and forget not all his benefits;
Who forgiveth all thy sin : and healeth all thine infirmities;
Who saveth thy life from destruction : and crowneth thee with mercy and loving-kindness;
Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things : making thee young and lusty as an eagle.
The Lord executeth righteousness and judgement : for all them that are oppressed with wrong.
He shewed his ways unto Moses : his works unto the children of Israel.
The Lord is full of compassion and mercy : long-suffering, and of great goodness.
He will not alway be chiding : neither keepeth he his anger for ever.
He hath not deal with us after our sins : nor rewarded us according to our wickednesses.
For look how high the heaven is in comparison of the earth : so great is his mercy also toward them that fear him.
Look how wide also the east is from the west : so far hath he set our sins from us. 
Yea, like as a father pitieth his own children : even so is the Lord merciful unto them that fear him.
For he knoweth whereof we are made : he remembereth that we are but dust.
The days of man are but as grass : for he flourisheth as a flower of the field.
For as soon as the wind goeth over it, it is gone : and the place thereof shall know it no more. 
But the merciful goodness of the Lord endureth for ever and ever upon them that fear him : and his righteousness upon children’s children;
Even upon such as keep his covenant : and think upon his commandments to do them.
The Lord hath prepared his seat in heaven : and his kingdom ruleth over all.
O praise the Lord, ye angels of his, ye that excel in strength : ye that fulfil his commandment, and hearken unto the voice of his words. 
O praise the Lord, all ye his hosts : ye servants of his that do his pleasure.
O speak good of the Lord, all ye works of his, in all places of his dominion ; praise thou the Lord, O my soul.

HE SANG THE SPIRIT, 17 CENTURIES AGO

Today is the feast of St Basil the Great and of his friend St Gregory of Nazianze. Basil, a capable 4th-century archbishop, is also a Doctor of the Church, and has been called "the Minstrel of the Holy Spirit". So I thought I would put up here a snippet from his De Spiritu Sancto, to give us an idea of his voice. Here he is defending the glory of the Holy Spirit against those who underestimate Him.

49.  And His operations, what are they?  For majesty ineffable, and for numbers innumerable.  How shall we form a conception of what extends beyond the ages?  What were His operations before that creation whereof we can conceive?  How great the grace which He conferred on creation?  What the power exercised by Him over the ages to come?  He existed; He pre-existed; He co-existed with the Father and the Son before the ages.  It follows that, even if you can conceive of anything beyond the ages, you will find the Spirit yet further above and beyond.  And if you think of the creation, the powers of the heavens were established by the Spirit, the establishment being understood to refer to disability to fall away from good.  For it is from the Spirit that the powers derive their close relationship to God, their inability to change to evil, and their continuance in blessedness.  Is it Christ’s advent?  The Spirit is forerunner.  Is there the incarnate presence?  The Spirit is inseparable.  Working of miracles, and gifts of healing are through the Holy Spirit.  Demons were driven out by the Spirit of God.  The devil was brought to naught by the presence of the Spirit.  Remission of sins was by the gift of the Spirit, for “ye were washed, ye were sanctified,…in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the holy Spirit of our God.” There is close relationship with God through the Spirit, for “God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba, Father.” The resurrection from the dead is effected by the operation of the Spirit, for “Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created; and Thou renewest the face of the earth.” If here creation may be taken to mean the bringing of the departed to life again, how mighty is not the operation of the Spirit, Who is to us the dispenser of the life that follows on the resurrection, and attunes our souls to the spiritual life beyond?  Or if here by creation is meant the change to a better condition of those who in this life have fallen into sin, (for it is so understood according to the usage of Scripture, as in the words of Paul “if any man be in Christ he is a new creature”), the renewal which takes place in this life, and the transmutation from our earthly and sensuous life to the heavenly conversation which takes place in us through the Spirit, then our souls are exalted to the highest pitch of admiration.  With these thoughts before us are we to be afraid of going beyond due bounds in the extravagance of the honour we pay?  Shall we not rather fear lest, even though we seem to give Him the highest names which the thoughts of man can conceive or man’s tongue utter, we let our thoughts about Him fall too low?

GAUDETE?

The text below comes from a few years ago, when Gaudete seemed joyless because of child shootings. This year, there are other reasons. There always are. Gaudete is a challenge we need to meet. 

advent three



Questions

from prison cell. Outside

blind see, lame walk. Yet

beauty of guns
betrays. Kills. Rapid
rattle cracks. Child's blood
flows into tears
of mothers. Crosses
loom. What hope, what

solace?


Three candles.


Camels stamp
and snort. A winter
dawn looms. Three
old men saddle up.
silent, intent, not quite
sure why.