THE POLLUTION THAT IS ANGER

 

trash-dump fire, similar to the Hinnom Valley

 

 

`You heard that it was said to the ancients: Thou shalt not kill, and whoever may kill shall be in danger of the Second Court;

²² but I -- I say to you, that every one who is angry at his brother shall be in danger of the Second Court, and whoever may say to his brother, Empty fellow! shall be in danger of the Sanhedrim, and whoever may say, Naval! shall be in danger of the Hinnom Valley’s Great Trash-dump Fire.

²³ `If, therefore, you bring your Qorban to the altar, and there remember that your brother has anything against you,

²⁴ leave there your Qorban before the altar, and go -- first be reconciled to your brother, and then having come bring your Qorban.

²⁵ `Be agreeing with your opponent-at-law quickly, while you are still on the way to court with him, so that your opponent may not deliver you to the judge, and the judge deliver you to the officer, and to prison you be cast;

²⁶ Indeed I say to you, you may not come forth thence till that you pay the last penny.’ (Matthew 5)

 

The above translation is based on Young’s Literal Translation, but modified by terms explained in the Real Yeshua blog’s invaluable posts on Yeshua’s Teachings on Anger. I will try to summarise these here.

            The opening sentence shows the audience that what follows is a completion of the old Torah’s commandment against murder. Whoever commits murder will deserve to be judged by the higher Beth Din, of 26 judges (the Lower had three judges).

            BUT I SAY – this initiates the New Torah’s completion of the old: the reinterpretation in the key of inwardness which, if it is followed, will make its followers more righteous than the scribes and Pharisees. Three stages of anger are discussed.

            Simple anger at one’s brother/neighbour is the equivalent of murder. Why? Because it opens a Pandora’s Box and can lead to murder. To a scriptural Jewish audience this would have called to mind humanity’s first murder, and would thus have identified the present discourse as a commentary on the story of Cain and Abel.

            If one calls one’s brother/neighbour raka – an empty fellow, useless, of no value – one is contradicting the Creator, who has created him in His own image, and thus committing a blasphemy, to be judged by the Sanhedrin, the highest Court.

            If one calls one’s brother/neighbour naval, one likens him to the naval who in Isaiah and in the Psalms says ‘There is no God’ and therefore denies that God does tov (all that is good, beautiful and healthful for Creation). This is the ultimate blasphemy, and means that he who utters it deserves to be thrown on the burning, stinking trash dump in the Gey-Hinnom, the Hinnom Valley outside Jerusalem – but which also functions as a metaphor for the destination of those rejected by God at the Last Judgement.

            These three points are an increasing emphasis on the importance of one’s inward condition and attitude towards one’s neighbour. Nothing is trivial, says Yeshua. A tiny mustard-seed can become a great bush. Simple anger, if untended or even fed, can end in murder, blasphemy and denial of God and His love. 

 

Now comes a further step, an image not readily understood by modern readers unfamiliar with the customs of Yeshua’s time and place. 

            A qorban is an offering, of which there were many kinds, and the rules for them were multiple and complicated. The bringing of qorbanot to the Temple was a form of drawing near to God, and for repairing one’s relation to Him. It was a regular part of Jewish life. To bring a qorban, a Jewish man had first to go to the Temple’s double gates (where he could see and smell the Hinnom Valley) and have it examined. The he had to go the ritual-bath complex and be purified by immersion supervised by priests. Following that he had to pass through the Court of the Gentiles, pass the Beautiful Gate, cross the Court of Women, pass the Nicanor Gate and enter the Court of Israel. Here he would wait until he was called by a priest; and when he was, he would finally bring his qorban to the altar and perform his part of the ritual.

            So that when Yeshua talks of remembering ‘at the altar’ that one’s relation to one’s brother was still polluted by an offence of anger (whether the brother is aware of this or not), and then leaving one’s qorban there, at the very altar itself, and going back through all those steps to go and find one’s brother and repair one’s offence against him, before finally coming back through all those stages again and actually offering one’s qorban – this is extreme. At the very last minute. 

           But it is crucial. Why? Because, says the Law, God cannot accept your qorban, your offering, and thus cannot grant you His forgiveness, unless you genuinely regret your offence and have obtained the victim’s forgiveness.

 

            And finally, another metaphor. If you are on the way to court with your neighbour who has lodged a complaint against you, you are well advised to obtain his forgiveness before you get there. Otherwise you will have to face the full legal consequences to the limit of the penalty; whereas if you obtain his forgiveness before you get to court, he can and will cancel the complaint.

 

Both these great images emphasise the point of Yeshua’s sermon on the sin of Anger or Ira: it is the root of all violence and thus, as the later Church called it, a capital sin, a sin that is truly Deadly.

 

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.

OF MARTYRS, MOTHERS, MUSLIMS, AND MASS

Muslims attending Mass at St Ouen, North of Paris, after the murder of Fr Hamel

(NB: white is the Muslim colour of mourning)

I was asked the other day why on this blog I hadn’t written anything about the murder of Fr Jacques Hamel, the old French priest stabbed to death at the altar by two ISIS-encouraged 19-year-olds. I thought about it, then answered that I wasn’t sure what sensible things I could say that hadn’t been said already a hundred times by the media, social or otherwise. Outrage, horror, grief. One Facebook meme had his picture with the overlay “MARTYR DE FRANCE”. I wasn’t happy with that: “martyr for Christ” would have been nearer the mark. However, two things happened – one big, one small – that persuaded me to write something here, if only to give them wider and encouraging publicity.

In the first place – and this is big, really big --, on the following Sunday when Masses were said in his memory, thousands of Muslims all over France spontaneously went to the Catholic churches to attend the service, many if not most of them for the first time. It was an extraordinary deed of solidarity and should have been given far more coverage. All those who were interviewed said that they had come to support their Christian neighbours and to show the world how appalled they were at what these young thugs had done. Many added that they were impressed with the closeness of the two faiths, and convinced that we serve the same God.

I find this, as we say nowadays, beyond decent; a genuinely noble gesture that I hope will be amply repaid by Christians. A few more visits to mosques during prayers might be a good beginning.

The small thing that I found extremely encouraging was that at a small local talk-plus-prayer-service I heard the visiting priest – and to me this was a first, I’ve written about it – praying, and urging us to pray, for the murderers and their families. I’m not sure how much this will directly touch the brainwashed, but in the context of my last post more intensive intercessory prayer for our enemies is urgently needed.

I remember, only a few years ago, reading a number of Collects and Psalm texts about “the assaults of our enemies” and thinking that nowadays, mercifully, we should perhaps learn to take them as part of a spiritual war. But no: the enemies are back, they are real, they are armed, they are intelligent, and they hate us. We can start rereading a lot of those texts (taking some care to apply Jesus’ teaching to some of the more vindictive Psalms), and looking at the ways they teach us to react. Note, for instance, that in the case of the Anglican Church’s Second Collect at Matins at no time do we pray to God to take away our enemies and their attacks: “defend us thy humble servants in all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in thy defence, may not fear the power of any adversaries.” And in the Second Collect for Evensong: “that we being defended from the fear of our enemies may pass our time in rest and quietness.” What we ask God to do is take away our fear. Perhaps, if he does that, we can become like St Stephen who, as he was being stoned, prayed that God might forgive his murderers. And pray at once for the soul of Fr Hamel and for the souls of Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean; for  their families and for their neighbours who have done us the honour of attending Mass.


PS: I have been reminded that the Muslim attendance at Mass was in response to a call by the CFCM, the French Council of Muslims; so not technically spontaneous -- but the response was huge, and deeply moving.

HORROR -- MERCY

I was going to juxtapose an image of Daech (ISIS/ISIL) beheading, but could not bring myself to. Imagine it, in relation to Grünewald's Crucifixion, and to this post.

Father, they slaughter and behead --

We wail barbarity and sin --

Outraged and chilled, we count the dead --

What do you see, who look within?

You whom no man had ever seen --

You sent your Son, that we might know --

He touched our souls and they were green --

What do you see, who look below?

We took him and we whipped him well --

We nailed him up -- such was his bond --

Dying for us, with us to dwell --

What do you see, who look beyond?

And yet he rose and walks the earth --

To weary pilgrims still a guide --

Giving his treasure to our dearth --

What do you see, who look beside?

In every body washed ashore --

In every soul that lives in hell --

We meet your Son for ever more --

What do you see, who know us well?

Their cruelty may ravage on --

The depth of Heaven knows your tears --

But we must pass your mercy on --

For Him who sees, and loves, and hears.

RK

Image: Matthias Grünewald, outside of the Isenheim Altarpiece (ca. 1515)

SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

With her permission I reproduce here the column my daughter the Rev. Tess Kuin Lawton, an Anglican priest and chaplain of Magdalen College School in Oxford, put on Facebook yesterday. I found it the most moving and pertinent comment I have seen.

It is rare to have an item of news so appalling that the instinctive human reaction is not to listen, watch or read about it at all; but in the story of the murder of 140 school children by the Taliban in Pakistan on Tuesday, that is what has been thrust into the heart of the pre-Christmas glitter and sparkle and the juxtaposition is impossible to bear.

Yet, the religiously minded among us cannot help hearing the echo of both Pharaoh and Herod and we find ourselves once more taking off our shoes as we wait for the Theophany. The religious narrative of our souls has shown that when God has come into the world, it has been a world of violence and horror. These things are not new. They are part of the human condition every bit as much as hope and anticipation and joy.

The Fall is not simply a colourful myth we can weave into carol services and set to beautiful music. It is reality of human nature which allows each one of us to sink to untold depths of depravity and paint a picture which can nevertheless justify our actions. There is a rationale behind every act of moral evil; a way to explain it, make sense of it. We seem to need to be able to do that somehow, in order to comprehend the darkness. So we have heard about revenge for the West honouring a teenage girl who champions education, we have heard of children bearing the punishment for the sins of their fathers in the army, we have even heard some try to suggest that education is un-Islamic.

Pharaoh feared the growing numbers of Israelite slaves and gave orders that the midwives kill all new-born boys. When the midwives could not do this, Pharaoh ordered that new-born boys be drowned in the Nile instead. The words used in Exodus for Pharaoh’s dealings with the Israelites are ‘shrewd’ and ‘ruthless’. Today, in a society where we are protected from reality by a screen, we are used to hearing these words used in a response to a budget report, not as a way of dealing with people. In the second chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, Herod works ‘in secret’ to ‘search for the child and destroy him.’ When his plan is thwarted and the holy family flee into the same Egypt of their ancestors, Herod’s fury leads him to ‘kill all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years or under.’

We read it out, we remember it in the Church’s calendar, but until this week, we have had no idea of the absolute horror of such an act. Turn off the radio, turn your faces away from the front page of the newspaper, change channels on the television. This blood is too much, these teenage faces caught in a moment of terrifying death is too awful for us.

How do we respond to the depths of sin in this world? What words can explain? None, of course. This is the season of watching and waiting. And sometimes what we watch is too much for us. ‘Maranatha’, come Lord. We have taken off our shoes, we have covered our heads, we have rent our clothes. Come into the heart of this evil. Gather into one, in your kingdom, the pain of all these broken lives. Lift up the souls of each child and never let them go.

This is what Christmas is about. The true light, which enlightens everyone is coming into the world. What we may have forgotten is how extreme the task of the Word really is. We know, because we hear it every year, that he is in the world but the world does not know him. This week, we have been reminded how far away from the light we have strayed. The reading which begins our carol services is not a nostalgic nicety, it is the painful and gritty truth. There is no health in us.

Advent is about facing this. In ourselves and in the world around us. We dress the Church is purple because it is a season of penitence. Have mercy on us, miserable sinners. At times, we forget it in the glittery rush for Christmas and in our desire to lift our spirits in a season of grey skies and long nights. At school, we were singing ‘Good King Wenceslas’ in joyful parts as King and page, as soon as December 1st arrived. But for another school, the slaughter of the innocents was just around the corner.

One commentator on the radio shed some light on the subject when she pointed out that this act of murder by the Taliban was a sign of their weakness rather than strength. Like Pharaoh and Herod before them, they are fearful of the power which (in this case) one young girl might have. Luke’s Gospel begins each of his first three chapters with a ruler: King Herod, Emperor Augustus, Emperor Tiberius. Yet we know that in not one of these cases does the power really lie here and we urge the reader to tell us about John the Baptist, Mary, the shepherds.

The horror of the murdered schoolchildren must make us reflect deeply on our own sin, our own culpability in this world, in a way which perhaps the familiarity of the readings and carols have inured us to. It must take us back to the raw power of God as we await the greatest theophany of history and, in humility and awe, we must pray.