FACING STONES, CLAWS, AND TEETH

 

Fortunate are they who are persecuted because of righteousness, because theirs is the kingship of the heavens.

Makarioi hoi dediōgmenoi heneken dikaiosunès, hoti autōn estin hè basileia tōn ouranōn.

 

Interestingly, the second part of this sentence is an exact copy of that in the first Beatitude: the kingship of heaven there belonged to the beggars in spirit, here to those who are persecuted for their righteous, or just, behaviour. So either these two share the heavenly reign, or they are the same people; or, conceivably, there is poetry and hyperbole at work here. For later on, in Matthew 14:19, he says of the little children that “the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these”.

 

There is no confusion about the words. Basileia means ‘kingdom’ in the sense of the office, not the geography – so ‘kingship, dominion, reign’. The heaven, or heavens, is/are the seat of divinity. So if this basileia is variously attributed to the poor in sprit, the righteous victims of persecution, and ‘such as’ little children, it is the thought, not the words, that needs to be teased out. Let us try to imagine that it might refer to the same people. Who would they be?

 

We have seen that the ptōchoi tōi pneumati are likely to be those who in their love for the Father tend to be simple, uncomplicated; and in fact the expression that instinctively occurred to me was ‘as children’ who trust their parent without complication. So the first and the third indications of who is referred to here agree.

But what about the persecution?

 

Why are they being persecuted? hekenen dikaiosunès: for the sake of – the translations say ‘righteousness’ but the noun can also mean ‘justice’ of ‘(the things of) the law’. They are being persecuted (the verb can also mean ‘prosecuted’) for the sake of, because of, justice – being just, being righteous. They practice that which, in an earlier Beatitude, people hungered and thirsted for. And for doing so, they are persecuted. By whom? The answer is not given, but there are plenty of examples in the New Testament (and in the Old, for that matter). It might be the religious authorities, the Scribes and Pharisees, the High Priests, who after all were on the way to persecuting Him for the very same reason; it might be the Romans, whose persecution of Christians reached a paroxysm under Diocletian and Galerius (303-311 AD), but who persecuted them for nonconformity to new Romanising edicts: among the Christians themselves, such nonconformity may well have been considered ‘righteous’.

 

So what it amounts to is that the simple, the innocent, the poor in spirit are those who know instinctively how to react to the Father’s love, and who therefore are likely to be victims of the kind of authority that demands obedience over any other behaviour, and punishes those who obey a different lordship: ‘my basileia is not of this world’ says Yeshua to Pilatus. 

 

What we see happening at this point in the Sermon on the Mount is the movement away from the declaration of good fortune to those of a certain nature or those in a certain condition, and toward a similar declaration toward those to whom certain grim realities are happening. Yeshua is modulating toward the beginning, and in future overwhelming, pattern of opposition that He will undergo first, and that awaits His followers afterwards. We see here the seeds of the martyrs’ blessedness.

Image: Execution by wild beasts (Ziten mosaic ca. AD 200)

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.

WHAT KIND OF NEW YEAR?

El Greco, the Blessed Virgin Mary

A new year, for most people, implies resolutions and an attempt to improve one’s life. Yet as a Catholic text I saw this morning said, the beginning of a civic year (the Church’s year, don’t forget, starts with Advent) stands in the sign of the Mother of Christ. It may be useful – and, in a way, a relief – to remember her reaction to the unexpected visit of an archangel: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it unto me according to thy word.” Instead of specific resolutions, with their known limited half-life, we might think of making these words, and this thought, our own for 2018: a year to be spent in the silence of listening, whatever the world’s noise around us.

PARADOX?

Cited by David Brooks on this day of Passover, the 20th-century philosopher Eliyahu Dessler wrote, “the ultimate aim of all our service is to graduate from freedom to compulsion.” As I read this, I thought of the Second Collect in the Anglican service of Morning Prayer: "Oh God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom . . ." The Latin original has cui servire regnare est, literally "to serve whom is to reign". It is, perhaps, in the end the same paradox. Brooks, distantly following Dessler, sees an education into obedience, into the multiple "sweet compulsions . . . of love, friendship, family, citizenship, faith, a profession or a people." The Collect sees only one. Rav Dessler would probably have said that they are ultimately all one. But the Collect goes straight to the heart of obedience: to serve God is perfect freedom. It is the only perfect freedom. Matthew 6:33: "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."

How and why is this? Our local Algerian priest, Fr Jean-Kamel, in his Palm Sunday sermon, said passionately that Holy Week, while it is in one sense an entry into mourning, is also the deepest sounding of joy: "Just think," he said, "de quel amour nous sommes aimés!" Think, ponder, with what love we are loved! This is the meditation of this time, whether one celebrates Passover or Easter. With what love we are loved. And the more deeply one enters into this, the more one wants to seek first the "kingdom of God", which is of course regnum Dei, the reign of God, the dispensation, the all-enveloping presence of that love.

Unlike the Nirvana of Buddhism, this is not something one can reach. Another paradox: you can seek it, but you cannot reach it, attain to it by any form of self-improvement. You can seek it, but the only way you can find it is by realizing that it is seeking you, and opening yourself to it. And when a few of the shutters on your windows start opening, you realize that indeed "all these things" -- the other things, like peace, happiness, love to and from other people -- are being added unto you, bit by blossoming bit. 

The whole thing, you dimly perceive -- because this is a long journey --, is a journey from false freedom, what you thought was freedom when you were 15, to real freedom, which, like the peace that accompanies it, passes all understanding.