PECCATA MUNDI

 

Lamb of God, mosaic in Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna

 

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi,

miserere nobis

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi,

miserere nobis

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi

dona nobis pacem

 

It’s a beautiful text in the liturgy, and the English version was, for 400+ years, “O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world”. As such, many loved it, for the world’s many sins have always needed removal through forgiveness. Then came the (19)Sixties, when everything was felt to need change, and suddenly the Lamb of God was taking away the “sin of the world”. Was, and is, that more, or less? And why the change?

            Well, said modern churchmen, it is based on John 1:29, where John the Baptist says “Behold the Lamb of God, ho airōn tèn hamartian tou kosmou” (who takes away the sin of the world). So we are just correcting the Latin. Of course, the Latin comes from the Vulgate, some manuscripts of which read peccatum (singular) and some peccata. And the liturgy, which adopted the Agnus Dei in the late 7^th century, took the peccata text.

            So the singular is the Gospel version, and thus “correct”. And it makes sense, because the Meshiach does deal with the Sin of the world, original sin, the worm in the apple of every human endeavour. 

            And yet there are those, I know, who feel a real sense of loss with the disappearance of the peccata. (It remains in Latin masses.) Because we are taught to examine our own consciences, not for Sin, but for sins; sins in their depressing plurality are what weighs us down; sins in their multitude are what we confront each Lent. And it is a constant comfort to hear, to be reminded, that they are what He takes away, they are what He forgives and, in His infinite mercy, forgets.

            So while I read St John’s Gospel with undiminished love for that wonderfully poetic text of salvation, I am happy still to recite in the Liturgy “Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi”, in the comforting assurance that even peccata smaller but knottier than the Sin of the World may not escape the notice of the Lamb.

FROM WHAT OPPRESSION?

"And now, Lord, what is my hope : truly my hope is even in thee.

Deliver me from all mine offences . . ." (Psalm 39)

This Psalm text illustrates with startling precision the difference between two concepts of the Meshiach current at the time of Yeshua's youth. The first was the image of the new King David, a David returning at the head of an army to rout the Romans, deliver Israel, and institute a new reign of peace, justice, and devotion to the Lord. This was probably the dominant image, and it corresponds to similar dreams in other nations: in Portugal, for instance, there was long a legend of a return of the good King Sebastian, and in England, of the great magician Merlin. 

In contrast to this, Yeshua delivered a new image of the Meshiach: an itinerant rabbi in a remote Northern provice, walking from town to town or arriving by fishing-boat, preaching in small-town synagogues and showing a miraculous talent for healing the sick. Admirable, of course, but in what way could this be The Meshiach? One can see why a number of educated people found it unlikely. Only those who were deeply permeated by the Scriptures yet at the same time of an open mind would have understood. They would have seen that he had based his idea of the Saviour on an eclectic reading of Zechariah, Ezekiel and especially Isaiah and the Psalms. From such a reading he would have deduced that, in the first place, the Meshiach would be a man of deep humility and simplicity, who would arrive riding on a donkey; that his basileia, his kingdom, his kingship or reign, would not be that of a worldly king but in and of some other dimension; and that any liberation he would bring would not be political or involve the Roman occupation. 

If we ask ourselves what, then, that "liberation" would be, what oppressor it would unseat and in what way it would do so, the above text from Psalm 39 gives us a clue. "Deliver me," the Psalmist begs, not from Rome and its armies; not from the Assyrian kings, not from the bulls of Bashan; no, "deliver me from all mine offences". The tyrant, in other words, is Sin; and the oppressed are not just the Jews but all humankind. And so this mild provincial itinerant with his modest program of teaching and healing turns out to be a giant, with a giant's ambition: to deliver the whole of humanity from the tyranny of Sin.

He can do this by taking the Law, that immense gift of God to His favourite nation, and "fulfilling" it. Fulfilling, in this case, means internalising it. I have written a series of posts on the Sermon on the Mount that show this. Concomitantly, the Temple is no longer central: upon Yeshua's death on the Cross, the Temple veil rips apart. Yeshua himself is the new Temple; and he is the Temple not just for the Jews but for all humanity. He contains in himself the Law and the Temple, and fulfils both in an immensity of divine Love that has become immediately accessible to ordinary humans.

This accessibility is confirmed as permanent by his Resurrection; which means that this Meshiach’s liberation is no longer limited to one moment in history but continues to operate even now, just as the Adversary does. Each of us can and does feel the tyrant’s grim presence in our life; but each of us can also pray the Psalm verse above and thus, in being heard, reach safety. 

 

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.

 

NOT A PARABLE

The present pandemic has taught us some things about viruses, and about infection, that are perhaps not without pertinence to the life of the soul. It gives us, not so much a parable as a controlling metaphor of great power. 

            Let us imagine (this is how great metaphors begin) that humanity suffers from a slow but certain viral pandemic. We nowadays but rarely believe that it began with one man; and yet we have learnt that a whole planet can be halted in its activities because one man ate an undercooked and dubious pangolin. The pandemic of our metaphor we will call SIN. And if we think we know all about it, we are as wrong as we were with the coronavirus. Its varieties; its mutations; its rate and direction of spread; the pattern of its victims; about all these, if we consider it in this new manner and context, we will have learnt a vast new humility. But since this pandemic has been with us for a very long time and is currently in its nth wave, there are things we know about its behaviour and about ways to combat it.

            Of its earliest attacks we know very little, because few notes were kept, and it is possible that a kind of rough herd immunity was attained. There was as yet no treatment, and of course no vaccine; but by trial and error a sort of method was produced that made it possible to avoid or to contain infection. If you acted in certain ways, by yourself or toward others; if you more or less avoided certain types of behaviour; if your group or clan or tribe abstained from some doings; you, or most of you, would probably escape infection.

            Gradually, though, the virus became both more virulent and more specific, and concentrated its spread on one dozen tribes, who formed one people, Israel. But as the crisis increased, research also became more focused, and at one point a treatment was discovered. The treatment was called TRH (LAW in English) and was quickly made available throughout the infection area. As often happens, those making it available considered it to have complete efficacy – as long as it was made mandatory. And so it was. 

            Like all such treatments, it was not perfect. Its main failing was that it was complex and demanding: its efficacy depended on an intricate pattern of actions and avoidances that took little notice of human fallibility and even, on occasion, produced a problematic side-effect known as Pride. But it was a treatment; nobody had a better one; and it was on the whole seen to work. How much at its best it was appreciated can be seen from a famous text that was written in its honour, which is still extant under the title Psalm 119. 

            For a long time, then, that was the situation. The virus continued to circulate; the treatment was applied with varying degrees of strictness and success. The various bodies of Doctors did what they could to refine and popularise the treatment. However, there were always those who were unsatisfied, who thought the authorities were too lax and who argued stridently for stricter application and even for modification of the theoretical base (usually in the direction of something simpler but more profoundly invasive). These last were known as Prophets and, as usual, got most of the publicity while often unsuccessful in achieving their specific aims. 

            And then came the huge breakthrough. At an unlooked-for moment, from an absolutely unexpected corner, a provincial backwater, there appeared a vaccine. Not a treatment: a vaccine. Its coming had been predicted, but with no certainty whatever as to its nature, time or place; people knew what its name was – Meshiach – but nobody knew for sure if, or how, it would work. And when it arrived it surprised everybody. Most – not all – of the treatment specialists didn’t like it: it seemed too simple. The public, however, went for it in a big way. In part, this was because its basics were so simple. Unlike TRH, it involved just one complete immersion and a simple series of formulas and concentrations. (The complete theory and practice was not fully understood till later, but essentially consisted of an absolute love on one side that depended for its efficacy on an absolute transfer of trust and power on the other. The synthesis, the union, of those two elements created a vaccine that at its best blocked the virus completely.) Once one had gone through that, the vaccine began working and could be stimulated and perfected with relative simplicity by the patients themselves. 

            Meshiach was extraordinary. Not only did it attract crowds from the start, it began to spread beyond the borders and was seen, surprisingly, to block similar viruses in other places as well. Mind you, the Establishment of treatment specialists felt threatened by it and opposed it tooth and nail; and a number of people who felt either blithely unthreatened or too sophisticated and/or too suspicious for the necessary transfer of trust formed, then as since, a hard core of incurable anti-vaccinators. And when the Establishment managed to get the original and sole deployer (the son of the creator) of the vaccine assassinated, it seemed that the virus was henceforth and forever out of control. 

            However, it soon appeared that both the vaccine and its originator were indestructible. Both came back, and now in a form that could no longer be suppressed. Moreover, a Standing Meshiach Committee for virus control had been created that had been given the originator’s licence to dispense and apply it everywhere. 

            And since then? you may ask. Since then the virus has not, alas, been suppressed entirely, and in recent centuries the anti-vaccinators have, like many of their anti-reasonable kind, been in the ascendant. But they have not been able to suppress the vaccine, and it remains available just about everywhere, though not, in some hideous and war-torn lands, always as easily as it should be. Like the coronavirus, the SIN-virus is spread by the deniers, the self-righteous, the irresponsible, and the morally foolish. But the Standing Meshiach Committee is still active worldwide, and neither the Xi nor the Trump has been able to stop it. 

P.S. The image is of course not a virus, but a praying mantis looking unusually diabolic. Added as a reminder that the SIN virus, we are told, did not happen by accident. 

 

HOPE AND STRENGTH?

“God is our hope and strength : a very present help in trouble.” (Psalm 46)

If one has faith, this is stirring; and instinctively one feels it’s true. But it it? And if so, how? 

First of all, the Psalm says that God is our, not my, hope and strength. As always, the original referent is the people of Israel; as always, for a Christian, the Psalms’ people of Israel is now the Church. 

As members of the Church, then, we can say that God is our hope. Between faith and charity; between our belief in the Resurrection and our active love for our neighbour, there is hope. Hope is symbolised by an anchor: it is what prevents us from drifting on to a lee shore. Hope is what permits us not to give up. Hope is what sustains us when we see the decline of Christendom, when we are depressed by the oceans of complete indifference to religion around our battered fleet. And our hope is – God. Is it our hope that He will, magically, act? that he will come flying into history on the wings of a divine wind and take over? We may daydream of such a dénouement, but we are pretty sure it will not happen. If our hope is God, it is perhaps rather that He will give us the strength and the stamina to carry on regardless; that He will continue to be the well of life, where we can go to draw the living water of renewed faith and energy.

As members of the Church, again, we can say that God is our strength. He is our strength, the strength of the Church: and the Church, in turn, is the strength of its members. There are times when our belief in this is sorely tested: when the Church, through its leaders, singularly fails to cope with the travails of modern life; when the Church, through some its visible groups or individuals, shows itself foolish or sinful or both. And yet – anyone who has tried to maintain an active and lively faith for a long time on his own knows how much the strength needed for that surpasses his little private store of resources. Within the Church, through the liturgy, through the Eucharist, but also through the sharing of thought and feeling in both theology and devotion – within the Church there is strength in abundance, available to all. 

A help in trouble. That is where it comes to the nub. Trouble is always with us, and may emerge from any shadow at any moment: for the community and/or for the individual. In what way is God our help in trouble? First, as hope: it is our hope in God that gives us strength and stamina. That hope is what is expressed in prayer. When we beg and beseech, we do so hoping. Because we know that, if we do not ask for fishhooks but for the force that will allow us to do His will whatever befalls, He will not let us down. 

Second, as strength. In trouble, God is our strength. Our strength. If we face trouble as a body, as members of the Church, as the Church, we will have the strength needed to survive and overcome trouble. This means unity. This means solidarity: not (only) in the now usual sense of helping the poor, but of knowing how to bury our differences and metaphorically link arms, watch each other’s back, and deal with it, whatever it is. And if God is our strength, that means that we receive it through prayer.

Finally, God is a very present help. Present, here; present, now. Not absent, not future. I often find it hard to remember, to realise, that God is with me here and now. As air is. As radio waves are. As light is. So, in trouble, prayer does not have to be elaborately organised and anticipated. It can be hurried, panted, cried, whispered; and if there are more of us, physically, it can be remembered and recited, or improvised, together. 

If I am in trouble, let me remember that I am not alone, but that I am a member of a body, the Church, the new people of Israel. And let me remember that as such, I have at all times the ear of our heavenly Father, Almighty and everlasting God. Through – per, by means of, by way of, through the mediation of -- Jesus Christ our Lord. 

HELP!

On this Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, and very suitably following the feasts of Michaelmas and of the Guardian Angels, we ask to be protected.

Latin original

CUSTODI, Domine, quæsumus, Ecclesiam tuam propitiatione perpetua; et quia sine te labitur humana mortalitas, tuis semper auxiliis et abstrahatur a noxiis, et ad salutaria dirigatur ; per Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum Amen. 

1549

KEPE we beseche thee, O Lorde, thy Churche with thy perpetuall mercye: and because the frailtie of man without thee, cannot but fall: Kepe us ever by thy helpe, and leade us to al thynges profitable to our salvacion; through Jesus Christe our Lorde. Amen.

1662

Keep, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy Church with thy perpetual mercy : and because the fraily of man without thee cannot but fall, keep us ever by thy help from all things hurtful, and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

One of the rare occasions when the 1662 revisers were more faithful to the Latin original, in restoring its a noxiis. One wonders why Cranmer left it out. He may have thought it self-evident and considered that its omission would lead the sentence more swiftly and elegantly to its conclusion. The Latin is, as usual, a jewel of compact form and shapely rhythm, employing no less than four cursus tardus and ending in a cursus velox (which, in spite of its name, I always suspect was seen by the writers as slower and more dignified).

The Latin original of Cranmer’s “perpetual mercy” is propitiatio, “an appeasing, atonement, propitiation” – which is very odd. One might translate it as “Keep,, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy Church in perpetual atonement”; and one wonders if the perpetual atonement may not belong rather to the church than to its keeping: so that God may be being asked to take care of a Church that lives in perpetual atonement. I suspect, though, that it is rather an unusual medieval use of the word, which makes it rather a peace-offering on God’s behalf, and which thus comes a little closer to Cranmer’s “mercy”.

It is a prayer for protection: custodi, Domine. Take care of us, Lord: protect us. And the rest of the prayer makes specific both the protection and the threat. We ask to be protected from “all things hurtful”, and if Cranmer had used 18^th- or 19^th-century punctuation instead of Tudor, he would have put a second comma after “profitable”. Because what dismays us here is not the threat of things hurtful in general, but the threat of things hurtful to our salvation. 

What are those? What can hurt our salvation? Not the horrors of the world: as St Paul put it in his letter to the Christians in Rome, “I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” No: the only things hurtful to our salvation can come from ourselves. And the Collect understands this: it makes this request because the frailty of man without thee cannot but fall. Not the nastiness of man; not his inherent evil; no, his frailty. He is weak. He wants to do everything right; but on his own, on a daily, hourly basis he falls, he screws it up and scuppers his own salvation. So we ask Him to protect us from doingall things hurtful, and to lead us to doingall things profitable, to our salvation.

Again, a close reading of, and meditation on, a brief prayer shows how rich it is in meaning and how it helps us increase our understanding of ourselves in our relation to our loving but doubtless frequently exasperated Father.

RICH AS A SUNRISE, DEEP AS LIFE - TRINITY 12

I am shamefully late in discussing this magnificent piece of dense and glorious prose, but we still just in the twelfth week after Trinity, so I will allow myself to print his now.

Leonine>Gelasian Sacramentary

OMNIPOTENS sempiterne Deus, qui promptior es semper in audiendo quam nos in orando, et abundantia pietatis tuæ et merita supplicum excedis et vota; Effunde super nos misericordiam tuam; ut dimittas quæ conscientia metuit, et adjicias quod oration no præsumit nisi per merita Mediatoris nostri Jesu Christi Filii tui et Domini nostri. Amen.

1549

ALMIGHTIE and everlastyng God, |which art alwayes more ready to heare then we to praye,| and art wont to geve more than eyther we desyre or deserve; | Powre downe upon us the aboundance of thy mercy; | forgeving us those thynges wherof our conscience is afrayde, | and gevyng unto us that that our prayer dare not presume to aske,| through Jesus Christe our Lorde.

1662

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who art always more ready to hear than we to pray, and art wont to give more than either we desire, or deserve; Pour down upon us the abundance of thy mercy; forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask, but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord. Amen.

Cranmer, as usual, translates closely and beautifully, even finding an English alliteration to reflect the Latin ‘et merita . . .et vota’; but he has difficulty with the compact Latin ‘quæ’, translating it first as ‘those things’ and second ‘that’ – which is awkward with the other ‘that’ that immediately follows (and which we would translate as ‘which’). However, he does get the strength of ‘præsumit’ by adding ‘dare’. Notice that what he leaves out entirely is God’s abundantia pietatis. Perhaps because for Englishmen piety was proper to men but not to God.

The 1662 revisers didn’t like the ‘that that’ either, and expanded it to ‘those good things which’; and expanded  the ‘dare not presume’ to the original's statement about our unworthiness and its palliation through the merits and mediation of Jesus. Nevertheless, as so often, I prefer Cranmer’s version, which (given the prose rhythms in the Latin) may reflect an earlier form of the original.. 

This is a favourite collect, and rightly so. People react to the parallelisms of rhythm and alliteration, and these bring us to consider the content. It is both joyful and humbling to know that our Father is readier to listen than we are to pray; and the same is true of his habit (the ‘wont’) of giving us not only more than we deserve but more than we thought we wanted! 

The psychology is profound all through. In the first place, we are reminded that even taking prayer in the very restricted sense of asking, we simply do not pray enough. As Wordsworth said, the world is too much with us: late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. We ask too much of the world – prosperity, friendship, happiness – and not enough of God. Meanwhile, He is always ready to hear. One does not have to make an appointment, say on Sunday morning: He is always there, waiting, loving, listening. 

Secondly, God is “wont” – it is His custom, His habit – to give us not only more than we deserve, but more even that we desire. That’s a two-edged statement: it reminds me of the old saying that the only thing worse than not getting what you wished for is getting it. So in one sense, God’s giving us more than we desire may appear at first to be unwelcome: the lesson is that we have to learn to desire what, and how much, He gives us. In Huck Finn’s phrase, He doesn’t give us fishhooks, even though we asked for them.  He gives us something much bigger that we didn’t hink of asking for, and so magnificent that we couldn’t remotely deserve it. 

Now, since we are here in a prayer, what are we asking for now? We ask Him to pour down upon us– abundantly, streamingly, like a downpour – and what? His mercy. Such a wonderful word, mercy. It is – not the opposite but the pendant of justice, without which justice is cold and brutal. And since we are sinners who consistently fuck up in life and in our relation to God and man, mercy is what we desperately need: more mercy than even we think we need, and certainly more mercy than we, in justice, deserve. 

And if God does this – if we get the mercy we ask for – what will that accomplish? What is the goal of our prayer? First, to be forgiven for “those things whereof our conscience is afraid”. Oh yes, we have a conscience, and it talks to us; and what it so authoritatively says is all too often not pretty. It makes us afraid – afraid of justice: unlike the Psalmist, we do not long for justice because we know all too well where it would leave us. We long for mercy.

And since we know all too well who and what we are, there are so many Divine gifts – Divine love, mercy, the beauty of holiness, the joy of heaven – that we “dare not presume to ask”. Only after the downpour of mercy, after the forgiveness, can we ask them. And so this wonderful Collect, this “treasure-chest” as Barbee and Zahl call it, comes full circle, and in its end is its beginning. 


Frederick Barbee and Paul Zahl, The Collects of Thomas Cranmer (Eerdmans, 2007)

THE JOY OF --- WHAT?

In the readings and general exhortations I encounter in my daily Prions en Eglise, there is constant mention of joy. “Shout and dance for joy, people of God!” “Quiver for joy!” For those of us living outside certain evangelical movements and outside Southern US black churches, this is a curious injunction. For Anglicans/Episcopalians, it is virtually unheard-of, the sort of thing to make us seriously uncomfortable. Why?

Well, we are not a culture given to loud displays of emotion, first of all. Secondly, when we assemble and meet together, we tend to do so either as a quiet, well-behaved group of friends and neighbours, with smiles and murmured greetings, or as individuals in search of reverence, silence, beauty in music and in ritual, and prayer. We may have joy in our hearts, but we remember Jesus’ injunction not to show off while performing our religious duties. 

There is another reason, I suspect. We do not glow with joy because we aren’t sure what we are supposed to feel so rapturous about. When we reach down inside us for the roots of our faith, we will probably come up with the Resurrection (cf 1 Cor. 15:14); but from there to quivering with joy on this Tuesday in June the way is not, for most of us, entirely clear. We are happy that Yeshua rose from the dead, for His sake; we know that it means something important for all Christians, and perhaps for others beyond; but let’s face it, the world seems in at least as big as mess as at any other time since, so shout and dance for joy? Is that a joke? Grim fortitude, in faith, hope and charity as among castaways on a large raft in mid-ocean might seem more appropriate.

The Psalmist, and St Paul, saw it differently. Yeshua Meshiach (“Jesus the Anointed”), in his sacrifice, death and resurrection, saved Israel and by (crucial) extension saved humanity. Saved from what? Saved from the consequences of our unbelief and our non-acceptance of God’s love for us. Not the proximate consequences, usually: shit keeps happening, the planet is in danger, and the bad guys often win. But from the ultimate consequences: from the destruction of our immortal souls, from the hell that awaits all those who have made themselves incapable of living eternally near the radiant source of all love. 

If that does not at least inwardly fill us with a certain trembling and incredulous happiness, it may be because we have trouble envisaging what we have been saved from. We need, perhaps, to pay more attention to Shaitan. Not just as an active shooter, drawing a bead on us at all times and in all places, but also as a terrifying example. He is what we will become like if we refuse the gift. Grim and greedy; eaten up with jealousy; racked with the rage and pain that contemplating beauty and love causes us. Incapable of any pleasure not guilty or corrupt. And yes, it lies in wait for all of us, not least because there is Someone always ready to convince us how much braver and more fun it is to walk the edge of the abyss, and even to dive in.

Nobody alive and breathing is beyond being saved from this, unless he refuses to. As a priest I heard the other day said, that is why the Sin against the Holy Spirit is the only one that cannot be forgiven: because it is the Spirit that saves us, that pulls us out of the deep well we fell into, that rescues us by the skin of our teeth. Refusing Him means you’ve left no chink open to be forgiven through, no pulley for the rope. So here we are, wobbling, doubting, lurching, ridiculous: but saved. Saved. SAVED.

In the light of that, a certain joy is in order. Pour the martinis. Light the candles. Sing a silly song. Dance a bit. Yup. Joy. Remember?

OCTOBER BEAUTY

The jeweller: Thomas Cranmer

On the Twenty-First Sunday after Trinity, I often put up a praise to that day’s Collect, the most perfect in the whole Book of Common Prayer. The Collects, for those who are not familiar with the term, are the prayers that in Anglican Matins and Evensong come after the Creed and some responses, and conclude the Office; in the current Roman Catholic Mass, they correspond to the prayer that follows the Absolution and introduces the readings. A Collect is a prayer said, usually, by the priest on behalf of the congregation, and from very early days on Collects were highly developed in form. A typical Collect has five sections: Invocation, Acknowledgement, Petition, Aspiration and Pleading. Moreover, the Latin Collects from the early Sacramentaries were very structured in their sentence rhythms and forms; and this was recognised and adopted by Thomas Cranmer, the author of the first Book of Common Prayer and of the Collects that survive from that 1549 text to this day.

Of all the BCP’s marvellous Collects, the finest is that for Trinity 21:

Grant, we beseech thee, merciful Lord, to thy faithful people pardon and peace; that they may be cleansed from all their sins, and serve thee with a quiet mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

This is as beautifully crafted as a sonnet. Observe:

Gránt, we beséech thee,

Mérciful Lórd,

To thy fáithful péople

Párdon and péace;

That they may be cléansed from áll their síns

And sérve thee with a qúiet mínd.

First, four two-stress phrases give the Invocation (‘Lord’), the Acknowledgement (‘merciful’), and the Petition (‘grant pardon and peace’). Then each of the two things asked for is elaborated (in the Aspiration) in a three-stress phrase: pardon results in their being cleansed from all their sins, and peace, in their being able to serve God with a quiet mind. Finally, the usual Pleading: per Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum, ‘through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ The stress-patterns form perhaps the greatest beauty; but the vocabulary also plays, with the two objects of the petition being alliterative: that and their order relates them and makes it clear that the one must precede the other. There can be no peace without pardon. 

The 1662 Book of Common Prayer – in England still the BCP stipulates that, when Matins or Evensong is said by lay people, this prayer replaces the Absolution; thus recognising its particular power, compact riches, and beauty. We are sometimes told that ‘O Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness’ (Psalm 96:9) should never mentally be inverted to ‘the holiness of beauty’; but it is perhaps not forbidden to suggest that liturgical texts, images, music and rituals of seriously great comeliness are the result of some kind of true blessing or holiness in their creators. Trinity 21 is an annual jewel in the crown of October.

THAT LITTLE WORD AGAIN

In my previous post I looked at the prayer that God’s will may be done on earth AS it is in Heaven; today we might glance at the prayer that we may be forgiven AS we forgive others.

It seems, at first, much simpler than the previous AS:  a simple case of do as you would be done by. If you want to be forgiven, the least you can do is do some forgiving yourself. Let’s start with what’s to be forgiven. In all Gospels except Luke it is “debts”;  but many scholars think that the word Jesus used was the Aramaic hoba, which means both debt and sin. If this sounds odd, remember that in both Dutch and German the same word, schuld, is used for a monetary debt and to mean ‘guilt’; and in Dutch, therefore, the relevant line of the Lord’s prayer says: forgive us our schuld as we forgive our schuldenaren – literally our debtors, but in fact those who have schuld toward us. And let’s remember also that only a little over a century ago debt was considered so serious that an inability to pay it sent you to gaol. (Those who borrow from the Mafia are even to this day reminded forcefully of the need to pay both debt and vig.)

Are we God’s debtors? It seems odd: if God is love, and our relation to him is one of love, is it decent to express that in terms of debt? In the Old Testament, God put it very clearly to Israel: if you (plural: y’all) will love and honour me and keep my commandments, you will be my people and I will be your God. If you will not, I will turn my back on you and nasty things will probably happen to you. So it’s in one sense a transaction; and a transaction, agreed to by both sides, creates a debt. If this sounds one-sided, you can still find traces of the other side in the Psalms, when the Psalmist cries “Up, Lord, and do something!” And in Judaism arguing, even indignantly, with God is not considered outrageous.

With the coming of Christ there is a subtle change. It is no longer merely a matter of keeping commandments, but of a relation of profound intimacy with God: with the Father, in the Son, through the Holy Spirit. This is still simple, but where keeping commandments is simple on this side of complexity, the new relationship is simple far, far beyond complexity.

So what does that do to debt and schuld? It transforms it, or is meant to. Just as between great lovers the very thought of “owing” is inconceivable, so in the new relation of love between God and the soul it is (meant to be) inconceivable. Right, says God: but if you accept this, and you also accept that “what you have done to the least of these, you have done to me”, then the thought of “owing” between you and your brother must also become inconceivable.

But. But we still live in a sublunar and greebly world. So in the meantime, in the mean time – the time in the middle between promise and Parousia, the mean and ungenerous time of Auden’s “low and dishonest decade” --, there is forgiveness. It is the way-station to inconceivability. And we learn the HOW of forgiving by looking at the way we hope God will forgive us. Not a mean forgiving, that will go on reminding the forgiven of their nasties and my virtue; not a forgiving accompanied by stern lectures, demanding promises never to do it again; no, joyful forgiving with open arms, with a clean soft garment and a feast of rich veal from the fatted calf.

This takes a bit of learning. Most of the time we don’t even pray for our enemies, let alone forgive them. When did you last hear prayers in church for ISIS and its members? Forgiving is hard; forgiving and forgetting even harder. But the joy it brings is so enormous that the learning is worth every effort. Another of the Joys of Lent? 

Image: Rembrandt van Rijn, "The Return of the Prodigal Son"