KIDDING?

 

We all know the Gospel story of Yeshua calling up a little child, pointing to it, and telling the disciples and passers-by that whoever is not ready to accept the Kingdom (read: kingship) of God like such a child cannot enter there. But what does he mean? Those who have small children love them desperately but in no way and at no time idealise them. They are adorable, selfish, slobby, brattish, quarrelsome and difficult at meals. Yeshua, as a 31-year-old bachelor, might have idealised the child in question; but as one who was Divine as well as very human, it’s doubtful. So, knowing everything about children, how could he say that that is what we should become to be citizens of the Kingdom?

            I think he was thinking first of all about a child’s simplicity. If a little girl is standing by the roadside with her father, waiting to cross, she sticks up her hand without looking, knowing that it will find the big strong secure hand beside her. A small boy who wants something from his parents asks for it. (He may or may not get it, but that doesn’t stop him asking.) Children, in relation to adults they trust, are simple and direct.

            Secondly, children naturally and necessarily experience love as a gift. They know that adults are powerful in ways that they themselves are not, and so they know that love is something they receive. Not necessarily in the form of concrete gifts, but in the form of hugs, comfort, bedtime stories, occasional treats, and Winnie-the-Pooh. If they are fortunate enough to have such love on a daily basis, they take it for granted. One day, if they meet other children who do not have it and are miserable, they will begin not to take it for granted. But meanwhile, they regard it as natural. And return it, naturally. 

            Thirdly, how do they love? First of all, it’s a love of belonging. My Daddy’s mine. My Mummy’s mine. Jackie is my brother. Lucy’s my sister. This is my house. Bingo is my dog. They all belong to me – this I know. What I don’t know, or can’t put into words,  is that I belong to them, and that thus we belong to each other.

 Then, it’s without question. Sometimes they hate Daddy, sometimes they love him, but they don’t doubt him. 

 

            Here, surely, there are lessons for those of us who wondered what the man across from us was talking about when pointing to the little kid. In relation to our Father (who is in heaven), be simple. Be direct. When you receive blessings in whatever form, recognise them as gifts from that large being who loves you. Give him a hug in return. Then go on with your day, and learn to live the  same way with those around you. If it moves, hug it. If it hits you, hit it back smartly and then hug it while you both cry. If you break something, confess and say you’re sorry (and mean it), and He will forgive you. Don’t be clever and doubt him; don’t be clever and try to outsmart him; if you want to be clever, find new ways of loving him and loving your neighbour. Channel your inner 7-year-old.

 

[What, a friend’s voice whispers in my mind, if you have never known this kind of loving happy childhood? If yours was miserable, violent, poor, and abusive? Well, I think that he would tell you a) to realise that you are now loved for real, b) that you can therefore know that trust is possible, and that c) you can therefore tell him all your past miseries, knowing that he will never tell anyone and that he will love you all the more for having told him.]

[And if you are handicapped or sick or in pain, tell him that and listen. You may hear him whisper that he knows what pain is like, he’s been there before you, and that he hopes you’ll remember what he said to the Good Thief on the cross next door. He may not be able to make it all go away, but he will give you without stint, give you strength and endless love.]

HOCUS POCUS

 

            This term for threadbare illusionism was coined by the Reformation to represent the ‘ordinary’ (i.e. non-Latinate) person’s hearing and interpretation of the priest’s words of consecration at the altar: Hoc est corpus meum, ‘This is my body’ – Christ’s words at the Last Supper, instituting the Eucharist. The Roman Catholic belief that at these words the substanceof the wafer was changed from bread into the real body of Christ – ‘transubstantiation’, a word never used by the Church itself – was seen by Reformers as a degeneration from a mystic truth into a form of magic.

            Rather than concentrate, as the Reformers did, upon what happens to what during the Consecration, I want to think for a moment about the Why. Why did Yeshua Meschiach create not merely a solemn moment (it was, after all, a Goodbye event) but at that moment a ceremony of symbolic sacrifice, to be repeated (‘Do this, whenever ye shall drink it, in remembrance of me’)?

            It is a fearful thing to attempt to enter into the workings of the Divine Mind. But between waking and sleep, I like to meditate drowsily on the life, thoughts and actions of Yeshua bar-Yosef before he became the Meshiach in deed as well is in potential. And at such moments I imagine him, with his brother Ya’akov, shaping a scroll-case for a wealthy client, Mr Salamon, in the city of Tsippori (Sepphoris in Greek) about five miles up the hill from Nazareth, and discussing the then-popular topic of the Meshiach and his coming. Unlike Ya’akov, who liked to think of that magical Liberator as a new King David arriving with an army out of the desert, Yeshua imagined an itinerant rabbi, a healer, preaching the Law and the Prophets, but in a different way, a way that stressed inwardness rather than outward observance.

            To the question (asked, either by Ya’akov or by the interested Mr Salomon), ‘But how can an itinerant rabbi walking around Galilee liberate Israel?’ Yeshua, after considerable thought, replies ‘I’m not sure his purpose is to liberate Israel from the Romans. I suspect it is to liberate Jews and Romans both – and Greeks, and others – from sin, and from evil.’ And to the obvious next question, ‘How?’, he replies by citing his study of the prophet Yeshayahu (Isaiah), who shows somebody very like the Meshiach going ‘like a lamb to the slaughter’: being, in other words, the sacrifice that atones for the sins of others.

            Joe Rat, the sainted Joseph Ratzinger, reminds us, in his Jesus of Nazareth, that our culture has largely forgotten the concept of atonement and the need for it. It responds to a very deep element of our human and social nature: an evil committed cannot simply be forgotten as if it never happened. Before we (individuals, or society as a whole) can ‘move on’, it must be atoned for. This not the same as punishment, but something needs to be done to ‘appease the gods’ in the old term, to right the wrong, to restore the balance. Hence the idea of a sacrifice, the surrendering of something precious. 

            Following Yeshayahu, Yeshua explains that the Meshiach can liberate humanity from sin by himself being that sacrifice, that offering. After all, it was always already likely that those who consider themselves the guardians of the Law and the Prophets would not take kindly to one who preached following them differently: they would almost certainly act against him, and given the importance attached to even minor points of observance, they might well go so far as to condemn him to death.

            I imagine him explaining this to Ya’akov and Mr Salomon as, the lovely scroll-case duly installed, they sit down and drink a glass of wine to celebrate. There is a long silence, as the others assimilate this stupendous concept. And then Mr Salomon says, ‘I think I understand, young man. But tell me: such a liberation by sacrifice may wipe out the sin of the whole present generation; but what about the unborn? You can’t efface it pre-emptively for coming generations. Imagine our great-grandchildren. How would the Meshiach’s liberation apply to them?’

            At that moment, Yeshua (we are still a year or two away from Yohanan’s baptism of him) does not yet know the answer to that question. But at some point before that fateful Supper (whether or not it was a Pesach meal) he understood that the best, perhaps the only, way for future men and women to be the beneficiaries of the Meshiach’s sacrifice was to institute a ritual, a ceremony of the utmost solemnity, in which the sacrifice was mystically repeated, in their own time and era. In that way, there would be a genuine Atonement for sin and evil in each generation. And each man and woman taking part in it would be able to feel, in the deeply-moving words of a Victorian hymn, ‘Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven’. In other words, reborn. 

Image: Laure Albin-Guillot, 'Consecration' from Missa Est by Daniel-Rops

THE LOWDOWN

 

I’ve often said that the worst thing, emotionally speaking, humans can do to one another is humiliation. The Nazis knew this, when they set elderly Jewish gentlemen to cleaning sidewalks on their knees with a toothbrush. Schoolchildren often have a diabolically fine sense of it, when they find just the right insult for the victim of their bullying. And at the other end of the scale governments upon occasion do it to whole countries. 

            Humiliation is almost never forgiven, and never forgotten. A woman in her mid-eighties remembers with crystal clarity the day when a grade-school teacher made an example of her for some transgression, in front of the whole class. And thousands of Russians now support their murderous and vengeful Führer because a generation ago, when Berlin’s vile wall came down, they felt their country had been humiliated beyond bearing. 

            The French language has two words for “pride”: orgeuil and fierté. The former is the chief of deadly sins; the latter is the healthy pride one may feel in an achievement of one’s own, of one’s daughter’s, of one’s football team’s or of one’s country’s. English has an additional word of great value, “self-esteem”: the form of psychologically healthy, indeed essential, pride that allows one to hold up one’s head, to walk tall. In humiliation, all these are battered, as one is made to feel worthless and of no account. The word, after all, comes from humilis, low, close to the humus, the earth, the soil, the mud.

            What, if anything, defends us against humiliation? One may take refuge in overweening pride, orgeuil, but that is a bitter draught that corrodes: not for nothing is it the chiefest of all sins. No: there is one defence, and I suspect one only, against this terrible condition. T.S. Eliot expressed it memorably and with perfect accuracy in “Four Quartets”:

 

                                    the only wisdom we can hope to acquire

                                    is the wisdom of humility. Humility is endless. 

 

In what is nearly a form of homeopathic medicine, we find a word with the same root, the root of eartth, of soil: humility. He that is down need fear no fall: he that is low, no pride. Humility does not mean hating or feeling contempt for oneself: humility means the openness and the generosity of looking at most other people with admiration for their unique talents or achievements, and not thinking of oneself as better than they. And it protects one against humiliation, because if that’s the way you feel and someone snide snarls “you’re not much” you quite naturally feel that he has a point, unpleassant though he is about it. It is hard, if not impossible, to humiliate a genuinely humble person. 

            What message is there here at the level of nations? A major reason for the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party was the Treaty of Versailles, which in sealing the Allied victory after the Great War humiliated the German nation as well as bankrupting it. And it has been said that one reason for the present war in Ukraine is the humiliation Putin and many Russians feel was infliucted upon their country at the fall of the Soviet Union. “In victory, magnanimity” prescribed Churchill:  a phrase sometimes remembered but rarely acted upon. 

            It would be a Good Thing if every government’s foreign policy included a constant, recognized, and expressed, contemplation of every other nation’s especial talents and achievements. Thus we, as citizens, might be taught to look upon, say, the Turkish nation with admiration for its long history of Ottoman civilization and governance; to admire the Moroccans for their medieval philosophers; to be grateful to Spain for teaching us a certain kind of pride and courage, and to Portugal for introducing us to the exquisite melancholy of saudade. We might then tell our Russian neighbours on this planet how we admire the depth and intensity of feeling that their particular culture has made known to us, and compliment the Dutch for having almost invented the precious quality of religious tolerance. We might send a memorandum to the Chinese, gravely thanking them for having presented the world with the wisdom of Confucius. And who knows? the climate of international relations might possibly improve to the point where the other kind of climate would actually benefit.

 

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.

PLENI SUNT COELI ET TERRA

“Pleni sunt cœli et terra gloria tua”

”Heaven and earth are full of thy glory”. We know this and have heard it often. Do we ever think about it? I’ve often wondered. Heaven is full of His glory, yes, I can believe that, wherever Heaven actually is. But earth? 34th St in New York? Soho in London? An undistinguished B road in the British or French countryside? Full of His glory?

A few days ago I had a sudden revelation on the subject. I was in hospital, in a clinic in a French provincial city near where I live. For three days I had a room in the cardiology department. And over each 24-hour period, a succession of nurses and care personnel came into my room, took my blood-pressure and temperature, did the cleaning, gave me blood-tests, brought me charmingly inedible salt-free meals, shaved my body hair in embarrassing places, and gave me unfailing smiles, encouragement and gentleness. And as I lay on my rather uncomfortable bed in between snoozes, two great truths came to me. First: medical science is one of God’s languages. If you have ever wondered why we see so few healing miracles these days, you haven’t been looking. From the invention of CoVid vaccines in less than a year to the possibility that a bypass operation might actually work, they are all around us: just not being performed by itinerant rabbis but by hardworking doctors and laboratory specialists. Second: the glory of God is all around us, right down the hall in the nurses’ station. If God is love, His glory surely shines through these young-to-middle-aged, always-tired-but-never-showing-it women of pure care and kindness to patients who range from the stoically quiet to the roaring and screamingly rebellious who bang the walls of their rooms (an old lady next door to me). I left feeling instructed and overwhelmingly grateful. Heaven and earth are full of His glory. Indeed.  

 

A COLD CASE?

 

                   

                                        

This is an attempt to clear up a mystery, a “cold case” from way back. 

 

How can it be that the Gospel accounts of the Crucifixion coincide so remarkably with the references in at least two Psalms (22 and 69)?

 

If we exclude the possibility that the Evangelists were deforming the reality in order to make it conform to the Psalms, and if we also, at least for now, discount the idea of a mystical and prophetic conformity of the Psalms to the later reality, we need to find some probable and realistic explanation. Here is a possibility:

 

The Sanhedrin and its mob bring the captured Yeshua to Pontius, howling for his blood. Pontius is awoken disgracefully early to deal with this. I do not believe that he saw Yeshua alone. A colonial Governor like him would always have staff on hand. And on that staff I postulate one Marcus Manlius ‘Judaicus’, his expert on the local population and its culture. (Even Manlius may have had staff under him.) He might have gone native to the point of having married a Jewish woman. But he is of good family and highly cultured, and indispensable to Pontius (who, historians tell us, is a faily average colonial administrator). 

So, Pontius tells whoever wakes him to call and summon Manlius immediately, to assist at the hearing. 

            We know how the hearing went. Yeshua is his usual taciturn self, replying only with two enigmas: first “the words are yours”, and later “my kingdom (basileia) is not of this world.” However, it is clear to Pontius (and to Manlius, who has not spoken but watched and listened) that this chap has done nothing that should lead Romans to execute him. He curtly says so to the Sanhedrin people, who insist that he is challenging the authority of Cæsar (and imply that they may send a complaint directly to the Emperor if Pontius doesn’t give in). 

            So eventually he goes along. Now for my insertion. I imagine a conversation between Pontius and Manlius, along these lines:

 

P. OK, I guess we’ll have to crucify him, but boy, does it go against the grain. Those bloody Jewish elders! You know, he genuinely made me wonder with his kingdom. I’m wondering if he mightn’t be genuine, and important. And we’re going to string him up?

M. I know what you mean, sir. I felt the same way. 

P. If we do crucify him, isn’t there something we can do to show that we do it reluctantly and that we take him seriously?

M. Well, there might be something. In fact, I can think of two things. First, as we always put up a sign above each cross with the description of the crime, how about in his case putting one up that simply says “Jesus Nazarenus Rex Judæorum”? That will placate those who believe in him and infuriate the elders.

P. Brilliant. And the second?

M. The Jews have a prophet, Yeshayahu, who describes the Meshiach, the great future king and liberator of Israel, not as a conqueror but in terms of a suffering sacrificial lamb, slaughtered for the sins of the people. This Yeshua of ours clearly identifies with that character. Now, they also have a Psalm that closely describes what could be seen as his execution: “they pierced my hands and my feet,” “they cast lots for my clothes” and so forth. These texts are known to all the Jews. How would it be if we conducted the crucifixion precisely as described in their texts?

P. Sounds a bit different.

M. Well, we don’t usually nail them to the cross, but it has been done on occasion. And as for the lads drawing lots for his clothes, we can tell them to do that, and perhaps put something decent on him before we nail him up so it’s worth dicing for.

P. Manlius, I like it. At least we can make them look foolish, even if he has to go.  Carius!

[enter Publius Carius, the Centurion in charge of today’s executions]

C. Sir?

P. This latest prisoner, Bar-Yosef, we’re going to do something different with him. It’s important for the effect. So you get the armourer to make up some 12-inch nails, and instead of tying him to the cross you nail him. Here’s the text for the notice on top; and I need the execution detail to put on a little show once he’s up. [describes the dicing]. And prepare some gall and some sour wine to put up on a stick if he calls for it. I know it sounds odd, but it’s important  for the politics of the thing.

C. Yes, sir. May I say, sir, how sorry I am to have to execute this fellow? He’s a truly good man, who healed my servant a year or so ago, quite miraculously and at a distance.

P. I know, Carius, but the situation is tense enough, and I really cannot let him go. After all, if he is who and what he seems to imply he is, this may not be wholly the end of him. Anyway, get the men together and get this show on the road. I want all three of them up there by noon. 

C. Very good, sir.

 

And Carius gets together the execution platoon with a sergeant. They perform the ritual flogging, though without much enthusiasm, but several of the legionaries have had a few drinks before the distasteful task, and so they decide to have some fun with the prisoner. “Since we have to crucify a king, let’s dress him up as one. Jam some thorn branches on his head; here’s a broomstick for a sceptre, hey, anyone got a nice red cloak?” Private Varus has nicked one from the officers’ cloakroom, so they wrap him in it. Carius passes by and gets very angry. “Sergeant, take those men’s names!” he snaps. But it is in these improvised regalia that he is led to the waiting beams and nails. And it is for the stolen officer’s cloak that the soldiers draw lots . . . . .

 

Of course I have no idea if this is how it happened. But I’m morally sure that Caius Pontius Pilatus had a Manlius on his staff; and something like this makes the parallels at least plausible.  

A VERY QUIET JOY

 

For Christmas, I always put up this exquisite small poem written by a very young English actress, Jill Furse, around 1940. At the outbreak of World War II, Jill married the poet and glass-engraver Laurence Whistler, had a daughter Robin, whom I knew at University, and died soon after giving birth to her son Simon, at the age of 29.

CAROL

 

Beyond this room

Daylight is brief.

Frost with no harm

Burns in white flame

The green holly leaf. 

Cold on the wind’s arm

Is ermine of snow.

 

Child with the sad name,

Your time is come

Quiet as moss.

You journey now

For our belief

Between the rich womb

And the poor cross.

 

Jill Furse (1915-1944)