BEYOND WEB AND WEBB

In a continuation of my Outline for a Personal Catechism (6 July 2021), this is an attempt to understand theological cosmology in Christian terms, continuing the concepts and phenomena of the Ascension. Given the current knowledge of the physical universe, with its thousands of trillions of stars and planets, a cosmological conception of Heaven is not really viable. It seems more reasonable to postulate the existence of another dimension to which we may apply the Biblical term “heaven” and which is the dwelling of the Deity. In this dimension neither time as we know it nor space as we know it exist. Its equivalent of “time” is what we know as “eternity”. It may well have an equivalent of “space”-- which is very faintly suggested by expressions such as “sitteth on the right hand of God” and “in my Father’s house are many mansions”--, but we do not know it. This dimension, “Heaven”, is not accessible to our five senses: it cannot be seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted. It is accessible through prayer (and perhaps through meditation). Its cartographers are the systematic theologians; its explorers are the mystics. Apart from the Trinity (and perhaps the Blessed Virgin Mary), its inhabitants are of several kinds: angels, saints, and the faithful departed.

            The shape of the inhabitants is not readily imaginable. The likelihood of angels’ resembling adult humans with wings is small. And we know little of the “glorious body”  that is promised to the faithful for their future: even the perfectly tangible body Jesus assumed between His Resurrection and His Ascension was a temporary affair. (And note that He was not physically recognisable even to his intimate followers.) The heavenly body of the saints and faithful departed may or may not resemble what they inhabited on earth: we have no way of knowing. Given the diversity of fates that their earthly bodies met, a formal reconstruction of decayed matter seems improbable. On the other hand, we are told that they are very much their individual selves, and recognisable by loved ones. Again, this suggests a different dimension with completely different forms of life, yet with a fundamental connection to humanity.

            All Biblical scholarship and theology tells us that “eternal life” is not simply life prolonged to temporal infinity. Some explanations lead me to think that the authors are trying to prepare us for a future without life after death; yet Jesus leads us to believe otherwise --  see his words ot the Good Thief. We may perhaps imagine that “eternal life” is life in that dimension called Heaven, where there is no time. 

            When the resurrected Jesus, after forty days on earth with his friends, is “taken up into heaven” in front of their eyes, what may we imagine actually happened? I suspect that, as their conception of Heaven was spatial, His sudden disppearance was seen by their eyes as having an aspect of “up-ness”, of a rising diagonal or even a vertical. In fact, we may assume, it was a move outward, or inward, (back) to that other dimension we call Heaven, where he came “home” to his Father; a dimension not accessible to our, or the disciples’, eyesight.

 

There are other words that give us earthlings trouble when we try to understand or visualise them. “Glory” is one. If we translate it as the honour or fame that heroes or great athletes reap, its theological meanings are odd and unlikely. It is perhaps better approached by way of John Keats’s vision of Madeline in “The Eve of St Agnes”: “Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,/ And on her silver cross soft amethyst,/ And on her hair a glory, like a saint”. The glory here is a sort of halo, a glow that surrounds her head. If we can understand such a glow as not outwardly surrounding but emanating from an inwardness, then at least the terrestrial part of “heaven and earth are full of thy glory” becomes clearer. And it is thus perhaps that we can detect one of the connecting spaces or routes between our earth and that other dimension, “Heaven”.

            Another such word is”peace”. To us it is usually either the absence of war or a condition of inner quiet and comfort. But that makes its use in the Gospels distinctly peculiar. When Jesus says “Peace I leave unto you, my peace I give unto you”; and when he tells the apostles upon entering a house to say “peace be upon this house” but if they are not received then that peace will come back to them; we are left wondering. Part of the answer lies in the Hebrew word shalom, which has a much wider meaning than our “peace”: it describes a kind of universal, even cosmic, harmony, where everyone and everything is in their proper place and fulfilling their proper function, in a joyful co-operation. And Jesus seems to use it in an almost local way, as if it is a something that can be bestowed -- or taken back. 

 

Both “glory” and “peace”, then, are words that belong to our languages here on Earth, but which have a dusting of Heaven still upon and within them. And as such they help us to add to our very partial understanding of that dimension, I should almost say, that parallel universe. In that dimension – we’re tempted to call it a place or a space, because it’s hard to imagine a dimension without space as we know it – in that dimension glory and peace are part of the atmosphere the inhabitants breathe. 

            It may  be the same with all the Biblical expressions of “joy” and “exultation” which look so odd in our fallen and embattled world. In the dimension we may call Heaven it is possible that they are part of the atmosphere, part of the weather. 

            The more we go into this territory of thought, the more we learn about our world, our life, and their relation to the “land”, the dimension, of which we are supposedly also the autochthonous citizens. And when we complain morosely that “heaven and earth are full of thy glory” seems like a cruel joke in the presence of the Russian army and drowning migrants, what we should understand is perhaps that the glory is there -- but too often ignored and trampled underfoot by the human race in all its brutish and brutal sinfulness, in its uncaring search for diversion and distraction, and in its passion for domination, prohibition and the bitter ashes of false victory.

 

Image: "Heaven and earth are full of thy glory"

 

FILLING IT FULL

 

The verb “fulfil” is interesting. It means “to complete” something, to add a missing element and thus to make something whole. In some ways it is a cousin to the verb “to perfect”. One can fulfil an expectation; one can fulfil a promise; one can fulfil a prophecy.

 

“I have not come to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfil them.” (Mt 5:17)

 

Yeshua’s interpretation of the Meshiach’s task is one of inwardness. The Law gave people (individuals and the community both) ten commandments and 613 regulations to observe, in order to present themselves worthily before God. Obviously, this required much study and practice: as Psalm 19 says, “Who can tell how oft he offendeth? O cleanse thou me from my secret faults.”  

            Yeshua, steeped in the Psalms and in the Prophets, notably Isaiah, seems to have pondered this and concluded that another way was possible. After all, what was the Law for? It existed to bring God and man together again, to re-bind (re-ligare) their bond. Might there not be a way to do this more purely as well as more expeditiously? Not by abolishing and replacing the Law: that would be blasphemous, as it had been given by God through Moses. On the other hand, achieving the Law’s aim more directly would, as it were, “fulfil” it, accomplish its purpose more simply as well as more purely. After all, it is possible to live a perfectly kosher life respecting the commandments and still have a mind full of resentment. 

            So he reduced the ten commandments to two: thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all they heart and all thy soul and all thy mind and all thy strength, and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. I have written previously (1 September 2022) about the seeming oddity of joining the injunction of ‘thou shalt’ with the verb ‘love’; here what is important is that if you live those two forms of love completely and wholeheartedly, none of the other commandments are relevant. And this is all the more true concerning the 613 rules: if you live the second commandment fully enough to enable you to live the first, and live the first completely, then in that love between you and God the 613 rules are completely fulfilled.

            Ah, says Rabbi Neusner[1], but you are forgetting Shabbat. That is a commandment not so much for the individual but for the community, for the community of the people of Israel. However much you, as an individual, love your Father in Heaven, that does not exempt you from observing Shabbat with your family, your clan, your town. 

            And just as that was for Neusner the point where, regretfully, he parted company with Yeshua, so it is the point where the followers of Yeshua Meshiach part company with the Rabbi. Because now we come up against a further huge step in the evolution of the Meshiach. Yeshua, the man from Nazareth, had interpreted the Meshiach’s task as fulfilling the Law by creating a direct route from the human heart to God. Now, however, he has become, he is, that Meshiach, and as such he gradually goes much further. 

            First of all, he (not man in general, but he) is “Lord of the Sabbath”. Once again, he looks for the purpose: what is the observance of the Sabbath for? And he concludes that it exists to bring the people closer to their God. Shabbat is made for man: not man for Shabbat. Meaning: man is made to be with God; if there is a better, more direct, more inward (note: not easier!) way for man to come closer to God on the special day of the week than observing rules about eating wheat tops or activating a light switch, then man should choose that. 

            Next: he has always read Isaiah; now he is coming to see that Isaiah’s relevance is complete and direct: the Suffering Servant is not the People of Israel but the Anointed One himself. It is he who will take upon him the sin of the world; it is he who, alone, will face the measureless evil that is its consequence; it is he who will be at the same time the High Priest and the High Priest’s sacrificial lamb; and on the third day, he rose again from the dead. 

            So, as he has taught men to “fulfil” the Law, he himself “fulfils” the Scriptures – he gives them, retrospectively if not retroactively, their ultimate meaning. 

---

[1] Jacob Neusner, A Rabbi Talks With Jesus, Doubleday 1993.

A SECRET IMMENSITY

“Your life is hid with Christ in God.” (Colossians 3:3)

 

This saying is of measureless profundity. We live several lives simultaneously. Our daily life with its tasks and pleasures and frustrations and pains; our emotional life with its joys and griefs; our intellectual life with its searches and discoveries; and our religious life, our life as a child of God. This last is too often neglected as it does not, like daily life, obtrude and trip us up. But it is our absolute life, the breath of ultimate life, love, sin and death. And as we grow, in age but also in the questioning of our place in the scheme of things, it is of this life that the importance swells and increases. And it is there that one day we confront this saying, telling us that our life is hid with Christ in God. 

            At first sight it seems absolutely mysterious and incomprehensible. So, to understand it, let us turn to that Doctor Ecclesiæ, Josef Ratzinger, alias Benedict XVI. In the second volume of his Jesus of Nazareth, he explains the necessity and the immensity of Jesus’ Passion and of the Cross. In the Cross, he says, God opens himself completely to man, makes himself definitively accessible in an act of ultimate love. And this complete and utter gift that took place once, in real historical time and in a real geographical place, is still taking place: it is repeated in each Mass and Communion. 

            This is stupendous and very nearly beyond understanding, if we take it seriously and try to get our mind and soul around it. It explains that other saying, “I am with you till the end of time” (Matthew 28:20). And if we keep it in mind when we reread that saying in Colossians, we realise that this truth is true in both directions: he is with us till the end of time, but we are also with him. 

            After the interim period of his appearances following the Resurrection, he leaves the disciples, and is ‘taken up to Heaven’ in the cloud that always signals the presence of the Deity. He rejoins the Father, and sends the Holy Spirit; but he is still with them, with us, till the end of time. What Paul tells us in the letter to the Colossians is that through the gift of the Meshiach, and through the action of the Holy Spirit, we are united to Him even unto his presence in the Trinity. This, I think, is what it means that our life is hid with Christ in God. If we entrust ourselves completely to him, he draws us up to him within the Trinity, within the presence of God. And that life, then, is our ‘eternal life’, as Ratzinger explains it: a life no longer subject to time and death.

            The more you ponder this in meditation, the more immense and moving it becomes. It turns everything around. That touching verse, ‘If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him’ (John 14) now glows in both directions: for we are now also invited to make our home with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. 

            Finally, our life is hid – it is in the worldly sense a secret life, a hidden life. Although it may shine through our eyes, the world of humdrumlies mostly will not recognise it or comprehend it. So we should probably be ready at least to try to explain it, however difficult that may be. But in the meantime, let us taste and savour fully the mystery and the glory that is offered to us.

Image: the Holy Trinity, by Andrei Rublev (c. 1360 - c. 1430)

 

 

WALKING THROUGH WALLS

                 

 This is a post about serious weirdness, uncanniness, Unheimlichkeit, and oddity. The time between the Resurrection and the Ascension is deeply strange. Mary Magdalen sees Him and thinks he is the gardener. The gathered disciples see him suddenly among them. The fishermen see him eating grilled fish on the beach, and do not recognise him. Cleophas and his friend walk and talk with him for an entire long afternoon, and do not recognise him until he breaks the bread. He walks through walls and yet has scars that can be touched. And then, after giving them some final instructions, he is whooshed up into a cloud.            

The period, unsurprisingly, is forty days long: like that which divided his baptism from the start of his ministry. So in fact his active human life as Meshiach is bordered by two liminal periods of “forty days”. The first is a period of preparation, in  which he has to clear himself of the three temptations that (necessarily?) accompany the condition of being both human and divinely powerful: gratifying simple needs, performing miracles for no other reason than to show off, and bringing the Devil into one’s mission for the sake of completeness. 

The second period has two meanings. In the first place it is a rounding-off of his earthly mission. He has now conquered the world, the flesh (death), and the Devil, and completes the job by making sure that at least the core group of his supporters has ocular and tangible proof that he has in fact risen from the dead. Secondly, like the desert, it is also a time of preparation: preparation for his definitive return to the Father, keeping his humanity but henceforth only as a theological principle and attribute, which allows him, while “in Heaven”, still to be available to earthly humans’ prayers and entreaties.

            All this said, his appearances are still deeply strange. Only Rembrandt, among painters, tried to represent this, in his Munich canvas of the Resurrected Christ – who is not only uncanny but completely different from his representations of the living Yeshua (see above). The disciples must have been utterly disconcerted. But he took the kindest care to reassure them, inviting Thomas to touch his scars, asking them for something to eat, and later breakfasting with them on fish grilled over a small fire of thorn-branches. The point, of course, was not only to reassure them that he was really he and not a ghost, but also to offer proof of the Resurrection.

            And what about that cloud? What about the whoosh? Either it did or it didn’t happen. If it did happen, does it tell us something (as the disciples probably thought) about the location of Heaven? Since to them the earth was probably flat, a Heaven “up there” was not unreasonable; but for us? Where is the Father, and where, seated at his right hand, is the Son? Where are all those angels? We now have increasingly good, if still very approximate, mappings of the Universe. So in all that, where is Heaven? My own dim sense is that is exists in another, parallel, dimension, invisible to our telescopes yet very occasionally glimpsed by mystics. This in no way denies the reality of its existence, or suggests that it exists only “in the mind”. If, as some scientists consider, we can realistically imagine a plurality of parallel universes, a multiverse, then a dimension where Heaven, Paradise, really exists is not remotely unlikely. 

Images: 1) Rembrandt, "Christ Resurrected (Ecce Homo); 2) Rembrandt, "Jesus"; 3) Gustave Doré, "Paradiso: Canto 31 (Dante)"  

A QUIET SPACE

 

Sometimes, the much-maligned media can bring one something quietly and deeply good. On the first Sunday in Lent, the televised Mass came from a community I had never heard of: the Cenacolo in Lourdes. The Cenacolo community was created in Turin, Italy in 1983 by a nun, Sister Elvira, who wanted to help young drug addicts; it was recognised  by the Vatican in 2015, and there are now 60 residential communities in a number of countries, five of them in France. 

            It was deeply moving. There were about 20 young men and three or four young women, all clearly very much involved, and all with faces marked by grave experience. The priest condicting the mass was Italian, the preacher was a French Franciscan prison chaplain. He explained to us viewers the way Cenacolo works: when a new person arrives, (s)he is greeted with “Enfin, te voilà!” (At last – here you are!) Everything is done to make them instantly welcome. The purpose, and the effect, of their stay is to give them a quiet space of support in which they can rebuild themselves.

            Thinking about it afterwards, it occurred to me that the Cenacolo can be a valuable image for the experience of Lent. After all, most of us are dependent on a number of things or behaviours that do not help, or actively hinder, our relationship with God. If we imagine Lent, not so much as a breast-beating time of penitence but rather as a time/space where God welcomes us with “There you are -- at last!” and gives us 46 days of quiet and reflection to rebuild ourselves, we can see this moment – which always happens, with potential irony, in the beauty and enchantment of spring – as a kindness, as a blessing, as an expression of the love with which we are loved. 

THE NAMELESS, THEN AND NOW

 

Reading, and listening to, the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches’ exhortations to the faithful in recent years, I have been struck by an anomaly, if not a contradiction. On the one hand one sees, around one in ‘live’ church or on one’s screen in a service attended online or on television, fairly large crowds of faithful parishioners. They are mostly middle-aged or older, but in many churches there are also families with parents in their thirties and forties, and children from babyhood to pre-adolescence. They look interested, fairly reverent, and quite awake: it is rare nowadays to see someone nodding off during a sermon, perhaps because sermons are now very short. They are people with busy lives who have taken the time to attend Mass or Evensong, and who clearly find there they spiritual food they need to resume life’s daily challenges. 

On the other hand there are in many cases (not all) the clergy, who appear not only to be addressing quite a different audience but to have quite a diffferent goal in mind. To read or hear them, one could easily imagine the pews filled with plump, self-satisfied burghers, Philistines to a man or woman, and thinking only of the Sunday lunch or dinner awaiting them after the blessing. And what are they hearing, these ghostly rentiers? To what are they being called? To wake up to constant challenge, to be aware that they must at all costs leave their comfort-zone, to go out and evangelise the world around them, to realise that their baptism has made them priests (but without powers or authority), kings (but without a realm) and prophets: in other words, to be disciples, all of them. 

Curiously, few or none of the people I know appear to sense the discrepancy here. The folks in the pews hear the message respectfully, and then go out and fight their daily battles; the clergy go back to their overburdened weekday lives; and no one seems to be bothered by the anomaly.

And yet, the question that sits like an invisible elephant in the room is: what is the ordinary Christian believer supposed to be and to do? What if we are not all meant to be disciples? After all, the Meshiach only had twelve (and one of them was a black sheep), and He sent out seventy. What about the others? The faces that haunt me in the pages of the Gospels are, first, those of the people He healed. The formerly blind man; the formerly lame man; the woman with the issue of blood; the father of the demon-haunted epileptic boy. Then, the faces of those who had been part of the crowd listening to His teaching. Those – not very many – who had been near and overheard Him addressing His disciples in what we call the Sermon on the Mount. Those – many more – who had heard His teaching in the synagogues around the Sea of Galilee. Those – vastly more – who had been fed by the disciples after hearing Him teach at the end of the day near the Jordan. 

Of the people He had healed, most were told to keep quiet about it. (Some theologians think that this was so that it would not be misunderstood.) Only the man from whom the demons had come out (Luke 8:35), and who had begged Jesus to let him stay with him (presumablly as a disciple) was told instead to go home ‘and tell people what great things God has done for you.’ (Rieu 140) One assumes that the others, in spite of His injunction, also told friends and neighbours; but that, in their new and healed form, they went on with their lives. 

Those who had heard Him teach, whether around the disciples on the Mount or in the Galilean synagogues, would have tried to apply what they had learned in their lives – lives that were certainly changed, whether minutely or hugely. And those who were fed in the large crowd (one does suspect that 4,000 or 5,000 was an exaggeration, especially without a microphone) would remember not only His teaching of that day but the miraculous meal or snack. And then? They might have gone home with the teachings still in their heads, and trying to apply those; or they might have mainly remembered the bread and the fish and been impressed by the miracle-worker.

The point I am trying to make is that most people who come to church have at some point been touched by His teaching and (thus, or also) by His presence. They come because there they feel healed and restored, because there they receive waybread for life’s journey, which will allow them to go home and try to apply the teachings to their daily battles. They are thus like all those nameless people in the Gospels: they believe, but pray to the Lord to help their unbelief. And if the corners of their difficult days hold some small comfort-zones, who is to blame them?

To enjoin every member of a city our country congregation to become a disciple, I contend, is unfair and unkind. As a Catholic Bible scholar recently explained, there are indeed those who are called to be disciples: to give up everything and follow Him. But the many other believers, good people with doubts but who love God and their church, should be spared the guilt that such a demand, which they cannot meet, lays upon them. As an old Dutch lady said to Noel Coward, ‘One should never ask more of people than they are able to give.’ God may sometimes ask, and enable, us to perform miracles far beyond what we thought was our ability; but I dare to think that old Mrs Hubrecht’s rule is, on the whole, His also.   

TRAINING RUN

After his baptism by his cousin – who was more than surprised to seee him in the lineup – he needs time to move out of his old life and into a new one. So he does a deal with cousin Yochanan to let him use his cave for a month or two, and moves in. Did ‘fasting’ mean nothing except water? Bread and water? Locusts and wild honey? In any case, he clearly spends his forty days mainly praying. This is his training-period before moving into full-scale messiahhood. I’m not sure we can really imagine what ‘praying ‘ means in this context. Talking to his father (the coach), certainly. Disciplining himself like an athlete, probably. Practicing? Practicing what? Preaching? Healing? For the preaching side of his future activity, he may well have been working out the details of the new theology. This would involve recall of the key Scriptures he must have by now known almost by heart – Pentateuch, Isaiah, Psalms, maybe Ezekiel, ?Daniel --, the outlines of current thinking on the subject of the Meshiach and what would be his innovations. 

At some point or points during this period come the confrontations with the Tempter. Whatever one thinks about the personal exchanges, in his situation facing three key temptations, and these three in particular, was likely and perhaps inevitable. What were they? One: hunger. Fasting is not easy, especially a prolonged fast for one who would normally only do small ritual ones. But the point here wasn’t hunger it was power. You’re the Meshiach now, dude: you can do stuff. Why not a quick sandwich to tide you over? Not a sin, just a grin. Silly power; but hey, you’re human. And your tummy is kissing your backbone.

We know the answer. (Oh, by the way: how do we know the answer? Or, indeed, the question? Only answer, if it ain’t invented: he told one or more of the disciples, at some point.) Answer: Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God. Humourless, but deep. Remember Nelson? Don’t need a cloak, my love for my country keeps me warm. Basic answer: willpower, arsehole. But on top of that: God’s Word is food, and that is not a metaphor. 

Second temptation. (We don’t know the intervals.) Power. More silly power. Come on, lighten up, have some fun. Chuck yourself off this Temple roof, go on. Remember Psalm 91. The angel brigade is waiting with a net. It doesn’t give you anything, or produce anything, but it’d be fun, no? Wheeeeeeeee! Bungy-jumping sans the bungy. Only Meshiachs can do that. Tell me you’re not tempted.

We know the answer. You shall not tempt the Lord your God. Humourless, but deep. Shaitan, Adversary, your sense of humour is about as funny as a fart-cushion at a funeral. Being the Meshiach is serious. It’s the real thing. It’s about saving people from death, destruction and misery. God the Father is getting ready to put all His power into this experiment. I’m in deep training for the universe’s hardest job. And you come and prattle about bungy-jumping? 

Now comes the biggie. OK, so it’s serious. Right, I can do serious. This time I’ll do a deal with you. I’ve been shut out for aeons. No power, nobody listens to me, all I’m allowed to do is test the odd Job here and there. You’re the Meshiach. You have the Boss’s ear. I’ll do a deal with you. You get Him to let me run the experiment, and you and I will do the job. We’ll finally run that world down there the way He wants it run: bloody humans will be good whether they want to or not; no more sin, no more idolatry, adultery, rape or driving under the influence. He’s the Boss, I’m the manager, you execute, with full powers.

And if I won’t? Well, let me put it this way. If you go for it, it will take you and me say a year. If you refuse, I will work against you every inch of the way and it will take five thousand years or longer. Like the gang bosses down there, I will make you rich or I will make you dead. 

This is not silly power. This is real power. This is what every person wanting to do good efficiently in the world dreams of. The power finally to put a STOP to all the misery and evil, not drop by drop but NOW. In one swoop. 

We know the answer. Worship the Lord, and serve him only. Oh, go away. You’re just in it for yourself. You know perfectly well that the Meshiach can only be responsible to the Father. No middleman, no vice-presidents, no manager. You are not needed, you’re a hindrance and finally you’re a bore. And you’re standing in my light. Out!

And Shaitan leaves, and Yeshua is left back at the cave, with night falling. Only one more day of the 40 is left. Then he will have to get on with it. Training over;  you’re heading for the front. How did I do, Coach? You did fine, son. I’m proud of you. Get some rest. And remember, when you’re out there in the midst of it all, I’ll always be only a prayer away. You’ll never be alone. Sleep well. 

Image: Moretto di Brescia (ca. 1520): Christ in the Wilderness