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

 

A TOAST AT A FEAST

At the feast in the house of Levi, we know what Yeshua said to the Pharisees, but what did he say to Levi and the other guests? (Luke 5:27-32)

            Note that Levi had just been called, and had got up and followed Yeshua, giving up his job and his booth as a Mokhes (a tax-farmer). Note also that there is no sign that he is giving up his house and his money – yet. Instead, he is giving a party for his new teacher. So I imagine him, toward the end of the meal, standing up, raising his glass or goblet, and making a speech, more or less as follows:

            “Yeshua Ben-Yosef, it is an honour to me and my family to receive you in my house. I am aware that by coming here you risk being hounded by the religious: I’m sure they are already gnashing their teeth outside. So it was extraordinarily kind of you to come under my roof and to eat and drink with us outcasts. I believe that you are a good man and a fine rabbi, and I should be grateful if you would accept me as your disciple.” (Loud – but in some cases ironic -- applause from all the mokheses present.) Then Yeshua gets up, smiles, and waits for the noise to die down.

            “Levi Ben-Levi, I thank you for your kindness in inviting me – indeed, in having called together this party in my honour. You and your friends are very good company, even if you are not approved of by – er – certain people of unblemished reputation. Some of you may have heard, just now, the reproachful words of that Pharisee. If you did, you may also have heard my answer to him – and you may not have been best pleased. After all, I told him that it was not the healthy who needed the doctor but the sick; and that implied that you, my hosts, were not in the best of health. 

            “Those of you who, like Levi here, have already heard me speak in public know pretty much what I‘m about. You know that I say a lot of dour and dire things as well as nice ones, and that, rather like Yochanan the Dipper, I sometimes tell people that they are in a bad way and need to turn their lives around. So, are you sick, and am I the doctor? And if both are true, what’s my diagnosis, and what’s my cure? As you know, I’ve nothing to give or to spend, except my teaching; so any good I can do you will have to come from that.

            “So, to begin: all right, yes, I think that in spite of your good nature you are not the healthiest or the happiest of folk. Many of you are mokheses, which is not a job to make you loved. And quite a few of you have not done that job in the kindest or most righteous way. There are a few other faces here that I’ve seen in bad places and in bad company. You may have got used to it, but deep down I think most of you would like to be in harmony, in shalom, with the world and with Adonai.

            “And this is where Doctor Yeshua comes in. Believe it or not, it can be done. You can get your moral virginity back. Some people find it depressing that I tell them they have to be more righteous than the scribes and Pharisees; and when I tell them that this can be done without conforming to the 648 ordinances in Scripture they think I’m selling snake-oil. But it’s true. There are only two commanments that matter. One: Adonai loves you, he is the Father of Love. So the first commandment that matters is to love him back, with every fibre of you. Then: Adonai loves every one of his children equally. So commandment no. 2: you love your neighbour just as much as yourself. And who’s your neighbour? Anyone.Anyone in trouble, sorrow, sickness or misery. X. Be there for X whenever you meet him or her. 

            “And you can condense that still further: follow the two commandments by telescoping them into one: Follow Me. I’m the one Adonai sent to help his children clear up the mess they’ve made. And right now we – you and I – are here;  the place is Here and the time is Now. If you respond, as Levi has done today, then you will not only make tov, make shalom, you will be shalom. You can forget the 648 ordinances, because you will already be what they were written to make you. 

            “So if you take up your account-books and follow me, we can all drink a toast to the terrific man who got us all here: Levi Ben-Levi, l’chaim !” 

image: The Feast at the House of Levi, detail (1573) by Paolo Veronese

 

TIE ME UP, TIE ME DOWN

 

 

Words have tones, and words have overtones. The tones are the meanings such as they are researched, ordered and listed in authoritative dictionaries. The overtones are not heard by all, and not heard in the same way by all; the overtones (also called connotations) are determined by the culture of speakers/writers and hearers/readers. If there is a strong mutuality between, say, a speaker and his/her audience; a mutuality that may occur, let us say, at a political campaign rally; the speaker can utter outrageous remarks in such a way that any verbal record would not show anything remarkable; in such a case, the speaker relies entirely on a shared harmony of overtones. In journalism, this is now called a “dog-whistle”.

            In large parts of the American demographic, the word “government” has strongly negative overtones (perhaps because American English also has the word “administration” for more neutral use). In France, no one minds the word “government”; but the word “shareholders” (actionnaires) makes large sections of the French electorate foam at the mouth. 

            And overtones depend, not only on geography but also on historical period. A word that in one age is perfectly neutral or positive may in another age be strongly disliked. I am old enough to remember that in any publicly available printed text the (sexual) “F-word” could not be printed in full; on the other hand, in modern America, the (racial) “N-word” cannot be printed or even, in some cases, referred to. And a particularly intriguing case, one that goes as far as what one might call lexical dissonance, is the French word con, which in one meaning (the original one), that of the female pudenda, is taboo; but which in its other meaning of “a stupid and disagreeable person” is colloquially common to the point of ubiquity. 

            All this leads me to the word “religion”. In the space of my (now not inconsiderable) lifetime, this word’s overtones have gone from neutral and sometimes positive to almost universally negative. When I was young we sang what were then still called Negro Spirituals, among which were stirring songs like “Give me that old-time religion, it’s good enough for me.” Some people’s religion was Christian, others’ Jewish, still others’ Muslim or Hindu; and within the Christian, some people’s religion was Catholic and others’ Protestant. Now, however, to have faith is good, to be spiritual is good, but to be religious? Noooo. 

            It is a pity. The word comes from a Latin verb, re-ligare: to bind together again. The idea behind it is that somehow, Heaven and earth got separated, and that this is tragic. I’ve often wondered that so many people find the idea of Original Sin hard to comprehend. Looking around one (and inside one), it seems so obvious: our human mind is capable of imagining something flawless, perfect; but we are incapable of realising it. Something always comes along and buggers it up. This being the case, any idea, person, or institution dedicated to binding-together-again Heaven and earth, perfection and BHF (basic human fuckup); to restoring the link between the despairing human soul and hope, between the woundedly resentful and the charity of love, between the helplessly angry and peaceable friendship, should surely be welcomed and cherished. Alas, this is too often not the case, and the media, social and otherwise, who delight in the excitement of conflict, eagerly exacerbate the tensions.

            I should like us to restore re-ligio to its ancient and merited glory. Let us be re-ligious in every part of our life. Let us try, wherever we can, to re-tie the broken strings and cables, to bridge the gaps, to mend the bridges; and most especially those broken ties between simple, hurting humans and a loving God who cannot force them to love him back, and who weeps among angels.    

TRIUMPH OF THE WILL?

 

Every time we say the Lord’s Prayer we say – with one of those mysterious optatives – “Thy will be done, in earth as it is in Heaven.” So that with each recital of the most famous Christian prayer, we brush up against one of faith’s most stubborn mysteries: the Will of God. We know that we ought to do God’s will; we know that our will ought to be aligned with God’s; but how do we know what God wills?

            When we are dealing with our own choices, the subject is not terribly hard. God the Father may be silent to our clumsy ears, but we know that “he who has seen me has seen the Father” and so, when faced with a choice or a decision, we can ask ourselves some version of the question WWJD --  What Would Jesus Do? The answer to that is not always simple, as there are many situations in an average life that did not present themselves to Yeshua when He walked the earth, or that the chroniclers of the Gospels did not see fit to include in their accounts. But still, we can often have an idea of the way we might usefully follow. 

            Where it get much more difficult is when it comes to distinguishing God’s will in the life and the world around us. Yeshua was not clear on the topic. He points out that when the tower of Siloam fell and killed a number of bystanders, those who died were not greater sinners that others (Luke 13:4-5); but he does not say whether or not God willed the tower’s fall or the people’s death. He says that not a sparrow falls “without your Father” (Matthew 10:29) but the Greek áneu “without” does not decide whether it is without the Father’s knowledge or without His will. And in both cases, the point he is making is different.

            Does God “will” all that occurs? There might be a case to be made to that effect: He is, after all, supposed to both all-knowing (omnisciens) and all-powerful (omnipotens); does it not follow that nothing occurs without His willing it? Thomas Aquinas, in the twelve articles on the Will of God in his Summa theologica, comes uncomfortably close to this position. And I say “uncomfortably” because when we consider such an explanation, we almost universally rebel. If (to take a recent happening in France) a madwoman tortures and murders a 12-year-old girl, did God will that? Does God will the suffering and death of the Ukrainian civilians in Boucha? Does God will the death of 600 people in a tsunami in Indonesia?

            This very proper revolt on our part leads some people to dismiss any idea of God’s existence: if such a God existed, they say, He would be a monster. But for those of us whose faith, though put to a severe test by this, subsists, it does so perhaps because of a third attribute we ascribe to God: not only all-powerful and all-knowing but all-good. This raises two questions: 1) how, then, do the events I described relate to His will? and 2) how, in view of a world in which such things occur, should we align our wills to His?

            I have previously written about the first question: the fact that His nature is love implies that He must of necessity allow us free will. Love’s very nature means that its reciprocity can never be forced or commanded. This, then, explains the occasional flourishing of human evil. He cannot command us to return His love: it is the only limit to omnipotence. The horrifying effects of natural phenomena, on the other hand, resist explanation. One can only assume that He, for reasons of His own, has decided not to micromanage His creation. (It is interesting that, even if we accept this, we still have an instinct for spontaneously giving thanks when we have a narrow escape.)

            The second question is the real purpose of this post. It assumes that we do not, and cannot, know whether anything that happens to us does so with, or because of, God’s will; and that He is much more concerned with our reaction to the happening than with the event itself. The point Yeshua was making about the sparrow was not whether the Father intended it to fall or not, but that if it falls, it does not do so at random and anonymously. And you, he said, are worth a lot more than a sparrow: hence, he did not say but did not need to, at the moment of any occurrence that involves you, you are surrounded by your Father’s loving attention. And hence, we may conclude, it is at that moment that we may or may not do His will. Where His infinite care for us operates, but cannot command us because of love and free will, is in relation to our reaction to the, to any, event. 

            He does not will that we shall win four million dollars in a lottery; but He pays close attention to what we think, feel, and do when we have won it. He did not will that such-and-such a young woman should die of breast cancer; but He surrounded her with His loving spirit during the ordeal (whether or not she recognised that spirit’s origin) and He attends with love and hope to the reactions of her family and friends. 

            At no time is discerning and/or doing His will easy. The crusaders who in 1096 AD went into battle shouting “Deus lo volt! Deus lo volt!” (“God wills it!” in Romance Latin) were perhaps, to our modern minds, rash if not painfully misguided; but are we sure we would feel as strongly if that phrase accompanied a Ukrainian counterattack? A special degree of caution is perhaps needed when trying to discern God’s will for human beings in the plural and collective; it would appear wise to practice humility in discernment and limit ourselves, as much as possible, to individual matters.

            Finally, we should not forget that Yeshua both taught and showed us the overwhelming and permanent need for prayer. Aligning our will to God’s can only be done after, and in, prayer. Perhaps this is a secondary meaning of the optative. We are not simply told “Do God’s will”; we are invited into a process that involves much more than our individual selves. “God’s will be done.” Amen.