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It has been quite a journey since Good Friday, and, perhaps due to lockdown, it has been somehow easier to follow, at least emotionally, in the steps of the Apostles. Crushed by what they took to be the ultimate defeat that we now call “Good” Friday, they passed into what looks like a state of bewilderment on that first Easter Sunday. Even the ever-faithful Mary Magdalene did not recognise Jesus by sight; it was the sound of His voice which drew from her the word: “Rabboni.” Thomas would not believe until he saw, and Peter, well Peter had good reason to be anxious as well as delighed; despite his big words at Gethsemane, he had betrayed his Lord.
Indeed, we see in John 21 that Peter had returned to his nets. It was John who first recognised the Lord. Impulsive as ever, Peter plunges into the water to greet Jesus. But what ground did he have to assume anything other than that there would be, at the least, a rebuke for his behaviour? Then, beside another fire, lit by Jesus, Peter receives forgiveness and healing. The three times Jesus asks him whether he loves Him echo the three denials, and what comes with that is forgiveness and a great commission, as well as a foreshadowing of suffering and death. Pardoned, healed, restored and forgiven, Peter is the pattern for us all. Our frailties and our wounds are not what define us, God’s forgiveness and Grace does that.
Throughout the earthly ministry of Jesus there were abundant signs that this joy, this forgiveness, this Grace was not simply for the children of Israel: the woman at the well who believed in Him was a Samaritan, a member of a despised minority; the Syro-Phonecian woman who begged Him for the crumbs of mercy was, likewise as a Canaanite, one beyond the pale – as the disciples were quick to point out; and the centurion of whom Jesus said: “I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel!” was an officer in the hated army of occupation. But it was not until the day of Pentecost, which the Church celebrates today, that the fullness of this message and its meaning were made clear.
The division between Jew and Gentile was deep and wide in the world into which Jesus was born, lived, and died; that division, like all others, was healed after the Ascension by the coming of the Holy Spirit. We are told in Acts that after the Spirit descended, everyone heard the Disciples speaking in his or her own tongue and that in that first day, three thousand were received into the Church. As Paul told the “foolish Galatians,” all who had faith were the “sons of Abraham.” Whether Jew or Gentile, male or female, slave or free, all that mattered was faith in Jesus. It was for this reason that Paul gave Peter himself the challenge when the latter tried to argue that Gentiles needed to be circumcised and follow Jewish practices. Neither did Paul speak in his own name, as he told the Galatians: “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
The Church is the risen life of Jesus, the means through which the joy that brings is shared with others. This morning’s “Thy kingdom come” Pentecostal service was a vibrant reminder of Paul’s words, and of the Spirit which binds where sin seeks to divide.
It has been a long journey from Good Friday to Pentecost, but with the birth of Church, may a new flame be kindled in all our hearts and may we love one another as He loves us; only thus will the world recognise us as His.
All Along the Watchtower 
I’ve been contemplating joy lately. I do not feel joy as I once did when I was younger. I wonder if this comes on with wisdom and experience. That what I thought was joyful was merely fleeting.
I’ve been discovering true moments of joy is utterly doing the will of the Lord. We are called to a life of holiness. May God grant me that grace–despite myself.
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I can speak only from my own limited experience, but I can relate to that Philip. Two things: one is that you are right, when we truly do His will, we receive joy; and let us remmember always, that He calls us where we are needed, though, like Peter, we might not always want to go there.
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Amen
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Perhaps joy rather than being just an experience of joyfulness can also be a state of being. That is, joy is the form in which we life out the virtue of hope. To be Christian is not to be exempt from depression or anxiety or the effects of stress. We can feel them to the full at any time. Yet so long as we have the hope born of faith we can hold in the deepest part of ourselves the assurance that light and not dark will have the final say in our lives. And that is joy.
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Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I will reflect on it. Yes, we have hope, although, I find out of the theological virtues sometimes is harder to fully understand it. Of course, that could be my own myopic issue.
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Hi Phillip, good to see you. “I do not feel joy as I once did when I was younger”
This is what happens when we become a real person in western/Hebraic tradition. As a child you were only a candidate for humanity, here on probation. Children actually automatically know what life is about, then through the pressures to conform, become a real person if they measure up to the expectations of them. Now you are a real person—Persona; the mask worn by Greek and Roman actors. The real self hides behind it. Liberation comes from you accepting you as you, while a real person (in the core sense of being currently human) is a genuine fake. That is a conflicted life where herd behavior wins over the real you.
Reversing this can only be complete (or even begin) when the organism no longer feels the need to apologize for being an organism. “It took a long time to sound like myself”—Miles Davis
What have they done to you and me? As children we were given their baggage, and we carried it a long time til it no longer felt heavy. We forgot how to play. Training in the ministry must weigh on you my friend. Adding layers to the mask until you no longer remember the character behind it.
All the world is a stage. With all due respect, Bravo—well done. If you could only remove the mask for a day or two to catch your breath before the lines get too tiresome and monotone. Living someone else’s life is endless, internal conflict.
Your parents and others taught you their rules of the game. But don’t forget what’s behind the act.
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I don’t agree with everything you say here, but there are things in which I think we can flesh out. Some Biblical exegetes propose that Adam and Eve in the garden are children. In fact, if we relate this to what you’re saying about children and play, kids do know what leisure is in its strictest sense as useless play.
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Useless play? I wonder, do you have children? Our culture hammers out the joy of life and the pure inquisitive joy and wonder of children. Life is not so serious. The two models we have today certainly deprecate the value of life as it naturally is. Now we only find joy in forgetting that by immersing ourselves in someone else’s script, that in the end has met no objective, yet creates artificially, anxiety.
Curious what you do agree with?
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I don’t think you understand the context of how I use the word useless. Useless, as in entirely for its own sake. It doesn’t serve any other purpose.
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Could that possibly be the fundamental expression of existence? Play also must be viewed in its proper context. Sometimes play is a chess match or a symphony. It can be very serious.
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The useless is the most useful. In fact, much of this argument is made by John Henry Newman in his work The idea of the University. For example, one may study Cicero or Latin for the sake the beauty of the language, the good in itself for its own sake.
Now, if I were to remove masks as you describe much of the purpose of play for its own sake doesn’t really matter because to do something for its own sake would be to participate in its goodness. And that type of epistemological system, goodness is relative and any relativistic good that has no formal or material object doesn’t really exist.
So, I’d say the irony here is that you’d propose there’s no positive evidence for God. I’d argue that without the foundation of that first principle and since of purpose/end or final cause for anything whether its the useful or the useless is completely illusionary. There is no teleological purpose for anything. The whole idea of joy and what happiness is would be nonsense, nothing more than start dust bumping into each other creating chemical reactions that cause stimuli.
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True I don’t think anything naturally leads to your Elohim, but does that mean there is nothing at all? We’re always presented with two wrong choices, usually in extremes. Perhaps there is another more organic option.
If you could play for a moment, what would you do as an all knowing (with all the knowledge and foresight of the universe) eternal being do to relieve the boredom of infinite living? I know there is one thing we all agree on and it’s not esoteric, but an underlying reality of every human, that I can demonstrate 100% of the time. This is not a cocky attempt, but something I have done over and over regardless of beliefs or culture.
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Naturally leads to God? Come on, Jim, you’re better than using the History of Religions perjoratives of Elohim–after all that’s why you use it and that’s why most theists take issue with those types of names because they recognize the intent behind it. At any rate, in Catholic theological discourse, quite rightly, nothing leads you to know who God is.” In the systemtatic theology, reason can only lead one to the grapes, but not to be satisfied from eating them.
I honestly cannot answer your hypothetical because I lack all the fundamentality of the my nature being existence itself, the perfection and simplicity of God, God as pure actuality, no potentiality, knower of all things in actuality not in succession, immutable, immovable, eternal (which is not the same as saying timeless, as time and eternal are measurements) my intellect being the same as my substance, etc.
Any Catholic theologian worth their salt would be baffled to answer that question as Catholics understand the nature of God through his simplicty. In fact, as a Catholic, I understand my likeness to God not in univocal and equivocal, but only as an analogical manner as He is Being and I am a being.
I really honestly don’t know how to approach your question because by my nature it is out my powers to fathom it. It may work within the Evangelical framework such William Lane Craig who argues against God’s simplicity.
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I offered no pejorative intent whatsoever with the term Elohim. It was simply a selection and is not a derogatory term in my vernacular.
The term “God” has been deconstructed to mean anything, and that has an ambiguous connotation, so I was specific. There may be “god”, but “a god”? There is nothing without god—It is all god, so you’re it.
Is it out of your power to fathom it, or is it so fundamental to your nature (or gods for that matter) who could even know it.
https://jimoeba.wordpress.com/2020/04/22/what-really-was-the-good-news/
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Not really. In fact, using reason, one can contruct God through His effects like the list I given. To be honest, anyone who attempts to answer your hypothetical lacks in understanding of the definitions needed to understand it’s a hypothetical they can’t answer.
Let me explain.
You say, “If you could play for a moment, what would you do as an all knowing (with all the knowledge and foresight of the universe) eternal being do to relieve the boredom of infinite living? “
In relation to the nature of God, whose nature has no genus, the hypothetical is an absurdity as you’re making equivocal the creature who has no univocal and equivocal likeness to the creator. So, the proposition that God needs to relieve boredom does two things that contradicts the true nature of God as pure eternal act, First, the idea of boredom suggests potentiality—which would contradict the nature of God, as that which is potential is not perfect. The second is a misunderstanding of God as eternal. Eternal, by definition, is not the same as as infinite time. The eternal can only be understood through time, which is the measurement of the present of things moving out of existence and into existence, the eternal is outside that measurement, it has no measurable movement. If time stood changeless it would cease to be time. Eternity is the measurement of the perfect whole, so to suggest something is bored and in potentiality, it would cease to be perfect, it would cease to be God.
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But we see that god is not perfect. The only thing that makes it so is your definition of god is also the author of his own immunity, he doesn’t play by the arbitrary rules set out for the game (really expressing morality is mans, not from an omnipotent source) It is incompatible. The understanding of god you present is a misunderstanding of your own nature.
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