Category Archives: Bible

Luminous Christianity (1)

09 Thursday Jul 2020

Posted by in Bible, Commentaries, Faith, Homilies, Marian devotion

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2-the-light-of-the-world-william-holman-hunt9 At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

Thus we read in St Mark, and thus did St John Paul II begin the Luminous Mysteries of the Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

One of the most frequent words used in Scripture to describe Jesus is “Light.” Jesus tells the people that He is “the light of the world,” while St John reminds us that the “light” came into the world but the world heeded it not because men preferred the darkness which hid the evil that they did. But we are told, also, that the darkness did not overcome the Light. Here, in the first of the Mysteries of Light, the Light of the World is revealed, and as we know, though the world, in the sense of the worldly, rejected Him, He prevailed and will triumph; but here, for the first time, parts of the world see Jesus for who He is – the Son of God.

And yet how strange. Isaiah told us that:

The people walking in darkness
    have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness
    a light has dawned.

But why does it dawn in this way? We are told in Hebrews:

15 For we do not have a High Priest who cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.

So why, if He is without sin is baptism the first revelation to the wider world that Jesus is the Light of the world? It is precisely because He is like us in every way, and in being baptised He makes baptism sacramental. It is our entry into His Church. Just as Jesus submitted to the humiliation of death upon the Cross for us and for our salvation, so He submits to baptism; where we go, the Incarnate Word has already been.

We see, in the Baptist’s reaction a recognition that he is not worthy to baptise the Son of God, yet Jesus insists, and John submits his will to that of God. The result of that obedience is that the Heavens are opened and God speaks. We see, here, how close Heaven is and the way to it; if we will submit our will to God’s, then the Kingdom of Heaven is, indeed, at hand.

Jesus begins His Ministry as He would continue it, identifying Himself with the sinners and the outcasts. The Baptist, like us, questions when he thinks he knows the answer. Jesus is the one for whom he has been preparing the way, so there is no way He needs to be baptised. God knows better. How often are we like the Baptist?

In Christ’s obedience the eyes of others are opened and His identity confirmed. If we love Him then we will respond to His love, and one of the fruits of that is obedience. We are not left alone, the Spirit is with us always, and the Church into which we are baptised is His Church and is here for us. The recognition of who Jesus is was the beginning of His earthly Ministry, and for us, it is the beginning of our life in Him.

I understand the arguments of those who would restrict baptism to adults, but my heart tells me that if the Apostles baptised whole families, so should we, and I know from my own experience, that the mark of infant baptism has been a gift of Grace for which I have always been grateful to my parents, well, to be honest, to my mother, as my father could not have cared one way or the other.

But Baptism is just a beginning, a vitally important one, but unless we persevere, then its fruits will be limited. How often do we wish we could see more clearly, rather than through a glass darkly? But how often do we remember that too much light in this world can be used as an instrument of torture? There is a limit to the light mankind can bear. We need faith, for, as the author of Hebrews reminds us:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 2For by it the people of old received their commendation.

The Baptist is shown the Truth, we are given the assurance of hope.

So, we begin the Mysteries of Light on Jordan’s bank with the Baptist night and with the Lord setting us an example. We shall continue them with His first public miracle, which is another sign that the Dayspring from on high had dawned on the world.

 

How are we to communicate?

03 Friday Jul 2020

Posted by in Anglicanism, Bible, Catholic Tradition, Faith, poetry

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Julian

The question of language is a vital one for the Church. How do we communicate the Word of God? This is a complex issue, bound up as it is with questions of culture (local, national and institutional, to name but three), personal formation, and individual preferences.

For the longest time in the West, the preferred text of Scripture was in Latin, although, of course originally, none of the text was in that language. Across time, the result of this was that the Scriptures were the preserve of a small elite, and the growing feeling that this was hardly what Jesus meant led to an irrisistible demand for texts in the vernacular. Now, of course, this is taken for granted, and being what we are by fallen nature, we can now argue, instead, over which version of the vernacular we prefer; but at least the words of Scripture are now available to all who wish to have access to them.

There are those who sometimes wonder whether this is such a good thing, as people will interpret the texts for themselves, but then they always did, even when the only people with access to them were priests and bishops; as anyone familiar with the early Church can attest, limited circulation of the text did not mean that there was anything like a uniform interpretation available.

One of the huge benefits of something we now take for granted, that is the ready availability of the Bible in a language, and even in the version of it that suits our taste, is that we can engage with it as individuals. Surely that is part of being a Christian? We develop a relationship with Scripture as we do, through it and the Church, with God. These wise words by the Rev Jessica Martin struck me as I read them this morning:

Like all relationships, it will have appalling, jagged gaps, breakdowns that seem insuperable. I will sometimes argue with it, sometimes be angry, sometimes disagree. That is how conversation is. For scripture, its crucible of meaning is the receiving intelligence, history, body, and affections of the reader. Scripture makes itself vulnerable to my flaws and to my failures of understanding; the trust goes both ways. I am not expected to be “mute and spiritless” before its holy voice.

The whole piece is worth reading reflectively.

Here I want to focus on one part of what she has to say here:

we have a huge communication gap between our worship and our reasoning. In worship, we don’t talk much about how to believe in poetic connections. And we divorce our reasoning from our corporate worshipping life, and so from our communal heart.

There is much wisdom in this, too much for a short essay to unpack, but let me offer a few preliminary reflections and hope that your comments, and further thought, will take me forther.

It is easy for our worship to fall into one of two styles: the one formal, even archaic; the other informal and even anarchic. As someone whose preferences tend to the former, and whose character shies (literally) away from what I would probably (perhaps wrongly) call “over-emotionalism” (confession time, I am actually comfortable with sharing the “peace”), I would rather worship where there is due order and the rubrics are followed. But I try not to mistake my personal preference for any kind of norm, and I am alert to the difficulty that those who drop into Church for the first time might encounter. I suspect those difficulties exist in a similat way in Churches where the worship style is more informal.

That raises a larger topic for another day, which is how Churches interact not only with their regular congregations, but with those who might want to come to Church but not get terribly involved. One of the effects of the pandemic has been to emphasise how important the place of worship is. There are those who say that it does not matter that Churches have been closed, we can worship God anywhere. The latter part of that sentence is correct, the first part of it betrays, I fear, an impoverished view of how individuals react to the numinous. It is not, at least for me, just the absence of the Eucharist, it is something more imtangible and poetic. T.S. Eliot expresses this best in “Little Gidding”:

It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.

That “kneeling where prayer has been valid” matters to me, because Eliot is right, prayer in more than “an order of words.” That takes me back to another insight from Dr Martin’s article:

When we reason at arm’s length with inert lumps of text, we cannot recognise how they and we communicate. But scripture in worship comes into the unfolding history of Now, binding together those who take part and making it more likely that they will take care with fragile shared meanings. Worship is recognised as a form of encounter. Enacted words are pregnant with change.

Just as in the Incarnation, the Word in becoming flesh, made Himself vulnerable to our frailties in order to heal them in His death and resurrection, so does His written word become vulnerable to our limitations of understanding, but through His Church and our worship, transcend them to help transform us.

 

 

Junia: a puzzle

02 Thursday Jul 2020

Posted by in Anglicanism, Bible, Catholic Tradition, Faith

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My thanks to the many who replied positively to yesterday’s post, and in the spirit of that, and as an homage to Jessica, I want to begin the next eight years with a topic which risks taking us back to polemical times, but in a way which invites, I hope, a more considered response. I would add that this is not me advocating any change in my own church, whose position seems clear except to those who don’t like that position. Here goes.

Toward the end of St Paul’s letter to the Romans (and yes, I know that there are those who think it wasn’t by St Paul, but the Church, and Tradition do, and that does it for me) is this salutation:

7 Salute Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen and fellow prisoners: who are of note among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me.

At least that’s what the Douay-Rheims translation says, as does the American Standard version and the New Life version. The assumption is that this is a male name, athough scholars have been unable to provide any other examples of the name “Junias;” there are numerous examples of the female name, “Junia.” In his homily on Romans, Ambrosiaster, who was writing in the second half of the fourth century wrote:

“Think how great the devotion of this woman Junia might have been that she should be worthy to be called an Apostle!”

Professor Moo, in his great commentary on Romans offers a typically balanced view:

“Paul’s mention of nine women in this list reminds us (if we needed the reminder) that women played an important role in the early church … Ministry in the early church was never confined to men; these greetings and other similar passages show that women engaged in ministries that were as important as those of men. We have created many problems for ourselves by confining ‘ministry’ to what certain full-time Christian workers do. But it is important that we do not overinterpret this evidence either, for nothing Paul says … conflicts with limitations on some kinds of women’s ministry with respect to men such as I think are suggested by 1 Tim. 2:8-15 and other texts.” (Douglas J Moo, New International Commentary (1996)).

The idea that the name “Junias” was to be preferred to the reading “Junia” was a twentieth century phenomenon, based on the assumption that since an “apostle” had to be male, “Junias” had to be the correct reading. The probability that the name is “Junia” and therefore a woman, has, naturally enough, led some modern scholars to argue that this supports the idea of women as priests. That may be as much a case of reading into the text what one wants to read, as the older idea that “Junia” was not a possible reading because a woman could not have been an apostle.

If we assume that “Apostle” is always a position of authoritative leadership, then the case for a female priesthood is certaily strengthened; but must it be read that way? Often Paul uses the word to denote a messenger or emissary (1 Cor. 15:5,7; 1 Cor. 9:5-6; Gal 2:9), and that may be the case here. Just because scholars in the last century went out of their way to insist the name was male because a woman could not be an “apostle’, that is no reason we should do the same the other way – understandable as that temptation might be. (Chapter 9 of Epp, Junia).

One of the problems, or so it seems to me, is that this issue gets swallowed up in an agenda-driven way. On the one hand a swift resort to a version of what Professor Moo has written, which emphasises the other possibilities, minimising the possibility of Junia being an Apostle in the strongest sense of that word. On the other, a ready resort to the claim that it can only be read in this sense seems unwise.

At this point the argument can get taken up with either explaining away or emphasising 1. Tim 2 11-15, 1 Cor 11: 2-16, 1 Cor 14:34-35, and in the literature it is easy to discern why one choice or the other is made. It is important here to emphasise that such discussions take us into the wider realm of how we read Scripture, and how tradition should weigh in the balance. What cannot be in doubt is that for much of the history of Christianity women have not had a sacramental ministry, whatever may, or may not have been the case with the “Apostle” Junia.

If Junia and other women were “Apostles” in the stronger sense of the word  then would it make a difference? Well, it would tend against the argument that Jesus chose only men, not least because we know there were many women followers and He appeared first to a woman, but I really don’t want to go down that route here, not least because the chance of it not provoking people is zero. But it is worth reflecting on the experience of the one big communion which has had women priests and bishops, the Anglicans. There, I think many who were against the idea for the usual reasons would say they have found the contribution of their new colleagues invaluable and that women have added a dimension to ministry which, perhaps, Junia would have recognised. Certainly, in my own dealings with women priests, I have been nothing but impressed by what they bring to their vocation, and without their contribution things would be poorer. At that point, I shall stop and await comment.

The prodigality of God

30 Tuesday Jun 2020

Posted by in Bible, Faith, St Luke's Gospel

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Prodigal

Today’s reading for morning prayer was Luke 15:11-end. As I reflected on it I was struck, not by the action of the Father, or the forgiveness of the son or the grudging spirit of the eldest son, all of which are my usual focus, but by the prodigality of God. By any standards of any time the actions of the Father go above and beyond any expectations. The younger son has dishonoured the family name, he has wasted a portion of the family inheritance and has brought shame upon his father. It is to his credit that he realises this and wants nothing more than a place among the hired servants; he knows he has forfeited any rights his birth might have conferred upon him; he has thrown them all away, and on nothing of value and for nothing of value, unless, of course, the wisdom of hindsight is thought to be worth it.

The Father’s love is prodigal. Running was something done by servants and children, elders did not run; yet the Father runs. He runs not to an honoured guest who by the standards of the time would have brought honour on him and his household, but to someone who has done the opposite.

The Father has already gone beyond anything reasonable in dividing the inheritance, he is under no social obligation even to receive his dishonoured son; had he reacted as his eldest son did no one could have complained. Sin has consequences, moral hazard demanded that the sinner suffer. But again, the Father  goes above the beyond. He forgives, welcomes and restores the penitent.

The God we see revealed here is indeed “Love.” He is lavish, his bounty is inexhaustible, even, to our way of thinking, wasteful. The elder son reacts as we might well, and as we might take our faith to require us to act – were it not for what Jesus says here. He who was lost has been found, and we see what He means when He says there is more joy over one sinner saved than in many righteous people.

How unfair that sounds to our ears. How can those who come at the last hour get the same as those who were there from the start? Those who faithfully observe the commandments (and often, as faithfully observe those who do not), who tithe, who love their neightbour as themselves and give of their substance to the poor, have they not deserved the Kingdom of Heaven? Jesus’ answer is “no.”

We cannot and do not “win” our way to Heaven. Grace is free to all who will receive it, as is forgiveness. That is a prodigality as beyond our comprehension as the love of God is. These are words we can understand only in relation to what we know and feel. Which of us would die for someone who was indifferent to us? God is indifferent to none of us; if He seems far off, it is we, not Him, who is far off.

He is there. He waits. He will run to us. He loved us first. Let us do the same.

Faith and Reason

07 Sunday Jun 2020

Posted by in Bible, Faith, St. Isaac, Trinity

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rublev-trinity

St. Augustine famously wrote: “seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe so that you may understand.” His comment is applicable to Trinity Sunday. If we say we understand the Trinity then we probably don’t, because the relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit is at the heart of our faith, and the finite cannot, by definition, grasp the Infinite. At best we see “through a glass darkly.”

That is not to surrender reason. God gave it to us so that we might come to a better understanding of Him, but He gave us other senses to make up for what reason alone cannot do. The Trinity is no more, or less amenable to reason than the other cornerstones of our Faith: that God became man in Jesus; and that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day. If, as our secular culture demands, we have to give a scientific justification for our beliefs, Christians have tended to go in two directions: a fundamentalist insistence on the literal truth of Scripture and its inerrancy (or on the authority of the Church and its inerrancy) or a gradual yielding of ground to allow one method of perceiving the world primacy, as though Reason and Imagination are somehow opposed to each other, rather then being complementary ways of seeing the world.

If we yield to the view that “science” can make no “sense” of concepts such as the Resurrection and the Trinity, we are going down the wrong road.. That would be to give “science” a say in how we exercise our reason which leaves no place for Imagination, Experience and Emotion; it also attributes to “science” a place it does not claim for itself, that of the final arbiter over what life is for and what it means to be human.

In retreat, the Church has tended, in public, to emphasise morality. This is not to say that is a bad thing, and, at least while morality bore the marks of its origin in Christian belief, it was an easy place for the Church to proclaim its utility. But as Society withdraws from that inheritance, it gets more difficult, which is why the Church has such trouble in areas such as LGBT rights; those areas where Society is furthest away from the shared inheritance, create a problem which many in the Church think is solvable only by yeilding further ground.

But our faith is not “applied morality”. Its purpose is not to control us and make us behave. That is another secularist fantasy made real by those who fail to enter into an imaginative understanding of Faith. Our Faith has nothing to do with being good and everything to do with hope and love directed toward the Creator who made us because He loves us. The Trinity is Love. As St Isaac wrote:

In love did He bring the world into existence; in love does He guide it during this its temporal existence; in love is He going to bring it to that wondrous transformed state, and in love will the world be swallowed up in the great mystery of Him who has performed all these things; in love will the whole course of the governance of creation be finally comprised.

That is the point being missed. Moral goodness is the product of loving God and of trying to be with Him as He is with us. As Martyn Percy writes in the Church Times:

God chose to abide with us in our temporality and frailty, so that we might abide with God in eternity. This is the heart of revelation: God is “with” us. Indeed, that small word “with” may be one of the most underrated in the scriptures. God always chooses to stay with us: we do not walk alone. We are never abandoned or orphaned: we are loved and adopted.

The Resurrection speaks to us of hope and God’s promise that death is not the end. The Trinity is the source of all love and life. As Malcolm Guite puts it in a wonderful poem which I commend to you all:

The Triune Poet makes us for His glory,

And makes us each the other’s inspiration.

He calls us out of darkness, chaos, chance,

To improvise a music of our own,

To sing the chord that calls us to the dance,

Three notes resounding from a single tone,

To sing the End in whom we all begin;

Our God beyond, beside us and within.

None of this is to deny the place of reason, but it is to put it in its place as one of the ways we engage with the world. But it is to remind us of what the atheist poet, Philip Larkin divined in his “An Arundel Tomb:”

Our almost-instinct almost true:   
What will survive of us is love

 

And as we were created in love, so will we survive in it. Science has nothing to say here where the poets, musicians and artists alone can help our understanding.

 

Joy

31 Sunday May 2020

Posted by in Bible, Faith, Galatians, Pentecost

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Pentecost

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.

The importance of love

26 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by in Bible, Faith, St. Isaac

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isaac

To some, even the use of the word “love” induces a visceral reaction, such, perhaps, has been its over-use. But as the Beloved Disciple reminds us:

7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.

8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

In Christ, God reveals His purpose to us. He did not write a manifesto or send us a list of things we must and must not do, He spoke to us in the only language we can understand – that is through another human life. Jesus tells us what God wants for us, but more, much more than that, He shows us what love means. We can understand love only through relationships, and that is what Jesus shows us – the true meaning of love.

That love is a manifestation of the eternal love that is the Holy Trinity. The sanctifying love of the Spirit and of the Son are poured forth for our salvation. it is through Jesus that we receive the gift of eternal life, not because we first love God, but because He first loves us.

If we love others, and He loves us, then, as the Catechism tells us, in this way the Trinitarian love is reflected here on earth as it is in Heaven. Human love is not the cause of our love, it is a manifestation of God’s love. It follows, as St John tells us, that those who claim to know God but do not manifest love speak under the influence of a false spirit. And yet how very hard it is for us to show love for one another.

St John outlines four ways in which God lives is us: if we love one another; if we have been given His Spirit: if we can confess that Jesus is the Son of God; and finally, if we abide in the love of God. If this is so, then keeping God’s commandments isno more burdensome than love itself. Love is not, as we know, without its difficulties. It is far from saccharine and always sweetness and light; but what we suffer when we love we do because we know that in this fallen world it must be so.

St Anselm of Canterbury prayed:

Lord, let me seek you in desiring you:

and desire you in seeking you.

Let me find you by loving you,

and love you in finding you.

As so often when it comes to love, let us leave St Isaac the Syrian to have the final word:

In love did God bring the world into existence;

in love is God going to bring it to that wondrous transformed state,

and in love will the world be swallowed up in the great mystery of the One who has performed all these things;

in love will the whole course of the governance of creation be finally comprised.

Fr Aiden Kimel has some wiser and deeper reflections on this theme here.

 

 

Unclean lips: Sunday reflection

10 Sunday Feb 2019

Posted by in Bible, Faith, Reading the BIble

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Isaiah 6:1-8; 1 Cor 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11

Isaiah, like SS, Peter and Paul, knows he is not worthy. “Who, me Lord?” Paul is the “least” of the Apostles, while Peter is sceptical of Jesus’ advice to go back out and cast his nets in the deep. He knew himself to be a “sinful man.” And of course he was right.

Despite Jesus’ trust in him, when he was most needed in Gethsemane he was asleep, and later he lied about even knowing Jesus. In a conscious echo of that first calling, Jesus once more advises Peter about his fishing, and it is that which makes him realise to whom he is speaking. Thrice the Lord asks Peter if he loves him, and thrice Peter affirms it; ransomed, healed, restored forgiven, the Apostle is charged with the care of the sheep. He no longer protests he is not worthy. Why is that?

It is certainly not because Peter feels any more worthy than he had had the beginning; indeed if anything Peter knew he had not lived up to the promises he had made. The contrast here with Judas Iscariot is worth noting.

Peter and Judas both betrayed Christ. Judas despaired of the evil deed he had done and, in despair, hanged himself. He could not forgive himself and he did not believe that forgiveness could be had. His pride told him that there was no remedy for his sin; so he destroyed himself, throwing back to God the gift he had been given. He had not been there when Jesus had prayed to the Father for forgiveness for those who “knew not what they do.” Not had Peter. But there was a critical difference.

Peter, like Isaiah and Paul, had the humility not to let his own pride come between him and forgiveness. We have all sinned, not one of us has reached perfection. How easy it is to hide and evade, and even lie, when we have gone wrong and done bad things and then, when we are found out, to despair. It is as though by going to the very depth of despair we make some sort of amend. But that is to judge as men do, and as with Judas, it can be to put a barrier up to the actions of God’s grace.

There is one odd thing about love; you cannot ever deserve it. Even at the secular, physical level, one cannot make the object of one’s love, love you. One can hope that by paying attention to the beloved, one might receive favourable notice, but one cannot compel or deserve love. Love, like God’s grace, is uncovenanted. God’s love is freely available to us; we did not love Him first, He loved us from the beginning.

Christ came to show us what love will do. He died for us, though we are sinners. A man might die for his family or his friends, or even for a cause. But few if any of us die for our enemies, let along for those whom we do not know. Christ did that because He is God, and we see in His atoning sacrifice a glimpse of the Glory of God; for me He did that?

Peter faced the music, so did Isaiah. Sometimes when we have gone wrong, it is easier ti run away, to take the blames, to become the sacrificial lamb. How much harder it is to face the music and to carry on living.

We are not told what Peter did after the crucifixion, just that he ended up back where he had begun, working the family fishing boats, a sadder if not a wiser man. Perhaps he reflected that it would have been better for all if Jesus had listened to him when he had said he was a sinful man? But, of course, Jesus had listened. He who, alone, knows the devices and desires of our own hearts, knew that Peter had the ability to grow spiritually, if only he would learn humility. Well, that he did.

Peter remained, like us, deeply flawed. He thought that it would be fine to eat non-kosher with Gentiles and did not see why the Jewish dietary laws should apply to all followers of Jesus. But when James and the Church in Jerusalem took a dim view of that, Peter backed away and supported them. It was left to Paul to call Peter out and contradict him. Peter let that happen. He had indeed learnt humility, if not always wisdom.

We are all of us sinners. The moment one stops knowing that, then the way os open to all sorts of sins which come from pride. But today’s Bible passages remind us  that sin can have its own pride, and that if our guilt makes us think we are beyond redemption and God’s love, then we need to think again. We have unclean lips and we are a stiff-necked and sinful people. But God loves us, and if we will but receive the message His Son brought to us about love, then all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.

A Short Reflection on The Word and Biblical Inerrancy.

04 Sunday Mar 2018

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I believe that scripture is the word of God, I believe that limited Biblical inerrancy is a mistaken approach due to the failure to properly understand the historiography of ancient writings. Any modern failure in properly understanding the words of eternal life stems from our cultural loss of ancient Judaism and Christian historicism.

It’s important to understand that scripture, inspired by God and written without error, is limited by the cultural identity of the Biblical writers. Simply, Biblical authorship that was needed for worship and evangelization from Babylonian Captivity to 1st Century A.D. that incorporated ideas of 21st Century positivism–that especially predated Herodotus and Thucydides–would have been dead on arrival during the period of their authorship. In this manner of understanding, it is important to put trust in God’s grace, our faith and the traditions of the Church.

As Lent approaches

11 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by in Bible, Catholic Tradition, Faith, Lent

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Lent is a chance to reassess where we are; a time of penance.

If press of business at work was the primary reason to refrain from blogging, there was a secondary one. It seemed impossible to blog and remain spiritually calm. The invasion of modern culture wars into the realm of religion was inevitable, but becomes wearing to one who finds it difficult to define himself in those terms.

At the heart of my own faith is the encounter with Christ in the Eucharist. That is the Christ who I encounter in the Holy Scriptures, who tells us that we will eat of His body and drink of His blood, and that He is the Way, the Truth and the Light. Were that not the case then there would be a disconnect between reason and experience, and my own Christianity rests on those two pillars- reason and experience. But these two are mediated through the Church and its traditions. I do not understand these things solely by the light of my own reason, although I constantly test them against it; I am part of a living tradition. I am but one of a great cloud of witnesses.

The spoken Word matters to me a great deal. Without Scripture I would be lost. But to interpret it by the sole light of my own reason would also be to risk becoming lost. Christ became man so that I, like other sinners, might receive life, and life eternal. My experience tells me that the Christ of Scripture is the one I encounter at the Eucharist; the Church reinforces that and provides me with a sacramental understanding of what, and who, I have received; it is a memorial of His saving Passion; but it is Him too not simply a memorial. I know this through what I feel; but I find reinforcement and validation for what I feel in the tradition and teaching of the Church.

Modern critical theorists of Scripture made the attempt to make it conform to their own limited, non-sacramental understanding of the world; ruling out miracles on the a priori ground that they could not exist. That was to insert one’s own understanding in place of that of the Church, which has always had the humility to accept what the Scripture it received described; it does not attempt to know better than the eye-witnesses. One’s unaided understanding might lead one astray. Had the Lord Jesus wished us to get our teaching about Him from a book alone, then undoubtedly He could have written that book. Instead He inspired His followers to write and collect what was written, providing, through the Church He founded, an infallible interpreter in cases of doubt.

In all of that, there is for me, only one culture war – that of the World against that of the Church. Of the mystery of the existence of many churches, I have no opinion. I have met better men and women than myself in many other Churches, and I leave any verdict on their ultimate fate where it belongs, with the Only Just Judge. I observe, with no further comment, that there are Anglicans and Orthodox with whom I have more in common than some Catholics I know. We share the characteristic of trying to balance faith, reason and tradition, and of not trying to give priority to whatsoever might be novel, whilst, at the same time, not turning our face against the fact that Spirit is at work in the Church

As I prepare for Lent, I am drawn back to this place and to the fellowship it provides.