John Chrysostom: Homily 42

I am conscious that I have not written here since last weekend. Aside from generally not being in the mood to write after a normal day’s work, I have struggled to find something to say that is appropriate. The news is continually a source of anger as we go from one controversy to another. Readers at NEO will note the bleak tone of my recent comments there.

There are trivial things I could write about, such as food, but readers of this blog typically expect something of spiritual, ethical, or political significance. Christians also disagree about our approach to the world: some say that if we ignore it, we become introverted and selfish, while others say that if we pay it attention, it is apt to distract us from Christ and the everlasting kingdom that the righteous shall inherit. In truth, there is no general answer: managing one’s mental health depends upon one’s circumstances and temperament.

I have set out below part of John Chrysostom’s homily on John 6 (taken from the Catholic site, New Advent):

“Beloved, let us not contend with violent men, but learn when the doing so brings no hurt to our virtue to give place to their evil counsels; for so all their hardihood is checked. As darts when they fall upon a firm, hard, and resisting substance, rebound with great violence on those who throw them, but when the violence of the cast has nothing to oppose it, it soon becomes weaker and ceases, so is it with insolent men; when we contend with them they become the fiercer, but when we yield and give ground, we easily abate all their madness. Wherefore the Lord when He knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, went into Galilee, to quench their envy, and to soften by His retirement the wrath which was likely to be engendered by these reports.”

There is wisdom here. There is a time for resisting, but also a time for retiring. In Ecclesiastes, it says: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven…a time of war, and a time of peace” (3:1,8). Wisdom lies in knowing what time it is. Some people will not be persuaded, no matter how hard we try. Sometimes, the best thing is to retire.

God has a great day of judgment in store. Though we may not be vindicated in this life, though the war on truth may continue apace, that does not mean there is no reckoning, no rebuke. Each person must stand before God at the Last Day and answer for their words, thoughts, deeds, and omissions. Nor will God abandon this world to the god of this age. One day Christ will return and the kingdoms of this world will become His. He will reign in glory from Jerusalem and delegate the rule of the nations to His faithful saints.

Why I like traditional Anglican liturgy

I’m not really an Anglican, although I have spent many a Sunday at Anglican services (not to mention some Friday morning communion services). Traditional services provide a quiet space for reflection. They tend to avoid the excesses that I have seen in various contexts.

This is important. Sobriety and focussing on God are a necessary balm in these difficult times and form a stark contrast to certain forms of churchmanship that have a tendency distract and misplace our focus. YouTube is filled with videos of people who have left churches (whether to join other ones or to become atheist or agnostic) because of cultures and doctrines that were detrimental.

Traditional liturgy also helps the Christian to feel part of the wider church, both spatially and in terms of the chain of history. Its ancientness reminds us that Christians of times past have faced persecution and difficulties, but overcame through their faith in Christ. Its stately solemnity reminds us that the vicissitudes of this life are temporary. God’s kingdom is everlasting.

The Anglo-Catholic manner of conducting it (and even the less ornate choir-dress style) reminds us that our brethren are found in all denominations. We may disagree on various points, but we all worship the Holy Trinity and confess that Christ died for our sins and will come again to judge the living and the dead.

If you are looking for an online church, whether because of lockdown, ill health, or any other reason, please consider St Barnabas Anglican Church in Atlanta, Georgia (USA). This church is not affiliated with the blog in any way, but has proved a source of comfort and fellowship to some of its members.

Saint Barnabas is an Anglo-Catholic church, which may be suitable for a number of readers of this blog, especially those who would like to attend something more traditional but feel unable to follow a Latin liturgy. St Barnabas broadcasts its services live and offers Zoom bible study sessions. Don’t forget to like and subscribe, so that you are notified of services in advance, and to visit their website. If you live in the UK, don’t forget the time-zone difference: the morning Sunday Eucharist service is broadcast at 15:55 UK time.

The intention of this post is not to recommend a particular church over another, and so contributors and readers of the blog are welcome to put links to other church services that they have found helpful in the comments below, whether of their main, pre-lockdown church, or one they discovered after the inception of the pandemic.

I am mindful that for many, their own normal church may not provide online services or they may feel that they were in any event looking to explore something different. This pandemic has given many of us pause and, indeed, forced some churches to close where they were not able to put sufficient financial support structures in place.

Online church is, of course, not the same as attending in person. For those of us in the UK who await in-person services again, the return to these, once authorised again, may not be straightforward. My own “mother church”, if you like, is Baptist. Accordingly, the return to in-person services, though led by the leadership team, will be in consultation and collaboration with the members, who elect the leaders and vote on important matters.

As we look forward to gathering once again, many of us will be pensive, reflecting on where our walk with God will lead, and what the communal aspect of that walk will look like. For some, the focus will be on receiving the sacraments again; for others it will be about the public worship of God through our prayers and hymns; for others still, it will be about outreach ministries in various forms.

But there will also be those who are new to the faith, nervous perhaps about attending a church in person for the first time (or the first time after a long absence). In addition, there will no doubt be those whose faith has been challenged by the pandemic (or had their pre-existing concerns forced to the surface by it). Returning to “normal life” for these two groups may mean attending an Alpha Course or some other appropriate structured meetings or sessions to learn the fundamentals of Christianity (or have them re-examined and re-affirmed).

I hope that this blog will be of use to people in all of the above circumstances and that we all continue to support one another in any way we can.

Return of the sun

So here we are and the days are lengthening. Soon the clocks will go forward. Mothering Sunday approaches and daffodils are open or opening in our gardens. This is the time of year when the sky is a watery blue, and we crawl out of the wreckage of winter, cradling hope for something new, something better.

Perhaps more than many a previous year, we cling on, awaiting the easing of restrictions, a fall in infection and death rates, and an end to the caution, fear and anger that have riddled us. Soon it will be exactly a year since the first lockdown was imposed in the UK.

Hope is not an easy thing to keep hold of. It also comes unexpectedly upon us, returning like a ray of light penetrating a dark place. It reveals our vulnerabilities, the fact that we are in God’s hands. Yes, we make choices and are responsible for them – but much of life is beyond our control. Things happen to us and we are faced with the challenge of overcoming them, sometimes in ways that seem contrary to logic.

Martyrs

The martyrs, following the footsteps of Christ, have overcome evil with their own death. When one chants, hears, or recites the Litaniae Sanctorum, especially in the presence of icons or other images of the saints and the Saviour, one is struck by the amount of violent death in Christian history.

Saint Stephen was stoned. Under Nero, the Roman matryrs were burned as “torches” in the night and killed by beasts in the arena; Saint Peter was crucified upside down; and Saint Paul was beheaded. Saint Sebastian was pierced with arrows. Saint Ignatius was thrown to the beasts. Saint Polycarp was burned at the stake and pierced with a spear, and Saint Laurence is traditionally held to have been burned to death on a gridiron.

Martyrdom has persisted throughout the history of the Church. Today Christians suffer terrible persecution at the hands of Islamists and Communists and other totalitarians. Their witness haunts us and surrounds us – but in heaven they are seated with Christ in glory. Sometimes it is good to look at paintings and icons of them seated with Christ, inspired by the imagery of Revelation and other parts of Scripture, as a reminder to us that, though they suffered terrible things, they have obtained everlasting glory and will one day rule the earth with Christ when He returns.

The Exodus and Cherubim

I have been watching videos on the YouTube channel, “Ancient Egypt and the Bible“, which are put out at least once per week. The host is an academic and holds to a Ramesside date for the Exodus (Late Bronze Age / Early Iron Age). The videos are interesting and reminded me to re-examine a depiction of the Ramesses II’s camp tent, as many scholars consider that to be useful as context for understanding the Tabernacle of Meeting raised by Moses.

It is interesting to note that the cartouche of the Pharaoh in the inner room of the tent (which analogically corresponds to the Holy of Holies) is flanked, or “overshadowed” by two falcons (representing Horus) with open wings. The terms “Cherubim” is essentially a functional one referring to the spirits that surround the throne of God and draw His chariot.

They are described in different ways in Scripture, which suggests that, although the basic concept of what they are remained static, the conceptualisation of their appearance was most likely conditioned by cultural context. Accordingly, having spent years in Egypt, the Israelites most likely conceived of their appearance in Egyptian iconographic terms following the Exodus and for many years after (i.e. as sphinxes, falcons, Isis and Nephthys, etc.). (Similarly, the “Seraphim” of Isaiah were most likely imagined in Egyptian terms because of the cultural influence of Egypt over Judah in the days of Isaiah. Seals from the period have images of cobras with many wings, derived from the Egyptian uraeus.) By contrast, during the Babylonian Exile, Ezekiel’s Cherubim clearly owe more to Mesopotamian iconography than they do to Egyptian. It is also possible that Abraham, having come from Mesopotamia, conceived of these throne-guardians in similarly Mesopotamian imagery.

Josephus believed the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant resembled birds. One might naturally assume this, given the biblical text explicitly refers to their wings. However, this may be a tradition that accurately recorded the fact that they were modelled on the Egyptian falcon iconography. We may never know as the Bible says the Ark will never be built again, and it may never be recovered, if indeed it still exists.

We have seen controversy recently here at AATW with Jess’ and Chalcedon’s posts on Julian of Norwich. I think it is worth reminding ourselves that this medieval society was frequently reminded of the Last Judgment through daily prayers, liturgy, and images. Many a church featured a so-called “Judgment Portal”, which no doubt created anxiety in the minds of large numbers of people. Martin Luther, who lived in the transition from the Medieval to the Early Modern periods, struggled to find peace and love, perhaps exacerbated by what we would now call neurosis.

Figures like Julian of Norwich, who had visions and intense personal piety, seem to have risen up to proclaim the love of God to a society that struggled to feel and accept it. Although in many respects removed from the Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Roman cultures that created their respective portions of the bible, medieval people could still in many ways relate to its narratives. This was an age that witnessed incredible brutality, abuse of power, refusal of justice, and religious hypocrisy and perversion. The man who would become Richard III had a taste of this during his time in the North in his younger years. A man was brutally killed and mutilated – yes mutilated – by highwaymen who managed to evade justice because they were protected by a powerful local lord. Richard of York tried to obtain justice for the man’s widow – but to no avail. The courts of equity were born in the medieval period as a consequence of the Crusades and, as their name suggests, they were created because the courts of law were no longer considered fair.

So we can understand the visionary figures who emphasised the love of God and devotion to Mother Mary in a world that, if it thought God was anything like the local lords and justices, feared the Last Judgment. They were taught about the eternal torment of Hell, and although Purgatory would eventually lead to Paradise, it too was feared. Prayers were said and pennies paid to hasten release of the dead from Purgatory. Nor could people openly question these doctrines, for fear of being excommunicated, tortured, and executed.

Underneath was a creeping anxiety that sometimes broke out, but only really emerged on a large scale during the Reformation, concerning a division between God and His Visible Church. On the one hand was personal piety and devotion to the Church caused many to feel that disobedience to the Church was disobedience to God, since the Church was Christ’s Body on earth. Those who knew the Scriptures would reinforce this with episodes such as David’s multiple refusals to kill Saul who, though corrupt and wicked by that point, was still the Lord’s Anointed in David’s eyes. On the other hand, when faced with abuses and cruelty, an inate sense of justice, the conscience, cried out for justice.

Though we live in different times, forms of these problems and questions do persist. Even stripping away our societal and personal concerns, we are faced with grim images of the afterlife of the damned in Scripture. These do not sit well with us for a few reasons.

1. Our natural pride and instinct for self-preservation clouds our judgment. We consider that, in general, people do not commit murder or other very grave sins (and we also lie to ourselves about the gravity of sin), and so we tell ourselves that eternal torment in hell is disproportionate.
2. The images of hell in Scripture frequently involve fire. Fire is one of the most painful forms of execution and torture known to man. Beheading is at least swift and brings an end. A fiery hell is not. It is everlasting and more painful than anything else. This causes fear and makes it hard to love God when contemplated frequently because in our sinful state, we tell ourselves that God is doing this to people. In that thinking, God is painted as a torturer. While our theology tells us that we put ourselves in hell and it is not God who does so, it takes discipline and a spiritual journey to accept that message and hold it firmly. Discipline and rigorous intellect do not sit well in our zeitgeist of emotionalism.
3. The Church has been given over to emotionalism in recent years, which feeds our mental instability and undermines a consistent approach to faith and Scripture. All denominations have been affected by this. They have all witnessed, to greater and lesser extents, the conversion of church from a scene of worship and focus on God into self-help seminars and opportunities for people to make themselves great. This takes various forms, but one of the more prominent ones has been people proclaiming themselves as prophets and flouting authority.
4. The images of hell are very vivid and often in the context of apocalyptic prophecy. There is often, therefore, a question as to the degree to which hyperbole and imagery are used to make a point. In our modern, post-Enlightenment world, it is common to dismiss metaphysical pronouncements of Scripture as so heavily conditioned by ancient mindsets that they are not useful in our context. This is fallacious, but nevertheless more common than we might care to admit. It is often strengthened by foolishness exhibited by sometimes well-meaning (sometimes not-so-well-meaning) fundamentalists in their readings of Genesis and other passages of Scripture. When Scripture or certain forms of its interpretation are made to look foolish, it becomes easier to start emptying Christianity of much of its content, such that it becomes a bland form of monotheism without anything of substance to say.

How are we to respond to all this? As I have stated before, Scripture teaches eternal conscious torment of the damned in hell. I do not see anyway around that. It would be one thing if we had only the ambiguous passages that can be interpreted in an anhiliationist manner – but the authors of Scripture did not leave that option open to us. Certain passages also imply that there definitely will be people cast into the Lake of Fire (at the very least the Beast and False Prophet of Revelation).

We have to accept that and find some way of living with that knowledge. Jock is right about the dangers of neurosis and various practices that have crept into the Church (he mentions Protestant churches generally, but they are also true of Catholicism, which has adopted many practices found in Protestant and Pentacostal churches). While he and I don’t agree on all things, I’m very much with him on this. To the extent necessary, therefore, we need to find a mental discipline and outward focus that allows us to trust God and devote ourselves to the mission in whatever form that may take, be it preaching the Gospel, serving others, or simply praying that God will save people and make right the wrongs of this world.

We also need to shun things that are harmful and beware of false prophets and false teachers within the Church. I am glad that these have been exposed in recent months (particularly those who prophesied that President Trump would win a second term). Scripture tells us not to fear false prophets and the like. That is something we need to take more to heart because these conmen do just that – cause people to fear by playing on the anxiety I described earlier above. “Disbelieve me, and you’re disbelieving God.” If the Scriptural approach over the experiential and emotional one has been criticised as Pharisaical, we can at least commend it for providing a better hedge against manipulation and abuse than the latter.