Tag Archives: Salvation

He is Risen

01 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by in Easter, Faith, St Luke's Gospel, St Mark's Gospel, St Peter

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Well after Nicholas’s kind words yesterday, maybe I should share this. This is my traditional Easter Sunday post, although I edited it for today, it remains very much as it was.

That’s the importance of the day. Jesus the Christ is risen from the dead. This is the most important day for Christians.

Let’s speak a bit on the history. You may know that Easter is an Anglophone term for what nearly everybody else calls some form of Pasch. There’s a myth about that, which The Clerk of Oxford does a fine job of debunking.

How was Easter celebrated in Anglo-Saxon England? There’s a popular answer to that question, which goes like this: ‘the Anglo-Saxons worshipped a goddess called Eostre, who was associated with spring and fertility, and whose symbols were eggs and hares. Around this time of year they had a festival in her honour, which the Christians came over and stole to use for their own feast, and that’s why we now have Easter’.

Yeah, not so much, Eostre was mentioned in two sentences by St Bede, the rest is mostly 19th-century fabrication.

The women and the angel at the tomb, from the Benedictional of St Æthelwold
(BL Additional 49598, f. 51v)

The reenactment of this scene – the women and the angel at the empty tomb – forms one of the best-known elements of the early medieval Easter liturgy, famous because it is often said to be one of the oldest examples of liturgical drama. To quote from Regularis Concordia, as translated in this excellent blogpost at For the Wynn:

When the third reading [of Nocturns] is being read, let four brothers clothe themselves, one of whom, clothed in white and as if about to do something else, should go in and secretly be at the burial place, with his hand holding a palm, and let him sit quietly.  And while the third responsory is being sung, let the remaining three follow: all clothed with cloaks, carrying censers with incense in their hands, and with footsteps in the likeness of someone seeking something, let them come before the burial place. And let these things be done in imitation of the angel sitting on the tomb and of the women coming with spices, so that they might anoint the body of Jesus.

And when the one remaining has seen the three, wandering and seeking something, approach him, let him begin, with a moderate voice, to sing sweetly: ‘Whom are you seeking?’ When this has been sung to the end, let the three respond with one voice: ‘Jesus of Nazareth’. To whom he should say: ‘He is not here.  He has risen, as he said before.  Go, announce it, because he has risen from the dead.’ With this command, let those three turn around to the choir, saying, “Alleluia, the Lord has risen.’ When this has been said, let the one sitting turned back, as if calling them back, say this antiphon: ‘Come and see the place’.

Saying these things, let him rise and lift up the veil and show them the place devoid of the cross, but with the linens placed there which with the cross had been wrapped. When they have seen this, let them set down the censers which they were carrying in the same tomb, and let them take the linen and spread it out in front of the clergy, and, as if showing that the Lord has risen and is not wrapped in it, let them sing this antiphon, ‘The Lord has risen from the tomb’, and let them lay the linen upon the altar.

This is a dramatic replaying of the crucial moment in the Easter story, bringing it to life through the voices and bodies of the monks. Although presumably the primary audience for this liturgical play was the monastic community itself, it may also have been witnessed by lay people. That appears to be the implication of a miracle-story told by Eadmer, describing something which he saw take place as the ritual was being performed in Canterbury Cathedral in c.1066:

There is quite a lot more at her post which is linked above and recommended highly.

We have often spoken about Jesus the leader, and his unflinching dedication to the death to his mission. On Easter, this mission is revealed. It finally becomes obvious that His mission (at this time, anyway) is not of the Earth and it’s princelings. It is instead a Kingdom of souls.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,

that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

And so we come to the crux of the matter. The triumph over original sin and death itself. For if you believe in the Christ and his message you will have eternal life. This is what sets Christianity apart, the doctrine of grace. For if you truly repent of your sins, and attempt to live properly, you will be saved. Not by your works, especially not by your wars and killing on behalf of your faith, valid  and just though they may be,  but by your faith and your faith alone. For you serve the King of Kings.

And as we know, the Christ is still leading the mission to save the souls of all God‘s children. It is up to us to follow the greatest leader in history or not as we choose. We would do well to remember that our God is a fearsome God but, he is also a just God. We shall be judged entirely on our merits as earthly things fall away from us. But our God is also a merciful God. So be of good cheer for the Father never burdens his people with burdens they cannot, with his help, bear.

As we celebrate the first sunrise after the defeat of darkness, Hail the King Triumphant for this is the day of His victory.

 

He is Risen indeed!

And hath appeared unto Simon!

Even Simon, the coward disciple who denied him thrice

“Christ is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon!”

to Simon Peter the favoured Apostle, on whom the Church is built

Crossposted from Nebraska Energy Observer.

Into Holy Week

25 Sunday Mar 2018

Posted by in Easter

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I thought it would be a shame if this Christian blog did not have a post for Palm Sunday, as I noticed we didn’t this morning. And so I will do a hasty one, drawing on our collective beliefs. The one I have selected is one of Chalcedon’s from Palm Sunday in 2015. My comment on it makes a fair introduction, I think. This was my comment:

“My thinking parallels yours.The sacrifice, of course, hearkens back to the Temple but it echoes down in that far further. If an act, it echoes back to Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his only son, Isaac to God, and God’s message to him that he will provide the sacrifice, a ram, instead.

The quote in Lutheranism’s general confession is:

“We have sinned against You in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone”

The English isn’t as beautiful as the BCP but we have the meaning right, at least. And yes, at my age it is more often “what I have left undone”. Sort of sad, really, it was much more fun to confess what I had done. 🙂”

Here’s Chalcedon:

It will soon be Palm Sunday; Lent is coming to its appointed climax. In Sunday’s Gospel we get the first sign of a something which will become more prominent on Maundy Thursday – Jesus’ fear of what awaits him: ‘Father, save me from this hour’. He would have seen crucifixions; he knew what there was to fear. Crucifixion was intended to instil fear; it was brutal, bloody and fatal. Yet it was for ‘this hour’ that Jesus had come into the world. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us so that He might be raised up as the propitiation for our sins. He died for our sins.

There is this something against which our notions of justice rail. How, we ask, can it be right for an innocent man to die for the guilty?’ What sort of Father, we wonder, sacrifices his son for rogues such as ourselves. Of late I have found praying the Sorrowful Rosary next to impossible; the envisaging of what happened to Jesus unsettles my prayer, and it is only by thinking on what was to come that I get through. But, as St Isaac reminds us, this is an act of love. There were, he tells us, many ways God could have chosen to save us, and by choosing this one, he shows us the extent of His love; I think He also shows us the extent of our sins.

Soon, then, we shall be following the familiar story of the Passion of the Lord, Perhaps its familiarity robs it of its power for us, so we might want to spend more time meditating on it. Every stripe applied to His back is a sin of mine; that Crown of Thorns he bears, they are the sting of my sins; and high on that Cross on Calvary my sins are forgiven, and through Him I am saved from my sins.

But my sins are not banished. By this stage of my life, it is more a matter, in the words of the old Anglican General Confession, of the ‘things I have not done’ rather that the things I have done. That I am conscious of that is a sign of growth I think; but it is also a sign that the journey continues. Words sometimes darken discussion.

I also commented,

“And of course Julian of Norwich, who in her illness also witnessed the scene, reminds us:

Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us—a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.

or so we pray in this, and all, seasons.”

My thoughts this day echo his when he ends, as I shall, “But the path to the Resurrection leads through Gethsemane and the hill at Golgotha; at times the Cross is too heavy to bear – and save for His presence would be so.”

 

Intermission: Luther v Zwingli on the Eucharist

13 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Lutheranism, Salvation

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Phillip mentioned yesterday that Lutherans have a very clear doctrine of the Eucharist, which is certainly true, and that the controversy between Luther and Zwingli highlighted the differences. That too is true. I didn’t want to go into it on his post, it is a bit far off topic. It is interesting, though, and last night I found a concise summary of the differences by Trevin Wax. It also highlights how it differed from Luther’s contemporary Catholic experience.

Luther’s view

In the medieval period before the Reformation, the mass formed the centerpiece of Christian worship and devotion. Three centuries before Luther began teaching in Wittenberg, the fourth Lateran council of 1215 established the doctrine of transubstantiation, which holds that upon the priest’s consecration of the bread and wine, the accidents (according to the senses) remain the same, but the substance (the internal “essence”) is miraculously transformed into the physical body and blood of Christ.

The implications of this doctrine were widespread. Laypeople began to adore the bread and wine from afar or superstitiously carry pieces of bread back home to plant in the garden for good crops or to give to an ailing animal for good health. To avoid an accidental spilling of the wine, the priests began giving only the bread to parishioners, keeping the cup for themselves. By the 1500’s, even the bread was withheld in most churches.

The mass had turned into a show instead of a sacrament. Some parishioners feverishly hurried from church to church to obtain the blessing of seeing more than one host in a given day.

Luther objected to the extreme practices brought by medieval superstition, but he continued to regard the “images, bells, Eucharistic vestments, church ornaments, altar lights and the like” as “indifferent.”

Two things in particular bothered Luther about the Roman Catholic view of the Lord’s Supper. First, he disagreed sharply with the practice of withholding the cup from the laity. So strongly did Luther believe in the laity’s participation in the mass that he condemned the Roman Catholic practice as one way that “Babylon” holds the church “captive.” (It should be noted however that Luther did not believe that withholding the cup necessarily invalidated the sacrament or that the Christians who were denied the cup during the previous centuries had not received sacramental benefits.)

Secondly, Luther believed that the Roman Catholic understanding of the sacrament as a “good work and a sacrifice” was the “most wicked abuse of all.” Luther argued forcefully that the mass must be seen as a testament – something to receive, not a good work to perform. The only sacrifice at the Lord’s Table is the sacrifice of ourselves. The idea that a priest could sacrifice the body and blood of the Lord was especially appalling to Luther and he considered this belief the most abominable of Roman errors.  […]

Another area in which Luther remained close to Roman doctrine is in the doctrine of the “real presence.” Up until 1519, it appears Luther agreed with the official doctrine of transubstantiation. In 1520, he criticized the idea quite forcefully, painting it as needless speculation based on Aristotelian thought.

A popular misconception among Reformation students is that Luther affirmed and promoted “consubstantiation,” but neither Luther nor the Lutheran church ever accepted that term. Luther simply refused to speculate on how Christ is present and instead settled for affirming that he is there. The presence of Christ in the Supper is miraculous and thus defies explanation.

Roman Catholic theologians strongly emphasized the moment of consecration, when the priest would lift the bread and say “Hoc est corpus meum.” At that moment, bells would be rung and all eyes would be on the elevated host, which had magically been transformed into Christ’s body.

Luther similarly emphasized the words of institution, but only because Christ’s command leads to the change, not because the priest has made a special utterance. In this and other practices, Luther was content to alter the understanding behind Roman Catholic practice without feeling the need to actually change the tradition itself.

Luther believed that the fruit of the Lord’s Supper is the forgiveness of sins. Roman doctrine held that Communion was for the righteous, those who have confessed their sins to the priest. Luther believed Communion was for sinners, those who needed Christ’s incarnation the most.

 

Zwingli’s view

 

Zwingli did not see the need for a “sacramental union” in the Lord’s Supper because of his modified understanding of sacraments.

According to Zwingli, the sacraments serve as a public testimony of a previous grace. Therefore, the sacrament is “a sign of a sacred thing, i.e. of a grace that has been given.” For Zwingli, the idea that the sacraments carry any salvific efficacy in themselves is a return to Judaism’s ceremonial washings that lead to the purchase of salvation.

Whereas Luther sought to prune the bad branches off the tree of Roman Catholic sacramentalism, Zwingli believed the problem to be rooted at least partly in sacramentalism itself. […]

What Zwingli could not accept was a “real presence” that claimed Christ was present in his physical body with no visible bodily boundaries.

“I have no use for that notion of a real and true body that does not exist physically, definitely and distinctly in some place, and that sort of nonsense got up by word triflers.”

Zwingli’s theology of the Lord’s Supper should not be viewed as an innovation without precedent in church history. Zwingli claimed that his doubts about transubstantiation were shared by many of his day, leading him to claim that priests did not ever believe such a thing, even though “most all have taught this or at least pretended to believe it.”

Had Zwingli’s modified doctrine of the “real presence” been an innovation, it would probably not have been so eagerly accepted by his parishioners. The symbolic view spread rapidly because Zwingli had given voice and legitimacy to an opinion that was already widespread.

In Zurich, the mass was abolished in 1525. The Lord’s Supper was celebrated with a new liturgy that replaced the altar with a table and tablecloth.

The striking feature of the Zwinglian observance of the sacrament was its simplicity. Because the bread and wine were not physically transformed into Christ’s body and blood, there was no need for spurious ceremonies and pompous rituals. The occasion was marked by simplicity and reverence, with an emphasis on its nature as a memorial.

Zwingli’s denial of the “real presence” did not result in the neglecting of the sacrament that would characterize many of his followers in centuries to come. He saw seven virtues in the Lord’s Supper that proved its importance for the Christian life.

Do read the articles linked above. While what he says on Lutheran doctrine is in accordance with what I know and believe, and what I know of how it was derived, and I am sort of assuming that as an Evangelical he knows a fair amount about Zwingli, I don’t know enough to comment intelligently about it. My original church had a fair amount of Reformed in it, but it was long ago, and I’ve long since come to believe in The Real Presence myself, actually before I became a Lutheran. It is just more consonant with the Lord’s words and the disciples’ reaction to them.

Ps, the short form

St Cyril and the Theotokos

28 Friday Apr 2017

Posted by in Bible, Catholic Tradition, Faith, st cyril of alexandria

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No brief survey can do justice to St. Cyril’s multiple contributions to our understanding of the Faith ‘once received’: his Trinitarianism and his Christology are the very summit of the achievement of the Eastern Fathers. His debt to Origen, St. Athanasius and to the Cappadocians, as well as to St. Irenaeus is obvious, but he brought their work to a new perfection. If the Western traditions have not always given him the credit that is his due – and his absence from the standard edition of the Church Fathers is much to its detriment `- then he has remained a powerful influence on the Oriental Orthodox tradition, not least in his own Coptic Church. A true Christology has to be related to a true soteriology, one that really transforms mankind and raises us to life in God.

This was why, when St. Cyril heard that Nestorius was speaking of the ‘two natures’ of Christ, he became concerned. He told bishop Succenus that because Nestorius ‘isolates the individual man born of the holy Virgin and likewise the individual Son, the Word from God the Father’, he ‘declares the holy Virgin is not the mother of God but mother of the man.’ [1]  The correct doctrine is that Christ is the pre-eternal Word born of the Virgin. St. Cyril knew that some were accusing him of an Appolinarian understanding of the Incarnation, and thought he was teaching a merger or a mingling of the two natures. This he dismissed as a ‘slander’, asserting what his own Church has ever held:

We affirm that the Word from God the Father united to himself in some inscrutable and ineffable manner, a body endowed with mental life and that he came forth, man from woman, become what we are, not by change of nature but in gracious fulfilment of God’s plan. In willing to become man he did not abandon his being God by nature; though he descended to our limited level and worse the form of a slave, even in that state he remained in the transcendent realms of Godhead and in the Lordship belonging to his nature.

So we unite the Word from God the Father without merger, alteration or change to holy flesh owning mental life in a manner inexpressible and surpassing understanding, and confess one Son, Christ and Lord, the self-same God and man, not a diverse pair but one and the same, being and being seen to be both things. [2]

There is ‘one incarnate nature of the Word’, and after union, there should be no speaking of two natures.

St. Cyril has been criticised for his use of the phrase ‘the one incarnate nature of God the Word’, and some hold that he was ‘taken in’ by an Appolinarian forgery which he thought Athansian in origin. A full discussion of this topic lies beyond the scope of this paper, [3]  but this does him a serious injustice. As he wrote to his agent in Constantinople. Eulogius: ‘there is no obligation to reject everything heretics say – they affirm many of the points we too affirm. [4] Apollinarius had come to the wrong conclusion, but he had identified the need for the Church to confess a single subject in the Incarnate Word. This had been at the heart of Alexandrian theology from Origen’s day, and has led even recent scholars to assert that ‘a single subject Christ, with an emphasis on Christ’s divinity’ was part of the Alexandrian tradition. [5] But this is to misread things. St. Cyril’s soteriology was a dynamic one, in which, as we have seen, enfleshment and the Logos were both essential parts of the Cyrilline vision.

—————————-
[1] L. Wickham, Cyril of Alexandria: Selected Letters, (Oxford, 1983), p. 73
[2] Wickham, p. 73
[3] McGuckin, St. Cyril, Chapter 3, for a full discussion.
[4] Wickham, p. 63
[5] Susan Wessel, Cyril of Alexandra and the Nestorian Controversy (Oxford, 2004).p.2

Is the Reformation over? Yes and no.

27 Monday Mar 2017

Posted by in Faith, Lutheranism

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Interesting stuff. This is written from an ELCA perspective. The ElCA has ecumenical yearnings to be again in communion with Rome, which I can understand but do not share. Not least because parts of the Lutheran church has done a better job of preserving what we believe than almost anybody else. Still, there’s a lot to learn here, and not just for Lutherans. All of our western churches are seeing similar things. Gene Veith of Cranach did a wonderful job of excerpting Sarah Hinlicky Wilson’s article, so rather than trying to do better, I’ll simply credit him.

. . .There are 4 million Lutherans in otherwise very Hindu India and another 5.7 million Lutherans in otherwise very Muslim Indonesia. There are nearly 20 million Lutherans in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Madagascar combined. Far more modest numbers are found in the Americas, and of course all kinds of Lutherans are spangled across Europe, from the ponderous folk churches of Scandinavia to the tiny but resilient minority churches in Slovakia, Serbia, and Romania.

But it’s another thing to see the global face of Lutheranism in person, and in Wittenberg. Every November since 2009 my German colleague Theodor Dieter and I have taught a two-week seminar titled Studying Luther in Wittenberg, which collects the “diaspora” of Lutheranism for a high-octane fellowship of study. . . .

What we encountered was an enthusiastic reception far beyond anything we’d dared to let ourselves dream. We’ve spent time at the seminar table with an Inuit pastor from Greenland who told us how she has to order a whole year’s supply of communion wine because the ice prevents imports ten months of the year. And with a Senegalese pastor who, as an observant Muslim high schooler, read through a Finnish missionary’s entire library before finally being granted access to the Bible—on the conclusion of which reading, he said to himself, “The Qur’an tells how to save yourself; the Bible tells how God saves you.” And with a third-generation Lutheran pastor from Myanmar who was ecstatic to eat sauerkraut and sausages as well as to talk theology all day. Brazilian scholars laboring to translate Luther’s works into Portuguese and a Taiwanese pastor seeing unflattering parallels between 16th-century Christian practice in Europe and 21st-century Taoist practice in China.

Luther has traveled far indeed, and the farther he goes, the warmer his reception. The Africans and Asians we’ve worked with have found in this late medieval friar’s writings on faith and grace, sin and law, left-hand and right-hand kingdoms the answers to the questions plaguing their churches, their people, and their societies. The western and northern Europeans are generally slower to warm up, a little bored with the theologian who taught the ubiquity of Christ but inadvertently became ubiquitous himself. By the end we could usually bring them around. Still, I postulate a Law of Luther Reception: there is an inverse relationship between Luther’s cultural importance and that culture’s ability to hear him.

Which brings us to the question of Luther reception in our own equally exotic, if all too familiar, United States of America.

via Is the Reformation over? Yes and no. | The Christian Century

One thing she comments on, I think is worthy of note.

And then, right at the moment exotic foreigner Lutherans hit their cultural stride, got their church presidents on the cover of Time, and eagerly started building bigger barns, the winds shifted. Whether aggravated by their own choices or obediently following the way of all mainline Protestants, the growth transmuted into a free fall and has kept on falling ever since.

That is very true for the ELCA, the Episcopal Church, and even the Roman Catholic Church. It is not nearly as true for the LCMS, there has been a decline, a pretty big one, but if one was to look at baptism and confirmation statistics (around 13 in our churches) it has pretty much reflected the birth rate, which peaked around 1960. More here. Incidentally, there is a study floating around that says the UK was happier in 1959 than at any time before or since. Connected? Maybe.

She deals with whether the reformation is over, and with Luther’s aversion to Rabbinic Judaism, although he loved the Old Testament. perhaps more than the New, and with several other things.

Her article is well worth your time.

Battle Lines? Yes, but remember that the battle is already won

16 Thursday Feb 2017

Posted by in Faith

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A week or so ago I wrote a post about R, a dear and valued old friend who had converted to Christianity. He has now joined our community and this is his first post. I welcome him on behalf of the whole community gathered here. C451.

18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”

John 15:18-19 English Standard Version (ESV)

This is my first post on All Along the Watchtower, and I hope that as someone recently come to Christ that I can make a helpful contribution to the conversation here.

My friend Chaldecon 451 recently wrote about the battle that surrounds us in a world where so much pressure is placed on our Churches, of whatever denomination, to conform to the free-wheeling, consumption-oriented, sexually-obsessed culture that surrounds us, which seems to be sweeping across us like a tsunami.

He is right in his description of the huge pressure being brought to bear upon us to change our reading of Scripture to suit the mores of the world around us. The media coverage of the recent decision by the Church of England to remain true to the Biblical definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman attests to the hostility that Christians face in an age of rampant unbelief.

These are difficult times, but nonetheless, the lack of understanding apparent across the media when Christians have the audacity to suggest that God’s Word is presented in the Bible and we cannot change it in order that people can carry on committing sin without any pangs of conscience, is something we should not allow to cause us to despair.

As Our Saviour told his disciples, we should expect persecution and yes, even hatred, to follow our attestation of our Christian beliefs. We should remember, however, that throughout human history hatred has been rooted in fear – fear of the different, fear of the different, and, in our case, fear of the Truth that is Jesus Christ.

As one who was very recently an atheist, I look back at my unwillingness to embrace Christ’s Mercy and now understand how deeply it was rooted in fear. Fear of the things I thought I would have to give up if I became a Christian, fear of leaving behind my safety zone of consumer-driven existence, fear of giving up my ingrained idea that I was the centre of the universe. Above all, the (now very odd) fear that, if those pesky Christians were right, then I was in a lot of trouble. Those who attack Christianity do so out of fear, and the harsher their attacks the more they reveal their fear of the Word.

Viewed from this perspective, the weakness of these attacks are revealed to us. Time and again in the Old Testament God showed Israel how, no matter how numerous an army appears before the battle, the fear in its heart means it cannot stand against His people. We should then take these attacks as evidence of His Victory and feel energised by this knowledge of our enemies’ fear to bring the Truth of His Grace to the ears of as many as we can.

The battle is already won, and that should give us strength.

‘What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?’

The problem with religion?

12 Tuesday Jul 2016

Posted by in Blogging, Faith, Salvation

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warrior_bride of Jesus Christ

‘Religion’ sometimes gets a bad name – even from those atheists would consider religious – and sometimes it’s not hard to see why. In response to my post on God being love, our friend ginny responded with a list of the ‘attributes of God’, as though in some way something theologians from her church had written could in any way qualify what the Beloved Disciple had written. He did not write ‘love is one of the many attributes of God’, he told us God is love. He knew that as humans that word meant something to us, as Jesus knew the word ‘Father’ meant something to us. So, to suggest that in fact, you need a 553 page book to understand the ‘Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma’ is no doubt true, but to suppose that has anything to do with knowing Jesus as Saviour is just the place where ‘religion’ gets a bad name. For those of us (and I am one of them as readers will know) who enjoy a good theological tome, such things are interesting to read, but we make the sort of mistake of which Christ accused the Pharisees, if we place such things in the way of the spirit of God’s laws. I doubt not that the Rabbi and the Levite had good reasons in terms of ritual uncleanness for not stopping to help the man who had fallen among thieves, and anyone familiar with Jewish purity laws will know that is the case; but God is love, and love meant not telling the poor injured man that there was a higher good than tending to him, it meant tending to him. It did not mean not healing a blind man because it was the Sabbath, love meant healing him when the opportunity presented itself.

As far as I can understand it, the distrust of love evinced by ginny and others who have left here stands on the ground that those of us who will insist on it, are saying that there is no Judgment. This is simply wrong. There is  Judgment. It will be Christ who judges us. Some have an understanding of Christ which seems to me to be taken from analogies with medieval monarchs, and they see what we would think of as cruel punishments, and they say this is the just reward of sin. Some of us have a less anthropomorphic understanding of God’s justice. We know that the thoughts of God are too high for us. We cannot begin to think that if we had an only son we would hand him over to cruel punishments and a terrible death and to suffer for sinners, yet we know God did just that. So we stand back in awe. Those claiming to know how the Infinite God who did that will judge us all, are, of course, welcome to the claim, but I do wish that they would recognise that their own Church is a great deal more sophisticated in answering questions about hell than they seem to be.

Section 1033 states that hell is “[the] state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed.” Note that – ‘self-exclusion’. Yes, Revelation talks of a lake of fire, but it is a figure of speech, not a literal reality, it describes, in all probability, how it feels to exclude oneself from God’s love. We have the free will to do that, and no doubt many will do just that, they know better than God himself. For my own part, I know God loves me, and I love him, all else follows from that. Those who need a Father who will punish them unless they behave, have an understandable human need, coming from very obvious places. But they should not mistake their vengeful father for the God who is love; nor should they be frightened of love, for it is in love that the whole world is redeemed. Christ’s message is one of hope for us all. I simply fail to get to first base with the idea that somehow we can be terrified into being good Christians by the prospect of burning in hell for all time. What sort of conversion is that? It seems to be a vision of God as a sadistic headmaster watching all we do and deciding at the end how long we need to spend in detention. I’m not sure who would even like such a being, let alone love it – neither am I clear why such a being would sacrifice its son for us.

The first Christians did not need 553 pages of dry theology to get the Good News is that we are saved if we believe in Christ – nor do we. Too often, alas, religion in the form of rules and regulations, becomes a substitute for a loving and living relationship with the God who desires us all to come to him, because he loves us. Perhaps the saddest thing for me of some of the reactions to this sort of statement, is the realisation that that sort of love seems foreign to my critics. In meeting God, I know His love. I had assumed it true of all Christians; is it not?

Bethany: a meditation

24 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by in Easter, Faith

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1maryofbethany

There was an unusual tenseness in the air as Martha lit the candles. There were rumours coming from Jerusalem that the Pharisees wanted to act against him; those rumours disturbed us all. He was stopping in Bethany on his way to Jerusalem, and Simon the leper, whose house was big enough to accommodate us all, was putting on a feast – with Martha’s help. As ever, she was bossing us all about, making sure everything would be perfect for Jesus – her love for him had, like mine, grown to immense proportions since he saved Lazarus, our brother. But I could see that her hustle and bustle masked the tension she felt – what if the authorities did seize him?

I lit the candles (always in the light, Martha commented tartly). They flickered and cast shadows on the walls – and when he and the others came in, it was as though the walls were inhabited by a cast of characters – black shadows, distorted – and the candles flickered – one went out, and I relit it. They ate – they were hungry. But there was something else which drove that hunger – the same anxiety I had felt coming into the house. The men were fearful of what the next few days would bring, but they made light of it, as men will when there are women present; but I knew, I sensed it.

I went to where I like to sit when Jesus is with us, at his feet. My sister thinks this is scandalous; I don’t know if that’s because it means I get out of taking the dishes away, or because she thinks a single woman should not sit in that position with a man. I saw his poor feet. No one had bothered to wash them, and they were dirty, and I could see that the heels looked sore. On an impulse, I took the alabaster jar of spikenard which I had received as a gift, and I broke it open and rubbed it into his feet, cleaning and smoothing them. The air was filled with the sweet perfume, which attracted the attention of others to what I was doing. Martha shot me such a look, which turn to anger when I let my hair down and used it to dry his feet – was that because she thought I ought to have had a towel with me – or because women did not let their hair down in public – maybe, as usual, I’d failed on both the practical and the moral fronts. I didn’t care. Jesus looked so careworn and almost sad, and he relaxed so much as I began my ministrations: love comes in many forms. In this place, at this time, this seemed the thing to do – so much so that I poured the rest of it onto his hair and massaged his shoulders. I do believe if looks could kill, the one Martha shot me at that point would have been the last thing I would have seen in this world.

It wasn’t only Martha who looked and acted as though I’d done something awful. Our host, Simon made a nasty comment to the effect that if Jesus really were a prophet, he’d know what sort of woman I was – a dreadful sinner. Jesus was unworried – he knew me well enough, and he told one of his wonderful stories, asking whether a man who owed a lot of money and was forgiven his debt would be more or less grateful than a man who owed a little and was forgiven it? That brought tears to my eyes – they fell onto Jesus’ feet, and I dried them with my hair, and kissed them. There was a noise from Martha that sounded like an explosion. I didn’t care, I was lost in the moment. I suddenly knew this was the last time I would do this for him – alive.

I like most of his followers, but Judas is an exception. He’s a nasty, grasping fellow – as my backside attests, it isn’t just money he grabs; he says all the right things – most of the time, but I’m not the only one who finds him creepy; Martha can’t stand him either. So it would have been him who opened up his big mouth to complain about my extravagance in using all that ointment on one man – it could, he complained loudly, have fed a family for a year if we’d sold it. I didn’t like to mention it was my ointment – but then I didn’t want to say how it had come to me, either – no one would ever give Martha such a gift.

But Jesus responded with words burnt into my memory. He tasked them quietly but firmly with not understanding – and then with what he said, showed me the full understanding of what I had just done. I had, he said, done it out of love for him, and to prepare his body for burial – and wherever the story was told, I would be remembered in it. That last I only understood when I saw what brother Luke and brother John Mark wrote in their books – I am told that Levi-Matthew also wrote about me, but I have not seen it, and unlike Luke, he never asked me for my version of what happened that night.I wonder if young John will mention it – I should like to see him again, but I am told he is in the far north somewhere with mother Mary; he was a sweet young man, so kind and gentle; I miss him.

What happened, what really happened, I can tell no one, because I do not have the words to describe how my heart was opened when he said that my sins were forgiven. I had not dared to ask – how could I? Simon the leper was right, I was a bad girl who did bad things. But Jesus, Jesus had known, and he had seen into my heart. My last memory will be of how he turned to me and said “Your sins are forgiven.” That caused a bit of a fuss, and I heard Simon, I think, ask who Jesus thought he was that he could forgive sins. But I recall those words now, all these years later: “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” It had, I did.

 

Gospel, 4th Sunday in Lent, Year C

06 Sunday Mar 2016

Posted by in Atonement, Commentaries, Faith, Lent, Reading the BIble, St Luke's Gospel

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Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

St Cyril of Alexandria notes the way in which the Pharisees fail to understand the nature of Jesus and of his mission; he came to save all, and the Pharisees sought to close the gates of heaven to all but those like them. They were outraged at his gentleness with and love for sinners; they looked for sharp rebukes and scolding – but in the story of the son that was lost and was found, Christ gives a true picture of what the love of God means; sinful, prideful men like the Pharisees found this a scandal – their God was of their own hearts, not the God who sent His Son to save sinners. When a sinner repents, that is all that is needed – and we are to rejoice and without reservation.

The Fathers saw several interpretations attaching to the two sons. St Cyril thought that the elder son represented the holy angels, and the prodigal the human race; but he notes that others thought the elder son the Jews, and the younger the Gentiles.

St Ambrose notes that the Father is full of generosity, and lets the son have his request – but it is the son who squanders what he was given, wastes a fine inheritance on the tawdry rewards of this world which, when the times become hard, will not sustain him. Augustine notes that to be in the realms of lustful passion is the same as to be in the realm of darkness – far, far away from the face of God. Ambrose notes that the famine is a famine also of goodness, of good deeds and of the wisdom of God. The younger son attaches himself to a patron of this world, but his reward is that of this world – barren and without nourishment.

Peter Chrysologus comments that the fate of the son is that of all who desert God’s grace for the rewards of this earthly life – fleeing from a generous provider, he ends by wallowing in dirt and endures a severe judgment.

Philoxenus of Mabbug noted that in spite of all his sin, he did not lose the honourable title of son – and though he felt unworthy and a sinner, he still called God his father – so the Grace of the Spirit had not departed from him. We, too, call God Father through the Grace of the Spirit.

St Ambrose commented that the son acknowledged he had sinned against heaven and the Father; that confession brings Christ to intercede for the sinner, and that intercession produces pardon. He acknowledges his manifold sins and wickedness and confesses he is not fit to be called son – he will be content to be a servant. But those who humble themselves before God will be raised – and the Father sees him a long way off and has always loved him and now rejoices that he was lost is found, he who was sunk in sin is now risen from the dirt – and the son is freed from the yoke of sin. The Father kisses and welcomes him, he imposes no penances, demands no restitution – the love of God to the repentant sinner is absolute and without qualification. Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. (Romans 4:7).

What love is this, St Athananius asks? It is the divine love beyond all expression, which rings out a pean of praise in heaven over the one sinner saved. The sinner is restored through the love of Christ, love that endured the pains of the Cross for our sake – the robe (everlasting life) is restored, and the ring, the symbol of fidelity to the Spirit, is placed again on his finger. Corruption is replaced by incorruption – and joy is unconfined because the beloved who was lost, has been found.

But the elder son, the representative of those who believe the Law saves, cannot rejoice. He knows the letter of what the Law prescribes for such a sinner before his repentance can be accepted, and he is scandalised that, as he sees it, his unworthy brother is so easily restored. But God, who alone knows all things, is the only Just Judge, and his reasoning is as high above ours as the angels are above our earthly lives. The elder brother is proud, and in his pride, honours the letter but fails to understand the Spirit. It is a hard saying for those who think they are righteous, that the love of God forgives all who repent – like the Pharisees at the beginning of the reading, they are scandalised at the company Jesus keeps.

Thoughts on the Epiphany

03 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by in Bible, Catholic Tradition, Faith

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The liturgical season is a marvellous resource for reflecting on our faith and some of its major moments. The original purpose of the feast of the Epiphany, which began as an Eastern Church celebration, was to celebrate the Baptism of Christ. Yet the Western habit of attaching the feast to the visit of the Magi reminds us of perhaps the most important and yet unremarked thing about Our Lord’s Ministry – its extension to the Gentiles.

There are many signs that the Gospel writers initially thought that Christ’s mission was only to the Jews: Matthew 10:5; Matthew 15:26 and Mark 7:27, and some of the problems which Paul had with the Judaisers stemmed from this sense possessed by some of the earliest converts that Jesus’ mission was only to the Chosen People. Paul hammers away at this in his great Epistle to the Romans, and of course his whole mission was testimony to the fact that it was not ancestry and the law which saved, but faith in the Lord Jesus.

It is interesting that it should be Matthew alone amongst the Synoptic Gospels who mentions the Magi – as scholars are agreed that the community to which he wrote was a Jewish one.  The parallels between the story of Moses in Exodus and of this part of Christ’s life would have been very clear to the Jewish audience. But if parts of his Gospel look backwards to Jewish tradition, the story of the Magi looks forward to the final words of his Gospel:

19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.

‘All the nations’ are to be evangelised, not just the Jews. The Magi, who sincerely wish to pay homage to the real ‘King of the Jews’ is contrasted with the behaviour of the actual ‘king of the Jews’; the message is plain – from the beginning Gentiles worshipped the Christ. Their acceptance prefigures the conversion of the Gentiles.  As Paul told the Galatians: ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’

That was, as it remains, a truly radical message. We are all one in Christ. The things which divide us, indeed the things we use to define ourselves, are naught to Him or to those who are in Him.

It is hard  for us to recapture how radical it was to those first Jewish followers to be told that the Samaritans could be ‘saved’: the Good Samaritan and the Samaritan woman at the well both serve, as do the Magi and the Roman Centurion at the crucifixion, of the faith that would be found in the Gentiles. There have always been, and always will be, those who feel that the Gospel message is just for them and their kind, but the coming of the Magi reminds us that it is for all who will follow His star and heed the Epiphany that Jesus is Lord.

That message would get the early Christians thrown out of the Temple, it would make them outcasts in their own land – but it would pave the way for the conversion of the whole world. At this Epiphany-tide it is good to remember those Wise Men – because they prefigure us. Christ came into the world to save all who will turn to Him, so let us turn and give thanks at this Epiphany-tide.