As We Forgive

The necessity of forgiveness in human affairs is a recurring theme in the New Testament and our continual human experience suggests that all aspects of life could be greatly improved if there were a lot more of it in human affairs.
Matthew’s Gospel gives us the parable of the ‘king’s’ remitting a servant’s debt of something like half a million dollars in today’s currency, only to report that same servant threatening court action against someone who owed a mere ten thousand dollars. (18.21ff). And Luke reports Jesus’ using, as so often, an everyday illustration of forgiveness: “Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back”. (6.37f)

Forgiveness not a Contract

Misunderstandings of the biblical position are frequently to be found, for example, the common tendency to assume that forgiving others is a condition for God to forgive us, as though this were some contractual arrangement, implying that God will not forgive us until we act forgivingly.
Close attention to what Luke says tells us that that was not in any way the position of Jesus. The scene was well known to Jesus’ hearers: a woman buying grain would hold out her apron as a kind of shopping bag. The description of what is poured in suggests an unlimited supply (which only God could give, and the passive, “it will be given” may well reflect the Hebrew usage for the action of God). The words ‘pressed down’ and ‘shaken together’ (think of trying to get the end of a bag of sugar into a canister that already looks full) in each case translate the perfect tense – pepiesmenon, sesaleumenon - which implies “something done whose effects continue into the present”. Interestingly, the final characteristic of this ‘overflowing’ gift is a present participle – “continuing to overflow”, that is, on and on and on (indefinitely). So God’s forgiveness is beyond our human imagining.
But what of the supposed contract? All this bounty has to be earned, it is regularly held, by our forgiving actions. This Lukan saying contradicts such a notion: the size of your measuring cup is crucial. If you use one of those one-cup Pyrex measures, that is how you go about things: giving with a small measure and capable of receiving far less than is offered. If you have, and regularly use, an eight-cup Pyrex measure, that, is your modus operandi.

The Gift & the Reception

So the central message of the Gospel says something very different from our usual contractual understanding: God’s forgiveness, it says, is free, unlimited and immediate, and what is at issue is our ability to receive it; this ability, moreover, is indissolubly linked to our own pattern of forgiving. A fundamentally unforgiving person cannot properly understand the meaning of forgiving and thus finds it difficult to receive forgiveness. The first words of Jesus in our first Gospel to be written are, “Repent, because the Rule of God is coming on you”. The word translated ‘repent’ in the Greek means “change your mind”, but, because of the history of its use in Greek translations of the Old Testament, it carries the much stronger connation of “turn yourself around”: it calls, in effect, for a conversion, which is the Latin form of the order, “about turn”.

Divine Providence & Forgiving

Everyday, in our personal lives, in national affairs and on the international scene, events occur that seem inexplicable for religious faith, events that raise two linked issues: our capacity to forgive, and God’s involvement in human affairs (Divine Providence).
Two events in particular, in the last eight years have shaken the American sense of immunity from the sort of disasters that have flooded across Europe and Asia for the last century.

Of course, it is not just 21st century American Christians who find events like the destruction of the World Trade Center towers and the devastation of hundreds of miles of coast lands, including a major city a serious problem for their understanding of the love and justice of God: events that put an immense strain on our ability to forgive whoever we feel bears the responsibility. Natural disasters, plagues, famines and war have not only tested our capacity to forgive, but have always raised questions about the Nature of God and the extent of divine direction of human events and natural phenomena. In the face of disaster, anger with other human beings, and, perhaps, ultimately with God, is very common but such questions have become particularly problematical for Christians of the 21st century. In the face of both natural disasters and also the catastrophic situations that we bring upon ourselves and on one another, if we cannot at least make a start towards forgiveness, we are left with the alternative: an attitude of revenge and an assertion of power on the human level, and for some an assumption that God punishes wickedness by these means.

New Testament Ambiguity

That the New Testament itself is not unambiguous in this matter is clear. Among the Synoptic gospels, Matthew echoes the “contractual” approach to the dealings of Yahweh with the people of Israel seen for example in Deuteronomy, and a vengeful approach explicit in Joshua and Judges (total destruction of the Canaanites, for instance). On the whole, however, the emphasis falls on a recall to repentance and an assurance of the limitless love of God. It is true that St. Paul speaks frequently of the wrath of God, but it is clear that his meaning is far from a personal vindictiveness. Many contemporary scholars have suggested that wrath ('οργη) is, indeed, impersonal in Paul’s usage, an inevitable result of ignoring the moral structure of the world. Moreover, against this must be set Paul’s teaching about the grace of God, a theme that underpins almost everything he says: “For God has shut up everyone in disobedience, in order to be merciful to everyone (τους παντας)” (Rom. 11.32).

Apocalypse of St. John

A New Testament book that seems to endorse revenge, The Revelation of St. John the Divine, is, perhaps, closer to an Old Testament theodicy than any other part of the New Testament. John Sweet (Commentary) argues, fairly persuasively I think, that the strong language of condemnation and judgment of a vast part of human kind, is offset by a repeated call to repentance, and by the fact that the destruction is held back again and again, as in the plagues of Egypt where the final fate of the death of the first-born is put off as “smaller” afflictions fail to produce repentance.

A very different view is expressed by Marina Warner in a Times Literary Supplement Review article (August 19 & 26, 2005, p.14).
She writes: “Armageddon…will engulf all of them Satan, the Beast, the Dragon, the Whore of Babylon, the unchaste and the lukewarm, dogs and sorcerers, and all those other famous embodiments of evil”: all these will go and only a tiny minority will survive. She concludes, “The language of denunciation, ostracism, anathema on the enemy amounts to this: a spell of exclusion”.
To what extent the Seer did mitigate his strong emphasis on the horrific judgments he predicts is largely academic when one considers the later history of the Book and its influence on sectarian Christianity. After a hesitation of several centuries, the book was finally established in the New Testament suggesting that the disasters that we agonize over are the judgments of God on a sinful world. This view of Divine Providence was not the only, but by far the most influential, until the 16th century when Luther, awakened from his “dogmatic slumber”, recalled (some of) us to St. Paul’s central message, (and, challenged the dominance of a “contractual” view of forgiveness). Luther’ work, however, left much of the older approach in place, and Armageddon, a predication of the final great battle which will engulf us all, became the key word for millenarian Christianity.

Reactions

In the last century and a half, most thinking Christians have found such a view increasingly intolerable; most, but not all. Conservative Evangelicals remained quiet about the destruction of New Orleans; however, several voices were heard after the catastrophe of September 2001 affirming it as God’s judgment on wicked New York. Perhaps the cry of outrage from many US citizens on that occasion has led to a muting of the response over the New Orleans disaster.

At issue is how far we can have the faith and courage to dare to re-read and re-fashion our theological structures, (and, therefore, our entire Christian orientation) in the light of the vastly increased knowledge that we have been given in recent centuries. In many ways the Anglican church has undertaken this task beginning in the1850s, often timidly and with enough over-reaching, followed by retractions, for its critics to say it has no mind of its own. A contrast is frequently drawn with the apparently monolithic church of Rome by Anglo Catholic apologists, and there have always been those who insist on the immutability of dogmas and the inerrancy of the biblical record.

Need to Refashion Dogma

Not only do we need to take contemporary science seriously, and there are reassuring signs from President Obama’s administration that such is now the case, but we also have to read the New Testament with all the tools that scholarship has given us in the last two centuries. One of the dogmatic readjustments that is paramount is how we understand God’s action in the world. Unless we can, as it were, make some space between God and the divinely created universe, we shall be locked into a view of God as punishing by means of natural disasters and human folly, a viewpoint opposed to what we learn of Jesus from the Gospels. The author of the 4th Gospel gives us the answer of Jesus to a question from Philip, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father”. (Jn. 14.9) When we look at Jesus, we do not see vengeance and destruction, but love and healing, and we hear words of forgiveness.

Thinking About God

David Jenkins writes, “God is not the mastermind of a great construction activity … moving on inevitably to a predetermined end ….. [God] is much more like a master artist...committed passionately, launched by love ….making ways forward by freedom and in freedom” (God, Politics and the Future, SCM, 1988, p. 109). The freedom is ours as well as God’s, and this, of course, is where forgiveness becomes crucial. It would be little short of blasphemy to attribute the terrible human suffering in the wake of Katrina to God’s wrath. Meteorological conditions are one thing; physical and social structures brought about by human activity are quite another, though there is mounting evidence that human activity is significantly affecting meteorological conditions. In October 2004, Joel, K. Bourne wrote a long article in the National Geographic Magazine which began: “The Louisiana bayou, hardest working marsh in America, is in big trouble-with dire consequences for residents, [and] the nearby city of New Orleans.” Other scientists have pointedly told us that if global warming continues, other coastal cities round the world will share the fate of New Orleans.

The Way Forward

So it is crucial for Christians not be drawn into the “blame game”, seeking retaliation on others or blaming God. I think a poem of R.S. Thomas, in a collection called Frequencies, 1978, catches something of what I want to say about our way forward. It suggests a coming to maturity in our theological speaking; precise statements ‘falsify’; ‘God’ explains everything, and when things prosper, God is praised: it is a different story when disaster strikes. So we need to be much more reticent, more tentative, and much less certain that we can produce a blueprint of the inner workings of the Godhead.

Waiting

Face to face? Ah, no
God; such language falsifies
The relation. Nor side by side,
Nor near you, nor anywhere
In time and space.

Say you were,
When I came, your name
Vouching for you, ubiquitous
In its explanations. The
Earth bore and they reaped;
God, they said, looking
In your direction. The wind
Changed; over the drowned
body it was you
they spat at.

Young
I pronounced you. Older
I still do, but seldomer
Now, leaning far out
Over an immense depth, letting
Your name go and waiting,
Somewhere between faith and doubt,
For the echoes of its arrival.

Good Friday, 2009

The seventh Word, St. Luke 23.46

Faith – Formula or Trust

Among books on Prayer and Spirituality I have read in the last 50 years, the author who has made most sense to me is Neville Ward, a Methodist Minister and Theologian. Rereading some of his meditations for Good Friday gave me a jumping off point in preparing this homily. He begins by noting that the Church has always insisted on the primacy of faith. I think, however, that we need to distinguish two ways in which faith has been understood in western Christianity. It has often come to be taken as assenting to dogmatic statements or intellectual formulae. I turn rather to the biblical understanding of faith, characterized as trust in and commitment to, a person be it another human being or God. Ward comments“[Y]ou have as much chance of finding God at the end of an argument as you have of finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.” (Friday Afternoon, p. 128).

The Words from the Cross

Contemporary biblical study has concluded that it is an impossible task to reconcile the series of words recorded as Jesus was dying on the Cross: they possibly represent different traditions that developed in disparate church groups, but they are used by the individual writers as part of their particular interests and overall themes. Traditionally, the final word in John is not the final word used Liturgically. John’s final word, (τετελεσται) “it is finished”, is much better understood as “accomplished” rather than something like, “it is over”, and one might wonder what can be said after that. Perhaps, the words of Jesus that Luke places last might be seen to suggest, in the briefest possible compass, just what it was that Jesus accomplished.

Abba, Father

The first thing that leaps out at us when we turn to Luke 23, verse 46, is the opening word, Father. Jesus is addressing God directly, and we know from our oldest sources in two of Paul’s letters (Rom. 8.15 & Gal. 4.6) and in our oldest Gospel, Mark, that Jesus used the Aramaic word “Abba” to address God: a tiny but significant point, for this is a more informal form of address, as to one’s earthly father: not the reverential form “my Father” normal in Jewish prayer. When we address God, speak to God, the usual understanding is that we are praying, so what Luke gives us here is Jesus’ final prayer to a God to whom He is so close that he is, indeed, his Father in whom he has total and explicit trust. This, surely, speaks volumes about the mission that Jesus has declared ‘accomplished’. Clearly, there have been and are, many views of God: some have seen god as a cruel tyrant, demanding an annual sacrifice of children; to some, God is a being who can be bribed and manipulated, and to yet others, God is an empty word, the expressing of a deep, but fantasy longing for a safe haven.

Unflinching Realist

But this final prayer of Jesus presents us with a loving God to whom Jesus said we are so well known that “the hairs of [y]our head are all numbered” (Lk.12.7). But, more than this, the prayer suggests a life-long commitment to God and a deep understanding of the human condition. Jesus comes across to us as an unflinching realist. By that I mean that the accounts strongly suggest that his understanding of God and our relationship to the Divine Being leave no room for sentimentality, self-pity, carefully nurtured grudges against others and a thousand other psychological ploys that we, almost instinctively, use. The prayer implies the total acceptance of the present circumstances.

It is so different from so many of our own prayers. In desperate situations like epidemics, natural disasters, and the personal chaos we sometimes allow our lives to descend to, we so often turn to fervent prayer, even if we can hardly remember when we last engaged in that activity. And what kind of prayer to do we use? “God don’t let the roof of my house get destroyed; God please keep me safe from the SARS virus” and so on. A moment’s thought will show that these are manipulative prayers, and what is more, often imply “destroy my neighbor’s house and not mine”: hardly the kind of love for others so strongly stressed in the teaching of Jesus. Neville Ward points out that it behoves us to note carefully what Jesus did not say, and goes on, “he did not say that death is the wages of sin. He did not say that God would save his friends from the violence of life; indeed he warned them to be prepared for it.” (Ward p.128).

God the Manipulator ?

For all sorts of reasons, Western people in the 21st century find it hard to hold onto trust in God and, at the same time, to take a hard-headed, realistic view of the human condition. It is assumed that if you are going to be truly realistic, you probably have to drop faith in God, and, on the other hand, we are faced with far too many examples of people who hang on to that faith by ignoring the realities of life. This is partly because Christian thinkers by and large have shied away from coming to grips with what science tells us about the world; they cling to the view that God is behind all the events of the on-going world, as though sitting in a massive heavenly traffic control station. To say, as Jesus, reported by Luke does, that God knows how many hairs you have is not to say that God will prevent your going bald.

Jesus did not have any idea of the scientific developments of the last two centuries, but the amazing thing is that his attitude to the real world is compatible with them. He speaks of natural events and says, “Your Father … makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust” (Mt. 5.45). He knows only too well the potential depths of anger, cruelty and hate that can be practiced by human beings; this is part of the reality of the human situation and must be dealt with under the over-arching faith that God’s love is the ultimate power of the universe. We hear how Jesus deals with such anger and hate in one of the first words of Jesus given us by St. Luke in his Passion narrative: “Father”, that same word again, “Father forgive them”. It seems that Jesus’ strength and calm, and his ability to communicate that to others, comes from a serene acceptance of the real word and its events, but with a life founded on a deep faith that God is (as St. Paul says) “all and in all”. (I Cor 15.28).

Ultimate Intuition

This issue of faith, with which I began, turns out to be pivotal. If one wanted to put the matter in less religious terms, one might say that each of us has a deep, deep intuition of what human life is all about. It might be called a vision of the world, but that would be too precise and so I prefer to call it a deep intuition, which often we may not be able to articulate. Nevertheless it is there, influencing all our thoughts and actions. If deep down, we really trust that good is stronger than evil, justice than injustice, and life not death is the ultimate scheme of the universe, we may be able to share the kind of acceptance Jesus brought to living: our faith though tested by all the evidence that seems to contradict such an intuition will hold. If deep down our intuition is much less optimistic, resulting from the obscurities of our very early experiences (Ward, p.131), we may feel that the reality of massive evil in the world presents an insuperable obstacle to faith. Indeed, for most of us there is likely to be some oscillation between these two positions. Perhaps the cry “Eli Eli lama sabach-tha-ni” - 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me' (Mt.’s version at 27.46) - hints that Jesus was not immune from such an oscillation.

Final Affirmation

If that were so, Luke is clear that it is not the last word. Recalling Psalm 31, Jesus dies with the affirmation that everything is held together by God’s sustaining power. The metaphor of the arms and hands of God in the Book Deuteronomy expresses God’s love in choosing Israel and keeping her safe: “The eternal God is your dwelling place,// and underneath are the everlasting arms”. (Deut. 33.27).
“Into your hands I commend my spirit” is emphatically not a statement of passive surrender; it is, rather, a strong affirmation of a life lived in a real world of failure and sin, hate and suffering, but lived with the unshakeable confidence that God’s love is stronger than all these enemies of life. It is a great mistake to assume that Jesus knew what followed after one’s last breath; doubtless, he shared the Judaic view that this life was not the end, that God’s sustaining hands were there beyond the final frontier of earthly life, but he was given no supernatural previews of what was to happen. So he died, as he had lived, totally committed to God, sure of the ubiquity of the divine love:

“There was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour … and the curtain of the Temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father into your hands I commend my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last.” (Lk. 23.46).

The Book Of Revelation – Study Outline Part 5

Part 1 of this Study outline was posted in August, 2007
Part 2 in Sept 2007
Part 3 on January 14 2008
Part 4 on Aug. 17 2008
Click on the appropriate year/month in Blog Archive (top, right) to find earlier sections

Overview

As the fourth section of Revelation ends, it might be worth quickly reviewing John's plan so far to ask if he has any kind of time sequence in mind. Farrer points out that "the visions of the seals have their centre in the present," but their conclusion points to the end of all things (though it is a pointer not the actual end). "The woes of the horsemen are also of the present age". He also notes that the seals and the woes of the trumpets are partial destruction. Final judgment waits until the section we are about to begin. Chapter 12, too, seems to look back to the ministry of Jesus, but it is followed by the revelation of the Beast (Antichrist) and the beginning of his reign.

Influence of Mark ch. 13

It is here that we need to recall the immense authority that Mark 13 would have had for the author. Critical study of the last century and a half has increasingly suggested that the apocalyptic sections of the Synoptic gospels, with Mark as the focus, may well contain original sayings of Jesus, but also strongly reflect the position of the first generation church. Denis Nineham writes that scholars have suggested (among many other theories) “that a Jewish-Christian document, drawn up in A.D. 40 to encourage and advise Christians, was subsequently incorporated into the tradition of Jesus’ words”. (Penguin Commentaries - St. Mark p.353). A footnote to this section reads, “No doubt of it [the document] emanated from a Jewish-Christian ‘seer’, it was thought of from the beginning as, in a very real sense, a word of the exalted Lord.” The conclusion is that we cannot be certain that every word in this section goes back to Jesus, though there can be no doubt that John certainly believed that to be the case.

First Generation Eschatology

Christian belief (about the end, eschaton) in the latter part of the first century seems fairly clear. The divine intervention was centered on the coming of Jesus, and the events of his ministry, and, above all, on his atoning death and resurrection. This was was seen as the decisive act of God, the beginning of the end of history, (cf. Paul you are already saved, and the 4th Gospel's repeated insistence that those who believe have already passed from death to life, already share eternity). Nevertheless, it was also strongly believed that the process of history was not quite complete, and would be completed by a speedy return of Christ (“the second coming”), and the imagery of Daniel’s Son of Man, coming on the clouds of glory, is firmly incorporated into the words of Jesus as they were passed on and finally written down. That he also used the term to refer to himself as humble and identified with suffering humanity (cf. Mk 10.45 and many other refs.), may suggest the origin of the later apocalyptic usage, and it remains possible that Jesus pointed to the theme of vindication in Daniel: applied to the persecuted saints and then to the saints in glory, vindicated by God. (Dan 7.22 & 27ff). The Christian tradition, though, has made a sea change. In Daniel the Son of Man is going to God to receive the reward of perseverance in the face of persecution: in the later NT, he is coming from God (returning to complete the divine plan and finalize the Rule of God).

The Markan Apocalypse

Mark 13 begins with warnings against deceivers. (Letters to Churches, week 1). It says before the end there must be wars, rumors of wars, famines and all kinds of distress. (Four horsemen, week 2). Mark’s Apocalypse includes persecution that reaches a climax (Mk 13.14) with the 'abomination of desolation'. John Sweet writes, “In Revelation all this is rephrased in terms of the two witnesses and the two beasts which form the climax of the trumpet plagues. In John’s time the danger was not....’false Christs’... the danger now was not of Rome desecrating the temple at Jerusalem - it had already been destroyed - but of the Roman world desecrating the spiritual temple, the church, in the person of Christian fellow-travelers”. (i.e. those who fell prey to emperor worship, or at least to “accommodation” with the imperial power). (Commentary on Revelation p. 20).

All this suggests that the final action of the apocalyptic scene is beginning. Mark 13 “has little to say about this final stage of the drama, and goes on to warnings about preparedness: it will happen within this generation, but no one except God knows the precise day (Mk 13.28-end)” (Sweet, p. 20f).
Revelation 19.11-16 gives us the climax of the Apocalypse, and so between 15.9 and 19.11 we seem to have prophecies of judgment, preceding the end and revealed as each “bowl” is poured out.

Chapter 16

We are presented with a series of judgments on the rebellious world. The first four "bowls of wrath" follow closely the pattern of the plagues in ch. 8, and, therefore, hark back to the Plagues of Egypt. In this 'week', though, the destruction is total. The powers of nature are taken from humanity (since they have abused the trust given them), and, in poetic justice, are turned on the desecrators.

vv.5-7 Specifically, the beast and his followers have killed the righteous ones.

Vengeance in the Book of Revelation

We have noted that using the conventions of Jewish apocalyptic writings, this is clearly a Christian apocalypse. It is moving to a Trinitarian view of God; it places the atoning life and death of Jesus at the centre of God's saving plan (Lamb is used 28 times), and it takes for granted a Christian liturgy. Even so, many feel that there is a strong taste of the OT about this book (cf.6.10; 14.11 & 20; 18.20; 19.17-21, etc.). There is a feel of vengeance, almost gloating over enemies, that goes beyond the exercise of righteous judgment. Above all, there is no reference to love.

Various answers have been given:

a) the wrath is against corrupt institutions rather than individuals;
b) it is part of the exaggeration of apocalyptic style;
c) there are some hints (much less aggressive) in the teaching of Jesus (cf. his condemnation of the Pharisees).

It has also been noted that the image of the Lamb is one of sacrificial giving (=love in the fully Christian sense).

Sweet has an excellent comment: The beast that looks like a lamb but speaks like a dragon (13.11) "is a deliberate parody of the spirit of the Lamb, whose only power is that of the sword which issues from his mouth (1.16; 2.12; 19.15) - his words that pierce men's souls (cf. Heb. 4.12). Is this 'slaughter' simply punitive, leading to eternal torment? Or does it represent the impact of truth on illusion - the only possibility of true healing?”*1 (Revelation p. 51)

vv.9-11 still no repentance is seen, following the pattern of Pharaoh's 'hardened heart'.

12-end the 6th and 7th judgments, (a) open the frontiers to the barbarian hordes (the stock pattern of judgment in Amos, Isaiah and Jeremiah), (b) set the scene for the final "battle" somewhere near Megiddo (Harmagedon = mountain of Megiddo) ), and (c) administer the coup de grace on the created order; the power of John's writing is seen in the short verse 20.

v. 15 note the clear reference back to the fifth letter (3.3), and a reminder that in spite of 'baroque' excursions, there is an overall pattern in the book.

Chapters 17 & 18

As in the case of earlier 'sevens', two substantial codas are added to the week. Here we get a kind of "close-up" of the destruction that has been mapped out in ch. 16.

Ch. 17 is in a general sense about the corrupt and corrupting power of imperial Rome, though the precise references of the symbolism in vv 9-14 are probably lost to us. (cf. chart in HarperCollins Study Bible p. 2330; none of the counting is entirely satisfactory). Seven Caesars are implied and the sixth is reigning. As usual, if this is a prediction of the end of history, it was wrong. John might have taken Jesus' warning to heart not to ask when and where.*2
It is more probable, thinks Sweet, that John is using the numbers symbolically. Note that six and eight appear again (as in the number of the beast and the number of Christ). Six is Friday, the day when evil seems dominant, and the eighth is a parody of the Christ who "goes to perdition"; (i.e. the anti-Christ pointing to the end)

Chapter 18
Here we have one of the ‘purple passages’ of the bible: full of dramatic movement and intense feeling, even so, it sets out the fundamental theological position of the book. There is an ultimate rejection of all that is contrary to truth and justice. Money, political power, military power, hierarchical dominance, and flagrant exploitation of the poor, have dominated human history and apparently have the upper hand. The Book of Revelation, and this chapter in particular, say that is not so in the end, and we ought to have known it was not so by looking on the crucified one, the Lamb whose only weapon is the word of God and obedience to the Righteous (judging) and Loving (accepting) God.

v.4 "come out" cf. God' warning to Lot in Gen 19.15. cf also Isa. 52.11

HarperCollins Study Bible has some pertinent notes on this chapter.

This section closes (as have the earlier septets) with a Liturgy - ch. 19.1-10.

v.3 is probably an intended and ghoulish contrast to the incense of heaven (5.8 & 8.4)

vv. 1-4 give thanks for deliverance from the corrupt and evil power of 'Babylon' (= the center of world power century by century).

vv 5-10 center on the reign of God. The negative side is the judgment of Babylon, the positive is the marriage of God with his people, an image that dominates the closing section of the book. The idea is found in the OT in the Prophet Hosea where Yahweh's choice of Israel is seen as a marriage cf Isa. 54.6. In the NT see II Cor 11.2 and Eph 5.25-27.

v.9 combines the stock idea of a "messianic banquet", the sign that the new age has dawned with rejoicing and plenty. In the Christian tradition, the development of the Eucharist owes much to these eschatological ideas, and also exemplifies a specifically Christian theme we have already noted, namely that the age to come has come and that Christians already have a foretaste of the joys of heaven.

The Concluding section - 19.11-22.7

What follows is in my notes from lectures by one of my Seminary Professors, Fr. Gabriel Hebert SSM, a great NT scholar. I assume that I added the extended quotation form Austin Farrer after the lecture, based on the given page references
"Farrer says (p. 302) that after our Lord has come, (19.11ff), ‘the order of events is simply narrated; it is the accepted stock of rabbinic eschatology, the Great Battle, the Kingdom of Messiah, the rebellion of Gog, the Last Judgment, the World to come...We may draw the general conclusion that St. John describes only two future stages of history, in addition to the present stage; the Advent of Antichrist and the Advent of Christ … The Advent of Christ releases the eschatological series proper, from the Great Battle to the World to come. St. John treats this as a unit, because to the Christian everything is secured once Christ has come'.
So it is in Mark 13, where nothing more is described after the coming of the Son of Man with power and great glory. This seems to be right. 19.1-11 is set forth with great beauty; but the events which follow are lightly treated, and St. John does not get going again till ch. 21 and the magnificent description of the New Jerusalem.
Yet it is this intervening section, including the bit about the Millennium, which has attracted most attention from the expositors."

Gabriel was pointing out the dangers of concentrating on a single passage quite out of context leading, in the case of millenarianism, to both theological and political distortions on a sometimes disastrous scale.
The fusion of right wing conservative millenarianism and USA foreign policy in the last half century is chillingly exposed in a recent book by Angela M. Lahr: Millennial Dreams & Apocalyptic Nightmares – The Cold War Origins of Political Evangelism OUP, 2007

The climax of the Book

i) 19.11-16 The Rider on the White horse. The picture correlates with the opening vision (1.12-16). A series of names indicate his being and function. The unknown name may refer to Mt. 11.27. It has overtones of the fact that in Judaism, the name YHWH (Yahweh) was replaced by "Adonai" (Lord).

ii) 19.17-18 A summons to great battle foretold in prophecy and apocalyptic (Ezek 39.4, 17-20).

iii) 19.19-21 The victory (cf. 17.12ff)

iv) 20.1-3 The binding of Satan for 1000 years. This one piece of fairly unimportant symbolism (for John an apocalyptic "prop" that was ‘required’ in apocalyptic writing) has assumed an importance out of all proportion to its meaning here (see comment above on Millenarianism). The seven days of history scheme often assumed that each day = a thousand years (II Pe 3.8), and so Satan is retrained to allow his victims to be released (cf. Mt. 12.29).

v) 20.4-10 The idea of two resurrections is peculiar to John; the Pharisaic view was of a "general" resurrection at the end of this age. John puts in a further "last throw" of the empire of evil. (It reminds one of many historical final desperate offensives of failing empires).

vi) 20.11-15 The universal judgment: a truly awe-inspiring piece of writing.

vii) 21.1-8 The New Jerusalem; creation restored, God is all in all, and Evil is finally conquered.

As in previous "sevens", there follow two more sections, a vision of the New Jerusalem and the River of living water.

Epilogue (21.8-end)

John closes with a brief epilogue. We are back in Patmos; the warnings against apostasy are renewed, and the certainty of Jesus’ second coming is emphasized. The Prayer is Marana tha. Amen, found at the end of I Corinthians, and in one of the very earliest eucharistic prayers known (in The Didaché):
Let grace come, and let this world pass away.
Hosanna to the God of David.
Whoever is holy, let him come; whoever is not, let him repent.
Marana tha. Amen
The book ends like a letter, reminding us that all the visions are part of the Pastoral Letter to the churches, which themselves have allusions to the visions (cf 3.12; 3.18; 2.10). There are clear overtones of the Eucharist (as in 3.20), for in the Eucharist, Christ comes with a foretaste of heaven. In the closing verses of the Apocalypse, "There is a last call to the hearer to choose, and a final prayer to Christ to come, and bring with him the Holy Communion of eternity". (Sweet, p. 314)

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1. Farrer has something along the same lines. "There is nothing amiable about refusing to awaken the consciences of your impenitent neighbours to the impending coals of fire.....When nature breaks forth in singular disasters or when the madness of (man) is permitted to break loose in war and its attendant horrors....we ought to see warnings of what the arm of the Almighty cannot for ever with hold". He goes on to suggest that if St. John returned today, he might say I warned you that fire would fall from heaven. "'well it has fallen. You complain that it is vindictive of me to give you warning. If you had repented...you would have had cause to be grateful. And if you still think that God will build into the stainless city any that loves or works a lie, rather than cast him into everlasting fires. I advise you to look to your consciences.'" (Rebirth of Images,
p.34

2. Another excellent insight from Farrer: "the two constituent parts of pagan power are military kingship and urban wealth. Ever since the days of Alexander the two have been unhappily adjusted". The city hopes the military emperor (a god) will keep his armies away and she offers homage to achieve this. At times, however, the General pillages the city. "Such are the loves and quarrels of the Beast and Babylon, the parody of that marriage there is betwixt Christ and his Church". (R.I. p. 298).
We might meditate on the alliance of urban wealth and the military infrastructure in our own imperial world.

The Jesus of Dogma

This is the second lecture in the Lenten series: Jesus from Synagogue to Cathedral

After the New Testament

The latest writings of the New Testament may be as late as 100 C.E. (some would say even later), and the following century is not a period that is bursting with historical data. Nevertheless, there are enough writings in the period 125-250 C.E. to give us a fairly clear picture of the development of the Church in the first three or four generations of the increasing number of people (almost entirely Gentiles) who followed Jesus. The goal of this lecture is to try to understand how the picture of Jesus with which we leave the New Testament period at the end of the first century becomes the portrait we find by the end of the sixth century C.E., firmly painted by a series of doctrinal statements: an ‘official’ series of Creeds and Definitions, but also a vast body of theological, writings. By the end of the process, (though the very concept of the process ending is a matter of serious contemporary debate), these writings were divided, in general, into two categories: ‘orthodox’ (from orthos, straight and doxa, opinion) and ‘heretical’ (from hairesis - choosing [a peculiar view]).

Two Pictures

Briefly to anticipate the conclusion, the two pictures are different: some would say totally different, others somewhat different, but clearly different. The crucial question, that has been asked increasingly urgently since the start of the critical study of the early church is how far are we bound by the dogmatic definitions of the early centuries: how final and unquestionable, that is, do we consider the process, the end result of which, was the “orthodox” portrayal of Christ as the “second Person” of the Trinity, of “one substance” with the Father; as fully human and fully divine and yet a single person?

Two Natures – One Person

Just to give the ‘feel’ of what we might call the dogmatic portrait of Jesus (though, significantly “Christ” is used much more than Jesus), here is a very brief quotation from the statement that is regarded as the definitive, final position of the Catholic Church on the person of Christ, the Definition of Chalcedon of 451 C.E.:

We all unanimously teach (here the Bishops insert virtually the first part of the Nicene Creed, and then go on, He is the)…one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, made known in two nature without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, the difference of the natures being by no means removed because of the union, but the property of each nature being preserved and coalescing in one person (prosopon) and one individual being (hypostasis)*1 – not parted or divided into two prosopa, but one and the same son, only-begotten, divine Word, the Lord Jesus Christ.

One might contrast this with the scene in Mk. 2.23ff where we see a Rabbi going for a walk with a few of his disciples, or even with Lk. 24.13ff, where a few days after the crucifixion, two disciples are again walking in the country. Jesus, as a stranger, walks with them and appears again in a rabbinic role, “[B]eginning with Moses…he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” Moreover, Luke implies that it was in the common meals they held that they became aware of the presence of Jesus, not as dead, but as risen.

More than a Prophet

By the end of the N.T. period, as I noted last time, Jesus was remembered as a, friend, a Rabbi and wise man whose teachings presented new possibilities of the human relationship with God. Above all, he was seen as God’s chosen agent in the battle with the evil powers, as a defender of the poor and marginalized, and as one who had the charisma to implant in people, the assurance of God’s healing and forgiveness. But we also saw that by the 80s of the first century, Christians were accepting Jesus as more than a Prophet and Rabbi: they sensed that he was adopted by, or exhibited, or shared in the Divine; (all these positions were held and debated in the early centuries). As early as 52 or 53 C.E. Paul could end a letter to his converts in Corinth with the Aramaic words, written in Greek characters for the sake of his readers: Μαρανα θα, Marana Tha, Come Lord, a prayer for the speedy return of Jesus, already addressed as “Lord” (Kurios).

Regula Fidei

This is still worlds apart from the language of the Chalcedonian Definition, and it seems to have been the kind of non-dogmatic view of Jesus that prevailed well into the third century. It is certain that a body of oral tradition existed before any of the NT was written and it is clear, from the references we have in the years 100-250 that this same body of tradition continued alongside the written scriptures for some while. In writing about tradition, Richard Hanson notes that several of the early Church Fathers, particularly Irenaeus and Tertullian in the west and Origen in the east speak of what they call the rule of faith (regula fidei) as clearly distinct from the written records. Elsewhere, he writes, “During” [the years 150 to around 285], “it was the ‘rule of faith that expressed orthodox belief in a fluid and undogmatic way”.*2
This approach was probably important for the emergence of a structured Ministry of Bishops, Priests and Deacons, that we find in place by the beginning of the 4th century, because a custodian of the tradition was needed, and the local Bishop became the one who was entrusted to receive the tradition and to pass it on, untouched, so to speak, to the next generation of the faithful.

Emergence of Hierarchy

The changing view of ministry in the Church is another aspect of the critical study I have referred to several times. The ‘orthodox’ view had been that the orders of ministry (Bishops, Priests & Deacons) were put in place by Jesus.
The Prayer Book of the Episcopal Church has a “Preface to the Ordination Rites” that reflects the scholarship of the last two centuries, but leaves wiggle room when it says: “[S]ince the time of the New Testament, three distinct orders … have been characteristic of Christ’s holy catholic Church.” (p. 510). “Since” is probably purposely ambiguous: it more naturally means after, which would be the consensus of most non-R.C. Church Historians; but it leaves room for conservatives from Catholic to Charismatic, who insist on the pre-critical view.

Contemporary Emphasis on Christ of Faith

It is interesting that this is not Jesus’ church, but Christ’s holy Catholic Church. This seems to be just one very small example of the way the Jesus of history has often been swallowed up by the Christ of faith, a process that began in the 5th century and continues today (though often hidden – I call it “crypto-monophysitism”!) For example, almost any newspaper report of an amazing escape, a totally unexpected recovery from sickness, or even a face appearing in your pancake can be reported as divine interventions or manifestations, attributed to Christ.

Move to Definition

In a way, the emergence of a systemized ministry can be seen as the early signs of what was to follow, when it was felt necessary by philosophically minded theologians to provide a kind of blueprint of the ‘inner’ workings of God (in the Nicene creed), and to explain the mechanics of Jesus’ two natures (defined at Chalcedon). The ministry of the Church moved from the picture we get in the NT to greater definition, by the end of the process consisting of seven orders: Door keeper, Lector, Exorcist & Subdeacon leading to the three major orders. (The list of the "minor orders" varies from time to time and place to place).
In the New Testament, we hear of Apostles, Prophets, Exorcists, Elders (the Greek word is πρεσβυτερος – Presbyter) Deacons, and, in the very latest strands of the NT, coming from around 95 C.E we have about five references to episcopoi – literally ‘overseers’ - bishop, a word that comes into the language from the Greek via late Latin, (e)biscopus. Of much more importance than is often allowed was the order of Prophets, and, indeed, some Prophetesses. A mid-second century book called The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, (known as The Didache), contains some detailed rules for welcoming a Prophet to the local community, warning that a stay of over three to four days may indicate a charlatan.

Montanism

Perhaps the earliest move to tighten up on belief came when the Prophet Montanus (c.156) led a charismatic, apocalyptic movement which the authorities considered dangerous since its Prophets and Prophetesses uttered “words of Jesus” which were taken as authoritative additions to the Gospels. Another straw in the wind was that the movement received condemnation by Zephyrinus, the Bishop of Rome (198-120), in the early 3rd century, a foreshadowing of the growth of papal power. The pattern was set that the preaching or writing of speculative thinkers often triggered tighter definition of the rather loose “rule of faith”. Another, less pleasant practice also emerged. It is one with which we, having endured an interminable Presidential campaign, are all too unhappily familiar with, consisting of innuendoes, exaggerations and downright lies. It was not difficult to find mud to sling at Montanus and his followers. The genders mixed freely in ecstatic outdoor meetings - (Hellenistic society was remarkably puritanical about such public meetings) - and it was easy to suggest that spiritual ecstasy soon led to physical heights of sexual passion.

Fathers & Heretics

Among the main figures who raised questions in the fourth and fifth centuries were Arius, a Presbyter in Alexandria and Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople in the 430s, This is to mention but two from a cast of many dozens. Required reading in Seminary for this period of Church History was Dr. Prestige’s Fathers and Heretics; colloquially known as, “Dads & Cads”. It takes three hundred pages to get through the ranks the of the boat-rocking heretics and the defending ranks of the-truth-is-absolute-and-we-have-it orthodox. Still, these two heresiarchs stand as the immediate (but by no means only) cause of two violent controversies. Among the notable defenders of orthodoxy, by far the most effective, and since he led the winning side, also the best known was Athanasius; born at the very end of the third century, he became Bishop and Patriarch of Alexandria in 328.
The majority of biographies of Athanasius see him as the one who saved Christianity, and it is certainly true that his role in the Council of Nicaea was pivotal. There has been, however, a growing appreciation of just how big a role power politics played in the development of the central dogmatic statements of the time, and Athanasius was certainly a major player in the game.

Some Background

The third century was not a bumper time for the empire. Peter Brown writes:

“After AD 238, all classes in the Roman world had to face up…to the unpleasant realities of empire. Between 238 and 270, bankruptcy, political fragmentation and recurrent defeats of large Roman armies laid bare the superb nonchalance on which the old system of government had been based”.*3

He goes on to point out that a few strong Generals restored the empire over which Diocletian reigned from 285 to 305: much tighter, centralized control of the Provinces and an enlarged bureaucracy led a badly shaken society back to order. It is, perhaps, noteworthy that the rescue from a failed state is not infrequently the result of a military dictatorship: one thinks of the Weimar Republic and several more recent S. American countries.

Persecution of Diocletian

Before the rise of Diocletian, the Church had been growing quietly: “The Christian church enjoyed complete tolerance between 260 and 302”.*4
Though Christians were still a small minority, people were aware of the growing power of Bishops and their congregations, and many in the empire blamed the terrible crisis that had overtaken them on the increasing failure of civic duties, the failure to offer the ancient and proper devotion to the immemorial gods.

So it was not surprising that Diocletian unleashed a bitter persecution, perhaps, the first such total effort. The persecution failed, though while it lasted a large number of biblical manuscripts were confiscated and destroyed. In 312 the Emperor Constantine was converted to the new religion, convinced that the Chi/Rho sign he had seen in the sky was Christ’s signal to him of victory in return for conversion. This event was, perhaps, the most momentous (some would say “disastrous”) turn of events in the whole history of the Christian church. The scattered autonomous communities, each led by their chief Pastor, the local Bishop, had, in effect become a State Church.

Nicaea and Chalcedon

I need to turn now to the two main controversies that raged in the church in the 4th and 5th centuries. What mattered to most Christians was the closeness of the community, the bonding of brothers and sisters, and, above all, the bonding of the community as a whole with Jesus. The weekly Eucharist reaffirmed the presence of the risen Lord and gave assurance of coming close to God. It was also the time when offerings were made for the poor and sick of the Christian community; this was seen as one of the striking characteristics of the new communities in a society where such concern, in spite of Societies and Guilds for specific groups, was largely absent. Such involvement was much more personal and intense than anything converts had experienced in the rites of the old religion dedicated to the gods of the city or a particular locality, but the finer points of theology were in the hands of the theologians, and before Nicaea, the fluidity I noted at the beginning remained the norm for the laity and many clergy. Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea (263-340), for example, held views very like those we noted at the end of the NT period. Peter Brown writes, “[The One] High God…had reached down to earth, to make his commands plain through a series of privileged representatives of His will, of which Christ had been the greatest.”*5 Still, it was normal to pray to Jesus and it was felt that he was more than a mere ‘representative’.

Demand for Clarity

These positions, however, were being questioned: briefly the issue was that philosophically minded theologians began to ask, “What precisely is the relationship between the Lord Jesus and the One God? If he is divine, how do we escape the charge of polytheism? But if he is merely a Prophet, does not that leave the One High God distant and not part of human vicissitudes?” It was an Alexandrian Presbyter, Arius, who brought things to a head by teaching something very like the views of Eusebius. At this point the great Athanasius entered the fray and he was to hold center stage in the controversy for over thirty years. Constantine was not a little irritated to find that his new “spiritual” arm of the state, so to speak, was rent by conflict. This is not what he expected, and he summoned the Bishops to meet in the city of Nicaea, and thus what is known as the First Ecumenical Council came into being. After weeks of wrangling and acrimony, the Bishops produced a document that they said laid out the faith always held, and, for the future, was always to be held by the Church.

Like God - The iota that split an Empire

Not all signed it, and those who refused were made aware of the Emperor’s displeasure, often by banishment. The minutes of that Bishops' meeting in 325, after several more decades of dissension, discussion and change, became the Creed of Constantinople, published in 381: this is what is generally called the Nicene Creed today. Gone was the old fluidity. God was defined in philosophical terms by the use of the Greek word homoousios - same substance (in the Latin una substantia, one substance); it was, indeed, the use of this unscriptural term that caused so much dissension, but it was felt to be the only way to exclude Arius’ teaching that Jesus was only a high-powered messenger/prophet.

A substantial body of Christians was excluded by this new standard. They wanted to say that Jesus was like God (not homoousios, but homoiousios, a minute difference that led to the remark that this was ‘an iota that split an Empire'). Semi-Arianism, as it was called, became almost the dominant form of Christianity in northern Europe as the Visigoths were converted.

Christological Question

Having, established the full divinity of Jesus, it was inevitable that questions would arise about how he could be fully human and divine at the same time, and conflicting views led to the Council of Chalcedon, which insisted that it was necessary to believe that Jesus was fully human, fully divine, but one 'person': in the end, however the Council did not (could not?) explain how this could be.*6 The view that his “central person”, so to speak, was divine and that his earthly body was temporary, or a mere shell for the time of his ministry, was roundly condemned, but that has not, unhappily, prevented it from forming a very powerful undertow to Christian thinking and practice ever since. (see above on “crypto-monophysitism”). The Council also aimed to exclude once and for all the teaching of Nestorius who was thought to consider Jesus as no more than a super prophet.

Conclusion

Perhaps one of the most unfortunate results of these controversies was the suppressing of alternative ideas, and giving to human formulations the status of unalterable, divinely approved blueprints of the inner workings of the Godhead: moreover, they are formulations tied to classical philosophical views, and are strongly culturally conditioned.

My experience has been that the vast majority of believers still function more as was the norm in the 2nd to 4th centuries, where Jesus is experienced as the One who walks with us, brings us close to God and understands “the changes and chances of this mortal life”: One who was adopted by, or exhibited, or shares in the Divine. All these positions are more or less heretical, though it is comforting to note that St. Luke seems to espouse the notion that Jesus was an “adopted Son”.
I always used to warn my Seminary students never to put more than five words together on the subject of the doctrine of the Trinity since if they said more, they would surely fall into heresy, and we know that there are heresy hunters everywhere.

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1. In the period that the Creeds were emerging, endless confusion was caused by a group of Greek words taken from philosophical writings: substance – ousia; an individual thing/person – hypostasis; person – persona Lat; prosopon Grk, and others like ‘nature’ and ‘form’.
The confusion was confounded because of growing separation of E. and W. resulting in a smaller number of bilingual theologians: St. Augustine, born in mid 4th century, for example, could not read Greek. The situation was not helped by the fact that the history and etymology of each word shows variations of use by different classical authors.

A further cause of misunderstanding and conflict between the theologians of the East and those in the West was the use of the two words substantia & hypostasis which are etymologically equivalent: ≈ standing beneath, i.e. the essence of a thing, person. In Greek, however, hypostasis was regularly used to mean an individual thing, person.
Before Nicaea, the West had settled on the formula, una substantia, tres personae; so, when a Greek spoke of three hypostases, to Latin ears this sounded like saying there are three Gods (tres substantiae).
See The Oecumenical Documents of the Faith, pp. 20ff. ed. T.H. Bindley, London. 4th Edition, 1950

2. Dict. of Christian Theol. pp. 341b & 246a. Tertullian (c.160-220); Irenaeus c.130-200); Origen (186-255)

3. The Rise of Western Christendom. Oxford 1996 p.19

4. Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity London 1971 p.68

5. Rise of W. Christendom p.71

6. The use of the word 'person' (persona, prosopon) is a further considerable complication in any contemporary efforts to make sense of Chalcedon. The modern sense of 'personality' is quite absent in the classical use; indeed, the Latin per-sona has its origin in the mask of the dramatic actor - 'sounding through'.

Jesus in the New Testament

As Lent approached, I was asked by the Rector of All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Rehoboth, Delaware, to suggest a theme for the five Lent Luncheon Lectures offered every year. I first considered taking the Apostles’ Creed as a basis, (though who could compete with Karl Barth?), or, perhaps, the vexed issue of the Church and State, and then I contemplated several other possibilities, but none of them sparked a great deal of enthusiasm. Then, in a space of a few days of fairly desultory TV watching, the contemporary use and frequent misuse of the name ‘Jesus’ stuck me, and I came up with:

Jesus: From Synagogue to Cathedral

The Central Question

The basic question is: How did we get from an unconventional Rabbi, born a Palestinian Jew around 4 B.C.E, whose education was almost certainly minimal, and who joined the other village lads from time to time in the Synagogue to learn some foundational passages from the Torah and Prophets: how did we get from there to the massive basilica built by the emperor Constantius II, Constantine’s son, where the great dome, with a vast mosaic of Jesus the Christos, reigning in glory dominated the building? Many such churches followed and the reigning Christ oversaw the rich pageantry of solemn Liturgies.

Norman Perrin writing about the figure of Jesus in the N.T., says, “In part, he was the Jesus who had lived and proclaimed his message in Galilee and Judea…But in still larger part he was the risen Lord present in the Christian communities; still conducting his ministry to them and through them”. (The New Testament – An Introduction 277). And it is because of the “larger part” of the N.T. records that we are meeting today, for we do not meet as an antiquarian society, but as a believing community, part of a vast throng of believers down the ages.

Why Were Two Pictures not Seen?

Before we can even begin to deal with this lecture’s subject, we have to take seriously what Perrin says and consider its implications. For over 1500 years the fact that there are two portraits of Jesus in the N.T. was not a problem. There are, indeed, more than two, but the central issue is the two that Perrin identifies, which are frequently differentiated as the Jesus of history, going round Galilee teaching and exorcising, and the (Jesus) Christ of faith, the center of the community’s devotion, giving them access to God. We need to ask why it was the ancients were able to see one clear portrait of Jesus and we are faced with multiple, overlapping pictures?

The simple answer, that infuriates traditionalist conservatives, is that we know a great deal more about how the NT writings came into being than was known in the late second century C.E. This answer produces responses like “sheer hubris”, but a moment’s thought will show that we accept this in every other area of human thought and practice. Jesus and his contemporaries firmly believed that infectious diseases were caused by evil spirits that got into you: it is not hubris for us to say they were wrong and that cholera, for example, is caused by the ingesting and spreading of a bacterium, vibrio cholerae; nor is it human pride when we say that we know that things burn because of a reaction between oxygen and carbon, and definitively not because they contain a mythical substance called Phlogiston, which early research was forced to conclude must have negative weight.

The Harmonized Picture

Along with all other areas of human thought, the understanding of history underwent a startling change from the 18th century on. No longer was it assumed that a report was more accurate because it was repeated endlessly: documents Number Two through Twenty might all be quoting number One or each other, for example. The distinction that Perrin draws also gradually became clear. Odd as it may seem, the early theologians, while noticing that the four gospels exhibited different characteristics, nevertheless, did not feel that the differences were all that important. Consciously or unconsciously the approach to the gospels was to harmonize them, to assume, for example that when Mark and Matthew tell the same story, but with significantly different details, what we have is accounts of two happenings. This approach is epitomized by a mid-second century work called the Diatessaron (= one from four). To quote Elliott and Moir, “He [Tatian] produced a ‘scissors and paste’ life of Christ from the four Gospels”*1 . The work was widely used and was the forerunner of many more in the third to tenth centuries, indicting very clearly why it was thought that a single, focused picture of Jesus could be presented.

Emergence of Critical History: A New Picture

Modern critical study suggests a different picture. Not only do the four gospels exhibit distinctly the interests of each author, it is also clear that they were written at different times and with different audiences in mind: Matthew clearly writes for and to that group of Christians that retained a strong element of Judaism in its belief and practice, whereas Luke writes for communities in the Hellenistic world who had little or no background in the Hebrew scriptures. One of the most striking developments was the separating of John’s gospel from the other three. It became very clear that the first three have some complex textual inter-relationships. That is to say they either used each other or some original document that did not survive. In the early days of critical study, this second alternative was much favored, but as study progressed it became much more likely that the first three gospels used one another in some sequence or other. For this reason, they became known as the Synoptic Gospels, (from the Greek συν οπσις - syn-opsis) because they could be looked at together in parallel columns high-lighting common passages. In critical history writing of any kind, unanimity is hardly to be expected, but the end result of intense literary analysis of the Synoptic gospels is that a large majority of scholars hold that Mark is our first gospel, written around 68 C.E., followed by Matthew and then Luke in the next decade.

The Fourth Gospel

It had been recognized in antiquity that John’s book was different from the others, and even a few voices were raised questioning its authority. The majority view however, expressed by Clement of Alexandria, was that this was “a spiritual gospel”, suggesting that it looked for the divine reality behind the ministry of Jesus. So in spite of the differences between this and the first three gospels, it was assumed to give us more historical information about Jesus.
In fact, the picture of Jesus we get from John is much more firmly in the second area that Perrin identifies. He is still the historical Jesus, but he has acquired traits of the glorified Savior and Lord. Jesus is clearly a human being, he weeps and is angry, but he is on the way to being more; he is according to John a bodily manifestation of God; at the very beginning of the book, John strikes a note very different from anything we find in the Synoptic Gospels, using a term from Greek Philosophy when he writes: “the Word (Logos) was made flesh and dwelt among us”. John assumes that Jesus knows what someone is thinking, and astonishes Nathanael*2 when in answer to the question “when did you get to know me?” Jesus replies, “‘I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you’”. (1.48).

St. John’s gospel was not the last to be written, but it is the last of the four that the church ultimately designated as “official”, known as the canonical gospels; it is also the one that exhibits most clearly the move from the Jesus of history to the Jesus Christ of faith. People often do not know that beside these official four there is at least a dozen or so more so-called ‘non-canonical’ gospels, the best known of which is The Gospel of Thomas.

Synoptic Gospels Not Neutral

It would be a big mistake, however, to assume that the Fourth gospel was the one that was all theology and that the Synoptic gospels are all “simple facts”. “That’s the truth pure and simple” is often used in rhetorical polemic, and, as has been frequently pointed out, the truth is rarely pure and never simple. The same can be said about ‘simple historical facts’; for instance, recording ‘A’ rather than ‘B’ is in itself the first step to interpreting.
To return to Norman Perrin’s distinction with which we began, it is clear that it is not only the Fourth Gospel that gives us a strongly interpreted picture of Jesus: the process was well under way in the earlier Synoptic Gospels.

One of the striking elements of interpretation was the effort, begun by Mark, to make sense of the death of Jesus, who, by the time Mark wrote, was accepted as God’s anointed one, the Messiach, the Christos. For the earliest believers this would be quite a stumbling block since in all the messianic expectations of the OT there is no evidence of a belief in a Martyr Messiah. Mark used, possibly following the teaching of Jesus himself, texts from Isaiah which speak of God’s Servant taking the message to the Gentiles, suffering and being rejected. In their original context these sayings*3 had no reference to a Messiah, indeed, it seems that it was the “holy remnant” of Israel who suffered for the nation as a whole. Another very important interpretative element in Mark (which is taken over particularly by Luke) is to see Jesus in his ministry fighting with the powers of darkness who appear again and again in the form of demons causing sickness, paralysis and blindness. Mark suggests that the earthly rulers of Rome and Jerusalem joined forces to destroy Jesus: thus Mark notes that as Jesus died a great “darkness came over the whole land”. *4

Can We See an ‘Historical’ Jesus?

Can we get behind this interpretive element to meet Jesus the Rabbi as he went to the Synagogue? This question has been at the center of much scholarship for over a hundred years: it has been named ‘the Quest of the Historical Jesus’. Some have felt that we can get behind the interpretive screen, so to speak and others that it is a hopeless quest. Perhaps a very tentative consensus has settled on a middle position. Careful and intensive work suggest that it is possible to identify the very earliest traditions about Jesus and the reporting of his message.

The Parables

The primary source is the parables. Linguistic analysis strongly suggests an Aramaic undertone, and though Jesus might have known a little Greek (the land, after all, was occupied by Greek speakers) he almost certainly spoke Aramaic. The parables strongly suggest that the fulcrum of Jesus’ message was the coming of the Kingdom (more properly, “the Rule”) of God, which, you may recall, is the very first thing that Mark records Jesus proclaiming after his baptism. Many of the parables begin with “The Kingdom of God is like … a father who had two sons…a merchant in the market for pearls … a shepherd seeking a lost sheep". The parables often imply a reversal of human standards and expectations, suggesting a view of God far from a narrow, exclusive legalism. *5 The strange parable of the farmer who paid all the day workers the same irregardless of how long they had worked, sets out the “amazing grace” of God, one of the central themes of at least two of Paul’s letters.

God's Grace & Jesus' Openness

This view of God as, one might say, ‘profligate’ was (and, one might say, still is) infuriating to legalist authorities, and Jesus put it into practice in his open table fellowship, which, the gospel writers note, caused grumbling and then, enmity. This openness, his willingness to put love of people before the strict letter of the law and the politics of the Jewish rulers dependent on Rome seem enough to account for Jesus’ arrest and execution. This approach seems to give us the outlines of a picture of the historical Jesus. What follows on the execution, however, is beyond history. It is based on the faith of that small band of disciples who understood that the powers of darkness had not defeated God, but believed that the power of love had overcome hate, and that life was stronger than death.

A Picture and a Portrait

This presents us with two pictures of Jesus, rather like two photos printed one over the other and we cannot have one without the other. If we are looking for something like a modern biography, the NT will disappoint us: we do not know, for instance the color of Jesus’ hair or eyes; we do not know if he was tall or short; we do not know if certain food gave him indigestion. Those earliest followers in the Way had known Jesus as a man and friend, set at a certain point in the flux of history; he was in no way a mythical divine hero to them like the gods of the Hellenistic world, but from the beginning they sensed that he was adopted by or exhibited or shared in the Divine; (all these positions were held and debated in the early centuries), and that, of course, definitively colors the portrait that became the norm, what later was to be called the “orthodox” view.

The Other Writings of the N.T.

I am aware that time is almost out, and I have not even looked at the rest of the N.T. That may seem strange particularly because the earliest of Paul’s letters were written something like 10-15 years before Mark wrote the first gospel. On the other hand, the Letters, by and large, take for granted the traditions that were encapsulated by the Evangelists, and, as a result, we find few references to events in the life of Jesus. The exception to this is the way the letters, particularly Paul’s, concentrate on the death and resurrection of Jesus, suggesting various metaphors as ways to explain how God rescues fallen humanity through the death and resurrection of Jesus. *6 Perhaps the most succinct summary of this in the whole N.T. corpus is in Paul’s Second Letter to Corinth: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation”. *7 Paul is also considerably exercised by the fact that God’s chosen people, Israel, seemed to be rejecting the Messiah, and he employs all his Rabbinic skills in an attempt to show that the Scriptures can be read to show that Jesus is the next stage of salvation, beyond the preparation provided by the Torah.

The Proclamation

We cannot end without noting the Acts of the Apostles; in the first ten or so chapters, Luke gives us a glimpse of the beginnings of the Church, or perhaps one should say ‘churches’, as new tiny communities sprang up outside Palestine. Most interesting is the series of speeches Luke reports. There is a common pattern, that looks, incidentally, very like the framework of Mark’s Gospel:

The work of Jesus is to rescue humanity from its self-made chaos, a chaos exemplified by the evil powers that cause madness, and all kinds of human sickness.

The healing stories, indicate that the power of God is working through Jesus;
His activities, in welcoming those regarded by the Law as unclean, bring him into conflict with the authorities, who in alliance with the demonic forces, conspire to destroy him.

The apparent victory of these powers as Jesus dies on the cross, is reversed by the mighty action of God who declares the ultimate victory of good over evil, love over hate in the Resurrection of Jesus.

I end with another quotation (edited) from Norman Perrin, which points us on to the theme of next week’s lecture: *8
"[Jesus] who proclaimed the Kingdom of God began himself to be proclaimed as (a) the one about to return on the clouds of heaven. {Apocalyptic Christianity} (b) as the one who “died for our sins and was raised for our justification”: {Paul} (c) as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”. {Johannine literature}. *9



1 Manuscripts & the Text of the New Testament. Edinburgh 1995 p 77
2 This is one among hundreds of occasions when John gives information not found in the Synoptic Gospels.
3 Found in Deutero Isaiah. Chs. 40-52
4 Mk. 15.33 There is also more than a hint that the powers of darkness and chaos, overcome by Yahweh in the command 'let there be light', here seem to have returned in victory.
5 St. Paul grasps this central point in I Cor. 1.25 – “Gods’ foolishness is wiser than human wisdom”. Who but a fool would send off a feckless 18 year old with half his equity?
6 One should also note Paul’s account of the Last Supper, the earliest we have, and several references the actual words of Jesus.
7 II Cor. 5.18f
8 Jesus in Dogma – The Age of Controversy
9 Op.cit. 302

Sermon for Vth. Sunday in Epiphany, Feb. 8, 2009

Readings: Isaiah 40.21-31; I Cor. 9.16-23; St.Mark 1.29-39

I had just completed preparing this sermon for the coming Sunday, and had no intention of publishing it when I looked at the current edition of The Living Church. Its very first piece is a sermon using the Markan reading as a text. I felt that an alternative (I was going to say 'antidote') might be a useful contribution; so here it is.

The Gospel before the "Gospels"

In his letter to Corinth, a fragment of which we just heard, St Paul speaks twice of the ‘gospel’; the Greek word is euangelion, “good news”. He begins by insisting that he has no choice: he is compelled to spread the good news. His words have all the urgency of the cry of the Second Isaiah from which our first lesson came: “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning?” Then Paul ends today’s passage: “I do [everything] for the sake of the gospel”.

After the reading of the epistle we come to a rubric in the PB: Then, all standing, the Deacon or Priest reads the Gospel, and in today’s context this means the passage from St. Mark that we just heard. This suggests an ambiguity in the word ‘gospel’, for when St. Paul speaks of the gospel as he writes to Corinth, he is not referring to an older copy of Mark’s book, hand-written on a papyrus roll. He is not doing this because Mark’s book did not exist when he wrote to Corinth. Paul’s letter to Corinth was written at least fifteen years before Mark put pen to paper (or more accurately to papyrus). So, Paul is referring to the passing on of a message that was in existence and being spread by the early followers of Jesus long before any of our four gospels was in existence: not to mention some dozens more that appeared from the early second century onwards.

There may have been written collections of Jesus’ sayings and versions of his parables, but Mark was the pioneer of a new format, the first of the Gospel writers. He gives us the first book that tries to encapsulate the salient feature of Jesus’ life and teaching, but far more importantly, a book that aims to interpret the things that happened to Jesus and things that he said. He reveals for us, that is, the fundamental faith of first and second generation Christians, the faith, as St Paul puts it, that, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation”. (II Cor. 5.18f.)

Mark's Book

Mark’s book is the shortest of the four canonical gospels (that is, the ones the church designated as “official” by the end of the second century). His account has very few parables, Jesus’ favorite method of teaching, has no stories like Matthew and Luke that tell of Jesus’ birth, and perhaps, most strikingly has no accounts of Jesus’ time with the Disciples after his execution, what we call the ‘resurrection narratives’.

The Importance of Mark's Gospel

Why, then, is Mark’s book so important? This question needs much more time than one sermon, but at least I can try to give the headings of what would need to be a whole lecture course.

1) Mark is our earliest gospel and provided the framework for the work of both Matthew and Luke.

2) Mark’s brevity suggests that the Gospel message that Paul refers to was well known among the churches by the year 50 C.E. so that Mark can take quite a lot for granted. It is worth noting that Mark is clearly not a shortened version of Mt. or Lk. as was often held in antiquity.
Mt & Lk are much longer because they add to Mark the stories and teachings just mentioned. When a passage from Mk used by Mt is compared it is found that it is Mt who has shortened Mk., removing details or redundancies.

3) His book reflects the unwritten gospel of the first few decades of which Paul speaks.
Interestingly, the speeches given by Peter and others in the early chapters of the Acts of the Apostles also give us insight to the framework of the Gospel before the written Gospels.

4) The framework is something like this:

• Jesus is doing the work of God; he is known in the early community as God’s anointed, Messiah in Hebrew, Christos in Greek.

• The work is no less than to rescue humanity from its self-made chaos, a chaos exemplified by the evil powers that cause madness, and all kinds of human sickness. And I want to return to this point later.

• The healing stories and nature miracles, that are so prominent in Mark, indicate that the power of God is working through Jesus to overcome the power of evil, or to calm the turbulence of nature, giving back life and health to humanity.

• Jesus’ activities, and particularly his welcoming of those regarded by the Law as unclean, bring him into conflict with the authorities, who in alliance with the demonic forces, conspire to destroy him.

• The apparent victory of these powers as Jesus dies on the cross, is reversed by the mighty action of God who declares the ultimate victory of good over evil, love over hate in the Resurrection of Jesus. It is important to note that most references to the resurrection do not say Jesus rose from the dead, but that God raised Jesus from the dead. The emphasis throughout Mark is that Jesus is God’s servant.

5) Finally, and most important of all, Mark’s book is significant because it is not merely a reporting of events, but gives us important clues to what Jesus’ life, teaching and death meant to his followers.

The Basileia Theou - Kingdom (Rule) of God

I want to spend the rest of our time considering what it is that Mark sees as central to the good news resulting from Jesus’ ministry. Mark records Jesus baptism and retreat to the dessert, and continues, “Jesus came into Galilee preaching the good news, and he said, ‘the appointed time has arrived and the Kingdom of God has drawn near’”. The phrase kingdom of God is better translated the ‘rule’ or the ‘power’ of God and Mark uses it another 20 or so times in his book. Much of what follows in Mark is designed to show just how the power of God is now working and what it will mean for Jesus.

The Rule of God Operating: Jesus' Fight with the Demonic
& His Rejection of Exclusion


Mark does this by concentrating on the theme of the struggle between Jesus and the powers of darkness, the demonic forces.
The theme emerged last week when a mentally ill man is cured, though the diagnosis in not schizophrenia or any other psychiatric term we use: the man has “an unclean spirit” which is conquered by Jesus, though Mark clearly understands that it is God’s power that is at work. Today’s reading tells us of Peter’s mother-in-law cured of a fever, and then goes on to a summary section telling of cures of physical and mental illness. Next week the gospel will tell of a leper who is healed; this not only continues the theme of the divine conquest of sin and sickness, but also introduces, in a way we do not recognize unless it is pointed out to us another central theme: it is the way Jesus welcomes those who are beyond the pale: lepers were excluded from the community of Israel, and Jesus not only welcomes them, but makes bodily contact. Incidents like this are important because Mark suggests that the fight against the powers of evil also becomes a fight with the establishment of Jerusalem.

Demons Today

We need, however, to grasp the nettle of demonic activity. As I just noted, where we would diagnose mental illness in psychiatric terms, Mark speaks of an unclean spirit. This reminds us that it is essential to read a first century C.E. book in its historical context, and we know from multiple sources that the belief in demons and evil spirits as the source of human ills was virtually unanimous. That Jesus shared this view is quite clear and the attempt to get round this by shuffles like “he only accepted the popular view to accommodate to human limitations”, merely undermines the real humanity of Jesus. It is sobering to remember that not a single doctor knew about the bacterial basis of endless killer diseases until into the second half of the 19th century. It would be odd indeed if Jesus had said, “This man is suffering from a serotonin deficiency”, and even fundamentalists, so far as I know, do not go to an exorcist when they have an appendicitis.

The fact that most people in the Western world do not explain sickness, mental ills and natural disasters by the action of demonic forces does not in itself negate Mark’s central act of faith that God was working (and we believe, continues to work) through Jesus to overcome evil with good and hate with love.

Later on in Mark, we shall come to the story where the Pharisees accuse Jesus of being in league with the demons. Luke’s version entirely grasps Mark’s central theme. Jesus says, “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then has the Kingdom, the Rule, of God come upon you”. (Lk. 11.20). This is a summary of Mark’s central message: God’s power is operating in a new way through the obedient work of his servant, Jesus, fighting the powers of evil. It is a work that involves conflict and suffering and Mark makes it clear that those who follow Jesus must be ready to share that suffering with the Messiah. Moreover, this is addressed not just to his first century readers in Rome, but to all Christians down the ages, and to us today.

INAUGURATION PRAYER

The immediate furor over the choice of the person who is to deliver an invocation at the Inauguration of President elect Barack Obama seems to have died down. It has left me wondering, “Invoke what precisely: or, more likely, vaguely?"

God’s reassurance that America has a divine mission? God’s promise to rescue us from the mess that is largely our own making? Or a summary of recent history with an agenda for the future, so loved of extempore pray-ers?” ("Lord, you will have read in the Washington Times.......")

Is it too much to hope that something along the lines of the Lord’s Prayer in the paraphrase version given in the New Zealand Anglican Prayer Book might be given us?

The Lord's Prayer from the Prayer Book
Of the Anglican Church in New Zealand

Eternal Spirit,
Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:

The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom
sustain our hope and come on earth.

With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.

For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and forever. AMEN.

Sermon for Christmas Morning 2008

All the pre-festival rush is over and for now we can enjoy a time of quiet and thanksgiving. For the rest of the day we shall be caught up again in the family rituals and customs of the season, with meal preparations and dealing with over-excited children and grand-children

From Epiphany to December 25

The customs of this festival are many and different in different parts of the world. The history of the festival day is also interesting. The earliest church, before it left the confines of the Mediterranean, rejoiced to recall God’s wonderful gift to human kind on January 6th, the feast of the Epiphany. It is here that we find the beginning of the custom of giving gifts at Christmas. In later centuries, as the church expanded into the cold, dark Germanic north, new dates were given and new customs introduced.

The church from its very birth has never grown in a vacuum, but in a culture permeated with older religions. Spiritual forces and gods were everywhere as were the places and the rituals that attended them. Two strategies were used; one was opposition on an intellectual and legal level, the other, was to incorporate some of the less objectionable elements of the old religions. This happened in the case of Christmas. Some German bishops of the 8th century decided that the pagan rites of the winter solstice must stop. They were wily enough not to choose the exact date, December 21; any sensible Thor worshipper would see through that one. So for northern Christianity, December 25th became the time to recall that in the deepest gloom of the year the bright light of God shines forth; at a later time, but from the same provenance came the fir tree covered in lights to our ceremonies, a sight that would have astounded any Galilean peasant.

Persistence of Gift Giving

Whatever customs have been introduced to Christmas in various parts of the world, the custom of gift-giving has remained central, not surprisingly because the focus of any theological understanding of this day is the amazing gift of God to us in the birth of Jesus. The gospels try to give us a feeling of the magnitude of the gift in the stories of brightness in the dark, the shining Angels announcing a great gift to the shepherds and singing a chorus of praise. We also get the message of the amazing nature of this gift in Matthew’s story of the wise men of the East who bring gifts of magnificence and deep symbolism to a little shed.
We all love gifts: both to receive them, but also to give them. Receiving them has a certain ambiguity: do I really need another packet of handkerchiefs? I recall how I received with some reservations the “useful gifts” that came from a Godmother – a pair of gloves one year, handkerchiefs another (what eight year old looks kindly on crisp linen squares?) and a book of devotion on yet another. On the other hand, there was an uncle who knew just what I wanted. A chemistry set, guaranteed to wreak havoc at the kitchen sink, an addition to the mecano set or a magician’s kit.
As I grew older, a greater appreciation grew of gifts that were carefully selected to meet real needs as well as to give pleasure. I also began to learn the joy of giving gifts as well as receiving them.
I am sure we all share these personal experiences and they are all woven into the meaning of Christmas.

God's Gift

The center of the Christmas message is God’s unimaginably generous gift to us. What, precisely, is that gift that formal theological language calls the ‘incarnation’? It is a gift carefully chosen to meet the real and desperate needs of the human race, which has tried to leave out God, even to replace God, in our affairs. At first sight God’s gift at Christmas might seem odd. What can a small defenseless baby do for us? But this is a gift of a very special child, one destined to make clear the Divine presence in all human affairs in spite of the mess that human self-will and pride have created. God’s gift in the birth of this child, and in all that followed from it, is an offer to humanity of reconciliation with God, with one another and, finally, within each torn human psyche.

The story of Christmas, in Matthew’s telling of it, also speaks of gifts of gratitude that are brought to the manger. The gifts are, on the face of it, a strange mixture; the gold, certainly, would be welcomed by a poor peasant family; but a bunch of joss sticks and a pot of strange smelling ointment were hardly immediately useful. Commentators get us out of this awkward moment of unwrapping a gift that seems oddly inappropriate, by reminding us of the deep symbolism: gold for a king, incense for the worship of God and myrrh for funeral rites. Perhaps, though, Christina Rossetti gets it right in her poem, In the Bleak Mid-Winter:

What can I give him, / Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd / I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man / I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give him - / Give my heart.

A 14th Century Miracle Play

What, indeed, can we give as a gift to this God of immeasurable love, who, in spite of general human nastiness and individual sins of self- centeredness, gives us the assurance of the divine presence in our midst. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, a poet and an amazingly subtle theologian, addresses this very question in a collection of sermons entitled A Ray of Darkness.

He quotes from one of the 14th century Miracle plays that were performed in churches at the Christmas season. Three ordinary Yorkshire workmen bring gifts; they are the Shepherds not to be outdone by the high and mighty Lords of the East. The first one says, “Lo, he laughs, my sweeting! Ah! A well fair meeting! Have a bob of cherries”. The second one goes on, “Hail! I kneel and I cower. A bird have I brought to my bairn.” And the third one concludes:
“Hail! Put forth thy hand. I bring thee but a ball: Have and play thee withall, and go to the tennis.” (22-23).

What a wonderful collection of gifts for a little child: a bunch of cherries, a canary in a cage and a tennis ball. Could anything say more clearly that God has entered into human life, its joys as well as its woes, than that last line: take the ball and go to play a game of tennis; go and express that true humanity through which the light of God will shine.
Williams comments, “What can I give him, poor as I am? What indeed! For God today has recreated the world and refashioned you and me in his own image. God today has burst open the frontiers of all possible and imaginable experience and come among us”… The Child through whom and in whom God comes to us “reaches out his hand and touches the bob of cherries that a [Yorkshire] workman offers him. And for the reaching out there is no exchange, there is no fit return we can make. God’s pure causeless, gratuitous love can have no answer, except some faint fumbling echo of that very gratuity … itself: the gift too great to make sense of. All we can do, like the (workmen), is to offer our meaningless little presents. All we can give to God is the equivalent of what the (workmen) here give; a packet of sweets, a canary in a cage, a tennis ball.” (ibid. 23).

Our Fumbling Gifts

Those ‘fumbling’ gifts will include all that we can do for others, the care we give to children and older people, the patience with which we forbear those who irritate us, the joys we share with family and friends. They will include our often puny efforts at prayer and our taking part in worship, but all these little offerings are taken up in a Great Thanksgiving, an ongoing Eucharist, a great Eucharistoumen, Thank You, which is, in the last analysis, the only return we can give for so immense a gift as we celebrate today.