Script for Political Message

The scene: Outside view of very modest single storey house, with mail box prominent by the side walk.

Characters: Harry, a retiree in his late sixties (whose short-term memory is a bit patchy) and Louise, his wife*, a year or two younger than he.

Scene I

Wide angle shot of a very modest single storey house, with the mail box by the sidewalk in the foreground. Camera pans in on H. coming to pick up the mail; he takes out 3 or 4 letters and looks through them more than once.

H. More medical bills.


Examines the mail again with puzzled look; turns and goes back to the house.

Scene II

H. goes through the hallway into kitchen where Louise is sitting at a table.

L. Is there anything interesting?

H. Well, you might call it interesting that my Social Security check has still not come; it’s days late.

L. Harry, your short-term memory is really getting a bit frayed. Who’s got the majority in Congress now?

Louise gets up and comes round stand behind H. with an arm round his shoulder

H. Of course, the Republicans scraped by with a tiny majority last November, but that still doesn’t explain the delay in my check.

L. Oh yes it does.
Don’t you remember that they handed Social security over to Big Banks on Wall Street, and after the plunge in the markets a few weeks ago, we got a message saying that it would be at least two months more before any payments could be made.

H. Oh God! Of course, But it sure leaves us in a big hole, and what do we do about all these medical bills? We seem to be billed for much bigger co-pays these days.

L. Yes, that’s because instead of paying 80% of approved procedures, Medicare now pays only 50%; and fewer procedures are approved.

H. This’ll mean using up that little reserve we kept for the grandchildren.

l. Yes. This really isn't just a political issue; it's a matter of social justice. It may be cold comfort, but at least we stood up for principle and didn’t vote for the party of the rich.

H. Why would any sane person have done that?

Fade out; bring up banner caption:

BE QUITE SURE YOU KNOW WHAT VOTING REPUBLICAN
MEANS FOR YOUR FUTURE

* You may remember Harry & Louise from earlier political commercials.

ERRATIC INERRANCY

A Clean (almost) Slate

I sometimes give thanks that I came to my theological education with a tabula (relatively) rasa. I was duly baptized and confirmed in the good old C of E and the family was counted as “a sound supporter” of our strongly evangelical village church (they regularly held a ham supper on Good Friday!). My mother came near to hysterics when my sister announced that she was getting engaged to a doctor of Irish nationality and popish religion: even worse, my sister was to be received after instruction from – you guessed – a Jesuit. My father, a naval officer, was, I think, as I look back, an open-minded pantheist: by and large, he strongly opposed racist and ethnic prejudices, which were so prominent in the officer class of the early 20th century. There was, however, a striking exception. It arose, as he frequently told us, from his early experiences as a midshipman visiting S. America and Malta, an experience which produced a pronounced antipathy to everything “popish”; he regularly referred to Roman Catholic priests as “black crows”, for superstitious sailors a sign of ill luck.

The upshot of this family background for me was, firstly, a general, interest in what are grandly called ‘ultimate questions’; secondly, a profound distrust of religious, ethical and political absolutes: in my mid-teens, for example, I was attracted to the short-lived “Common Wealth” party (see an article in Wikipedia).
Thirdly, I read a lot of Penguin books on religion and social concerns. I was unduly influenced by the apologetic writings of C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton, and it was not until my second or third year of studying history and theology that I managed to delete much of what had seemed witty and reasonable. The Chestertonian, “he was either a madman or God” argument seemed plausible to a fourteen year old.
How I ever came to the conclusion that I might seek ordination in the C of E is not at all obvious in the light of this record, but that is another narrative of a length beyond the scope of this little essay. Perhaps I may return to it at some future time.

Context & History in Biblical Study

Suffice it to say I that began the study of theology without any significant baggage labelled either Evangelical or Anglo Catholic. The Seminary (we called them “Theological Colleges") I attended was liturgically slightly on the high side of middle-of-the –road, but intellectually fairly radical. I recall a member of the Faculty some time in the very early 1950s heaping scorn on the arguments against women’s ordination on “theological” grounds.

It is not surprising, therefore, that I was never impressed by apologetic arguments that argued for a Chalcedonian Christology on the basis of Old Testament prophecies, and that the notion of an inerrant bible (whose contents had been for me somewhat sketchy) seemed absurd. The concept of inerrancy perhaps needs a little parsing. My notion that Fundamentalists were those who read the bible ‘literally’, was overturned in my second year when I read James Barr’s excellent book, Fundamentalism; he points out that, on the whole, Fundamentalist readings of the bible very often resort to “figures of speech” to avoid a literal reading. A very good example is the treatment of “days of creation” in Genesis 1. These, of course are not literal days, but “eras of history”. These shuffles and shifts are essential if the primary tenet of Fundamentalism, - the Bible is the authentic word of God and is totally without error – is to be maintained.
In the years since my student days, my continued study has deepened, and, I hope, refined my theological positions, but I remain committed to an historical, contextual and critical study and reading of biblical texts.

A Disconcerting Experience

Imagine, then, my complete disorientation when it suddenly seemed clear to me (I suppose in evangelical terms, I experienced a conversion moment) that the contemporary political situation in the U.S.A. is clearly foreshadowed in Scripture. I resisted this sudden conviction: apparently this is normal in the conversion process, though many evangelicals would maintain, that if conversion is not instantaneous and complete, it is not valid. But resist it I did. First of all, I had to be clear about the verse itself. And there it was II Peter, 2.22 (could such a row of ‘twos’ be without significance?), “For them the Proverb has proved true: ‘the dog returns to its own vomit’, and the sow after a wash rolls in the mud again’”.
In a sense, this seemed to have double strength: it is an Old Testament passage wrapped round and ratified by the New.

Text and Vocabulary

I tried the ploy of a textual variant somewhere in the verse; Manuscript scholars, it is well known, are enemies of the gospel who regularly demean the sacred King James Bible, suggesting that it descends from a “corrupt” family. On the other hand, their results can be used when necessary. But Nestle’s definitive edition of the Greek text, which has an extensive apparatus of variant readings, gives not a whiff of scribal emendation or homoiteleuton.

My last, desperate attempt to avoid the clear meaning of this verse was to look up the word ’εξεραμα (exerama, vomit). Arnt and Gingrich, Lexicon of the New Testament and Early Christian Literature, closed that last escape route. The interesting thing about the word is that this its only appearance in the New Testament, and it appears also in a medical treatise of the late first century C.E. by Dioscorides. Critical scholars use this example of what they call an hapax legomenon – a word that occurs only once in the whole bible - (together with dozens of words unique to 2 Peter) as an argument for a very late date for the letter, therefore discrediting its Petrine authorship. In fact (sic), the use of a very rare word may well point to divine dictation. So what does this verse foreshadow, perhaps, even, foretell?

Astounding Polls

Simply, the astounding poll result that 75% of the American electorate want to return to the policies of the Bush/Cheney years.

There the matter might have rested, leaving me dismayed, and amazed at this example of Democracy, ("Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." - Winston Churchill in a House of Commons speech on Nov. 11, 1947), awaiting only “the inevitable end”. But I could not stop worrying at the thing, like a dog with an old bone (to carry on the imagery).

Then, another bolt from the blue (divine message? Direct line to the celestial exchange?). A passage in the Old Testament, as it were, flashed up before me. It does not cancel out the message of 2 Peter, but it poses the question: “how valid are the data of the poll”? The75% number comes from a Gallup poll, and the lit-up message directed me to I Chronicles, 21.1-6 (N.E.B. translation). “Now Satan, setting himself against Israel, incited David to count the people”. Some of his advisors tried to dissuade him; Joab warned him that doing this “would only bring guilt on Israel”.
So here we have an unmistakable reference to a Gallup Poll, for what does Gallup do but “count the people”? Unhappily, those taking part in these exercises seem not to recognize that they are involved in Satanic activity.

Waking Up

As is so often the case in disturbing dreams, it took several seconds before a feeling of relief flooded in; I had not, after all, become a Fundamentalist. But as I reflected on the fragments of the dream that lingered on during the day, it occurred to me that both the author of the Book of Proverbs and the anonymous author of the Seond Letter (of) Peter, had hit on a truth of crowd psychology: a crowd, when fed enough inflammatory material, will not behave rationally, a situation exacerbated in our case by decades of a failing education system. The Proverb suggest that the dog is attracted back, but does not consider the consequences: that certainly seems to be the case of the 75%.

II Peter 2.21 certainly is not in any way prophetic; indeed the letter is a sad piece of work, and might have been best left out of the Canon, as it is in some third century lists, which often include the Letters of Clement of Rome, a much better bet.

It is, though, a good image for the possibility of a Republican return to power, and whether they regain power or not, the Old Testament passage stands as a warning about Polls: satanic or not, they need watching in more than one sense.

Sweat and Water…Blood & Wine

Invalid Sacrament?

My great friend, Mark Harris, recently returned from leading (supported by eight other adults) a group of 14 young people (14-18 year-olds) on a pilgrimage journey to Navajo land. His resilience in enduring primitive camping conditions for two weeks – no shower for a week! - in his late sixties, is only surpassed by his empathy with this age group. Detailed accounts and comments can be found on his Blog, Preludium.
This was not a Work Camp; it was, so far as I understand it, an opportunity to experience another culture, another world-view, and to spend time in some questioning, ‘mulling over’ the day-to-day contacts and experiences and to share in the life of a temporary community.

Daily prayers were a part of the schedule and it was planned to visit the nearest Episcopal Mission to attend a Eucharist. In the event, this turned out not to be practical (travel time particularly), and so it was decided to celebrate the service in the Camp. An immediate problem, though, was the absence of any wine, camping as they were in a totally “dry” locality. So, they went ahead with the Eucharist, using bread and water. Hearing of this, doubtless, Anglo-Catholics (or the tatty remnants of that movement) will be moved to a state of near apoplexy: one can visualize headlines in the Church Times or Living Church, Episcopal Youth Leader Celebrates Invalid Eucharist. Possibly the other extreme might not fuss too much; after all, they were at one time so intertwined with Temperance Movements, that grape juice was normal in ‘low church’ English parishes.

Mark had made the point that water in Navajo land was very scarce and precious: a vivid symbol of life, (recall Leviticus, “the blood is the life”) and it assumed a strongly sacramental quality in this service.

The Gethsemane Pericope

Mark’s reporting of the Eucharist with water as a potent eucharistic and not just baptismal sacramental symbol, turned my attention to Luke’s account of Jesus’ praying on the Mount of Olives, Gethsemane (Lk. 22. 43-44).
Verses 43-44 are in parentheses in most contemporary editions of the Greek New Testament. That is because the MS evidence provides a relatively strong probability (but not a certainty) that the verses are a later, though very early insertion. More recent textual critics have tended to give more weight to some of the MSS that have these verses and note that the passage is quoted by Justin Martyr, c.150 C.E.
[If anyone is interested in the complexities of contemporary textual criticism, I should be happy to produce a short essay on the subject: leave on note in the Comments.]

First Generation Christians & the Death of Jesus

In what follows, I assume that what we have in these verses is an early comment, a kind of Targum, by a first-generation reader of Luke. (If the reading should be original, even better, we have Luke’s own views). This marginal note to a first edition of Luke suggests for us what the earliest readers understood Luke to be saying about the death of Jesus: the basis for its saving efficacy, which was for them a ‘given’; the way in which his followers should participate in it; and its underpinning of both Baptism and Eucharist.

I have always thought that the Gethsemane story in Mark, followed by both Matthew and Luke, stands as a connecting link between the Last Supper and the execution of Jesus. Jesus and his disciples join in the Passover Hallel, says Mark, and go at once to this quiet place of prayer.

Obedience

What follows gives in graphic, dramatic narrative form, what is one of the central theological interpretations of the meaning of Jesus’ death to be found in the New Testament. The centrality of Jesus’ obedience stands out definitively in Romans 5.19 – “[J]ust as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous”. But it is also found in Hebrews 5.8, a verse which follows what may well be an allusion to the Gethsemane story.
It is not easy to produce ‘proof texts’, but the whole tenor of Mark’s account stresses the obedience of Jesus to the will of the father: the temptation narrative, and the compulsion to preach the evangel; and the fourth Gospel emphasizes the theme: “I came not to do my own will, but the will of my Father who sent me”.

Metaphors for “Saved by the Cross”

The New Testament uses many metaphors to elucidate what was, to those first followers of Jesus an empirical fact, the reality that underpinned their sense of freedom and of living a new life: the reality was an absolute conviction of “salvation” , connected in Greek with the verb ‘to heal’ (sõzõ), ‘to make whole’. The conviction of this new ‘wholeness’ was somehow inextricably linked to the life, work and death of Jesus, and the multiple metaphors used in the New Testament were attempts to put an ineffable experience into inadequate words: an attempt to get at the meaning of Jesus’ death in itself and for the life of his followers.
Many are found on the writings of Paul:

• a law court where, against all expectations the Judge says, “Not guilty” [justification ] ;

• a meeting of high-level diplomats working out a treaty [reconciliation];

• the fight of a righteous man against evil forces experienced as demonic [Christus Victor],

• and, of course, the sacrificial metaphor [atonement].

In all these instances, we find parallels in the Synoptic gospels and other N.T. Letters.
Luke has a parable about sending an ambassador to make peace, Lk. 14.31ff., Mark reports Jesus’ words about binding the ‘strong man’ (i.e. the powers of evil) 3.27, and the whole sequence of healings in Mark, often followed by Matthew and Luke, centers on the Christus Victor theme. The sacrificial theme, too, is prominent in these gospels. Mark 10.45 with the words “ransom for many” (λυτρον αντι πολλων) is interesting because it combines the sacrificial metaphor with yet another one – the manumission of a slave, which has strong overtones of the Exodus theme.
Yet, in this great welter of attempts to get to the essence of the divine salvation, the central act of Jesus’ obedience stands out as preeminent.

Gethsemane Narrative & an Early Comment

And so I return to the very early addition to Luke’s account of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Several things are presented in this picture of Jesus:

• The undoubted humanity of Jesus: the Johannine Christ is not remotely present in this picture. The cost of obedience is immense. This is not part of a drama whose victorious outcome is known to Jesus, a view that hovers around later Christology; it is a terrible struggle with powers that keep human beings from God, both within their very being and in the world where they find themselves.

The commentator (or Luke) uses this occasion to stress the central importance of a sacramental theology.

• Water is primary: The biblical record is, one might say, flooded with it. The Spirit broods over it at creation; Yahweh leads the People through it to freedom, into a land that is watered from “the heavens” and not by “the foot” (irrigation) Deut 11.10f. Jesus’ ministry begins with it and the New Testament ends with it: “The angel showed me the river of life…flowing from the throne of God”. (Rev. 22.1)

• From the time the Hebrews made the Passover the linch pin of their faith and the center of their Liturgical life, water has been inextricably linked with blood. Both words supply powerful and paradoxical metaphors: water gives life and takes it; blood flows from death, but is also a sign of life (Lev. 7.14).

• It is not surprising, therefore, that water and blood come together in the New Testament where a further layer of metaphor is added. The Old Testament figure of the cup of wine is also a two-facing symbol. It is a sign of blessing “that makes the [human] heart happy”, (Ps. 104.15), but it is also the wrath of God.

A Pivotal Point

Luke’s version of the Gethsemane pericope, (with its comment, if it is not all from Luke’s pen) brings together all these elements, and makes this a pivotal point for understanding the life and death of Jesus and their relevance for the on-going life of his followers.

Connecting the Last Supper and the Cross, it places the obedience of Jesus at the center of his life and of his relationship to God.
In the sweat – (the water of life) – that is as blood – (the wine of blessing and of judgment) - it connects the process of God’s salvation, effected through the obedience of a faithful Servant, to the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist. And it is in this sacramental mode that Christians come to learn about and share in that obedience. So Paul writes that those whom God calls are “to be conformed to the image of (his) the Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family” (Rom. 8.29).

Invalid?

So in these particular circumstances, is water for the cup of blessing an invalid sacrament? What I suggest in this essay is that this is not an “open” question. That precise language, Latin, has two ways of dealing with “loaded” (as opposed to “open”) questions; if the implied answer is “yes”, one begins the sentence with nonne…?.

If “no”, the sentence begins with num…? I’m strongly in favour of num.

CAPITALISM UNCOVERED

A Sliver of Autobiography

When I was eighteen and in the middle of training to be a Radar Mechanic in His Majesty’s Brittanic Navy, I was stationed in the East End of London, attending the Northampton Polytechnic, undergoing a crash course in physics and the theory and technology of radio and radar. The naval ratings on the course were billeted in a large building in Hoxton that had been a hostel for “fallen girls”; it had been commandeered by the Royal Navy to become HMS some-thing-or-other . (All R.N. shore facilities are “Her/His Majesty’s “Ship”). Hoxton, among the worst of London’s East End ‘slums’, was not a pretty place: rows and rows of houses thrown up in the last part of the nineteenth century, still, in some places with a communal tap for a group of huddled houses, and often noisy at night with drunken brawls. From this dreary area, we walked to the Old Street Underground station and arrived in Islington for our first lecture – 8.00 a.m.

Labor Landslide

Depressed as it was, when the results of the first election after the War (WW II) came out, the whole area erupted with joy and enthusiasm. The people had spoken clearly - no return to closed mines, idle railway marshalling yards and decaying agriculture: no return, in effect to unbridled Capitalism with its endless queues of men picking up a pitifully small ‘dole’, as the unemployment relief was then called. But, of course no patriotic American mentions the ‘C’ word.

Profit before People

There is much that can, and needs, to be said about the Socialist experiments of the nineteen fifties and sixties, but the advent of Lady (the iron one) Thatcher, demonstrated unequivocally that capitalism was still (not, perhaps in its virulent form of the era of the first Factory Acts of the nineteenth century), very much alive, and still much more interested in profit than people.
See: a summary of the Acts and Parliamentary Committees

The religious and ethical issues raised by capitalism are extremely complex, and, so far as I can tell, infrequently mentioned in the main-stream media and in political discussions; this contrasts strikingly with the acrimonious debates about the morality of abortion, euthanasia and the sexual dallyings of prominent politicians. But before I turn to consider what theologians and ethicists have said about capitalism, I want to ponder the flood of news reporting, political rhetoric and Congressional hearings that have engulfed us for almost two months now.

Right-about: Turn

Not long ago, we were hearing cries of anger and pain from the right (not always so very far right either) about government “interference” in our health system. An alarming number of older citizens, while chanting this mantra in a kind of 1984 regimentation, managed at the same time to demand, “hands off Medicare”. Appalling posters and caricatures were waved in the pepped up rallies, and mutually contradictory accusations of Socialism, Fascism, and Communism were hurled at the President. I, for one, could not escape the feeling that all this hate was motivated by unspoken, perhaps these days unspeakable, deep-rooted racial resentments. But that is another issue for another essay.
In the light of all that outcry from the right, one is, I feel, justified in expressing utter amazement that we have recently heard from these same right-wing politicians, apparently speaking in all seriousness, that the President is failing in his leadership by not, in effect, nationalizing the Oil Companies!
The thing that has struck me forcibly is that in all this flood of official reports, populist frenzy, endless news reports and even more ‘expert’ news analyses, I cannot remember once hearing the word capitalism.

Why Taboo Word?:

As I tried to work out why this was so - since it seems very obvious to me that this issue is like an immense dead camel which all discussions tread warily around, - that part of the explanation must lie in the political development (or under-development?) of the U.S political system. My grasp of U.S, history is not as good as my knowledge of British and European history (and even there, there are lamentable gaps), but I think it would be generally agreed that any Socialist movement in the U.S. has been relatively peripheral, and there certainly has never been anything like a functioning Party with substantial representation in the Congress. What is more, the failure of such movements to take off, is as much the lack of support from the working class majority as the active opposition of the upper, plutocratic classes.

Sine qua Non for the “Dream’

America as the “land of promise” for all the millions of immigrants in the last century and a half, has been so tightly tied to the tenets of the inviolability of private property, the absolute right to climb the ladder of social and economic betterment, (hard luck for the head on a lower rung), and, in effect, the embracing of Adam Smith’s invisible hand, that there is a deeply embedded and largely unexamined commitment to unrestrained capitalism. It is this commitment, a majority seems to believe, that makes possible the “American Dream”; at the same time, the actual conditions necessary for entering the dream world are rarely examined: dreams do tend to fade as one awakes to the real world again.

Rusty, Clanking Machine

It appears, in the last analysis, that the relationship between the government and the many powerful corporations that, in theory, operate at its bidding is hopelessly ambiguous (one might say dream-like), defined in a vast corpus of Congressional Acts, Presidential Executive orders and the operation of an army of “regulatory” agencies. The confusion appears to be demonstrated in the outcry against a moratorium on the drilling of new deep wells out at sea, which goes along side shrill denunciations of the Administration for ‘not cleaning up the mess’.

I had already written the previous paragraph when I came across Hendrick Hertzberg’s comment in the current New Yorker. He points out that it is the “out-of-control of a dwindling resource” that lies behind the Gulf disaster, and suggests that the most efficient way to deal with this would be a realistic tax on carbon production together with a reduction in the payroll tax. He continues:

“This is what some European countries have done, and it may well be what Obama would do if he had the kind of legislative power that European prime ministers have and many Americans of all political persuasions, assume that he has, too”. [As an ex-pat Brit I wonder what that says about the US educational system?]
But the President does not have that kind of power and so he is attempting to achieve “the maximum that…our rusty, clanking legislative sausage machine is capable of delivering”. (June 28, 2010 p. 18).

This ‘rusty machine’ has failed dismally to develop some viable alternative to naked, uncontrolled capitalism: an alternative that would give structure to the balance between government and free enterprise.

Contrast with Britain

There is I think, a striking contrast here with the British scene, where the vested interests of the “landed classes” began to converge with those of the new captains of industry. Indeed, the latter quickly surpassed the old aristocracy in wealth, frequently marrying off their daughters to a Duke or Marquis, and sending their sons to Eton or Harrow, the unquestioned leading public (i.e. private) schools in the land.
There was, though, a distinct difference between the two classes regarding the poor. The aristocratic tradition staunchly believed in noblesse oblige, and agricultural workers, though often grindingly poor, at least had a primitive social support system provided by the great house.
The plight of the industrial worker was far different, and the reports of the working conditions of the first half of the nineteenth century are hair-raising to read. (see Web reference above).

Beginnings of Control

It was out of these conditions that the Liberal Party, even though committed to a policy of laissez faire, began to establish regulatory laws: six year olds could no longer work for more than twelve hours underground; factory workers must be given a break to go to the bathroom; some minimal standards were established to protect workers against flailing drive belts and grinding gears.
By the turn of the century, however, a more radical politics emerged in the form of the Labor Party, which, after WWII, came to power with a landslide victory. A much more ‘socialistic’ program than anything the Liberals had envisaged was put in place with uneven results over the next half century.
Overall, however, Britain has had a much more controlled form of free enterprise capitalism than has ever existed in the U.S.A., and the present Gulf disaster has revealed some significant confusions. Not a few in the Republican party would agree with Rep. Joe Barton if it were at all politically possible, while the further right (Tea Partiers et mult al.) exhibit an apparent approval of the worst excesses of the British Mill owners of the 1830s and the U.S. Robber Barons later in the century. At least these folk seem to know where they stand.

The Moderates’ Bind

It is the rest who appear lost in a deep fog: the behavior of BP is seen by most as flagrant, but they operate very freely, almost independently, under a complex system of legislation that the government, committed to the rule of law, is bound by, and which, as I suggested above, is the deeply ingrained position of many working people. (What else could account for so much support the Republican Party from that group when such support is clearly inimical to the longer-term well-being of workers?)

Theological & Ethical Issues

Is there anything that theology and the history of Christianity can teach this nation which proudly claims to be “One…under God”?
It might be worth pointing out right at the beginning that the New Testament has immensely more references to the use of money and the treatment of the poor than it has about how people should behave in bed (or perhaps on a sea shore or a mountain top). Moreover, the majority of the references are not exactly gentle about the rich.
This would suggest that at the very least our contemporary imbalance of emphasis on the two ethical issues is strikingly at odds with the New Testament writings and the teaching of Jesus. [I am well aware that the contrast between what is recorded in the gospels and the teaching of Jesus would not be accepted universally, but it is widely acknowledged in biblical studies, and does not preclude some relatively reliable conclusions about Jesus’ teaching].

Prophetic Tradition in the New Testament

When we turn to the NT, we find Jesus firmly in the prophetic tradition in sayings about the poor and the misuse of power: both in his recorded sayings and in the writings of the earliest followers the same themes recur; the rich man who built new barns; the parable of Dives and Lazarus; the Rich young man to whom Jesus said, “sell all you possess and give it to the poor”; a camel struggling to get through a needle’s eye; Peter’s address to Jesus, “we have left everything to follow you”; the Beatitudes, and especially Luke’s highly radicalized version of Matthew’s “blessed are the poor in spirit”, which becomes “blessed are the poor”: period. These are just some examples of a radical criticism of the lack of compassion so often displayed by the powerful and rich. We have heard very recently just how relevant these criticisms still are when people who cannot find work are characterized as Hobos.

Poverty in Church History

Christian history has witnessed movements that involved total renunciation of ‘the world’. Very early on, this rigorous interpretation was inter-twined with Hellenistic elements of thought, which denigrated the material world and regarded sexuality as demonic. These movements in turn, set up fierce theological and ecclesiastical tensions, evidenced very much later by the Papal suppression of the Franciscans because of their advocating extreme poverty in the 14th century, and the heated discussions of the Reformation period.
A consensus emerged favoring a via media. Total poverty and some communal form of living was not required: possessions were not sinful, though they could all too easily become an occasion for sin. The dangers were underlined for the church as a whole by the lives of ascetics and by the network of Benedictine communities that peppered the medieval map of Europe.

Usury Dethroned

Perhaps this mediating position was an important factor in the rise of a merchant class, though its move to something like modern capitalism was checked by the Church’s continuing complete ban on usury (which, in effect, regarded money as an artifact: the money gained was not from a service, or from a product).
It is fairly widely held, though increasingly questioned, that it was Calvin who loosened the bind and suggested that earning interest was not in itself wrong. Dennis McCann writes:

“Calvin’s reinterpretation of the biblical arguments against usury, especially those based on Deuteronomy 23.19-20...enabled Christians to participate fully in the development of the institutions of the modern Western financial system.” (Christianity: The Complete Guide, Ed. John Bowden, London 2005. p.186. Quoted hereafter as CTCG).

This is not to say that Calvin would have approved of the contemporary failure to examine the ethical issues raised by global corporations as his comment on Acts 16.15 suggests:

“Many place angelical perfection in poverty, as if the cultivation of piety and obedience to God were impossible without the divestment of wealth…Many fanatics refuse rich men the hope of salvation, as if poverty were the only gate to heaven, although it (poverty) sometimes involves men with greater disadvantages than riches. But Augustine reminds us that rich and poor share the same heritage. …[And] we must beware of the opposite evil, lest riches hinder or so burden us that we advance less readily toward the kingdom of heaven”. (Quoted in Bouwsma, Calvin, 198).


Christian Reactions to Industrial Revolution


Commentators point to the undoubted fact that “in modern times, Western Christianity has been perceived as the religion of rich and powerful people” (Michael H. Taylor CTCG 959), and the novels of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century provide overwhelming evidence of this. The same trend is glaringly present in the mega churches of the “Prosperity Gospel”, and sits uneasily beside a rather older frugality preached by John Wesley and his followers.
Donald Hay, in an excellent article in Modern Christian Thought (MCT) edited by Alister McGrath, points out the peripheral influence of Christian Theology in the last two centuries, the period of intense development of economic theory and practice leading to our present situation; this means that economics is saturated with utilitarianism. It is, says Hay, “almost exclusively an Enlightenment discipline ". He goes on to note however, that there has been a constant flow of commentary and criticism from historians and theologians in the last 150 years. The evangelicals of the 1850s deplored the many social evils of the industrial revolution, but their tone of superior morality and a view of divine providence that suggested people should keep and be satisfied with their “station” in life, was somewhat cold comfort.
More humane and more theologically sophisticated were the incarnational views of F.D. Maurice, which were “taken up by the Christian Socialists in the latter half of the nineteenth century and by Charles Gore and William Temple in the first part of the twentieth century”. (MCT pp. 136f).

Hay points to the significant contribution to the discussion of ethical issues of capitalism by a group of scholars who came to be known as Christian Socialists, (would such an oxymoron be remotely possible in the U.S.?): B.F. Westcott, Charles Gore and Scott Holland. “They rejected the concept of the economic system as a natural order of cause and effect uncontrolled by any moral responsibility”. (MCT p. 137).

The Roman Catholic church has also produced a steady stream of commentary, mainly in the form of Papal Encyclicals, the first of which to bear on the modern situation was Rerum Novarum (Dealing with conditions of labor). Issued in 1891 by Leo XIII - New Things –suggests a rather late entry into the field, but it did insist on justice for working people and advocated a degree of governmental control of private enterprise. As was normal in papal pronouncements it took the opportunity roundly to condemn Socialism, and frown sternly on Democracy.

Closing Considerations

1) It seems clear from an empirical point of view, that some forms of Capitalism work better than many forms of Socialism: producing better living standards, wider opportunities and happier lives for very many people.

2) On the other hand, it is equally clear that capitalism, left to itself in Smithian fashion, quickly produces unacceptable inequalities, which have a deleterious effect on Society as a whole: incomes, education, health care are endangered for the poor as the rich become richer (often staggeringly so) and the poor, poorer (with a rapidity that should embarrass us).

3) Religion has been enlisted by both sides (Prosperity Churches), and some biblical verses. For example, ‘the poor are always with you’ can be read (and used) like so many of Jesus’ sayings, in more than one way. It may be quite pragmatic, that is to say, experience shows that this is a (sad) fact of human history: a more ominous view of the saying might be that poverty is, as it were, built into the order of things, an item of the lex naturalis . Such a view is quite explicit in many economic theories of the last two centuries, which suggest a pool of unemployed people is required ; it will hardly be a surprise to note that this is a view held by Adam Smith and his followers.

4) Clearly, the churches cannot legislate (though there are still a few theocracies in the world where the religious authorities can dictate to the State). One of the strategies of those who have moral qualms about capitalism has been to set up countless agencies staffed largely by volunteers doing magnificent work to alleviate some of the more obvious suffering caused by the capitalist system: hunger, homelessness, unemployment, severely limited educational activities – there is no need to prolong this gloomy list. Tacitly, this may seem to endorse the first interpretation of Jesus’ words about the poor, weakening the drive for direct action. Hay, whom I have already quoted, says of this situation:

“While personal charity and concern for the poor are to be encouraged, the claims of economic justice require that action be taken by governments to ensure that no one is left in poverty”. (MCT p. 66)

5) But here is the rub: U.S. elections over the last thirty years suggest that half the electorate (some times a bit more, sometimes less) vote precisely on the grounds that government should keep its hands off (except, of course, when a disaster like the current one is about to have grave financial consequences for conglomerates. Then those on the Right feel free to castigate the Administration and forget election slogans of “No Socialism”).
A further problem is the growing political influence the religious right (particularly discernible in the eight years of the Bush Presidency). Too often, the religious drive is transmuted into a passionate jingoism: a very strong military, and readiness for pre-emptive action are paramount; ethical issues of personal behavior are more important than social issues; and, sometimes, a reversion to early nineteenth century views about the divine ordering of master and servant is openly expressed. Clearly if these ideological positions form part of the majority in an election result, one can hardly hope for government action; and when the party of the right, with support from the much further right, is not the majority, strenuous reaction to, and blocking of, any proposed legislation which aims to improve the lives of those blighted by unregulated capitalism, can be expected.

Conclusion

So what can middle-of-the-road Christians and many others (very probably a larger number) who share the same moral concerns, though not professing any specific religious faith do?
Writing in 1926 R.H. Tawney pointed out the failure of the theological community to keep up with the rapid changes of the industrial revolution:

“In an age of impersonal finance, world-markets and a capitalist organization of industry, traditional social doctrines had nothing to offer, and were merely repeated when, in order to be effective, they should have been thought out again from the beginning and formulated in new and living terms” (Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, Penguin , p 184).

At the time, it seemed to Tawney that the churches had failed miserably in meeting the challenge, but I have noted the writings of F.D. Maurice, and the cogent pamphlets and books put out by the Christian Socialists following him, which might suggest some modification of his stringent criticism. Indeed, the final part of the 20th century and the first decade of this one have witnessed an increasing pressure on the part of the Vatican and main line Protestant churches to draw attention to theological and ethical issues of poverty, power and the structure of capitalism.
What the individual can do is continually to exercise her/his social conscience; to support those seeking election to public office who convincingly display an awareness of the moral dimensions of society, and who are not beholden to the pressures of capitalist lobbyists.
However, much we can achieve by “good works”, we must continue to insist that government has an important and legitimate role in the ordering of a just society.

Perhaps, too, we should take every opportunity to remind people just how deeply capitalism is embedded in our society: to such an extent that we do not mention it because we take it so much for granted, and, therefore take for granted as inevitable, deprivations and injustices that ultimately conflict with our Constitutional principles.

A Tale of Two Churches:The Church of England in Crisis

Canterbury Tale

The current New Yorker (April 26) has a masterly article, an essay in effect, on the present state of the established church in England. Jane Kramer, the author, has a sharply focused view of a scene that is often murky and obscured by the notorious English fogs; she regularly contributes the Letter from Europe for the magazine.

Note well that that is the Church in England, not the United Kingdom, since the established church in Scotland is not part of what is now known as the “Anglican Communion”, being Presbyterian in polity, not Episcopalian. Nevertheless, the situation where the Queen is both head of an Episcopal body and also head of a Presbyterian one is rather typical of British systemic ambiguity (where a ‘Public School’ is in fact a private institution and the Constitution is not readily available to the lay person). It also points us back to the origins of the kind of incipient schisms that Kramer so admirably delineates.

James I & the Puritans

King Henry was hardly a reformer: he attended the Latin Mass every day of his life and only very reluctantly agreed to a vernacular version of the Mass, for that is really what the first Prayer Book of 1549 actually was. It was his daughter, presiding over what is called “the Elizabethan Settlement”, who in some measure held together those who looked still to Rome and those who looked to Geneva. After her death, leaving no direct heir, the throne passed to James VI of Scotland, the son of her cousin Mary. (Henry’s sister, Margaret, was Mary, Queen of the Scots’ mother).
The Reformers who felt that things had not gone anyway far enough under Elizabeth were delighted; here was a monarch brought up in a strict Calvinist country, formed by the fiery John Knox. Surely, they believed, at last a real reformation could be accomplished. This is not the place to follow the meetings of the Hampton Court Conference, called by James in 1604. He clearly was not sympathetic to the Puritans who could not accept the 1552 B.C.P., and he was adamant on the issue of an Episcopal polity. At one point he railed at the suggestion of a Presbyterian form of church government, “If you aim at a Scots Presbytery, it agreeth as well with monarchy as God and the devil!” He more or less dismissed them with the often-quoted line: “No Bishops, no King”. One wonders how direct is the connection to that day’s meetings to the sailing of the Mayflower, the (dire?) results of which are with us today!

Women Bishops & Gay Clergy

Kramer gives us a fair account of the dilemma of Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, but she quotes Diarmaid MacCulloch, a revered Oxford historian, saying,
“Rowan has enormous grace, he gives his opponents space, but he has a lack of killer instinct, which I’m afraid is a necessary quality for leadership”,
and makes it clear that the Archbishop supports the logical next move in the ministry of women: ordaining women priests as bishops. It is this issue, however, that has caused the latest violent rocking of the boat.
For several years, the center stage has been held by the conservatives, the Evangelicals, who made a fairly deliberate change in strategy some years ago, more or less abandoning opposition to the ordination of women to concentrate on opposition to any form of same gender blessing and particularly to condemn the ordination of openly homosexual men. Not surprisingly, the consecration of Gene Robinson provided them with a big arms cache. Stephen Bates in A Church at War, (London, 2004) gives an excellent account of the differences between the conservative US religious right and the much older British evangelical tradition (ch. 7), but also notes, as does Kramer, that recent decades have seen the adoption of the crude anti-scientific attitudes of the US groups by British conservatives. Bates traces the development of the anti-gay evangelical strategy with immense insight and detail.

GAFC ON

The anti-gay agenda was certainly significant in the emergence of GAFCON, of which Kramer says:

“In 2007, the conservative evangelicals attached themselves to a group called GAFCON, for Global Anglican Future Conference, which a year later emerged from the shadows of the Internet to hold an alternative bishops conference in Jerusalem. The meeting was hosted by, among others, the schismatic Nigerian archbishop, Peter Akinola, who retired this month, and the Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen - a man described by one liberal Australian Anglican as ‘taking over our church by stealth, ordaining anything evangelical that moves.’”.

In the ‘mother’ church the center has moved. As Kramer makes clear the burning issue is about consecrating women bishops, and an alliance is emerging (as it did in the case of the scheme for reunion with the Methodists) of the conservative Evangelicals and the conservative remnants of the Anglo-Catholic movement.

To quote Jane Kramer again:

It took seventeen years of wrenching Synod debate for women to be ordained, and when they were, some five hundred male priests fled in protest - two-thirds of them, as the saying goes, ‘to Rome.’ The prospect of women’s elevation to the House of Bishops has been even more divisive. This isn’t a question of High Church and Low Church differences. England’s church has always been (the common word) ‘inclusive.’ It grew as an uneasy accommodation between the traditionalists of the Apostolic Creed and Catholic ritual and devotions now known as Anglo-Catholics and the brimstone-and-Bible Protestants born in the chapels of the Reformation, making common cause against the Church of Rome. Today, it covers a sliding scale of beliefs and practices, with the majority of England’s Anglican parishes somewhere in the middle. But the argument about women bishops cuts across all the old divisions.

The Wider Anglican Communion

The broader issues of the Anglican Communion are not central to Kramer’s account, but are clearly a significant ‘backdrop’; she writes,

Geoffrey Kirk, an unabashedly misogynist London vicar who is the national secretary of Forward in Faith, told me that, for him, the tipping point was the Episcopalian bishops’ election of Jefferts Schori as their presiding bishop. He called it ‘a fundamental scandal’ and added,
" ‘I think Mrs. Jefferts Schori is a layperson. It’s not my doing. They decided.’ He said that a shoplifter was ‘more qualified, per se,’ to be a bishop than a woman was, so long as the shoplifter didn’t say that shoplifting was good, or that he was a Marxist spreading the wealth around.'"

It is, she implies, the deep desire of the Archbishop to hold together the “Anglican Communion” that leads to the appearance of ineffective leadership. He “is determined to preserve what remains of that bond [the connection “with the mother church in England]”. In this context, Kramer remarks that “(s)chism is hardly new to Christianity”, and one may add, not new to the C of E in particular, Methodism being the most striking example.
Perhaps it might help to put in perspective the possible exodus of a thousand or more clergy in the C of E to look at some earlier history.

Church & State in Mid-Nineteenth Century

Owen Chadwick’s The Victorian Church (Part I, pp.309-324) gives a lively account of the attempts to revive the Convocation(s) in the mid-nineteenth century.
The Convocation of Canterbury had not been allowed to meet since 1717, except at the call of new Parliament when an address affirming the royal supremacy was made to the King/Queen.
The attempt to re-vivify the Convocation began in the wake of the Gorham case debacle, which started in 1847 and dragged on until 1853; in that year the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council overturned the judgment against Mr. Gorham for departing from the apparent teaching of the Book of Common Prayer (B.C.P.) that infant baptism alone resulted in unconditional regeneration. Evangelicals were not happy with any view of the Sacraments that smacked of ex opere operato, insisting that baptism needed conscious repentance to achieve moral regeneration. The issue was clouded because the B. C. P. and Thirty-nine Articles (XXXIX) are not entirely consistent on the matter, but it was the assertion of State power over Church Doctrine that was at the center of the uproar. It was now the turn of the Tractarians to threaten wholesale departure from an Erastian church: the Evangelicals had threatened departure should the judgment against Gorham be upheld.

Two Churches

The attempts to revive Convocations were, of course, part of the Church/State tension so clearly displayed in the Gorham case. At one point when Lord Aberdeen was, briefly, Prime Minister, it seemed clear that a meeting of Convocation to receive a committee report could not be stopped. The Law Lords so gave their opinion. The State could not over-rule the Church in this matter, but this was only one battle in what might prove to be a long and costly war. If the church got the bit between its teeth, an inevitable clash with Parliament loomed. Aberdeen had searing memories of the split in the Established Scottish Presbyterian Church in 1843 when over the very issue of the power of the State to dictate to the Church, rather more than one third of the ministers seceded to form the Free Church, and so he was unhappy with the Law Lords’ ruling. It is reported that Aberdeen said to his son:
“Your friend is right who says the Church of England is two churches only held together by external forces. This unnatural apparent-union cannot last long, but we may as well defer the separation as long as possible.” (p. 319).

What Now?

That was in 1853. One hundred and fifty-seven years later, the policy of deferring the separation seems to be at least still breathing: but the ecclesiastical boat continues to rock, almost swamped at times by sudden squalls Yet the situation is very different from 1853. The C of E is realistically at least three churches now, and the autonomous churches of the Anglican Communion have embraced a bolder view of the scriptures and take more seriously the facts of scientific research. (Of course, a significant number of center members of the C of E would concur). This has led to internal schisms, notably in the US, led by the deposed Bishop of Pittsburgh, Robert Duncan, but by and large, they are strong. Perhaps the final break up will not be the naughty behavior of Canada, the US, New Zealand and others, but the long predicted sorting out of Rome and Geneva in the English church.

Lift Up Your Hearts

ΕΥΧΑΡΙΣΤΟΜΕΝ ΣOI - A Lecture given as part of a Lent Program
All SS Church Rehoboth, 2010

“Private” Prayer

It has become a truism to point to the significant increase in emphasis on the individual since the age of the Enlightenment. A symptom of this is clearly seen in the literature on prayer in the 18th-19th centuries: many books were written to be used in ‘private’ prayer, centering on methods for Meditation, or were guides dealing with topics like “Problems in Prayer”. Even in the context of the Mass, in continental Europe at least, one has a picture of a congregation busily engaged in saying the rosary while the liturgical action wends its separate clerical way, often behind a massive stone choir screen.

I would like to remind us that, on the contrary, the prayer of the gathered community is the earliest form of Christian prayer of which we know; furthermore, in spite of periods when, what we call the Liturgy, has lost its central position (for example the 18th century C of E), the Eucharist has constantly reminded Christians that the central elements of prayer are worship and thanksgiving. To day, I want to focus primarily on this Eucharistic worship of the church; the next lecture will consider the many other forms of liturgical prayer, known as the Offices, that have developed down the ages.

The Liturgy & the Daily Offices

First a brief note on two technical terms, Liturgy and Office: in Hellenistic Greek the word leiturgia meant an act of public service. In the NT it was used of the saints serving one another, but also of the community serving God, and since the main, perhaps, only service humans can give to God is to say “Thank you” (which in Greek is eucharistõ soi) the word was soon applied to the Eucharist. The word ‘Office’ comes from the Latin officium, originally the duty of a civic leader. Its use broadened into any ‘official’ responsibility, and, in the 4th and 5th centuries, it came to be applied to the round of weekly or daily prayer to which Christians,, particularly those in the emerging religious communities were duty bound. St Benedict called the Offices, the opus Dei, the work of God.

The New Testament

Where to begin? Perhaps some passages we find in the early chapters of Luke’s companion book to his Gospel, The Acts of the Apostles are as good a starting place as any. In 2.46 we hear of the earliest disciples, still, apparently, living in Jerusalem, “day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes”. In some ways, this is a ‘blue-print’ for the way the Christian Liturgy developed its distinctively two-part format. As Luke’s narrative continues, charting the movement of the church from Jerusalem into the wider Hellenistic world, we hear of Christians going to the synagogue, but celebrating the Lord’s Supper, (or, perhaps, Agapé meal?) in the developing “house churches”.

By around 70 C.E., it seems that a final separation between church and Synagogue was happening: Christians no longer thought of themselves (or were thought of by others), as a sect of Judaism. Nevertheless, the early influence of the Synagogue remained, as it does to this day, on the structure of the central act of Christian prayer: and not on its structure only, but in the fact that this central prayer was (as had been the case of synagogue worship) essentially a corporate act, not individual.

Development of the Eucharist

Having laid out some introductory material, I want to outline the development of the Eucharist from the earliest times of which we have evidence, and, as we proceed, to consider what the community has understood the meaning of its gathering to be in celebrating this central act of worship.

We do not find descriptions, let alone texts, of the services of the earliest communities. We do, however, have some hints in the NT itself, and, by the middle of the second century, evidence of how the church was worshipping. The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (known often by the first word of its Greek title – the Didaché), which may be as early as 110 C.E., records the words to be said at the blessing of the bread and wine.

In the NT itself, the first reference to a solemn blessing of the bread and wine is found in Paul’s first letter to Corinth (11.23ff). Written c. 52 C.E., the letter is very much a pastoral guide, full of advice and not a few admonitions about irregular behavior and departures from the teaching that Paul had delivered to them. The immensely important information about the early memorial meal comes in a context that suggests that at this stage, the celebration was still a proper meal followed by a narrative of the last supper Jesus shared with his disciples, set in a telling of the happenings surrounding that meal itself. Paul repeats the words of Jesus at that final Passover, and adds a significant comment of his own: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (26). This may well be one of the first (and, perhaps, definitive) theological musings on the life, death and resurrection pf Jesus, the Christos, and on the significance of the community meal for the ongoing life of the church.

Other N.T. References

It is not, however, the only passage in the NT that reflects the centrality of the Eucharist. In the Synoptic Gospels, the stories of the feeding of the crowds abound in eucharistic allusions, and all the Evangelists give a central place to a Passion Narrative which gives prominence to the Last Supper, and as the great Liturgiologist R.C.D. Jasper writes, “[NT] books such as Hebrews and Revelation clearly indicate a knowledge of the eucharist”. (Dict. Liturgy & Worship, SCM Press 2nd Ed. p. 315).

So clearly from the very earliest times, the disciples met to share a common meal. Why did they do this, and what did it imply? I will try to outline the consensus views of biblical and liturgical scholars. Perhaps the single most important factor was the growing faith that death had not ended the life and mission of Jesus: a faith, that is, that Jesus’ presence continued with them. It is worth noting just how many of the resurrection stories in Luke and Matthew (Mark has no Resurrection Narrative) take place in the context of a meal. This is even more striking in the Fourth Gospel.

What Does it Mean?

The first theological reflections on the life and death of Jesus center on the primacy of the Rule of God, and on the conflict between it and the power, or rule of evil. In the light of the resurrection faith, the death was seen not as a defeat, but as the triumph of God’s love, a love on which Jesus had staked his whole being. The belief the Jesus continued to be present in the church very soon came to be focused on the sharing of the common meal and reciting Jesus’ own words. Of course, those words themselves are full of new interpretations and carry a strikingly new message: the disciples are under a new covenant, with the implication that they are a new People of God; Jesus’ willing submission to the powers of evil is seen as the way in which God is saving the people. It is a new way, not by animal sacrifice (though the metaphor is powerfully used), but by willing obedience to the rule of God. St Paul, with his customary theological acuity, gets the point precisely in his letter to Rome, “For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous”. (5.19).

Center Point of Prayer

Thus, Christian prayer revolves round this center point: God’s will to rescue humankind, entangled in its own folly, by the work of the chosen Messiah, Jesus. Again Paul hits the nail right on the head. “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation…everything has become new. All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ… that is, in Christ, god was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us”. (II Cor. 5.17ff).
Believing this with all their hearts, is it any wonder that when we come to earliest texts of a service we hear the central act beginning with:
“Lift up your hearts; lift them to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God; it is very proper and our bounden duty (note here: “our Office”) to do so.”? Is it any wonder, either, that they called this act of worship the Eucharist, the Thanks-to-God-giving?

Liturgy of the Word

While the primary focus of the celebration was the final days of Jesus ministry, it was by no means the only thing that mattered to the disciples. The wider context of Jesus’ teaching, healing and welcoming ministry was essential for Paul’s conclusion noted above. The centrality of the Rule of God is only apparent if we listen to Jesus’ words in those incomparable stories, the Parables, and take note of the shorter sayings, found throughout the synoptic record.
It is here that the influence of the Synagogue is most clearly seen. E.J. Grisbrooke writes, “The synagogue service was composed basically of three elements – readings from the [Hebrew] scriptures, psalmody, and prayer, and these three are from the beginning the constant basic elements of the Christian [service]” (in Dict. Liturgy & Worship SCM Press, p.501).

We know that the three readings usually came one each from the three divisions of the Hebrew bible: from the Torah (Pentateuch), the Prophetic writings, which included what we call the ‘historical’ books like Joshua, Judges and Kings, in the division of the Prophets, and from the “Writings”, what we call the Wisdom literature, containing books like Job and Proverbs.
There was also a homily that commented on the readings and was usually delivered in Aramaic, since classical Hebrew was not longer the living language of the Jews. A written collection of such homilies is called a Targum (plur. Targumim), and they are an important source for our understanding of first century Judaism and sometimes reflect a different text in use. The custom of giving a homily is clearly seen in Luke’s account of Jesus, in the Synagogue of Nazareth: “He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day as was his custom”. Clearly, he is already regarded as a Rabbi (through popular acclaim), and he gives a homily on the reading from Isaiah that they had just heard. (Lk. 4.16f). The custom is even more clear in Luke’s report of Paul in Pisidian Antioch: “On the sabbath day they went into the synagogue and sat down. After the reading of the Law and the Prophets, the officials sent to them a message, saying, ‘Brothers, if you have any word of exhortation for the people, give it’”. (Acts 13. 15f.)
It seems that very early forms of the Christian service used an OT lesson and two NT lessons, one from the gospels and one from the Epistles, but by the 5th century, the OT lesson dropped out and remained out until the liturgical revisions of the 20th century restored them.

Before the Written Records

But what happened before gospels had assumed a written form? It seems most probable that in the years around 32 – 65 C.E. that after the OT reading the worship leader (Peter, Paul and other close followers of Jesus) would recount the remembered parables and saying of Jesus. Biblical scholars see this as one of the major formative influences on the emerging written accounts of Jesus’ acts and words because these clearly were interpreted and applied to the current needs of the community. On cannot imagine a house church gathering in Corinth, say, around 55 C.E. when the Leader having heard the OT lesson then said, “I’m afraid, brothers and sisters, that brother Mark has not yet finished his book so I have nothing to tell you about Jesus this morning”.

Understanding the Eucharist

I want to close by summing up some of the salient points about the Eucharist.

1) The church understands prayer to be primarily the function of the gathered community. This is not to say that prayer on one’s own is not also part of an individual Christian’s spiritual sustenance: we have, after all, the striking example of Jesus whom the Evangelists record drawing apart to a quiet place to pay. This is a time for introspection and examination.

2) From the very beginning, the central act of worship has been the Eucharist. This primacy strongly emphasizes that the centre of prayer is Thanksgiving and Adoration of a God who can be addressed as a parent and who holds all things together, bringing light out of darkness, order out of chaos and life out of death. It is light years away from a pagan (and unhappily, all too often contemporary) understanding of prayer as presenting a wish list to the ultimate entrepreneur. It is not only a thanksgiving for what God has done in Jesus, but for the wider understanding of all things being ultimately in the hand of God. (See Eucharistic Prayer D, BCP)

3) The structure of the Liturgy has from the beginning has been two services: (a) a recital of the saving acts of God in word, inherited, in part, from the Synagogue, and (b), the recital of the saving acts of God in symbol and sacrament: essentially a re-presentation, and emphatically not a representation. In broad terms, the first part of the service looks to the Hebrew context in which Jesus moved and presents to the community the narratives of his life and the essence of his teaching.
The second part centers on the words of Jesus at the Last Supper , set in a Thanksgiving Prayer that places Jesus as the central actor in God’s saving actions. Eucharistic Prayer B in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer is an excellent example, incorporating much ancient material.

4) The words of Jesus at the Last Supper pose innumerable question since Mark, Matthew and Luke have significant differences between one another, and Paul, certainly our earliest witness, is different again. However the overall meaning is the same: Jesus is instituting a new Passover, for a new, universal people of God - the faithful followers of the Messiah, united as one with him, sharing in the obedience to the Rule of God. This involves sacrifice and that is what lies behind the strong symbolism of the sacrificial lamb; in this context, God also provides a New Covenant for the New Israel.

Remembrance of Me

It was in this common meal that the early disciples experienced the presence of the risen Lord. The excruciating conflicts about how Jesus is present were far in the future, and, perhaps, if the vital faith of the early years had not faded and been overlain with philosophical musings, need never have occurred.
The most striking element in the words of Jesus is the command to “remember”, for it encapsulates how the community understood what was happening. In Paul’ account, after both the blessing of the bread and the blessing of the wine, we hear, “do this for my remembrance”. In the English this sounds straightforward: we are to recall the events of the last Supper. This, however, is to ignore the evidence of the OT use of the idea where it is God who is asked to remember. Jeremias writes, “God’s remembrance, however, has always a quite definite meaning in Holy Scripture: it never means a mere recollection on the part of God; but when God remembers somebody, He acts, He does something, He sits in judgment, and grants his grace, He fulfills His promise”. (Eucharistic Words of Jesus p. 162).
Thus at each celebration we not only remember that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself”, but we also call on god to fulfill his promises, and to be present with the Messiah and the gathered people who are his body.

One of the earliest Liturgies we know has this in its Eucharistic Prayer:

“Remember, Lord your church to rescue it from all evil, and perfect it in your love, and gather it from the four winds; make it holy to be part of your Kingdom (Rule) which you have made ready for it”. (Didaché 10.5, my translation).

A Christmastide Sermon - 2009

The Cost of Christmas

During the last few weeks, I have noticed a distinct trend in the Advertisements that urge us to buy and buy again. Of course, the circumstances of this particular “shopping season”, otherwise known as Advent, create immense difficulties for the advertising industry. Even the most ingenious and bare-faced practitioners of the art of persuading us that what we would like is in fact a need which we fail to meet at our peril, even they have had a hard sell. One Mega store has adopted the slogan “Christmas Costs Less at (let us call it) Xmart”; after muting the rest of the spiel, for the second or third time, and as I sat waiting for the program to resume, I began to muse: “What, in fact, is the cost of Christmas? Is it calculated as, presumably, the GNP is worked out by examining a sheaf of statistics? What statistics? Then I asked myself, “What did the first Christmas cost?”

Costs: Immediate and Hidden

Certainly, the accounts suggest crowds with, one assumes, not a spare seat in any donkey cart, but our records do not say anything about last minute shopping, though there is a note of urgency since “Mary’s time had come” and a place was needed for the birthing. Knowing businessmen everywhere, the shed was probably not gratis, but the cost must have been very small. So, from a purely commercial point of view that first Christmas was even cheaper than shopping at Xmart. “But”, I mused on, “what about the hidden costs, those pages of small print?” Cost cannot be reckoned merely in dollars and cents, though we consistently seem to think so.

As is so often the case, the true cost of something is not always immediately obvious; this is surely true of some of the more stupid things we do, but it is also true of our generous actions. In these cases, we usually know the immediate cost, and if we are realistic, accept the fact that unexpected costs may lie ahead. But we have taken all that into account and will stand by our decision to offer help.

I think that something like this is the true cost of Christmas. Luke records the visit of Mary and Joseph to the Temple for the ritual purification required after childbirth, and adds the prophecy of Simeon. “This child is destined…to be a sign that will be opposed…and a sword will pierce your very being”. (Lk, 2.35): a chilling intimation of costs to come. We know that Jesus was destined not only to be spoken against, but to be viciously attacked.

Jesus the Realist & Human Fantasies

If we are realistic about helping someone, we are prepared for unexpected costs, and there is no doubt that Jesus was totally realistic about the consequences of his mission. Dozens of his recorded sayings show that he knew he was in danger. Some Pharisees, says Luke, came to him and said, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you”, and Jesus replies that he must continue with his mission of proclaiming the Rule of God, because it “is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside Jerusalem”. (Lk. 13.32).

Perhaps the most costly thing of all is to refuse to face reality: to live in a world of fantasy. Of course, when we do that it is often others who have to bear the greater cost. The examples of the human tendency to prefer fantasy to reality are unlimited. To begin with a biblical example, we may note the Genesis story of the building of the tower of Babel. This is the climax of the early Myths recorded in chapters one to eleven in Genesis. They begin with the fantasy that we do not have to follow God’s plan for us because we are so clever, and end with the futile attempt to place ourselves as the divine at the top of a Ziggurat, the dwelling place of the gods.

In our own day it must be obvious to any thinking person that the advertising industry encloses us in a cocoon of fantasy: every family is perfect and each member has gleaming white teeth; diamonds are for ever and will ensure eternal love; a cruise in a totally artificial environment (ski slope; mini tropical forest) will…goodness only knows what it will do. Perhaps one of the potentially most costly (indeed bankrupting) fantasies is that there is no danger from a rapidly melting ice pack. The terrible cost will face our grandchildren as coast line shrinks, unless we can all come to grips with the reality of the situation very quickly.

Transformation of God

In a sermon preached long before he was ArchBp of Canterbury, Rowan Williams says that human love at its best, giving up personal interest and risking safety on various levels to help a fellow human being ‘provides a hint’ of what happened at Bethlehem. “A human being comes into existence who so transforms what we mean by “God” that we can boldly and almost playfully say that God has moved, or changed places”. (A Ray of Darkness (1993) p. 18). Yet, our power to turn the reality of God’s love into fantasy is very clear in so much associated with Christmas. As Rowan Williams says in another Christmas sermon, “The tightly swaddled baby is a gift-wrapped object…a lucky mascot”. (op. cit. p. 27). That human being who was to pay such a cost for us, has been made into a marketing symbol. Could anything be further from reality than the carol verse: “The cattle are lowing…But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes”. Rowan comments that there can be no parent who is not incredulous at such a report. 'Lowing' is an understatement; the cattle were doubtless creating a racket; angels were shouting a chorus and people were tramping in and out. Any real baby (not the fantasy one of carols and Hallmark) would be giving full voice with a scarlet face and clenched fist.

The Gift & Cost of Christmas

And the whole point is that Jesus was real; a real baby, a real adolescent and a real man, perhaps the most real human being ever. In his humanity he showed us what the love of God means and challenged us to leave our fantasy world behind and live in the reality of the Rule of God. It was this commitment to reality that brought him into conflict with the authorities and led, ultimately, to his execution, the hidden cost of his birth in Bethlehem.

It might seem that this is a far too gloomy reflection for Christmastide, but it need not be. Could anything be a greater gift than to be enabled to receive the outpoured love of God, which Jesus so unstintingly mediates to us? Who would not seize the opportunity to escape from an unreal world into the reality of God’s kingdom? To be able to answer Jesus’ question, “Do you still not see” by a resounding “Yes”.
St. Augustine said that God will ultimately penetrate our deafness. I suggest that it will be by the continual and loud crying of the Baby in the Crib, followed by the resounding Prophetic proclamation of a God who loved so much that Paul could say, “The foolishness of God is greater than human wisdom”. (I Cor. 1.25).

Reflections for Advent

The Incarnation

The word Incarnation occurs quite frequently at this time of year; a notable example is one of the most popular of all Christmas carols: “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”. One wonders, as this song pours our from every broadcasting system in every Mall in the land, what the vast majority of listeners make of verse 2:

“Late in time behold him come, offspring of the Virgin’s womb.
Veiled in flesh the God-head see; hail the incarnate Deity”?

Even log-time members of one of the established Christian churches (of course, I do not refer to Episcopalians) have a hard time in explaining the theological implications of the word Incarnation. I am reminded of a ten-year old Sunday School student who, on being quizzed by his parents about that morning’s lesson (it was close to Christmas), said it was all about canned milk.

A Definition?

The Incarnation (from the Latin in which not surprisingly means ‘in’ and carnis, flesh), very baldly stated is the name given to the belief that in some mysterious way, the divine, or perhaps, The Divinity lived in, was joined to, was one with the human life of a man born in Galilee around 4 BCE and brought up in a pious Jewish household. You might gather from the fuzziness of this definition – either divine or The Divinity, and three attempts at describing the kind of relationship between God and Jesus – that whenever a try to say something about the incarnation, I am aware that a quagmire looms ahead. It may well be the case that one can hardly put together more than a sentence or two on the doctrines of the Incarnation or the Trinity without be accused as an heretic.

Carols & Metaphors

Consider the carol just quoted: “veiled in flesh the God-Head see”, and then consider verses from other carols: “God from God – Light from Light eternal, Lo, he abhors not the Virgin’s womb” ( from O Come All Ye Faithful); or “How silently the wondrous gift is given! So god imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven” (O Little Town), and, finally, out of dozens of actual or implied views that might be quoted, “Behold the world’s creator wears the form and fashion of a slave” (From East to West).
There is a considerable variation in the metaphors used to describe the relationship that faith sees between God and the birth of Jesus. A ‘veil’ suggests someone (God?) walking around looking human, but, perhaps, not fully so.
O Come All Ye Faithful is a great deal more robust: it suggest that the divine presence – “Light from Light Eternal” itself spent nine months in Mary’s womb. Here we have a clear Trinitarian theology with Light Eternal being God the Father and the Light emanating thence being the Son, whom the 4th Gospel prologue calls the Word; moreover, says John, the Word is “the true light than enlightens everyone”, who came into the world: “The Word was made flesh and lived among us”. (John 1. 9 & 14).

At the other end of the spectrum is Little Town of Bethlehem. Here, the birth is an undefined ‘wondrous gift’ and its purpose is to give to all humanity the ‘blessings of [his] heaven’. This is, what one might call a very soft version of the doctrine of the Incarnation, and, perhaps, that explains the popularity of this beloved carol.

Early Faith to Developed Dogma

It seems quite clear from the early documents of the group that came to be called Christians that from the very first they believed that Jesus was inseparably close to God, and that God worked though him to break down the barriers they experienced in coming to God and embracing others They also embraced Jesus’ teaching about the Rule – Kingdom - of God. The Prophets had looked for One, who would come to inaugurate the Last Days, and Jesus was seen as fulfilling that promise; the parables of Jesus speak of the Rule of God already operating, but also point to a future fulfillment.

This is the beginning of a development that produced a specific “doctrine” of the incarnation, but it was not until Christianity became a lawful religion after the baptism of the Emperor Constantine in 356 C.E., that Christmas became a central festival, and the season we call Advent began its rather long liturgical development.
Before Christmas became the central winter festival, (mainly, as the church spread into northern pagan areas, to replace the rituals of the winter solstice, lighted fir trees and that kind of thing), Epiphany had been central; it was one of the times for Baptism and was preceded by some weeks of preparation for the candidates. It was this period of preparation that gave Advent its quasi-penitential element when it became the preparation for Christmas, the Feast of the Incarnation. So it is that Advent has notes of joy in anticipation of Christmas, but also an undertone of penitence for the human failure that lies behind so much suffering and pain in the world.
A final ingredient was added to the Advent Liturgy somewhere around the ninth century: it was an emphasis on the Second Advent, the second coming of Christ at the end of the ages. The vibrant faith of the earliest believers that Jesus would return within their lifetime, had long centuries ago died, but as the fact that the end of the millennium was approaching sank in, there was a surge of interest in “the Last Things”. It seemed appropriate to put together the joy of the first Advent with the coming judgment of the Second, and a look at the readings for the season will quickly illustrate the point.

Systematic Theology

It remains true, however, that the reality encapsulated in the theology of the incarnation is central. Having said that this doctrine is central is not to say that it is paramount. Some theologians say so, for example, Samuel Wells in a recent guide to Christian doctrine writes, “The doctrine of the incarnation is the central doctrine of Christian theology, from which all other doctrines flow”. (Christianity – The Complete Guide, (CCG) Ed. John Bowden p. 617; my italics).
A good deal depends on how one approaches doctrine in general. Wells approach might be called a “systematic theology”; such an approach is concerned to produce an overall, neat pattern, which gives a somewhat theoretical picture. This systematizing tends to depend more on philosophical principles than on history. Early signs of this mode are seen in the fourth century where, in the Nicene Creed of 325, the Bishops resorted to a Greek philosophical, term, homoousios, in an attempt to nail down, categorize, the exact nature of the relationship between God and Jesus.
The apogee is seen in the Scholastic theologians of the 13th &14th centuries when it was argued whether the Incarnation would have taken place anyway, even without the fall of Adam. St. Thomas Aquinas thought not, and thus named the first transgression a felix culpa – a happy sin.

Pragmatic Approach

A more pragmatic approach is to begin with the foundation documents of the church, and, using the tools of historical criticism, to trace how the developed teaching about God, Jesus, humanity and the complex relationships between them developed. Since the Enlightenment, this has increasingly been the approach of those scholars who have not remained firmly in a conservative position, as in Calvinism and the Roman Catholic church.
It will, I am sure, come as no surprise to anyone who has read articles on Simonsurmises that this is the approach with which I feel most comfortable. So, I will begin with the biblical picture. It is often assumed that the doctrine of the incarnation is based, above all, on the stories of Jesus’ birth. It needs to be stressed, however, that of the four canonical gospels, two do not have an account of Jesus’ birth. Mark, our earliest witness, begins with Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist, and the 4th Gospel has an introduction strongly influenced by Hellenistic philosophy. That Prologue, as indeed the whole of the Fourth Gospel, was to be an immense influence in the development of Christian Doctrine; it is here, probably only here, in the New Testament, that there is an unambiguous statement of the pre-existence of Christ, expressed in the theology of the Logos.

The Central focus

On the other hand, all four gospels spend a disproportionate amount of time on the story of the Passion, and it is abundantly clear from the rest of N.T. that the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus were both the focus of individual faith, and the spearhead of the earliest preaching. It is also noteworthy that in the development of Christian worship, Holy Week and Easter were the first to have specific liturgies attached to them, almost four centuries before the celebration of Christmas became normative. The conclusion is clear: the central doctrine of Christianity is connected with the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Background to Ministry of Jesus

So, paradoxical as it may seem, I think we need to start with the ministry of Jesus, and particularly with its climax in Holy Week and Easter. It is immediately clear, of course, that if we are to make any sense of the accounts of Jesus’ life and death, we have to go back much further into the seedbed of Judaism. The O.T. gives us a dramatic presentation of the faith of the Hebrew people, the first (at least, in the Western world) to embrace a belief in One God. A battle between the gods is a recurring theme in the middle-eastern myths appearing, in stories where the chaos monster is overcome and stability and order in nature are established.
Traces of these stories are embedded in the O.T. We find many references to a primeval chaos monster, slain by Yahweh. It is important to note that the Hebrew writers completely eliminated the idea of multiple gods fighting for supremacy; everything is achieved now by the One God, Lord of all creation and of all Nations. Sea monsters called Rahab and Leviathan are said to be slain by Yahweh. (Job 9.13; Pss. 74.13-14. 89.10; Isa 27.1; 51.9).

Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of Yahweh!
…Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon?
Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep[?] (Isa. 51.9-10)

God’s creative activity consists in the overcoming of darkness and chaos and the establishing of light; essentially this battle sums up the message of the Prophets, which is foundational to the ministry of Jesus, and is central, also, in the rest of the N.T. The second story of creation in Genesis, the much older one tells of the beginning of the estrangement between the human race and God; in a sense, as John says centuries later, human beings loved darkness rather than light. By their hubris, the idée fixe that they we self-sufficient and smarter than God, they joined the forces of darkness and chaos.
The repeated offers of a Reconciling Covenant with Yahweh are met with repeated acts of disobedience and hubris. The Prophets see this disobedience not as ritual failures, but as a moral issue – the break down of justice, the exercise of unrestrained power and the blatant exploitation of the poor. Yet they consistently hold out hope that God will send a righteous leader.

The Early N.T. Traditions

All this (and so very much more) lies behind the writers of the N.T. as they record for us the early traditions about Jesus of Nazareth and, in the Letters, give us their first attempts to understand what it is that God is working out among them. There seems little doubt that Jesus collected a group of enthusiastic and committed followers, who listened to his teaching, and accompanied him as he journeyed round Galilee; above all, they spent that last period of his life with him in Jerusalem. Whether at the very early stage they called him Messiah, Christos, we cannot be sure, but it was a title that they applied very soon after his death, firmly believing that he power of God had been given him back to them in what thy called the Resurrection. The early speeches of the Apostles recorded in The Acts of the Apostles suggest that they were the ones who took out the message, what the, called the Euangelion, – the Good News.
We also learn from the same source that the simple declaration of faith required at Baptism was, “I believe that Jesus is Messiah (Christos)”: a Creed that would have seemed hopelessly inadequate to the Bishops who framed what we call the Nicene Creed in 325. [More precisely, the Creed we use liturgically is the Constantinopolitan of 381].

What did the Apostles Think?

It seems unlikely in the extreme that the Galilean fishermen, based firmly in Judaism thought that they were following a man who was also fully God (as the later creeds put it) as they went from village to village; it would be repugnant to their faith in the One God. But it also seems clear that by the end of his ministry and especially in his martyr’s death they came to the conclusion that he was unique among human beings; that God worked through him; that his teaching about the coming rule of God was an authentic divine message.
Perhaps most central of all, they experienced peace and reconciliation. This is portrayed again and again in the accounts of the miracles. A person tortured by madness (in 1st. century terms, possessed by a demon), is seen to be healed. The word in Greek is sõzõ, which also means to save. A saying recorded by Luke sums up so much of what they thought about Jesus. Luke uses St. Mark’s account of the Pharisees’ accusing him of casting out demons by black magic. As in Mark, Luke reports Jesus saying that if Satan is casting out Satan, then that is good news. But significantly, then adds, “If I by the finger of God cast out the demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you”. (Lk. 11.20). Jesus is understood to be a mediator of the love of God, making people whole, and overcoming the powers of darkness.
Even before the earliest Evangelist, St. Mark, Paul had written to the Christians in Corinth, somewhere between 52 and 54 C.E., that is, only two decades after the crucifixion:
“We are convinced that one has died for all…(17) So if anyone is in Christ there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through the Messiah and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is in the Messiah God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us”. (II Cor. 5.14ff).

Here we have the germ of what was to be one of the fundamental doctrines of the church, the Atonement, but we also have the clearest statement of who the first generation Christians thought about the Relation of Jesus to God, and our relation to Jesus, and, thus to one another and to God.

Paul to Chalcedon

It is a long way from this to the “official” view of the Incarnation that was sealed in the 4th and 5th centuries, particularly in the Creed of Constantinople and in the statement issued at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 C.E., known as the Chalcedonian Definition. How the Church got from St. Paul to Chalcedian is a long and fascinating story, which must wait for another time. However, the position of Chalcedon on the relationship between God and Jesus remained set in stone until the 18th century when critical study of the biblical texts began, and the dogmatic authority of the Roman church began to be challenged even more strongly than it had been at the Reformation.

Two Contemporary Views

I end by juxtaposing two contemporary views. One from Samuel Wells, who defends the immutability of the views set out in the Chalcedonian Definition and the other from John Robinson’s book, The Human Face of God. John was a C. of E. bishop and caused an almighty uproar when he published his first book, Honest to God.
First, Samuel Wells:

The doctrine of the Incarnation is that at a certain time, God the second person of the Trinity … took flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and growing from infancy to adulthood, walked on earth in human form. [Yet throughout his life] Jesus never ceased to be divine, the second person of the Trinity; nor did he did he [ever] cease to be human…nor to be one person… a person with divine and human nature; and [never did] the Creator and creature cease to be distinct orders of being. (CCG p.612)

Wells goes on to say that this doctrine is “not easy to grasp in today’s world”. Some of the critics of the Definition would go much further than that and say that the doctrine, in its traditional form, is incoherent, but that what it stands for is important for Christian faith.

So, John Robinson writes:

I believe that the word [incarnation] can just as truly and just as biblically (in fact, more truly and more biblically) be applied to another way of understanding it. This is: that one who was totally and utterly a man – and had never been anything other than a man or more than a man – so completely embodied what was from the beginning the meaning and purpose of God’s self-expression (whether conceived in terms of his Spirit, his Wisdom, his Word, or the intimately personal relation of Son-ship) that it could be said and had to be said of that man, ‘He was God’s man’ or ‘God was in Christ’ or even that he was God for us”. (Human Face (1973) p.179.