+Z’ev

Today’s assigned readings:

Deuteronomy 29:16-29, Revelation 12:1-12, Matthew 15:29-39

A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth.
Revelation 12:1-2

Several ancient writers, among them Bede the Venerable, see this woman as the Church. Bede says of this sign, “It is the same sign which now also appears in the Church, that God is born of man.”

Other writers - more recent, especially Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox - see this lady as the Blessed Virgin. Hymns and devotional literature envision the Queen of Heaven as enthroned in heaven this way. (Although, point of fact, certain RC traditions says the virgin did not experience the pain of childbirth as this woman clearly does.)

Modern readers of this text, such as Hal Lindsey, for their own political reasons (and because they don’t like the sacramental image of the Church or “Catholic” images of the BVM read here) see this woman as an image of Israel, through troubles and pain, birthing Messiah to the world. They note that according to Jewish tradition Michael is the Archangel that defends Israel.

At least as I see it, these three possible readings need not be exclusive. The Church is called the new or the spiritual Israel. The Virgin is often seen as an image, an icon of the Church. As she gives birth to Christ to the world so the Church gives birth to Christ daily.

In a lot of ways from get up to lay down, my quest has been to find this Woman Clothed with the Sun. Every time I’ve think I’ve found her she slips away. The problem is not that she is so elusive: I’ve been looking in the wrong places.

Define “The True Church”.

Well, in the most direct definition, we look for the Church that Jesus “really” founded. We look for the one “descended” from the Apostles, and “passing on” their teaching. We look for the Church not occluded with “the traditions of men” (without realising that even that phrase is a “tradition of man” - in this case, Paul). We look for the Church that is filled with the Holy Spirit. And, even if we don’t say it, we go looking for the one that is these things (and more) perhaps exclusively, or at least, to the exclusion of most of the rest. My housemate can tell a story of his journey from Methodism to Anglicanism to Catholicism to Orthodoxy. My History of Religions professor at NYU, Lady Anne Freemantle, used to say she left the C of E and became Roman Catholic because of Historical Snobbery. My own journey is a little more chaotic than that - I can’t say as I was looking for much of anything other than a safe harbour, albeit only one from which it was safe to fire shots in my own petty cultural wars. But I was still questing.

It’s easy to confuse the Church or Israel with an institution. I’ve been reading a lot of blog posts recently where the Woman Clothed with the Sun is confused with something that exists externally, be that the institution of the Orthodox Church or the institution of the Roman Church. There are parallels in Judaism and in Islam where the faith is confused with political support for Israel or political activism on the extreme side. Christian confusion of the Church and State (as in Byzantium and Rome and England and the US) allows us to “forget” that until recently support for the institution of Church was exactly support for state. Even today it is common to see secular flags in Christian sanctuaries and to confuse “love of God” with a state, an institution. In Orthodoxy it’s very easy to see a confusion of Salvation History with the Greek struggle for independence from Turkey or the struggle against Russian Communism. Our tendency to “Christian Institutionalism”, to see the Church as an institution, is another form of statism; is just the same problem as Jewish or Islamic statism.

I found an unexpected parallel this morning as I woke up, reading my RSS feeds. Over on a blog called “Orthodox Anarchist”, the writer, Mobius, has been sharing his own struggles. Seeking a more devout Jewish life he moved to Israel. Recently, as I read it, he’s realised that, in fact, it was life in Israel that was causing him problems.

I looked at Tirzah and said, “You see how I am right now? All amped up like this? This was me in Israel 24/7. Panic attacks. Sleepless nights. Endless arguments. This is why I needed to leave. I was in a constant state like this. It had to stop. I was going to snap.”

“Thank G-d you got out of there. It was the right thing for you to do.”

“I woke up on my parents couch in New Jersey after my first night back and felt the greatest sigh of relief. I said, ‘Thank G-d! I’m in New Jersey!’ Who the hell talks that way about New Jersey?!”

Who would talk about New Jersey that way, after living in the Holy Land!?!?

It’s fun to project oneself out of time into another world where “Being Christian was easier”, ie, the life of a Russian Peasant or Byzantine Monk. But I’m a 21st Century American Gay Man. I can find wisdom in their paths (as I can in the blog of a Jewish man from New Jersey) but I can’t live their lives. And so, in my own quest to find the Woman Clothed with the Sun, I’ve stumbled into my own New Jersey. Having been out there looking for the “real” church, the “holy” church, the unadulterated “pure” church… The thing is, having been all over I can’t see any difference in all the institutions: they are filled with the same people. We’re all on the same quest, know it or not. I’ve kinda come to that moment in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy says, “If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with!” We’re put where we are in order to live out Christ here.

Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat; and I do not want to send them away hungry, for they might faint on the way.”
Matthew 15:32

This is what I know: somehow, after his resurrection (”three days”) Jesus feeds us. Not through his own hands but through the hands of our fellow travellers. In fact, those hands are the hands of Jesus. And then he sends us crowds away, out into the world. This verse from the Gospel is the same image as the one from Revelation: a Eucharistic image. As the woman (Mary/Church/Israel) gives birth to the child (Jesus) - in the Incarnation, in the Eucharist, in the fullness of time - so also Jesus, in feeding us, gives us spiritual birth. And where I was fed, finally, I found the Woman Clothed with the Sun: I realised she was me, each of us called to be the lover of God, called to birth Christ in our lives to the world, called to be the Apostles feeding the multitudes with Jesus, himself.

We’re put where we are in order to live out Christ here, to be the hands of the apostles sharing the Miraculous Bread with the multitudes; to be the woman that births forth to the world “a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations”. it’s not at all easy - the Dragon and all fighting against us. We are meant to be in not in “the Holy Land” (of an Institutional Fortress) but rather in “the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, so that there she can be nourished.”

It’s not that there is, out there, a “True Church” that we have to find and join: we have to be the True Church in here, in the heart. To project that woman on an institution absolves me of my duties. It makes my faith much easier if I need only to let “The Church” Institution do her job. But, as in the reading from Deuteronomy, it’s not an institutional duty to keep the covenant, but rather a personal one. We are each responsible for it, for “the revealed things belong to us and to our children forever”. I can’t afford to confuse my membership in an Institution with my quest to be the Bride that births Christ to the world.

It’s Sunday: go to Church!