+Z’ev

Today’s assigned readings:
AM: 1 Kings 3:5-14, James 4:13-17,5:7-11, John 5:1-15
PM (Eve of Holy Name): Isaiah 65:15b-25, Revelation 21:1-6

Jesus is painted in the Gospel of John, as God: but that God is more Jewish, I think, than many of us see. John’s community (in Ephesus) was still observing the Passover in the 2nd Century. The Gospel is littered with images of Judaism-as-Metaphor for Jesus and the Messiah’s kingdom. Jewish festivals show up with new meanings woven in or laid over. Jewish customs are commented on not to discard them, but to weave in new meanings.

This reading begins “After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.” What feast?

To answer that we have to wonder how chronological John’s gospel is. Jesus goes “up to Jerusalem”. There are only three “Pilgrimage Festivals” in Judaism: Passover, Pentecost and the Feast of Booths. Passover is noted as “being near” in the next chapter (6:4). The Feast of Booths is in the Fall but we are told in chapter 4 that “the fields are ripe for harvesting.” The feast of Pentecost is a harvest festival. But it comes after Passover. Is John so Chronological that there is a years time between Chapter 5 and Chapter 6?

Many commentators decide that this “Feast of the Jews” is all the same Passover as in 6:4. But that makes no sense because Jesus leaves Jerusalem for that… And the Feast of Booths (Autumn) shows up in Chapter 7.

So one possible reading is that Chapter 7 has a Booth (Sukkoth), Chapter 6 has a Passover (Pesach) and Chapter 5 has a Pentecost (Shavuot).

There’s two reasons why this possible reading is important:

1) Shavuot (שבועות) is the feast of “First Fruits”. The Harvest begins and offerings are brought to the temple.
2) Shavuot falls on the 6th day of the month of Sivan. According to Jewish Oral Tradition, the first of Sivan is the day that waters of Noah’s flood begin to recede. And 1 Sivan is also the day that the Tradition teaches that the Jews began their encampment at Sinai - in preparation for the reception of the Torah.

All of these images tie together, I think, in the Greek words used to describe this healing of the man at the pool: this is the only healing in the Gospel of John that is described with the words hugies gegonas υγιης γεγονας “become (or made) whole”. This is different from the normal word of a healing, “Sozo” which can also be a word meaning “Saved” as well as “Healed”. This one means, literally, “Made Whole” or “Made Sound”. (I think the word is “hoo-gi-ace” but saying “Hugies” make me giggle.)

The “flood waters” recede - The healing pool retreats into the background - and the earth is restored (made whole/made sound) - the man-of-earth (In Hebrew, one word for man is “Adam” from earth) is restored to his proper function.

It’s interesting to see this reading show up on the eve of the secular new year. In the modern world we’re used to living outside of cycles. Most of our culture sees things as moving forward on a chronological line rather than moving around an annual cycle. Judaism is not moving in a straight line: the annual festivals cycle on an entirely agricultural basis. Christianity does this as well in the liturgical cycle, but much (all?) of our secular world is built by mostly non-liturgical Protestants. The story arc for Protestantism is Salvation-to-Apocalypse. For Catholics (and catholics) and Jews, the pattern is Day-to-Day, leading forward to eternity. “L’olam v’ed” is the Hebrew, “Unto ages of ages” is the Eastern Orthodox form, “et in secula seculorum” is the Latin, and “world without end” is Anglican. The seasonal festivals lead forward.

Most of us expect to see New Year as a New Thing.

But no: it’s really the same old thing come back to us. We stress over it. We make resolutions. We get all hyped up. We get drunk. We wake up tomorrow and nothing has changed. We even spend several days crossing off the wrong year on our checks - all over again. (For some odd reason, unless I think very specifically I usually start writing 1979 in this period of the year.)

The year cycles. It doesn’t move forward. This is not the time of year that I normally feel the pressure of the story arc. That hits me at my birthday. But I know a lot of people who draw near to the end of the year with the same sort of dread that I experience in August. We find ourselves behind, indebted, stranded in the same old crap all over again. “The holidays” end and normal, secular time returns. Kids go back to school. Work comes back to normal. It’s dark at 5PM when we leave work. It’s dark at 7AM when we leave home. Pretty much everything sucks by 2 January.

When looked at in our secular context, the reading invites us to bring our first fruits of harvest and to have them “Made Whole” again. And, indeed, if we are honest, they are broken. The harvest is not 100%. It’s not exactly what we wanted. It’s a little surprising in some ways. Feh.

Offer it to God anyway. It will be made whole.

Much love,

Huw

Today’s assigned readings:
1 Samuel 1:1-2,7b-28, Colossians 1:9-20, Luke 2:22-40

He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him.
Colossians 1:13-16

Peter asked me a question on an earlier post over on my other blog.

A question I’ve been harbouring for some time now is, what do you think of Y’shua? Did he exist? What role does he play in your mind, heart, understanding now?

It was the perfect question for me to get in the morning with my coffee. It prompted a heartfelt reply from me, then a further conversation with Peter, via iChat. It also happens to wonder around this claim of Paul’s that Jesus “is the image of the invisible God.”

I’ve edited it all together into the following (which was also posted over there on Sarx):

Yeshua: Rabbi? Yes, who fully participated in the Rabbinic debates of his time. Messiah? I’m confused as I look more into what Jews thought of the text they had. God-in-the-the-flesh? Well now…

So much of the theology I understand, so much of the theology by which I see God, experience the word, deal with my neighbour, understand forgiveness, healing/salvation/wholeness (tikkun olam) is exactly incarnational. I can’t make the leap. If Jesus isn’t God in the Flesh, not only does Christianity not make sense, but so also does nothing else.

I tried to hint at this struggle with the bald theological line “I wonder how a totally transcendent deity can be involved at all.” In fact, this a problem I have w/ Eastern Orthodox theology as well: at times it got so focused on Christ-God that it seemed like Jesus-the-Guy who went through a voice-change and puberty and acne and probably tried to figure out why he suddenly had back hair… This guy gets lost in all the Gold Icons and hymnography.

Right now, I need this guy to help me make sense out of God. For his ability to help me through that, I love him deeply. I can’t imagine life without him. Indeed, I can’t imagine God without him.

Ironically: the God that hairy-backed Rabbi helps me most understand is the God I find in Judaism. Hence my confusion.

The reverse is also true. For Jewish theology, the mitzvah is a sacrament: a connexion not a law, per se. Ignore Paul, and just think high-church sacraments for the time. In the absence of an incarnational God, the question for me is “What is the sacrament connecting with?” When I think of Eucharist I can point to that one rabbi. Connexion.

Put when I drape myself in the sacrament of the Prayer Shawl, what’s the connexion?

Strangely enough, when I try to think in Jewish terms (And I know I’m bad at that) the God that is there, at the other end of the line, isn’t very personal. Or even a person. To my internal radar, it feels (subjective, I understand)… it feels very abstract, impersonal. It’s more like YHVH is an Active Force: so much Not-Like-Human as to be “Thing” in my own vocabulary. It feels very much like the “Eternal Radiant ISness” at the centre of so much Neo-Pagan and New Age theology. It is (as noted in the earlier post) very Reconstructionist: God as “the sum of natural powers or processes that allows mankind to gain self-fulfillment and moral improvement”.

The God I meet in Jesus-the-Rabbi is more like the earthy, Semitic deity I’d expect in Judaism. This God is *not* the God I ran into in Eastern Orthodoxy. That deity was so far above all humanity that proper theology had to make some near-gnostic statements about Jesus’s death. “Well, the Body died… but God the Son didn’t. He was still on the Throne with God the Father… where he always was and always will be…” Argh. No…

God died.
Felt Pain.
Went through puberty. Wet Dreams. Burped. Passed Gas after too much hummus.
Or this isn’t working.

And that Dead, Farting God introduced me to the warm, loving, Semitic deity I expected. Yet Judaism has the warm, homey rituals I’d expect that same deity to have instituted. Hellenic Christianity does not - although it picked up some from various cultures that it has passed through. These rites are simply folk-ways; the Official Rite is all Cold. In Judaism the folk-ways ARE the religion. The rites are incarnational in one, the deity is in the other.

Much love,

Huw

1st Sunday after Christmas:
1 Samuel 1:1-2,7b-28, Colossians 1:9-20, Luke 2:22-40

Monday:
AM 1 Kings 3:5-14, James 4:13-17,5:7-11, John 5:1-15
PM Eve of Holy Name:
Isaiah 65:15b-25, Revelation 21:1-6

Feast of the Holy Name:
Isaiah 62:1-5,10-12, Revelation 19:11-16, Matthew 1:18-25

Wednesday:
1 Kings 19:1-8, Ephesians 4:1-16, John 6:1-14

Thursday:
1 Kings 19:9-18, Ephesians 4:17-32, John 6:15-27

Friday:
Joshua 3:14-4:7, Ephesians 5:1-20, John 9:1-12,35-38

Saturday:
AM Jonah 2:2-9, Ephesians 6:10-20, John 11:17-27,38-44
PM Eve of Epiphany:
Isaiah 66: 18-23, Romans 15:7-13

Today’s assigned readings:
AM: Isaiah 49:13-23, Matthew 18:1-14
PM: Isaiah 54:1-13, Mark 10:13-16

Enlarge the site of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the right and to the left, and your descendants will possess the nations and will settle the desolate towns. Do not fear, for you will not be ashamed; do not be discouraged, for you will not suffer disgrace; for you will forget the shame of your youth, and the disgrace of your widowhood you will remember no more. For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name; the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called.
Isaiah 54:2-5

The Feast of the Holy Innocents is one of those odd events that has no basis in history, only in Myth. There is no evidence outside of Matthew for any of the incidents in the Infancy Narratives. It might, at least, have been nice if one or two other Gospels had some of this info. This even is not important to our salvation: none of the little babies die “for us sinners and for our salvation”.

But if you’d like to see the extent to which some will go to insist on the historical veracity of these events, click here. Ultimately the pro argument runs “you can’t prove that it didn’t happen, so, Nyah!”

What strikes me is how Matthew sets Jesus up as Moses. First there is a Joseph the Dreamer. Then there is the slaughter of all the kids. Then there is the Exodus from Egypt into the promised land. Then Jesus goes up a mountain and Delivers the the Law - the chapters of Matthew that contain the Sermon on the Mount are really the delivery of the New Torah. The slaughter of the Holy Innocents is, textually, a parallel to the same even in Egypt. (Coincidentally, that passage is being read in Synagogues this week.)

This story needn’t be historical to be important. Even if it *is* historical, it is also mythological. It’s part of our icon of God as presented in the text, it’s grafted in here. What are we to make of a God who lets such actions happen - killing of innocent people so that his chosen may live? Or, rather than pin it on God, what does the need to tell such stories say about us?

Much love,

Huw

Today’s assigned readings:
AM: Proverbs 8:22-30, John 13:20-35
PM: Isaiah 44:1-8, 1 John 5:1-12

One of his disciples—the one whom Jesus loved—was reclining next to him
John 13:23

John lives to a ripe old age and dies. Tradition says he was the last of the apostles to die and that, for a time, Jesus’ mother, Mary, lived with him. Other stories are told of John, in ancient history as well as today. Most of these have basis only in hearsay and so may be believed or not as the case may be.

John has always been my favourite of the Apostles because he is the Disciple whom Jesus Loved. I read in that none of the sexual implications that some modern folks want to see. But I do read into it what may be called Homoeroticism - allowing for that to be culturally acceptable in Roman Judea and Galilee, but not here and now.

To me this is the key to the entire Gospel.

Jesus and John, Peter and James, brothers and more than that - friends.

Friendship was always very important to me. But when I reached college and joined a fraternity, I discovered friendship as physical. And, again, remove the sex part from the picture. The joy of friendships between men who felt no fear about touching each other: reclining on the couch watching TV, walking down the street arms locked, shoved into benches in bars, drinking out of common cups. This level of intimacy was always alien to me growing up for two reasons: because I was attracted to men, such intimacy was far to great a temptation; and because, where I lived, men shook hands from a great distance. No one was physically intimate - no matter how emotionally bound they were. (Of my closest friends throughout high school, I can’t recall hugging one of them until a death struck our circle in my senior year.)

And so John leaning on Jesus seemed then - and now - a highly charged image, one filled with some emotion I could understand only in the abstract.

There are places (California comes to mind) where such intimacy is common. I don’t think hand shakes ever happen at my former Parish in San Francisco. Or only among newcomers. New York City is not such a place - even my Fraternity bothers had to admit that they were non-typical (we often scared other Fraternities). What I have noticed is that the younger one is now, the more likely it is that such intimacy is common. My Beloved tells me that he and his family and friends (gay and straight) often hug and touch.

Me? I crave such touch and can’t get enough of it when I’m with them all. This is a shortcoming in my own youth - in the culture in which I was raised, perhaps, or as a result of something in my family or myself, but a shortcoming nonetheless. I work always to overcome it - although during my five years in Orthodoxy I think I hugged about 8 people. Again, a sign of my own shortcomings. But it does feel good now, on a Sunday at the peace, to be drawn into huge hugs by the Rector’s wife or the Rector. Hugs are so very important.

Why to I say this is the essence of the Gospel?

Because the divine love that flows out of God to each of us craves union, unity. Peter, in this passage, “The Pope”, can’t even understand what Jesus is talking about and so has to ask John, the man with intimate contact. It’s not a case of right teaching or dogma, but rather of all-human-love directed towards its rightful object: the Divine present among us. The Gospel is not about Orthodoxy, but rather about Orthagape: right love.

Jesus says “Whoever receives one whom I send receives me; and whoever receives me receives him who sent me.” To receive as a companion one sent by Jesus is to receive God, himself. That level of intimacy we develop with each other is the level we develop with God. For God comes to us in those whom he has sent.

Whom has Jesus sent? Matthew 28:17 - everyone, even the doubters, get sent into all the world. All of us, even those of us who have theology or “issues” that are annoying and repugnant.

Whom has Jesus sent? The Benedictines teach (according to their rule) that any guest who comes to the house is Christ himself - to be greeted with a prostration. That is, God has come.

If such is true of the random stranger, imagine all of our friendships being so important.

Much love,

Huw