+Z’ev

Commemoration of Clement of Rome

Today’s assigned readings:
1 Maccabees 4:36-59, Revelation 22:6-13, Matthew 18:10-20

If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
Matthew 18:17

The Greek uses the word for Church here, ekklesia - strange considering that there was no such thing, yet. It seems we are dealing here with a later interpolation, some Apostolic or Post-Apostolic Era midrash. It starts off good, of course: don’t jump on your sinning brother in public. But what kind of sin?

It has nothing to do with sins “Against God” or “heresy”. It is “if your brother has sinned against you.” These are more personal sins. This is how to restore a relationship. I think this is important. Don’t go out blabbing about your problem with so and so. And even if he doesn’t confess his wrong, just go get one other person. Etc.

But of course, all of this differs with the counsel given just a few verses later (18:22 - in tomorrow’s reading) that we should forgive 70×7 times over.

But my favourite line is the last one: “if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

What the heck does that mean? And remember: these are sins of one individual against another - not “heresy” or sins “against God”. We’re not talking about anything more than your neighbour borrowed the wheelbarrow and forgot to return it or he slandered you at a pool party. What does it mean to have to treat your neighbour like a “Gentile and a Tax Collector”?

Two part answer, I think. And the first part underscores that, clearly, this is not Jesus talking.

Some of the Christian congregations that were, primarily, made up of Jews didn’t accept Gentiles for membership if they had not yet converted to Judaism. Only Jews could be followers of Messiah. Fr Eugene A. LaVerdiere (in The Eucharist in the New Testament and the Early Church) believes that the Didache is a document produced by such a community. It too has the elements of exclusion we see here. For these people, attempting to keep much of the Rabbinic code, to welcome a Gentile into your house would be to become impure. So I think, in the context of the Community that produced the Gospel of Matthew, this is pretty condemning.

John Chrysostom turns this passage into a kind of imprecation against the enemies of Christians - two of you can bind him and it will be a curse. And even will help the Church.

Seest thou how by another motive also He puts down our enmities, and takes away our petty dissensions,fdfdf.and draws us one to another, and this not from the punishment only which hath been mentioned, but also from the good things which spring from charity? For having denounced those threats against contentiousness, He putteth here the great rewards of concord, if at least they who are of one accord do even prevail with the Father, as touching the things they ask, and have Christ in the midst of them

If someone sins against you and you can’t get satisfaction, then consider him a Gentile or a tax collector.

Or is that too harsh? Later he’s about to say ““Even the tax collectors and the prostitutes shall go before you into the Kingdom of Heaven.” Jesus was the guest of tax collectors. He healed Gentiles and their children. He drove demons from them and in most cases he did it without theological quibbles: they stayed Gentiles.

Jesus reminds us over and over that traditional categories of exclusion do not exist any longer. Is he reminding us here that the many qho goes on sinning is to be loved all the more?

Our reading today from Maccabees includes the institution of Hanukkah. You may be wondering where is the Miracle of the Oil? The story of the oil - that miraculously lasted for 8 days when it should only have lasted for one - was added later, when celebrating this military victory would have been antagonistic to the Romans (and later, to Christians). The story of the oil was invented to share that the spiritual values of Torah triumph over the darkness of the pagan world.

Hanukkah is one of my favourite festivals; not because it is “Jewish Christmas” but rather because of the quiet joy of lighting candles in winter’s darkness. For me there was a wonderful peace of setting the menorah in the window and seen the flames flicker. It is, truly, a different sort of light than you might find anywhere. Jerusalem is located at about the same latitude as the border between Georgia and Florida (aprox 31°) There is still enough of a difference there, between day and night during winter time, that some extra light would be welcomed. When the Jews later moved further north - even up into Russia - the candles of Hanukkah (even though they can not be used for any mundane purpose) must have been a joy indeed.

To see in the darkness a growing light (as we light first one candle, then two, three, etc) is a profound truth in our individual lives as well as the world. It is a chance to rededicate our lives to spiritual work. Some Jewish mystics saw the last day of Hanukkah as being the final day of the season of repentance begun in the High Holy days (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur). On this day we can celebrate the rededication of the temple of “our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice”.

It’s interesting to see this celebration of the Jewish victory over Gentiles read in the same lections as this most-un-Jesus Gospel midrash. How do they go together? Jesus commands us to love. To not divide ourselves off. Can the light of rededication be lit (in windows and doorways, as is traditional) to draw others to holiness?

Much love,

Huw

Today’s assigned readings:
1 Maccabees 3:42-60, Revelation 21:9-21, Matthew 17:22-27

Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And in the spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God.
Revelation 21:9-10

Did you see this test called “What’s your eschatology?” When I took the test I came up as
Moltmannian Eschatology 90%
Amillenialist 85%
Preterist 70%

I’m not sure what I did wrong! My friend, Donald, took the test and scored
Preterist 100%
Amillenialist 100%
Moltmannian Eschatology 100%

Now, there ya go!

Preterism, btw, is “a variant of Christian eschatology which holds that some or all of the biblical prophecies concerning the Last Days (or End Times) refer to events which actually happened in the first century after Christ’s birth. The term preterism comes from the Latin praeter, meaning “past”.”

This is at marked difference with the eschatology of my youth: full on “left behindism”, Hal Lindsey doing a verse-by-verse reading of the Book of Revelation coupled with today’s copy of the New York Times. It takes a while to overcome that mode of function. You want to imagine that every event is fated, something out of the Bible. Did we invade Iraq? Is that how we anger the “kings of the East”? Will we bomb Iran - Russia’s friend? Is that what annoys “Gog and Magog”? If you keep thinking in this mode for too long, everything become fatalistic: there is nothing we can do to resolve this or that issue because it was Foretold in Bible Prophecy™. It is the Will of God™. From this point of view it becomes nearly required that instead of halting the anschluss of horrid and evil things, one leaps in to further it. After a while, one begins to feel really “Special” for knowing what God is about. Everyone may be confused, but We Know! Glory to God! This is called a “Futurist” Eschatology and it is a hard habit to break.

There are other ways of reading the Book of the Revelation. And, to one degree or another, these are Preterist: it happened in the past.

What, throughout the NT, anyway, is called “the bride”? Easy: it is The Church. And the Church is not something from the far distant future, but rather it is something here, now.

Each of the stones and metals in the image are said to mean something. And we could go on a huge examination of the symbols… but it’s not needed.

Is the New Jerusalem the Church now or at some point in the future? I’d rather not see that as an either/or choice.

On Palm Sunday 2002 (they may still do this) we tried a new thing at St Gregory of Nyssa Church: during the Procession of the Palms we stopped for a “Station” in the back of the Church during which we read from the Book of Revelation, a passage about everyone standing before the Throne of God. And as I looked around the court yard, filled with children and adults, drummers and palms, suddenly the Preterist/Orthodox reading of Church=Kingdom of God on Earth made sense. It all fell into place, not in the sense of one actor “filling the role” of another, but rather in the sense of “now/not yet”. That Palm Sunday, our one parish marching around our one building was the Church Triumphant marching though time and eternity. Our building filled with normal people - artists, mothers, musicians, clergy, children - was visibly filled with saints standing before God’s throne.

That was a liturgical event. It’s the same sort of event that happens every Sunday at Mass: all of heaven and earth, present over the consecration of the elements, all gathered into the Body of Christ. That meeting of the Divine and the Human becomes the meeting of us all.

But what I’d like to see in this descent of the New Jerusalem is something more than a Liturgical Event: rather a proclamation of a new reality. As we learned yesterday, “Behold the Sh’kina of God is with men!” God’s glory dwells among us: we needn’t look further than ourselves, if we are dwelling together in love.

If we are doing that, then the New Jerusalem has come to earth not just spiritually, but in reality. If we are failing to do that than it will never come - and it matters not at all how we feel about Preterism or Futurism or the Rapture.

Much Love,

Huw

Commemoration of Edmund of East Anglia

Today’s assigned readings:
1 Maccabees 3:25-41, Revelation 21:1-8, Matthew 17:14-21

And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”
Revelation 21:2-4

The NRSV says, “the home of God” which is an odd rendering. The KJV says “Tabernacle” and the Greek is σκηνη Skene. It’s the word used for any kind of temporary dwelling, such as a tent or a booth, but also of the Jewish Tabernacle itself. This forms a pun with the word rendered “dwell” in the NRSV. It is basically a verb form of Skene. It means “tabernacled”. So, “the tabernacle of God is with men and (he) shall tabernacle with them and they shall be his people”.

I am intrigued by the idea that the Book of the Apocalypse may be a Jewish mystical document edited by early Jewish Christians to contain a Christian message.

I didn’t know of any sources online and so I googled. I found a article in the Jewish Encyclopaedia which, among other things, spoke of our passage today. The article wondered if the Greek word σκηνη Skene mightn’t be a corruption of the Hebrew word שכינה Sh’kinah, which means the “dwelling” or “settling”, and is used to denote the dwelling or settling presence of God, especially in the Temple in Jerusalem.

First it seems clear that this one word substitution neither makes or breaks the “Hebrew original” claim. For I can easily imagine John the Apostle, in the midst of a vision, declaiming in his mother tongue (rather than in his adult-aquired Greek) while his scribe stumbles around trying to make sense of it all.

Having said that, I found the idea that the “Shekinah” would “Tabernacle” with men to be a multi-lingual pun with many deep and complex allusions and far more enjoyable as a literary device, speaking as a writer. And that’s where I am tonight.

I had an interesting few weeks at Church, leading a discussion on Olivier Clement’s Roots of Christian Mysticism, a book I can not recommend highly enough. When I first read the book, at St Gregory of Nyssa Church, we took nearly 6 months to discuss it. 6? 8? It was along while. I had only 3 weeks to talk about two chapters - including one week of introduction. So I picked two fun places and we talked about them.

What makes the book so much fun to talk about is, when you get in to the swing of things, you can’t talk about it without recounting stories. I’d be talking about saint so and so in chapter one and suddenly remember a story form Abba whosits over in chapter 6. Both stories needed to be heard in the context of each other in order to understand the point I was trying to make. But we, in this one class, hadn’t had time to read the whole book. And so I kept leaping forward to points… only to discover that I needed to backtrack because the context wasn’t there. I can’t quote Abba whosits, without telling his story - unless you’ve already read it.

The context makes the story: the literary shape of everything depends on the context.

Did the seer say “The tabernacle of God is with men and God Tabernacles with them” or did the Seer say “The Shekinah of God is with men and she (the Sh’kinah of God is a she) is ’skeena-ing’ with them. (Hahah! Get it?!? Skeena/Sh’keina! Get it?!?!)” Or did someone come along and, not knowing enough Hebrew, try to pronounce “שכינה” and end up with “Mmm. That sounds like Skene. Maybe that’s what it means.”

Context is everything.

If the Apocalypse is a Jewish document reformatted or, better yet, recontextualised for Christian use, does that in any way reduce the importance of it or has 2,000 years of Christian context made this into something more than it was, originally?

I’m willing to allow that last reading for the Apocalypse. I think we have our discussion with God-in-Text and reach, each of us in community, his own conclusions about context and meaning. That discussion does not happen over and above the “real” or “intended” meaning of the text. That discussion is the meaning of the text. I feel differently about other doctrines (as I’m trying to point out in today’s Meditation on my other blog).

Much Love,

Huw

Commemoration of Elizabeth of Hungary

Today’s assigned readings:
1 Maccabees 3:1-24, Revelation 20:7-15, Matthew 17:1-13

When the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, in order to gather them for battle; they are as numerous as the sands of the sea. They marched up over the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city. And fire came down from heaven and consumed them. And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
Revelation 20:7-10

At the end of the Left Behind series everyone is standing around hugging like it’s a dinner party. The Lord Jesus has come back to start his thousand year reign.

Thus the problem with all Millennialism and Dispensationalism: they miss the traditional understanding of the Scriptures. The “thousand years” is seen as a symbol of the Church, being God’s Kingdom active upon the Earth. The thousand years is not a set period of time, but rather it is as long as God allows. The teaching that Christ would reign for 1000 years on the earth, was declared a heresy by a Church council and that was when a new line was added to the Nicean Creed: And his kingdom will have no end.

But if the Church is God’s kingdom on earth why has nothing been fixed? Even a little bit? The call of “Already Not Yet” goes up. The Repair of the World is begun, Satan is bound, the Kingdom spreads. But it is Already Not Yet here.

This is where I have my strongest issues.

The Gospel today includes the Elijah prophecy.

And the disciples asked him, “Why, then, do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?” He replied, “Elijah is indeed coming and will restore all things; but I tell you that Elijah has already come…
Matthew 17:10-12a

Sunday the original prophecy from Malachi was part of the lectionary:

See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.
Malachi 4:1-2, 5-6

And I remember sitting in the pew saying “well, either that has not yet been fulfilled or the entire meaning needs to be “spiritualised”. Either John the Baptist was Elijah reincarnated (as Jesus claimed) in which case only one sentence of the prophecy was fulfilled and the rest is coming at some time in an infinite future, or else the entire thing has to be spiritualised and all of it read in an “already not yet” mode.

One of the accusations levelled by Jews who feel called to fact-check Christian prophecy claims is that claims of “spiritualised” readings have no historical roots in Jewish readings. The way of Christians to pick one sentence or one phrase completely out of context and say that the prophecy was fulfilled… that’s not Jewish.

Because if Elijah has already come, then we are in the Great and Terrible Day of the Lord now. But, um… no. And John didn’t exactly turn the heard of Children to their parents… and Jesus said he was bringing a sword, not peace.

Yet demanding a literal reading of Jewish prophecy leaves me in a place of demanding a literal reading of Christian prophecy too: and thus a literal 1,000 years.

Things fall apart when I try for constancy. And every once in a while (as with Joshua’s comment on yesterday’s post) someone comes along and shows me that from another angle things are, indeed, very consistent.

As I wait for my own “logic” to go away, I keep thinking maybe “already not yet” is my own excuse.

Much love,

Huw

Today’s assigned readings:
1 Maccabees 2:29-43,49-50, Acts 28:14b-23, Luke 16:1-13

Then the enemy quickly attacked them. But they did not answer them or hurl a stone at them or block up their hiding places, for they said, “Let us all die in our innocence; heaven and earth testify for us that you are killing us unjustly.” So they attacked them on the sabbath, and they died, with their wives and children and livestock, to the number of a thousand persons.
1 Maccabees 2:35-38

The story in the 4 Books of the Maccabees is hard to reconcile with Christianity. Today’s reading is a perfect example. It seems that several groups of devout Jews removed themselves from the pagan culture growing around them. They moved off into the countryside around Jerusalem (just as the Prophets had done earlier, and just as Christian monastics would in later years). There they set up communities and tried to live in a pious manor as their ancestors had done. (I think partly here of the Qumran community, and the Essenes - they may or may not be the same folks.)

When the Pagans and Paganised Jews arrived, they challenged the devout to a battle on the Sabbath. The Pious refused even to defend themselves and so they were slain by the heathens rather than defile the law they were called to live. But…

When Mattathias and his friends learned of it, they mourned for them deeply. And all said to their neighbors: “If we all do as our kindred have done and refuse to fight with the Gentiles for our lives and for our ordinances, they will quickly destroy us from the earth.” So they made this decision that day: “Let us fight against anyone who comes to attack us on the sabbath day; let us not all die as our kindred died in their hiding places.” Then there united with them a company of Hasideans, mighty warriors of Israel, all who offered themselves willingly for the law.
1 Maccabees 2:39-42

So rather than keep the law they sought to live, they decided to defend the law now - even if it meant defiling it - so that they could live the law later.

Since Hanukkah is one of two festivals mentioned in the NT (the other being Passover) this is a festival Jesus celebrated and that without recorded comment. So I wonder how to read this feast, and how to read this book.

Jesus told us to “resist not evil” and to “turn the other cheek”, to “pray for those who persecute” and to “bless those who curse” us. While you might consider yourself my enemy, I am not to judge you and to imagine that whatever comes between us is my fault. The only person excluded from the Altar (granting the Gospels a close and literal reading) is the man whose brother or sister has anything against him.

What would the Maccabees have said to any of this?

I think I know: “Let us fight against anyone who comes to attack us on the sabbath day; let us not all die as our kindred died in their hiding places.”

The Orthodox Church celebrates some martyrs of the Maccabean revolt on 1 August (incorrectly identifying them as “Maccabees”), clearly urging in this story that people willingly die for the faith. But the message of Hannukah is that we should be willing to fight for the faith.

So I wonder at Jesus’ teachings, in the face of Roman Occupation of Jerusalem and the later official (State) Church’s response to issues of war and violence. What would Jesus have thought about the war over icons? Or the Crusades? What would Jesus have thought about the current issues between the allegedly-Christian west and Muslims? What would Jesus have thought about the congregation of Anglicans filing lawsuits against each other? What would our spiritual ancestors - those who lived through the first 300 years of Church - have thought about us today?

In some ways, of course, the Maccabean decision makes a lot of things easier: Here’s the law; live it literally and when challenged, fight and die for it.

Apart from any parallels we might see between the Maccabean choice and religious extremism today, I wonder how people today might see this choice. As Jews celebrate Hanukkah today, do they see the parallels? Were the Maccabees an early type of Al Qaeda? Was the Hasmonean monarchy a last-ditch effort to establish a Jewish sort of Wahhabism that resulted, eventually, in Judaism moving beyond that military state thing? (And do we see in today’s Israel a return to that?) Was Jesus’ teaching of radical peace, in part, a response to this “muscular Judaism”?

Where would Maccabees have been in today’s world? Fighting in front of Abortion Clinics? Fighting in front of the Al Asqa Mosque? Standing in front of funerals with signs that say “God Hates Fags”? Or using guns to shoot those who would try to take communion while rejecting church teaching?

And what would Jesus have thought about such things?

And when you answer that last question, remember that Jesus celebrated Hanukkah without comment in John.

Much Love,

Huw