Brood of Vipers (Luke 3)

   

“John said to the crowds…’You brood of vipers! Who warned 
you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of 
repentance.’”. From the Gospel according to Luke, chapter 3,
verses 7 and 8.

     In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

     Luke is determined to locate the story of John the Baptist, 
and the story of Jesus, firmly in history, in a place and time 
that can be described. The events that Luke is about to relate 
happened to real people in a real place, at a time that we know 
something about. Luke is telling us that the contents of his 
Gospel are history, not fiction or speculation or mythology. 
Like a good historian, he provides references that can be 
verified. And we have an independent source for John the 
Baptist, in the historian Josephus, who wrote about him.

    John has one message: a baptism of repentance for the 
forgiveness of sins. In this Advent season, when we prepare 
to celebrate the coming of the Incarnation, and we also look 
forward to the coming of Christ at the end of time, spiritual 
preparation is essential. In repentance, that is, in turning 
toward God and away from those things which obstruct our 
relationship with Him, we are following in the footsteps of the 
prophets and John the Baptist. Luke himself makes the 
connection between the Baptist and the prophets, when he 
quotes chapter 40 of the prophet Isaiah, earlier in chapter 3 of 
his Gospel. Again the emphasis is on a real historical 
connection, with the words of a prophet who had preached 
centuries before. Isaiah and John are not offering theological 
abstractions, but real actions, baptism, in the case of John, 
and the opportunity, in the case of Isaiah, to follow him on a 
straight path to God, free of obstacles.

    Let us recall Isaiah’s words:  every valley shall be filled, and 
every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked 
shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth. To 
contemporary ears, this sounds like strip mining, or freeway 
construction. So, we can’t be expected to take this geographical
 description literally, but we can grasp the main point: there is 
actually no obstacle between us and our destiny in God. There 
is no valley of despair so deep, no mountain of trouble so 
great, that they can actually prevent us from arriving at our 
destination. The pathway before us is clear; all we have to do 
is take the first step, and more steps will follow. Once we set 
out on the path, deep valleys and high mountains are not the 
obstacles that they appear to be. There is nothing to stop us. 
The first step that John the Baptist offers is the baptism of 
repentance. And repentance is basically a choice: to turn 
toward God. That is all.

    Before today’s reading, Luke writes, in verse 2, “The word 
of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.” Why 
the wilderness? The wilderness is that place where there are 
no distractions, no easy escapes from the mountains and 
valleys of our spiritual journeys, where the rough ways are not 
yet smooth. The wilderness, spiritual or geographical, is that 
place where we can more easily hear the voice of God. This is 
why people walk on pilgrimages through difficult landscapes, 
and locate monasteries, like St Catherine’s in the Sinai desert, 
in remote places. Geography and our passage through it are 
analogs of the spiritual life, which is always a journey, a 
journey from God and return to him.

    It is a journey where God is always present and waiting for 
us; always present, at the beginning through to the end. We 
know this because Isaiah says, “All flesh shall see the salvation 
of God.” This is a promise, without qualification, no 
exceptions. That being true, John’s baptism of repentance is a 
way of accepting that reality; it puts us on the right path, the 
rough way made smooth, on the journey to God.

    Luke’s emphasis on the historical environment of John the 
Baptist and Isaiah the prophet, reminds us that we are on our 
journey to God in the world that we know, a world that is as 
real to us as the world was to Luke and John and Isaiah. There 
is no retreat from the world, from history, into some gaseous 
abstract spiritual realm where we can escape from the 
challenges of the journey, the deep valleys, the mountains, the 
rough places. They are where God journeys with us, and where 
he is waiting for us at the end of the road.

    “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” asks the 
Baptist. The answer, of course, is, he did, and the prophets 
before him. There is a tone of seriousness, maybe even 
harshness, in John’s proclamation of repentance. The crowds 
coming to hear him are vipers, snakes! So, that’s what he 
thinks of them and their so-called “repentance !” “Bear fruits 
worthy of repentance!” But even that may not be enough: 
“Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees.” So much for 
the crowds' fruits of repentance.

    This is too much for the crowds. They need more specific 
guidance than this; they need some examples of repentance 
that they can relate to. “The crowds asked him, ‘What then 
should we do?”

    The answers are interesting and revealing. The Gospel 
breaks down the “crowds” into three groups: first, what we 
may call the “general public”, then tax collectors (our text says 
“even tax collectors”, an out-group for sure!), and soldiers. 
Ordinary people experienced soldiers and tax-collectors as 
oppressors, so it is not surprising that Luke mentions them 
specifically.

    And the answers are straightforward, practical, simple, 
easy to understand: share surplus clothing and food, don’t 
collect more taxes than required, don’t extort money, and be 
satisfied with what you have. These instructions are a relief 
after remarks about the axe at the root of the trees and so on. 
Repentance, in other words, is not complicated or mysterious 
or difficult: share, don’t steal, don’t abuse, be content. It is 
interesting that the first and last instructions are expressed 
positively: share, and be satisfied with what you have. 
Repentance is not about making ourselves feel badly about 
what we’ve done or  haven’t done, but about simply following 
the commandments in ways appropriate to our circumstances.  

    The Baptist’s serious, warning tone reappears. “One who is 
more powerful than I is coming...his winnowing fork is in his 
hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into 
his granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” 
We may understand this to mean that the chaff, along with the 
trees that don’t bear good fruit, are all those things that we 
repent of, all those actions and inactions that lead us and 
others away from God. Those actions and inactions are 
consumed in the unquenchable fire, which is nothing less than 
the uncreated light, the light of the divine radiance. We don’t have to hear this as
 a threat of hellfire. The winnowing fork separates good actions from bad, 
and the good actions are taken up to God and add to the radiance;
even bad actions, and inactions, are
enfolded in the unquenchable fire and add to the divine radiance..

    So, when we “flee from the wrath to come”, we are turning 
toward God, toward repentance, leaving behind actions that 
get in our way, and in God’s way. May we heed 
the message of John the Baptist, and the prophets,
this Advent and always.

    In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen. 
(15-16.XII.18 Adv.)

   

    

The First Commandment (Mark 12)

    In Nomine etc..

    Most of chapter 12 of Mark’s Gospel summarizes a long discussion among Jesus, some Sadducees, scribes and probably others, about taxes to the emperor, about marriage in the afterlife, what the first (or greatest) commandment is, and about who the Messiah is. Today’s reading, from verses 28 to 34, presents just the section about the first commandment. It is best to hear it in the context of the rest of the discussion, before and after the reading.  

    “One of the scribes came near....and seeing that he answered him well, he asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’” The answer we all know. And Jesus adds a commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no more discussion of this, not one that is recorded anyway, between Jesus and the scribe. It is as if the scribe is just examining Jesus on his catechism, making sure he produces the correct answer from memory, with no more depth to it than that. The scribe apparently approves; he says, somewhat patronizingly it seems to me, “You are right, Teacher!” I’m glad he thinks so! The scribe goes on to provide an elaboration of the answer, which perhaps he thinks Jesus should have added, “you have truly said that he is one,” and so on. Like an eager pupil now, and not the inquisitorial scribe he was a moment ago, he is seeking Jesus’s approval, and is answering an unspoken question, “What is the meaning and importance of the commandment?” The scribe evidently knows his catechism, and is eager to recite what he knows, whether he’s asked or not. There is a certain naive pride in this, which Jesus indulges. “When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely [to an unasked question, remember], he said to him ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’”

    Not far from the kingdom of God. Not far. Not far, but not there yet either. I don’t know whether the scribe actually hears this, or whether we do. The response is positive, in that Jesus is supporting the scribe in his understanding, and is also telling him that there is more ground to cover, more to understand than rote learning of answers to standard questions. The scribe is close to his spiritual destination, but only close.

    It is perhaps regrettable that today’s Gospel reading ends here, with the line, “After that no one dared to ask him any question.” Why “no one dared”? Because the Sadducees and scribes and others recognized that they were in the presence of true authority, of someone directly aware of the Kingdom, of divine reality, which is beyond question and answer, beyond canonical definitions and orthodox, official answers to permitted questions. The whole conversation between the scribe and Jesus is within these limits, orthodox, expected, permitted, acceptable, canonical. But Jesus ends by saying that the scribe is “not far” from the Kingdom. Orthodoxy, in other words, gets the scribe close to the Kingdom, but not in it. What are the scribe, and we, to make of this?

    If we continue reading chapter 12, beyond today’s selection, we learn more about access to the Kingdom, to divine reality. Jesus said “How can the scribes say that the Messiah is the son of David? David....by the Holy Spirit, declared, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand...David himself calls him Lord, so how can he be his son? And the large crowd was listening to him with delight.”

    The clue here is the Holy Spirit. Or maybe we should say just “holy Spirit” and leave off the definite article, so we can feel the living, divine breath that David experiences, that is his experience of the Kingdom. That enables David to get beyond the formal limitations of commandments and superficial meanings and to encounter the reality that unifies David and the Lord, Jesus and God, the scribes and the crowd to the Kingdom.

    The delight of the crowd is another clue. A natural meaning is that they are enjoying the spectacle of the scribes being put in their place. But another meaning is that they perceive the presence of Holy Spirit in Jesus, and in themselves, and experience the reality of the Kingdom, which they see in Jesus. And so do we, when we let Holy Spirit lead us to an experience of the unity of David and Lord, Jesus and God, scribes, and ourselves, and the Kingdom. Amen. (3-4.XI.18. Adv)                      

Blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10)

In Nomine etc..

    “Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside”. “Bar” means “son of” in Hebrew, and Timaeus comes from a Greek verb meaning ‘to honor’, so  the name means something like ‘son of honor’. This name, in other words, is a very interesting Hebrew-Greek hybrid. Greeks had ruled that part of the world since the time of Alexander the Great and were part of the population, as were Romans and many other ethnicities, to use a current word.

    Timaeus is also the title of a book, a dialog by Plato, which, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, is an “account of the formation of the universe and an explanation of its impressive order and beauty. The universe, he proposes, is the product of rational, purposive, and beneficent agency. It is the handiwork of a divine Craftsman…” It is possible that the Evangelist knew this, and so includes this name in order to make a point about a relationship between ideas of the Greeks, and the revelation of God the creator to the Hebrews. Bartimaeus, after all, is blind, that is to say, he is in some way incomplete, and comes to sight, that is, to full understanding, in the presence of Jesus the Messiah.  Bartimaeus, Son of Honor, heir to Greek ideas about God and creation, comes to Jesus to reach full understanding.

    “He began to shout out and say, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.’” The blind man, in other words, knows who Jesus is. He knows that he’s the Son of David, the promised Messiah. The Son of Honor recognizes the Son of David, even though he can’t see him. He has reached a depth of insight that allows him to perceive Jesus’s true nature. His blindness has helped him to develop his spiritual awareness, which in his case does not depend on physical sight. He knows, he is confident of what he knows, he trusts, and so he acts and calls on Jesus.

    The sighted people around Jesus are not so insightful or so aware. “Many sternly ordered him to be quiet.” Well, of course; he’s a blind beggar by the roadside, as unimportant and low status and ignorable a person as the crowd can think of, perhaps only a step or two above lepers and the like. Perhaps we ourselves feel a bit like this crowd around Jesus, when we ignore the beggars and the lost and the mad on our streets. In any case, Bartimaeus doesn’t let the blind crowd stop him; “he cried out even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me’”. The blind man sees in Jesus not only physical healing, but the completion, the fulfilment of his spiritual journey, attainment of fuller understanding of the role of God and Jesus in creation, and in his own life.

    Jesus hears the call of the blind man. He doesn’t let the spiritually sightless crowd deter him. “Call him here,” he says. Notice at this moment that Jesus doesn’t call the blind man directly; he tells the crowd to do this. Jesus uses the moment to teach the crowd that they must pay attention to the call of the needy, the blind, those of low status, and truth-seekers. The crowd, like us, must learn to hear the calls of the blind and others, must be willing to learn from them, must be open to the possibilities that they present.

    “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” Jesus is calling all of us, to open up ourselves to his experience of God, which can be ours as well. The story even tells us how this works.

“So, throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus.” Well, that describes it almost completely. We throw off our cloaks, all those routines and protections and beliefs and opinions and evasions and who knows what else, that prevent us from letting Jesus get through to us. As long as we wrap ourselves in our defenses, not even a miracle can get through to us.

    And there is still one more step. Jesus asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” He can’t help us if we don’t know what we want. We can’t help ourselves either, until we’re clear about that. Once we are clear about what we want, then we see. “My teacher, let me see again.” Bartimaeus, son, probably, of a Greek, is ready to see, and he does. The Messiah and a man with Gentile ancestry are ready to share in a vision of creation which Plato foresaw, and which Jesus represents. May we also hear Jesus’s call, throw off our cloaks, let him open our eyes, and ‘immediately regain our sight, and follow him on the Way.’ Amen. (27-28.X.18. Adv.)

Sons of Zebedee (Mark 10)

In the Name, etc..

    Today’s Gospel reading begins, “James and John, the sons of Zebedee…” Why does the Evangelist find it necessary to mention whose sons they are? What does this detail add to the story? What message are we meant to hear, coming through this small phrase? Answers to these questions will help us to understand Jesus’s teaching a few verses on.

    Some scholars think that ‘Zebedee’ comes from a Hebrew word meaning ‘Gift of God’. If so, this is a splendid name, of which Z. is likely proud, and his sons too. Z. is a Galilean fisherman, the husband of Salome, and the father of the Apostles James and John.

     Zebedee appears in all four gospels as the father of two of Jesus’ most prominent disciples, James and John, who with Peter stood at the center of the Twelve. The three were privileged to witness the Transfiguration, the raising of Jairus’ daughter, and they were with Jesus in Gethsemane.

    Zebedee and his two sons operated a fishing business on the Sea of Galilee in partnership with another set of brothers, Andrew and Peter. There were hired men, as Mark says in chapter 1: “they left their father Z. in the boat with the hired men.” Zebedee, in other words, is a successful man, with sons and his own boat, or boats, and employees.

    The fishing business changes the day that Jesus’s call comes to the two brothers. The picture we have from the gospels portrays Zebedee in a boat with his two sons and hired men, mending their nets on the shore of the Sea of Galilee when Jesus came by. “And Jesus...saw...James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in a boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him”. Although it must have affected the business somewhat, there is no record that Z. protested their forsaking the profitable business. Z. and his business are, to use the modern word, resilient!  It is even possible that the business furnishes financial support for Jesus and His disciples during the years of our Lord’s ministry. There is no record of this, but it is a plausible supposition.

    Zebedee’s wife was Salome who is always designated as “the mother of the sons of Zebedee” as Matthew’s Gospel says. Salome accompanied Jesus during His ministry in Galilee to serve Him, as Mark says in chapter 15.. She was later present at the crucifixion, and was among the women who went to the tomb to anoint the Lord.

    This family history and profile is a way of saying that the family, Z., Salome, James and John, were central, very important in the earliest community around Jesus. They were present for important teachings, miracles, and events. They were closest to Jesus and they knew it. And, being closest, they could ask questions of Jesus, and make requests of him,  which would probably not occur to others. And one of those requests is the core of our Gospel today. It reveals what the family thought they knew about Jesus, how entitled they thought they were, and how, despite their proximity, they got some fundamental details wrong. Familiarity does not always equal understanding; proximity does not guarantee knowledge. There was more that they had to learn.

    In today’s Gospel, James and John themselves ask Jesus, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” They don’t say who should have which chair. They are probably thinking of thrones in an earthly kingdom, over which they will be judges. In God’s kingdom, the right hand of God is associated with mercy, and the left with justice. James and John apparently think that they are capable of discerning when to be just and when to be merciful,  but Jesus will reveal just what kind of preparation is necessary to learn that kind of discernment. C S Lewis is supposed to have remarked something like this: Justice tempered by mercy is the most beautiful thing on earth. James and John, and their mother Salome, don’t know the differences yet, or how to combine the two. In Matthew’s Gospel, Salome did all the talking and revealed her own ambition when she asked the Master for special favors for her two sons in the kingdom: “Command that these two sons of mine may sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom”. Salome evidently thinks she has the right to demand such a thing, based on her family’s importance, and in Mark’s Gospel, her sons think so too. But Jesus soon teaches them the real meaning of being enthroned with him in glory.

      “You do not know what you are asking,” Jesus says. Jesus doesn’t actually spell out the implications of their ambition; we, the hearers and readers of today’s Gospel, already know what Jesus means, and the Evangelist, good writer that he is, lets us fill in the implications for ourselves, by using our imaginations to import into today’s Gospel the future events of the Passion. It is not clear that the sons of Zebedee are aware of this, but we are; we know what Jesus knows.

     “But to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant; but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” This remark comes as a surprise to the sons of Z. Is not Jesus the promised Davidic king? Does not a king appoint his judges and close advisors? What kind of ruler is this, who can’t choose his closest associates?

    This is a reminder that Jesus’s kingdom, his glory, is not like other kingdoms, earthly kingdoms. Jesus is announcing that he is not going to be the glorious ruler that the sons of Z are hoping for. He is not going to appoint them to their fantasy jobs. Instead, he tells them what the necessary preparation is, and what the outcome will be.

    The preparation is the cup that Jesus will drink, and the baptism that he will be baptized with. This preparation will reveal the real nature of worldly, earthly kingdoms, and what they will do to anyone who seriously challenges them. The world has not changed since Jesus’s time; Jesus still challenges earthly kingdoms, their rulers and lords, their tyrants.

    The outcome of this preparation is a complete turning upside down of what leadership, rulership, can be. The great among us are to be servants, the first among us are to be slaves. Those who achieve this transformation are signs of the real nature, the real destiny of human beings. Jesus says, “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.” In other words, a son of man, that is, a human being, any human being, finds his and her real nature in the service of others, and the purpose of this service is preparation for eternal life in the new heaven and the new earth. The cup that Jesus will drink is not just a grim reminder of his approaching Passion, but also a foreshadowing of his, and our, drinking of the fruit of the vine, sharing in the life of God in eternity. Jesus’s baptism and ours begins the preparation for it, and James and John and Salome and Z too were, are, on the same path.

    In the world that we know, of course, rulers are not like this. Today’s Gospel is a constant challenge to allow ourselves to begin, to continue, the preparation, the transformation that Jesus puts before us. We have been baptized; in our eucharist today let us drink the cup that Jesus drinks, and say with James and John, that “we are able” to drink of that cup, and to share in that baptism. Amen. (21.X.18. Adv.)

     

 

Saint Michael and all Angels

    In Nomine etc..

    With an attitude that is perhaps a little too casual, on good days, when things are going well, I like to think that my guardian angel is on the job, and even working overtime. When things are going not so well, I begin to suspect that my guardian angel has been asleep, not paying attention at all! That isn’t true, of course; the angels are ever attentive, always awake, always on the job!
I’ve never had any problem with the concept of angels in general, or with the concept of guardian angels in particular. They are well-attested in Scripture, tradition, and in the experience of countless numbers of people. My talk today is about angels and their roles; we tend to neglect the angels, so the feast of Saint Michael and All Angels gives us an opportunity to pay more attention to them.

     In the Scriptures, the existence of the angels, like the existence of God, is taken for granted, as accepted fact. Altho they are mentioned more than 200 times, we don’t have any information about their creation, and we don’t have many descriptions. But it is clear that they are part of the world, and have an interest in us humans.

    In Greek, angel, angelos, means ‘messenger’, and, strictly speaking, applies only to the two orders, angels and archangels, who communicate with humans. And, odd as it may sound, they are not supernatural. They are created beings, part of the natural, created world like ourselves. As Paul says in the Letter to the Colossians, “In him all created things took their being, heavenly and earthly, visible and invisible.” Angels, like us, have character, individuality, and will, but they are not human. To make themselves visible to us, they take on human form. I remember once saying to a friend that if we could see the angels as they are, they would look like fire. I don’t know where I got that idea, but I was pleased to learn that St Basil the Great had a similar idea, when he wrote that “their substance is a breath of air or an immortal fire...visible...to those who are worthy to see them.” Ezekiel says, “the living creatures came and went, vivid as lightning flashes.” Psalm 103 says, “thou wilt have thy angels be like the winds, the servants that wait on thee like a flame of fire.” They are pure spirits, unlimited by time or space, immortal, free, neither young nor old, and more. Their brightness can be thought of as reflections of the uncreated light of God.

    There are nine types, or ranks, or orders, if you will, of these heavenly beings, all named in the Scriptures: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. Psalm 102 and psalm 148 describe them as ever ready to praise God and to carry out his commands.

    The Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones are councillors and have no relations with humans. Their work is the adoration of God. Their love for God is the strongest of any creature, according to St Dionysius the Areopagite.

     The Dominions, Virtues, and Powers rule space and the stars, our galaxy among them. They have no direct relations with humans.

    The Principalities, Archangels, and Angels are responsible for the Earth. They execute God’s will, are the perpetual guardians of humans, and are God’s messengers.

    We know the names and something of the work of four of the Archangels. Michael, whose name means Who Is Like God, is the leader of the heavenly host, and threw Lucifer out of Paradise. Gabriel means Man of God, is the angel of the Annunciation. Raphael is The Healing of God, is chief of the guardian angels, and carries our prayers to the Lord. And Uriel, Fire of God, interprets prophecies. These are powerful names: Like God, Man of God, Healing, Fire. They reveal the personalities and powers of the archangels. There are three more archangels, whose names and roles I don’t know.

     I used to own a Dictionary of Angels, which included  mentions from the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions, and beyond. It reminded me that awareness of this spiritual reality is spread over the whole earth. That being so, it is our task to increase our sensitivity to the presence of the angels, and to be attentive to the messages that they bring us.

     I pass over consideration of the fallen angels to another time, perhaps to a sermon in Lent. Their story reveals more of the nature of the angels, but we don’t need to go into it now.

    Dionysius the Areopagite offers a splendid definition of the nature of an angel: “An angel is an image of God, a manifestation of the invisible light, a burnished mirror...receiving...all the beauty of divine goodness, and...kindling in itself, with unalloyed radiance, the goodness of the secret silence.”

    The more we become aware of the angels of light, the more strengthened we are in our capacity for good, and the sharper becomes our ability to detect and resist the snares of the angels of darkness.

       Let us pray. O Prince most glorious, Michael the Archangel, keep us in remembrance, and here and everywhere, always, pray to the Lord that our souls may be saved. Amen.  (29.IX.18 Adv.)