crossbeams

Mark 10 moral issues, riches and power

2009-10-15T23:14:00.000+01:00

Many of the ethical issues that Jesus and his followers faced are no longer live issues: some of the issues the church faces today are not adequately dealt with in scripture. But it is clear that Jesus generally took a broad approach to ethics rather than a legalistic one. He tends towards compassion for the weak and is scathing towards those who exploit the law to gain advantage from it. Thus cleanliness rules which make it even more difficult for the hungry to eat, which make it easier for the rich farmers with good facilities to sell their produce and impossible for the poor to take their goods to market, are bad (whatever the scriptures may or may not say); and glosses on the law which enable people to wriggle out of responsibility to care for their elderly parents by making apparently generous donations to temple or synagogue are corrupt.

It appears that if a son made over to God that part of his possessions with which he would normally be expected to support his parents then he would be exempt from keeping them. However, the gift to God seems sometimes to have been a technicality, the son still receiving income from the property thus ensuring that scribes (who may have received a fee for the service) and sons did well out of it - but poor parents suffered. In some cases the son may have wished to be exonerated from the vow (Korban) but the scribes refused exemption (possibly for the benefit of the temple fund) and so they prevented him from making provision for his parents.

Later in the gospel Jesus similarly shows support both for children and for women: again siding with the weak against the strong. The Mosaic divorce law as practised was particularly hard on women. They had no right to divorce or even leave their husbands but the husband could divorce his wife for all kinds of reason: and whereas any affair the wife might have with another man was viewed as adultery, men could only commit adultery against another man by having an affair with his wife. An affair with a widow or an unmarried woman did not count as adultery. Moreover a woman whose husband had divorced her was left discarded, defenceless and impoverished; in a worse position socially even than widows.

Jesus is not prepared to enter into arcane disputes about what constitutes a serious enough reason for divorce. No excuse will ever be adequate to justify breaking apart those whom God has made one flesh. He recognises, however, that the law instituted by Moses was designed to make provision for human weakness; sometimes marriages will break down; when these breakdowns occur it is painful for all concerned and such breakdowns should never therefore be brought about on mere pretexts. Nor can they ever be justified by pulling Moses and divine law into the situation. God’s law is clear: marriage is intended to be for life and indissoluble. However when breakdowns occur, as they will from time to time, he asserts that women have the same rights as men; he maintains, despite the Jewish understanding of his times, that, when men have affairs with other women or divorce their wives to marry another, they commit adultery against their wives. He recognises that women can divorce their husbands - though in so doing they are committing adultery just as their husbands do if they divorce their wives. In other words if men accept the validity of divorce then that validity applies equally to women. In our culture Jesus’s teaching can seem unbending and harsh: but in a culture where men could treat their wives casually and claim to be keeping the law, his teaching safeguarded women and impressed upon both men and women the sacred nature of a marriage covenant. His firm stand on the sanctity of marriage primarily protected women and children: and his apparent equating of the rights of wives to obtain a divorce with those of their husbands protected them against abuse from their husbands.

In his teaching on children, Jesus similarly raises their status. When parents bring children to Jesus for him to bless them the disciples brush them aside. They have no time for such trivialities. Perhaps they were angry at the lingering superstition and folk religion that surrounded Jesus’s ministry: But Jesus has already placed a child at the very heart of his ministry. It has been pointed out that it later became traditional for parents to take their children to the rabbi for a blessing on the Day of Atonement. Throughout his gospel Mark seems only to deal with children as victims. Here once again they appear as victims of the disciples discrimination against them. Jesus, though, turns everything on its head: it is to these children that the kingdom of God belongs. The next two passages make clear that it is not the rich or those with ambitions to sit at the left and right hands of Jesus who will inherit the kingdom: rather it is those who have nothing. Here the children stand as examples of all little ones. And all people who would enter the kingdom must receive it with the faith of such little ones: those who are dependent and vulnerable; those who allow themselves to be lifted and loved; those obedient to the Father; those, hopefully, not yet vitiated with the power games and desire for status of the adult world. On that simple faith the atonement of the world might depend.

The next story provides the contrast that makes the meaning of the incident with the children stand out in sharp relief. A man comes up to Jesus and asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. Once he has satisfied Jesus that he has kept all the commandments since his youth Jesus tells him to sell his possessions and give the proceeds to the poor. The man is unable to do this and goes away sorrowful. In explaining his treatment of the man to his disciples Jesus points out to his disciples how difficult it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. It is not simply riches that prevent people from entering the kingdom, a whole set of values has to be turned on its head. The prevailing attitude in Jewish theology was that wealth was a sign of God’s favour. Yet this man seems not to have been totally satisfied with this complacent doctrine otherwise he would not have come to Jesus in the first place unless it was purely for reassurance. Those who argue that Jesus, in commanding the man to dispose of his possessions and help the poor was being specific only to this particular case have to wrestle with Jesus’s own explanation to the disciples afterwards. It is apposite to quote RH Grundy commenting on the parallel passage in Matthew: “That Jesus did not command all his followers to sell all their possessions gives comfort only to the kind of people to whom he would issue that command”. For children who own no property, who are totally dependent on their parents for everything they have, entry into the kingdom is easy: for the rich it is even more difficult than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, despite the fact that the man whose sad story gives rise to the teaching is the only one in Mark’s gospel who is marked out as a man Jesus loved.

Indeed this story is typical of many in the gospels in which everything is stacked up to reach a particular conclusion only to arrive at the opposite. There is no mention of the man being rich at the beginning of the story. He kneels before Jesus much as the leper had done. Uniquely in the gospel he identifies Jesus as “good”. He had the right priority for his own life - the desire for a life of eternal worth. He has kept the commandments. And Jesus looked at him with love. Then came the bombshell. As a man of property, he ends up going away devastated.

Ched Myers draws our attention to a number of interesting features within this story. It may well be that the man is trying to flatter Jesus and that explains Jesus’s sharp reply. He obviously not only thought Jesus was good but wanted to be told he was good in return. He had kept the commandments since his youth and wished for commendation. In Jewish tradition only Aaron and Moses had been credited with keeping the whole law. Jesus gives none. It is likely that the long, compassionate look of love Jesus gave him is meant to be in contrast with the man’s keeping of the law. Jesus’s love is people this man’s love is wealth. To begin with Jesus speaks to him as he did to the leper: “get up and go”. It is as if this man needs to be healed in the same way as the leper was. The last word to him, “come, follow me”, is the same call to discipleship as that offered to fisherman at the beginning of the gospel. It is the second and third orders that are exceptional: to sell his possessions and give the proceeds to the poor and so exchange treasure on earth for treasure in heaven. This the only story in Mark’s gospel of discipleship rejection.

For the disciples with their traditional theology the inability of rich people (those patently enjoying God’s blessing) to enter the kingdom makes entry for anyone impossible. However, the lesson of the story of the sower and the seed still stands true. Despite all negative appearances the kingdom will come. And those prepared to let go of all their loves for the love of the kingdom will see their losses amply repaid in blessings of greater value, though those blessings may also come with persecution. For this turning on its head of all materialist life-styles cannot be achieved painlessly. Nevertheless the disciples are not to despair for what looks impossible in human terms is not impossible to God.

Mark 5 21- 43 dealing with daughters

2009-06-22T21:48:00.000+01:00

One device that Mark uses frequently in his gospel is to interrupt one story with another: thus each story shines light on the other. Back in Galilee, one of the leaders of the synagogue is anxious about his daughter who is dying. He asks Jesus to heal her but the journey to the house is made difficult by the crowds pressing in on Jesus and hampering his progress. Meanwhile hidden in the crowds is a woman who has been haemorrhaging for twelve years. By the strict purity laws of the day she should not have been in direct contact with people, but she pushes through and touches Jesus’s coat, believing that even that small touch will heal her. Immediately she experiences healing. Jesus, aware that power has gone out of him, stopped and asked who touched him. The woman steps forward, expecting a rebuke, but nevertheless admitting her guilt. Jesus, far from admonishing her, addresses her personally: "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease." While Jesus is still speaking, messengers come from Jairus’s house; they say,"Your daughter is dead”. That juxtaposition of the word daughter is as powerful as anything in the gospel.

For many people the life of the unclean woman in the crowd with the 12 year haemorrhage, which had been persistently treated by doctors to no avail, was not worth the same as that of the twelve year old daughter of a leader of the synagogue. Yet by the use of the word daughter Jesus immediately and unequivocally puts a value on that woman as she relates to him as directly equivalent to that of the little girl as she relates to her father. Moreover, Jesus could have allowed the woman to have slipped away into the crowd, healed but unnoticed. By drawing attention to her, by singling her out, by making her step forward and by addressing her so publicly, Jesus makes plain to all around, even to Jairus, that he has been touched by a woman who is unclean. The received wisdom was and always has been that clean is made dirty when it touches something contaminated.
“As dirtie hands foule all they touch,
and those things most which are most pure and fine” (George Herbert)
Here Jesus breaks the eternal rule: instead of him being contaminated he feels power flow out of him, the clean one, to purify the unclean. The damage of the fall has been thrown into reverse.

A challenge has now been thrown down to Jairus. If he wants his daughter be restored to life he has to accept Jesus into his home whether clean or not. His faith overcomes his misgivings. Jesus then clears the crowd, including all but three of his disciples and makes his way to Jairus’s house; at the house mourning rituals are already in motion. Again Jesus clears the house of all but the immediate family: this healing is to be an intimate private affair, possibly out of sensitivity to the child. Gently calling her to her feet, Jesus raises her to life and tells them to give her something to eat, and to respect the private way in which she had been raised.

At this point a number of parallels between the two stories become apparent. First of all the twelve years haemorrhaging of the woman is mirrored by the twelve years of the little girl’s age. Possibly the repeated number twelve is intended to be symbolic of the twelve tribes and the twelve disciples, whose faith seems to have been haemorrhaging away. Possibly the mention of the girl’s age in the context of the twelve years’ haemorrhage reminds us that she, too, was about to begin to menstruate, or perhaps is simply there to indicate the appalling suffering of the woman whose needs had been ignored, indeed whose condition had been exploited by unscrupulous doctors, for the whole lifetime of Jairus’s precious daughter.

The ability of an articulate leader of the local community to come and plead with Jesus for healing on behalf oh his daughter is contrasted poignantly with the woman with no-one to plead her case, who has to approach surreptitiously, hiding herself in the crowd and illegally touch him for healing. Only then, when already clean was she able to come out of the crowd and ask formally in the way Jairus had done, though, even then, only in fear and trembling. In the end it was not the nature of the approach, nor the issue of social class or age, gender or status that was significant: only faith.

The professional mourners who made a living out of death are treated scathingly by the story teller. They have the temerity to laugh at Jesus, the Lord of life. Their mocking prepares the way for the mockery of the Golgotha crowds just as surely as the amazement of the family prepares us for the similar amazement of the women as they fled from the open tomb at the very end of the gospel.

crossing to the other side Mark 4 35-41

2009-06-15T21:38:00.000+01:00

It is generally thought that Mark’s gospel was written between 65 & 70 C.E., probably either in Rome or in the north of Palestine. This was a time of crisis for both Christians and Jews both in Rome and in Israel. In Rome Nero’s persecutions were in full swing until he died in 68; during his reign the two great leaders of the church, Peter and Paul, were both martyred. Utter chaos prevailed from 68-69 with 4 emperors taking office in that year. The situation in Palestine was even more fractured: the Jewish revolt was being bloodily put down: in 70, Jerusalem was destroyed, the temple plundered and burnt under the orders of Titus, and eventually the religious and political fabric of the Jewish nation was to be totally dismembered. Whichever provenance we choose for Mark’s gospel, the background against which it was written was stormy and dangerous, particularly for Jews and Jewish sub-sects like the Christian church. At the same time we know from Paul’s letters that the church was rapidly reaching out from its Jewish roots into Gentile communities. This trans-cultural movement in itself caused pain and soul-searching within the more conservative Jewish-Christian groups; this pain could only have been exacerbated by the persecutions in Rome and war in Palestine.

In the early chapters of Mark’s gospel Jesus frequently withdraws to the lake or the hills for prayer, for respite, for thinking-space, or even to coach his team in discipleship. Right at the beginning of his ministry, Jesus establishes a rhythm of frenetic activity and withdrawal. From time to time the order is given to cross to the “other side” of the lake for mission. The gospel stories of journeys to the other side are fraught with danger, difficulty, feelings of alienation and the seeming absence of God: the stories are of headwinds, rough seas, storms and sinking boats. When Jesus is in the boat he seems ineptly unaware and unconcerned: sometimes he is not even in the boat at all.

On the first occasion a huge storm descended upon them in the night: even the experienced fishermen thought the end had come, but Jesus was asleep in the back of the boat. It is not difficult to imagine the first hearers of this gospel listening knowingly to this story. Here they were seeking to take the word of life to other side and yet whenever they did so they encountered trouble: persecutions in Rome and hostility at home. Major figures of the church had been killed including both the radical Paul - the apostle to the Gentiles and the more conservative Peter, with whom Paul had had stand-up rows about circumcision and gentile dinner parties. This going to the other side was indeed a dangerous and lonely business.

The early church had been given courage by the assurance that Jesus would return in triumph. Indeed Jesus’s promise is recorded in the gospel: And he said to them, "Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power." Yet here these leading figures were tasting appalling death while Jesus seemed to be either asleep, or worse, absent. The outcome of the story, however, was that Jesus silenced the storm and then rounded on the disciples for their lack of faith. They then, in their turn, are more amazed than ever at the authority of the man they are following.

On another occasion they found themselves rowing into a headwind that was so strong that they feared they would die of exhaustion before they reached the shore. This time Jesus was not in the boat; he had sent them on ahead while he went into the hills to pray. Then he came to them walking across the water; the result was the same. The wind dropped and they reached their destination safely.

Journeys to the other side are implicit in the work of the kingdom. Indeed there can be no kingdom without them. Invariably they are going to be hard. In the time of the gospels it meant engaging with the Gentile population on the other side of the lake. In our day they may mean crossing equally deep cultural divides: engaging with youth culture, the homeless, those living in tower blocks and neglected housing estates, people of different colour, different religion, crossing into the world of commerce or industry, or entering into politics. While it may seem on the whole easier to keep to what we know, to be settled within the small circle of our own fellowship, the call is always going to be to take the risk and go to the other side whatever that might mean to us in our situation. Obeying it will undoubtedly lead to difficulty, mistakes, the feeling that we are up against it, sometimes even the sense of the absence of God. It will frequently seem that the hostile elements have the advantage over us. Yet if we are called to do this work then it will not fail. Lack of faith is a greater enemy than the forces ranged against us: for lack of faith may cause us to sink untraced into the sea, though even then, despite appearances, the Lord is close by to save.

In understanding the power of these stories it is helpful to know something of the immense fear and respect Jews had for the sea. They left love of the sea to their neighbours; in earlier times, the Philistines, more recently the Phoenicians and Greeks. They took delight in a God who had closed the sea in behind fixed boundaries. The sea was the unstable and untameable domain of Leviathan; a place of storms and unpredictability. Sometimes that capriciousness worked in their favour as when the waters of the Red Sea came tumbling back and engulfed the pursuing Egyptians. But a huge bronze representation of the sea was kept in the temple as a sign that even those things over which man had no control lay within the reach of God. Job cries out, “Am I like the sea that you have to set a guard over me?” When prophets like Isaiah wanted to proclaim the cosmic breadth of God’s salvation it was to extend it to coast-lands and islands. And here was Jesus able to sleep in the height of a storm at sea, while
They mounted up to heaven, they went down to the depths;
their courage melted away in their calamity;
they reeled and staggered like drunkards,
and were at their wits' end.
Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble,
and he brought them out from their distress;
he made the storm be still,
and the waves of the sea were hushed.
Then they were glad because they had quiet,
and he brought them to their desired haven.

On another occasion, even more powerfully, he was able to stride across its unstable waters with all the security and control of one walking up a country path. The Jesus who was at peace in a wilderness of wild beasts, is equally at peace in the midst of a stormy sea. Clearly there were not any no go areas for him. It seems likely that it was to point up such theological points as these that Mark referred not to the Lake of Galilee, its usual title, but the Sea.

These stories of crossing to the other side, however, show the disciples in a far less favourable light. Jesus had failed to find faith in the religious establishment and had only just chosen this group to be a new symbolic Israel through whom he could work. He had begun to instruct them in the secrets of the kingdom and now put them to their first test. How would they manage without him? They had panicked and shown themselves to be no more full of faith than his own family: they had rounded on him, accused him of not caring, lacking compassion and being lazy. Above all they demonstrated that they were ultimately just as prone to despair, to give up, to let the sea of evil overwhelm them as the religious establishment had been. This failure at the first test was sadly to be replicated several more times before those shocking last hours when all forsook Jesus and fled, the last of them disappearing naked into the night losing his last vestige of respectability and dignity in the melee of the Jerusalem streets on the night when he was betrayed.

mustard seed Mark 4 31,

2009-06-13T03:02:00.001+01:00

The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed........

Jesus has much to say about seeds. They are to be scattered freely, even wastefully, not held on to grimly; they are to be allowed to germinate in their own time; they do their work most effectively when they are hidden in the dark fertile soil rather than exposed to scrutiny. Though small, insignificant and apparently shrivelled and dead they carry within themselves latent energy that, in the right conditions, brings forth a miraculous harvest. They are quite capable of producing a harvest even when enemy forces attempt to displace them. They are also reliable and true to type: if wheat is sown wheat is reaped: if weeds are sown then only weeds grow.

With seed size does not matter: authenticity is more important. So the kingdom of God is not about making a big impression. The world has seen its empires come and go: they are lampooned in the prophecies of Daniel (4. 20ff) and Ezekiel (17. 24). They have dominated the world like cedars but the kingdom of God is not like that: its energy is concealed in the humble mustard seed of faith. It will displace the ostentatious mountains of empire and manipulative religion (Matthew 17. 20): and will cast the luxuriant mulberry with its blood-red fruit into the sea of oblivion. (Luke 17. 6)

The mustard seed, when planted, becomes a shrub capable of providing shelter even to birds, which, in the parable of the sower, are the enemies of the seed. But, of course, although the birds of the air swoop down and eat the seed, in turn they spread the seeds through their droppings. The kingdom of God provides shelter for all kinds of people and projects. There are times when some of these even seem hostile - devouring faith. But in the work of the kingdom even the enemies of good turn out to be the allies of the gospel: like the birds nesting alarmingly in the shadows of its branches and pecking away at the seeds even while the bush is still in flower, they become inadvertent spreaders of the seed, providing new growth points in unlikely locations.

In mission we are to be openhanded. Sometimes we feel embarrassed that the projects we can see with the eye of faith, look insignificant in seed and unspectacular in fulfilment. Like the mustard plant. Often the growth of the plants is slow and unspectacular. Sometimes even when they flourish they bring with them alarming side effects which disappoint us. But God sees more than we can imagine: he prizes that which we often disdain. The mustard plant in his eyes is more important than the cedar. He puts his trust in our minuscule faith. To fulfil his dream he hands his kingdom over to us like seed; not for us to cling to and keep within our tight fists, but for us to sow, in promising and unpromising locations.

Through faithfulness, integrity, openhandedness and patience the kingdom of heaven comes with simple grace and humble maturity, not to dominate or to overpower but to provide shelter and peace for all even its enemies. He has entrusted the kingdom to us. Dare we let him down?

Mark 1 40-45 touching a leper

2009-02-09T09:06:00.001Z

There were times when Jesus, himself, cried out in anguished despair at the state of the world he had come into. The sheer weight of it appalled him and angered him. In the next healing story we find Jesus confronted by a man suffering from a virulent skin disease which alienated him from society. In this meeting we read that Jesus was angry and as he sent him away he was ‘snorting with indignation’. When a man came to him with an epileptic child Jesus was so outraged at the incapability of either the ‘teachers of the law’ or his own disciples to do anything about it that he launched out “You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you?” In some ways the boy with the demon that makes him both deaf and speechless is symbolic of the religious world to which Jesus came. The disciples ask him how he cast out this demon. Jesus replies: "This kind can come out only through prayer." The religious establishment seems both so complacently accepting and at the same time so utterly despairing that it has come to accept the world for what it is and has either totally lost all hope of a Kingdom of God or pushed it so far into the future that it is distant and irrelevant. Thus the religious establishment - both disciples and scribes alike - have become the means by which the world continues to suffer without any sign of justice because they have ceased to be the channels of God‘s grace and love and the means of his compassion. Similarly, in the story of the man with the skin disease, the way the Torah (law) was interpreted by the priests compelling a man to live as a leper an outcast within a chosen people, with no hope of rehabilitation, left Jesus snorting with rage. The man clearly had already been to the priest for a declaration that he was clean for Jesus sent him back. Jesus trumped the authority of the priest by touching the man, declaring him clean and sent him back to make the sacrifices only a clean man could make, thus ‘witnessing against the system’. But the failure of the man to comply with the law, of course, and instead tell the whole town that Jesus had touched him, marked Jesus out as potentially unclean too. Hence his need to retreat from that area.

the man of authority Mark 1 21-28

2009-01-26T13:54:00.001Z

It is the Sabbath. Jesus goes into the synagogue and begins teaching. His words are compelling: there is an authority none of them have ever encountered before. It immediately arouses opposition: a man cries out, “Why have you come here to mess with us?” Here in the cosy, contented world of the religious clique, cushioned in their traditional cult, glossing their scriptures, and easing their ills with properly turned prayers, the man from the wilderness seems to speak from a deeper well of wisdom and a more authentic spirituality threatening their position as religious leaders in the community. “Have you come to destroy us?” The voice is clearly one Jesus had identified in wilderness as belonging to the great antagonist who opposes everything God and his kingdom stand for. And here it speaks out, not in some obviously evil, diabolic form but in an angry elder of the synagogue, who, in his outrage, recognises in the authority of Jesus, a prophet, a Holy One of God, who will disturb the already fragile, delicately balanced peace in Galilee on which he and his friends depend for their continuing power and prosperity. Jesus with awesome clarity calls the demon for who he is and drives him out. A scribe is exposed as an enemy of God. Battle is joined.

angels and archangels Luke 1 & 2 1-20

2008-12-24T22:14:00.005Z

Luke's story begins not in the deserts of Trans-Jordan, nor in the hill towns of Galilee, not even in Bethlehem, but in the courts of the temple in Jerusalem. The contrast with Mark, whose gospel remains the core of Luke's narrative, could hardly be greater. Whereas Mark plunges us straight into the rough, breathless conflicts of Jesus=s ministry, Luke opens with a leisurely, luminous prelude, soaked in the language, style and culture of the Greek version of Hebrew scripture, punctuated with praise and prayer: a story of priests, prophets and angels, miraculous births and heavenly visitations all interwoven into a narrative, at once elegant and artful.

At the outset of Luke's gospel Israel is represented by the old, tired, disappointed but obedient and faithful, priestly couple, Zechariah and Elizabeth. They echo the grieving faithfulness of Hannah whose son Samuel was to be the fore-runner of the great king David, they appear as a living embodiment of the childless Zion of Isaiah=s prophecy, indeed Zechariah receives his calling from an angel in the holy of holies, not altogether unlike the epiphany granted to Isaiah himself. Their son, miraculously conceived, was like the mighty Samson to be brought up a prophet from his mother's womb, kept holy for the Lord. Like Elijah he would go forth with spirit and power, preparing his people to meet their Lord.

However, though he is faithful and good, Zechariah, like Israel, is unbelieving. The bitter way in which Mark, Matthew and indeed John deal with the refusal of the religious authorities to accept Jesus as Messiah gives way in Luke to a poignant acceptance: the elder brother in the story of the loving father breaks his father's heart by his refusal to come into the party, but all that the father has is his: the priest and Levite miss the point of their calling and pass by on the other side, leaving a Samaritan to show what it is to love your neighbour, but they receive no judgment from Jesus; Jesus stands and weeps over Jerusalem: how many times he would have loved to gather it up like chicks under a mother hen's wing, but they would not be gathered. Jesus's problem with Israel is not cast in the language of a struggle with Satan, so much as in that of exasperation with a goodness and faithfulness that had become so defensive that it could not open itself to the wonder of salvation.

The man of prayer Zechariah had become so used to praying to what seemed an empty heaven that he could not believe it when his prayer was answered. In that he was not unlike those who met for prayer in John Mark's mother's house who could not believe Rhoda, the servant, who told them that the imprisoned Peter had escaped and was knocking on their door. The priest who did not believe in prayer was thus unable to bless the people. Right at the end of the gospel, Jesus, the man of prayer stood and blessed his disciples before going to glory. They then returned to the temple where Luke's story had begun and were there within its courts continually praising God.

As often in Luke it is the women who teach the men a lesson. The old man Zechariah, the temple priest whose job it was to recognise the voice of God and interpret it to the people is contrasted sharply with Mary, the young virgin in the Galilee town of Nazareth. They both were visited by the angel Gabriel. On the face of it we would expect the priest to know how to react: he was the professional go-between with God: he witnessed the visit in the temple, the purpose-built place for encounters with God. The news he had received was that for which he had been praying: therefore he should have believed it. By contrast Mary was not expecting any encounter with God or an angel: the news which she received was not something for which she had been hoping. Indeed if we are right in assuming that Mary was engaged to Joseph because she was not yet ready for marriage then the news would have been devastating for such a young girl. As we saw when looking at Matthew's account it was not unusual for girls to be promised to men in marriage at the age of 12 and for the marriage to become effective at puberty. When Mary says that she has not had no knowledge of a man, the simple meaning is that she had not had sexual intercourse with a man, but it could well mean that she was not yet ready for such a relationship and was not yet ready to bear a child, therefore it would be impossible. The angel's reply, drawing attention to her cousin Elizabeth's surprising pregnancy makes more sense if this is the context: especially the words "nothing is impossible with God". The angel's message also gave a good deal of information about the baby to be born: his name, Jesus was a popular name of the time - the Greek for Joshua. That much is unremarkable. But then the angel spelt out a number of details that might have made Mary shudder. She lived in Galilee, a hotbed of zealot revolt against the Romans. The angel's pronouncement dripped with the promise of Messiah. To a young girl in Galilee that could only mean one thing, rebellion and therefore trouble. Yet Mary unlike Zechariah, accepts her calling. For many it would have been one favour from God too many, but Mary humbly and graciously accepts her gift. On Mary's acceptance the angel immediately left her. Few words are more devastating in the gospel than these. At the moment when she most needed support she is left alone.

But the angel had left a clue as to where she might find it. So Mary goes south to the hill country above Jerusalem to meet her cousin Elizabeth. As soon as Elizabeth greets her the baby in Elizabeth=s womb leaps for joy, and Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit. Yet another woman responds appropriately to the latent salvation of God.

Luke's gospel is the first part of a two volume work. And in some ways the structures of the two parts are similar. The Acts of the Apostles and the gospel both celebrate the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is conceived through the power of the Holy Spirit: Now Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit. This enables her to be the first person to recognise Mary's unborn child as her Lord. Truly it had been the embryonic John, filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb who had first recognised his Lord: Elizabeth caught the recognition and the joy from him, and Mary caught it from her. That joy is to be the next theme of the gospel. It bubbles up immediately in the first of a whole series of songs.

Mary's song is loosely based on that of Hannah, but bristles with quotations and allusions to other Old Testament songs. The essential theme is the transforming power of God to shake and change society: the hungry are fed, the rich are stripped of their wealth, the poor are raised, the powerful laid low and the weak empowered, the arrogant are humiliated and the humble given responsibility and status: in short, God's purposes revealed to Abraham in his covenant are about to be made good: the day of salvation has arrived. This song sets the tone of the gospel. Jesus reiterates many of its sentiments in his manifesto sermon in which he announced the year of jubilee at Nazareth at the beginning of his ministry. At key moments in stories unique to Luke's account we see these prophecies coming to life before our eyes: a prostitute praised and a pharisee humbled at a dinner party, the tax collector Zacchaeus receiving Jesus into his house and making restoration to the poor, a thief being awarded paradise.

Elizabeth's baby is born. The neighbours begin to catch the joy. Zechariah names the baby, John, meaning the Lord is gracious, (as commanded by the angel). He is then liberated to praise and spread the news of the gracious, unlimited love of God. And so he sings his song.

In some ways this song takes Mary's a stage further: the transforming power of God is not only there to change the order in society, but to be totally liberating in a spiritual sense too. It is a song of freedom: freedom from oppression, freedom from fear, freedom from guilt, and freedom from darkness. It is a song not just of thanksgiving but of prophetic vision. Like Mary's it also echoes Old Testament songs but reaches out beyond them in faith. It is rich in allusion: for example, the horn of salvation and the rising day-star (or shooting stem). The notion of the horn of salvation became ultimately linked to the myth of the unicorn through Psalm 92. 10 and the vision of Daniel in Daniel 8. 5-7. Hence all those magnificent medieval tapestries which adorn the Cluny museum in Paris and the Cloisters in New York. Whether the horn is meant to signify the powerful, piercing, battle hardened triumph of God's intervening power in the conflict against evil like a mighty, mythical, horned creature winning the day, or whether it refers to the use of a horn for anointing with the oil of saving power, we can take our pick. Most commentators go for the former. The second allusion of the rising sun (or day-star) is also ambiguous, but the ambiguity is more easily resolved. The words could mean either rising star or sprouting shoot. The words are used in both senses in Messianic passages in the Greek Old Testament. However there is such a strong sense of light in the rest of the song that the former must hold here - though it may well be that the author would like us to hold the other reference in our minds, too. In particular, the prophecy of Malachi seems to have a powerful influence, mentioning not just day-star, but also the root and branch. He has already drawn attention to "the messenger to clear the way", so that the "Lord will suddenly come to his Temple". Soon "the calves will come leaping out of the stalls", which at once links to the image of John leaping within his mother=s womb and the birth of Jesus who was laid in a manger. The presentation of the infant Jesus in the temple and his tarrying in the temple at the significant age of twelve, both only mentioned in Luke, where he is recognised by prophets, priests and doctors of the law alike with astonishment, are clearly Luke's way of pointing to the fulfilment of Malachi's prophecy. Then in masterly way as Jesus's body is taken down from the cross in darkness and is laid in the tomb in royal splendour by Joseph of Arimathaea the day-star appears again to herald a new day, although it was approaching evening. For in the blooded victory of the cross, through the anticipated dawn of resurrection, the Day of the Lord was shown to be a day of Light and Salvation to end the gloom of death and despair. The tomb has become a place of healing and forgiveness, a place of peace from which the Sun of righteousness will rise with healing in his rays.

So in his song with its subtle evocation of the prophecies of Malachi, Zechariah prepares us for Luke's version of salvation history. At its core is the forgiveness of sins. That is the key to peace. It is another fundamental theme of Luke's gospel and again it drives us forward to Jesus's sublime forgiveness of his killers as he hangs upon the cross: a word once again unique to this gospel.

After the sublime beauty of Zechariah's prophetic song, the account of the birth of Jesus seems both brief and prosaic. The emperor issues an order in the time when Quirinius was governor of Syria that all the world should be registered for taxation purposes. Luke might simply be putting down a datemark on the event to remind all his readers that despite the luminous glow of all that has gone before and the intervention of angels and the opening of heavens and the mystery of miracle births we are dealing not with myth or fanciful tales of the gods, but with real people part of a real world, subject to politics and tax. He might also have been drawing attention to the fact that God uses even heathen emperors like the divine Augustus within his plans for salvation, just as he had used Cyrus. Unfortunately the reference to the census has obscured rather than cast light on the date of Jesus's birth. The first census known to have been held by Augustus during the governorship of Quirinius was in 6CE (according to Josephus): it is probably the one Luke alludes to himself in Acts which caused a rebellion, led by Judas the Galilean. However, Luke has already told us that these things happened when Herod was king of Judaea, which, of course agrees with Matthew. Herod died in 4BCE. The easiest explanation for this disparity is that the census was held in stages over a period of time or that the tax based on the census was introduced in 6CE and that caused the rebellion. But Josephus seems quite explicit that this census did not take place until after Herod's death when Judaea was added to the province of Syria. Alternatively there may have been an earlier census which failed because of unrest or administrative chaos following Herod=s death and it had to be done again by Quirinius later. But that is to enter the field of speculation.

The story that follows has been so embellished by legend and art that it comes as a bit of shock to read it as it is: there is no donkey, no ox, not even a stable. There is certainly no inn-keeper and probably not even an inn. The word usually translated "inn" is by no means the usual one, and not the one used for the inn in the story of the good Samaritan. The best translation is probably "billets", but it is the same as the word used for the "upper room" where the last supper was held. It would seem highly unlikely that Joseph had to stay in an inn since the reason for him having to go to Bethlehem was that this was where he was born. More likely he and Mary were accommodated within the family home but pressure of space forced them to use part of the house normally used by the animals. The animals' food box, probably attached to a wall would have made an acceptable make-shift crib. Nor is it mentioned in the text that Mary arrived only just in time to give birth: it simply says that while they were there Jesus was born. All babies, well-cared for and loved, would have been wrapped in strips of cloth just as Jesus was. The birth scene in this drama is unremarkable and plain.

Nothing in these simple verses prepares us for what happens next. Shepherds are watching their flocks by night. Of course there had once been a Bethlehem shepherd who had been visited by Samuel and crowned king. But now shepherds were generally poorly regarded. Their work tended to make them unclean. They wandered from place to place and like all itinerants were traditionally distrusted. There were suggestions that some were terrorists. Their presence in the fields stands in sharp contrast to the law abiding Joseph who has gone to Bethlehem on the emperor's orders to be taxed. Yet it is not to Mary or even Joseph that the angelic host appears with all the glory of God. It is to shepherds. When it comes to understanding the nature of her child's mission it is going to be in the testimony of these unreliable shepherds that Mary is going to have to put her trust. This introduces another theme of the two volume work: the importance of witnesses. As Jesus says to his disciples referring to the unbelief of Capernaum, "Anyone who rejects you, rejects me, and anyone who rejects me rejects the one who sent me."

The angel reintroduces the theme of joy that has shone through the whole story so far. A joy not just for them nor the people immediately involved in the story nor even just for Israel: this joy was to be for the whole world. The angel's message bristles with some of Luke's favourite words: I bring good news, joy, today, Saviour, Lord. The Day has come. In the deep darkness of night the day-star announced by Zechariah has been born; in the city of David, a Saviour has come to be Christ (Messiah) and Lord. But the signs are small: already it is made clear that this Lord is not framed in the usual trappings of power. The sign of power of God is not be found in a palace nor yet even in the angelic skies: the sign of the most extraordinary is to be discovered by disreputable shepherds in the ordinary simplicity of a baby in a nappy lying in a makeshift cot. The skies open to reveal a celestial party; the heavenly party-song is taken up by the triumphant crowds on earth when Jesus enters Jerusalem, a climactic point of his pilgrimage of salvation. The earth is to be a place of peace; it is mysteriously both a prerequisite and a consequence of the revealing of the glory of God. The absence of peace on earth confounds even the peace of heaven. Jesus's mission is to bring peace on earth that alone can restore full glory to God in heaven. Yet in the coming of Christ already that glory is being revealed and perfected.

The angels leave the scene. The shepherds discuss what they have seen: but not for long. With haste they go to Bethlehem and witness what the angel told them. And they were welcomed. They told their story and all were astonished. But Mary went further than all the others. She treasured their witness and pondered it in her heart. Many will respond with amazement to the spectacular signs of God's salvation, but the requirement is to go beyond astonishment, accept it and embrace it: to stay with it long term. That is a weighty matter - a thing to be valued and pondered. The shepherds return, their work of evangelism done: they are merely the first of many in the gospel to return from an encounter with Jesus glorifying and praising God. Glory to God in the highest had become a catchy tune.

Mark 1 1-13 the man in the wilderness

2008-12-03T22:42:00.000Z

We first meet Jesus in the wilderness. It is in the wilderness that all routes to God begin. Some will have stumbled into the wilderness by mistake, others will have always been there but many will have had to make a conscious effort to leave the walled, secure, cultivated, self-made order of home with its tidiness or its weeds, its hard toil or its reclined elegance. They will have ventured in faith beyond the familiar into the unknown. Some may have gone out beyond protected ground into a place of risk for adventure. Others may be motivated by boredom or a feeling of imprisonment within a culture, or a sense that the self-made and self limiting enclosure of the garden can never bring life in all its fulness. Out there in the trackless wilderness where signposts are simply hints in the sand, and doubts the likely mirages of faith, there is no choice but to follow where Jesus leads. The spiritual food and drink needed to keep alive will be different from that on which we have become dependent. Living outside the camp will be challenging to traditional thought processes. Living there calls for a radical change of direction, an abandonment of past life-style, and a pilgrimage of uncertain direction, for God tends to be an elusive destination.

At first encounter it hardly seems to be good news at all. But the Bible assures us that it is indeed gospel that we hear in that wilderness. It was beyond the civilised city of Ur that Abraham encountered promise. It was in the fugitive’s wilderness of remorse, family breakdown, and shattered trust that Jacob saw heaven opened. It was in the wilderness of Sinai, far from the fleshpots of the Pharaoh’s palace of his upbringing, that Moses met his God and knew him by name for the first time. It was again in that same wilderness that he was caught up in Yahweh’s supreme revelation to his own people; the word of law and covenant that still holds Israel. The clinching indication that this people was to going to move from wilderness to a land was revealed when the mighty walls came tumbling down at Jericho: a sign that however high and strong man builds, wilderness is always ready to break in on his protected plot. It was in the wilderness of captivity that the children of Israel had to learn new songs, not fixed in the foursquare harmonies of Zion, but psalms of a pilgrim people whose temples, carved out of the hardness of their hearts, would never replace lives of integrity beaten out in the blood-pumping rhythms of the flesh-soft heart of love. For they would always be a people whose identity had been formed in the wilderness: living in tents, feeding on manna from day to day, drinking from fountains opened out of rocks along the way; a people whose God was always on the move, the signs of his presence carried in a box, a day’s journey ahead of them, and even when resting with them kept in a tent as s sign of their readiness to move.

But the people to whom Jesus came had forgotten all that. They lived at a time when nations were identified not by wilderness pilgrimage but by their buildings. Forums and temples, palaces, aqueducts, walls and theatres were named for Emperors and kings. Herod the Great, Augustus’ vassal king in Jerusalem, had learnt the lessons of his times. His eternal life would be bought at the price of projects: a signature palace at Massada, an aqueduct, towers and harbours, but above all a massive temple to his God in Jerusalem. Jesus had lived and worked as a builder. Just a few miles from his home in Nazareth a new city was rising in the hills with theatres, baths and temples. Surely this was good news to Galileans, especially contract builders like Jesus. Yet this new city, Sephoris, with all its sophistication and state of the art urban living is the one major place in Israel we never encounter in the books of good news. And Herod’s mightiest and most prestigious project, the new temple in Jerusalem is treated with disdain by the man we first encounter in the wilderness.

In practice, the temple discriminated against the poor and the alien: the oppressive tax regime to pay for it imposed on poor, already oppressed, people, financial burdens they could not bear and seemed to imply that forgiveness depended on an ability to pay. The clear implication was that God could be impressed by prestige projects, that national identity was located less in the covenant written upon the heart, than in stones piled up in specious splendour. The planning, building and administration of such an ornate temple created a privileged class in Jerusalem totally out of touch not only with ordinary people, but with the simple faith God required of them; a self-serving ruling class with delusions of grandeur but no less Pilate’s puppets, who hypocritically had copied Roman temple culture while parading their exclusive Jewish identity.

Jesus came to bring freedom from that kind of bondage. A lame man is lowered through the roof into his presence. Jesus forgives him his sins: no temple sacrifice is required. Only faith. It is out in an open desert place that Jesus feeds 5000 men with two fish and five loaves. He walks across the wilderness of a stormy sea, and out among the tombs of Gentile badlands, on the wrong side of the lake, he brings sanity and peace to a man whose mind is a wilderness more tangled even than the wildness of the sea in a terrifying storm. A woman with a haemorrhage, banished from polite society, banned from synagogue let alone temple, driven into a wilderness of fear and despair for 12 years, touches him and is welcomed as his daughter, and is then sent on in peace. People isolated in deafness or in blindness, a leper, those who were branded as outcasts, tax collectors and sinners, found Jesus in the wilderness of their rejection, and were liberated by him from all that bound them, not least the temple culture superimposed upon them that could offer them no release but instead enslaved them within systems in which they could only be exploited and never receive healing.

So the people of Jerusalem went out: leaving the temple, going out beyond the authority of the priests, crossing even the boundaries of the promised land, to encounter John, a wild, untamed man of the wilderness on a Ray Mears diet: to be washed by him, not in the blessed and holy water of the temple courts, but in the historic waters of the Jordan, whose stream their forefathers had mysteriously and miraculously crossed in the dry; and there renounced the city and all its ways. Turning to new wilderness ways of finding God, they are pointed to one on whom the favour of God ostensibly falls. And Jesus, the righteous one, filled with the Spirit of God himself, rising out of the waters turns not to the city crowned with its magnificent House of God but to the wilderness peopled only by beasts and angels where the pure in heart can see God, and recognise Satan for who he is and there to find the authentic voice of God within his heart.

2008-11-04T17:56:00.001Z

Matthew 22. 1 – 23, 18. 23 – 35 Kings, citizens and slaves

2008-09-30T14:19:00.000+01:00

The story of the marriage feast exists in three different versions. Most comparisons between them come to the conclusion that Luke’s version is most likely to be nearest to that which Jesus told, and Matthew’s the furthest removed. Certainly Luke’s version fits more easily into salvation history: the excuses offered by the guests make their failure to attend more culpable: the host’s behaviour in inviting the outcasts is more generous and less compulsive, and there is no weeping and gnashing of teeth at the end.

However, even for Matthew’s version, the standard interpretation goes something like this: God, the king, invites people to the wedding of his Son, but the honoured guests (the scribes and Pharisees and temple leaders and presidents of the synagogue) refuse the invitation. In fact, not only do they refuse the invitation but they murder his servants, (the prophets). Consequently the temple in Jerusalem is razed to the ground as God’s punishment on them. When those who do turn up come into the feast the king notices one of the guests improperly dressed. This is interpreted as insubordination and he is cast out into weeping and gnashing of teeth. The story goes that Revd Ian Paisley was thundering forth on this text until a little old lady near the pulpit interrupted and says to him, "That's all very well, Reverend, but what about those of us who don't have any teeth left to gnash?!" Without pausing in his stride Paisley comes back with, "Mother, have no fear! Teeth will be provided!" (Brian McGowan).

Thus as Marianne Blickenstaff shows Matthew transforms a wedding reception into a frightening hall of judgment: “While Luke's version of the parable ends with the replacement of the unworthy guests, Matthew's redaction continues his focus on judgment to include even the newly invited company. When the king discovers a guest not wearing a wedding garment, he commands that the unfortunate man be bound hand and foot and expelled "into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth" (22:13). The king's abrupt action shocks the reader into realizing that those who manage to gain entrance to the feast are not guaranteed a place at the table, and that the Bridegroom's fictive family is perhaps not as all-inclusive as it seemed. Though one can never cease to be a biological relation, even if disinherited, one can be expelled from this new adoptive family and be forced to remain in the "outer darkness," the opposite of the joyful wedding banquet, a place where the Bridegroom is never present.
That a joyful wedding feast can turn to sorrow in the rhetoric of apocalyptic judgment is a theme also voiced by the prophets: "I will bring an end to the sound of mirth and gladness; the voice of the bride and bridegroom in the cities of Judah…" (Jer. 7:34; cf. 16:9; 25:10); and "Let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her canopy" (Joel 2:16). Like the prophets, Matthew warns that there is a nebulous boundary between joy and sorrow in the liminal stage between waiting for the eschatological banquet and its fulfillment, between promise and final consummation, between being "out" and being "in." In this liminal stage, the members of the fictive family come to understand that their place at the banquet is not guaranteed, and that even their adoption into the Bridegroom's family does not assure an escape from violence in the final judgment.

But what if the Greek at the beginning of the parable is read in a totally different way: it literally reads “the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man, the king……” Let us look at the story without the preconception that the king stands for God. A king sends out a summons to those who had been invited informing them that everything is now ready and he expects them to be there at the wedding of his son. For some reason they seem reluctant to come. Who would turn down and invitation to a royal wedding? He sends out more slaves instructing them to summon the guests to the wedding. Most of them just ignored the slaves and went about their ordinary business trying to pretend they had not been invited. Others beat up the slaves and some of the slaves were killed. Why should the invited ones behave in this way? The king was enraged and sent out troops with instructions to kill the murderers and burn down their city. The slaves are then commanded to go into the streets and make sure that there are guests for the wedding to prevent the king losing face. So they gathered in good and bad alike – anyone would do – to make sure that the king was not embarrassed by having no guests for the marriage of his son. But when the king came in he saw one guest improperly dressed. He interrogates him, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?” The man is speechless. The slaves throw him out of the party into the bitterness of the night.

Perhaps that last action explains why people did not want to come to the wedding in the first place. Does this king remind us of God or Caesar? Jesus or Herod? We have already heard an account of Herod’s birthday party which ends up with the head of a man who dressed in camel’s skin presented on a platter to the queen. Ancient literature is bulging with stories of dinner parties that were the sort of events from which sensible people tried to excuse themselves.

The sequence of emperors from the death of Augustine until the death of Nero was marked by a decadence that was, even its own time, regarded as deeply shocking Already Matthew has given us a shocking portrait of a king: a king with colossal resources who apparently governed not only through violent force but with a shocking disregard for budgetary control presumably keeping the goodwill of his civil servants by allowing them to cream off millions from the exchequer. We are introduced to one of them: this man owes 10,000 talents: the talent was worth 10,000 denarii. A denarius was a day’s pay. So the poor man owed 10,000 x 10,000 days’ pay: or 10 million days’ pay. Now if we say that the average working life is 50 years that adds up to 15.000 days. In modern money, the debt is about £4 billion. It beggars belief how any king could be so incompetent as to have one of his managers owing quite so much, or on what the manager could have spent so much money.

Of course the figure 10,000 x 10,000 was just the Jewish way of saying the largest number you could think of. Even so, on the day of reckoning, the poor debtor had no hope: it was all very well the king saying I’ll sell you, your wife, your children and all your possessions: the average selling price for a slave was about 100 denarii: sometimes a slave could just fetch 200: so allowing 100denarii for him and his wife and his children he would only be able to pay off 0.0001% of the debt! Even if he had eight children.

Even more implausible is the manager’s promise to work off the debt! Thus the king might as well let the man off: in terms of the debt any other action would amount to punishment for the sake of it. So filled with compassion for a man in such a state he did so.

On the way home from his encounter with the king the manager met a client who owed him 100 denarii -100 days’ pay - or – the price of his own head as a slave. This was a sum that could realistically be raised. When the client said “Be patient and I will repay you” he meant it. The action of the manager was gratuitous and stupid: he clamped his client in prison thus depriving the him not only of the means of work to pay back the debt but also of feeding his family. Putting him in prison until he should pay was sheer vindictiveness.

Now colleagues of both men enter into the story: they are outraged with the manager who has slung their workmate into prison: they report the matter to the king who calls in the manager and reinstates the debt he had cancelled. The man is to be tortured until he should pay up: which of course meant for eternity since there was no means of him ever paying.

Since it was illegal under Jewish law for a man to sell his wife into slavery, and there was no institution of slavery for debt in Israel, and torture was illegal under Jewish Iaw this story would ring true in Jewish ears primarily in a Roman context. Such behaviour towards those sub-governors behind with the tax was common in the Roman Empire: the sub-governor was therefore likely to take a harsh line towards those behind with their tax since he would be held responsible by the king for it personally. “There was a liquidity crisis in 33CE in which interest rates rose, loans were called in and land prices collapsed. Tiberius loaned a substantial sum of money to landowners without interest for three years to restore liquidity.”

The parable, then, at its face value is all about accounts, ledgers, debts and credit. It is also about tax, duties, relationships between governor and governed. The parable ends with the manager languishing under the eternal torture of his king. This proud, hard hearted manager discovers his master to be the sort of king who reinstates debts that once have been wiped off the slate. This is a king who gives way to popular pressure in his treatment of an unpopular manager. He is untrustworthy. Obviously this king is no more meant to be like God than the unrighteous judge in Luke 18.

The point is that even tyrannical and venal Roman kings expected to find some compassion in their managers and could sometimes rise to the occasion and show mercy themselves. How much more will a merciful God who has released human beings of such colossal debts expect those made in his image to be forgiving in the way he is. But such forgiveness requires a total change of heart. That change of heart can only be effected when a love relationship takes over from a contractual relationship in our attitudes not only to God but our fellow human beings. Since God breaks the contract by giving his forgiveness that contractual way of looking at the world is no longer valid. Law is trumped by grace. Thus forgiveness is dependent of the one forgiven as well as on the one who forgives. Like love it is a two way process. Forgiveness has to be fully accepted to be effective, it is possible to remain unforgiven irrespective of the attitude of the wronged person. The manager in the story never knew himself to be relieved of debt – never experienced the release of his burden and so continued to behave in a mean-minded way. Far from liberating him to be a different person - he felt humiliated and thus determined to exercise the shreds of power he had left over the other poor unfortunate. Sometimes forgiveness only doubles the debt. It humiliates the debtor even more. He still wanted to pay the debt off. If we are unable to be forgiving ourselves then we are likely to be those who will never in the bottom of our heart be able to believe that we are forgiven: we therefore will live with our debts - tortured by them - unable to pay them off - burdened by the guilt for eternity. Only those who have had their heart of stone replaced by a heart of flesh can know what it is to be loved and forgiven.

So we return to the other royal parable. If the king in the story of the debtors can easily be equated with Tiberius, so can the king in this parable. How did the listeners interpret this? They discovered that Jesus “did not regard people with partiality”. In other words they interpreted his parable as being subversive to the Romans. Of course at no point had Jesus made it clear enough that he was talking about Caesar ‘s corrupt banquets and political wedding feasts for him to be indicted. So they sought to trap him with questions about Roman taxation, and force his him to come out openly as a dissident.

The quotation that Matthew appends to the parable simply thickens the fog. Who were called and who chosen? The chosen were surely those sent the named invitations – they after all were those whose names were on the guest list. They were chosen. Nothing in the text suggests that they were many. The many would appear to be those who were dragooned into coming. The other person to be chosen was the man thrown out into weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Assume for one moment you were sitting next to him and witnessed his embarrassment at the hands of the king and then saw the slaves bodily throw him out into the abyss. What if he were your friend, your father, your son, your husband? Would you be able to eat your canapés with joy after that? John the Baptist had been beheaded for refusing to refrain from criticizing Herod’s marriage to Herodias. At a banquet of sycophants he remained obstinately non-conformist. He had refused to dance to the music of the pipes. But then so had Jesus.
Dramatically Marianne Blickenstaff has suggested that the silent one who is cast out represented Jesus himself. Jesus, enigmatically taking upon himself the title of Son of Man, resolutely refused to wear a garment thrust upon him by either his opponents or his supporters. The cardboard cut-out of Messiah was spurned whether it was placed on him by Peter or Caiaphas. He was the one thrown out into darkness and the gnashing of teeth, silently bearing the wrath of the regime because he alone would not conform to a code of ostentatious righteousness that was at odds with his humanity and fellowship with the poor and sinful. Many (which usually means all) indeed were called: few (in fact only he) was chosen.

nuremberg chronicle

2008-09-09T22:28:00.009+01:00

I managed to acquire something of a minor treasure during the summer: a leaf from the first edition (in Latin) of the Nuremberg Chronicles printed in 1493. This book purports to tell the story of the history of the world from the creation right up to the present day. It was immensely popular in its own day: 2500 copies were printed, many in German, and was possibly the first ever book to be pirated: a cheaper version was published in Augsburg in 1497.

The glory of this book lies not so much in the text as in the illustrations. It contains 1804 pictures, mostly of people, towns, genealogies and Bible stories. My leaf as you can see from the top left illustration is quite modest, but very typical.
However the 1804 illustrations are created from only 652 woodblocks, meaning that many images were used more than once. Thus an image depicting a Biblical king was used again for a contemporary king. And a prophet could quite easily reappear as a pope. In the same way the picture shown below which purports to be of Alexandria is also used in other parts of the book to represent Athens, Pavia, Austria, Carinthia, Prussia and Amazonia. The repetition of woodcuts was a common practice during this time, both in order to save money and because many readers of the Chronicle accepted these as idealized renderings of distant locales. However, there are 32 authentic city views in the Chronicle, based on both contemporary illustrations and models already existing in the printer's archives.
Of course the world whose history the chronicle purported to describe was narrow and flat. Columbus had only just sailed the ocean blue in1493 and his conclusions remained to be formulated let alone believed.

The best notion of the world’s shape was taken from Ptolemy’s Geographia, published in 150, rediscovered in 1300 and reprinted in the 1480s. Thus the world view that appears in the Nuremberg Chronicles was that formed 1350 years earlier. Within less than 50 years that view was itself history.

The credit for compiling these chronicles is usually given to a Nuremberg doctor, Schedel. And here another issue arises: just as the printers were quite happy to use any old picture in their stock of woodblocks so Schedel did little more than copy chunks of narrative from other sources and link them with the occasional conjunction or linking phrase. Over 90% of the text was lifted straight out of other histories. There is nothing new in plagiarism. Of course not all of these were in print so he made more widely accessible documents that existed in manuscript only.

So why the fuss about the Nuremberg Chronicles? It is not rare: a modest original double sided leaf of an early German edition with some illustration is available on the internet for around £50. The whole book can be bought in a fine facsimile for around £200. Many international libraries will carry an original copy and pages can easily be seen on the internet.

Some of the pictures are original and show interesting views of the places as they were in 1490. Some of the pictures were carved into the wood by significant artists such as the young Durer, who was born in Nuremberg and whose godfather Koberger oversaw the book production.

But perhaps what is most fascinating is the fact that these chronicles were produced right on the cusp of a significant change in human attitude to events and to mankind itself. In 1490 Germany it was quite acceptable to portray an obscure Judean king with the same features as a remote medieval one. It was their kingliness that was important not their appearance. Similarly a legendary , even make-believe, place like Amazonia (the Amazon itself was not yet discovered and was named after the myth—not the other way round) could be portrayed with the same features as Athens since both were reckoned to be places of significance: what was portrayed was aura not architecture. And yet in the same book there are magnificent realistic depictions of contemporary cities like Bamberg: we visited Bamberg this summer. It is still recognizable from this picture. Already people and places were being depicted with astonishing verisimilitude. When Cromwell, 150 years later, was painted warts and all he was by no means the first.

There is, though a further interesting side to the Nuremberg Chronicles. They do not end in 1493 when the book was printed. There is one further chapter in which the future is predicted. It was widely believed that the end of the world would come in 1500. This belief was based on an interpretation of the prophecies of Daniel that the time and a half of time referred to a period of 1000 and 500 years respectively. Since it was believed that Jesus had been born in the year 0 the year 1500 took on a huge significance.

So the book of the Chronicles has a purpose beyond that of simply providing Germany with a luxury picture book. It was produced to prepare a people for judgment. Durer’s first published book in his own name followed but 5 years later. It was a full, dazzling and terrifying illustrated edition of the Apocalypse. This end to the book was not speculative it was as certain as the stories of the past.
What was so amazing was that far from 1500 bringing the end of the world in the terms they envisaged it only brought the end of the world as they knew it. Far from closing down the world the demi millennium opened it up. For 500 years every year brought new discoveries, new continents, new rivers, new species of animals, new civilisations, new myths and new perspectives. By 1830 geologist Archibald Lyell was stating about the earth that there was no vestige of a beginning and no prospect of an end. And no longer could two people be given the same face for the very variety of the world and its peoples rather than its homogeneity is its glory. Our young people trek the frontiers of heaven from monastery to monastery in the mystic heights of the Himalayas, our old people traverse the oceans on cruise ships to the frightening ends of the earth at Terra del Fuego, in the Magellan Straits named after the man whose crew first circumnavigated the world less than 30 years after the Chronicles were printed. Now round the world racing is an annual and almost unremarkable event.

Above all the Nuremberg Chronicles were a triumph for the recently invented printing press. They showed the glory of what could be produced. And in what numbers. It was the printing press that facilitated the Lutheran Reformation. It was the printing press that revolutionised the sharing of knowledge. In many ways it was the very medium of which the Chronicles were one of the finest examples that brought about the end of its world. That ultimately is what fascinates in this extraordinary work. Not only does it stand on the cusp of two ages, it is in itself that cusp.

But in the same way we live on the cusp of a new age. Computers and the world wide web are to our age a not dissimilar revolution to that of printing in the 15th century. The exploration of the universe, the discovery of DNA, the ability to create life, all these are about to change our world as dramatically as did the discoveries of the sixteenth century.
To some extent we have learnt our lesson: not even many theologically anchored history books are bold enough to end with the last judgment as if it were an historical event. The church may laugh at the naivety of the soviet astronaut who returned to earth saying he had been out there an found no trace of heaven or God. And yet I received a book this week from an American publisher purporting to prove modern science wrong and the Bible right about the creation of the world. This book is wondrously illustrated, weighs about 8 kilos and is but the second volume in a total work of 7. It concentrates all this page power on Darwin, who lived and died an honest Christian struggling to discover a little more about God’s world than was revealed in the closed minds within which the church had imprisoned it.

Brothers and sisters once it was a best seller but now the Nuremberg Chronicles are no longer read. No one is going to take a world view for our age even from such an impressive tome. It belongs in museums and glass cases. Its pages are just a curiosity for collectors: one of the last great works o the middle ages, one of the first great printed books. What message is the church proclaiming for this new world in which we live? Fifty years ago the gospel was still being delivered in virtually Victorian ways. In the last 50 years things have changed a little. But sadly much that the church says today is as irrelevant as the maps of the Nuremberg Chronicle were to Magellan and Drake.

treasure and trash Matthew 13 24-53

2008-07-15T01:06:00.001+01:00

Throughout Matthew’s gospel it has been made clear that good and bad live cheek by jowl in God’s world. Sometimes it is by no means obvious which is which. Those who think that they can see are often those whose eyes are blinded by planks. Those who say Lord, Lord are those who are not recognized by the Lord they affirm. There will come a day when all will be revealed but at the present moment, Jesus seems to imply, it is guesswork. That is why it is unwise to judge. Even his own authority has not been revealed to anyone except the Father. In the meantime, while the ignorant think he is the Son of David, the knowledgeable think he is Beelzebub. Those who claim to preach “good things” are hypocrites, they try to sound good but they speak from an evil heart. On the day of judgment their words will be judged.

It is in this context that Jesus tells a story about a farmer’s field. The farmer sows good seed. But in the night an enemy comes and deliberately sows weeds in the same field. By the time anyone notices what has happened the grain has already begun to form in the good plants. But to try to remove the weeds will probably result in pulling up the good with the bad because they have become so entangled. The harvesters will have to reap the good with the bad and then sort out the mess afterwards; that way the bad can be destroyed and the good will be saved.

The essence of the passage seems to be an attack on the separatist cults of the time, the Pharisees who tried to separate themselves from other people to keep their holiness intact and in particular the even more elite Qumran communities. The world is as mixed as when a woman mixes yeast with flour. Sometimes it seems like a stony field – yet hidden within it is a treasure of untold price; a sea containing fish edible and bad. We spend our life searching for treasure, dragging our faith through the sea looking for fish, examining through prayer the haul of every day seeking to discriminate between the good and the bad. There will come a time when the difference will be obvious and the judgment made. And when that day comes not all the new will be good – nor all the antiques bad. It is not as simple as that. In vain we look for a hallmark to ascertain that which is treasure: there are no signs.

Jonah was thought by his fellow travelers to be the cause of their troubles – they threw him overboard, but in fact he was a prophet of God. The big fish was thought to be Leviathan – the enemy of God and the mischievous and wicked ruler of the wild and uncontrollable sea. But it turned out to be Jonah’s saviour. Nineveh was being prepared for destruction but ended up being saved. The plant under which Jonah was sheltering in the sweltering heat was destroyed by a worm. The whole point of the book of Jonah is that nothing is quite as it seems. The sign of Jonah is no sign at all. That, after all is the topsy-turvy world of the gospel, where the meek inherit the earth, the poor are richly blessed, and burial in a tomb marks not an ending but a beginning.

But Satan is a clever counterfeiter: he copies God, except that that which God does openly by day, the devil does surreptitiously by night. And that which God sows is good – since the seed is his, so that which Satan sows is evil because he is evil. Only when the plant bears fruit can it be known for sure to be good or evil. In that sense the parable is also a comment on the judgment passages of chapter 12. But it is also a comment on how the disciples will be treated. Just as the religious leaders failed to recognize Jesus as being of God so his followers also will be mistaken for those who are evil and will be persecuted. Equally there will be those who point to the weaknesses within the church and see that as an excuse to excommunicate and root people out. The parables would seem to suggest that however good it would be to be able to do that, it is not a practical option. The result will simply be to ruin the good with the bad. Indeed the implication is that by doing that weeding the apparently holy ones will be carrying out precisely what Satan hoped would happen when he planted his seeds. They will indeed be doing his work rather than the work of the God they think they are serving.

So we take the world as we find it: and perhaps discover that even the church will be no better. Later in the gospel it will all be made even clearer in the parable of the sheep and goats. The treasure that we find is found in a field. It comes with mud attached. In order to acquire it we have to be committed to that which we do not treasure if we are to find and have that which we do. To love God means even loving enemies and those whom we normally would not respect because we cannot be sure that they are not the field in which the treasure of God’s kingdom is to be found. In our work as “fishers of men” we trawl the whole sea: we do not farm prime salmon.

pipes and yokes Matthew 11 16-30

2008-06-30T07:31:00.002+01:00

One thing that must have baffled both followers and opponents was the contrast between Jesus and John the Baptist. Even the imprisoned John himself was surprised by the direction in which Jesus’s ministry was going. He sent out spies to try and ascertain if Jesus was the genuine article. The reply Jesus gives is not dissimilar to the keynote sermon he preached in Nazareth quoted in Luke. His ministry is one of transformation, and therefore good news for the poor. But that did not really seem to address the issue. If that was his ministry what was John’s status? Jesus tried to show that the gulf between them was nothing like so great as it seemed. John had gone to wilderness to show solidarity with the poor. He had dressed in poor clothes. He had rejected the carpeted civilized life of the Jerusalem smart set to preach an uncompromising need for repentance. In so doing he had been preparing the way for the coming of the kingdom in which the lives of the poor would be transformed. Admittedly John was not just a quivering reed: he was more akin to the fiery prophet Elijah: the seizing of him and imprisoning of him was in itself a sign of a violent reaction against the kingdom and a sign of the authenticity of John’s preaching to which Jesus paid ample tribute.

There were huge differences between John and himself: the one dour and ascetic, the other celebratory and generous but because they were both radical and threatened the status quo both would set off alarm bells in the corridors of power. Jesus then tells a story about a bunch of kids playing the pipes in the market place.

These pipes were reed instruments, loud, piercing, of rather unrefined tone. In former times they were the folk instruments of village dance ‑ ear‑splittingly loud. They were also traditionally the instruments of lament: like the Scottish bag‑pipes, they were capable of stirring emotion with their plaintiff tone.

Once upon a time the pipe had been an instrument of the prophets, too. In one of the earliest references to prophets in the Bible Saul sees a group of prophets coming down from the holy hill playing the pipes: this was not surprising since part of being a prophet was the cultic dance. Indeed these cultic prophets worked themselves up into a frenzy under the influence of the spirit of the Lord! We get some idea of what might have happened as we read about Saul stripping naked and freaking out.

By the time the temple had been built, perhaps as a result of their association with this rather ill‑disciplined worship, pipes were out. They were the instruments of the brothel and the disreputable party: the accompaniment to erotic dance. Now since the rival fertility religions involved cultic prostitution this avoidance of the pipe was quite understandable; I suppose these days the equivalent would be those who refuse to countenance guitars in church because of the association of rock bands with drugs!

By the time of Jesus, the pipes had ceased to be associated with formal Jewish religion at all: when we see them on Greek pots they are often accompanying some scene of drinking and debauchery or with times of death. All that then is the background to the text

"We piped for you and you would not dance"

Some would say that the children represent the prophets; they play the pipes but the people won't respond: it makes no difference whether it is a dance or a dirge ‑ this generation is "stiff-necked". They just can't bend to the rhythm of the song. That certainly is a strong message. But Matthew seems to have other ideas for the words that come afterwards don't follow from such an interpretation at all.

Pipe players are sitting down in the market playing for the other children and getting totally exasperated that the other children won't join in with the tunes they are playing. Not surprisingly the two activities specifically mentioned here are dancing and mourning ‑ the very two activities associated with the pipes. Apparently it was customary for boys to dance at weddings and girls at funerals: hence this may just have been a reference to the games of weddings and funerals. It should also be mentioned that the words used for dancing and mourning rhyme in Aramaic ‑ therefore Jesus may have been quoting a popular proverb.

In Matthew’s setting the pipers are the Pharisees: with all their sanctimoniousness: they sit in the market piping but they can't get the occasion right: they play nightclub music at funerals and dirges at parties ‑ then they complain that the people don't keep in step with their perverse rhythms. When John comes preaching repentance they say ‑ we're holy we don't need it. When Jesus comes with the joyful celebration of the kingdom of God they say he's dissipated and needs a touch of John's asceticism. However out of touch they may be with the mood of the times, they go on playing their contrary tune trying to change the mood and remain in charge.

Ultimately both Jesus and John died to the sound of the pipes. Ironically, John whose lifelong music was the dirge (according to this text), died to the raucous vulgar measure of Salome's sensual dance: Jesus whose lifelong music was celebration, died to the wail of the lament, and the crowd went home beating their breasts (the very words Matthew uses here for mourning).

And then as if to prove the difference between himself and John had been exaggerated he launches off into a prophetic assault reminiscent of John himself on the Galilean cities of Choroazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum. John tells us a little about Bethsaida, at least 2 disciples came from there, and Capernaum was the town in which Jesus had made his home, but of Choroazin we know almost nothing. A site which we believe to have been Choroazin has been excavated but though a substantial town, including a well preserved synagogue, from the 2^nd century has been found, no remains of the 1^st century have as yet been uncovered. Yet Jesus surprisingly compares Bethsaida and Choroazin unfavourably with the large and significant sea ports of Tyre and Sidon, so proverbially associated with wickedness that their destruction was a cliché of Hebrew prophecy. Capernaum is even less favourably compared with Sodom and he literally sends his own home town to hell. These words are so vehement that Bultmann thought that Jesus could never have said them but it is a general rule of attribution that the more difficult the saying the less likely it would have been to have been interpolated at a later date.

It would seem that the fact that even John the Baptist was having doubts about the authenticity of Jesus’s ministry had pushed Jesus over the edge into exasperation. Presumably he had hoped for the kingdom to come with less resistance when he had set out from the Jordan. But with the constant criticism and downright opposition he was experiencing from the faith leaders in the synagogues, the slowness of his chosen disciples to understand his message and the willingness for people to accept healing and other works of power without it significantly affecting their life style or state of faith, the gospel was making little progress. There may not be quite sufficient grounds here to suggest that this passage constitutes a mid-ministry crisis but it is surely encouraging to all engaged in ministry that even Jesus found it hard-going. Indeed, it appeared at that point that such was their unbelief that even his prodigious, spirit filled work was not going to be sufficient to bring them sufficiently to their knees in repentance to stave off the destruction that was surely coming.

How did Jesus respond to this sense of exasperation? Matthew tells us that it was precisely then when he felt so negative about his ministry and untypically blamed the community to which he had come (perhaps not unlike the pipers he had lambasted earlier in the passage) that he turned to God in prayer to thank him for his mission. In his prayer he sees that it is not the experts who know best but the children and the poor, that he is not mistaken that God is his Father and that the fact that that is not universally recognized is of no consequence. Since no-one can know the Father except through Jesus’s own revelation means that his calling is not necessarily to success but to faithfulness to the will of God. His anger at being misunderstood and rejected melts to thanksgiving when committed to the Father in prayer. The prayer leads him to a profound self-knowledge of both his status and ministry which in turn leads to the most sublime invitation to come to him recorded in the gospel.

A light burden

Moses had tried to lead his people to “rest”. Their disbelief and rebellion prevented them from entering into it. Joshua took on the mission with similar results. Jesus, the greater Moses, had now been entrusted with this mission. The Lord of the Sabbath became, as St Augustine described him, the “true Sabbath”. Jesus has already enjoined his followers to be perfect as his Father is perfect. The Sabbath was that state of rest God entered into when all his work was ended. There is certainly a meaning in which that rest can be said to be the eternal rest in God of one who has been completed in his humanity by the vicissitudes of life; indeed of one whose work is ended because God’s work in her is complete.However, such a rest is probably not the comfort that most people who hear the “comfortable” words want to hear in them. Heaven is not a resort that readily springs to mind when rest-cures and spring breaks are suggested. It could, of course, be the peace of mind that confidence in that ultimate Sabbath brings: certainly in the early church that must have been a powerful support particularly in times of persecution. But the Sabbath was intended to be experienced not only as a final rest but as a strengthening and sustaining rest along the pilgrimage. Here the notion of the seventh day as complete number (the sum of odd and even) may give us a clue to the meaning of the saying.

We are to be yoked together with Christ: the odd with the even. In so doing, that which seemed to be toil, that which was arrhythmic, now becomes by contrast rest. The heavy loads which destabilized us and we were unable to bear, yoked together with Christ seem balanced and light. He brings an equilibrium and a rhythm to life that enables it to be lived in harmony with ourselves and God. Worship and prayer provide a breathing out and a breathing in that is even and stressless. Jesus has already talked about living without anxiety because of Christ-like priorities. He has also talked about ultimate security in the way we build our lives if they are Christ-shaped. In our daily toil we learn from him – the Lord of the Sabbath.

If we take as broad a view of “rest” as this then we will not wish to be too restricted as to who the “weary and heavy laden” are. In the days of the early church Fathers it was usual to see them as those carrying burdens of guilt from sin. Recently the emphasis has been on those who were oppressed by the agrarian crisis we noted in our look at Mark: high rents, tithes, high taxation, the burden of cleanliness laws as well as the problems with living under the yoke of a foreign invader. The word yoke was used as a description of the law in the sense of “law as all that God has made known of his nature, character and purpose and what he would have man be and do” So those who were weary and heavy laden were likely to have been those who found the burden of religion oppressive: this may have been caused by a weight of unforgiven (or as they believed unforgivable) sin, or indeed an inability to meet all the regulations that had been imposed to enforce the Sabbath and the cleanliness laws, resulting in economic hardship; it may even have been the sense of failure of a people who regarded Roman occupation as a sign of God’s displeasure with them as a people and his apparent refusal to bring the deliverance they craved. In some cases it may have been illness (like leprosy) that was regarded by some as a punishment from God. But Jesus says to all who found their relationship with God oppressive "come to me ‑ I shall not place the burdens of failure on your shoulders; I shan't always be making you feel that you are doing wrong: I shall affirm you for who you are." I shall not be for ever placing unbearable obligations on your shoulders. Indeed, like the suffering servant, I shall be one who carries your sorrows. The essence of his yoke is forgiveness and his affirmation of the humanity of those who come to him.

Of course such a claim was a bold one. It is placed by Matthew immediately after the great self revelation of Jesus as the one to whom all authority has been granted. He speaks as Wisdom who was there at the founding of the world. He speaks as the suffering servant who has borne our grief; he speaks not only as Moses – who until the arrival of Jesus was the meekest man in all the earth– and who gave the law, but as the Torah itself. He talks not about the yoke – but his yoke.

There seems to be,of course, an inconsistency that we cannot run away from at this point. The Jesus who invites us to take his yoke on our shoulders is the same Jesus who urges us to take up our cross and follow him. The “easiness” of the yoke is not to be confused with the easiness of life. A good carpenter shaped the yoke to fit the animal: a bad one forced the animal to develop calluses to protect it from the harshness of the yoke. Religion can, by being authoritarian and fundamentalist, make people callused and insensitive. God complained that Israel had developed a heart of stone. The yoke of Jesus is engineered to prevent us from becoming stiff-necked and thick skinned. The crosses we carry such as sitting by the bedside of one who suffers, sharing the grief of the bereaved, are carried with greater integrity by those who have not become embittered with their God. The yoke should not be a burden in itself – it is a device to help us carry the burden by sharing it with another rather than carrying it alone. Even in those instances when it seems (like the milkman carrying his churns) that we have a yoke all to ourselves, the device balances the load and makes it easier not more difficult to handle. Indeed only those who have taken his yoke upon them can even contemplate carrying the cross.

Word and sacrament Luke 24 36-49

2008-04-04T08:20:00.000+01:00

The risen Jesus had appeared to the Emmaus disciples on the first day of the week in the exegesis of scripture and the breaking of bread. From that small beginning developed the tradition of making live the risen presence of Jesus in what became the two core elements of Sunday worship, word and sacrament. When they arrived at Jerusalem Jesus appeared again, this time to the eleven. Despite the testimony of the Emmaus pilgrims, and Simon Peter, to whom Jesus had also appeared, his arrival was still greeted with incredulity. They continued to react in the same way to the women at the appearance of dazzling young men at the tomb: with disbelief and fear. This was an encounter with the spirit world they would rather not make. The notion of a bodily resurrection was obviously totally alien to them. Whatever they believed about life after death, and at the time of Jesus it was still a doctrine that divided Jews, despite having witnessed at least a couple of raisings from the dead in the ministry of Jesus, the presence of Jesus in the room with them was a supremely uncomfortable experience.

Jesus’s attempts to reassure them can only have made their discomfort worse. He invites them to reach out and touch him; to put their hands in his crucifixion wounds. It is surely significant that the risen Jesus carries with him the scars of sacrifice. However he lives and reigns, Luke makes clear that he forever remains the crucified. Thus death and resurrection are made inseparable from each other. It is when the death of Jesus is celebrated (in the breaking of bread and pouring out of wine) that his risen presence is encountered. The place of the skull was transformed into paradise, and the wounds that speak of death become the signs, the evidence, of resurrection.

Then he called for food. For those who remembered his last meal with them this was surely deeply significant. Not only was it a device to show he was alive and bodily present in their midst it also announced the arrival of the kingdom. The eleven were now treated to a detailed exegesis of scripture to show how the suffering of the Messiah and his resurrection lay at the heart of God’s salvation from the beginning of time. And they were made witnesses to the gospel. That gospel was forgiveness and repentance. And it was for all nations. Whether Jesus’s word of forgiveness from the cross is in the best attested manuscripts or not its authenticity in terms of mission cannot be doubted. The significance of the death and resurrection of Jesus is that it opens up to all humanity the gracious mercy of God.

By sending his Son God makes himself vulnerable to our hate. But the willingness of Jesus to absorb our violence and not allow his love to be destroyed by it demonstrates the indestructibility of the love of God. This is of course affirmed by the resurrection. Thus the broken body of Jesus reveals the ever beating heart of God’s love. Jesus commands us to carry our cross daily. The kingdom does not come by crucifying – or by any other violent means – or by playing power games; it comes through cross bearing, absorbing suffering into love. It is in this sense that Jesus “bore our griefs and carried our sorrows.” He bore the squalour of death with the nobility of God. Paul tells us that the mind that was in Jesus should be ours too. This mindset did not seek equality with God but accepted slavery, and ultimately death on a cross. The way of the cross is the authentic route by which we all travel. This we embrace willingly through faith, as Christ did.

the walk to Emmaus Luke 24. 13-34

2008-04-04T08:07:00.003+01:00

For fourteen chapters all the traffic has been inexorably heading for Jerusalem. Now it is flowing in the opposite direction. If at times that pilgrimage was made with faces set like flint, this return home is nothing other than a humiliating retreat. Hopes have been shattered. The one in whom they were grounded is dead and buried. A life they believed had been transformed has been sent back to square one, only this time to be lives with disillusion and zero energy. Their return is not purposeful; there are times when they simply stand still, and times when their walk slows, clearly reluctant to be admitting defeat. But a retreat it is.

It is Cleopas and presumably his wife. A stranger joins them in their walk. This story is apart from anything else a sublime piece of teaching on bereavement counselling: about getting alongside, going at the pace of those suffering, stopping where they stop, and moving on when they resume their journey, listening to their stories, before intervening with interpretation. Theirs is not only a story of disappointed hopes but of disorientation. The testimony of the women that the tomb was empty and that they had seen a vision of angels assuring them that Jesus was alive had made that disorientation. The death of Jesus, though deeply disturbing and a loss of all in which they had placed their hopes, had a finality to it that they might come to live with. This new development was not believable so was not a ground for hope, yet it was tantalisingly suggestive, enough so to undermine the certainty with which they had begun the day. If the testimony of the women were true, and they were fairly sure it was not, that would place demands upon them that would be even greater than when they had decided to put their faith in him in the first place. To follow in faith one you had seen and eaten with, conversed with and witnessed doing remarkable things had been demanding. But to follow one whom you had seen buried but were told was now alive required a different order of faith altogether, a faith beyond your Richter scale when it came to moving mountains.

The stranger began to unpick scripture. He talked about the Messiah. There was something about his teaching that made them want more. They reached Emmaus, their home village. He went on ahead but they called him back and invited him in. When supper was served the stranger took bread, blessed it and broke it. Suddenly they knew who he was. The painting in the National Gallery by Caravaggio says it all. The table is laid with chicken bread wine and fruit. The fruit is as fruit always is: it has its blemishes and its bloom, its wormholes as well as its refreshing ripeness. But it is placed at the very edge of the picture. The disciple flings his arms wide in a vibrant sign of the cross. The disciple on the left is caught in the act of leaping out of his seat. The fruit is about to come tumbling off the front of the table. The revelation of the crucified Jesus as risen Lord overturns all our tables.

The two disciples set out with the setting sun behind their backs and heads east to benighted Jerusalem. Their whole life has been turned back round into the right direction and a walk that was laden with sorrow becomes light footed with meaning and purpose. The story they had to tell had been transformed. This was no longer a story that everyone knew – now their testimony was exciting enough to tell the world. The fruit was out of the bowl.

Matthew 28 Women witnesses to the resurrection

2008-03-17T15:06:00.000Z

All four gospels are agreed that women went first to the tomb of the first day of the week and discovered the tomb to be empty. The plausibility of Mark’s account that they went to complete the embalmment of the body has long been questioned. Indeed Mark himself has the women question the viability of it. Matthew suggests that the women simply came to visit the tomb. The desire to visit the last resting place of a friend is a powerful motive in almost any culture. No other motive need be postulated. However, there developed a tradition in Judaism whereby the tomb was watched for three days to stay with the dead person until the soul left the body. When this became a traditional and habitual practice is disputed. But recent evidence seems to suggest that the practice went back to the 1st century CE and continued up to the Byzantine era. The women, then, go to watch over the tomb. Matthew’s account seems to suggest, also, that they went as soon as the Sabbath was over: that is at the first opportunity. They therefore form the counter witness to the false witness of the guards who had specifically been placed to watch over the tomb – not in mourning or in fulfilment of traditional burial procedure, but for reasons of security. It seems that may have even witnessed the earthquake and the descent of the angel and his rolling away the stone.
The main difference in Matthew’s account from that of Mark is that just as the women were leaving the tomb, in a mixture of fear and joy, to go and tell the disciples the great news Jesus himself appears to them. In marked contrast to other resurrection stories they instantly recognize him and throw themselves at his feet grabbing him round the legs in worship and love. Jesus tells them not to fear but to go and tell. Jesus gives them the same message that the young man gives to the women in Mark’s gospel.
When they do go back to Galilee Jesus meets them on the top of a mountain: Some of the 11 are still in doubt; they wait to hear his teaching. But it is not teaching they receive: Jesus asserts his authority as Lord. What they receive is an ordination: the mission field has no boundaries; their task is to baptize; those baptized are to be taught to obey every command of Jesus. They are to build houses on the rock. It is a renewed warning to all readers of the gospel. Jesus’s teaching as reported in this gospel is not for approval or analysis. It is not directed at the mind but at the will. It is passed on to us as an imperative not an option. And the risen Jesus in not limited in his presence to Galilee or even Palestine. He remains Emmanuel until the end of time.
If Mark leaves us bewildered and fearful of how the resurrection is going to impact upon us a disciples, sending us back to first principles and urging us to revisit old haunts with faith instead of fear, Matthew announces the triumph of Jesus with a fanfare of trumpets and a ring of assurance: in the words of Edmond Budry’s great hymn:

Craindrais-je encore? Il vit à jamais,
Celui que j’adore, le Prince de paix;
Il est ma victoire, mon puissant soutien,
Ma vie et ma gloire : non, je ne crains rien!
À toi la gloire, O Ressuscité!
À toi la victoire pour l’éternité!

He lives for ever, what is there to fear?
Prince of peace triumphant, him whom I adore
My supporting conqueror, hero ever near
He my life my glory, no I shall not fear!
To you all glory, risen Lord for aye
Yours the saving victory through eternity.

Matthew 27. 24 – 26, 35 - 36, 50 – 54. Earthquakes

2008-03-17T15:00:00.003Z

The main effect of Matthew’s sympathetic treatment of Judas is to shift the blame for Jesus’s crucifixion further over on to the priests and Pilate. But the other changes he makes to Mark’s account of the trial before Pilate also serve to make Pilate less active in the process. Pilate emerges in Matthew’s account as a weak vacillating governor who tries to wash his hands of blame. The intervention of his wife sending word that she has had a dream and encouraging him to have nothing to do with the conviction of an innocent man, his questioning of the crowd, “What then am I to do?” and finally his own public washing of hands claiming innocence show a governor who simply had virtually abdicated decision making finally allowing the mob to make the decision. The people as whole take the unconditional blame: ”His blood be on us and on our children.” These words became the major excuse for anti-semitism which has vitiated the Christian community to some extent ever since. Matthew may well have seen them as an explanation for the destruction of Jerusalem and the fall of the temple.
The crucifixion of Jesus was routine; Matthew mentions it in a subordinate clause; it took place where probably hundreds were crucified at some time or other: The place of the skull. And in the place of skull the soldiers diced for his clothes. Strangely Matthew makes that the main verb in the sentence! This has been beautifully picked up by William Blake in a magnificent picture of the crucifixion; he has set in the foreground the gamblers rolling a dice for the modest prize of Jesus clothing. In the background are the three crosses: the central one of Jesus dominating the picture. But the soldiers are so engrossed in their game that they are totally oblivious of the suffering on the crosses behind them. One man has the smile of triumph from ear to ear: he’s thrown the six that earns him Jesus’s tunic! These soldiers have come to take crucifying slaves, robbers and rebels as routine business in a day’s work: business that has the added bonus of perks like games to divide the victim’s clothes. For the winner the crucifixion in the background is a sideshow to his victory in the game.
We are outraged: crucifixions should never be allowed to become routine: yet the place of the skull was the place where probably hundreds were crucified at some time or other: crosses and the mutilated bodies hanging on them were as much a part of the Roman world as starving Africans is part of ours. Like those Roman soldiers we too live out our petty victories against the background of appalling suffering: we in the Northern world gamble over the clothes of the poorer Southern hemisphere and celebrate our economic success oblivous of the context. Perhaps 2000 years from now people will marvel at the inhumanity of a time like ours when half the world could eat themselves to death while the other half starved: to them perhaps it will rank in obscenity as high as crucifixion does to us today.
Whatever might be let this simply be said: they led Jesus to the place of the skull, and when they had finished crucifying him they divided his clothing. Jesus joined the anonymous victims - those who were considered so low in the ranks of humanity that their bodies could be sported with, they could be nailed up on a cross naked - exposed to a hostile world - in the place of the skull. And he is with the anonymous victims still: for the place of the skull still exists in our world.
With only minor changes Matthew follows Mark’s account of the death of Jesus right up until the moment when the veil of the temple is torn in two. At that point he heightens the drama. A massive earthquake tears open the city, tombs are opened, the dead walk the streets. It is in response to this sign of elemental power let loose at them moment of Jesus’s death that the centurion and the other soldiers cried out in terror, “Surely this was God’s Son.” This is of course a most significant change, not only in the story but in the theology. In Mark the centurion seems to react to the splendour of God revealed in the broken body of Jesus. These soldiers react to a more orthodox and less unusual revelation of divine power. Matthew has already reported when Jesus entered Jerusalem the previous Sunday that the whole city was shaken. And as that happened Jesus took the disabled into the temple with him thus opening it up to those ritually unclean. Now as the city is shaken for the second time the veil of the temple is torn from top to bottom opening up the very heart of the presence of God to all comers. There was to be a third shaking when Jesus is raised: this time the very door of heaven is opened wide.
Josephus tells us that the temple veil had an embroidery upon it that represented the heavens. Just as the high priest tore his clothes when Jesus said that he would see the Son of Man seated on the right hand of God, so now as Jesus dies the temple veil is torn in testimony against priests and temple. This is getting as near as possible to the notion of God himself rending his garments in disgust at what the religious leaders have perpetrated on his Son. And it is a preparation for that much greater rending of veils when the heavens open and Jesus is revealed indeed in all his glory at the end of the gospel.

Judas

2008-03-17T14:58:00.001Z

Matthew follows Mark’s account of the passion story quite closely but there are some significant changes of emphasis. In particular Judas is given much greater prominence in the narrative. John tells us that Judas kept the money bag, indeed he tells us that Judas stole from it. Matthew tells us that when Judas went to the authorities to betray Jesus at least part of his motive was financial. This interest in financial reward goes strongly against the teaching of Jesus, irrespective of the betrayal: here is a case of mammon seeming to loom too large in a disciple’s affections. The story also shows that the contract he had made with the authorities was stronger than his love for his friend. Having received the money he was duty bound to deliver. With the 30 pieces of silver in the bag he looked for the best opportunity to hand Jesus over to them. When Jesus says at table says “Woe to him by whom the Son of Man is betrayed!” it is Judas who is reported as saying “Surely not I Rabbi,” Jesus knowingly replies, “You have said so”.
In Mark’s account once the arrest has been made in Gethsemane we never hear anything of Judas again. He disappears into the night as do all the others. But Matthew gives us a sequel. In this story Judas suffers remorse, and confessing his sin, seeks restitution by handing back the blood money which he throws down on the floor of the treasury in the temple when the priests refuse to take it back. They will not put it to the temple fund since they recognise it to be blood money – so they use it to buy a field from a potter to use as a burial ground for foreigners. In the meantime Judas hanged himself.
Matthew’s account is easily the most sympathetic to Judas. Many commentators have suggested that suicide was a heinous sin in 1st century Judaism quoting Josephus. His story also is a little reminiscent of that of Ahithophel who went home and hanged himself. But there was also a tradition of noble suicide. In some ways the judgment he placed on himself – since the authorities refused to judge him – certainly arouses more sympathy than the stories in Acts and Papias where God seems to smite Judas down peremptorily. But the main ground for sympathy arises out of Judas’s repentance. Again some have objected that it was only remorse: that he went to the priests rather than to Jesus – but Jesus was now before Pilate and hardly available – and the words he uttered were what amounts to a public confession. Besides the word for repent is straightforwardly the word the New Testament routinely uses for a saving change of heart. It would seem that the Christian community never had any real clue as to what had motivated Judas: other than the financial motive – scarcely convincing – offered by Matthew there is not attempt to explain his actions. His reaction on seeing Jesus handed over to Pilate at least suggests that that was not the outcome for which he had been working. Perhaps he had been hoping for a set battle on the Mount of Olives, a popular insurrection and a Messianic war to remove the Romans: that he was in fact leading the authorities into a trap. Jesus was clearly aware of what was going on and would have had time to prepare an ambush. Whatever his intentions Judas, as portrayed by Matthew, hardly deserves the unforgiving infamy that he has received in the literature and art of the Christian community. As far as they were concerned, it would seem that Judas Iscariot had discovered and committed the unforgivable sin. Matthew offers at worst the repentant tragedy of a man who got it wrong.

John the Baptist Matthew 3 13-17

2008-01-08T11:53:00.000Z

In contrast to the others coming for baptism, Jesus came from Galilee. The well-attested baptism of Jesus would surely have raised eyebrows in the early church, where his sinlessness was already well established doctrine. John’s baptism was for repentance. Of John’s baptism Jesus surely had no need. Neither Mark, Luke nor John (the gospel writer) take on board that issue but Matthew makes explicit John’s reluctance to baptize Jesus precisely on those grounds. Jesus’s enigmatic reply that in being baptized he is to be permitted to ‘fulfil all righteousness’ prepares us for the whole ministry of Jesus as revealed in this gospel. The word righteousness surely carries not only its Greek meaning of doing good but the Hebrew/Aramaic meaning of bringing about justice, of making right prevail. Baptism then prefigures his death. Jesus is God with us: God fully immersed in our humanity. By his being baptized into the sinfulness of human beings we will be able to be baptized into his holiness. By his being baptized into our death we will be able to be baptized into his life. It is not for his own sins that he repents but he repents for ours, on our behalf. And yet in a sense he also repents on behalf of God for a world tainted by sin. He acknowledges that he has been sent to be part of a humanity that has corrupted the universe: that God cannot for ever stand outside it, over and against the world he made, but has to repent and enter it: to enter it in every aspect and be totally identified with it.

Significantly it is immediately after he is fully immersed in the water as a sign of his identification with humanity in all its sinfulness that he is openly affirmed as the Son of God. After the fiery introduction to Jesus that John has given us, the way in which that sonship was revealed may have been a little surprising. We might have expected fire, or a mighty rushing wind, or a spectacular blaze of God’s glory like that revealed to Isaiah. If a bird was required surely it would be an eagle, the sign of royalty: a bird with power in its claws and a bit of bite in its beak: the sign that this was to be a ministry of power. But it was a dove that appeared: the dove known for its grace, love, and gentleness: a bird of peace - hardly a cutting edge in the ornithological world - not even a rare bird. It was the cheapest form of sacrifice - the bird offered by ordinary people who could not afford a lamb. Perhaps it served as a reminder of the days of Noah when a dove was released from the ark and returned with an olive branch in its beak as a sign that the waters were abating, the period of punishment, of cleansing was over, God’s anger had relented, and the earth was to be given a new start, that a new covenant was to be made that would be grounded in God’s mercy. On the second occasion that Noah released the dove it never came back - the sign that the earth was ready for habitation. So, now, as Jesus came up out of the waters of cleansing, out of the waters of death and judgement, symbolically the dove that Noah had let out that had never returned coming back to rest on the one who was truly was going to be the beginning of the new creation. It came back to rest on the one who was to restore peace between heaven and earth, on the one through whose body and through whose blood was to be revealed the sign of the new covenant to replace the covenant even made to Noah. And as a sign of sacrifice the dove rested on the one who was to be the sacrifice for the world’s sins. Moreover, in the context of Matthew’s gospel, there is surely also an illusion here to the very opening of Genesis where the Spirit of God hovered (like a dove) over the face of the waters. Jesus represents not just a new covenant to replace the one made by God with Noah, nor just another fresh start, not even an exodus to a wilderness en route for a new kingdom, but a totally new creation.

It was thus in the action when Jesus most identified with humanity, being baptised in repentance for its sins, that God most openly recognised him as his son. This was a lesson that he was to have to take forward with him in his ministry. So when the devil said ‘If you are the Son of God........’ Jesus would know that being the Son of God meant no short cuts, no wizardry, no spectacular gestures. It is said that Roman emperors, when enjoying triumph processions in Rome, had a slave behind them in the chariot whispering continually in their ears, ‘Remember you are human’. Perhaps that is why Jesus continually referred to himself as the Son of Man. As Paul was to put it: ‘Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.’

Bethlehem, magi, Herod and the massacre of the innocents

2007-12-29T04:02:00.000Z

Matthew, like Luke, affirms that the Jesus was born in Bethlehem. According to the Amarna Letters, one of the oldest sources for the story of Palestine, Bethlehem was known as Bit‑Lakhmi or house (temple) of Lakhmu. Lakhmu was a pagan god. This name became subtly changed to the more acceptable Beth Lehem or house of bread. This was totally appropriate because, as we learn from the story of Ruth, around the town were fertile crop‑growing fields. Its earliest mention in the Bible is as the tomb of Rachel, the mother of Israel. But Bethlehem's main claim to fame was that it was the birthplace of the one great international man of note that Israel had ever produced: David. However, after the exile, its significance was merely symbolic. A new David would one day arise and restore Judah, perhaps even reuniting the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah and re‑establishing the old Davidic empire. Bethlehem had a past and it had a future: what it lacked was a present. For now, all that Bethlehem had was its routine of everyday living: its annual harvest; its daily baking. It was a prosperous town: its vineyards were as noted as its grain, but its prosperity was by no means renowned beyond the confines of the desert within which it was set: it was a fish large only in the goldfish bowl of Palestine. 'Not least of the cities of Judah' comes as near as possible to damning with faint praise. At this point of its history what lingering hope the people had was centred on the other great Davidic city, Jerusalem. It was therefore to Jerusalem that the magi came. They came from the east. At the time of the Babylonian exile was born the hope that one day even the kings of the sophisticated super‑powers who enthralled them at that time would come and bow before their king; for he would come from God with power and his glory would know no bounds. By the time Jesus came, the world's centre of gravity had decisively shifted west, first to Athens then to Rome. But the east remained an important source of luxury goods through the trade caravans: roads linked Ephesus with Susa, and Babylon with Kabul, and about 120 Greek ships a year linked India with Egypt. The world of the east was shrouded in mystery; but travellers had returned with stories of fabulous temples, astonishing technology, and elegant living. Roman cooking depended on eastern spices and the aristocracy craved oriental silks. Two of the gifts the magi brought, myrrh and frankincense, commonly came from Saba, in the South of Arabia, where it is likely that the Queen of Sheba had once had her palace.

The magi were probably astrologers. As such it is unusual to find them being treated favourably in the text. Balaam serves as an Old Testament example. He was a foreigner from the east whose prophecies included a star and a sceptre. Balaam is treated as a bit of a comic turn in the Book of Numbers, being shown as the wise man who was less wise than his ass. These magi are misled to Herod’s palace, but there is no attempt by the writer to portray them as anything other than serious scholars, obedient and humble before their learning, sensitive to the traditions of the Jewish people, for protocol would have dictated that a king was to be searched for first in Jerusalem: perhaps they would have felt honour bound to start their inquiries with the king. Indeed the humble, honest and diligent searching of these Gentiles is compared most favourably with the lazy, casual and devious methods of Herod, whose negative attitude sets the tone of hostility among the Jewish ruling class which is to mark out the rest of the gospel.

Herod reigned from 37- 4 BCE. He was not king by birthright - he was not even completely Jewish: he owed his position to his courting of the Romans. His servile attitude to Augustus was accompanied with paranoia towards his own people. Married ten times, he systematically eliminated not only political opponents but any who might have seemed to have a rival claim to the throne. he was determined to build for himself an eternal name by initiating architectural works: baths, aqueducts, stadia, theatres, palaces and fortresses. His greatest and most costly project was to rebuild the temple. This was not finally completed until 63 CE, and then survived only 7 years before it was totally destroyed by the Romans.

Herod’s motive in rebuilding the temple was probably three-fold: a desire to copy the temples of Athens and Rome, a desire to make a name for his dynasty and a desire to curry favour with the people. But despite rebuilding the temple he was not particularly interested in Jewish tradition. His appointments to the priesthood were mainly men steeped in Greek philosophy and learning rather than their commitment to Judaism. His chief advisors were also mostly those schooled in Greek philosophy. He was therefore not trusted by the orthodox Jews who plotted against him with sons of his various wives. He had two of his sons murdered in 7BCE and another murdered just five days before his death. To counter any threat Herod built massive fortresses through the country and a fortress palace on the hill of Masada to which he could retreat. Towards the end of his reign, as opposition became more pronounced, the golden eagle was torn down from the Jerusalem temple by conservative Jews and their followers. Herod retaliated by having them burnt alive.

So when the magi asked "Where is he who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw his star in the east and have come to worship Him," it was the sort of question Herod had been dreading all his life. And Matthew’s portrayal of the anxiety that this question brought both to him personally and to the political establishment rings true with what we know about him from other sources. The words ‘born’ and ‘Jews’ would have been particularly threatening to a king who had been placed in office by a Roman emperor and relied on his relationship with the Romans for his office.

For centuries from Socrates to Voltaire the whole world believed in the Great Chain of Being. Events on earth were accompanied by events in the heavens. Matthew’s gospel is written within such a framework. The interpretation of scripture quoted by the scribes is affirmed by the heavenly sign. The star which signified the birth of a king reappears over Bethlehem; the magi’s quest is confirmed. But what was the star? Halley’s comet appeared in 11-12BCE: Jupiter and Saturn were in conjunction three times in 7BCE. Given that Jupiter was the star of kingship and Saturn the star of the Jews, their conjunction may well have created the ‘star of the King of the Jews’ which was understood by eastern astrologers. The fact that this phenomenon happened three times in the year may account for the re-appearance of the star when the magi turned to leave Jerusalem.

So the magi found their way to Bethlehem and the house of Joseph, Mary and Jesus. Gentile wise men, using their wits alone, would never have found the king for whom they were looking. The Hebrew scriptures were necessary to help them read the signs of the world correctly. Matthew seems to be giving us a clue to how we are to find the Messiah in his gospel, too. Looking for signs in the heavens will not be sufficient; those signs - even the signs of the deeds of the Christ - will need to be interpreted in the light of scripture. Herod had the scriptures but did not read them and would not obey them. The scribes had the scriptures, read them, understood them, taught them correctly to others, even to these wise men, but did not follow to worship the child whose birth they acknowledged was important. They preferred to keep in with the corrupt and paranoid Herod than to worship at the feet of the Messiah. The wise men did not have the scriptures but when the words were opened to them they believed, obeyed and worshipped. Matthew will therefore provide those of us not versed in Hebrew scripture with the relevant texts along our way so that we might be guided aright and not have to depend on stars and signs alone in our quest for the whereabouts and significance of the one born to be not just King of the Jews, but Lord of all.

Matthew seems to suggest that Mary and Joseph lived in Bethlehem. Nazareth is the place in which they finally settle to keep out of the way of Herod’s family. Not only is there no inn or stable but there is not even a manger. They live in a house, presumably Joseph’s house where they had always intended to live when they were married. The climax of the story has been reached. The magi go into the house, throw themselves in worship at the feet of the child who is with Mary his mother and open their treasures before him. By opening their treasures to him they show him and us where their hearts are.

The treasures that they opened were the treasures of worship. Frankincense and myrrh were both essential ingredients of incense. Pure frankincense was kept in two vials before the sacred bread in the tabernacle and the temple. Myrrh was used as an essential ingredient in the ointment of purification used by priests before they could perform sacrifices. Gold also played a significant role in the furnishing of the temple. Frankincense and myrrh came almost exclusively from the South of Arabia. The Gold of Sheba is referred to in Psalm 72. So in the visit of the magi to the infant Jesus we see echoes of the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon. It had probably been the building of the temple and the consequent requirements of gold, myrrh and frankincense that her kingdom produced that made it important for Solomon to make an alliance with her to secure supplies. These magi now come to pay homage to great David’s greater son, bearing the same signs of worship. By presenting them to Jesus rather than to Herod, who was building a temple to surpass even that of Solomon, they prepare us to see in him the one whose temple will outlast that of stone.

Once the magi have worshipped at the feet of Jesus, they receive direct guidance from God himself. Up till now they had been guided by a star and by scribes. That guidance had been equivocal and not always clear. Now they received guidance in a dream that was decisive. Their encounter also opened up for them new routes in life. After encounters with Christ we do not leave by the same door through which we entered.

The literature of the ancient world is packed with stories of gods and heroes, mythical and historical, whose life was threatened soon after birth and had to flee to distant lands or be hidden in caves. There was, of course, above all, a parallel in the story of the baby Moses. The plan of Herod to kill all the male children under the age of two is also reminiscent of that story in Exodus. The urgent flight by night of Joseph, Mary and Jesus to Egypt recalls (in reverse) the hurried night escape from Egypt of the Jewish slaves in the exodus. Matthew accentuates that allusion by quoting the famous verse from Hosea 11: ‘Out of Egypt I called my son’. Jesus, who has already been introduced as the son of David, and the son of Abraham, is now identified as the new Israel. In ancient times the king personified his people. Thus Jesus experiences the alienation of his people, their fragile existence, their exiles. So this story also resonates strongly with all who are driven from their homes today: refugees, asylum seekers, the homeless and the threatened.

Herod’s massacre of the innocents at Bethlehem is not found in any other texts. But from what we know of Herod from other sources it would not have been out of character. At the very least the story shows the kind of vulnerable society into which Jesus was born. But the Hebrew scripture with which Matthew chooses to illuminate this story takes us straight into a passage deeply significant in the development of New Testament doctrine: Jeremiah 31. The verse he quotes is the one sad verse in the chapter. The chapter bristles with texts that became Messianic in hope. It is as if Matthew is pointing to the weeping in Bethlehem as the tears which will give way to joy as the Messianic promises are fulfilled. Rachel’s tomb was reputedly in Bethlehem: in the place of her sorrow, her son - the New Israel - was the one sign of hope. But that hope was as sure as a covenant of God written upon the heart. Even though the temple was in ruins (as Matthew wrote) and the children of Israel were going through an agony of grief, God’s son had been given, and the days of dancing would not be far behind. The cries of Rachel weeping for her children would be but the beginning of the story which would end with a new exodus into a kingdom of heaven.

2007-12-21T16:28:00.001Z

Missed tick Mary

Scene 1 Baker St.

Holmes put down his violin to read a telegram urgently delivered to his lodgings in Baker Street.

“Please be at the Black Swan Hotel at Bethlehem at 4 am, Do come! I am at my wit's end. Mary."

Watson I should be most happy to go down with you if I should not be in the way,

H. My dear Watson, you would confer a great favour upon me by coming. And I think that your time will not be misspent, for there are points about the case which promise to make it an

absolutely unique one. You would oblige me by bringing with you your very excellent field-glasses.

We should of course fly Virgin – but I understand your phobia of aeroplanes. According to my Bradshaw there is a natalstar camel train leaving the brand new St Pancras at 11am.

That will do very nicely. Then perhaps I had better postpone my perfecting of this scale in D as we may need to be at our best in the morning. You will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we went into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary that for strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.

A proposition which I took the liberty of doubting.

Quite an interesting study, that maiden, I found her more interesting than her little problem, which, by the way, is rather a trite one. Old as is the idea, however, there were one or two details which were new to me. But the maiden herself was most instructive.

You appeared to read a good deal upon her which was quite invisible to me,

Not invisible but unnoticed, Watson. Now, what did you gather from that woman's appearance? Describe it.

Well, she had a slate-coloured, broad-brimmed straw hat. Her dress was blue with a little purple plush at the neck and sleeves. Her sandals I didn't observe. She had small round, hanging, gold earrings, and a general air of being fairly well-to-do in a vulgar, comfortable, easy-going way.

Sherlock Holmes clapped his hands softly together and chuckled.

'Pon my word, Watson, you are coming along wonderfully. You have really done very well indeed. It is true that you have missed everything of importance, but you have hit upon the method, and you have a quick eye for colour. Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details. My first glance is always at a woman's sleeve. In a man it is perhaps better first to take the knee of the trouser.

So what have you deduced so far that would explain her extraordinary predicament?

I have devised seven separate explanations, each of which would cover the facts as far as we know them. But which of these is correct can only be determined by the fresh information which we shall no doubt find waiting for us.

And none of them involves her theory of the wholly impossible intervention of Almighty God himself?

If I tell her she will not believe me. You may remember the old Persian saying, 'There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.' My dear fellow, life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generation, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.

Of course, in your position of unofficial adviser and helper to everybody who is absolutely puzzled, throughout three continents, you are brought in contact with all that is strange and bizarre. But here -- let us put it to a practical test. What is the first heading upon which I come in my newspaper? All hotels full in Bethlehem.

Then it looks as if we’ll be camping out Watson.

Scene 2 in the Bethlehem campsite

Watson, look up and tell me what you see.

I see a fantastic panorama of countless stars. With one gigantic star brighter than all the others dominating the sky.

And what does that tell you?

Astronomically, it suggests to me that if there are billions of other galaxies that have roughly similar stellar population densities as represented by my view, that, potentially, trillions of planets may be associated with such a galactic and, therefore, stellar population. Allowing for similar chemical distribution throughout the cosmos it may be reasonably implied that life-and possibly intelligent life-may well fill the universe.

Also, being a believer, theologically, it tells me that the vastness of space may be yet another suggestion of the greatness of God and that we are small and insignificant.

Meteorologically, the blackness of the sky and the crispness of the stellar images tells me that there is low humidity and stable air and therefore we are most likely to enjoy a beautiful day tomorrow.

Why? - What does it tell you, Mr. Holmes?

Someone stole our tent.

But listen, Holmes! Can you not hear celestial music of the highest order?

Upon my word you are right Watson. And the accompanying baaing of the sheep and the baying of the hounds is perfectly tuned to the Delian mode. Extraordinary. Watson focus your field glasses on that light just above the horizon over on the hills the other side of Bethlehem. It appeared just 5 seconds before the music began. Taking the speed of light to be 299 792 458 m/s and the speed of sound to be 340.29 m/s it would be apparent that the phenomenon is taking place in the shepherds’ fields just 1,700 metres distant from this very camp site.

Holmes - How brilliant – tonight you have excelled yourself in the logical art of deduction. Behold there in humble silhouette against that radiant horizon stands our tent. How can you have known that the disappearance of our tent was connected to the mysterious heavenly phenomena above those distant fields? And lo those craven shepherds cowering beside our tent have come under the awesome judgment of God himself. Holmes these events are of such portent that I fear I shall have to return to Baker Street on the next available camel train.

Courage Watson. Since you chose the dour drudgery of matrimony you seem to have lost the stomach for a good adventure. We must make our way over there immediately and confront those dastardly shepherds with their heinous crime.

Scene 3 Back at Baker St

How utterly amazing my dear Holmes. I was the one that Miss Mary had need of not you.

Yes and because we went haring off after those felons you missed the sublime opportunity to deliver into this world of woe the Son of God.

When I think of all the patients I have toiled with over the years. The night calls I have conscientiously answered, the cases I have referred to the sainted hospitals of our fog ridden metropolis: and then this opportunity of an eternity arises and I am found to be more concerned with property than souls.

But at least we were able to give Miss Mary our tent – much better than having to sleep with cows and donkeys. As a result of our thoughtful generosity the little Jesus will have an upbringing immune from the risks of mad cow disease, foot and mouth and bird flu.

But it was all your fault Holmes – despite all your attention to the details of sleeves and trouser legs you never adjusted your treasured timepiece to Bethlehem time. So when we got there the child had already been born. Those cunning shepherds got there before us – and who knows if he had read the stars aright and not gone to Jerusalem even the murderous Moriarty would have got there before us. So what do you make of it all now Holmes?

I still cannot fully comprehend that Miss Mary … no sister of mine would ever have accepted such a situation.

And had it been my betrothed, Holmes, she would have ended the day even more stoned than you.

I will brook no more lectures from you on that subject Watson! But so much still remains unexplained. (impatiently) Data! data! data! I can't make bricks without clay.

At last a mystery too deep even for you Holmes – sometimes God’s doings humble us all.

The mystery of what it is to be truly human Watson is not one for either you or even me to fathom.
Draw your chair up and hand me my violin, for the only problem we have still to solve
is how to while away these bleak winter evenings."

Matthew 1 The birth of Jesus

2007-12-18T00:19:00.001Z

It comes as a shock to anyone picking up a Greek New Testament to read its very opening for the first time: ‘The book of genesis - of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham’. This surely is the title of the book. Was the author consciously claiming that he was setting out a new Torah - a new covenant for a new chosen people, indeed a new creation? There is much evidence in the book to suggest that that was precisely what he was about. Jesus was the Messianic King - David’s greater son, he was the new Moses, the instigator of a new law bound in a new covenant, and the son of Abraham, father not just of the Jews but the one in whom all the families of earth were to be blessed. In Jesus the world is recreated in hope. The Jesus story is nothing less than a new Genesis. No wonder the early fathers bound this book in to form the beginning of the new Covenant (or Testament).

After this audacious and ambitious title it is a little disappointing for the modern reader to be confronted with a daunting list of names. But the third section of the Old Testament begins with eight chapters of names and Matthew may, again, have been consciously attempting to add a new section to the existing scripture. He was certainly at pains, all the way through his book, to emphasise the continuity of his work with that of the existing accepted texts. We should we not read this genealogy just as a list of names: Matthew makes clear that Jesus came in the fullness of time: just as 14 generations elapsed between Abraham and David, and between David and the exile, so also in God’s time, Jesus came into the world after 14 more generations. Unusually, five women are included in the genealogy: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba and Mary. Many attempts have been made to find a common factor between these women: certainly all five were the cause of rumour and inuendo, and possibly four of them were non-Jewish, too: Tamar pretended to be a prostitute and seduced her father in law, Judah: Rahab was a prostitute; Ruth an exotically perfumed foreigner who had crept into bed with Boaz and taken advantage of his intoxication to compromise him; Bathsheba had committed adultery with the king and bore his child. Mary, too was, perhaps, accused of unmarried sex with Joseph.

The message seems to be that Jesus is the consummation of Jewish history: that he came as the new David, bringing a new peak to what God was able to do for his people: and that if anyone should ask how God could use the son of an unmarried mother in his plan of salvation, there was ample evidence in Israel’s history of God using women others despised, either because of their reputation or their race, to bring to pass his glorious plans.

Matthew is now ready to reveal Jesus to us. And unlike Mark who introduces us to Jesus in the wilderness, already a man on a mission, he begins with a story of miraculous birth. The word genesis therefore appears again - this time usually translated birth - by its repetition creating a frame around the genealogy. Matthew may have been consciously or perhaps even subliminally reflecting the books of Moses in the construction of the first chapters of his gospel. Certainly the circumstances of Jesus birth as Matthew describes them suggest a new creation. Unlike Luke’s account Matthew’s is from the perspective of Joseph. Already Matthew had made it clear that Joseph was not the father of Jesus in the same way that the other fathers Abegat’ their sons. Joseph is introduced to us in the list of names as the husband of Mary. Here he is reintroduced as ‘betrothed’ to her. In 1^st century Palestine betrothal took place at a very early age: usually between 12 and 13. A marriage contract was then drawn up, and usually a year or so elapsed before husband and wife lived together. During that time of separation, legally, the woman was regarded as the man’s wife, and any affair was still regarded as adultery, even though the marriage had not been consummated. Equally should her ‘husband’ die she was regarded as a widow.

For Joseph, therefore, the news that Mary was pregnant was devastating. He was to lose his bride before she had been his, he would require a certificate of divorce before he had even lived with her, and she may have been stoned to death by his family. To prevent this last possibility, or at the very least, public humiliation, Joseph arranged to have Mary secretly moved to a safe house, while he properly prepared to divorce her with as little fuss as possible.

The intervention of the angel of the Lord in a dream prevented him from proceeding with this course of action. Matthew records no further intervention from an angel until the women arrive at the empty tomb at the end of the gospel. And so the two events that particularly marked Jesus out as the Son of God, his birth through the power of the Holy Spirit and his resurrection, are attested to not just by fallible men and women but are affirmed by the powers of heaven, too. Perhaps to 21^st century readers the testimony of an angel casts more doubt rather than more certainty upon the authenticity of the story, but in Matthew’s time the intervention of an angel would powerfully highlight the significance of the event being recorded. The birth and resurrection of Jesus were matters not only of worldly but also heavenly significance. And in both cases it needed the angel of the Lord to remove barriers to facilitate the fulfilment of the Lord’s will: a mighty stone rolled away to reveal an empty tomb to incredulous women, and overturning the conventional thinking of a righteous man who would, by refusing to accept Jesus as his son, prevent him from being the descendent of David.

The angel testified that the conception of Jesus had been the work of God’s creative Spirit. Just as God had breathed the life of Adam into a clay model so he had breathed Jesus into the womb of Mary. Joseph is to take Mary as his wife and to accept this child as his own, not just from birth but from now. For he is to name the child and in so doing take responsibility as his father; and with that responsibility he is also to take the calumny that will be showered upon him and Mary from those who will not believe his story. In that way Jesus will be the Son of David, not just by accident of birth, but by the obedient submission of a righteous man to the will of God: the first of those who are ‘Blessed when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.’ Luke notably introduces Mary as the most blessed of women. Matthew’s Mary remains only a shadowy receptacle of God’s initiative. It is Joseph who is humble and obedient. It is through his decision that a Messiah is born named Jesus, who would save his people from their sins. He is the willing agent of God’s grace.

God’s will was done. The name Jesus was a common one, but this child was to be no ordinary Jesus. At this point no clue is given as to how he is to fulfil his name. That fulfilment of the name will be the theme of the whole gospel and will not be fully revealed until the full account has been told. But at this point a much more unusual name is introduced, Emmanuel (God with us). It is not until the very last sentence of the gospel that this name is fulfilled. Throughout the narrative, Matthew anchors his account in scripture. It is clear that he does this to add authority to his story. But also his account is written in the form of an apologia. Quotations from the Hebrew scriptures gave his readers ammunition for their disputes with rabbis who disputed the authenticity of the Jesus message. The quotation from Isaiah used at this point was not commonly considered a messianic text. It was originally addressed by the prophet to King Ahaz who was anxious about the future of Israel in the face of a powerful alliance between two of its traditional foes. It simply suggested that a child about to be born was to a sign of the presence of God with his people that would protect them from the powerful nations ranged against them. Perhaps it was the use of the word ‘virgin’ in the Greek translation that Matthew knew which drew him (or the early church from which he got the tradition) to this particular text. Certainly the Hebrew text uses the word ‘alma’ which simply means young woman and does not necessarily have the technical sense of virgin. In the context it is the child that is the sign not the ‘virgin’! Inasmuch as later rabbis interpreted the text they pointed to Hezekiah as the fulfilment of this prophecy. There is a no suggestion that he was born in miraculous circumstances as the son of a virgin. For Matthew, also, it is not the virginity of his mother that is supremely important but rather the nature of the child, and his sonship of David, the Saviour of his people and Emmanuel: God with us.

John the Baptist and Jesus

2007-12-13T01:40:00.001Z

"We piped for you and you would not dance"

John the Baptist Matthew 3 1-12

2007-12-07T12:33:00.000Z

Matthew tells us nothing of the childhood, or indeed the young manhood of Jesus. This is probably because there were no reliable stories to be told. But after the elegant interplay of dream and interpretation of the first two chapters, tales of a virgin and mystic men from the east, it is a little surprising to be plunged straight into a new narrative, heavily dependent on what we have already read in Mark, yet subtly tilted by Matthew to suit his own theological purpose. ‘In those days’, it begins, enigmatically. Once upon a time, in the good old days, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness saying ‘the kingdom of heaven is at hand’. We finger our way back to Mark’s account: that is not the way we remembered it. John preached repentance but not a kingdom. It was Jesus who preached the kingdom. Matthew connects John to Jesus more firmly than any other gospel writer. They preach the same basic message, they are both taken to be prophets, they are both opposed by the Jewish authorities, they are both killed and both have their bodies taken away and buried by their disciples. It is not until John is arrested that Jesus begins his ministry. John is introduced by nickname as a character who would have already been familiar to readers. Unlike Mark who sometimes calls him the one who came baptizing (and sometimes the baptizer), Matthew simply calls him the Baptist: and he is introduced primarily as one who preached, not one who baptized. Similarly, whereas for Mark it is the placing of John in the wilderness that matters, for Matthew preaching comes before wilderness and the wilderness is qualified as being of Judaea. Judaea was the place of danger. Joseph and Mary fled from there: they were afraid to return there from Egypt: when Jesus hears of John’s arrest he also goes back to the comparative safety of Galilee. John is the fearless protagonist who stands before Pharisees and Sadducees, Jesus-like, and calls them a brood of vipers.

So Matthew (and indeed Luke whose account is very similar here) immediately identifies the groups among the Jewish leadership who are the villains of the piece. The Sadducees had their strength in Jerusalem where they provided the ruling body in the priesthood whereas the Pharisees were strongest out in the country, particularly in Galilee. Since the preaching of John is located in Judaea it is natural that both groups are identified here. They are identified as a self proclaimed privileged class who claimed salvation as their right in the name of Abraham. They now come to claim the privilege of baptism from the new prophet, or possibly, not even to be baptized themselves but to observe the practice to make sure that it was sound.

They were self-designated sons of Abraham. Of course we have already been told, in the genealogy, that Jesus is the true son of Abraham. In sharp contrast to their claim to divine birthright, the Baptist identifies them as children of serpents. They are to be chopped down as useless branches fit only for firewood for the mighty one who will ignite the old timber when he comes in power. These drum rolls of judgment, never silenced for long in this gospel, introduce Jesus, the judge, to whom all authority will ultimately be given to clear the threshing floor.

Jesus the King Luke 23 33-43

2007-11-20T20:49:00.000Z

Crucifixion was often chosen as a punishment for those who pretended to be other than they were: slaves who tried to runaway to freedom, rebels who pretended to be national heroes. Irony was part of the punishment. There is evidence that the more arrogant or fanciful the criminal, the higher his cross. Thus Jesus was placed between the two other criminals in the place of emphasis, and it may not be simply an artistic convention that his cross stood higher too. Above his head stood that ironic inscription “This is the King of the Jews”. So his being lifted up was in itself a mock exaltation, and the sedilla, on which he sat on the cross was a mock throne. A similar notion has survived into our modern culture in such films as “’Ang ‘em high”.

It is in this context that Jesus was fair game also for the criminals executed alongside him. In the extremity of their condition they could always mock the king. They were rebels after all. Their expectations of kings were low. “Save yourself” the crowd cries. It was then all the more remarkable for one of them to acknowledge his punishment as deserved, and to treat Jesus’s alleged kingship with seriousness rather than sarcasm. The sublime reply of Jesus, “This day you will be with me in paradise” takes us all straight from a death scene into an enthronement. By such a statement Jesus marks out his kingdom in wider terms than Pilate or even the thief. He who has been lifted up upon a cross as a pretender to the throne of the Jews announces himself King of all the world. He is King of all peoples, all cultures, a universal king not just for one time but for eternity. As King of all humanity he hung on the cross representing the whole of humanity. When he was crucified it was as if everything God had made was crucified with him. The king was the representative of all he reigned over so if he was king of the universe then all the world hung on that tree. All humanity was lifted up in him. For Luke, the crucifixion of Jesus is not a payment for people's sins. He omits Mark's famous quotation "For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many" Rather, Jesus's healings and offers of forgiveness are a proclamation of God's reign and God's comprehensive saving purpose. Salvation is restoration of God's people through the forgiveness of sins. Jesus' death was the opportunity though which God's authority would be manifest. "With the promise to be ushered into paradise there is the suggestion of a return to an Edenic quality of time - time which is…..always new, always just created". It is of course scandalous that Jesus enters into his kingdom hand in hand with a rebel. It is a scandal that perfectly fits the scandalous agenda of the Magnificat and the sermon at Nazareth. It is simply an extension of the scandal of the woman who burst into Simon’s dinner party and is commended for her love and the transformation of Zacchaeus.

Nor is the kingdom to be further delayed. The words “This day” announce its arrival without equivocation. That is why Luke is happy to have Joseph of Arimathea turn from burying Jesus into the dawning of the Sabbath. The day of salvation was here. The reign of Jesus had begun. Once the Sabbath was over Jesus would be seen to be risen. What Matthew describes with an earthquake Luke describes with a dawn.

In Mark’s and Matthew’s account, Jesus dies alone with a cry of anguish. In Luke he dies in fellowship with the one alongside him, not in anguish but with a voice of authority he hands his life back to his Father. It is not quite the equivalent of the triumphant death recorded by John, but it is nearer to that than to the account Mark. The innocent verdict announced by Pilate is repeated by the centurion and the crowds return home beating their breasts in repentance. This has been no empty death: already its saving purpose is finding fulfillment. God’s forgiveness has been unlocked and lives are being changed.

Luke 19 1-10 Zacchaeus and the Day for the Lord

2007-10-30T09:10:00.000Z

What sort of tree do you have in mind when you hear the word sycamore? Those stately trees that send their seed-heads spiralling into our rose beds every summer? The sycamore of the Bible is no such tree. It is in fact part of the fig-mulberry family. Amos the prophet is described as “a dresser of sycamore trees". The fig sycamore produced rather puny fruits that were used as fodder for cattle: unfortunately they were a little slow to ripen, so Amos’s job — for he was a herdsman — was to pinch the neck of the fruit to encourage it to ripen earlier so that it could ripen in time to be of use to the cattle he kept

That was his job as a prophet, too. His job was to pinch Israel, for its time to be picked off had nearly come. Amos was the great preacher of social justice among the prophets. He launched out at every redoubt of privilege: priests, princes, judges, rich farmers, merchants, all get a right old lashing from his tongue. I like to think of Amos, climbing along the branches of the sycamore trees, pinching these stalks, bringing to ripeness his sycamore figs, thinking every time he did it, ‘Ha! Zebulun the crooked corn merchant man, you’ll soon be getting the same treatment. Yes, Amaziah the priest, your time is coming too, you’ve corrupted the people long enough, you’ll soon be ripe for feeding to the cattle!’

It is nice to turn to the New Testament to see who the other habitué of the sycamore trees was: what a contrast! Zacchaeus, the rich con-man, the swindling tax official who oppressed the poor, collaborated with the Roman government, shocked the town by his venality and sticky palmed corruption. In short, the very sort of person Amos preached against. What is he doing up in Amos’s favourite tree? I can only believe Luke has mentioned him being in that particular tree deliberately to make some significant theological point. Luke’s gospel is focussed on the role of Jesus as the spirit filled prophet. Right at the outset in Mary’s song the sort of programme that Amos proclaimed is affirmed: He has put down the mighty from their seat and exalted the humble and meek; he has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent empty away.”

The centre piece of Luke’s gospel is the journey from Galilee to Jerusalem. This incident in Jericho is the last before Jesus arrives in Jerusalem itself. It is also unique to Luke. It is clear, then, that Luke attaches particular significance to the story, especially when Luke ends the story with one of the crucial sayings of the gospel. ‘This day salvation has come to your house, Zacchaeus’, says Jesus.

Into which category did Zacchaeus come? The story of Zacchaeus suits Luke so well because it is so ambiguous: Zacchaeus is rich. He was a senior tax officer. But as a tax-collector he was also an outcast in the town: indeed he might have been up the tree not only because he was short, but also because he was afraid of being lynched by the crowd. He was, then, in one sense among the poor in that he was an outcast (like the lepers, prostitutes and gentiles); he was also, though, one of those who might be put down from his seat in that he was mighty, powerful, an oppressor. Zacchaeus does not neatly fit into the comfortable categories of the amateur sociologists who draw up evangelisation programmes. He is an odd-ball. But this story shows the transforming power of God in Jesus, the coming of the kingdom, the world turned upside down by the spirit, in graphic clarity.

First, Jesus sees the man, hidden though he is in the tree.

Second, Jesus invites himself under the man’s roof and into his life.

Third, the man responds to this invasion of his life willingly.

Fourth, the man is utterly transformed, from one who robs the poor to feather his own nest into one who is prepared to sell his house and give half the proceeds to the poor.

Fifth, by this action indeed the life of the poor in Jericho is transformed too.

Sixth, he will accept all the consequences of his life of crime and make restitution according to the law. Thus indeed law and prophets are fulfilled in the ministry of Jesus. The day of salvation is declared. The Nazareth manifesto is finding fulfilment.

The first ripe sycamore fig has fallen from the tree, not to be destroyed but to be saved. Amos’s message was: Repent before it’s too late — the Day of the Lord is coming with dreadful consequences. Jesus’s message is also ‘Repent! Today is the day of Salvation’.

So Luke underlines the word of prophet and Lord: no-one is beyond the pale; salvation can come to any house; it was a message that Luke was to rub home in one more dramatic story unique to him. There were once two other robbers in a tree: not hiding from anyone; not there of their own choice; they were nailed up there in just punishment for their misdeeds. One says to Jesus, “If you are the Christ come down out of your tree and then save us as well”.But the other confessed his sin and asked that he be included in the kingdom.

‘This day’, Jesus said, ’you will be with me in paradise.’

Jesus did not wait for Zacchaeus to make the first move. He invited himself into his home.

When people responded to Jesus’s call, things happened. We are used to hearing that the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk: the gospels are full of those stories. But here is a unique one: the poor are provided for. We, in the rich west, must remember that in some ways we are like Zacchaeus. We have become wealthy by robbing the poor in other lands. Of course we did not personally do it, and the whole business is extremely complex; but there is little doubt that our industrial and financial base was built on the swag of Empire; that the present world economy is organised for the benefit of the rich. It is of some comfort that Jesus came to Zacchaeus’s house: under the terms of the preaching of Amos the rich (especially the corrupt rich) might not have much hope. But Zacchaeus’s response to Jesus was to make restitution to those he had robbed. By so doing he made it clear to everyone that the transforming work of God was alive in his heart, and that the day of salvation was here.

Luke 18 1-8 The judge and the widow

2007-10-16T13:24:00.000+01:00

We are told that this parable is about prayer. The suggestion seems to be that we are to be like that terrier of a widow woman snapping at the heels of the judge until he eventually gives her justice. We are to be persistent and nagging in prayer: God will finally, if reluctantly, relent and we will be vindicated. But such an interpretation would have terrible consequences: it would portray the church as a poor defenceless bereaved widow with no-one to plead for her: forced by circumstances to plead her own’ case: having no advocate. This hardly seems a biblical’ picture: for throughout the New Testament both Son and Spirit are described in precisely those terms as advocatethat is what comforter means (one who is strong and comes alongside like a “friend” in a union dispute; one who pleads for the church. Indeed the church is not a widow but the bride of Christ. Secondly it portrays God in a poor light, too. He only gives in because he is afraid for his own reputation as judge.

But this parable is a typical bit of ancient logic: the Jews called it qal—wahomer we might say an argument from lesser to greater: the NT is full of it. Sometimes it is obvious and it says, “How much more...”Here we are left to work it out for ourselves.

On the one hand here is a poor widow pleading her case with a totally venal judge: despite her weakness. and his corruptness he eventually grants her request. On the other here is a lovely bride, whose eloquent husband is pleading her case before a judge whose mercy is unassailable, whose justice is unquestionable, whose power is irresistible. This is qal wahomer on a colossal scale.

The parable, then, is a great reassurance. Luke’s gospel is notable for its taking or board anxieties about the Lord’s delay.’ The old prayer ‘How Long so prevalent in the psalms and prophets was beginning to creep into the prayer life of the church too. It is surely significant that this parable is not reported by either Matthew or Mark. Luke places it right at the end of his discourse on the coming of the Son of Man. The book of Revelation describes the martyrs in heaven crying in desperation to their God, “How long Sovereign Lord before you judge the people of earth and avenge our death?” The widow’s request is couched in similar terms: “I want justice against my enemy”. The question How long is posed 15 times in the psalms alone! It is a question somewhat unfashionable in modern worship. But is that a reflection on our comfortable life style? The how long question has always been on the lips of martyrs and the oppressed - not the oppressors it was always the question of the widow not the well-off. Debtors longed for jubilee: creditors were glad that the steam had run out of jubilee theology. A desire for Christ’s coming burned bright in the church of Paul and Luke. It no longer burns with passion in our souls: where it is talked about it is more dreaded than welcomed. The How long, has become a Not quite yet Lord!

But the parable is notable for another echo of Revelation, too. The barbed question with which it ends: “But when the Son of Man comes will he find any faith on earth?” That is the other classic prophetic question. For the how long question could be posed of God’s people too! Thus it picks up the demand “Be thou faithful until death”. The question has now been turned inside out. God’s faithfulness is not in doubt - he will come and not be slow. The reason for his delay is not his injustice but his mercy. He is delaying to give man time to be faithful.

Thus this parable is less about prayer than it is about faithfulness. When his people are as passionate about justice as God is, then his kingdom will come. The parable comes at the end of a passage which begins with the observation: the kingdom of God is among you. Now perhaps we can begin to see that if it is about prayer at all it is about prayer in the sense that can be defined as an exploration of the will of God - a journey into his heart. It is about the most important petition prayer “Thy kingdom come — thy will be done”. The classic question

“Is not the judge of all the world just?” can only be answered affirmatively. “Will he find faithfulness on earth?” receives a more conditional response: only if his people become so committed to his will in prayer and action that they are bringing in his kingdom.

And so the parable turns on the hearers as they do so often. How much do you want God’s justice? On which side of the fence will we be? Are we among those who beg him to delay - or are we among those earnestly seeking his triumph? Are we enemies of the widow? They had no desire for the judge to act - indeed they might have been those bribing him not to intervene. They carry on living their lives content that the judge has been seen off with a few bribes of hymns and prayers; they marry, buy, sell, drink, eat, plant and build as if their time were all their own: widows, starving, poor, don’t enter into the equation: we are back in the same line of teaching as the parable of the rich fool: his error was not that he was rich - but that he thought he had all the time in the world and never let the coming of the kingdom enter his thinking.

10% Luke 17 11-19

2007-10-08T15:49:00.000+01:00

This story can be read in at least three different ways, depending on our take on Luke’s gospel. First there are those for whom the important thing is trying to discover what relevance the story had to the early church. Under this view the gospels were written as source material for sermons; therefore every story had an immediate application.

So the story of the ten lepers might be told with tis application. In the church communities to which Luke was writing there was this problem: lots of people came forward to be baptised but few then went on to- regular attendance at the eucharist. And so Luke puts this story to show that Jesus had exactly the same problem in his ministry. Ten lepers were cleansed: or ten people experienced the washing away of sin in baptism; only one came back into the Lord’s presence to give thanks; or only one came to the thanksgiving service. The story then might be used either to console the church; we have problems keeping converts - don’t worry even Jesus found it the same; or it might be preached to the newly baptised as an encouragement to come regularly to the table to give thanks for salvation.

The second kind explanation places greater emphasis on the setting of the story within the gospel itself. One important ingredient of Luke’s gospel is that the underdog - the outsider, the foreigner is the one commended, and the favourites come nowhere in the race. Thus it is a prostitute who is commended for love, not a Pharisee: a runaway spendthrift of a son for whom the fatted calf is killed: a Samaritan who is shown as the model neighbour. Here, then, the emphasis should fall on the fact that it is a Samaritan who returns to give thanks. The others accepted their healing as no more than they deserved; they were after all members of God’s chosen people and if that was to mean anything concrete in their lives then they had a right to expect to be healed: the Samaritan could only stand amazed that a Jew had healed him, an enemy.

We, too, live in a society where people regard health, prosperity, happiness as rights. In the USA you don’t thank your doctor for healing you - you just sue if he doesn’t. This attitude also spills over into other areas of life. In prosperous Britain God is there to be sued when things go wrong not to be thanked for salvation. Why pick on me? is a question more asked than Why choose to heal me? We like the Jews have come to take God’s love for granted. It takes an outsider to teach us gratitude.

But it could be argued that both these approaches magnify small details of the story to fit into a scheme. Perhaps we should take the whole thrust of the story on its own merits. The story is about faith: the lepers exercised faith in three ways: first they asked for cleansing and then went out to live their lives believing they had received cleansing before there was any obvious sign; that was the limit of faith for the vast majority; but one man - one man without any preconceptions discovered two further aspects of faith which resulted in a scale of blessing the others had not experienced; humble praise, and mission.

Now this note of humility is particularly relevant given the previous passage which exhorts the disciples not to get too big for their boots. The man who throws himself to the ground in gratitude is told to stand up. Jesus does not keep us on our knees grovelling. The health he gives is total. We can stand up straight empowered by his grace. It is only after the man has stood up that Jesus pronounces his faith complete. Thus faith is born in that moment when we both recognise the truth of who we are and we begin to recognise the person God has called us to be. So we go forth with a new vision of God and ourselves.

The Jesus who accepts us as lepers, makes us fit, commissions us as servants and adopts us as sons. And so Jesus waits for those he has healed through his saving death to come to him in gratitude; that gratitude in itself opens channels for yet more tidal waves of grace to flood into our lives; grace that enables us to stand up; to take responsibility; and then to go out in mission.

the rich man and his brothers Luke 16 19-31

2007-09-27T03:46:00.000+01:00

In the story at the end of this chapter there is no middle man - there is a rich man and a poor man.

But in the place of the manager the rich man has created a great gulf between them that lasts for eternity. This rich man is seriously rich; he dresses in imported clothes, the purple of emperors, and had sumptuous feasts every day. The word gate implies he lived in a large mansion. Cities had gates, houses doors. But the word gate immediately triggers another meaning. The gate was traditionally the place of judgment

At the place of judgment lay a poor man. Unlike the rich man he is named: Lazarus, helped by God. This poor man sits there because since the rich man has feasts

every day, every day it would be likely that the scraps of bread that were used as napkins to clean tables would be thrown out every day. Dogs gathered there for the same reason. The rich man was

so rich that he turned “necessities of life into disposables.” The fact that the dogs licked Lazarus’s wounds made it even less likely that the rich man would want to help him. The association between dogs and excrement made them unclean.

Both die. The rich man is buried, presumably with all ceremony and spices. The poor man’s body would have been thrown on the rubbish tip, otherwise known as Gehenna (hell). However, at this point the story of the great gulf

gets turned inside out. It is the rich man who calls Abraham his father who seems to be languishing in the place of refuse where the fires never go out, and the poor man who had no funeral who is in the arms of Father Abraham (the great patriarch of hospitality). In life Lazarus longed for crumbs, in death the rich man longs for a drop of water. But the same great gulf still exists between them.

Indeed the rich man has not changed. He still is trying to issue orders: “send Lazarus” he says,

as if Lazarus were still his errand boy. He is not to be counted as a brother. Abraham refuses. He is right. Even if he sent Lazarus back the brothers would not notice him. No doubt there was already another Lazarus at the gate, lying, dying, unnoticed in the gutter while the rich passed by on the other side. The world has never lacked a Lazarus. Until the poor are recognised as brothers the world will always be as it is. The word of God had constantly come reminding the world that it exists in community. But it has been ignored. So long as there are those who think there is no such thing as society, fires will burn, hells created and suffering continue unassuaged. That gate we erect behind which we can safely contain the poor is no less now than in the days of Amos a place of judgment.

the sharp manager Luke 16 1-9

2007-09-17T14:33:00.000+01:00

In some ways Luke might be termed the middle class gospel. It is punctuated by dinner parties and journeys. Many of the characters in the parables seem to be middle managers, those who are squeezed by rapacious bosses and discontented clients be they peasants or merchants. Luke the doctor knew the middle class and had an ear for the stories that reflected his own social group. Jesus had business experience: he ran a jobbing builder’s business. He would have been familiar with many of the money problems he dealt with in parables such as this.

In 1^st century Jewish life lending money at interest was illegal. There were, however, ways around this. You worked out a figure for interest and added it to the sum that had been borrowed. So if a sum of £100 were borrowed over a period of 4 years (given typical interest rates of approximately 25% per annum) the total debt would be called £200. Some interest rates were reckoned to be as high as 50%, depending on the commodity in which debts were to be paid. Oil was generally paid back at the higher rate.

In this story the landowner is a plutocrat who lived richly on the earnings of his estates or businesses abroad. Imagine: your boss spends most of his time living it up in his villa in Spain - leaving the agent in Britain to finance his comfortable lifestyle - he floats out all day in the pool because he has a reliable man back in blighty handling the sharp end. However, back in Britain, the manager is having colossal problems getting in the debts. The debtors accuse him of fiddling the books and squandering the master’s assets. And he is called into the boss’s office and the boss says he wants to see the books. The manager knows that when he sees the books the boss will see how unsuccessful he has been in getting the payments on the loans. He also knows that he cannot survive in the world without the support of either the clients or the boss. In such a scenario he decides that he can only side with the debtors. He calls them in one by one to lower their bargaining power, reduces their debts and hopes he can then escape into their company and avoid the wrath of the boss. In effect he halves the rate on oil from the extortionate 50% to the more normal, but still excessive 25%, and reduces the interest on corn from 25% to 20%. By rewriting the contracts the manager seizes the initiative and makes both the boss and the peasants dependent on him.

The boss responds realistically. He says I knew when I employed you were a sharp guy and keeps him in post. He has no choice: to reinstate such crippling interest rates would risk insurrection among the clients: they would support the manager against him. If he sacked the manager he would then be exposing a new manager to the power of a client community who had succeeded in getting one manager sacked and would be keen to try out their apparent power on a new and inexperienced manager. He recognises that his income is still adequate and is grateful to the manager for the adroit way in which he handled a potentially difficult situation.

At the end of this story there has been a total transformation. The rule of the ancient economy was that masters distrust managers, peasants hate managers and managers cheat both masters and peasants. But now, peasants praise their master, the master commends the manager and the manager not only keeps his job but relieves his community of a little of the appalling burden of debt that is crippling it. In the late nineteenth century the American evangelist Dwight L. Moody was on a preaching tour in England creating a stir. A group of Church of England clergy came to call on Moody saying, "What we don't care for Mr. Moody is your way of doing things." Moody thought the complaint over for a moment and said, "I don't care much for it either, but I prefer it to your way of not doing things."

Luke typically sets this story in the context of Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem. Soon all the accounts were going to be gathered in. The disciples could not go on playing political games, having a foot in each camp. The time was coming for decision making. At that time it would be important to know who is your best friend. It was not going to be Pilate, nor Caiaphas but the one on the cross however unobvious that might have seemed.

When we have a choice do we side with the powerful or the powerless? Our place is with those who have the enormous debts. Perhaps once the middle manager had hoped that the would end up with the villa in Spain - he ends up going out for a pint with those he would never have dreamt of mixing with. Do we side with the big multinational corporations - Nike, MacDonalds or the small traders desperately wanting fair trade?

the comforter John 16 1-16

2007-05-29T23:28:00.000+01:00

We often get the wrong idea about the Holy Spirit, “the Comforter”. That word derives simply from the Latin which means the strong one alongside which is itself a literal translation of the Greek parakletos. But in our day the word comforter conjures up a kind of security which is very far from what the Holy Spirit offers. Indeed it is only when we have left the snug foetal position, safely curled up in the womb of our water based pre-natal state that the Holy Spirit comes into His own. Nicodemus was told he had to be born again: to move from a water based world to a spirit based world. To be born is dangerous: it means leaving the safety of the warm, dark, hidden place and coming out into the world – into the light, into the cold, to risk exposure to all sorts of dangers and ultimately to become independent.

When the Holy Spirit came upon them the disciples were reborn: they left the relative security of their hide-out in the upper room. The door was now opened and out they went into the street. They abandoned the security of silence for the risk of witnessing. The direct result of the gift of the Holy Spirit was that they soon found themselves in front of the authorities for breaches of the peace. The Holy Spirit offered no security; instead it exposed them as witnesses. It took them beyond their comfort zone and some of them to death and persecution.

In John’s gospel we see why. Unfortunately the word advocate – the modern translation of parakletos tends to be linked with defence rather than prosecution. In our child protection policies we have advocates to whom children can go for comfort, advice and ultimately protection. The way Jesus describes the work of the Spirit shows that it is more about prosecution than defence. It is the power of conviction. It drives the church on to the attack. It shows the world that it is wrong about sin, wrong about Jesus and complacent about judgment. Some comforter! The strong one alongside is elsewhere described as the “Sword of the Spirit”. It is an encourager “pour encourager les autres”.

The Spirit is also the great communicator. We often think we need to have silence for the gentle dove-like spirit to appear among us. But the Spirit came in anything but silence at Pentecost. It’s arrival was marked by those two deadly accomplices in mayhem – fire and wind. Flame, accompanied by wind is the great communicator. Just hold a piece of paper close to a candle and see how the flame leaps across the gap to communicate with the paper. Watch a forest fire in its full, fearsome unstoppability. Driven by the wind it leaps across gaps with a terrifying desire to communicate. And so as soon as they got into the street the apostles began to speak and the great communicator got the message across. Even language was no barrier. Far from creating a feel good factor within the upper room the Spirit broadened out their community until in one day it now embraced 15 different cultures. And so the Spirit took these Galileans outside their comfort zone in that it exposed them to new ways of thinking and new styles of living. For them it was bad enough being in Jerusalem; soon at least one of them would be in Rome.

Yet the Spirit is also a spirit of unity. Those language groups that were dispersed as a result – so the story went – of the failure of the Babel project were now being galvanised into a unity not of hostility or rivalry to God but into co-operation with him. The new creation born at the resurrection of the new Adam was to be a creation of reconciliation. And so the Holy Spirit has already begun to reveal the last days; when the earth shall be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea; when the lion shall lie down with the lamb. The world we see now – nature red in tooth and claw, nations at war with nations, fear and hunger stalking the planet is not the truth. The Spirit prosecutes this world and exposes it to the promise of the new creation and the hope of peace and reconciliation. Those in whom the Holy Spirit dwells can never be content with the status quo – they can never rest comfortable with the injustice of this travesty of a world in which we live. They yearn for unity with all the passion of a creating God.

I'm sorry but this is my last blog for a few weeks. I'm having a break.

litany for pentecost

2007-05-23T09:54:00.000+01:00

Lord we are in need of your reviving power:

we have become stale and unimaginative:

sometimes we are afraid of your

creativity and cower in the darkness because we fear the revolution of your kingdom.

Visit us in the deepest parts of our being:

renew us with the sweetness of your grace,

you who are the source of all that lives.

Come Holy Spirit:

Come Holy Spirit from heaven's pure height;

scatter our darkness with your glorious light.

Come, father of poor folk, great giver of all,

light of our being, the fire of our soul.

The Lord says, I shall make you a light to the nations so

that my salvation may reach the remotest parts of earth.

Lord, we need the refreshment you alone can bring:

sick, we need healing, tired we need energy,

bereaved we need comfort:

sometimes we cry in desperation with Jeremiah, why is there no progress in the cure of our people?

Come Holy Spirit

Of all who bring comfort, Lord, you are the best,

to those admitting you, life's welcome guest;

in toil our refreshment, deliciously sweet,

solace in sorrow, cool shade in the heat.

The Lord says: I have seen their ways, but I will heal them,

I will repay them with comfort.

Lord we need peace:

In the words of your prophet Isaiah,

we are searching for peace in this world like those without eyes,

feeling our way along the walls, stumbling as though noon were twilight, waiting for judgment that never comes,

for salvation that seems far away.

Come Holy Spirit.

Bereft of your presence, most blessed pure light,

bound in the darkness, we languish in night;

come, visit your faithful, our hearts fill with peace;

from sin's grim prison grant saving release.

The Lord says: Look I am going to send peace flowing like a

river, and like a stream in spate the glory of the nations.

Lord we need cleansing: we try to do better week by week but

we fail: we need you to forgive us; bend our stubborn wills

to your gentle purpose, melt our ice bound hearts with the

fire of your passion:

Come Holy Spirit:

Cleanse all that is dirty, what's arid, refresh:.

heal wounds that fester with healthy new flesh:

make brittle minds supple, make frozen hearts warm:

guide the lost wanderers safely back home.

The Lord says: I shall pour clean water over you and you

shall be cleansed. I shall give you a new heart and put a

new spirit in you: I shall remove your heart of stone and

give you a heart of flesh instead.

Lord we need your life within us: we become discouraged so

easily; we wilt before the powers of evil in the world, we

willingly retreat into the obscurity of religion instead of

carrying your light to all people:

Come holy spirit

Please give to the faithful who serve in this place

your sev'nfold blessing, the gifts of your grace;

give goodness its prize, give safe journeys at last,

life that is endless, a joy unsurpassed.

The Lord says I have loved you with an everlasting love and

so I still maintain my love for you. I shall build you up

once more, yes you will be rebuilt.

RJG verses trans from Stephen Langton

ascension Luke 24 50-53

2007-05-18T10:57:00.000+01:00

Jesus leads his disciples out to the Mount of Olives in the direction of Bethany. The description is brief, almost laconic. For a full description we have to turn to Luke’s second volume. When Jesus reaches the Mount he raises his hands in blessing. The Son of the Most High, the daystar, the Saviour in a manger, the Son of Man, the righteous man unjustly crucified, the risen Lord finishes the task the priest Zechariah had failed to complete at the outset of our story. It is as if the whole world had been waiting for the blessing of God, only to find those qualified to give it dumb and unbelieving: Israel, God’s son and agent through whom blessing was to be communicated to the world had seen the vision but never taken it seriously, ever since Sara had laughed at God’s promise, it had been never properly communicated the love and grace of God to the nations. With this blessing the training of the apostles is now complete: they simply await empowering. For Jesus, however, this is the final exodus. He disappears in front of their eyes. Those who had slept through the transfiguration now stared open eyed into the heavens waiting for something sensational to happen again. But this time there is no heavenly host, no vision of Elijah and Moses, no cryptic conversation about the exodus. This is the exodus, and he just slips quietly away as enigmatically as he was conceived.

Two witnesses appear and tell them to stop watching the skies and get on with work on the ground. They return to Jerusalem praising God, constantly in the temple. The hosannas of palm Sunday ring out again – but not to one riding lowly on a donkey – to one crowned in heaven as Lord of all. These hosannas are not to end in tragedy: they are not just a fickle one off event. They are continuous. They are for all time. They are for eternity.

From now on it is down to the apostles: they are going to be at the centre of attention: the presence of Christ in the world will largely depend on them. They, gifted with the Holy Spirit, will be God’s agent. Perhaps the ascension is a wrongly titled event. The exodus of Jesus is less about his glory than the more wonderful incarnation of God in his people. At Pentecost the process is completed and the new Body of Christ is unleashed on the world with an impact hitherto unseen. At last Jerusalem rocks.

atonement

2007-05-08T16:25:00.001+01:00

Great God of justice, mercy, peace

Who rules the world in matchless grace

How could it be your sovereign will

That evil men should take and nail

Your son upon a cross of wood

Shatter his body, drain his blood

Release a terrorist instead

Happy to see your Jesus dead?

Is this the way you punish sin

Condemn to death earth’s greatest man?

Leave him, rejected with the poor

Naked, unloved, alone, unsure

Forsaken by his Father God

To die in darkness like a dog?

Surely our sins were multiplied

As yet another good man died.

Or was it you we killed that day,

Your blood we coldly poured away?

Slaying in hate like Cain of old

Our brother sent to love and hold;

Holding the world in terror’s thrall

By bomb and bullet, loveless law,

Condemning millions to your fate

Seeking to strangle love with spite.

Was it not nails but love that tore

Open your body, like a door

Through which, by faith, we see your way

To turn earth’s hells to heavenly day

Renouncing violence, hate and war

To walk more humbly, finding power

In patience, kindness, loving care

Till justice makes this sad world fair.

RJG copyright Baptist Peace Fellowship.

I was asked by the Baptist Peace Fellowship to write a hymn putting forward an alternative to penal substitution as an explanation of the atonement. There are of course many such models as a perusal of Paul Fiddes’ excellent summary Past event and present salvation: the Christian idea of atonement (1989) makes clear.

In my hymn the first 2 verses point out the illogicality of penal substitution: that a Father should execute his own loved and innocent Son to satisfy his wrath is morally repugnant. Such a God is simply not credible as a God who saves. Instead I suggest that God was judged by man and found guilty: we crucified the Son (in the words of the parable) so that the vineyard should be ours. Like the tenants we used violence to assert our independence, and like those tenants we have done ever since. Every act of violence re-enacts the crucifixion of Jesus in our culture and in our age. When Cain slew Abel it was to “punish” God.

By sending his Son God makes himself vulnerable to our hate. But the willingness of Jesus to absorb our violence and not allow his love to be destroyed by it demonstrates the indestructibility of the love of God. This is of course affirmed by the resurrection. Thus the broken body of Jesus reveals the ever beating heart of God’s love. Jesus commands us to carry our cross daily. The kingdom does not come by crucifying – or by any other violent means – or by playing power games; it comes through cross bearing, absorbing suffering into love. It is in this sense that Jesus “bore our griefs and carried our sorrows.” He bore the squalor of death with the nobility of God. Paul tells us that the mind that was in Jesus should be ours too. This mindset did not seek equality with God but accepted slavery, and ultimately death on a cross. The way of the cross is the authentic route by which we all travel. This we embrace willingly through faith, as Christ did.

A few words about the form of the hymn. It is in the somewhat unusual metre of DLM which allows for long sentences. It is also marked by a number of deliberate half rhymes, especially sometimes in key points: e.g. peace – grace, will – nail, sin – man, God – dog, thrall – law, fate – spite, war – power.

Half rhymes create an unease, a jarring in the smooth run of words. In this hymn they are meant to prevent us from feeling that we can box the atonement into a formula – the amazing grace of God that triumphs over our rebellion must never cease to surprise us and the awkward corners of the cross should never be totally planed out. The other device used is enjambement, where the sense is carried over a line break – throwing the emphasis forward. This is particularly evident in the last verse – e.g. ………………..tore

Open your body

I was trying to create a picture of the body of Christ being torn apart like bread at communion.

RJG

the glory of God John 13 27-35

2007-05-02T14:23:00.000+01:00

It was night. Last week it was winter, now it is night. Sometimes John is sparing with his words. It is often when what he has to say is most poignant. Judas has slipped out of supper to do what he had to do. The sun has gone down on his wrath and under the cover of darkness he did what he did because his deed was evil and he preferred darkness rather than light. Judas gets a bad press in John. He steals from the bag and allows Satan into his heart. In a narrative that makes so much of the symbolism of darkness and light the words “it was night” are profoundly chilling.

And yet that awful brief phrase (just seven characters in the Greek) is immediately trumped. Now at that moment as Judas is betraying him; now at that moment of deepest night; now at that moment that Satan has penetrated into the heart of one of Jesus’s closest followers; the glory of God is most clearly revealed. Five times in 33 words we read that God is glorified. Of course darkness cannot obliterate light. It can only reveal it. Only light can destroy light. In Portugal on the feast of the Assumption in the middle of August fireworks are launched into the height of the noontide sky. They explode with deafening bangs but leave only whispy smoke trails across the brilliant sky. When the sun goes down, they career across the inky velvet of the star spangled heavens, showering spectacular reins of amber and balls of green, blue, red and silver and gold. Against the lowering clouds of Caiaphas’s judgment the triple rainbow arch of God’s mercy sparkles more spectacularly than at any other point of human history.

There has been some controversy about the atonement recently; what is the glory of God? It is certainly not his wrath. Jesus tells his disciples clearly where the glory is revealed. “Love one another.” It may be new it may be radical it may not seem to match perfectly what they understand by atonement but this is the truth that Pilate and all politicians and lawyers like him find so elusive. The darkness of a betrayal, the darkness of a lynching, the darkness of unjust trial, the darkness of a cynical political trade, the darkness of a crucifixion: they extend the love of God and man to the furthest limits of their elasticity. The love of Peter for his Lord might snap relatively early in the piece, but the love of Jesus for his mother survives and the love of God for the whole human race shines in glory from pole to pole across that eclipsed earth.

So, if you want to demonstrate the glory of God in your living, look to me in my dying, Jesus says. Forgiving, healing love is the glory of God. Live his glory in all your relationships.

the good shepherd John 10 22-30

2007-04-26T00:09:00.000+01:00

At his very first entrance into the narrative of the gospel Jesus is announced by John the Baptist as “The Lamb of God”. Now he announces himself as the “Good Shepherd”. The word shepherd was closely connected with kingship. The notion of the people as a “flock” was deeply embedded in the imagery of worship, through the Psalms and prophetic literature. This understanding of the king as shepherd and his subjects as the flock was probably a least partially rooted in David’s role as the shepherd king.

But the role of shepherd also had less clear but no less powerful antecedents in the more mythical mists of Jewish history: if Yahweh was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob then he was the God of a shepherd race. Jacob indeed was the consummate shepherd who breeding skills with sheep brought him his wives and enabled him to father the tribes of Israel. It was while shepherding on the back flank of Sinai that Moses (the palace boy) received his calling to bring Israel out of slavery, as God made himself known to him as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and revealed his name. Further back beyond the mists of time it was Abel’s, the shepherd’s, sacrifice that was pleasing to God whereas Cain’s cereal offering was not.

The prophet Ezekiel (chapter 34) had roundly condemned both shepherds and sheep for selfishness and greed: as shepherds they had cared better for the strong than the weak and as sheep they had practised survival of the fittest and left the weak and the lame to perish. It was going to need God to set a new pattern of shepherding for his people so that they could learn afresh how to be sheep and ultimately how to be shepherds.

The kingship exercised in the time of Jesus by the Romans was that of the wolf of Rome. That kingship was not even that of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The wolf-like coat was worn with pride. The kingship provided by Herod was that of the fox – a sort of counterfeit wolf. The Jewish leaders cross-examining Jesus in the temple are not even fit to be in the flock let alone shepherds.

It would be difficult to be more insulting to the priesthood than to claim that they were no longer part of God’s flock. In the fearful chapter 25 of Matthew the sheep and goats are separated out: but at least originally the sheep and goats would have coexisted happily in the same flock. Here the shepherd disowns the flock. There are some who hear his voice and belong and others who don’t and don’t. The issue is not of feeling – nor appearance nor breeding. It is simply one of recognition and obedience. Is the way of Jesus authentically that of God the King and Shepherd of his people? If you believe it is and live it then you are in the flock. If it is not you stand outside in the cold. And the days are wintry and dark indeed outside the fold.

Of all the Jewish festivals – the festival of Hanukkah was the most nationalistic. It was also the most recent. It celebrated the time when Judas Maccabaeus and his fellow nationalist rebels had stormed into the Jerusalem of Antiochus, thrown the Persian invader out and cleansed the temple of his blasphemous Gentile statue and effects. It was at this very feast that Jesus made this outrageous assault on those who regarded themselves as the prize sheep in God’s most prestigious flock (if not even shepherds themselves). Earlier in the chapter he has pointed out that there other sheep outside the historic flock of Jacob, who will be part of his flock. It is to be the greatest flock that ever lived. They asked him if he was the messiah. His answer upped the stakes. His mission was even greater than that of the Messiah as they envisaged it. His mission was not simply local to Jerusalem, it was global. If the vision of Ezekiel was that of shepherds failing even to be sheep, Jesus was so conquering as Lamb that he was to be the ultimate shepherd.

a net full of fish John 21 1-19

2007-04-18T10:20:00.000+01:00

“I’m going fishing”, said Peter. The others – a motley crew in total 4 short of the 11 – though mystically making up a very complete team of 7 agreed to go with him. But in that dark night the familiar haunts Galilee seemed a very hostile Tiberias. In the murky waters no fish were to be found. It seemed that after the adventures of following Jesus there was going to be no easy return to the old ways that they had abandoned only three long years ago. Three years, three hours, three days, Saturday night and Sunday morning, days seemed to stretch into eternities and eternities condensed into the twinkling of an eye. Time no longer made sense. But somehow the three years, three hours and three days had changed everything and now their past was inaccessible to them. Perhaps new fishing companies had sprung up in their old haunts with new technology and greedier boats and had fished Galilee empty. Perhaps the knack had gone. But the dawn greeted tired, disappointed, hungry and penniless men with nothing to show for a night of toil.

Some of them (particularly Peter) may have remembered the dire warnings of Hosea: “There is neither faithfulness nor loyalty in the land ….. and even the fish in the sea will perish” (Hosea 4 1-4). Someone was standing on the shore watching them. “Children!” he called out. They were hardly in the mood to be patronised by a passing tourist. “You don’t seem to have caught any fish, have you? Try putting the net on the right side.” Amazingly they took notice.The result was spectacular. Suddenly they have a new problem; the net was so full it could hardly be brought to Land. Only Jesus could have been responsible for such a reversal of nature. Peter leapt overboard to meet his Lord.

When they counted the catch they found 153 fish. The amount written on this catch would out-weigh even that quantity of fish. For me by far the most coherent explanation is that of T A Emerton at www.biblicalhorizons.com/biblical-horizons/no-133-153-large-fish/?output=pdf -. It has long been known that 153 is triangular number based on 17. (That is if you add all the numbers from 1-17 you get 153). 10 plus 7 is itself the sum of two complete numbers, thus giving 17 a particular significance. The ages of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are all based on 17: books 3 and 4 of the Book of Psalms each contain 17 Psalms. The prophecy in Ezekiel 47 that the sea between En Gedi and En Eglaim will be full of fish when the water from the temple flows into the Dead Sea is surely relevant. Already John has described how Jesus had stood up in the temple and talked about streams of living water flowing out him, and those who believe in him. In Hebrew all the letters have a numerical value. If we add the Hebrew letters making up the word GEDI we get 3+4+10, = 17. When we add up the Hebrew letters of the word EGLAIM we get 70 +3 +30+10 + 40 = 153!

Hardly anyone in the Old Testament is described eating fish: by the time John’s gospel was written the word fish and the emblem of a fish were codes for the church. Jerome seemed to think that there were 153 known species of fish and that the net was the symbol of the church. Thus the church could embrace all types and conditions of men without being torn asunder. (Would that this were true!) That theory has since been doubted. It certainly seems as if the number 17 is again at work. Then number of different groups of people who heard the gospel at Pentecost was 17. More likely than it being the known species of fish 153 may have been a symbolic number for all the nations on earth.

In any event what is surely being suggested by John is that the resurrection of Jesus had set in motion a whole new creative order. On the eighth day God had arisen from his Sabbath to begin a new work of creation so that even that which seemed dead was now alive. The tired toilings in the night of a disappointed people were not going to be sufficient to turn things round. Any success depended on the creative spirit of God. His presence ensured that even dead waters would teem with life. But that presence was as reliable as the dawn which follows the night. Eternal day had dawned. The new creation was already in train.

Jesus had already been out fishing for there was already fish on the barbecue. Peter, as had Adam before him, realised that he was naked. But now the curse has been lifted. His sin did not bar him from table fellowship with his God. In the new creation he would have the opportunity to be a Good Shepherd like his Lord, though that might mean laying down his life, too.

Men came from the sea
with their unusual catch -
one hundred and fifty three.
A fire burned on the beach.

They had expected nothing,
now there was a glut,
and also this man waiting.
The charcoal was white hot.

But was the man there?
One moment it seemed so,
the next he was not.
Master, they said, don't go.

Like thin air shimmering
when powerful heat bakes it,
he continued his waiting.
Indefinite. Definite.

The fire burned on the beach
with their unusual catch.
They had expected nothing.
Now there was too much.

All change John 20 1-18

2007-04-05T17:11:00.000+01:00

Whatever we may say to the contrary I suspect that most of us don’t like change: familiarity does not so much breed contempt as content: when we return from holiday we like to find the house as we left it; when we prepare to meet again with a loved one after a long absence we can only remember her as she was and are often disconcerted to find that not only she but we also have changed over the intervening years. As parents we often find it difficult to adapt to the changes that take place in our children: when they become toddlers we try to cling to their babyhood, then, when they enter those terrible teens, we find it dreadfully difficult to come to terms with their growing maturity. Many of the battles fought in so many households arise out of this failure of parents to keep pace with the change that occurs in their children. And sometimes, alas, they seem to grow out of our love altogether: that is a change no parent can take.

But of all changes the most difficult to come to terms with is surely death. It is a common occurrence in bereavement to talk to an empty chair as if the loved one were still there, to go to the gate and look for him coming home from work at his normal time, to imagine every heavy footstep on the path as his.

But what if one day the step were his? How would we react then?

Mary had seen Jesus die: she had stood at the foot of the cross and seen every detail of that awful death: and she had heard his cry of triumph: it is completed. So she came to the tomb as soon as she could - it was all finished now - at least he was safe there. The pain, the humiliation was over: there she would find her Lord in peace - beyond harm, beyond danger, preserved in spices; she could bring flowers on his birthday, sit there in the tranquil shade of the garden alone with her memories, cherishing the man of love too good to die - but all the same dead. She came. But the body was gone. The huge stone that should have protected him for ever had been rolled away - the embalmings were there - but there was no Jesus. She dashed back to tell Peter. He confirmed the story: but as if she couldn’t believe her own eyes or his she was drawn irresistibly back to the tomb again; she quizzed the angels barely registering who they were, her eyes filled with tears, “They’ve taken my Lord away and don’t know where they’ve put him” Then, with anger and bitterness welling up inside her she sees someone in the shade of the trees - almost without thinking she comes close to accusing him of stealing the body:

“Tell me where you’ve put him then I can go and take his body away.” Then no—one would ever separate her from her Lord again.

Then the man called her name and in an instant she knew who it was. She clutched him round the legs, perhaps not even aware that he was alive —determined only never to let him go again. As far as she was concerned - if he was alive he was the same old Jesus come back to life: they would go back to Galilee and live as if nothing had happened. But Jesus told her to let go. “Do not cling to me”.

We like to take hold on Christ - to cling to him - to possess him: and in so doing we frequently limit him to our way of thinking, imprison him in our flesh, entomb him in our feelings, confine him to the limits of our experience and our understanding. Like Mary we clasp him round the legs to keep him where we are. There is always an inner conflict between our comfortable preferences and our calling: it is all a question of control. We want to control Christ and his work: we try to restrict his resurrection life to our own limited vision. Like Mary, we would drag him back to the safety of the past and live with him there.

But the risen Jesus breaks out of her grasp: for his journey is not yet over. He had broken through the veil of the flesh and had embarked on a journey that eventually was to be Mary’s journey and ours too. Just as he led the way to the cross so the risen Christ leads out beyond death to the father.

But Jesus did not end his word to Mary with a rebuke: he gave her an order:

go and tell: and when she does tell my Lord becomes the Lord. For the first lesson that Mary had to learn was that the risen Jesus was not for her alone. He was not only to be her own personal saviour - for this is another way in which we cling on to him. The glimpses of the risen Christ are always momentary: he does not linger - he would always go further. And when he does linger it is usually to explain mission: go and tell for Jesus lives in the telling; and the church born of the spirit and living in the spirit is Christ to the world: this good news is not to be kept bottled up. So what is the message? ‘I am going up to my father and your father, my God and your God.” Mary wanted to pull Jesus back through death, to keep him human, personal, the old Jesus she felt safe with - but he was en route for glory. Not just for him but for her too, and if for her, for us also. As we sing:

Soar we now where Christ hath led

Following our exalted head

Made like him with him like him we rise

Ours the cross the grave the skies. Alleluia!

What a message to pass on: death is but a stage on the journey we make in Christ: we have a picture of death in baptism: just as in baptism we rise up out of the waters, born anew in his spirit, so death is but a door we pass through in our journey to the Father, God. Thus that message comes to us fresh again this Easter day, passed us through millions of lips it has reached our ears, I go up to my Father and your Father, my God and your God.

It comes to us still hankering after the old times, it comes to us with our narrow perspectives and our wavering faith, it comes to with our limited expectations of God’s salvation. But it comes to us with the same urgent challenge as it came to Mary: for the Jesus who goes to the father is still the way, and he who is the way is the truth and he who is the truth is life itself. Do not cling to me but go and tell that I am going on

Let us do that and then go forward ourselves in the strength of his spirit.

stones Luke 19 28-40

2007-03-28T23:37:00.000+01:00

We at Harrow Baptist Church will be waving our palms and singing and shouting our hosannas on Sunday. It comes therefore as a bit of surprise that neither palms nor hosannas are mentioned in Luke’s version of the story.

The crowd throw their clothes on the ground in front of the donkey as a sign of the royal dignity of the one riding it. Their shouted and sung greeting made clear who they presumed him to be:

“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”

The king who came in the name of the Lord could only be the anticipated Son of David who would restore the fortunes of his people. The song of peace and glory that had been sung at his birth by angels is now repeated by the crowd. Jesus was the man who was going to put the shalom back into a Jerusalem built in war by David the mercenary. This city of the nations, to which even the queen of Sheba came in splendour, so many times destroyed and now governed uneasily as part of the Pax Romana was about to be restored as a place of peace not under the aegis of Rome but of heaven. This king was not only making peace on earth but peace in heaven, too: a king in the reconciling business at the highest level.

Of course the crowd would have no idea of how that was to be achieved. But in their song at least they seemed to realise that there could be no glory without peace. And for peace to be lasting the violence and aggressive selfishness that humanity had carried like the mark of Cain on its psyche had to be defeated.

The enthusiasm of the pilgrims terrified those in charge of the temple cult. The glory songs of the psalms had their place and it was not the street. This exuberant and spontaneous worship challenged them as the professional leaders and orchestrators of worship and prophecy. Let loose from the dignity and formalism of liturgy these worship shouts had a revolutionary fervour that mortified the ruling class. They called on Jesus to silence the rabble.

With another idiosyncratic insertion into Mark’s account Luke reports Jesus’s devastating reply.

“I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.” Which stones? The next time stones are mentioned it is to refer to the impressiveness of the stones of the temple. Could Jesus have been referring to the verse in Habakkuk 2 11 where it is said that the mansions of the rich will for ever cry out in testimony to the injustice of the system which so divided rich and poor. Was Jesus saying something like, “You are so proud of your temple worship in this fantastic building. When the day of judgment comes this flamboyant building will cry out against you”.

Perhaps Jesus was thinking that they might try to stone him for blasphemy. Perhaps he was issuing them a challenge: “Stone me and it will be for the glory of God for every stone you throw will be for the peace of heaven and earth for by my death and only by my death will peace and glory be restored.” In the Acts of the Apostles, the second volume of Luke’s work, precisely that happens to Stephen. Luke surely heard the story from Paul. As those stones hurled in hatred at Stephen thudded into his body the glory of heaven was revealed and the righteous judgment of God resounded with a ring of resurrection so true that it echoed into Saul’s ears for the rest of his life. Certainly the death of Jesus was to be means by which reconciliation was achieved: Jesus was a king in the reconciling business - and his most important reconciling task that of reconciling man with God - he was to be God's offering for us and our offering to God. With sublime irony Luke indicates the reconciling power of Jesus as he reports that at the moment of Jesus’s condemnation to death Pilate and Herod became friends from that day onwards.

Or was he saying something altogether different? “These rough hewn stones you regard as rubbish will praise God more resoundingly than all your neatly cut, dressed, polished marble stones of the temple.” The great words of Psalm 118 ring throughout the passage: we will already have sung them today: they include that prophecy that became so important a part of Christian tradition,

“the stone that was dumped at the back of the yard now has the place of honour.”

This was remembered not least by Peter whose nickname gave him particular reason to take the comment on board. It was to be the disciples, leading the worship that the leaders wanted to be silenced, who would be gather as “living stones” around that great stone rejected by the temple leaders, and built up into a temple that would outlast Herod’s flamboyant folly. And it would be through that community, the incipient sign of the true kingdom of righteousness that heaven and earth would united in glory and peace. They, the disciples, would indeed become the new royal priesthood.

The rebellious tenants Luke 20 9-19

2007-03-21T09:12:00.000Z

Many of the members of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council, would, themselves, have been absentee landlords. Some of them may even have experienced the difficulty of collecting rents and tithes from their tenants: some may even have experienced the extreme case that Jesus here exemplifies of servants sent to collect the dues being beaten up, abused or threatened. It was a story he may have witnessed many times in his life in Galilee, which had become increasingly lawless and rebellious. So it was easy for Jesus to suck his Jerusalem hearers into being sympathetic with the landlord in his story. To them the vineyard would have been their Galilean estates, and the escalation of violence shown to their representatives, a barometer of the increasing rebelliousness of that truculent territory, where zealots were, finally, seeking to claim independence both from them and Rome. They may have been pleased that, at last, Jesus seemed to be taking on real issues of importance, siding with them against these dangerous northern dissidents.

But Jesus was actually speaking within the prophetic tradition in which the vineyard stood for Israel. The ruling class seem to be under the illusion that they can control the country: the prophets, God=s messengers are persecuted. With the sending of his son he plays the last card in his pack. Kill him and the vineyard will be in the hands of the tenants for ever. The parable plays up the patience of the landowner to a most unlikely degree. Few landowners would be either so foolish or have sufficient resources to send so many servants on an unsuccessful mission to collect the rents: in no real case can any landowner have been so naive as to send his beloved son thinking that they would respect him. This is a landowner acting totally irresponsibly. The son is murdered and his body is thrown out of the vineyard to be at the mercy of the wild beasts. Jesus turns to his audience of absentee landlords and asks them what the landowner should do next. The answer comes: AHe will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others.@ Indeed some of them might already have done that with their estates. Then Jesus quotes from the very Psalm that had been sung at his entry into Jerusalem two days earlier. It was generally assumed that the rejected one who was restored in that Psalm was David himself, who brought the ark into Jerusalem, and laid the plans for the temple itself. The blind man in Jericho had identified him as the Son of David. The crowds had greeted him with the royal Davidic chorus, ABlessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord@, he who had cleared the temple was himself the chief cornerstone of all that was essential to the salvation of Israel; he was the Son. It was Jesus who had been sent to the vineyard whose body was to be thrown outside the city wall to dogs and crows. And God who had looked for justice saw only bloodshed: who looked for righteousness and heard only a desperate, forsaken cry of a dying man.

This was a clear answer to those who had questioned on whose authority Jesus was acting and speaking. In the context of the parable, John the Baptist had been the last of the prophets who had been killed. Jesus was the Son. If ever there were a self-fulfilling prophecy this was it. The Son was due to be killed: the vineyard was soon to be lost: the new council of tenants had already been formed and trained (the twelve). Just as there was an inevitability about the story of the sower and the magnificent harvest, so also there was a frightful inevitability about this one. The response of the hearers ensured that.

Son or slave Luke 15 11-32

2007-03-15T09:33:00.000Z

Sometimes the parables of Jesus are like cartoons: the characters, larger than life, sharply etched, strongly contrasted and sketchily fleshed out. Like these two sons: the one generous indeed rashly prodigal – the other tight-fisted and mean; the one adventurous and risk-taking, the other cautious and unambitious; the one lazy and sociable, the other hard-working and solitary. Yet they are both sons of the same father. Both carry his good qualities to such extremes that they become faults in opposite directions: his grace becomes wild spending, his careful management becomes obsessional graft.

There are many themes in this wonderfully complex, multi-layered story, but perhaps the most poignant is the way it highlights the contrast between son and slave. When the younger son decides to go back home it is as a slave (or at least hired hand) that he expects to be welcomed. By squandering his inheritance he believes he has squandered his sonship. It shows a total lack of understanding of the love bond of the father-son relationship. He is his father’s son not because of what he has done or not done: he might even be ritually unclean by working down the pig farm but to his father he will always be a son – living or even dead.

The other son reveals a similar failure to understand his relationship. He is, of course, bitter towards that younger son whom he even fails to acknowledge as a brother. But that bitterness extends to his father, too. In their sad conversation he says that he has “slaved his guts out” and never been adequately rewarded. This is the talk not of a son but of shop steward. His relationship with his father is contractual not filial.

The younger son repents : he accepts the totally unmerited generosity of his father. But then he has been even more irresponsibly generous himself in the past and it does not take him too long to swing into party mood. But the elder son’s bitterness is not melted so easily. It is not easy for him to forgive his layabout brother. His slavery is by now deeply ingrained. The “everything” that his father had given him had included a great deal of responsibility and hard work that his young brother should have been sharing.

The Bible bangs on all the time about how God adopted as his child a slave people suffering under Egyptian rule. But how they continually persisted in turning what God wanted to be a relationship of loving commitment back into the slavery that was easier to live with because it made fewer demands. Obeying orders is easier than taking responsibility. Working grudgingly and unwillingly for fixed hours is easier than open ended commitment out of love. And even the pain of the slave master’s whip might more easily be borne than trying to love the brother who squanders your livelihood.

So we routinely turn our love relationship with our Father into a master–slave contract. We treat home like a hotel, and charity becomes a drudge. Faith and works become opposites instead of organically connected like trees and fruit, prayer a shopping list, and worship a bribe. In the end we even refuse the generosity of God because we would prefer to earn our own salvation. In our consumer mindset that which money can’t buy must ultimately be worthless.

This story stands as a stark warning not just to those who have wandered off into far countries and need to return, but perhaps more poignantly, to the faithful who have never left the farm. They too have forgotten what it is to have the honour and responsibility of being a son not for what they do but for who they are.

Fruitless Luke 13 1-9

2007-03-05T17:55:00.000Z

Who=s to blame? A bunch of terrorists out of sheer bloody mindedness incite a mob to action over the building of an aqueduct: it stands as a symbol of a regime that has been imposed upon them by a foreign imperialist government which is more interested in milking their economy than giving them proper civil rights. The governor responds by ordering a cavalry charge indiscriminately into a seething mass of freedom marchers: pour encourager les autres. Whose fault is it? The terrorists? The governor? The crowds? The soldiers? Or the system?

The expert replies by reminding them of another disaster recently in the news

In a separate incident eighteen construction workers involved in building this aqueduct are killed when one of the towers collapses. Was this just a tragic accident or was someone to be blamed for that too.?

We live in a fragile world where relationships are all askew: so immensely valuable that it can=t be priced life is nevertheless ended so easily and unpredictably: we all live cheek by jowl with death. Life seems to hang by a hair=s breadth. Allocating blame isn=t the point: we can of course say that it all goes back to the fall but that=s not a helpful analysis since it only pushes the question of blame back a couple of million years.

Rather than waste thinking time allocating blame it is more constructive to think how we should respond to the facts. In a violent suffering world it is all the more important that we make our lives count while we have them.

Think about this for a moment:

A man owns an orchard: on one of his routine visits he notices that one of the trees never seems to have any fruit on it: I suggest we chop it down and replace it with one that is more worthwhile he says. It=s a waste of space , time and resources says the businessman.

No please don=t says the gardener; he has a different relationship with trees: for him they are not simply to be valued in economic terms but for what they are: he who loves to grow them has grown to love them.

It might not be the poor tree=s fault: the blame may lie with me: perhaps I have not been attentive enough to it: I have allowed the soil in this corner of the orchard to become poor: the roots are competing for nutrition with weeds and rubble: give me time. I=ll give this tree a bit of TLC and then we=ll review the situation again next year.

We have been given a life to live both as individuals are more to the point in community: it is important that in whatever time is given to us that we are fruitful and fragrant for the world in which we live often seems like a barren wilderness and we are sorely needed as fruitful oases. That may require - from time to time someone coming along and digging in a bit of manure around our roots: - perhaps I=ll use my father=s euphemism - a bit of good stuff. We may need to be disturbed, at root level before there are signs of fruit at branch level. But thank God he isn=t chopping us down yet: for he loves the trees too much. But nevertheless life is short: sometimes shorter than we think it will be. And the need for fruit urgent.

Not least because we live in a world of pain and dislocation: in the wilderness of despair there have to be signs of hope: there ought to be a difference between a cultivated tree and a wild one: the russet should be sweeter than the crab:

Paul would say that we have been grafted on to the best rootstock the world has ever known: even Jesus himself: the life of the church should stand out as a paradigm of what it is to be human: a human life lived in an eternal dimension: where it matters when it matters for a world that matters: and it matters if we don=t.

The fox and the chickens Luke 13 31-35

2007-02-28T17:32:00.000Z

What a contrast we have in these verses. Jesus calls Herod a “fox” whereas he is the “mother hen”. In rabbinic literature the fox was regarded as an animal of low cunning. It stood lower in comparison even with the mighty wolf, let alone the kingly lion. Of course the wolf stood as the emblem of Rome for it had been a she-wolf that had suckled Romulus and Remus in Roman folklore and had therefore been instrumental in the establishment of the original city. The fox is at best a poor substitute for the wolf. Foxes have their holes from which they emerge to wreak havoc in the hen house at night. Creatures of the darkness and the underworld, predatory on the weak and defenceless, the fox was among the least complimentary epithets for a tetrarch let alone a would be king. For his power was shadowy and his rule predatory- but it was not the mighty he could challenge – he preyed on the poor and like those whose ways were evil he prowled in the twilight. Herod the great had played wolf: Herod Antipas could but play fox. “Better to be a tail to lion than a head to foxes” the proverb put it.

But Jesus does not push this proverb. Having dismissed Herod as the fox he does not seize the lion of Judah image for himself. Instead astonishingly he chooses the rather domestic and banal image of the fussy mother hen. The contrast with the fox could hardly be greater. Here Jesus aligns himself unambiguously with the defenceless and helpless chickens upon whom the Herodian party preyed. In the prophecy of Isaiah (ch 31) God says that he will protect Jerusalem like “birds hovering”. The image at least is of a large bird of prey, scouring the surface of the earth with piercing and all-seeing eye, ready to swoop in powerful dive to protect its young in moments of danger. Instead we have this image of the plump flightless timid hen clucking fussily over its nest offering as its only protection for its chicks its own defenceless body – saying effectively to the predator – take me, eat me have your fill and leave the chicks – they are of little use to you.

Jesus prophetically sees the futility of his own sacrifice. He offers his body for the protection of Jerusalem, but the chickens go pecking around the farmyard oblivious of fox or wolf or even lion for that matter. Indeed rather like the foolish chickens in folk tales of all ages they would rather trust themselves to the power of a predator than to the warm and gentle embrace of their mother’s flightless wing. Just as he must not throw himself from the temple so Jesus refuses to be other than a defenceless hen to his powerless children. It is an awesome sign of his humility.

Temptations Luke 4 1-13

2007-02-20T21:56:00.001Z

When we come to the story of the temptations we notice that Luke has reversed the order of the last two temptations so that Jesus=s last encounter with the devil (for the time being, Luke cautiously notes) is in the temple - or at least on the roof of it. Thus the temptations mirror the journey of the gospel from wilderness via mountain top to temple.

The journey starts in the desert: no‑one need be surprised that Jesus encountered the devil there: in Luke=s gospel it was the place of evil: it was the place where the evil spirits roamed looking for a home. Jesus, though, went out there filled with the spirit of God. Here he is tempted to turn a stone into bread. This temptation is basic to all: to make a living without work. As Paul put it: AIf a man does not work neither should he eat!@ Perhaps the point is that Jesus is resisting the easy option of living in the desert, away from human contact, the life of the hermit. What does seem obvious is that the temptation was to turn away from serving others into a life of self‑indulgence, either the by choosing the easy route of breaking his fast, or the easy route of isolation from mission, since if bread could be found as easily as stones in the wilderness, why should anyone want to live with the pressures of depending on community?. We are not immune either: the church has always struggled with the tension between escape into the desert, feeding its face spiritually while neglecting the hunger at its doors, and being actively present in the world, serving the community.

The next temptation, as Luke tells it, is clearer. In a flash Jesus sees in his mind's eye all the nations of earth: suddenly he has swung from one extreme to the other: now, far from escaping from responsibility into the desert, the temptation is to be a man of the world. This temptation has also trapped the church: for too long and in too many places, still, the church has muddied its hands in squalid politics, rarely emerging with any dignity and, usually, obscuring the simplicity of the gospel: thus we read reports of how church leaders in France for years harboured Nazi criminals: we are aware that the racist government in South Africa went hand in hand with the Dutch Reformed Church: the Vatican has played politics at a mostly demeaning level for most of its history; the easier place for Christians is in opposition rather than power. It is scarcely possible to be active in politics without denying at some point the heart of the faith: for the self‑giving love of God fits uneasily into any political programme; it leads more easily to crucifixion than landslide election victories. So Jesus teaches that while he cannot live alone with God in a desert of his choosing, turning stones to bread in a self‑indulgent neglect of his social responsibility, he also shows that whole‑hearted involvement in the world's affairs and the grasp of power is equally dangerous, especially if it is not accompanied by a controlling worship of God and concentration on his will. As the Philippian hymn teaches, every knee shall bow at the name of Jesus; but the route to that glory lay in slavery, humiliation and death on a cross. There are no short cuts to establishing the kingdom. And if there were no short cuts for Jesus, there are none for us either.

The last temptation takes place not in the desert, not on a lofty mountain peak, but in the temple. If the desert is the devil's natural habitat, the mountains God's special meeting place with man, where the law is given and the prophets see God, the temple was the very house of God himself. No-one expects to be tempted in God's house. Yet here, perhaps, the temptation is the most devious. Here the Word of God is read out. Surely this causes no trouble: we listen, we obey, we do. The psalm is sung: 'He has given his angels charge over you, to protect you . . . they will carry you in their arms lest you trip over a stone.' The devil has twice been repulsed by Jesus=s use of scripture now begins to use it himself. Put the verse to the test, do something the world can't fail to notice! Call yourself God=s chosen one? What's your faith like? How much are you prepared to rest on the promises of God? But what are we being exhorted to do? To put God to the test, says Jesus. Never do that! When Jesus says “Do not tempt the Lord God” that does not mean, 'Do not tempt me!' He means, 'Don't try to tempt me into putting the Lord God to the test.' Now some people have seen in this temptation a reference to the trial of Jesus: apparently the punishment for blasphemy was being thrown off the temple tower. Similar punishments existed in Rome where the traitors were thrown off the Capitol hill. Luke reports that they tried to throw Jesus over the cliff at Nazareth in the very next story! So the temptation might be to give in, throw in the towel, inflict the punishment on yourself, test God to see if he is on your side or not! This is a sort of medieval trial by ordeal: if he saves you - and surely he will - you are proved in your mission. Though this was a temptation specific to Jesus, often in the house of God we hear the word twisted by the deceiver to make rational sense to us. It is also tempting to judge mission by results: to test our own closeness to his will, the measure of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit by increases in offerings, baptisms membership statistics and size of congregations. But by doing this are we putting God to the test by demanding evidence of his presence with us? Does the absence of signs point to the absence of God? Many people thought so. If Jesus was the Christ, where was God=s protection at Golgotha? His apparent absence was noted by all.

The church has traditionally used the passages about the temptations in wilderness as the passages of scripture to be read on the first Sunday in Lent. In a another desert the old Israel had failed to put faith in God: faced with giants they felt like grasshoppers: for 40 days they had stared the enemy in the face: at the end they shrank from the task and so faced 40 years of nomadic aimless existence: Christians live their lives under the shadow of the cross: to be a follower of Jesus is to be at that heart of suffering where God touches earth. We are tempted to try to retreat into a specious spirituality, concentrating on our own needs; we are tempted to throw ourselves into political action, oblivious of the demands of worship, all action, no spirituality; we are tempted either to throw in the towel, or look for easy answers. In Luke=s account Jesus showed that these temptations must be resisted: the cross is there to be carried. And he makes clear that this is not just a 40 day test but the battle of a lifetime.

The transfiguration: Luke 9 28-36

2007-02-14T11:19:00.001Z

The story of the transfiguration of Jesus is recorded in Mark and Matthew as well as in Luke, but Luke stamps his own mark on it by including much detail absent in the other gospels. To begin with he changes the time note at the beginning from six days to eight days. It has sometimes been suggested that Mark, and Matthew (presumably following him) had in mind the six days that the cloud of glory hung over Sinai when Moses received the ten commandments. Certainly it is extremely unusual for Mark to have been so precise about time. Is there then any significance in Luke changing from 6 to 8? Most commentators would suggest not; however the transfiguration - a word Luke seems studiously to avoid (again unlike Mark and Matthew) - is surely some sort of preparation for resurrection. Within the early church resurrection came to be associated with the 8^th day. God created the world in 6 days and on the 7^th rested. The resurrection took place on the 1^st day of the week but in cosmic terms this was the day of new creation, the 8^th and eternal day. Early Christian baptisteries were 8 sided to symbolise this. Now if Luke were making a point about this (the Day of the Lord is a very important theme in Luke's gospel) then it may well be that the mention of 6 days in Mark refers not so much to the 6 day presence of glory cloud on Sinai, as to the 6 days of creation: it was on the sixth day that human beings were created in God's image as the climax of God's work. In Mark's account Jesus transfigured appeared in dazzling radiance as the true Son of God: humanity in all its glory. Luke, perhaps with the benefit of Paul's theological insight, now puts a further gloss on Mark. The old Adam was created on the 6^th day. Jesus, carrying all the weight of Adam’s sin, died on the 6^th day. On the 8^th day he rose from the dead as the new Adam. The glorified Jesus is not just man as God intended him to be, the climax of the old creation, but the first being of the new creation.

The second change Luke makes is more easily explained. Jesus takes Peter, John and James up the mountain to pray and it is while Jesus is praying that he is glorified. Thus through prayer Jesus has placed himself within the glorious presence of God. Perhaps Luke is making a point about prayer in general: that prayer lifts the believer into the heavenly places. And in his account it is not just Jesus who shines in glory but Moses and Elijah too, and his glory was not simply a white surpassing that of the finest washing powder (as in Mark) but the white of lightning. Luke also gives us the theme of his prayer: his exodus in Jerusalem.

Now that word exodus had packed within it a colossal theological punch. The whole history of the formation of the Jewish nation was tied up with the exodus from Egypt. A slave rabble were formed into a chosen people under the covenant of Sinai: the exodus lay at the root of their formation, the root of their liberty, the root of their law and informed their feasts. But the coming out of Jesus: his passage through death - personally carrying the curse of the first born - his rising - his own personal identification with Passover where unleavened bread stood in sign for his body, and his own blood was to be the seal on a new covenant: all this new exodus material was now going to be packed into that already redolent word.

Yet while the mysteries of the Christian faith were being revealed, the chosen disciples were so sleepy they missed its import. Luke is surely here preparing us for another hilltop prayer encounter, this time in Gethsemane, when once again the exodus of Jesus was on the agenda and once again the same three disciples missed the plot.

The three gospel accounts are all similar in that they all say that the disciples saw Moses and Elijah talking with the transfigured Jesus. They are often identified as representatives of law and prophets: but it is also relevant that they both received theophanies on Mount Sinai. Less attention is given to the association both had with the Passover: Moses as the instigator of the first Passover when the children of Israel left Egypt, and Elijah as the one for whose return a cup is left at the end. Luke's emphasis on the exodus of Jesus makes this association perhaps more poignant. In his resurrection glory on the mount of transfiguration Jesus appears with the representatives of the first and the last cups: alone among the gospel writers Luke quotes Jesus saying at the last supper, "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood" tying Passover in with the covenant given on Sinai. Thus exodus, covenant, Passover and new creation all find allusion in Luke's subtle account.

Luke also follows Mark (and Matthew) in quoting Peter wishing to prolong the experience by building three booths to Moses, Elijah and Jesus. This could be an allusion to the Feast of Tabernacles - the great feast - which rolled the creation of the tabernacle in the wilderness into one with the harvesting booths of the first harvest in the promised land. Thus strangely the feast seemed to celebrate not only the wanderings of the Aramaeans but also their eventual arrival and settlement in a promised land. Jesus's rebuke showed his total dislike for the ossifying of faith in monuments: it was inappropriate to celebrate an exodus with the structures celebrating an arrival. All three gospels make clear that the glories of the revelation on the mountain are to held in tension with the struggles of discipleship in the plains.

At the high moment of their experience the disciples felt as if the whole shekinah glory of the unapproachable God was being let loose on their unprotected heads. That moment was too much for them but the revelation God affirmed the nature of Jesus by proclaiming him his Son, the Chosen One. The words echoed those spoken from heaven at his baptism. Just as it had been at the moment when Jesus descended into the waters of baptism - the sign of death and resurrection - that God said "Today I have fathered him" so in the poignancy of the moment as Jesus prepared for death God once again affirmed him as his son. For the disciples, too, a command: listen. On this occasion the vision was spectacular but the purpose of the vision was to make them listen even when what they saw might not be encouraging. Since the gospels were written for people who had never seen Jesus to hear about him the command to listen was an essential part of their story. But it was a command the disciples themselves were to ignore.

sermon on the plain

2007-02-07T10:25:00.000Z

Luke distinguishes this leadership team from the great crowd of disciples waiting for them in the plain. It is to that larger group that Jesus addresses the teaching that follows. It is not simply for leaders. It is for all who follow him. While it is clear that at this point for Matthew the mountain setting is important for Luke it is important to make clear that the disciples were not limited to a small coterie of specialists. For Luke mountain generally meant withdrawal, plain. involvement. The words "How blest are you who are poor" were said in the context of the plain where the hearers were surrounded by the consequences of poverty, malnutrition, and death. They are also spoken by one who had the power to change things. They are not some mystical theology delivered in a remote spot to a privileged elite, instead they are spoken by one who was touched on all sides by the seriousness of the desperate human condition of those to whom he ministered.

Unlike in Matthew's account, Jesus does not spiritualise poverty, hunger and grief. Nor does he speak about them obliquely. Here Jesus speaks to his disciples directly. And whereas in his Nazareth sermon the congregation fixes their eyes on him, now he fixes his eyes on them. He speaks not just as preacher but as judge. His piercing eyes see them as they are and with prophetic insight as they shall be. This is Mary's song expounded by her son. The logic of materialism is turned on its head: it is you rich, you powerful, you replete and you happy ones who are cursed and you poor, hungry and sad who are blessed. You who are flattered and well thought of are phoney and will be forgotten: the true prophets are you who are abused and denounced. It is you who will be remembered like the great persecuted prophets of old.

The teaching that in Matthew rambles over 109 verses is here condensed into 29. But even within this concentration of material there is room for some addition. The epithet "Judge not that you be not judged" is amplified: not only are followers of Jesus not to judge they are also to have the Father's compassion, and they are to practise his forgiveness. Moreover the command to be compassionate comes first: as Meister Eckhart memorably put it,"Whatever God does, the first outburst is always compassion." Giving is to be generous. Because it is going to be you who set the standards for God's grace, Jesus says. This emphasis on compassion, forgiveness and grace within the context of judgment is entirely consistent with Luke' s account of the life and death of Jesus. Although the large majority of sayings Luke quotes are also in Matthew, through his concentration on these themes, Luke moves the mood of the sermon away from obedience to the law and moral rectitude, to an ethic of love which springs unconditionally from the store of goodness in the disciple's heart. The love demanded goes far beyond that of the golden rule - treat others as you would wish them to treat you. Love is unreserved: enemies deserve it as much as friends: those incapable of paying back love are still to be loved: our love like God's is to be unilateral. Any other ethic will lead to moral collapse. For only unilateral love can unlock the falling spiral of tit for tat. Unlike in Matthew's account it is not a question of wisdom, the men in the parable are neither wise nor stupid: rather it is a question of conscientiousness, care and commitment. The one whose life stands is the one who comes to Jesus, listens and lives, digs deep and only builds when he discovers rock. That is true discipleship.