The Island Parson

Day Twenty-Six of An Advent Calendar: Visitation & Magnificat

Posted on December 22, 2016 by Bruce Bryant-Scott

Thursday, December 22, 2016 Thursday after the Fourth Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 29.13–24
Revelation 21.22—22.5
Luke 1.39–48a, (and Luke 1.48b–56, if desired)
The text of the readings follows after the comments.

“Tidings” (1973) by Romare Bearden (1911-1988), Seattle Art Museum

Continuing to read from Luke, we go with Mary from Galilee to the hill country of Judea to visit Elizabeth, her relative, and to stay with her and Zechariah for three months. When Mary arrives the unborn John the Baptist leaps for joy in Elizabeth’s womb, somehow knowing that the future Messiah was being carried by Mary. The late Raymond Brown titled a little book on the infancy narratives “An Adult Christ at Christmas“, which suggests that whatever we read about Jesus in the first chapters of Matthew and Luke are really not about Jesus as an infant, but about his life as an adult. If we read these stories literally we will miss the rhetoric that propels the readers away from little baby Jesus to the adult crucified on the cross. In this case the reaction of the fetal Baptist previews the reaction he will have when Jesus comes to him at the River Jordan.

Mary, inspired by the Holy Spirit, proclaims praise to God in the parallelism so well known to us from the psalms and other Hebrew poetry. Just as the the movement of the unborn John presages his meeting with Jesus, so the Magnificat, the Song of Mary, indicates the future, adult Jesus. In the Anglican Church many of us know this piece as one of the two canticles sung at Evensong. And so often I think we miss the expectation of radical justice that is within these words.I know that as a teenage chorister singing Stanford in C I had only a dim appreciation of what I was singing – no one had ever bothered to explain it to me or any of the other choristers. Yet even in the words of the Book of Common Prayer (1549 words still) their subversive nature rings out:

He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat : and hath exalted the humble and meek.
He hath filled the hungry with good things : and the rich he hath sent empty away.

These words echo the prophet Isaiah seven centuries earlier, as we read in today’s passage:

the meek shall obtain fresh joy in the Lord,
and the neediest people shall exult in the Holy One of Israel.
For the tyrant shall be no more,
and the scoffer shall cease to be;
all those alert to do evil shall be cut off.

Whether from Mary or from Isaiah, this is not good news for the rich and powerful, the arrogant and oppressive, it is judgment upon them. And while Mary sings of these things as having already happened (for you Greek fans, the verb form is an aorist), she is describing something that is really going to happen in the future. Arguably, it is yet to happen – there is still gross inequality, the rich still exploit creation and disregard the poor, and humility is regarded as a minor virtue. It is what the prophets looked for in the coming of the Messiah, and what the early Christians expected with the Second Coming of Jesus as the Son of Man.

And yet, in a sense, in the Incarnation, even in the pregnancy of Mary, the victory had already been won. Just as Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s transformative renewing of the world, so is his incarnation. Like Revelation, time here is ambiguous, and the Magnificat describes God’s justice as something that has happened, is happening, and is going to happen. Will we allow ourselves to be swept up in this mystery?

One of the most beautiful settings that catches the mysterious nature of this is Arvo Pärt’s from 1989. I have loved singing it, and if you haven’t heard it, have a listen to the Erebus Ensemble’s rendition.

Isaiah 29.13–24
The Lord said:
Because these people draw near with their mouths
and honour me with their lips,
while their hearts are far from me,
and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote;
so I will again do
amazing things with this people,
shocking and amazing.
The wisdom of their wise shall perish,
and the discernment of the discerning shall be hidden.

Ha! You who hide a plan too deep for the Lord,
whose deeds are in the dark,
and who say, ‘Who sees us? Who knows us?’
You turn things upside down!
Shall the potter be regarded as the clay?
Shall the thing made say of its maker,
‘He did not make me’;
or the thing formed say of the one who formed it,
‘He has no understanding’?

Shall not Lebanon in a very little while
become a fruitful field,
and the fruitful field be regarded as a forest?
On that day the deaf shall hear
the words of a scroll,
and out of their gloom and darkness
the eyes of the blind shall see.
The meek shall obtain fresh joy in the Lord,
and the neediest people shall exult in the Holy One of Israel.
For the tyrant shall be no more,
and the scoffer shall cease to be;
all those alert to do evil shall be cut off—
those who cause a person to lose a lawsuit,
who set a trap for the arbiter in the gate,
and without grounds deny justice to the one in the right.

Therefore thus says the Lord, who redeemed Abraham, concerning the house of Jacob:
No longer shall Jacob be ashamed,
no longer shall his face grow pale.
For when he sees his children,
the work of my hands, in his midst,
they will sanctify my name;
they will sanctify the Holy One of Jacob,
and will stand in awe of the God of Israel.
And those who err in spirit will come to understanding,
and those who grumble will accept instruction.

Revelation 21.22—22.5
I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honour of the nations. But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practises abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign for ever and ever.

Luke 1.39–48a (1.48b–56)
In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.’

And Mary said,
‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
(for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’

And Mary remained with her for about three months and then returned to her home.)

Posted in Advent | Tagged Magnificat | Leave a comment

Day Twenty-Five of An Advent Calendar: Annunciation

Posted on December 21, 2016 by Bruce Bryant-Scott

Wednesday, December 21, 2016 Wednesday after the Fourth Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 28.9–22
Revelation 21.9–21
Luke 1.26–38
The text of the readings follows after the comments.

“Annunciation” (1980), Raphael Soyer (1899-1987), Smithsonian American Art Museum http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/online/roby/art/1986.6.98.cfm Annunciation

This morning at 2:44 am PST we have had the winter solstice, which is when the sun reaches its most southerly extreme relative to the celestial equator. In practical terms in the northern hemisphere this makes for the shortest day of the year, and marks the beginning of the astronomical winter, although with recent snowfalls it is clear we are well into the meterological season of winter.

In terms of the gospel reading it is not December 21, but March 25, as we have Luke’s account of the Annunciation. Since we celebrate Jesus’s birth on December 25, we celebrate his conception nine month’s earlier, on March 25, when Mary says, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” As the English Language Liturgical Consultation version of the Apostles’ Creed puts it, “He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary”. In the lead up to Christmas we read our way through Luke’s infancy narrative in chapters 1 and 2, and today we get this story.

Some people have great problems with this passage. The late radical lesbian feminist Mary Daly, who taught at the Jesuit affiliated Boston College, argued that “In the Annunciation the male-angel Gabriel brings poor Mary the news that she is to be impregnated by and with god. Like all rape victims in male myth she submits joyously to this unspeakable degradation” Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984, p. 74). In less extreme language others have also described issues with the passage. My own thoughts are that this is not a rape fantasy, but that the issues raised by scholars like Daly are less to do with how Mary is actually portrayed in the gospel and more with what later generations did with the passage, making it a justification for the exaltation of virginity, and the stereo-typing of Mary as meek, submissive to patriarchy, and quite unlike ordinary humans.

If we stick to the text and the portrayal of Mary in Luke and the other gospels we find someone who is faithful but who ponders these things “in her heart”. I like the picture above of a young woman who is dealing with the imponderables of pregnancy and where it will lead. As a male I cannot and will never know what this is like, but I have watched the wonder of expectation and birth, which is at once so ordinary and so wondrous. You never get the children you expect, and the signs and portents which Mary received only multiplied this reality.

In the end what we have is not someone who is submissive but who cooperates with the divine. To suggest that this is submission in an oppressive sense is to miss the creative and re-creative aspect of the Incarnation in which, to use yesterday’s words from Revelation, “All things are being made new.” Amongst those things are the relations between male and female, perhaps seeing it less as essentialized binary opposites as continuums on both the biological and sociological levels. The Incarnation is not abour reinstating what already is in the broken, fragile world, but it is about redeeming and renewing it through metanoia (a transformation of the mind) and living in the New Jerusalem. Inasmuch as Christ lives in us by the power of the Holy Spirit, we have entered into the role of Mary.

Isaiah 28.9–22
‘Whom will he teach knowledge,
and to whom will he explain the message?
Those who are weaned from milk,
those taken from the breast?
For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept,
line upon line, line upon line,
here a little, there a little.’

Truly, with stammering lip
and with alien tongue
he will speak to this people,
to whom he has said,
‘This is rest;
give rest to the weary;
and this is repose’;
yet they would not hear.
Therefore the word of the Lord will be to them,
‘Precept upon precept, precept upon precept,
line upon line, line upon line,
here a little, there a little’;
in order that they may go, and fall backwards,
and be broken, and snared, and taken.

Therefore hear the word of the Lord, you scoffers
who rule this people in Jerusalem.
Because you have said, ‘We have made a covenant with death,
and with Sheol we have an agreement;
when the overwhelming scourge passes through
it will not come to us;
for we have made lies our refuge,
and in falsehood we have taken shelter’;
therefore thus says the Lord God,
See, I am laying in Zion a foundation stone,
a tested stone,
a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation:
‘One who trusts will not panic.’
And I will make justice the line,
and righteousness the plummet;
hail will sweep away the refuge of lies,
and waters will overwhelm the shelter.
Then your covenant with death will be annulled,
and your agreement with Sheol will not stand;
when the overwhelming scourge passes through
you will be beaten down by it.
As often as it passes through, it will take you;
for morning by morning it will pass through,
by day and by night;
and it will be sheer terror to understand the message.
For the bed is too short to stretch oneself on it,
and the covering too narrow to wrap oneself in it.
For the Lord will rise up as on Mount Perazim,
he will rage as in the valley of Gibeon
to do his deed—strange is his deed!—
and to work his work—alien is his work!
Now therefore do not scoff,
or your bonds will be made stronger;
for I have heard a decree of destruction
from the Lord God of hosts upon the whole land.

Revelation 21.9–21
Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ And in the spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. It has the glory of God and a radiance like a very rare jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal. It has a great, high wall with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates are inscribed the names of the twelve tribes of the Israelites; on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city has twelve foundations, and on them are the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

The angel who talked to me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and walls. The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its width; and he measured the city with his rod, fifteen hundred miles; its length and width and height are equal. He also measured its wall, one hundred and forty-four cubits by human measurement, which the angel was using. The wall is built of jasper, while the city is pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations of the wall of the city are adorned with every jewel; the first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth cornelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst. And the twelve gates are twelve pearls, each of the gates is a single pearl, and the street of the city is pure gold, transparent as glass.

Luke 1.26–38
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you.’ But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’ Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.’ Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her.

Day Twenty-Four of An Advent Calendar: See, I Am Making All Things New

Posted on December 20, 2016 by Bruce Bryant-Scott

Tuesday, December 20, 2016 Tuesday after the Fourth Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 11.10–16
Revelation 20.11—21.8
Luke 1.5–25
The text of the readings follows after the comments.

victoria_bc_-_christ_church_cathedral_-_stained_glass_34_-_chapel_of_the_new_jerusalem_20010241804

A very literal rendering of the vision of New Jersusalem, Christ Church Cathedral, Victoria, BC Canada

The Reverend Canon Howard Buchner of blessed memory, Dean of Divinity at Trinity College, Toronto from 1961 to 1983, once said that the words from Revelation 21 “See, I am making all things new” were the most radical in the whole of the New Testament. It also sums up the essential message of the good news, and the mission of God in creation – the renewing of all things.

The good news is not really about accepting Jesus in order to avoid the wrath to come. To reduce the gospel to something like this is to miss the universal quality of what God is doing in Christ. Some evangelicals will emphasise the personal nature of the death of Jesus – “Even if you were the only sinner in the world Jesus would still die for you” – but I think that is just a little bit of an egocentric way of understanding the Incarnation. It’s not just about you. It’s not just about Christians. It’s about the whole of creation, heaven and earth, things visible and invisible. The question about this is: do we see this all as good news and are we ready to be swept up in God’s transforming embrace? Or do we want to stick to the ways things are, resist the change that is coming, and deny God’s presence in the world? Are we willing to become the wonderful creatures that God made us to be, or will we hold on to the warped and perverted versions of ourselves that is at best a dim reflection of the divine glory?

As Revelation 21 continues on into Revelation 22 the description of the New Jerusalem is of a city that is larger than any city that has ever existed. It is this large, it would seem, because of all of the people who are to be in it. The passage today does suggest that some might be excluded from the New Jerusalem, but it does not name names.

Some folks might get excited by the passage about “the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death”. Just as time is complicated in Revelation, so are images. A wise scholar once said that people take metaphorically the things in that book which were meant to be taken literally, and take literally the things which were meant metaphorically. Thus some excited exegetes miss the underlying message of transformative justice in Revelation, and only see the surface images and not through to the underlying meaning. The sulphurous lake is one of those. I would agree with the Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988) said that “we must see that hell is not an object that is ‘full’ or ’empty’ of human individuals, but a possibility that is not ‘created’ by God but in any case by the free individuals who choose it”. As somone once said, “We are required to believe that hell exists, but nowhere are we required to believe that anyone is in it”.

My own thinking is that hell is the freely chosen separation from the divine, and active resistance to grace, which manifests itself in this life in violence, lies, and damaging action. If we believe that there is some continued existence after life, then it is also reasonable to believe that that separation and warped mode of being also continues. I have not seen too many death bed transformations – people tend to die the way they lived. If they were good and generous people in life they would be the same in death; if they were miserable, angry, so-and-sos throughout their lives, then that’s the way they went out of this world.

So this reflection takes us back to the here and now. If the kind of people we are at death and into the afterlife are the kind of people we are in life, what kind of people do we want to be now? The time to change is not at death, or at some moment before the judgment seat of God, it is now. So, when the one seated on the throne says, “See, I am making all things new” he is speaking perhaps of some time in the future, or perhaps of the resurrection of Jesus – or perhaps at this very moment. Now is the time when, for me, all things are being made new. Can we accept this radical message?

Isaiah 11.10–16
On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

On that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that is left of his people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Ethiopia, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea.
He will raise a signal for the nations,
and will assemble the outcasts of Israel,
and gather the dispersed of Judah
from the four corners of the earth.
The jealousy of Ephraim shall depart,
the hostility of Judah shall be cut off;
Ephraim shall not be jealous of Judah,
and Judah shall not be hostile towards Ephraim.
But they shall swoop down on the backs of the Philistines in the west;
together they shall plunder the people of the east.
They shall put forth their hand against Edom and Moab,
and the Ammonites shall obey them.
And the Lord will utterly destroy
the tongue of the sea of Egypt;
and will wave his hand over the River
with his scorching wind;
and will split it into seven channels,
and make a way to cross on foot;
so there shall be a highway from Assyria
for the remnant that is left of his people,
as there was for Israel
when they came up from the land of Egypt.

Revelation 20.11—21.8
Then I saw a great white throne and the one who sat on it; the earth and the heaven fled from his presence, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, the book of life. And the dead were judged according to their works, as recorded in the books. And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and all were judged according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire; and anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

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

And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ Then he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death.’

Luke 1.5–25
In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly order of Abijah. His wife was a descendant of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord. But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years.

Once when he was serving as priest before God and his section was on duty, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and offer incense. Now at the time of the incense-offering, the whole assembly of the people was praying outside. Then there appeared to him an angel of the Lord, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified; and fear overwhelmed him. But the angel said to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He must never drink wine or strong drink; even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.’ Zechariah said to the angel, ‘How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.’ The angel replied, ‘I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur.’

Meanwhile, the people were waiting for Zechariah, and wondered at his delay in the sanctuary. When he did come out, he could not speak to them, and they realized that he had seen a vision in the sanctuary. He kept motioning to them and remained unable to speak. When his time of service was ended, he went to his home.

After those days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she remained in seclusion. She said, ‘This is what the Lord has done for me when he looked favourably on me and took away the disgrace I have endured among my people.’

Posted in Advent | Tagged Eschatology, Hell, New Jerusalem, Renewal, See I am Making All Things New | Leave a comment

Day Twenty-Three of An Advent Calendar: The Peaceable Kingdom

Posted on December 19, 2016 by Bruce Bryant-Scott

Monday, December 19, 2016 Monday after the Fourth Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 11.1–9
Revelation 20.1–10
John 5.30–47
The text of the readings follows after the comments.

The Peaceable Kingdom (1833) Edward Hicks (1780-1849) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Hicks

The reading from Isaiah and the reading from Revelation both deal with the reign of the messiah, the anointed one of God. Isaiah’s is the easier one to understand in some ways. It describes the people of Israel after they have undergone a severe trial, in which all the corrupt leaders and their followers are swept away, and only a holy remnant is left. The metaphor of a stump is used, and a shoot comes out of it to restore the Davidic monarchy. The spirit of Yahweh is with this king, and his reign will be righteous and just. A peaceable kingdom is described in which carnivorous animals become vegetarians, and wild animals like wolves, leopards, and lions are tame enough to be led by small children. Snakes become unsnakey, and are playthings for children.

This passage influenced later messianic expectations. The messiah would have to be a descendant of David and both infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke have genealogies making that claim. The baptism narratives all have the Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus.

The early Christians believed in two comings of Jesus; some aspects of the Isaiah readings are attributed to the second coming. The Son of Man is to come to judge the quick and the dead, and as we read some days ago, “with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked”, as we heard from 2 Thessalonians.

The passage from Revelation is also about the Second Coming. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15, also refers to the reign of Jesus (I’ve put in letters to indicate the sequence of events):

(a) But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died . . . But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits,
(b) then at his coming those who belong to Christ.
(e) Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after
(c) he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.
(d) The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For ‘God has put all things in subjection under his feet.’ . . .
(e) When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him,
(f) so that God may be all in all.

This is one chronology of the end time. Revelation is another, and while people have tried to harmonize this and other passages, such as Mark 13 and some of the passages we’ve seen already this Advent from 1 & 2 Peter, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, and Jude, I think that while they all come from the same basic inspiration it is hard to make them cohere well.

Revelation 20 imagines Christ reigning for a thousand years, a vision which gives rise to a variety of millenarianisms. As I have sometimes said in sermons, time in Revelation is a funny thing. A passage can be seen to refer to things that have already happened, or are happening now, or will happen in the future, or some combination of these. Thus Christ’s reign can be seen as something yet to come, or something that is already taking place on earth in the hearts and minds of the faithful. I suspect is it a both/and kind of thing.

Revelation 20 does not describe what happens in the 1000 years, and whether that reign carries on after Satan is finally defeated, or whether something else happens. Revelation 20-21 might be read as a description of that reign, or it might be read as an event that takes place after the millennial reign. If we follow the chronology in 1 Corinthians 15 the reign of Christ appears to be succeeded by something else, when “God becomes all in all”. IS this Revelation 20-21, the peaceable kingdom described by Isaiah which follows the reign of the Son of Man? Because time overlaps and is confusing in Revelation, I am not sure one can come up with a definitive answer and chronology that relates it to 1 Corinthians 15, and in any case, it may well be using words to describe that which is beyond words.

The vision of the Messianic reign and the Peaceable Kingdom is an inspiring one. It is something which we as Christians can work for, and act as thought it has already arrived, knowing that we will not enjoy the fullness of it in this life.

Isaiah 11.1–9
A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.

He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,
and faithfulness the belt around his loins.

The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.

Revelation 20.1–10
Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and locked and sealed it over him, so that he would deceive the nations no more, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be let out for a little while.

Then I saw thrones, and those seated on them were given authority to judge. I also saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus and for the word of God. They had not worshipped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection. Over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years.

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

John 5.30–47
[Jesus said] ‘I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge; and my judgement is just, because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me.

‘If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. There is another who testifies on my behalf, and I know that his testimony to me is true. You sent messengers to John, and he testified to the truth. Not that I accept such human testimony, but I say these things so that you may be saved. He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. But I have a testimony greater than John’s. The works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me. And the Father who sent me has himself testified on my behalf. You have never heard his voice or seen his form, and you do not have his word abiding in you, because you do not believe him whom he has sent.

‘You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life. I do not accept glory from human beings. But I know that you do not have the love of God in you. I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; if another comes in his own name, you will accept him. How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God? Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?’

Posted in Advent, Uncategorized | Tagged Eschatology, Isaiah 11, Peaceable Kingdom, Revelation 20 | Leave a comment

Day Twenty-Two of An Advent Calendar: Light

Posted on December 18, 2016 by Bruce Bryant-Scott

Sunday, December 18, 2016 The Fourth Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 42.1–12
Ephesians 6.10–20
John 3.16–21
The text of the readings follows after the comments.

Eric Fischl, A Visit to / A Visit From / The Island (1983) http://whitney.org/Education/EducationBlog/EricFischl

The days of Advent are variable. At it’s shortest Christmas comes the day after the Fourth Sunday of Advent, a Monday, so that Advent IV and Christmas Eve are the same day. That would make for an Advent season of 22 days, or, in most people’s minds, 21-1/2 days. This year Advent is at its longest, as Christmas falls on a Sunday, meaning that there is a full week between the Fourth Sunday of Advent and Christmas Day, making an Advent season of 28 days.

The people behind the Daily Office Lectionary dealt with this by creating two sets of telescoping readings. The outer barrel of the telescope are the readings for the last seven days before Christmas, and are set according to the date, from December 18 on to December 24. The inner barrel is a week’s worth of readings for the week of the Third Sunday of Advent, Sunday through Saturday. These readings are preempted once December 18 comes, so that in most years only a few of the daily readings are used. This year was unusual in that we used all of them. It’s a clever system, and works well.

We continue to read from Isaiah, only we jump from the first twelve chapters of Isaiah into what was earlier described as Second Isaiah, poetry written several generations after the historical Isaiah by disciples working within his tradition. The message shifts from warning and condemnation to one of hope and renewal: “Sing to the Lord a new song!” The sea and the desert and all their inhabitants from oases and coastlands join together to sing for joy. The cause of this joy is the return of God’s people from exile to Jerusalem and Judea.

Israel is given a new role. The first of the Servant Songs appears in the reading today. “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.” The movement of Yahweh from a tribal god to the sole deity with a claim on all peoples results in a universal mission of the the people of Israel, here personified as a servant. Israel has a mission to all the nations, not in an arrogant or showy way but in persistence and steady moving forward. It is a mission of liberation and justice, as befits a people that traces its origin in freedom from slavery in Egypt, and exile to Babylon: “I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.” It is a time for transformation, hope, and joy, and of moving one: “See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.”

Jesus of Nazareth saw himself as the servant of God, and probably understood these verses to apply to himself. This is not to negate the previous understanding of the Servant Songs as describing the new role for Israel at the dawn of the fifth century BC, but to underline the ability of prophecy to be recycled to apply to new situations. The Gospel according to Luke definitely understood Jesus as that servant; in chapter 2 Jesus as an infant is brought to the Temple by his parents, and Simeon sees him and recognises him as the Messiah. He sings,

νῦν ἀπολύεις τὸν δοῦλόν σου, δέσποτα, κατὰ τὸ ῥῆμά σου ἐν εἰρήνῃ·
ὅτι εἶδον οἱ ὀφθαλμοί μου τὸ σωτήριόν σου,
ὃ ἡτοίμασας κατὰ πρόσωπον πάντων τῶν λαῶν,
φῶς εἰς αποκάλυψιν ἐθνῶν καὶ δόξαν λαοῦ σου Ἰσραήλ.

or, in English, as is commonly sung in the words of the Book of Common Prayer:

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word.
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

This theme of light is picked up in the Gospel according to John, both in the prologue in chapter one and again in today’s reading from chapter 3. Jesus is the light of God which has come into the world. The light is a means of truth and salvation. Rejecting it brings condemnation upon oneself, as it means that one rejects truth, servanthood, justice, and God’s grace. As Paul puts it in Ephesians, the forces of evil that lead to condemnation are cosmic, deeper than ordinary human will: “our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Again, this goes back to Paul’s understanding of idolatry as the source of all evil. Get involved in having idols, of having and worshiping gods other than Yahweh, and you will probably be corrupted and destroyed. Paul advises us to put on truth, righteousness, readiness to proclaim the gospel, faith, salvation, the Spirit, and the Word of God.

As Christians we inherit the mantle of being the servant of the Lord. We, too, are called to be “a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.” We are called to challenge the idols of this age, all that brings us to stumble in the darkness, that which causes moral blindness, that which imprisons people in narrow, and to release folks from violent and fearful prisons of the mind. More literally we are to help those most affected by conflict and oppression – people today in Syria and Iraq, Yemen and Libya, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Ukraine and Georgia, and for peace between Israelis and Palestinians; indigenous peoples suffering five centuries of disease, war, genocide, and colonization; the 65 million refugees around the world; the 1.3 billion people still in extreme poverty; and the legacy of slavery throughout the world. While Christians can take pride in their country, they should always be somewhat critical as well, knowing that all states fall short of the kingdom of God. Thus, no Christian can be a true nationalist, as Galatians 3. 16 states: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” This is not to obliterate difference, but it is not the essential or most important thing.

So let us draw to the one who is the light of the world, that we might shine reflected glory, and join in the chorus as we sing a new song to the Lord, and act to bring justice to the earth, and teaching to the coastlands.

Isaiah 42.1–12
Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth;
and the coastlands wait for his teaching.

Thus says God, the Lord,
who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread out the earth and what comes from it,
who gives breath to the people upon it
and spirit to those who walk in it:
I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness,
I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
I have given you as a covenant to the people,
a light to the nations,
to open the eyes that are blind,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness.
I am the Lord, that is my name;
my glory I give to no other,
nor my praise to idols.
See, the former things have come to pass,
and new things I now declare;
before they spring forth,
I tell you of them.

Sing to the Lord a new song,
his praise from the end of the earth!
Let the sea roar and all that fills it,
the coastlands and their inhabitants.
Let the desert and its towns lift up their voice,
the villages that Kedar inhabits;
let the inhabitants of Sela sing for joy,
let them shout from the tops of the mountains.
Let them give glory to the Lord,
and declare his praise in the coastlands.

Ephesians 6.10–20
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak.

John 3.16–21
‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’

Posted in Advent | Tagged Advent, Isaiah, Light of the World, Nunc Dimittis, Second Isaiah | Leave a comment

Day Twenty-One of An Advent Calendar: The Goodness of Matter, and the Incarnation

Posted on December 17, 2016 by Bruce Bryant-Scott

Saturday, December 17, 2016 Saturday after the Third Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 10.20–27
Jude 17–25
Luke 3.1–9
The text of the readings follows after the comments.

Creation Window “The Fourth Day” from the Parish of St. Matthias, Victoria, courtesy of Toad Hollow Photography

One of the reasons I hold to the Christian faith is that it describes a reality that is material and is in time. As Genesis 1.31 puts it, “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.”

This hasn’t always been the case; there is a strong tendency in Christianity to deprecate the material. Under the influence of Neo-Platonism Christianity had a tendency to privilege the immaterial and eternal, not just with reference to the divine, but in terms of the created order. Origen of Alexandria, the 3rd century biblical commentator and theologian, imagined two creations, one spiritual and immaterial, and then another in which souls received bodies and the material world came into being. Many of the texts found in Nag Hammadi (the so-called “gnostic gospels”) have even more complicated and developed cosmology in which successive emanations are successively lower and removed from the divine. It was said of the pagan Neoplatonist philosopher Pllotinus that “he was ashamed to be in the body” , and this attitude carried over to many who were ascetics. This tendency, combined with a weariness with the assaults of politics, disease, and conflict, his has sometimes led to a disregard for creation.

But the God described in the Bible is one who is very involved in the world, and has a passionate love for it. The opening verses of today’s reading from Matthew firmly sets John the Baptist in history, in a definite time and place. The faith of Christianity is not myth or legend, but faith in a particular individual who lived in a material body in a time of history (people who claim that Jesus never existed are not credible historians). While scholars might argue about exactly what Jesus did and said, there is a consensus that:

Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist.
He called disciples.
He had a controversy at the Temple.
Jesus was crucified by the Romans near Jerusalem.
Jesus was a Galilean.
His activities were confined to Galilee and Judea.
After his death his disciples continued.
Some of his disciples were persecuted.

It is also demonstrable that after his death his disciples proclaimed that Jesus had been raised from the dead. What is beyond historical demonstration is the historicity of such an event; being a unique event contrary to normal experience, such a claim cannot be verified. But it can be believed or not believed, and that is where faith carries on from historical reconstruction.

The Incarnation, which Christmas is all about, is a validation of the very goodness of creation. In joining the immaterial, eternal Word of God with the very material, mortal body of the child of Mary we have a paradoxical affirmation of who and what we are as human beings – mortal, visible, fragile, limited, wondrous creatures. While it might surprise some of my friends, I revel in the materialness of my existence. I do not imagine that something I might call “spirit” or “soul” is somehow more essential than the body. Indeed, in a Wittgensteinian / Rortyian kind of way, I eschew essentializing human nature, and see religious language as a kind of “language game” I will use language like “spirit” and “soul”, but I do not ascribe to that usage references to some metaphysical things. It is a traditional way of talking about humans in the created order, but does not necessarily require us to develop an anthropology that is supernatural and divorced from human science.

Material things are good. The created world is worthy to be redeemed by God. Resurrection is resurrection of the body – transformed, but still a body. Our ultimate destination, beyond words, is described as a city in a new heaven and a new earth, transformed but still material.

The implications from this are vast. I think it means that we are called to live in harmony with creation and its creator, and to enjoy living in our bodies. We are not called to be simply spirits passing through an alien world to something better, but to be full participants in this very earthy existence. In this the model is, as always, Jesus of Nazareth.

Isaiah 10.20–27
On that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no more lean on the one who struck them, but will lean on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God. For though your people Israel were like the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will return. Destruction is decreed, overflowing with righteousness. For the Lord God of hosts will make a full end, as decreed, in all the earth.

Therefore thus says the Lord God of hosts: O my people, who live in Zion, do not be afraid of the Assyrians when they beat you with a rod and lift up their staff against you as the Egyptians did. For in a very little while my indignation will come to an end, and my anger will be directed to their destruction. The Lord of hosts will wield a whip against them, as when he struck Midian at the rock of Oreb; his staff will be over the sea, and he will lift it as he did in Egypt. On that day his burden will be removed from your shoulder, and his yoke will be destroyed from your neck.

Jude 17–25
But you, beloved, must remember the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; for they said to you, ‘In the last time there will be scoffers, indulging their own ungodly lusts.’ It is these worldly people, devoid of the Spirit, who are causing divisions. But you, beloved, build yourselves up on your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God; look forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on some who are wavering; save others by snatching them out of the fire; and have mercy on still others with fear, hating even the tunic defiled by their bodies.

Now to him who is able to keep you from falling, and to make you stand without blemish in the presence of his glory with rejoicing, to the only God our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority, before all time and now and for ever. Amen.

Luke 3.1–9
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,
‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” ’

John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our ancestor”; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.’

Posted in Advent, Uncategorized | Tagged Creation, Genesis 1, Historicity of Jesus, Matter, Neoplatonism | Leave a comment

Day Twenty of An Advent Calendar: From Poly to Mono

Posted on December 16, 2016 by Bruce Bryant-Scott

Friday, December 16, 2016 Friday after the Third Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 10.5–19
2 Peter 2.17–22
Matthew 11.2–15
The text of the readings follows after the comments.

King Sennacherib and his crown prince Arda-Mullissi after the battle of Lachish in 701 BC. From the palace at Nineveh.

Once upon a time the God of Israel was but one God among many. That God’s name in Hebrew was יהוה, which was probably pronounced “Yahweh”. In the time of David, Solomon, and later Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, the people of Israel called their God by that name, but in the centuries immediately before Jesus’s time pious Jews began to consider it too holy to say, and so they started saying אֲדֹנָי‎, adonai or “My Lords”. This tradition was carried over into the Septuagint, where יהוה is translated as κύριος kyrios “Lord”. This carried on into Latin where Dominus was used wherever the proper name of God was found in the original Hebrew, and “the LORD” in English translations (note the capitalization). Notably the Jerusalem Bible used “Yahweh” in it’s translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, and the use of the proper name of God has always struck many people as incongruous.

The books of the Hebrew Bible, in the collections now known as the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings, were edited and mostly received their final forms in the centuries prior to Jesus. Not all books may have had a stable form even then – the Dead Sea Scrolls suggest that the lasts forty or so of the psalms had a variable order, and Jeremiah was circulating in two forms, one longer and one shorter (and it was the shorter one that was translated from Hebrew into the Greek Septuagint, while the longer one became the canonical Hebrew text). As this final formation was taking place the editors ensured that the texts described an ancient Israel not always as it was, but as they thought it should have been, or must have been.

Some aspects of this retroprojection included: a) the greater centralization of the worship of Israel at Jerusalem than was probably the case; b) an original monotheism that became corrupted by idols and the worship of other gods, whereas there was probably a high tolerance for the worship of Canaanite gods such as Baal and Asherah; and c) the giving of the full Torah at Sinai, with the full calendar of feasts, whereas much of this probably only emerged over centuries of fusion of the cult of Yahweh with agricultural festivals that probably pre-dated the coming of Israel to the land of Canaan.

Scholars suggest that initially Yahweh was simply the God of Israel, an ethnic God. Uniquely, Yahweh had no image, but as we know from 1 & 2 Kings, there were images of other gods in the Jerusalem Temple until Josiah had them removed and destroyed. But starting with Isaiah we begin to see not simply a special relationship between Israel and Yahweh, we also begin to see the claim that Yahweh’s claim was greater than just on this one, numerically small population. Isaiah 2.2-4 puts it this way:

In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. ³Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. ⁴He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

Yahweh becomes in Isaiah’s vision a god for all peoples. There is now a universal quality to Yahvism.

The implication is that God now controls the fates of all nations. And so, in this day’s reading from the prophet, Assyria is an instrument of Yahweh, though they do not know it. And because they do not know Yahweh the God, he will punish the arrogance and haughtiness of Assyria. And, as we know, assyria was destroyed by the Neo-Babylonian Empire.

This exclusive monotheism with universal implications worked itself out in the extension of the gospel to the Gentiles (a word which simply means “the peoples” or “the nations”). We take this kind of universal claim as normal, but 2700 years ago it was novel and challenging.

Isaiah 10.5–19
Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger—
the club in their hands is my fury!
Against a godless nation I send him,
and against the people of my wrath I command him,
to take spoil and seize plunder,
and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.
But this is not what he intends,
nor does he have this in mind;
but it is in his heart to destroy,
and to cut off nations not a few.
For he says:
‘Are not my commanders all kings?
Is not Calno like Carchemish?
Is not Hamath like Arpad?
Is not Samaria like Damascus?
As my hand has reached to the kingdoms of the idols
whose images were greater than those of Jerusalem and Samaria,
shall I not do to Jerusalem and her idols
what I have done to Samaria and her images?’

When the Lord has finished all his work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, he will punish the arrogant boasting of the king of Assyria and his haughty pride. For he says:
‘By the strength of my hand I have done it,
and by my wisdom, for I have understanding;
I have removed the boundaries of peoples,
and have plundered their treasures;
like a bull I have brought down those who sat on thrones.
My hand has found, like a nest,
the wealth of the peoples;
and as one gathers eggs that have been forsaken,
so I have gathered all the earth;
and there was none that moved a wing,
or opened its mouth, or chirped.’

Shall the axe vaunt itself over the one who wields it,
or the saw magnify itself against the one who handles it?
As if a rod should raise the one who lifts it up,
or as if a staff should lift the one who is not wood!
Therefore the Sovereign, the Lord of hosts,
will send wasting sickness among his stout warriors,
and under his glory a burning will be kindled,
like the burning of fire.
The light of Israel will become a fire,
and his Holy One a flame;
and it will burn and devour
his thorns and briers in one day.
The glory of his forest and his fruitful land
the Lord will destroy, both soul and body,
and it will be as when an invalid wastes away.
The remnant of the trees of his forest will be so few
that a child can write them down.

2 Peter 2.17–22
These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm; for them the deepest darkness has been reserved. For they speak bombastic nonsense, and with licentious desires of the flesh they entice people who have just escaped from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption; for people are slaves to whatever masters them. For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overpowered, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment that was passed on to them. It has happened to them according to the true proverb,
‘The dog turns back to its own vomit’,
and,
‘The sow is washed only to wallow in the mud.’

Matthew 11.2–15
When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.’

As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: ‘What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written,
“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way before you.”
Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force. For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John came; and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. Let anyone with ears listen!

Posted in Advent | Tagged God's Name, Josiah, Yahvism | Leave a comment

Day Nineteen of An Advent Calendar: “You Brood of Vipers!”

Posted on December 15, 2016 by Bruce Bryant-Scott

Thursday, December 15, 2016 Thursday after the Third Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 9.18—10.4
2 Peter 2.10b–16
Matthew 3.1–12
The text of the readings follows after the comments.

John the Baptist window at St. Matthias, Victoria BC. Photo courtesy of Toad Hollow Photography

There are days when I wish I could talk like John the Baptist. Who wouldn’t like to turn to the hypocrites and compromised leaders and say, “You brood of vipers!”? Who wouldn’t like to threaten with axes those who exploit the poor?

Jesus clearly had a strong connection with John the Baptist. That connection is mentioned in all four gospels (although Luke and Matthew probably have a literary dependence on Mark). All four gospels agree that Jesus was baptised by John. The Gospel according to John states that Jesus found some of his first disciples from among the disciples of John. The Fourth Gospel also says that Jesus baptised people.

The interesting thing is that the direction Jesus took was very different from John the Baptist. Whereas John was at the river Jordan, and people came to him, Jesus began an itinerant ministry, going to “the lost sheep of the people of Israel”. Jesus had a healing ministry, but there is no indication that John did. John proclaimed the coming wrath of God, whereas Jesus, while not disavowing this, talked about the coming kingdom in parables.

In both cases they challenged the established order – the Herodian client kings, the collaborationist Pharisees and Sadducees, and the Roman conquerors. In both cases they were put to death by the powers they offended. In that respect Jesus was like John the Baptist.

What is interesting is that John the Baptist’s movement eventually died out; there are reports of his followers decades later, but in time they just faded away. The followers of Jesus, however, obviously carried on. What made the difference?

It’s probably that Holy Spirit thing. John the Baptist cleansed people of their sins when they repented, but Jesus was the means by which his disciples encountered the living God through the Holy Spirit. They felt empowered to be like Jesus – to teach, proclaim, heal – and whatever they thought about the wrath to come they knew that they would be spared it. Ironically, while they might be spared from “the wrath to come” they encountered plenty of wrath already present, and so as the Holy Spirit propelled them to be like Jesus some of them also experienced a suffering and death like his.

Between Pentecostalism and Orthodox Christianity those us us in the traditions of Western Christianity (Catholicism, Anglicanism, Lutheranism, Reformed/Calvinism, and so forth) have had to reassess how they approach the third person of the Trinity. This has sometimes been unsettling.

Unsettling can be a good thing, though. We need to be unsettled. We need to be in-spired. As I get older in the faith I realise that the Holy Spirit is indeed at work in me, and I can see it at work in others, as their prayer lives deepen, and their reaching out to others becomes profound and natural. It is a kind of transformation, a metanoia or change of mind that is far greater than mere repentance (which is how the Greek word is usually translated).

Isaiah 9.18—10.4
For wickedness burned like a fire,
consuming briers and thorns;
it kindled the thickets of the forest,
and they swirled upwards in a column of smoke.
Through the wrath of the Lord of hosts
the land was burned,
and the people became like fuel for the fire;
no one spared another.
They gorged on the right, but still were hungry,
and they devoured on the left, but were not satisfied;
they devoured the flesh of their own kindred;
Manasseh devoured Ephraim, and Ephraim Manasseh,
and together they were against Judah.
For all this, his anger has not turned away;
his hand is stretched out still.

Ah, you who make iniquitous decrees,
who write oppressive statutes,
to turn aside the needy from justice
and to rob the poor of my people of their right,
that widows may be your spoil,
and that you may make the orphans your prey!
What will you do on the day of punishment,
in the calamity that will come from far away?
To whom will you flee for help,
and where will you leave your wealth,
so as not to crouch among the prisoners
or fall among the slain?
For all this, his anger has not turned away;
his hand is stretched out still.

2 Peter 2.10b–16
Bold and wilful, they are not afraid to slander the glorious ones, whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not bring against them a slanderous judgement from the Lord. These people, however, are like irrational animals, mere creatures of instinct, born to be caught and killed. They slander what they do not understand, and when those creatures are destroyed, they also will be destroyed, suffering the penalty for doing wrong. They count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes, revelling in their dissipation while they feast with you. They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children! They have left the straight road and have gone astray, following the road of Balaam son of Bosor, who loved the wages of doing wrong, but was rebuked for his own transgression; a speechless donkey spoke with a human voice and restrained the prophet’s madness.

Matthew 3.1–12
In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’ This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,
‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.” ’
Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our ancestor”; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

‘I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing-fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing-floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’

Posted in Advent | Tagged Advent, Jesus, John the Baptist | Leave a comment

Day Eighteen of An Advent Calendar: Love and God’s Feelings

Posted on December 14, 2016 by Bruce Bryant-Scott

Wednesday, December 14, 2016 Wednesday after the Third Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 9.8–17
2 Peter 2.1–10a
Mark 1.1–8
The text of the readings follows after the comments.

christ-pantocrator-sinai

One of the things I wonder about is whether God has emotions. Oh, I know, it says in the Bible that God loves people, gets angry, and rejoices. But, if God is wholly other, then it may be the case that when we ascribe emotions to God we are doing so metaphorically. For example, when we say God visits judgment upon his people may be another way of understanding that the created order is such that actions have consequences, and that pride, arrogance, and lies will lead to political weakness and the destruction of a people, from the elite to the ordinary folk.

This line of thinking has a long and venerable background, but it has also been quite contested. Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin all held that God was “impassible” or incapable of having emotions. What, then, does this do to the love of God? James Franklin Harris in his Analytic of Religion (2002) quotes two thoughts on the matter which represents what is probably the consensus opinion (ignore the first three words):

james-franklin-harris

So the love of God is a central quality of God. Unlike in humans, it is not a passing emotion, but an eternal aspect of what it is to be divine, as central in doctrine as the Trinity or of God as being wholly other and independent of creation. Indeed, creation must be seen as an act of love by God. The redemption of humanity through the Incarnation is likewise and act of love.

So, to put it formally, our understanding of love, as much as we as humans can understand it, is analogous – our love is like the love of God, and flows from it. However, when we say that God gets angry like we get angry, that is not an analogy, but a metaphor, something that is true up to a point and then is wrong, because the description is really just a makeshift we use in place of saying nothing.

Of course, Jesus Christ has emotions, as he is human. He also does not have emotions, because he is divine (although he is, at core, love). Thus we can say that Jesus is both full of emotions and without them, because he is both human and divine. It is the paradox of the Incarnation that in the Word made flesh we see the divine weeping, rejoicing, filled with zeal, filled with anguish, tempted, and finally suffering. In this very human figure we see the divine in a way that we never could before. O come, let us worship.

Isaiah 9.8–17
The Lord sent a word against Jacob,
and it fell on Israel;
and all the people knew it—
Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria—
but in pride and arrogance of heart they said:
‘The bricks have fallen,
but we will build with dressed stones;
the sycamores have been cut down,
but we will put cedars in their place.’
So the Lord raised adversaries against them,
and stirred up their enemies,
the Arameans in the east and the Philistines in the west,
and they devoured Israel with open mouth.
For all this, his anger has not turned away;
his hand is stretched out still.

The people did not turn to him who struck them,
or seek the Lord of hosts.
So the Lord cut off from Israel head and tail,
palm branch and reed in one day—
elders and dignitaries are the head,
and prophets who teach lies are the tail;
for those who led this people led them astray,
and those who were led by them were left in confusion.
That is why the Lord did not have pity on their young people,
or compassion on their orphans and widows;
for everyone was godless and an evildoer,
and every mouth spoke folly.
For all this, his anger has not turned away;
his hand is stretched out still.

2 Peter 2.1–10a
But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive opinions. They will even deny the Master who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. Even so, many will follow their licentious ways, and because of these teachers the way of truth will be maligned. And in their greed they will exploit you with deceptive words. Their condemnation, pronounced against them long ago, has not been idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of deepest darkness to be kept until the judgement; and if he did not spare the ancient world, even though he saved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood on a world of the ungodly; and if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction and made them an example of what is coming to the ungodly; and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man greatly distressed by the licentiousness of the lawless (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by their lawless deeds that he saw and heard), then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgement —especially those who indulge their flesh in depraved lust, and who despise authority.

Mark 1.1–8
The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,
‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way;
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight” ’,
John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’

Posted in Advent | Tagged Divine love., Impassibility | Leave a comment

Day Seventeen of An Advent Calendar: The Messiah of the 7th Century BC

Posted on December 13, 2016 by Bruce Bryant-Scott

Tuesday, December 12, 2016 Tuesday after the Third Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 9.1–7
2 Peter 1.12–21
Luke 22.54–69
The text of the readings follows after the comments.

josias_rex

The passage for today from Isaiah is well known. The first couple of verses were quoted in Matthew 4.15-16, with reference to Jesus. Verses 6-7, the last verses in the reading (“For a child has been born for us”) was read by ancient and medieval exegetes as also referring to Jesus, and Charles Jennings read it as such when he set it as part of the libretto in part One of Handel’s Messiah.

The passage is undoubtedly messianic. The only thing, it was probably about a 7th century BC messiah, and not the 1st century AD one named Jesus. Surprise!

Messiah simply means “the anointed one” and priests and kings in ancient Israel and Judah were both anointed. Indeed, in the Coronation Rite to this day the monarchs of the United Kingdom are anointed just prior to being vested and crowned. In all probability this is a prophecy made about Josiah, who was king from 641 BC to 610 BC. He came to the throne of Judah at the age of eight after his father was assassinated. If the passage is inedeed about him, then great things were expected and great things did happen. When Josiah became an adult he began a renovation and renewal of the Temple in Jerusalem. While this was going on priests discovered a book of the Torah, which most scholars believe must have been an earlier version of what eventually became known as Deuteronomy. He began a reform of the Temple cult. First, he removed any objects that were associated with other gods, such as Baal, the sun, the moon, and so forth; these he destroyed. He suppressed all non-Yahwist worship in the city and countryside of Judah, in particular worship of Asherah, the supposed consort of YHWH. He also held the first Passover since the time of the judges, some 500 years before.

2 Kings 22.2 says, “He did what was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the way of his father David; he did not turn aside to the right or to the left.” This is high praise, indeed, arguably better than even David and Solomon, who both had their flaws. It appears that a history was commissioned to describe the story of the Israelites from the time of Moses down to the reign of Josiah, and it started with the proto-Deuteronomy and included what eventually became Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings.

The problem is that Josiah then met a sudden death when he battled the Pharaoh Neco II in 610. Judah then declined. Neco made Judah a vassal of Egypt and dismissed and appointed its kings. Then Babylon made the Kingdom of Judah a vassal, and when Judah revolted the Babylonians put down the revolt in 598, changed the king again, and took the elite into exile in Babylonia. In 586 the king tried to make an alliance with Egypt and rebel against the Babylonians, but the Babylonians came again, destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple, and took all the leaders who had not been taken before, leaving the poor laborers of the land behind.

Josiah was described this way in 2 Kings 23.25: “Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; nor did any like him arise after him.” That sounds like the happy ending, and scholars posit that the original version of the history did stop there. But then Josiah died, and everything went wrong.

But the passage from Isaiah continued to be read messianically. Judah, which became Judea after Cyrus the Great told the exiled Judeans (or Jews as they had now become ) to go home, still looked to a time of having a king.

In the sense that this passage was not completely fulfilled by Josiah, room was created for the hope of a new messiah, one who might be like Josiah, only more fortunate. Ironically, the messiah that was recognised in Jesus was nothing like Josiah. He was a messiah that exploded the definition of messiah – he never ruled a proper kingdom, he was impoverished, and was executed by the Romans. Even if he is the Son of Man coming in glory to reign over all things, this apocalyptic version of the messiah is a long ways from what Isaiah may have had in mind.

And yet Jesus is like sticky tape – all kinds of descriptions and appellations seem to be attracted to his person. He is the Messiah, but not the messiah we were expecting. He is the Son of Man, but he comes twice, and the first coming in the flesh as the son of Mary is as anything other than judge and king. He is rabbi, but not of any particular school. It is as if any box we wish to put him in is immediately broken out of, or redefined and transformed. As it was with Jesus, may it be so with us who seek to follow him.

Isaiah 9.1–7
But there will be no gloom for those who were in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined.
You have multiplied the nation,
you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you
as with joy at the harvest,
as people exult when dividing plunder.
For the yoke of their burden,
and the bar across their shoulders,
the rod of their oppressor,
you have broken as on the day of Midian.
For all the boots of the tramping warriors
and all the garments rolled in blood
shall be burned as fuel for the fire.
For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
and he is named
Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
His authority shall grow continually,
and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.
He will establish and uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time onwards and for evermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

2 Peter 1.12–21
Therefore I intend to keep on reminding you of these things, though you know them already and are established in the truth that has come to you. I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to refresh your memory, since I know that my death will come soon, as indeed our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me. And I will make every effort so that after my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things.

For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honour and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.

So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

Luke 22.54–69
Then they seized him and led him away, bringing him into the high priest’s house. But Peter was following at a distance. When they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat among them. Then a servant-girl, seeing him in the firelight, stared at him and said, ‘This man also was with him.’ But he denied it, saying, ‘Woman, I do not know him.’ A little later someone else, on seeing him, said, ‘You also are one of them.’ But Peter said, ‘Man, I am not!’ Then about an hour later yet another kept insisting, ‘Surely this man also was with him; for he is a Galilean.’ But Peter said, ‘Man, I do not know what you are talking about!’ At that moment, while he was still speaking, the cock crowed. The Lord turned and looked at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said to him, ‘Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times.’ And he went out and wept bitterly.

Now the men who were holding Jesus began to mock him and beat him; they also blindfolded him and kept asking him, ‘Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?’ They kept heaping many other insults on him.

When day came, the assembly of the elders of the people, both chief priests and scribes, gathered together, and they brought him to their council. They said, ‘If you are the Messiah, tell us.’ He replied, ‘If I tell you, you will not believe; and if I question you, you will not answer. But from now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God.’

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