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.’

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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.

peaceable-kingdom

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?’

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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.

83-17a-b_fischl_imageprimacy_2340_1540

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.’

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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

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.’

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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.

assyria01

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!

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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

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.’

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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.’

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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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Day Sixteen of An Advent Calendar: Trust and Betrayal

Posted on December 12, 2016 by Bruce Bryant-Scott

Monday, December 12, 2016     Monday after the Third Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 8.16–9.1
2 Peter 1.1–11
Luke 22.39–53
The text of the readings follows after the comments.

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The past few days’ gospel readings have been from the portion of the Gospel according to Luke describing the events from Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem up to his betrayal today and his arrest and the beginning of the trial tomorrow. The events of this time in Jerusalem leading up to his trial and judgment parallel what is to happen in the Second Coming – a time of distress leading up to judgment, only this time it is Jesus who is the judge, not the Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate.

The action of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane is a very human moment: “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me.” After all, who wants to go through pain and suffering that leads to death? According to the four gospels Jesus was aware of his impending death. We can put that down to either a realistic apprehension according to his human nature (after all, the Romans had executed many Jews before Jesus), or perhaps a divine foreknowledge; the gospels do not say and aren’t interested in how Jesus knew. But Jesus does not act like someone who believed that everything was pre-determined, for he asks that his Father might “remove this cup” from him. But in the end he puts his trust in the Father: “Yet, not my will but yours be done.”

There are many theories about the atonement. My own belief is that in a fallen, broken world – that is, one that is estranged from God – it follows that if God became human then estranged humanity would seek to destroy the incarnation. In Jesus, the Word made flesh, we see that estrangement overcome in a particular individual. By participation in the Body of Christ – the church, the followers of Jesus – we estranged humans can overcome the divide, and, as St. Athanasius put it: Αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐνηνθρώπησεν, ἵνα ἡμεῖς θεοποιηθῶμεν For God became human so that we might become God.  This participation in Christ does not mean that we become part of God or is absorbed into the Godhead – we remain creatures – but we become holy, even as God is holy, and we become the creatures God made us to be. The incarnation – an overcoming of the estrangement and the offering of participation in this reconciliation – is an indictment and rebuke to the world that persists in sin and corruption. So it seeks to kill the incarnate one for whatever reason. Christ, in his humility, as a servant, accepts his identity as opposed and oppressed, aligning himself with the great masses of humanity throughout the millennia who have suffered at the hands of the rich and powerful. For me the Father wills the death of Jesus at the moment of the Incarnation.

Jesus accepts this, and trusts in the prospect of the resurrection. But then trust is broken, when Judas comes to betray Jesus with a kiss. Again, Jesus seems to have expected this, and did not take steps to stop it. One of the disciples (unnamed here and in Mark and Matthew, but in John identified as Simon Peter) attacks with the sword. He’s rather clumsy, and only manages to cut off the ear of a slave, not even harming one of the officials or armed guards. Even then Jesus has had enough, and heals the slave. Is it the case that taking up arms to defend Jesus itself is also a great betrayal? Remember that the early Christians were all pacifists, and it was considered necessary for Christian converts to abandon occupations such as the military and the judiciary where one might have to kill or order the execution of people (this only changed after the time of Constantine, in the 4th century). Was Peter’s attack a fourth denial of Jesus?

Trust once lost is hard to regain. The trust that Jesus had in the Father was vindicated when Jesus was raised from the dead. The betrayal of Judas was never undone because Judas believed himself unforgivable, and so he killed himself. The violence and denials of Simon Peter was undone by a love greater than death, a power stronger than estrangement, and a willingness to suffer in the face of brokenness. Peter became the leader of the early church, despite all his flaws and some embarrassment of the church around him. Jesus, in the end, trusted him to feed his sheep.

Trust once lost is hard to restore, but with God, all things are possible.

Isaiah 8.16–9.1
Bind up the testimony, seal the teaching among my disciples. I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him. See, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are signs and portents in Israel from the Lord of hosts, who dwells on Mount Zion. Now if people say to you, ‘Consult the ghosts and the familiar spirits that chirp and mutter; should not a people consult their gods, the dead on behalf of the living, for teaching and for instruction?’ surely, those who speak like this will have no dawn! They will pass through the land, greatly distressed and hungry; when they are hungry, they will be enraged and will curse their king and their gods. They will turn their faces upwards, or they will look to the earth, but will see only distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; and they will be thrust into thick darkness.

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.

2 Peter 1.1–11
Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ,

To those who have received a faith as precious as ours through the righteousness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ:

May grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants in the divine nature. For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love. For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For anyone who lacks these things is short-sighted and blind, and is forgetful of the cleansing of past sins. Therefore, brothers and sisters, be all the more eager to confirm your call and election, for if you do this, you will never stumble. For in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ will be richly provided for you.

Luke 22.39–53
He came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives; and the disciples followed him. When he reached the place, he said to them, ‘Pray that you may not come into the time of trial.’ Then he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and prayed, ‘Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.’ [[ Then an angel from heaven appeared to him and gave him strength. In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground.]] When he got up from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping because of grief, and he said to them, ‘Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not come into the time of trial.’

While he was still speaking, suddenly a crowd came, and the one called Judas, one of the twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him; but Jesus said to him, ‘Judas, is it with a kiss that you are betraying the Son of Man?’ When those who were around him saw what was coming, they asked, ‘Lord, should we strike with the sword?’ Then one of them struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his right ear. But Jesus said, ‘No more of this!’ And he touched his ear and healed him. Then Jesus said to the chief priests, the officers of the temple police, and the elders who had come for him, ‘Have you come out with swords and clubs as if I were a bandit? When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. But this is your hour, and the power of darkness!’

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Day Fifteen of An Advent Calendar: Recycling Prophecy (Again), and Baptism

Posted on December 11, 2016 by Bruce Bryant-Scott

Sunday, December 11, 2016     The Third Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 13.6–13
Hebrews 12.18–29
John 3.22–30
The text of the readings follows after the comments.

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A new week begins! Week three of Advent! But I warn you, it’s a short one today.

The editors of the Daily Office Lectionary are recycling prophecy by having us read this extract today. It sounds very similar to what Paul in the two Letters to the Thessalonians was saying about the Day of the Lord. Only, we don’t have the first five verses of the chapter, in which it is explicitly stated that this is an Oracle against Babylon. A reference to the Medes in verse 17 suggests that they will wreak God’s punishment on the Babylonians; which, in a sense, is what happened when the Persians (who absorbed their close relatives the Medes) conquered Babylon. However, by carefully not including these passages, the editors of the lectionary seem to be wanting us to read this not a a prophecy that in time was fulfilled, but something we might connect with the Second Coming of Jesus.

I find the passage from Hebrews to be rather complex. The author is comparing Sinai to the Heavenly Jerusalem. I could, I suppose, if I worked at it, get a better understanding, but the hermeneutics are so convoluted that I just want to pass over it in silence. We can do that, you know.

I like the passage from John. It’s the only indication in the New Testament that Jesus himself baptised people. What’s challenging is that we have no good sense of what those baptisms were like, or what their purpose was. Did it result in the filling of the candidates with the Holy Spirit (Mark 1.8)? Or was it more like the baptism of John, one of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Mark 1.4)? Or was it both?

Whatever Jesus was up to, baptism became the rite of initiation for followers of Jesus. I was baptised in late December of 1962, when I was not even six moths old and yet already had had two major surgeries. My ordination vows are grounded in my baptism, and I continue to seek how it is to live as a Christian. In some ways my role is like that of John the Baptist – one who points to Jesus, and says, “Let the celebrations begin.”

Isaiah 13.6–13
Wail, for the day of the Lord is near;
it will come like destruction from the Almighty!
Therefore all hands will be feeble,
and every human heart will fail,
   and they will be dismayed.
Pangs and agony will seize them;
they will be in anguish like a woman in labour.
They will look aghast at one another;
their faces will be aflame.
See, the day of the Lord comes,
cruel, with wrath and fierce anger,
to make the earth a desolation,
and to destroy its sinners from it.
For the stars of the heavens and their constellations
will not give their light;
the sun will be dark at its rising,
and the moon will not shed its light.
I will punish the world for its evil,
and the wicked for their iniquity;
I will put an end to the pride of the arrogant,
and lay low the insolence of tyrants.
I will make mortals more rare than fine gold,
and humans than the gold of Ophir.
Therefore I will make the heavens tremble,
and the earth will be shaken out of its place,
at the wrath of the Lord of hosts
on the day of his fierce anger.

Hebrews 12.18–29
You have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them. (For they could not endure the order that was given, ‘If even an animal touches the mountain, it shall be stoned to death.’ Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, ‘I tremble with fear.’) But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking; for if they did not escape when they refused the one who warned them on earth, how much less will we escape if we reject the one who warns from heaven! At that time his voice shook the earth; but now he has promised, ‘Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven.’ This phrase ‘Yet once more’ indicates the removal of what is shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe; for indeed our God is a consuming fire.

John 3.22–30
After this Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he spent some time there with them and baptized. John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim because water was abundant there; and people kept coming and were being baptized— John, of course, had not yet been thrown into prison.

Now a discussion about purification arose between John’s disciples and a Jew. They came to John and said to him, ‘Rabbi, the one who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you testified, here he is baptizing, and all are going to him.’ John answered, ‘No one can receive anything except what has been given from heaven. You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, “I am not the Messiah, but I have been sent ahead of him.” He who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. For this reason my joy has been fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease.’

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