Reading The Lectionary In Holy Week

Isaiah 42:1-9

The servant of God brings justice

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 out 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.

So I’m inspired to review the daily lectionary for Holy Week. This is actually Monday’s readings, but there’s a theme here, so I want to start with it even though it’s a day late. 

What Isaiah describes here is what I call the power of powerlessness. God, in God’s own telling, is supreme:

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: 

And has a covenant with the children of Abraham:

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, 

That covenant has a purpose, which is not just to make Israel a nation:

to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. 

To bring, in other words, God’s salvation to the world. The blind, the prisoner; that’s literal, not some metaphorical pseudo-spiritual “miserable sinner that I am”/Amazing Grace” sense. Real blindness; real imprisonment; in the dungeons, where the forgotten languish. If the light doesn’t reach them, what’s the point of it?

And how will this happen? By works of power and physical dominance? No. By powerlessness:

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 out 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. 

The spirit of God is a cry for justice, but it is not a fight, a clarion call “Aux armes, les citoyens!” God’s justice comes peacefully, quietly; relentlessly.

He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth, and the coastlands wait for his teaching. 

Because the spirit of God is faith, is trust, is patience. “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” When the fire and the rose 🔥🌹are one? No; in God’s time. Have faith; hold fast to trust; be patient. And you will behold the power of powerlessness.

Psalm 36:5-11

Refuge under the shadow of your wings

Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.

Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains; your judgments are like the great deep; you save humans and animals alike, O LORD.

How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights.

For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.

O continue your steadfast love to those who know you and your salvation to the upright of heart!

Do not let the foot of the arrogant tread on me, or the hand of the wicked drive me away.

The psalm is a prayer of faith and trust. It is more for the heart than the mind; although the two are not separate, not apart from each other. But we’ll leave the psalm today as a heartfelt prayer, a cri de couer.

Hebrews 9:11-15

The blood of Christ redeems for eternal life

But when Christ came as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation),

he entered once for all into the holy place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.

For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer sanctifies those who have been defiled so that their flesh is purified,

how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God!

For this reason he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, because a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant.

I’m going to start with the second verse there, because I’m more interested in elucidation than exegesis. I just want to point out a few points of interest, places where I think misunderstanding can intrude. 

So when scripture uses the metaphor of the tent, it’s a reference to the Exodus, to the years in the desert, to the time before the Temple in Jerusalem. But the real issue is here:

… then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation), 

Which might be misread as a dichotomy between Jesus (homoiousias/homoousias) (holy; good) and creation (fallen; bad). That’s a reading from several centuries later. The letter to the Hebrews is merely upholding the understanding that, while God is Creator, what is created is neither homoousias nor homoiousias with God; but Jesus is. Take that from it, and you’ll be fine.

As for the blood…well, connect the idea of fluids to the anointing story from John, the last of four in the gospels; and the only story, besides the crucifixion, that show up in all four gospels (and before you object, no, Mark does not have a resurrection; only an empty tomb. The longer ending is much later than the original ending.)

John 12:1-11

Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.

There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him.

Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus's feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said,

"Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?"

(He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.)

Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.

You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."

When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.

So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well,

since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.

This is where things get tedious, because the anointing stories absolutely fascinate me. This is almost the only time a story in the synoptics shows up in John, and owes so much to Luke, the only gospel closer in chronological time, to our time; save John’s. I’ve got the Scholars version at hand, so I’m going to cheat and use that one now:

Six days before Passover Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, the one Jesus had brought back from the dead.  There they gave a dinner for him; Martha did the servince and Lazarus was one of those who ate with him. Mary brought a pound of expensive lotion and anointed Jesus' feet and wiped them with her hair. And the house was filled with the lotion's fragrance.  Judas Iscariot, the disciple who was going to turn him in, says, "Why wasn't this lotion sold? It would bring a year's wages, and the proceeds could have been given to the poor. (He didn't say this because he cared about the poor, but becasue he was a thief.  He was in charge of hte common purse and now and again wouild pilfer money from it.)

"Let her alone," Jesus said.  "Let her keep it for the time I am to be enbalmed.  There will always be poor around; but I won't always be around.

--John 12:1-8, SV

So that's it:  8 verses and done.  But the scene in John’s gospel is Bethany. Lazarus, a character in a parable in Luke (the only other time the name appears in the gospels), is now the dead brother of Mary (Lazarus dies in the parable, too). Lazarus has been raised from the dead, which is why the chief priests are upset (actually the Romans killed Jesus, but the surest way to be the next on a cross was to hint that execution was in any way unjust. Much safer to blame Judean religious authority.). Now the time is the days before Passover; and Jesus, he does in Mark and Matthew, refers to the act as a foreshadowing of his death.  But two very important elements have shifted, perhaps through Luke's lens:  now the perfume goes on Jesus' feet, and again, a woman wipes his feet with her hair.  Only this time the woman is named, so perhaps now we can tell this story "in remembrance of her," at least in the modern understanding of "remembrance."

It's interesting, the similiarities between this story and the stories in Matthew and Mark.  There aren't that many commonalities between John and the Synoptics.  John the Baptizer plays an important role in the gospels of Mark and Matthew, a role that reaches its zenith in Luke's gospel, where he begins with the appearance of Gabriel to John's father, Zechariah. In John's gospel the Baptizer appears as a bystander, someone who literally comments on Jesus as Jesus walks by.  No one in John's gospel gets to share center stage, however briefly, with Jesus.  John's gospel has no Sermon on the Mount (Luke)/Plain (Matthew), and precious few parables.  In the synoptics, Jesus' miracles are "acts of power" (dunamis) in the original Greek; in John's version they are "signs"  (semeia). So the resurrection of Lazarus is a "sign" of Jesus' authority and power, and it is precisely that sign which leads to the crucifixion:

When the huge crowd of Judeans found out he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, the one he had brought back from the dead.  so the ranking priests planned to put Lazarus to death, too, since because of him many of the Judeans were defecting and believing in Jesus.

John 12:9-11, SV

The "sign" of Lazarus was costing the priests their power; at least in John's narrative.  I’ve mentioned before that the cleansing of the Temple seems to have been the historical impetus for the crucifixion.  That occurs just before Passover, a time of tension in Roman occupied Jerusalem.  John includes that story, in a few verses in chapter 2, almost immediately after the first "sign" at the wedding in Cana:

It was almost time for the Jewish Passover celebration, so Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  In the temple precincts he came upon people selling oxen and sheep and doves, and bankers were doing business there too.  He made a whip out of rope and drove them all out of the temple area, sheep, goats, oxen, and all; then he knocked over the bankers' tables, and set their coin flying.  And to the dove merchants he said, "Get these birds out of here! How dare you use my Father's house as apublic market."

(His disciples were reminded of the words of scripture: "Zeal for your house is eating me alive.")

John 2:13-17, SV

It's worth pointing out here, as a side bar, that merchants in the temple weren't necessarily evil.  Temple sacrifice was the point of coming to the Temple during Passover, and most travelers couldn't bring animals with them for the ritual.  They bought animals as they were able to afford:  from doves to ox.  Coins given to the Temple also couldn't bear the image of Caesar, both because humans are made in the image of God (and no images of God can be created), and because Caesar declared himself a "son of God," or divine in his rule over the empire. So the coins of Rome had to be exchanged at Temple for coins acceptable in the Temple.  The problem with both practices, from Jesus' point of view, is that they exploited the poor (like Jesus).  The cost of a dove was already a sacrifice for the poor traveler to Jerusalem coming to the Temple to worship the God of Abraham who taught Israel to think first of the care of the poor.  The exchange rate on Temple coins made money for the banker, and cost the poor, especially, a great deal.  Jesus' objection, in other words, is not pious;  he objects to the economic exploitation of people like him, the very people the God of Abraham professes to identify with.  So you can see why he's pissed off. You can also see why Pilate was worried. We don’t countenance these kinds of complaints today: especially if they are made in the name of Jesus.

Pilate's palace overlooked the Temple.  I mean, directly overlooked.  From the walls of the governor’s palace, Pilate could look down into the open areas of the Temple. Turmoil in the Temple during Passover, the high holiday of the Judeans (Jews is a bit of an anachronism during the time of Pilate), the "first of months" for the children of Abraham , is not conducive to the Pax Romana. It's a time of high political tension for Rome, which tolerated diverse religious beliefs, but not diverse political beliefs.  And Passover was as political as it was religious, so....

Back to Jesus:  the cost of the perfume Mary uses doesn't bother him.  There's no contradiction here; just a contrast.  And a consistency that keeps this version of the anointing at Bethany in line with those of Matthew and Mark.  Luke's is still the outlier (no perfume; only the woman’s tears; an outrageously erotic presentation in Luke’s day); but that outlier finds echoes in John's version.

First, note that the disciples appear in the story in Mark and Matthew, but not in Luke.  And John, who likes to tell more concrete stories (the better to ground his long, abstract discourses by Jesus.  As one of my professors in seminary pointed out, John's Jesus sucks all the air out of the upper room.  Chapter 13 of John begins that event, with Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.  Chapter 18 begins with Jesus finally going to the garden, although he's barely there before Judas shows up to betray him.  The chapters in between are almost all a monologue by Jesus.), replaces Simon the leper/Pharisee with Lazarus (the better to connect the resurrection of Lazarus in chapter 11 to the plot against Jesus in chapter 12) and "the disciples" with Judas Iscariot.  John's character of Judas is the one we all think of as the betrayer, the Iago to Jesus' Othello (except Jesus is not nearly so naive about Judas, especially in John's gospel), the Judas familiar to us from "JCS" (except, again, John's Judas doesn't really have any redeeming virtues).  So Judas is clearly the antagonist in this little story; he is even a hypocrite, because he doesn't care about the poor or whether the mony would go to them.  He's just, in modern parlance, a "troll."

And Jesus' response is equally blunt.  It also lends itself most easily to the dismissal of concern for the poor I've heard from too many professed Christians:  that the poor will always be with us.  It's usually said as if that's not only a fact of life, but the desire of God that some be poor.  As punishment; as part of God's "plan"?  The reason scarcely matters.  The excuse for ignoring them and denying any responsibility for them, is all that matters.

In some ways the Johannine version of this story is the most attenuated, and it suffers from that loss of detail.  John is less concerned with this story than with incorporating it into his narrative because, like the crucifixion, it is a part of the story of the Nazarene that cannot be excluded.  Curiously, it is John's gospel that gives us the long discourse between Pilate and Jesus, the back and forth between the Governor of Judea and a peasant rabble-rouser (which makes it, historically, a highly unlikely event.  Imagine your governor bandying words in public, before TV cameras, with a condemned prisoner just before his execution.)  We owe a lot of what we think about the story of Jesus to John's embellishments.  But in the anointing story John reduces the events to a bare minimum:  now the woman is named:  Mary, the sister to Martha and to Lazarus.  So she is in her brother's home, and yet still serving Jesus at table.  An attenuated scandal since Jesus is above such matters, and the focus stays on him in John's version.  Do you see this woman? Well, don't; she really doesn't matter.  Even the detail of drying his feet with her hair, which now can be a sign of love and honor for what Jesus has done (resurrected her brother Lazarus), but which would also be scandalous (it's still a first century lap dance; and imagine it happening today.  Washing someone's feet is intimate enough.  Drying them with your own long hair?).  John steps over that quickly by shifting attention to Judas, and in the most negative way possible.  Jesus dismisses the whole thing, using it as a foreshadowing of his death.  He doesn't even acknowledge what she's done, or why, except to dismissively say she should save the perfume for his burial preparations.

So the story comes from Mark to Matthew, almost unaltered; and then undergoes a radical transformation in Luke.  Some of those physical changes make it to John's version, but John seems ready almost to discard it, as it's not a "sign" pointing to who Jesus is or what his authority is, and it's not a "teachable moment" allowing Jesus to talk on and on and on about the nature of God and humanity.  For John it's a narrative transition point between the more important story of Lazarus (a "sign" if ever there was one; and, in John’s narrative, the prefiguring of Jesus’ resurrection) and the movement of the story into Jerusalem and the "upper room" (the remainder of chapter 12 is Jesus again talking about the concept of "signs" and the narrative moving toward the foot-washing of chapter 13 and the captive audience of the disciples Jesus then lectures for five chapters. Some of this we’ll get to). It's like John knows he can't leave this story out, but doesn't really think much of it, himself.  It's a pebble in his narrative shoe that he drops off as soon as he is able.

What, then, do we get from all of this?  This simple story was so important to the gospel writers they all included it (the canonical gospels, I mean; not the non-canonical ones).  Luke alters it dramatically.  From his "Special Luke" source?  From his own interests in the story of Jesus of Nazareth?  For whatever reason, he puts it through a blender, changing time and place and persons, leaving out the disciples and followers so thoroughly it is obvious the woman with the jar is a stranger to everyone else in that room.  There's a reason Luke goes immediately from his anointing story to a catalogue of the women traveling with Jesus.  It may be one of them is the woman in the room, since they provide for Jesus' ministry out of their own resources, and undoubtedly the perfume, even if it didn't cost a year's wages, was very expensive.  Luke is drawing a line underneath the woman's identity, the fact she was a stranger before she entered the room; and the enticing possibility that she is a stranger no more, because Jesus told her she had shown great trust, and that trust had saved her.  Matthew and Mark intimate the woman is one of the group; and maybe that's why Luke says the women had resources to fund the ministry when offerings weren't enough.  Matthew and Mark make it clear this is an anointing:  the perfume goes on the head, like the oil on the head of the king, or as in Psalm 133:

{A Song of degrees of David.} Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!

2It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments;

3As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.

That is an anointing.  Luke shifts not only time and place (not Bethany; and far earlier than the fateful Passover events) and location (feet, not head).  Is it even an anointing anymore?  John restores (follows?) tradition, by calling the act an anointing, but Mary aims for the feet, not the head.  And in Mary we finally identify a woman (although no one tells that story in memory of her) and a reason for her gratitude (her brother has been restored to life).  John also includes a lovely, concrete detail: "And the house was filled with the lotion's fragrance."  A metaphor?  Or merely a physical detail about the nature of perfume?  Either way it's wiped aside by the actions of Judas and the blunt retort of Jesus.  None of this really interests John; but what's always been interesting to me is why John includes this story; and why he shifts to location to Jesus' feet, even as he keeps up with the tradition of the house being in Bethany, and the disciples (well, Judas) being present.

In "JCS," the anointing story turns into the emotional heart of the story.  Immediately after Judas' lament "Heaven on their minds" we meet the disciples with "What's the Buzz?"  And among them is Mary Magdalene and the women (as a backing chorus) who sing "Let me try to cool down your face a bit", which allows Judas back in with "Strange Thing, Mystifying":

It seems to me a strange thing, mystifying

That a man like you can waste his time on women of her kind.

Yes, I can understand that she amuses,

But to let her kiss you, stroke your hair, is hardly in your line.

It's not that I object to her profession,

But she doesn't fit in well with what you teach and say.

It doesn't help us if you're inconsistent.

They only need a small excuse to put us all away.

That's John crossed with Luke.  The objection is in Judas' mouth; but the objection itself, however obliquely expressed, is that of Simon the Pharisee.  Jesus has already accepted Mary's attention:

Mary, ooh, that is good

How you prattle through your supper,

Where and when and who and how

She alone has tried to give me, 

what I need right here and now.

Which sounds more like Luke than anybody.  This story recurs with the famous love song "I Don't Know How To Love Him."  Again Mary soothes Jesus, upset by the events of the march into Jerusalem (Simon Zealotes tells Jesus to use this power for glory), the cleansing of the Temple ("My Temple should be a house of prayer!/But you have made it a den of thieves!") and the followers ("Christ you know I love you/Did you see I waved?/I believe in you and God/so tell me that I'm saved!") and the beggars and diseased ("See my eyes, I can hardly see/See my legs, I can hardly walk/See my purse, I'm a poor, poor man/See my toungue I can hardly talk") to whom Jesus finally screams "HEAL YOURSELVES!"  And then Mary is back, offering "Myrrh for your hot forehead/calm you and anoint you" as she soothes him to sleep, and then sings her song of confused, bewildered love.  It isn't the song of the woman in Luke's version of the anointing; but it could be ours, if we examine that story carefully, if we take what Luke gives us, seriously.

And here's an interesting thing from the rock opera, too.  Judas says, in the first song, that Jesus has begun to matter more than the things he says.  This is an old discussion in Christianity.  The earliest gospels were likely "sayings" gospels.  Some of those are conjectural:  "Q" is thought to have been a collection of sayings of Jesus.  There's also presumably a "signs" gospel behind John's version.  The Gospel of Thomas is the most famous extant example of these kinds of gospels.  And it’s arguable, especially after the crucifixion, especially today, that Christians honor Jesus more in who he was than in what he taught.  Judas, in other words, is on to something.  Gallup reports that church attendance in America is declining, and thinks this marks something in American cultural history.  Perhaps; or perhaps it just marks a new social willingness to admit you don't go to church anymore.  The decline in attendance has been obvious to pastors and churches for more than half a century now.  Gallup thinks it’s discovered something but, again, the world is just catching up to the church.  And still we're a long way from the early 20th century.  This fight between who Jesus was, and what Jesus said (and which matters more) is a very old one, in other words; and if the latter is starting to prevail over the former (not to its extinguishment, but with a renewed emphasis on the latter above the former), perhaps that's all to the good.  Perhaps that's even the Holy Spirit (Luke) at work.  Perhaps we should let that fragrance fill the house (John).

Luke's story is, in my understanding, a powerful story about grace and salvation, forgiveness and redemption.  We want things to be earned, especially something as important as grace and acceptance (acceptance often includes some manner of forgiveness), but we want these blessings purchased with some coin.  For me that coin should be as small as possible, a mere mite, because surely I am deserving of forgiveness and grace, especially if I can't possibly pay for it.  For you, however?  Well, I'm not sure I want you getting something for nothing.  That seems unfair.  Maybe if you were to show a little love, you'd be deserving.  But to be deserving and to show some love, surely you have to have some prompting to respond to.  So would it work like this?

"I walked into your house and you didn't offer me water for my feet; yet she has washed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You didn't offer me a kiss, but she hasn't stopped kissing my feet since I arrived. You didn't anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with myrrh. For this reason, I tell you, her sins, many as they are, have been forgiven, as this outpouring of her love shows. But the one who is forgiven little shows little love."

But that's an ouroboros, a Moebius strip; it doesn't seem to have a beginning or an end, and if you walk along it, it has only one surface.  There's no way in, no point at which you can begin your payment for that grace.  How do you earn it, then?

Precisely.  Begin there.

On what condition does goodness exist beyond all calculation? On the condition that goodness forget itself, that the movement be a movement of the gift that renounces itself, hence a movement of infinite love. Only infinite love can renounce itself and, in order to become finite, become incarnated in order to love the other, to love the other as a finite other. This gift of infinite love comes from someone and is addressed to someone; responsibility demands irreplaceable singularity.

Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, tr. David Wills (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 50-51.

These conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your own cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it, so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. Adulterers! Do you now know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you suppose that it is for nothing that the scripture says, "God yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made to dwell in us"? But he gives all the more grace; therefore it says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

James 4:1-6

I am reading (Simone Weil's) essays as a part of my Lenten reading...She says that we "...must experience every day, both in the spirit and the flesh, the pains and humiliations of poverty...and further we must do something which is harder than enduring in poverty, we must renounce all compensations: in our contacts with the people around us we must sincerely practice the humility of a naturalized citizen in the country which has received us."

I keep reminding the young people who come to work with us that they are not naturalized citizens...They are not really poor. We are always foreigners to the poor. So we have to make up for it by "renouncing all compensations..."

Dorothy Day, from The Dorothy Day Book, p. 11. 

“Who Do You Say That I Am?”

 

And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years and in divine and human favor.

The really last words of Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth before the adult Jesus starts his career as an itinerant preacher. That's the part we never think about.  We’re more inclined toward the Greek idea expressed in The Cherry Tree Carol, where Jesus not only commands the cherry tree from Mary’s womb, but converses with Joseph, as well. Jesus is God, right? How can God be a child, or need formation? The kind of formation children go through? And yet Luke makes it clear Jesus is fully human; an idea the non-canonical gospels run with in telling stories of Jesus’, and the mischief he creates with his power to perform miracles.

That’s the separating factor in Luke, too. Matthew focuses on Joseph in his nativity: the husband, the patriarch. Mary is silent, the infant almost invisible. Luke’s narrative foregrounds Elizabeth after the embarrassment of Zechariah, and focuses on Mary. Joseph is the silent, almost invisible, one. The angels direct the shepherds to the child in the feeding trough, wrapped in the rags of a poor person’s child. And then they take the baby to the temple, and finally we see him teaching the elders. Luke has marked the baby as God from conception; he proves it by showing him teaching about scriptures he can’t himself have learned yet. (For Mark Jesus’ baptism by John is the point where he becomes the Christ, the Anointed One. For John, Jesus exists in the beginning with God. His incarnation is just another of God’s semeia, or signs.) The most human thing Jesus does in John’s gospel is weep over the news of Lazarus’ death. In Luke’s gospel he sweats blood in the garden of Gethsemane. In the infancy gospels, he behaves as a child with god-like powers would behave. In that way he increases in wisdom and, at least, human favor.

The gospels each, in their own way, are at pains to make Jesus human, but also something more. Again, this is not a theological argument or apologia. It’s more a literary analysis; I’m just looking at the texts and how each gospel handles the issue. Humanity and divinity are pretty much oil and water. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the very presence of God in creation leads to theophany: Moses in Sinai in a thunderstorm; or the appearance of God to Elijah. It isn’t referenced in Luke, but when the priest entered the inner sanctum of the temple, where God might be directly encountered, he did so with a rope tied to his ankle, so the corpse could be safely removed. Moses came down from Sinai with his face shining, having stood so long in the glory of God (a glory that obscures God from human sight in Isaiah’s vision of the throne room of God). Zechariah comes out unable to speak; so the people know something big has happened.

God is not, in other words, human. God is wholly Other. So what is Jesus?

Mark identifies Jesus with God at the Transfiguration, a private event (only three disciples see it) which is the public revelation of Jesus as divine, a divinity that seems to come to him at his baptism, where he publicly acknowledges his earthly ministry and all that will involve. That’s actually pushing it backwards into Jesus’ life, since Paul places Jesus’ divinity in the resurrection. Matthew pushes it back to birth; Luke to pre-birth (it predates the conception of his cousin, John), and John’s gospel takes it all the way back to “in the beginning.”

But the Greek idea of humanity and divinity is basically jerks with superpowers. Which is kind of the lane explored by the infancy gospels. Jesus has to learn to be human, while at the same time being God. Luke says that happened easily. The infancy gospels say: let’s think about that a minute. Which is not to say they get something fundamentally right; but they do raise an interesting issue.

The Cloud Of Unknowing

Baron Friedrich von Hügel, the early 20th-century Roman Catholic thinker, wrote of three elements of religion. In the institutional element, a child, for example, soaks up with delight and few questions all the customs and creeds of the religious institution. The second intellectual element most typically begins in adolescence, when individuals begin to pose questions to the inherited faith and attempt to make sense of it for themselves. If they fail in the quest of this second element, they may well abandon their childhood faith and its related institution. But if they succeed, they move on into the third or mystical element of religion, when - without in any way leaving behind the first and second elements - they are able to live with questions that no one can answer, exploring the connections of thought and feeling which help make belief not a groundless or fruitless activity, and living in an attitude of wonder and ultimate trust in the universe. 

Now it seems to me that highly gifted people are often able to move naturally and with deep fascination into Von Hügel's third element of religion. They do not in the process leave behind the institutional and intellectual aspects of faith, and this gives them a rich multi-dimensional grasp on reality and meaning - something very different from certain and final knowledge. Many in our time have continued to be able to leap across to maturity of faith. At the other end of the spectrum, however, the simple (and the faux-simple), like the poor, we always have with us in the churches.

Not so fast.

First, this sounds a bit Kierkegaardian to me: beginning in the aesthetic, moving into the ethical (this is the basic argument of Either/Or), and then advancing to the religious in the Knight of Faith (if one doesn’t get caught as the Knight of Infinite Resignation). (This is presented in Fear and Trembling.) But these are the philosophical works; not the religious works. For S.K., the two have no commerce with each other. They speak different languages about different views of the world. Even the “leap of faith” mentioned there comes from Fear and Trembling, but SK meant it was what the non-religious see and how they understand; and they are wrong. It’s the attempt of the world to explain what they cannot explain.

Take the Knight of Faith. In SK’s description we see a perfectly bourgeois man of Denmark in the mid-19th century. What SK meant was the ideal of the religious could be anybody. But he also meant the designation, the identification, the definition, were the concerns of the philosopher, not of the saint. Or the Knight of Faith, since a saint is known by semeia (miracles, specifically). By the way, without signs, how do you know the K of F? And if you need signs, how do you know the signs are…signs? Or what they signify?

SK wasn’t trying to make this simpler. 

Seminary was a very intellectual (and rigorous ) experience. It taught me to think, not to believe. It didn’t teach me to be a mystic, so much as it taught me any appeal to the metaphysical, even any consideration of it, was considered “mysticism.” Seminary doesn’t deal in mysticism. We need to define our terms here.

I’m not sure “everyone her own Aquinas” is all that sound an argument anyway, since Aquinas and Francis were both mystics (Francis reportedly was the first to display stigmata; Aquinas finished his Summa and said he had a vision that turned all his writings to straw), but both came to very different conclusions about coming to God. Aquinas used his powerful intellect, Francis his powerless humility. I’m not saying one way is better than another; I’m saying it’s dangerously reductive to think there is “one way.” Or even many ways, as long as they lead from emotional (pietism?), to intellectual (“pure theology”?), to…the Cloud of Unknowing?

Monks in the first twelve centuries of the church didn’t pursue their spiritual goals by pursuing theology. Some did, but some thought it actually got in the way of their goals. Who was right? My maternal grandfather was a Primitive Baptist and, from time to time, a lay preacher to his congregation. He had no religious education, no seminary degree. What he knew of Christianity he’d learned in that denomination. He even sang from a shaped note hymnal. His inability to formulate a systematic theology* did not make him less faithful than me, or any less of a Christian. In fact, I aspire to his trust (faith) and faithfulness. He got there without the intellectual endeavors I’ve struggled to achieve. Who’s right?

I'm not arguing with the Baron so much as I'm arguing with the Guardian.  Their take is one Kierkegaard would savage, probably with a pseudonym (because his pseudonymous works were all critiques of philosophical reasoning by showing up its limitations and blindspots).

Christianity’s mysticism, per the mystics themselves, is more connected with unknowing than knowing. The classic text here is The Cloud of Unknowing, the anonymous English text about the encounter with the ineffable (another philosophical term). Sticking with England, there’s Julian of Norwich’s near death experience which led her to a life of service and contemplation as an anchorite. St. John of the Cross wrote of the “dark night of the soul.”  St. Teresa compared the experience of God to an intimate (sexual) encounter. Not too many people aspire to a state of ratiocination that will culminate in sexual ecstasy. Doris Grumbach wrote a memoir about her unexpected spiritual experience, and how (not unlike Julian, but with far less success) she tried to understand it and, more importantly, repeat it. Mother Teresa, her contemporary, reported the same thing. Try as I might, I can’t find how the intellectual experience of seminary yields the mystical ecstasy of Teresa, or even the visions of Julian. In seminary our cloud of unknowing was the region between our understanding and what our professors were trying to teach us.

And faith, by the way, is not either blind acceptance or a willing acceptance that you’ll understand all there is to understand. That’s just experience and wisdom. Socrates taught as much. Faith is trust; but trust in what?

Exactly. 

 

I know I’m speaking strongly about something offered rather casually. But the mystical experience in Christianity is not a matter of discovery, but revelation. It doesn’t come from our efforts, but from God’s revealing. Doris Grumbach didn’t pursue God; nor did Julian, nor even Paul on the road to Damascus. Monks tried to live as much in the presence of God as they could; and if they succeeded it would be, as Julian called her visions, a “shewing.” It wouldn’t be wrapped in knowledge, but in unknowing.

*not that I hold systematics in high regard. My final paper in seminary on systematics was on why it was a mug’s game. I got in a war of words with one of my systematics professors that carried on after I graduated. I’m still bull-headed enough to insist I was right.

Replying to rustypickup: The schema also strikes me as very RC. I struggle to imagine a Protestant bulldozing Pietism so complacently (that said, I don’t struggle that hard). Mostly I just wanted to engage it, to see what I came up with. It never as much as I imagine it will be.

Thanks for the book tip; I’ve already contacted my favorite local bookstore. My nearly 70 year old body is warning me if my limitations, but my equally aged brain still thinks I don’t know enough. 

Seminary is a struggle. I hope it’s a good one for you.

All Saint's Day 2024

All Saint's Day (Nov. 1) is a day to honor the saints, mainly those who don't otherwise have a feast day. All Soul's Day (Nov. 2) remembers all who have died in Christ who are not considered saints.  Protestants don't necessarily observe the day, but for those who do the "saints" mean the clouds of witness who we believe surround us in time and across time, as well as across space.  According to most accounts the Irish holy day Samhain was one of the "thin places" on the calendar, when the dearly departed were yet close at hand, not as ghouls and ghost and goblins, but as family. That’s the supposed connection between All Hallows Even and Samhain, anyway.  Somewhere along the line we pushed them together, or tried to resurrect non-Christian holidays as pre-Christian.  I don't know much about the history of Samhain, but the Gregorian calendar came to Ireland with Christianity (I'm 99% sure, anyway), so it may be the Irish holy day was translated into a specific day on the Roman Catholic calendar.  

Anyway....

The German Protestant church observed the Totenfest, the remembrance of the dead, the faithful who had died in Christ in the past year.  They marked that occassion not on a calendar date, but on the last Sunday of Pentecost, the liturgical season that begins roughly 50 days after Easter Sunday, and runs until the Sunday before Advent.  Don't get your calendars out, it's easy to calculate.  Advent begins four Sundays before December 25th, so the last Sunday of Pentecost is a week before the first Sunday of Advent.  Because days on the Gregorian calendar move about, while Christmas has a settled date, and Hallowe'en, too, the last Sunday of Pentecost and first Sunday of Advent change their dates every year.  This year the last Sunday of Pentecost is November 24th.  I'll mark the Totenfest that day again this year.  

It's all about death and resurrection.  Although those terms might not mean what you think they mean.

This prayer is from the (German) Evangelical Book of Worship.  I'm not certain precisely when they used it in the church year, but I find it useful for Totenfest or, in this case, for All Saint's Day.

Almighty and everlasting God, before whom stand the spirits of the living and the dead; Light of lights, Fountain of wisdom and goodness, who livest in all pure and humble and gracious souls.

For all who witnessed a good confession for thy glory and the welfare of the world; for patriarchs, prophets, and apostles; for the wise of every land and nation, and all teachers of mankind,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For the martyrs of our holy faith, the faithful witnesses of Christ of whome the world was not worthy, and for all who have resisted falsehood and wrong unto suffering or death,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For all who have labored and suffered for freedom, good government, just laws, and they sanctity of the home; and for all who have given their lives for their country,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For all who have sought to bless men by their service and life, and to lighten the dark places of the earth,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.
For those who have been tender and true and brave in all times and places, and for all who have been one with thee in the communion of Christ's spirit and in the strength of his love,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For the dear friends and kindred, ministering in the spiritual world, whose faces we see no more, but whose love is with us for ever,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For the teachers and companions of our childhood and yough, and for the members of our household of faith who worship thee in heaven,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For the grace which was given to all these, and for the trust and hope in which they lived and died,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

And that we may hold them in continual remembrance, that the sanctity of their wisdom and goodness may rest upon our earthly days, and that we may prepare ourselves to follow them in their upward way,

WE BESEECH THEE TO HEAR US, O GOD.

That we may ever think of them as with thee, and be sure that where they are, there we may be also,

WE BESEECH THEE TO HEAR US, O GOD.

That we mave haev a hope beyond this world for all they children, even for wanderers who must be sought and brought home; that we may be comforted and sustained by the promise of a time when none shall be a stranger and an exile from thy kingdom and household;

WE BESEECH THEE TO HEAR US, O GOD.

In the communion of the Holy Spirit, with the faithful and the saints in heaven, with the redeemed in all ages, with our beloved who dwell in thy presence and peace, we, who still serve and suffer on earth, unite in ascribing:

THANKSGIVING, GLORY, HONOR, AND POWER UNTO THEE, O LORD OUR GOD.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,

AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING, IS NOW, AND EVER SHALL BE, WORLD WITHOUT END. AMEN.

The Revised Common Lectionary provides these scripture readings for All Saints 2024.

Isaiah 25:6-9

25:6

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.

25:7

And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the covering that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever.

25:8

Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken.

25:9

It will be said on that day, "See, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation."

Psalm 24

24:1

The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it,

24:2

for he has founded it on the seas and established it on the rivers.

24:3

Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place?

24:4

Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false and do not swear deceitfully.

24:5

They will receive blessing from the LORD and vindication from the God of their salvation.

24:6

Such is the company of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. Selah

24:7

Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in!

24:8

Who is the King of glory? The LORD, strong and mighty, the LORD, mighty in battle.

24:9

Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in!

24:10

Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory. Selah

Revelation 21:1-6a

21:1

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.

21:2

And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

21:3

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and be their God;

21:4

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."

21:5

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."

21:6

Then he said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End..

John 11:32-44

11:32

When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."

11:33

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.

11:34

He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see."

11:35

Jesus began to weep

11:36

So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!"

11:37

But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?"

11:38

Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it.

11:39

Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days."

11:40

Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?"

11:41

So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me.

11:42

I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me."

11:43

When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus come out!"

11:44

The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him and let him go."

If you skipped all those readings, I don't blame you. I won't belabor them here.  I just want to point out the thematic reason for them, the thread that runs through them:  death and resurrection, and how even the dead are alive to God.

None of which are simple concepts, although we oversimplify them constantly, imagining either a painless passage from death to "after life," or maybe we complicate it with a Final Judgement and the separation of the sheep and the goats.  But these verses are not abstract speculations on unknown things.  They are far more concrete than that.

Here, let me run through them quickly.

Isaiah promises a vision of renewal and redemption that will follow the Babylonian Exile.  It will be a time when Israel is so faithful to God (which doesn't mean observing the "right" rituals in worship or daily life, but following the "law of God," in Micah’s famous tripartite version:  do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God.  There's a whole set of lessons in that verse alone, but that's for another day).  It's an apocalyptic vision, by which I mean not death and destruction and the end of all things, but the final revelation showing the truth of all things.  And what is this apocalypse? It is when death is swallowed up forever, and every tear is dried. The true end, as in purpose but also conclusion, of history.

Doesn't seem very solidly concrete; but the Psalm is a song of the saints, of "Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false and do not swear deceitfully/They will receive blessing from the LORD and vindication from the God of their salvation./Such is the company of those who seek him.” Not so very different from Isaiah’s vision.

And the revelation to John, in the original Greek the "apocalypse" of John, where it is declared that 'Death will be no more," and because of that "mourning and crying will be no more."  It's one of the passages I've used most often at a graveside service, to try to comfort the mourning.  Notice it's not a Platonic statement about an immortal soul slipping off its mortal coil.  It's about resurrection, a return to life, a completion at the end of history.

Finally, the story of Lazarus.  This is an interesting story in John, because it's one of the semeia, the signs, Jesus performs.  In the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke), the "miracles" are "dunamis," or acts of power.  In John, they are signs; and any modern semiologist (if they're still around) will tell you the distinctive character of a sign is that it points to something beyond itself, like a stop sign points to the power of government to punish you if you don't obey the sign.  So the resurrection of Lazarus is a sign; but it's also one of the most concrete passages in John, where Jesus literally talks for three chapters in the upper room on the night before his crucifixion. Jesus talks a lot in John. So much so the person often disappears behind the abstractions. Except for washing his disciples feet, there's no time in the narrative of his last night to eat or drink or to give the cryptic message about the meal.  But in the story of Lazarus Jesus doesn't talk, he merely acts.  And he overcomes death, a real death of a truly dead person (Nikos Kazantzakis uses this story in his novel The Last Temptation of Christ, and notes that Lazarus sits in his sisters' house still stinking of the grave. Verisismilitude, indeed.)

Death and resurrection; concrete and visionary; real and metaphorical.

For all the saints.  From all the saints.

The semeia here is rather remarkable in John, because John's is not an inclusive gospel; it is almost a gnostic gospel. Those who know, know; those who do not, are Nicodemus; imagining that they know, but understanding nothing. Never mind; they are saved in the end. In the end, Nicodemus is one of those who recovers the body after the crucifixion. Or maybe that is John's joke again, since the body was never Jesus in the first place; since it only appeared to be Jesus.  But John is brutally direct here:  like God speaks Creation into existence, Jesus speaks Lazarus back into life.  We are meant to see this clearly, not through a glass darkly.  Lazarus was dead.  Lazarus is alive.  Wiping the tears from the eyes, at least, of his sisters; and, I suppose, from the eyes of Jesus, too.  Jesus is so abstract and talkative in John's gospel he practically disappears behind the verbiage.  Here, he cries; like a real person; like a caring human being.

God wept.

Rather like the saints, a few centuries later.  Saints are people, flesh and blood, body and bone.  They are no ideals and plaster and just metaphors.  Metaphors are powerful, ideas are powerful, but they are not real, and plaster especially is just a man-made product.  Saints are human. Saints are real.  Saints are made by their faith; and by God.  And the blessings of God announced in these four passages, are real; and concrete.

So say the saints:  The blessings are here. The blessings are now, and they are real. The blessings are pronounced, right now, and being pronnced, they become real. They take affect here; for you. Now.

The language of this day all sounds like language of what will come, will happen, will be seen one day; but not now.  We hear those words, or read those words,  and we think: "Yes. Yes!" And we want them to be true now; but we know they are not true. We know they cannot yet be true.

But the saints admonish us. The saints tell us, remind us, wave their hands before our blind eyes, shout into our deaf ears: "The time is now! The blessing is now! The great ordeal is over and the throne of the Lamb is in front of you right now! The shepherd guides you now! The springs of water wash your feet right now! God is wiping your tears away now, now, even now! Oh, won't you open your eyes and see?! Won't you open your ears and listen?!" And then they weep for us, the saints; the clouds of witness who surround us and know what we know and know what we refuse to know. They surround us and weep and try once again to get our attention, to make us listen, to make us see, to get us just to notice.

Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in!

Who is the King of glory? The LORD, strong and mighty, the LORD, mighty in battle.

Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in!

Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory. Selah

Lift up your heads, and open the gates of your mind and soul; then you would see, then hear, then you would know! Those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. The lives of the servants of the Lord are redeemed! And they are redeemed right now! That is what the saints tell us, and they know! They know, because they are human. They know because they are just like us. They know, because they are saints. And they surround us; and they are here, now.

Samhain is what the Irish once called this time. It was their new year, and the ancestors came back to see them for a celebration. It was when time itself was a "thin place," and the spirits could communicate with the living, and the veil between the two worlds was thin enough to allow communication. For them, the spirits were as real as flesh and blood family members, and their return was a blessing.  As I get older and lose more family members to time, I see more and more what a blessing that would be. For us, perhaps even the saints don't seem quite real. The saints seem like the blessed ones, and their blessings seem to have come long after they could enjoy them in this life. But they know what we forget: that the blessings are for life, not for death. Blessings that only come as rewards in the end, are no blessings at all. Blessings that are not for this life, are only cruel promises. The saints know that God is the God of the living, not the dead; and that in God’s sight, all are alive. Which is why this time of year is still a time of celebration, not of mourning. Which is why the great ordeal has passed, and the lamb is with us now. And why the ones who seem so little, and have so little, and struggle to be merciful and make peace and keep pure hearts, are blessed right now, and not later, not as a reward for being stubborn or persistent or for simply hanging on. The struggle has passed. Blessed are we; right now. That is what the saints know.

The saints are flesh and blood and bone, as Jesus was; and they know what our struggles are, as Jesus did, and they know what our hope is; and that is what sets them apart from us. But not for long; never for long; and they don’t want to be set apart, they want to be with us, they want us to be with them. They are here, now, in this “thin time” they are as near as our next breath, and they know: the blessings on the merciful, and the mourning, and the pure in heart; on the peacemakers and the meek and the ones who are so hungry and thirsty for righteousness they are sure they can just taste, and if only they could be satisfied! They know, the saints, the wise and humble and loving saints, that we are with them, right now; and that we are blessed. Right now. And they want us to know it, too. For all the saints. God willing, we’ll see that we’re ones, too.

Because that’s what it means, to be children of God. The saints look just like you. Have hands, and hearts, and eyes, and ears, and mouths, shaped just like yours. And that is your blessing, now, and evermore. Because you are merciful. Because you are meek. Because, whether you know it or not, your heart is pure. Because you will never stop being hungry and thirsty for righteousness. Because you know it is there, that it will come, that it will be done. Because you know, the great ordeal is no ordeal at all. Because you know, that you want everyone else to know this; and to know they are blessed.

For all the saints. And you are one, too.

Amen.

Holy Monday 2024

I am reposting from years back, and doing it shamelessly.  Some of these posts will be updated/emended.  Some will not.  You get what you pay for, right?

 Isaiah 42:1-9

42:1 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.

42:2 He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street;

42:3 a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.

42:4 He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching.

42:5 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:

42:6 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,

42:7 to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.

42:8 I am the LORD, that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols.

42:9 See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.

Psalm 36:5-11

36:5 Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.

36:6 Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your judgments are like the great deep; you save humans and animals alike, O LORD.

36:7 How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

36:8 They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights.

36:9 For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.

36:10 O continue your steadfast love to those who know you, and your salvation to the upright of heart!

36:11 Do not let the foot of the arrogant tread on me, or the hand of the wicked drive me away.

Hebrews 9:11-15

9:11 But when Christ came as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation),

9:12 he entered once for all into the Holy Place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.

9:13 For if the blood of goats and bulls, with the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer, sanctifies those who have been defiled so that their flesh is purified,

9:14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God!

9:15 For this reason he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, because a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant.

John 12:1-11

12:1 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.

12:2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.

12:3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

12:4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said,

12:5 "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?"

12:6 (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.)

12:7 Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.

12:8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."

12:9 When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.

12:10 So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well,

12:11 since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.

"Lazarus" is a name that appears in two gospels: once in Luke's parable:

There was this rich man, who wore clothing fit for a king and who dined lavishly every day.  This poor man, named Lazarus, languished at his gate, all covered with sores.  He longed to eat what fell from the rich man's table.  Dogs even used to come and lick his sores.  It so happened that the poor man died and was carried away by the heavenly messengers to be with Abraham.  The rich man died too, and was buried.

From Hades, where he was being tortured, he looked up and saw Abraham a long way off and Lazarus with him.  He called out, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me!  Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water to cool my tongue, for I am in torment in these flames.'

But Abraham said, 'My child, remember that you had good fortune in your lifetime, and Lazarus had it bad.  Now he is being comforted here, and you are in torment.  And besides all this, a great chasm has been set between us and you, so that even those who want to cross over from there to you cannot, and no one can cross over them that side to yours.'

But he said, 'Father, I beg you then, send him to my father's house--after all, I have five brothers--so he can warn them not to wind up in this place of torture.'

But Abraham says, 'They have Moses and the prophets; why don't they listen to them?'

'But they won't do that, father Abraham,' he said.  'However, if someone appears to them from the dead, they'll have a change of heart.'

(Abraham) said to him, 'If they won't listen to Moses and the prophets, they won't be convinced even if someone were to rise from the dead.'

--Luke 16:19-31, SV

The second time is in John, where it appears twice. There's one other connection:

(Abraham) said to him, 'If they won't listen to Moses and the prophets, they won't be convinced even if someone were to rise from the dead.'

So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.

It's not an idle connection, in other words.  The resurrection of Lazarus is a semeia, a sign, in John's terminology.  All of the "miracles" in the synoptics are dunamis, acts of power; John calls the "miracles" (that's our word) "signs." And while most of us remember the story of Lazarus because "Jesus wept," few of us notice the "sign" of Lazarus is another entry on the bill of indictment against Jesus.  To John, it's just one more reason Jesus was crucified.  He includes Lazarus among the doomed because signs must be erased.  Acts of power can be explained away, or simply forgotten; after all, many in Jesus' day claimed the power of resurrection, and many of their followers claimed their leader had been resurrected.  We tend to treat the most miraculous claims of the gospels as unique in human history, or certainly in 1st century Palestine, but they weren't.  Perhaps that's one more reason John says they are "signs".  Signs have to be destroyed.  Acts are fleeting; signs, if not perpetual, are at least more permanent.

This is the second part of Lazarus' story, in John.  Jesus returns to the house of Lazarus for what we now call Holy Week.  And here is he anointed, the other story common to all four gospels (the only other one is the crucifixion), and again, he draws from Luke's story (the last, chronologically, of the synoptics).

One of the Pharisees invited him to dinner; he entered the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. A local woman, one who was a sinner, found out that he was having dinner at the Pharisee's house. She suddenly showed up with an alabaster jar of myrrh, and stood there behind him weeping at his feet. Her tears wet his feet, and she wiped them dry with her hair; she kissed his feet, and anointed them with the myrrh.

The Pharisee who had invited him saw this and said to himself, "if this man were a prophet, he would know who this is and what kind of woman is touching him, since she is a sinner."

And Jesus answered him, "Simon, I have something to tell you."

"Teacher," he said, "Speak up."

"This moneylender had two debtors; one owed five hundred silver coins, the other fifty. Since neither one of them could pay, he wrote off both debts. Now which of them will love him more?"

Simon answered, "I would imagine the one for whom he wrote off the larger debt."

And he said to him, "You're right." Then turning to the woman, he said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I walked into your house and you didn't offer me water for my feet; yet she has washed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You didn't offer me a kiss, but she hasn't stopped kissing my feet since I arrived. You didn't anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with myrrh. For this reason, I tell you, her sins, many as they are, have been forgiven, as this outpouring of her love shows. But the one who is forgiven little shows little love."

And he said to her "Your sins have been forgiven."

Then those having dinner with him began to mutter to themselves, "Who is this who even forgives sins?"

And he said to the woman, "Your trust has saved you; go in peace."

Luke 7:36-50, SV

I just want you to notice the similarities in action here.  The woman is unnamed in the synoptics (though Matthew says "what she has done will be told in memory of her”). John supplies a name, and tries to remove the scandal of a woman coming to the table with men by making it Mary's house, and making her a friend of Jesus (who was known to have women in his entourage, a scandal in itself.  That information, too, is found in Luke, not in Mark or Matthew; but it was true for Paul, too, so....).  And the anointing of the head (for a king) in Matthew and Mark moves to the feet for Luke and John (and probably opens the door in John to the foot washing on Maundy Thursday; but we'll get there). John returns to the synoptic version of this act with the complaint of Judas.  That complaint is found in Matthew and Mark; but Luke elides it.

I mention this not to draw conclusions, but so you can create your own meditations.  These are deep waters, and we tend to stir them with small sticks and stay on the shore. The "suffering servant" of Isaiah 42 is relevant here, too.  Not because the servant has suffered, but because he has endured.  You should notice Isaiah's "servant" is not about power or even punishment. 

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.

Justice will come through perseverence, not through crushing authority.  Justice will prevail and flourish, not conquer and put all opposition to rout, because creation itself is good. And justice will prevail to what end?

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.

Which sounds very much like where we start the Christian year, every year:

When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom.  He stood up to do the reading and was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

The spirit of the Lord is upon me

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to announce pardon for prisoners

and recovery of sight to the blind;

to set free the oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord's amnesty.

Luke 3:16-19, SV

That story ends, notably, with Jesus preaching on those verses, which doesn't exactly please the assembled multitude:

Everyone in the synagogue was filled with rage when they heard this.  They rose up, ran him out of town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, intending to hurl him over it.  But he slipped away through the throng and went on his way.

--Luke 3:28-30, SV

It seems to be a pattern leading inexorably to Holy Week, which ends with the crowd not letting Jesus walk away. 

Monday of Holy Week 2022

 Isaiah 42:1-9

42:1 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.

42:2 He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street;

42:3 a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.

42:4 He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching.

42:5 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:

42:6 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,

42:7 to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.

42:8 I am the LORD, that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols.

42:9 See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.

Psalm 36:5-11

36:5 Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.

36:6 Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your judgments are like the great deep; you save humans and animals alike, O LORD.

36:7 How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

36:8 They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights.

36:9 For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.

36:10 O continue your steadfast love to those who know you, and your salvation to the upright of heart!

36:11 Do not let the foot of the arrogant tread on me, or the hand of the wicked drive me away.

Hebrews 9:11-15

9:11 But when Christ came as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation),

9:12 he entered once for all into the Holy Place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.

9:13 For if the blood of goats and bulls, with the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer, sanctifies those who have been defiled so that their flesh is purified,

9:14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God!

9:15 For this reason he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, because a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant.

John 12:1-11

12:1 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.

12:2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.

12:3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

12:4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said,

12:5 "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?"

12:6 (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.)

12:7 Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.

12:8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."

12:9 When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.

12:10 So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well,

12:11 since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.

"Lazarus" is a name that appears in two gospels: once in Luke's parable:

There was this rich man, who wore clothing fit for a king and who dined lavishly every day.  This poor man, named Lazarus, languished at his gate, all covered with sores.  He longed to eat what fell from the rich man's table.  Dogs even used to come and lick his sores.  It so happened that the poor man died and was carried away by the heavenly messengers to be with Abraham.  The rich man died too, and was buried.

From Hades, where he was being tortured, he looked up and saw Abraham a long way off and Lazarus with him.  He called out, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me!  Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water to cool my tongue, for I am in torment in these flames.'

But Abraham said, 'My child, remember that you had good fortune in your lifetime, and Lazarus had it bad.  Now he is being comforted here, and you are in torment.  And besides all this, a great chasm has been set between us and you, so that even those who want to cross over from there to you cannot, and no one can cross over them that side to yours.'

But he said, 'Father, I beg you then, send him to my father's house--after all, I have five brothers--so he can warn them not to wind up in this place of torture.'

But Abraham says, 'They have Moses and the prophets; why don't they listen to them?'

'But they won't do that, father Abraham,' he said.  'However, if someone appears to them from the dead, they'll have a change of heart.'

(Abraham) said to him, 'If they won't listen to Moses and the prophets, they won't be convinced even if someone were to rise from the dead.'

--Luke 16:19-31, SV

The second time is in John, where it appears twice. There's one other connection:

(Abraham) said to him, 'If they won't listen to Moses and the prophets, they won't be convinced even if someone were to rise from the dead.'

So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.

It's not an idle connection, in other words.  The resurrection of Lazarus is a semeia, a sign, in John's terminology.  All of the "miracles" in the synoptics are dunamis, acts of power; John calls the "miracles" (that's our word) "signs." And while most of us remember the story of Lazarus because "Jesus wept," few of us notice the "sign" of Lazarus is another entry on the bill of indictment against Jesus.  To John, it's just one more reason Jesus was crucified.  He includes Lazarus among the doomed because signs must be erased.  Acts of power can be explained away, or simply forgotten; after all, many in Jesus' day claimed the power of resurrection, and many of their followers claimed their leader had been resurrected.  We tend to treat the most miraculous claims of the gospels as unique in human history, or certainly in 1st century Palestine, but they weren't.  Perhaps that's one more reason John says they are "signs".  Signs have to be destroyed.  Acts are fleeting; signs, if not perpetual, are at least more permanent.

This is the second part of Lazarus' story, in John.  Jesus returns to the house of Lazarus for what we now call Holy Week.  And here is he anointed, the other story common to all four gospels (the only other one is the crucifixion), and again, he draws from Luke's story (the last, chronologically, of the synoptics).

One of the Pharisees invited him to dinner; he entered the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. A local woman, one who was a sinner, found out that he was having dinner at the Pharisee's house. She suddenly showed up with an alabaster jar of myrrh, and stood there behind him weeping at his feet. Her tears wet his feet, and she wiped them dry with her hair; she kissed his feet, and anointed them with the myrrh.

The Pharisee who had invited him saw this and said to himself, "if this man were a prophet, he would know who this is and what kind of woman is touching him, since she is a sinner."

And Jesus answered him, "Simon, I have something to tell you."

"Teacher," he said, "Speak up."

"This moneylender had two debtors; one owed five hundred silver coins, the other fifty. Since neither one of them could pay, he wrote off both debts. Now which of them will love him more?"

Simon answered, "I would imagine the one for whom he wrote off the larger debt."

And he said to him, "You're right." Then turning to the woman, he said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I walked into your house and you didn't offer me water for my feet; yet she has washed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You didn't offer me a kiss, but she hasn't stopped kissing my feet since I arrived. You didn't anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with myrrh. For this reason, I tell you, her sins, many as they are, have been forgiven, as this outpouring of her love shows. But the one who is forgiven little shows little love."

And he said to her "Your sins have been forgiven."

Then those having dinner with him began to mutter to themselves, "Who is this who even forgives sins?"

And he said to the woman, "Your trust has saved you; go in peace."

Luke 7:36-50, SV

I just want you to notice the similarities in action here.  The woman is unnamed in the synoptics (though Matthew says "what she has done will be told in memory of her”). John supplies a name, and tries to remove the scandal of a woman coming to the table with men by making it Mary's house, and making her a friend of Jesus (who was known to have women in his entourage, a scandal in itself.  That information, too, is found in Luke, not in Mark or Matthew; but it was true for Paul, too, so....).  And the anointing of the head (for a king) in Matthew and Mark moves to the feet for Luke and John (and probably opens the door in John to the foot washing on Maundy Thursday; but we'll get there). John returns to the synoptic version of this act with the complaint of Judas.  That complaint is found in Matthew and Mark; but Luke elides it.

I mention this not to draw conclusions, but so you can create your own meditations.  These are deep waters, and we tend to stir them with small sticks and stay on the shore. The "suffering servant" of Isaiah 42 is relevant here, too.  Not because the servant has suffered, but because he has endured.  You should notice Isaiah's "servant" is not about power or even punishment. 

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.

Justice will come through perseverence, not through crushing authority.  Justice will prevail and flourish, not conquer and put all opposition to rout, because creation itself is good. And justice will prevail to what end?

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.

Which sounds very much like where we start the Christian year, every year:

When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom.  He stood up to do the reading and was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

The spirit of the Lord is upon me

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to announce pardon for prisoners

and recovery of sight to the blind;

to set free the oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord's amnesty.

Luke 3:16-19, SV

That story ends, notably, with Jesus preaching on those verses, which doesn't exactly please the assembled multitude:

Everyone in the synagogue was filled with rage when they heard this.  They rose up, ran him out of town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, intending to hurl him over it.  But he slipped away through the throng and went on his way.

--Luke 3:28-30, SV

It seems to be a pattern leading inexorably to Holy Week, which ends with the crowd not letting Jesus walk away. 

🍷 (Second Sunday Of Epiphany)

The scripture readings.

In the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke), the miracles are called dunamis. The Greek word translates into English as “act of power.” John, on the other hand, uses the Greek word semeia. It means “sign.” The miracles are signs; they point toward something. They indicate. In themselves they are not important. What they point to is what matters.

This is the first sign in John’s gospel. It is certainly an act of power. But what does it point to? What does it indicate?

This is the season of Epiphany, so the other reasonable question is, what does it reveal?

Paul writes of spiritual gifts. He means they point to God, that they are signs. Think of a sign by itself. A stop sign is just a piece of painted metal on a stake. But it points to the authority of the state, an authority we respect because it keeps traffic orderly, it keeps us safe. For Paul the spiritual gifts point to God, and what God gives for us; the emphasis on “us,” not you or me. The gifts point to the church, not to your merits. The stop sign is not for you; it is for us.

Who’s the wine for, then? What does it point to? What is revealed? Paul says the gifts are from God for the common good. Whose good is the wine for? Yours? Mine? The bridal party’s?

We might as well do the story the respect of taking all of it seriously. John opens his account of Jesus’ ministry with it for a reason. John says because of this sign Jesus’ disciples believed in him. What had they been doing before? He also says this sign reveals Jesus’ glory; so at least we’ve got the epiphany worked in. But what reveals Jesus’ glory? The water into wine, or the quality of the wine? Is it a better sign because the wine is so good? Is that the glory? Or does it just underline it?

Yes, signs have to be interpreted. What is revealed is what we understand.

In itself the sign is not important. But then why is the wine so good? The steward recognizes its quality, but not its provenance. Maybe that’s the point; maybe it serves a purely narrative purpose. But is all of it not a sign, then?

Is the story significant in itself, or is it a sign? In the narrative it’s important, because this is the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. But is it just a McGuffin, meaningless in itself and forgotten as soon as it is used to start the story? Who are these people? Jesus’ mother appears again at the crucifixion (more than she does in Matthew or Luke, where she’s present only for the nativity); the disciples continue on; but this wedding disappears once this event is over. Is it really even important? Significant? What, then, does it signify?

According to John this is about the glory of God. Glory is the doxa, the light that comes off of God and is God, but obscures God. It is illuminating, it is light. Think of it as the light of revelation. It is the light that reveals. Paradoxically, it also hides. But that’s appropriate to John. In John’s telling, the semeia reveal; but they also hide. 

John’s “signs” reveal to those who understand; they also conceal the truth from those who don’t. Think of Mathew’s magi: the star reveals a truth to them Herod’s scholars don’t see. But the scripture, the word of God, reveal a truth the magi couldn’t know. The revelation is still hidden from Herod, who doesn’t see God’s action in the world; he only sees a threat to his power. In Matthew, as in Luke, the nativity is the first miracle of Jesus. It is dunamis, an act of power. It is a rather simple matter of who it is revealed to: magi, shepherds. In John the semeia reveals and hides: the steward of the wedding doesn’t get it; the disciples do. Of course, like Mary, the disciples know something the steward doesn’t. It’s not his fault; Jesus has not yet revealed himself. When he does, how can everyone know what it means?

Even John the Baptizer, in John’s gospel, has to tell the disciples, “Behold, the lamb of God.” That’s not a semeia, but it’s the first revelation. That the disciples understand it is not to their credit; it is meant for the common good. It is meant for us, the readers of this gospel. It is, for us, a sign. The sign is not the point. The point of the sign is what it signifies, what it points to. Whether we understand that, whether we realize that; well, that’s on us.

Thanks be to God.