I have fallen into the habit with this blog of either posting something quite long or going quite a long time without posting anything. Other demands being what they are, I would perhaps be better served posting something brief rather more frequently. I do often have ideas occur to me which would be good material for a blog post, but I always find myself working them out in too great detail and come to the point where I inevitably lack the time to be satisfied with my production. This summer we shall see if I can train myself for more frequent short posts.
I picked up Adorno again yesterday, having dipped into Benjamin the day before, and came across this excellent gem in his essay "How to Look at Television":
"The increasing strength of modern mass culture is further enhanced by changes in the sociological structure of the audience. The old cultural elite does not exist anymore; the modern intelligentsia only partially corresponds to it. At the same time, huge strata of the population formerly unacquainted with art have become cultural 'consumers'. Modern audiences, although less capable of the artistic sublimation bred by tradition, have become shrewder in their demands for perfection of technique and for reliability of information, as well as their desire for 'services'; and they have become more convinced of the consumer's potential power over the producer, no matter whether the power is actually wielded."
(A form like 'wielded' always grates on my ear; had a few things turned out just slightly more fortunately in October of 1066 we would have a good strong form like 'wolden' or 'welden.')
Adorno points something out in this paragraph which is both immediately obvious and widely ignored, that the current relation between popular and elite culture is an entirely different relation than that of previous ages. It is as equally misleading to compare Mozart to Philip Glass as it is to compare him to Paul McCartney, although both may appear fitting in different situations. Our 'elite' artists of today (and indeed our cultural elites in general) are far more esoteric and far less intimate with the structures of political power than cultural elites of Mozart's day were. The arguments that align Philip Glass with Mozart will be either aesthetic or social. The aesthetic arguments will inevitably appeal to vague categories, all of them inevitably either Romantic (profundity, feeling) or counter-Romantic (complexity, technique), in an attempt to ignore the obvious disparity in beauty and sophistication between the music of Mozart's era and our own. The social arguments will point out that, like Glass, Mozart really only appealed to a small elite within society, but the facts are rather clearly against this, from the packed opera houses of Prague and Vienna to the pianos of every drawing room in Europe. On the failure of these comparisons, one might perhaps attempt a genealogical justification, tracing a line of teachers and performances between Mozart and Philip Glass, and claiming merely that the profession has changed; but we should remember that in the development of species the new breed after a certain point cannot produce offspring with the old, and is therefore treated as something different.
The comparison with a popular musician like Paul McCartney is just as tenuous, treating popularity as though it overcame all the aesthetic obstacles, and refusing to accept those aesthetic objections for reasons perhaps sometimes more grounded but as a rule less persuasive than those which would defend someone like Philip Glass. Mozart did not string together three minute ditties with his friends and expect to be applauded for it as an artist. That a group like the Beatles should be considered to have produced cultural artifacts worthy of preservation for any reason other than curiosity is as much a political victory for democratic baseness as an aesthetic one, and should alert us of precisely the reasons why our current cultural elite only partially corresponds to the cultural elite of an aristocratic period like Mozart's. In almost every way besides the praises they are effusively afforded popular musicians of our day resemble folk singers and not court composers; that these two breeds should be somewhat alike in popularity is a testimony to radical economic, political, and cultural changes and not aesthetic kinship.
I have gotten somewhat away from Adorno at this point, driven, as are we all when we write without direction, by the goads of my own preoccupations and propensities. We must always keep in mind the important differences between the social situation of our cultural elite today and that of the past. And I have come to the end and this is no particularly short post; perhaps next time.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Friday, April 23, 2010
The Blasphemy Against the Holy Spirit
This is a sermon written for my New Testament intro course.
The Text: Matthew 12:22-32
“Therefore I tell you, people will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age, or in the age to come.” I know any of you who were paying attention when the gospel was read will have had some sort of reaction to these verses. You might have started a bit at the words “will not be forgiven,” and at the words “blasphemy against the Spirit” you were probably a little puzzled as to what exactly Jesus meant. This combination of a vague crime and a strict punishment certainly gives the imagination a lot of room; and where we are so free to imagine the crime we are also all the more dangerously liable to suppose that we ourselves are guilty of its commission and so worthy of its punishment. Terrible fear and doubt has been engendered by these verses in the Christian hearts of all ages, such terrible fear that I might even wish the authors of sacred scripture, when they sat down to record the sayings of Jesus, had left this one out. For they certainly did not record everything he did: these authors were selective in what they preserved, and preserved what they selected to help us grow in faith and understanding, and yet Matthew, along with Mark and Luke, thought it important to include in his gospel this troubling saying, this harshest verdict of the law of God.
Listen to these verses again, listen carefully: “People will be forgiven every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against Spirit will not be forgiven.” I want first to note one thing: there is incredible hope in this passage. Perhaps it does not seem so at first glance. But how great an occasion for faith and trust in Jesus Christ, how powerful and comforting a testimony it is to the grace and mercy of our God that Jesus here singles out only one from the many thousands of sins we could envision for an irrevocable and inescapable condemnation. If you have murdered, Jesus is saying, if you have stolen, there is forgiveness for you. If you have hurt those you love out of jealousy or greed, there is forgiveness for you. If you have allowed a father or a sister or a friend to slip into the clutches of death while enmity still reigned between you, there is forgiveness for that as well, from God your heavenly Father already in this age, and, if we may hope in Christ, from that loved one themselves in the age to come. Remember always the abundance of this forgiveness.
So from this Teacher of mercy we hear that of all sin and blasphemy only blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And what, then, is this ‘blasphemy’? I think for us the way this word is often thrown around these days does something to dull its meaning. Don’t we hear, for example, a fierce and empassioned partisan of some musician or actor pronounce it (albeit jokingly) “blasphemy” to criticize their work? Or, more to the point, will we not hear that insufferable race of political commentators assert that in certain circles it is ‘practically blasphemy’ to express support for the health care bill, or, on the other side, ‘practically blasphemy’ to have qualms about supporting it? Now what does blasphemy appear to be if we are led by the way it is used in our popular culture and our everyday language? It seems to have something to do with holding opinions, doesn’t it? It seems as though blasphemy is merely a stronger word for an opinion of yours that is contrary to someone else’s strongly held conviction.
Is that at all that blasphemy means here in the Bible? If that’s what we mean by blasphemy, how can there be blasphemy against someone? That is what Jesus says here, blasphemy against the Spirit. Can I hold an opinion against you? You might disagree with an opinion of mine, but ask yourself how I could be said to hold it against you. But in the Bible, in this verse, blasphemy is something we commit against someone. And it is really a term about respect, about honoring what is worthy of honor. The Greek word blasphemia has a variety of senses, but one of them is slander—something you can commit against someone. This especially applies to the slander of someone of high standing, of great eminence or dignity. And so, since there is no personage on earth or in heaven whose worth and authority and eminence can be equaled or even compared with God’s, the term came more strictly to mean slander against God.
Blasphemy, then, against the Spirit is an affront to the Spirit’s dignity, a disregard for the honor that is due him, a flagrant disrespect of his person. It is to treat him disparagingly, to insult him, to place him in contempt. But of what comfort is this definition to us poor sinners? When there is not one of our sins which does not in some respect insult God or misrepresent him, how can it be that but one sin is blasphemy against the Spirit, who himself is also God? But Jesus goes on a little more, as we heard, so as to be clear on exactly what he means: “Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age, or in the age to come.”
Hold on to that contrast between the Son of Man and the Holy Spirit, we’ll come to that. But to speak a word against someone, what does that mean? It does not strike me as a phrase we use particularly often. “At the meeting she spoke against the ballot measure.” This is how we usually employ the phrase, am I right, in political contexts, in matters of debate. But what about speaking against a person? “Last week in Bible study, Pastor spoke against John Spong.” This is closer to the Biblical usage, but I’m still talking about positions, opinions, sides, am I not? This is the problem we had earlier with the word blasphemy: the way we usually use the word is not quite the same as the way the Bible uses it. It is very close, and I don’t want to give you the impression that you need some secret knowledge to understand your Bible: 99 times out of 100 you can read your Bible carefully in English and understand what it is saying. But there is that one percent—and in a verse like this it is terribly important that we know what Jesus means and what he doesn’t mean.
In Greek, to speak against someone is much more personal that it usually is in English—it is a phrase you use when you take someone to court, or if you are otherwise feuding or in controversy with them, and it comes out in words. It is not something mainly about their opinions, but their person. This is not the sense in which a congressman speaks against a legislative measure; there is animosity in speaking against someone. It is not their opinion, but their person, and it is not about them, but to them that you say these things. That is the sense the Greek language has of speaking against someone, a sense of accusing them, of a verbal attack on their person, of invective, of this direct form of insult and disrespect. And it is this phrase that Jesus uses to characterize that fearful and terrible thing for which we will not be forgiven.
So what then is this blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? How is it that we could speak against the Holy Spirit in this personal and aggressive way? So we have a definition of this sin, of speaking against the Holy Spirit, but the definition is not much less vague than what we started with: “pastor, all you’ve done is to give us more room to imagine and fear.” If you want an evidence of the devil’s subtlest tricks, how he uses our weaknesses against us, how he uses our strengths against us, look to your imagination. Here is a hard teaching from the Lord, but as we contemplate it, as we take time carefully to think upon it, up come thoughts and images that suggest our condemnation, up come the wildest fantasies of how me may have sinned this unforgiveable sin. And this is rightly terrifying. It is rightly terrifying to consider the prospect of an eternal separation from God, in whom is all light and all life and all love, to consider the pain of an eternal punishment for this one temporal transgression. And so we who do yearn—and if you are here this morning there is at least some part of you that yearns—for the face of God, who strive to be called blest because we hunger and thirst for righteousness, we who want to walk as children of the light, we are rightly and justly solicitous to learn what is this sin which in an instant would destroy all those desires sought to gain.
Do not let that easily tempted imagination get the better of you, do not let Satan have his way with your anxiety. There is good news in this commandment, remember, for every transgression under heaven but one. There is forgiveness for all those tangible sins in your life, forgiveness from God and forgiveness for one another. But there is good news for us also in the hardness of the commandment: listen and see if you can hear it. Listen with the ear of your heart for the whispers that the Spirit is sending you, for that Spirit we are here so fretfully and piously endeavoring to never offend is the very same Spirit that blows where it listeth, the Spirit that searches our hearts and carries up to heaven our most intimate and unutterable sighs. It knows us better than we know ourselves, and we feel its power and comfort in us in those moments when we do not feel so dried of our baptismal waters, when in the bread and the juice we feel our Lord most nearly present, when the Word pierces our soul like an arrow. Who of us in such a moment of rapturous power would even think to speak against the very Spirit that endued that memory or that morsel or that message with such power? When in the flesh and sinews of our worship, in the hymns and the prayers, the sermon and the sacraments, we can feel an inexpressible vivacity, there is the Holy Spirit of God—and having met him, we do not condemn him or insult him or dishonor him; I do not know that we are capable of summoning any other feeling than love and wonder. Or in the sinews of our lives, which seem so often weak or straining, when the Spirit of the living God breaks through our mornings or our evenings, our commute or our last thoughts before we sleep, and suddenly Jesus is there and saying “peace be with you”—when that unexpected joy is in you you will not be moved to do the Spirit wrong, to attack him with your words, to speak against him. And yet this is what it would be to speak against the Holy Spirit, for he is not constrained to be ever before us, to always be visible to us, but the Spirit blows where he listeth, and when he does so choose to present himself to us his goodness is overpowering and his joy is irresistible.
But, sisters and brothers, does not the Psalmist cry “take not thy Holy Spirit from me?” Do we not most of us consider ourselves immeasurably blest at all to feel those motions of the Spirit? Those sinews of worship in which the Spirit moves can just as often seem the sinews of a corpse, and the movements of a hymn as lifeless. And those sinews of our daily lives, are they not all too often the most lifeless labors of all? And when in all those things we feel a sickness with our life that passes hour by hour so often without meaning or accomplishment, then are we tempted and do often succumb to a kind of blasphemy, to a kind of accusation against God. But we do not speak against the Holy Spirit there but against the Son of Man; no light matter, yet one for which the merciful Father of our Lord has nevertheless an inexhaustible treasury of forgiveness. For remember how Jesus appeared to the world in his earthly ministry, in every one of his born days even up to those hours of his passion, even up to the hour of his burial. When Joseph of Arimathea had his men roll down the stone into place to seal the tomb, they were burying a man like any other, indeed they were burying the man of whom Isaiah had said in him “there is no beauty that we should desire him.” This was the Lord of all, but who saw it? This eternal Son of the everliving Father in heaven, who saw him? He was a mere son of man, a human being like us all, and when we behold this everyday man with our everyday eyes it is all too easy to forget what we saw in him when the Spirit was shining from him and upon him. And when we see this God at work in what seems like tedium to us, we imagine him to be a tedious God; when we accept his providence over the details, we tend to take issue with how he handles them; when we do not get from every turn a new and blinding revelation, then we accuse him and we speak against this Son of Man, this God who is everyday. In him there is no beauty that we should desire him, but he too is God; he too is worthy of all honor and yet we subject him to all blasphemy—though such blasphemy, alleluia, as God has promised to forgive. Yet to blaspheme this humble Son of Man in those very moments when the Spirit so shines forth from him that in this Son of Man we see the Son of God?—I cannot imagine it. And yet because I cannot imagine it I can grasp its ultimate seriousness; because we cannot comprehend this sin, we may understand why such an enormity could not be pardoned.
Did these Pharisees who prompted Jesus’ words blaspheme against the Spirit? They had not actually seen the miracle that Jesus did, they were not there when the demon was cast out, when the strong man was bound by someone stronger—Matthew says they had heard about it. And isn’t that where we so often are. In all my life as a Christian I have never seen the Spirit go forth in power to heal someone physically, but I have heard of such things. And I confess that I have often responded with the skepticism or even the hostility of the Pharisees and not the love and trust that I owe my Christian brother. But when I am mindful of when I have known the Spirit’s power, if less dramatically than that, I am less liable to speak against the Son of Man, and to remember that behind his everyday appearance is a glory that is brilliantly new every morning. But to see the Spirit accomplish its great act—ask someone who has seen it, and they will not tell you that they doubted in that moment. So it seems to me here, in this story, that the Pharisees blasphemed the Son of Man, but did not blaspheme the Holy Spirit.
Yet I do not think Jesus would have uttered these words if he did not think that there were those who have spoken against his Holy Spirit—and he knows the hearts of us all. But hear this word of comfort: if you have ever felt the Spirit move in you as power and love and joy there is neither force nor compulsion strong enough to change that disposition of your heart to one of blasphemy. If you strive at all for the kingdom, if there is any desire in your heart to be conformed to the image of Christ, and to imitate his life, then know that you have not been put beyond hope by committing this blasphemy. God does not abandon those whom he has drawn to himself. Remember what a treasury of forgiveness these verses promise us for all our offenses, and know that whosoever earnestly seeks forgiveness in his other sins, will not ever be the one to make himself in this sin unforgiveable. Amen.
The Text: Matthew 12:22-32
“Therefore I tell you, people will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age, or in the age to come.” I know any of you who were paying attention when the gospel was read will have had some sort of reaction to these verses. You might have started a bit at the words “will not be forgiven,” and at the words “blasphemy against the Spirit” you were probably a little puzzled as to what exactly Jesus meant. This combination of a vague crime and a strict punishment certainly gives the imagination a lot of room; and where we are so free to imagine the crime we are also all the more dangerously liable to suppose that we ourselves are guilty of its commission and so worthy of its punishment. Terrible fear and doubt has been engendered by these verses in the Christian hearts of all ages, such terrible fear that I might even wish the authors of sacred scripture, when they sat down to record the sayings of Jesus, had left this one out. For they certainly did not record everything he did: these authors were selective in what they preserved, and preserved what they selected to help us grow in faith and understanding, and yet Matthew, along with Mark and Luke, thought it important to include in his gospel this troubling saying, this harshest verdict of the law of God.
Listen to these verses again, listen carefully: “People will be forgiven every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against Spirit will not be forgiven.” I want first to note one thing: there is incredible hope in this passage. Perhaps it does not seem so at first glance. But how great an occasion for faith and trust in Jesus Christ, how powerful and comforting a testimony it is to the grace and mercy of our God that Jesus here singles out only one from the many thousands of sins we could envision for an irrevocable and inescapable condemnation. If you have murdered, Jesus is saying, if you have stolen, there is forgiveness for you. If you have hurt those you love out of jealousy or greed, there is forgiveness for you. If you have allowed a father or a sister or a friend to slip into the clutches of death while enmity still reigned between you, there is forgiveness for that as well, from God your heavenly Father already in this age, and, if we may hope in Christ, from that loved one themselves in the age to come. Remember always the abundance of this forgiveness.
So from this Teacher of mercy we hear that of all sin and blasphemy only blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And what, then, is this ‘blasphemy’? I think for us the way this word is often thrown around these days does something to dull its meaning. Don’t we hear, for example, a fierce and empassioned partisan of some musician or actor pronounce it (albeit jokingly) “blasphemy” to criticize their work? Or, more to the point, will we not hear that insufferable race of political commentators assert that in certain circles it is ‘practically blasphemy’ to express support for the health care bill, or, on the other side, ‘practically blasphemy’ to have qualms about supporting it? Now what does blasphemy appear to be if we are led by the way it is used in our popular culture and our everyday language? It seems to have something to do with holding opinions, doesn’t it? It seems as though blasphemy is merely a stronger word for an opinion of yours that is contrary to someone else’s strongly held conviction.
Is that at all that blasphemy means here in the Bible? If that’s what we mean by blasphemy, how can there be blasphemy against someone? That is what Jesus says here, blasphemy against the Spirit. Can I hold an opinion against you? You might disagree with an opinion of mine, but ask yourself how I could be said to hold it against you. But in the Bible, in this verse, blasphemy is something we commit against someone. And it is really a term about respect, about honoring what is worthy of honor. The Greek word blasphemia has a variety of senses, but one of them is slander—something you can commit against someone. This especially applies to the slander of someone of high standing, of great eminence or dignity. And so, since there is no personage on earth or in heaven whose worth and authority and eminence can be equaled or even compared with God’s, the term came more strictly to mean slander against God.
Blasphemy, then, against the Spirit is an affront to the Spirit’s dignity, a disregard for the honor that is due him, a flagrant disrespect of his person. It is to treat him disparagingly, to insult him, to place him in contempt. But of what comfort is this definition to us poor sinners? When there is not one of our sins which does not in some respect insult God or misrepresent him, how can it be that but one sin is blasphemy against the Spirit, who himself is also God? But Jesus goes on a little more, as we heard, so as to be clear on exactly what he means: “Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age, or in the age to come.”
Hold on to that contrast between the Son of Man and the Holy Spirit, we’ll come to that. But to speak a word against someone, what does that mean? It does not strike me as a phrase we use particularly often. “At the meeting she spoke against the ballot measure.” This is how we usually employ the phrase, am I right, in political contexts, in matters of debate. But what about speaking against a person? “Last week in Bible study, Pastor spoke against John Spong.” This is closer to the Biblical usage, but I’m still talking about positions, opinions, sides, am I not? This is the problem we had earlier with the word blasphemy: the way we usually use the word is not quite the same as the way the Bible uses it. It is very close, and I don’t want to give you the impression that you need some secret knowledge to understand your Bible: 99 times out of 100 you can read your Bible carefully in English and understand what it is saying. But there is that one percent—and in a verse like this it is terribly important that we know what Jesus means and what he doesn’t mean.
In Greek, to speak against someone is much more personal that it usually is in English—it is a phrase you use when you take someone to court, or if you are otherwise feuding or in controversy with them, and it comes out in words. It is not something mainly about their opinions, but their person. This is not the sense in which a congressman speaks against a legislative measure; there is animosity in speaking against someone. It is not their opinion, but their person, and it is not about them, but to them that you say these things. That is the sense the Greek language has of speaking against someone, a sense of accusing them, of a verbal attack on their person, of invective, of this direct form of insult and disrespect. And it is this phrase that Jesus uses to characterize that fearful and terrible thing for which we will not be forgiven.
So what then is this blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? How is it that we could speak against the Holy Spirit in this personal and aggressive way? So we have a definition of this sin, of speaking against the Holy Spirit, but the definition is not much less vague than what we started with: “pastor, all you’ve done is to give us more room to imagine and fear.” If you want an evidence of the devil’s subtlest tricks, how he uses our weaknesses against us, how he uses our strengths against us, look to your imagination. Here is a hard teaching from the Lord, but as we contemplate it, as we take time carefully to think upon it, up come thoughts and images that suggest our condemnation, up come the wildest fantasies of how me may have sinned this unforgiveable sin. And this is rightly terrifying. It is rightly terrifying to consider the prospect of an eternal separation from God, in whom is all light and all life and all love, to consider the pain of an eternal punishment for this one temporal transgression. And so we who do yearn—and if you are here this morning there is at least some part of you that yearns—for the face of God, who strive to be called blest because we hunger and thirst for righteousness, we who want to walk as children of the light, we are rightly and justly solicitous to learn what is this sin which in an instant would destroy all those desires sought to gain.
Do not let that easily tempted imagination get the better of you, do not let Satan have his way with your anxiety. There is good news in this commandment, remember, for every transgression under heaven but one. There is forgiveness for all those tangible sins in your life, forgiveness from God and forgiveness for one another. But there is good news for us also in the hardness of the commandment: listen and see if you can hear it. Listen with the ear of your heart for the whispers that the Spirit is sending you, for that Spirit we are here so fretfully and piously endeavoring to never offend is the very same Spirit that blows where it listeth, the Spirit that searches our hearts and carries up to heaven our most intimate and unutterable sighs. It knows us better than we know ourselves, and we feel its power and comfort in us in those moments when we do not feel so dried of our baptismal waters, when in the bread and the juice we feel our Lord most nearly present, when the Word pierces our soul like an arrow. Who of us in such a moment of rapturous power would even think to speak against the very Spirit that endued that memory or that morsel or that message with such power? When in the flesh and sinews of our worship, in the hymns and the prayers, the sermon and the sacraments, we can feel an inexpressible vivacity, there is the Holy Spirit of God—and having met him, we do not condemn him or insult him or dishonor him; I do not know that we are capable of summoning any other feeling than love and wonder. Or in the sinews of our lives, which seem so often weak or straining, when the Spirit of the living God breaks through our mornings or our evenings, our commute or our last thoughts before we sleep, and suddenly Jesus is there and saying “peace be with you”—when that unexpected joy is in you you will not be moved to do the Spirit wrong, to attack him with your words, to speak against him. And yet this is what it would be to speak against the Holy Spirit, for he is not constrained to be ever before us, to always be visible to us, but the Spirit blows where he listeth, and when he does so choose to present himself to us his goodness is overpowering and his joy is irresistible.
But, sisters and brothers, does not the Psalmist cry “take not thy Holy Spirit from me?” Do we not most of us consider ourselves immeasurably blest at all to feel those motions of the Spirit? Those sinews of worship in which the Spirit moves can just as often seem the sinews of a corpse, and the movements of a hymn as lifeless. And those sinews of our daily lives, are they not all too often the most lifeless labors of all? And when in all those things we feel a sickness with our life that passes hour by hour so often without meaning or accomplishment, then are we tempted and do often succumb to a kind of blasphemy, to a kind of accusation against God. But we do not speak against the Holy Spirit there but against the Son of Man; no light matter, yet one for which the merciful Father of our Lord has nevertheless an inexhaustible treasury of forgiveness. For remember how Jesus appeared to the world in his earthly ministry, in every one of his born days even up to those hours of his passion, even up to the hour of his burial. When Joseph of Arimathea had his men roll down the stone into place to seal the tomb, they were burying a man like any other, indeed they were burying the man of whom Isaiah had said in him “there is no beauty that we should desire him.” This was the Lord of all, but who saw it? This eternal Son of the everliving Father in heaven, who saw him? He was a mere son of man, a human being like us all, and when we behold this everyday man with our everyday eyes it is all too easy to forget what we saw in him when the Spirit was shining from him and upon him. And when we see this God at work in what seems like tedium to us, we imagine him to be a tedious God; when we accept his providence over the details, we tend to take issue with how he handles them; when we do not get from every turn a new and blinding revelation, then we accuse him and we speak against this Son of Man, this God who is everyday. In him there is no beauty that we should desire him, but he too is God; he too is worthy of all honor and yet we subject him to all blasphemy—though such blasphemy, alleluia, as God has promised to forgive. Yet to blaspheme this humble Son of Man in those very moments when the Spirit so shines forth from him that in this Son of Man we see the Son of God?—I cannot imagine it. And yet because I cannot imagine it I can grasp its ultimate seriousness; because we cannot comprehend this sin, we may understand why such an enormity could not be pardoned.
Did these Pharisees who prompted Jesus’ words blaspheme against the Spirit? They had not actually seen the miracle that Jesus did, they were not there when the demon was cast out, when the strong man was bound by someone stronger—Matthew says they had heard about it. And isn’t that where we so often are. In all my life as a Christian I have never seen the Spirit go forth in power to heal someone physically, but I have heard of such things. And I confess that I have often responded with the skepticism or even the hostility of the Pharisees and not the love and trust that I owe my Christian brother. But when I am mindful of when I have known the Spirit’s power, if less dramatically than that, I am less liable to speak against the Son of Man, and to remember that behind his everyday appearance is a glory that is brilliantly new every morning. But to see the Spirit accomplish its great act—ask someone who has seen it, and they will not tell you that they doubted in that moment. So it seems to me here, in this story, that the Pharisees blasphemed the Son of Man, but did not blaspheme the Holy Spirit.
Yet I do not think Jesus would have uttered these words if he did not think that there were those who have spoken against his Holy Spirit—and he knows the hearts of us all. But hear this word of comfort: if you have ever felt the Spirit move in you as power and love and joy there is neither force nor compulsion strong enough to change that disposition of your heart to one of blasphemy. If you strive at all for the kingdom, if there is any desire in your heart to be conformed to the image of Christ, and to imitate his life, then know that you have not been put beyond hope by committing this blasphemy. God does not abandon those whom he has drawn to himself. Remember what a treasury of forgiveness these verses promise us for all our offenses, and know that whosoever earnestly seeks forgiveness in his other sins, will not ever be the one to make himself in this sin unforgiveable. Amen.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
The Night in Which He Was Betrayed
It is partly by my lot and station and partly by the season and week we now are in that I today came across not one, but two different speculative reconstructions of the trial and execution of our Lord. The first, E.P. Sanders' conviction that Jesus was condemned by the Jewish authorities not for the blasphemy of claiming to be the Son of God or to hold other messianic titles, but for his turning over the money-changers' tables in the temple, I encountered while poking around in his book Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah; he apparently discusses it more in-depth in some of his other works. The argument is not terribly far-fetched (Sanders appeals to the difference in Jewish law between blasphemy and false prophecy, and the sense of these messianic titles in pre-Christian usage) but it does come down to suspicion of the gospels on a point where they do not greatly disagree. Suspicion may well be warranted for the historian on a point where the gospels narrate events in markedly different ways, but this is not such a point.
The second account, and by far the more fanciful one, I encountered in a brief essay by Gary Greenberg, arguing that the tradition of Judas' betrayal of Jesus does not correspond to the historical reality. I will not rehearse his argument, since the essay is easily accessible by the link above, but only point out the sort of evidence he is using.
1. An argument from silence in Paul.
2. An argument from "Q Material" which assumes first, that Q exists, of course, second, that in this particular passage Matthew represents the older tradition (the fidelity of Matthew's version to the Q original is argued on the basis of Luke's attempting to re-interpret the Judas tradition, that is to say, Greenberg has very bumblingly begged the question here), and, finally, that the passage in question is to be read in a crudely literal sense and not symbolically.
3. An argument from a non-canonical gospel which Greenberg has given an incredibly early date (pre-Mark!), acknowledging 'controversy' but providing to evidence, save a citation of that universally esteemed scholar, John Crossan.
4. An argument from the semantics of paradidomi.
This claim merits further attention. Paradidomi is the verb your New Testament will translate 'betray' in the passion contexts, but Greenberg claims that it in fact never means 'betray,' but only the more neutral 'hand over' appealing to the work of William Klassen, Judas: Betrayer or Friend of Jesus, which is available on Google Books. It is first of all unclear to me how much different the meanings of 'hand over' and 'betray' would be in the situation as the gospels describe it (for Greenberg's putative reconstruction of history it does make some difference); what we have here is purely the combat of psychologizations. Second, I have it on the authority of a New Testament scholar that many New Testament scholars are unfortunately often not as careful as they should be when appealing to evidence in Classical Greek, especially that the Liddell-Scott-Jones Lexicon, certainly the authoritative record of the Greek language, is not always treated as critically as it ought to be in matters of classical usage. Klassen's argument is a case in point, as he addresses the three citations given in LSJ and a couple uses in papyri; this is not a thorough word study, and there is no excuse not to do a thorough word study in a language as well-attested as Classical Greek if you wish to contest a generally-held meaning.
There are more important problems with Klassen's criticism of LSJ. First of all, he has misunderstood what the lexicon is actually saying about paradidomi. Klassen claims that LSJ gives the meaning "to give a city or a person into another's hands, esp. as a hostage or an enemy with the collational notion of 'treachery, betray.'" (Klassen 47) What LSJ says is "to give a city or a person into another's hands...esp. as a hostage or to an enemy, deliver up, surrender...with collat. notion of treachery, betray..." (LSJ 1308) The words in italics indicate English words with which LSJ suggests you translate paradidomi, and the ellipses indicate examples cited from Greek literature for the given sense. It is unclear why Klassen chose to paraphrase the Lexicon entry instead of quoting it, but his paraphrase gives the impression that LSJ considers this second sense always to have the "collational notion of 'treachery, betray.'" There are a few problems with this. First, when reading an entry in a lexicon, the first meaning given is the general one, and subsequent meanings, separated by semicola, are shades of that general meaning. So when LSJ states "with collat. notion of treachery, betray," it is not stating that paradidomi in this sense always may be translated as 'betray,' but that, when it carries this "collat. notion of treachery" a proper English translation may be 'betray' instead of something more neutral. Second, there is the matter of what "collat." stands for. Klassen takes it as standing for 'collational,' as we have seen, "of or pertaining to collation," according the OED, which appears, from the citations given there, to be a word closely confined to how one presents text-critical information on the printed page; there is no hint of the lexicographical sense Klassen appears to see. On the other hand, the LSJ itself tells us that "collat.= collateral" (LSJ xliii), presumably in the sense (OED 2a) "accompanying, attendant, concomitant." (It is not my intent merely to make Klassen look like a fool; we all make mistakes. A mistake such as this, however, does seem to indicate some careless scholarship) Thus the LSJ is saying that when paradidomi, normally translated "give into another's hands," has a collateral or accompanying notion of treachery, it may be translated "betray" in order to bring out this collateral sense or overtone. A scholar familiar with the tool would not be confused here.
Second of all, he claims that all three of the citations in LSJ make no sense if we translate paradidomi as 'betray.' I confess I have not looked closely at the context of the three passages cited by the Lexicon, but the first two seem to clearly have overtones of treachery or betrayal: guards being intimidated and persuaded to hand over their fortresses (Cyropaedia 5.4.51), Antiope handing over the fortified area to Hercules because of her love for Theseus (Pausanias 1.2.1). On the third (Cyropaedia 5.1.28), I do agree with Klassen that it does not quite seem to fit, at least to my brief glance ("handing over weapons"). People may disagree on these nuances, I suppose. Klassen, however, does nothing to persuade us to trust his sense of the Greek over that of Liddell et al. when he cites the Loeb translations of the passages in question to corroborate his position (Klassen 47, notes on 59). It is an argument of absolutely no weight in questions of semantic nuance to appeal to a translation, which will necessarily pick up on some nuances and not others; translations are useful as illustrations, not as evidence. Even if Klassen's is a popular book (I am not sure of its intended audience) such an argument is unacceptable. It really does give the impression that the author merely flipped open his Loeb and looked over to the facing-page English instead of thinking through the Greek, but that certainly could not be the case.
Third, Klassen's general attitude is accusatory and there seems no reason for this. "Any lexicon," he says, "that suggests otherwise [than that paradidomi can never mean "betray"] is guilty of theologizing" (remember all this bears on the character of Judas) "than assisting us to find the meaning of Greek words through usage." (Klassen 48). I would wager it is this aggression that has prevented Klassen from treating the evidence with the proper care. Such a situation is ironic, since the evidence from LSJ, properly understood, does help his case a bit. LSJ commits only to paradidomi having overtones of betrayal or treachery, not to those concepts being central or important to it. Perhaps even the acknowledgment of an overtone is enough to render them part of the vast anti-Judas conspiracy.
As to all these speculations about 'what actually happened' in those last days that our Lord bore for us the old Adam, I find them tiresome, and threatening only insofar as they have shone great power to seduce my weaker brethren from firm faith in the God of Abraham. There are not many other fields where facts verified by many early sources would be interrogated so antagonistically. Some scholars practice such interrogation responsibly, and I only wish they would exercise themselves in soil more suited for the gospel seed, while others seem eager to propose the most fanciful reevaluations of the events. Surely such fascinations confess the power of Jesus' name. He indeed draws all people to himself, but some upon approaching the light have chosen to close their eyes and employ the imaginations, whether for fear of the heat or to feed their fantasizing vanity, I do not know. It is that light which shines from the God who is a consuming fire and not the light which he created that I will more trust to guide my footsteps. Those who testify to the former light are evangelists, those who point to the latter are historians, speculative and sound alike. To evoke the Philosopher: history I love, but I love the Church more.
The second account, and by far the more fanciful one, I encountered in a brief essay by Gary Greenberg, arguing that the tradition of Judas' betrayal of Jesus does not correspond to the historical reality. I will not rehearse his argument, since the essay is easily accessible by the link above, but only point out the sort of evidence he is using.
1. An argument from silence in Paul.
2. An argument from "Q Material" which assumes first, that Q exists, of course, second, that in this particular passage Matthew represents the older tradition (the fidelity of Matthew's version to the Q original is argued on the basis of Luke's attempting to re-interpret the Judas tradition, that is to say, Greenberg has very bumblingly begged the question here), and, finally, that the passage in question is to be read in a crudely literal sense and not symbolically.
3. An argument from a non-canonical gospel which Greenberg has given an incredibly early date (pre-Mark!), acknowledging 'controversy' but providing to evidence, save a citation of that universally esteemed scholar, John Crossan.
4. An argument from the semantics of paradidomi.
This claim merits further attention. Paradidomi is the verb your New Testament will translate 'betray' in the passion contexts, but Greenberg claims that it in fact never means 'betray,' but only the more neutral 'hand over' appealing to the work of William Klassen, Judas: Betrayer or Friend of Jesus, which is available on Google Books. It is first of all unclear to me how much different the meanings of 'hand over' and 'betray' would be in the situation as the gospels describe it (for Greenberg's putative reconstruction of history it does make some difference); what we have here is purely the combat of psychologizations. Second, I have it on the authority of a New Testament scholar that many New Testament scholars are unfortunately often not as careful as they should be when appealing to evidence in Classical Greek, especially that the Liddell-Scott-Jones Lexicon, certainly the authoritative record of the Greek language, is not always treated as critically as it ought to be in matters of classical usage. Klassen's argument is a case in point, as he addresses the three citations given in LSJ and a couple uses in papyri; this is not a thorough word study, and there is no excuse not to do a thorough word study in a language as well-attested as Classical Greek if you wish to contest a generally-held meaning.
There are more important problems with Klassen's criticism of LSJ. First of all, he has misunderstood what the lexicon is actually saying about paradidomi. Klassen claims that LSJ gives the meaning "to give a city or a person into another's hands, esp. as a hostage or an enemy with the collational notion of 'treachery, betray.'" (Klassen 47) What LSJ says is "to give a city or a person into another's hands...esp. as a hostage or to an enemy, deliver up, surrender...with collat. notion of treachery, betray..." (LSJ 1308) The words in italics indicate English words with which LSJ suggests you translate paradidomi, and the ellipses indicate examples cited from Greek literature for the given sense. It is unclear why Klassen chose to paraphrase the Lexicon entry instead of quoting it, but his paraphrase gives the impression that LSJ considers this second sense always to have the "collational notion of 'treachery, betray.'" There are a few problems with this. First, when reading an entry in a lexicon, the first meaning given is the general one, and subsequent meanings, separated by semicola, are shades of that general meaning. So when LSJ states "with collat. notion of treachery, betray," it is not stating that paradidomi in this sense always may be translated as 'betray,' but that, when it carries this "collat. notion of treachery" a proper English translation may be 'betray' instead of something more neutral. Second, there is the matter of what "collat." stands for. Klassen takes it as standing for 'collational,' as we have seen, "of or pertaining to collation," according the OED, which appears, from the citations given there, to be a word closely confined to how one presents text-critical information on the printed page; there is no hint of the lexicographical sense Klassen appears to see. On the other hand, the LSJ itself tells us that "collat.= collateral" (LSJ xliii), presumably in the sense (OED 2a) "accompanying, attendant, concomitant." (It is not my intent merely to make Klassen look like a fool; we all make mistakes. A mistake such as this, however, does seem to indicate some careless scholarship) Thus the LSJ is saying that when paradidomi, normally translated "give into another's hands," has a collateral or accompanying notion of treachery, it may be translated "betray" in order to bring out this collateral sense or overtone. A scholar familiar with the tool would not be confused here.
Second of all, he claims that all three of the citations in LSJ make no sense if we translate paradidomi as 'betray.' I confess I have not looked closely at the context of the three passages cited by the Lexicon, but the first two seem to clearly have overtones of treachery or betrayal: guards being intimidated and persuaded to hand over their fortresses (Cyropaedia 5.4.51), Antiope handing over the fortified area to Hercules because of her love for Theseus (Pausanias 1.2.1). On the third (Cyropaedia 5.1.28), I do agree with Klassen that it does not quite seem to fit, at least to my brief glance ("handing over weapons"). People may disagree on these nuances, I suppose. Klassen, however, does nothing to persuade us to trust his sense of the Greek over that of Liddell et al. when he cites the Loeb translations of the passages in question to corroborate his position (Klassen 47, notes on 59). It is an argument of absolutely no weight in questions of semantic nuance to appeal to a translation, which will necessarily pick up on some nuances and not others; translations are useful as illustrations, not as evidence. Even if Klassen's is a popular book (I am not sure of its intended audience) such an argument is unacceptable. It really does give the impression that the author merely flipped open his Loeb and looked over to the facing-page English instead of thinking through the Greek, but that certainly could not be the case.
Third, Klassen's general attitude is accusatory and there seems no reason for this. "Any lexicon," he says, "that suggests otherwise [than that paradidomi can never mean "betray"] is guilty of theologizing" (remember all this bears on the character of Judas) "than assisting us to find the meaning of Greek words through usage." (Klassen 48). I would wager it is this aggression that has prevented Klassen from treating the evidence with the proper care. Such a situation is ironic, since the evidence from LSJ, properly understood, does help his case a bit. LSJ commits only to paradidomi having overtones of betrayal or treachery, not to those concepts being central or important to it. Perhaps even the acknowledgment of an overtone is enough to render them part of the vast anti-Judas conspiracy.
As to all these speculations about 'what actually happened' in those last days that our Lord bore for us the old Adam, I find them tiresome, and threatening only insofar as they have shone great power to seduce my weaker brethren from firm faith in the God of Abraham. There are not many other fields where facts verified by many early sources would be interrogated so antagonistically. Some scholars practice such interrogation responsibly, and I only wish they would exercise themselves in soil more suited for the gospel seed, while others seem eager to propose the most fanciful reevaluations of the events. Surely such fascinations confess the power of Jesus' name. He indeed draws all people to himself, but some upon approaching the light have chosen to close their eyes and employ the imaginations, whether for fear of the heat or to feed their fantasizing vanity, I do not know. It is that light which shines from the God who is a consuming fire and not the light which he created that I will more trust to guide my footsteps. Those who testify to the former light are evangelists, those who point to the latter are historians, speculative and sound alike. To evoke the Philosopher: history I love, but I love the Church more.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
From My Reading
It was my intention over the break to turn the energies of my reading and writing to secular matters, having been so totally occupied at seminary with Biblical and Theological exercises. The reading, for what it was, proved pleasurable, but the writing bore nothing full-formed for all its travail. I present you, therefore, gentle reader, some quotations from my holiday studies, with occasional commentary.
"The serf belongs to the land and turns over to the owner of the land the fruits thereof. The free labourer, on the other hand, sells himself and, indeed, sells himself piecemeal. He sells at auction eight, ten, twelve, fifteen hours of his life, day after day, to the highest bidder, to the owner of the raw materials, instruments of labour and means of subsistence, that is, to the capitalist. The worker belongs neither to an owner nor to the land, but eight, ten, twelve, fifteen hours of his daily life belong to him who buys them. The worker leaves the capitalist to whom he hires himself whenever he likes, and the capitalist discharges him whenever he thinks fit, as soon as he no longer gets any profit out of him, or not the anticipated profit. But the worker, whose sole source of livelihood is the sale of his labour power, cannot leave the whole class of purchases, that is, the capitalist class, without renouncing his existence. He belongs not to this or that capitalist but to the capitalist class, and, moreover, it is his business to dispose of himself, that is, to find a purchaser within this capitalist class."
-Karl Marx, "Wage Labour and Capital"
Notice how Marx accurately describes the worker's refusing to participate in capitalist production as renouncing his existence--"Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it." (Mark 8:34-35)
---
Are the growth of productive capital and the rise of wages really so inseparably connected as the bourgeois economists maintain? We must not take their word for it. We must not even believe them when they say that the fatter capital is, the better will its slave be fed. The bourgeoisie is too enlightened, it calculates too well, to share the prejudices of the feudal lord who makes a display by the brilliance of his retinue. The the bourgeoisie's conditions of existence compel it to calculate.
-Ibid.
---
I would express the whole industry [the historical criticism of Beowulf] in yet another allegory. A man inherited a field in which was an accumulation of old stone, part of an older hall. Of the old stone some had already been used in building the house in which he actually lived, not far from the old house of his fathers. Of the rest he took some and built a tower. But his friends coming perceived at once (without troubling to climb the steps) that these stones had formerly belonged to a more ancient building. So they pushed the tower over, with no little labour, in order to look for hidden carvings and inscriptions, or to discover whence the man’s distant forefathers had obtained their building material. Some suspecting a deposit of coal beneath the soil began to dig for it, and forgot even the stones. They all said: ‘This tower is most interesting.’ But they also said (after pushing it over): ‘What a muddle it is in.’ And even the man’s own descendants, who might have been expected to consider what he had been about, were heard to murmur: ‘He is such an odd fellow! Imagine his using these old stones just to build a nonsensical tower! Why did not he restore the old house? He had no sense of proportion.’ But from the top of that tower the man had been able to look out upon the sea.
-J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Monsters and the Critics"
What Tolkien says here is certainly applicable to all instances of historical criticism, that of scripture not least.
---
And you, do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them; for I am going to bring disaster upon all flesh, says the LORD; but I will give you your life as a prize of war in every place to which you may go.
-Jeremiah 45:5
It strikes me that this verse contains in many ways the heart of the gospel.
---
Being in company with a gentleman who thought fit to maintain Dr. Berkeley’s ingenious philosophy that nothing exists but as perceived by some mind; when the gentleman was going away, Johnson said to him, “Pray, Sir, don’t leave us; for we may perhaps forget to think of you, and then you will cease to exist.”
-From the Langton Johnsoniana in Boswell's Life of Johnson
A sentiment with which our next author would certainly agree.
---
“At that word we both thought of him.” Let us assume that each of us said the same words to himself—and how can it mean MORE than that?—But wouldn’t even those words be only a germ? They must surely belong to a language and to a context, in order really to be the expression of the thought of the man.
If God had looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we were speaking of.
-Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations II.xi
Wittgenstein's plainness is as often an obstruction to his clarity as it is an aid. But it is the peppering of his philosophy with oracular utterances such as this that allows him to be read with pleasure.
---
'Tis not a freedom, that where all command;
Nor tyranny, where one does them withstand:
But who of both the bounders knows to lay,
Him as their father must the state obey.
-Andrew Marvell, "The First Anniversary of the Government under his Highness the Lord Protector"
The second couplet has not the ease of the first, and may be paraphrased thus: "But the state must obey as a father the man who knows to put limits on both the one and the many."
---
If America ever approached (for however brief a time) that lofty pinnacle of glory to which the proud imagination of its inhabitants is wont to point, it was at this solemn moment[the framing of the Constitution], when the national power abdicated, as it were, its authority. All ages have furnished the spectacle of a people struggling with energy to win its independence, and the efforts of the Americans in throwing off the English yoke have been considerably exaggerated. Separated from their enemies by three thousand miles of ocean, and backed by a powerful ally, the United States owed their victory much more to their geographical position than to the valor of their armies or the patriotism of their citizens. It would be ridiculous to compare the American war to the wars of the French Revolution, or the efforts of the Americans to those of the French when France, attacked by the whole of Europe, without money, without credit, without allies, threw forward a twentieth part of her population to meet her enemies and with one hand carried the torch of revolution beyond the frontiers, while she stifled with the other a flame that was devouring the country within. But it is new in the history of society to see a great people turn a calm and scrutinizing eye upon itself when apprised by the legislature that the wheels of its government are stopped, to see it carefully examine the extent of the evil, and patiently wait two whole years until a remedy is discovered, to which it voluntarily submitted without its costing a tear or a drop of blood from mankind.
-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America I.I.VIII
A just appraisal. America has never seen a nobler generation than that which founded her. The outrage of lawless insurrection will always hang over them, but it is a testament to their character that a group of men which gained power so basely, and who therefore treated the guides of civil society with utmost contempt, should have governed on the highest principles of virtue.
"The serf belongs to the land and turns over to the owner of the land the fruits thereof. The free labourer, on the other hand, sells himself and, indeed, sells himself piecemeal. He sells at auction eight, ten, twelve, fifteen hours of his life, day after day, to the highest bidder, to the owner of the raw materials, instruments of labour and means of subsistence, that is, to the capitalist. The worker belongs neither to an owner nor to the land, but eight, ten, twelve, fifteen hours of his daily life belong to him who buys them. The worker leaves the capitalist to whom he hires himself whenever he likes, and the capitalist discharges him whenever he thinks fit, as soon as he no longer gets any profit out of him, or not the anticipated profit. But the worker, whose sole source of livelihood is the sale of his labour power, cannot leave the whole class of purchases, that is, the capitalist class, without renouncing his existence. He belongs not to this or that capitalist but to the capitalist class, and, moreover, it is his business to dispose of himself, that is, to find a purchaser within this capitalist class."
-Karl Marx, "Wage Labour and Capital"
Notice how Marx accurately describes the worker's refusing to participate in capitalist production as renouncing his existence--"Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it." (Mark 8:34-35)
---
Are the growth of productive capital and the rise of wages really so inseparably connected as the bourgeois economists maintain? We must not take their word for it. We must not even believe them when they say that the fatter capital is, the better will its slave be fed. The bourgeoisie is too enlightened, it calculates too well, to share the prejudices of the feudal lord who makes a display by the brilliance of his retinue. The the bourgeoisie's conditions of existence compel it to calculate.
-Ibid.
---
I would express the whole industry [the historical criticism of Beowulf] in yet another allegory. A man inherited a field in which was an accumulation of old stone, part of an older hall. Of the old stone some had already been used in building the house in which he actually lived, not far from the old house of his fathers. Of the rest he took some and built a tower. But his friends coming perceived at once (without troubling to climb the steps) that these stones had formerly belonged to a more ancient building. So they pushed the tower over, with no little labour, in order to look for hidden carvings and inscriptions, or to discover whence the man’s distant forefathers had obtained their building material. Some suspecting a deposit of coal beneath the soil began to dig for it, and forgot even the stones. They all said: ‘This tower is most interesting.’ But they also said (after pushing it over): ‘What a muddle it is in.’ And even the man’s own descendants, who might have been expected to consider what he had been about, were heard to murmur: ‘He is such an odd fellow! Imagine his using these old stones just to build a nonsensical tower! Why did not he restore the old house? He had no sense of proportion.’ But from the top of that tower the man had been able to look out upon the sea.
-J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Monsters and the Critics"
What Tolkien says here is certainly applicable to all instances of historical criticism, that of scripture not least.
---
And you, do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them; for I am going to bring disaster upon all flesh, says the LORD; but I will give you your life as a prize of war in every place to which you may go.
-Jeremiah 45:5
It strikes me that this verse contains in many ways the heart of the gospel.
---
Being in company with a gentleman who thought fit to maintain Dr. Berkeley’s ingenious philosophy that nothing exists but as perceived by some mind; when the gentleman was going away, Johnson said to him, “Pray, Sir, don’t leave us; for we may perhaps forget to think of you, and then you will cease to exist.”
-From the Langton Johnsoniana in Boswell's Life of Johnson
A sentiment with which our next author would certainly agree.
---
“At that word we both thought of him.” Let us assume that each of us said the same words to himself—and how can it mean MORE than that?—But wouldn’t even those words be only a germ? They must surely belong to a language and to a context, in order really to be the expression of the thought of the man.
If God had looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we were speaking of.
-Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations II.xi
Wittgenstein's plainness is as often an obstruction to his clarity as it is an aid. But it is the peppering of his philosophy with oracular utterances such as this that allows him to be read with pleasure.
---
'Tis not a freedom, that where all command;
Nor tyranny, where one does them withstand:
But who of both the bounders knows to lay,
Him as their father must the state obey.
-Andrew Marvell, "The First Anniversary of the Government under his Highness the Lord Protector"
The second couplet has not the ease of the first, and may be paraphrased thus: "But the state must obey as a father the man who knows to put limits on both the one and the many."
---
If America ever approached (for however brief a time) that lofty pinnacle of glory to which the proud imagination of its inhabitants is wont to point, it was at this solemn moment[the framing of the Constitution], when the national power abdicated, as it were, its authority. All ages have furnished the spectacle of a people struggling with energy to win its independence, and the efforts of the Americans in throwing off the English yoke have been considerably exaggerated. Separated from their enemies by three thousand miles of ocean, and backed by a powerful ally, the United States owed their victory much more to their geographical position than to the valor of their armies or the patriotism of their citizens. It would be ridiculous to compare the American war to the wars of the French Revolution, or the efforts of the Americans to those of the French when France, attacked by the whole of Europe, without money, without credit, without allies, threw forward a twentieth part of her population to meet her enemies and with one hand carried the torch of revolution beyond the frontiers, while she stifled with the other a flame that was devouring the country within. But it is new in the history of society to see a great people turn a calm and scrutinizing eye upon itself when apprised by the legislature that the wheels of its government are stopped, to see it carefully examine the extent of the evil, and patiently wait two whole years until a remedy is discovered, to which it voluntarily submitted without its costing a tear or a drop of blood from mankind.
-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America I.I.VIII
A just appraisal. America has never seen a nobler generation than that which founded her. The outrage of lawless insurrection will always hang over them, but it is a testament to their character that a group of men which gained power so basely, and who therefore treated the guides of civil society with utmost contempt, should have governed on the highest principles of virtue.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
A Sermon for the Season
Once I have finished with my finals here at Duke it is my earnest intention to resume furnishing this blog with posts that are both original to it and of a less exclusively theological nature. Until that time, however, here is a Christmas Eve sermon that was part of the final project in my preaching class. This sermon was conceived as the culmination of an Advent sermon series on the theme "Learning to Long for Jesus;" each Sunday's sermon was titled by a different line from "O Come O Come Immanuel," and each service would include a reading from the Song of Songs. If I have not disgusted Origen I have done well.
“Rejoice! Rejoice!”
Song of Songs 8:1-2, 6-7; Luke 2:1-20
Here at First UMC we have been learning this season of Advent how to long for Jesus and every week in these four Sundays of waiting for the birth of Christ we have read from the Song of Solomon, the Song of Songs. As you heard me say when I read the scripture, the poetry of this book has been always understood in the tradition of the church to speak of the love between God and his people. These are the words we can turn to as models for our own love of God and as assurances of his love for us, as testaments to its richness and passion. For it is not a love that is measured or restrained or controlled or a love that holds anything back. And likewise the love of the Bride, our model, whose words we heard read this evening, is neither lukewarm nor cautious, but gives recklessly of itself all it has to her Husband, our God.
Yet the love of the Bride is a love that we so often, all too often cannot feel. The love of this Song of Songs is a love we all would choose, a love we would all receive eagerly, and a love we would all happily, joyously give if we could only feel it truly in our hearts. For it is the love we know would quench that longing at the foundation of all our longings, the longing to love God and the longing to be loved by him. The love of God—how we long to have it! How we long to be able to give him our love! How we long to know surely that he loves us!
For it seems to us, doesn’t it, that there could be no love between this God and us. The differences are too vast, we are so small, our troubles are so small, our needs, our wants, our hopes, joys, disappointments are so small and he is God, the Maker of all that is, the Ruler of all that is, the One, so we are told, to whom the prayers of all the world go up. What time would he have to love us? What compassion could he have for people who go through commutes and reports and e-mails, who take the kids to piano lessons and then sit down for a basketball game at night, when he holds the galaxies in his right hand and all infinity in his left? What place could there be in that lofty heart for the love of us? And how could we love him? What joys would we share with one who is beyond all joy, what would we talk about with one who is ineffably beyond all we could ever think or say or do?
It is a convenient and helpful disappointment when we console ourselves and say that God is so far, so infinitely far above us and beyond us that there could never be love between us. It is a convenient disappointment because it rationalizes our distress, builds a cage in our minds for our longing so that it cannot disturb us or trouble the smooth schedule of our lives. And once we have decided there is no hope of sharing love with God, once we have squared ourselves (as we think) to the reality of things, it is so easy to pretend that old desire is no longer there, that it has gone off, that it has faded from our hearts. It is easy to pretend we have reached maturity, when we learn to say and think that God could never love us, that it would not be prudent for us to fall in love with God. We learn to live effectively, if not well, by assuring ourselves every hour that the distance is too great and the difference is too great, that God is up there and I am down here and love cannot pass the breadth of our separation.
It is a denial the mind can make easily, but which the heart will always resent. Could there be some way, we will always ask. God, we say, could there be some way? Or, like this:
“O that you were like a brother to me,
Who nursed at my mother’s breast!
If I met you outside I would kiss you,
And no one would despise me.
I would lead you and bring you
Into the house of my mother,
And into the chamber of the one who bore me.
I would give you spiced wine to drink,
The juice of my pomegranates.”
They would deride me on the street if I ran up to him and kissed him, if I embraced the God of all like that I would be laughed at. They would say to me “Don’t you know who he is?” And I fear that I would say it too, even to myself. But O that were my brother! O then I would run up to him and kiss him and embrace him and there would be not a whisper of disapproval, then I could be with him and no one would think a thing of it. Then love between us would be easy and natural; then I could love him and not feel as though I shouldn’t. Then I could give him the gifts that I have always wanted to give him, then I would bring him into my mother’s house—O that he were my brother! O that there was a way that I could love him, that all the boundaries and distances and differences could fall away and I could feel his love and feel within myself real love for him.
O that he were my brother! It is a wish we never lose no matter how we try to cloak it and deny it, no matter how we try to keep it hidden away where others cannot see it, where we ourselves may sometimes forget that it is there. And how else could we live with this desire smoldering within forever within us if we did not try by every means to smother it with resignation and the set jaw of despair? So we teach ourselves and we are taught that he can never be our brother, that the love we want so fiercely could never be. We train ourselves to stop longing for that love, to stop longing for his love, to stop longing to be able to love him. “O that he were my brother!” No, no, we learn to laugh that off. “O that I could kiss him in the street, that I could bring him into my mother’s house!” But no, I cannot do that. There is too much distance between my heart and God’s—I have never heard him really say he loved me, and I, however much I want to love him I cannot. O that he were my brother! O that he were my brother!
And if he were our brother, would we even know how to kiss him? If we suddenly found that all this crippling distance were collapsed, could we bring ourselves to lead him to our mother’s house, would we be ready to offer him the juice of our pomegranates? Or would we let him pass, and convince ourselves that it was nothing more than our imagination? And if we, in a moment of surprising courage, had the strength to embrace him when we saw him, had the strength to ignore our long-developed reflexes of denial, would it even then be long before old habits took up their places again, and we turned ourselves to a new effort of forgetting and denying? But O that he were my brother! O that he were!
I hardly think the shepherds expected they would see their God or that a chorus of angels would announce especially to them that a Savior had been born in Bethlehem of Judah. For surely the announcements of God are not given to shepherds, to men whose labor is among the beasts. No, surely if God would speak to anyone, he would speak to the men who work with armies and not animals, the men who balance the wealth of nations and whose voices are heard in the Senates and Parliaments of the earth. There could be no message from an angel to a shepherd because what could God say to a shepherd, what could God feel for a shepherd? And what would a shepherd do with God? All he knows are sheep. But the angels spoke and they said to the shepherds “These are glad tidings!” And the shepherds could not say otherwise, for they ran into town and they found the child and told his parents all the angel had said. And Mary, who had loved the child nine months, treasured all of it in her heart, the Bible tells us. For those hours the shepherds had forgotten it was foolish to think you could love God or that God could extend his love to you. Maybe one of them forgot so well that he took the baby in his arms awhile, while Mary stood there by him all full of love, love for her child, her son, and love for that foolish shepherd because he too, in that moment, loved her child.
But the shepherds left. The shepherds left and Luke tells us that they praised God for what they had seen and heard. For a night in December they allowed themselves to think they could have love for God, and for that evening they did not chide themselves when they felt that God loved them. But soon they were back to assuring themselves that such feelings are more wishes than reality, that the distance between a shepherd and God cannot be bridged, that he is so far from us that there is no way we could really love him, that we are so different from him that he would never love us ever in return. Perhaps some thirty years later one of the shepherds would let this wishful longing get the better of him again, and he would go to see a man who was healing the sick and preaching the kingdom of God. Perhaps another put his longing up forever and shouted with the crowd to crucify that man who dared to claim he was God’s Son. But most of them, I guess, like most of us, went on about their lives and only sometimes, when their guard was down, would find themselves crying “O that he were my brother!” O that he were a person I could love! O that I were to him and he to me that there could be love between us! O that he were my brother and I would embrace him and eat with him in my mother’s house! Then I could make him a part of my life and he would make me a part of his—O that he were my brother! O that there could be love between us! I would give anything that I could love him, and if a man offered me all the wealth of his house for that love I would utterly scorn him.
O that he were my brother! O that he were my son! He was Mary’s son. And when she felt him stirring about inside her, she loved him, and she loved him, O how she loved him when she held him in her arms that first time, her child, her son. And there was nothing feigned about that love, nothing false, nothing inauthentic or insincere about that mother’s love for her baby and her God. And Joseph loved him when he first put his hand upon the belly of his beloved, and he loved him when he set him in the manger, the son of the one whom he loved and the Son of his God. Here was God and nothing could stop Joseph and Mary from loving him; here was love from God and no one could have convinced them what they felt was not true.
And what is the distance of a thousand years or a thousand miles when the distance has been bridged between the ineffable majesty of God and those first coughs and cries of a newborn infant? And what does it matter that he is not here to shake your hand when you know that his face was once a face that human eyes could see, and that his face will be seen again? Why shall we not greet him in the streets of our lives with the kisses of our souls, why shall we not take him into our homes to treat him lovingly? O that he were my brother!—we have cried it, we have shouted it and wept it, but he is! He is our brother and he is ours to love and he has for us a love which is strong as death, as fierce as the grave, many waters cannot quench his love, nor can floods drown it. He is our brother and he calls from us that love we have been hiding all our lives, that love we were taught was foolish. But he is born among us and he is here for love, and though I cannot promise if you love him there will not still be those who think you are foolish, I can tell you they will only think so because they do not know what we know, that he is our brother, that we may love him, and he may love us. We know he is our brother because we have all heard tonight the story of Mary’s boy in Bethlehem! We know he is our brother and let us take him into our mother’s house and cherish him this Christmas, for we know that the Man who was born of Mary is a God that we may love. Rejoice! Rejoice! These are good tidings of great joy. Amen.
“Rejoice! Rejoice!”
Song of Songs 8:1-2, 6-7; Luke 2:1-20
Here at First UMC we have been learning this season of Advent how to long for Jesus and every week in these four Sundays of waiting for the birth of Christ we have read from the Song of Solomon, the Song of Songs. As you heard me say when I read the scripture, the poetry of this book has been always understood in the tradition of the church to speak of the love between God and his people. These are the words we can turn to as models for our own love of God and as assurances of his love for us, as testaments to its richness and passion. For it is not a love that is measured or restrained or controlled or a love that holds anything back. And likewise the love of the Bride, our model, whose words we heard read this evening, is neither lukewarm nor cautious, but gives recklessly of itself all it has to her Husband, our God.
Yet the love of the Bride is a love that we so often, all too often cannot feel. The love of this Song of Songs is a love we all would choose, a love we would all receive eagerly, and a love we would all happily, joyously give if we could only feel it truly in our hearts. For it is the love we know would quench that longing at the foundation of all our longings, the longing to love God and the longing to be loved by him. The love of God—how we long to have it! How we long to be able to give him our love! How we long to know surely that he loves us!
For it seems to us, doesn’t it, that there could be no love between this God and us. The differences are too vast, we are so small, our troubles are so small, our needs, our wants, our hopes, joys, disappointments are so small and he is God, the Maker of all that is, the Ruler of all that is, the One, so we are told, to whom the prayers of all the world go up. What time would he have to love us? What compassion could he have for people who go through commutes and reports and e-mails, who take the kids to piano lessons and then sit down for a basketball game at night, when he holds the galaxies in his right hand and all infinity in his left? What place could there be in that lofty heart for the love of us? And how could we love him? What joys would we share with one who is beyond all joy, what would we talk about with one who is ineffably beyond all we could ever think or say or do?
It is a convenient and helpful disappointment when we console ourselves and say that God is so far, so infinitely far above us and beyond us that there could never be love between us. It is a convenient disappointment because it rationalizes our distress, builds a cage in our minds for our longing so that it cannot disturb us or trouble the smooth schedule of our lives. And once we have decided there is no hope of sharing love with God, once we have squared ourselves (as we think) to the reality of things, it is so easy to pretend that old desire is no longer there, that it has gone off, that it has faded from our hearts. It is easy to pretend we have reached maturity, when we learn to say and think that God could never love us, that it would not be prudent for us to fall in love with God. We learn to live effectively, if not well, by assuring ourselves every hour that the distance is too great and the difference is too great, that God is up there and I am down here and love cannot pass the breadth of our separation.
It is a denial the mind can make easily, but which the heart will always resent. Could there be some way, we will always ask. God, we say, could there be some way? Or, like this:
“O that you were like a brother to me,
Who nursed at my mother’s breast!
If I met you outside I would kiss you,
And no one would despise me.
I would lead you and bring you
Into the house of my mother,
And into the chamber of the one who bore me.
I would give you spiced wine to drink,
The juice of my pomegranates.”
They would deride me on the street if I ran up to him and kissed him, if I embraced the God of all like that I would be laughed at. They would say to me “Don’t you know who he is?” And I fear that I would say it too, even to myself. But O that were my brother! O then I would run up to him and kiss him and embrace him and there would be not a whisper of disapproval, then I could be with him and no one would think a thing of it. Then love between us would be easy and natural; then I could love him and not feel as though I shouldn’t. Then I could give him the gifts that I have always wanted to give him, then I would bring him into my mother’s house—O that he were my brother! O that there was a way that I could love him, that all the boundaries and distances and differences could fall away and I could feel his love and feel within myself real love for him.
O that he were my brother! It is a wish we never lose no matter how we try to cloak it and deny it, no matter how we try to keep it hidden away where others cannot see it, where we ourselves may sometimes forget that it is there. And how else could we live with this desire smoldering within forever within us if we did not try by every means to smother it with resignation and the set jaw of despair? So we teach ourselves and we are taught that he can never be our brother, that the love we want so fiercely could never be. We train ourselves to stop longing for that love, to stop longing for his love, to stop longing to be able to love him. “O that he were my brother!” No, no, we learn to laugh that off. “O that I could kiss him in the street, that I could bring him into my mother’s house!” But no, I cannot do that. There is too much distance between my heart and God’s—I have never heard him really say he loved me, and I, however much I want to love him I cannot. O that he were my brother! O that he were my brother!
And if he were our brother, would we even know how to kiss him? If we suddenly found that all this crippling distance were collapsed, could we bring ourselves to lead him to our mother’s house, would we be ready to offer him the juice of our pomegranates? Or would we let him pass, and convince ourselves that it was nothing more than our imagination? And if we, in a moment of surprising courage, had the strength to embrace him when we saw him, had the strength to ignore our long-developed reflexes of denial, would it even then be long before old habits took up their places again, and we turned ourselves to a new effort of forgetting and denying? But O that he were my brother! O that he were!
I hardly think the shepherds expected they would see their God or that a chorus of angels would announce especially to them that a Savior had been born in Bethlehem of Judah. For surely the announcements of God are not given to shepherds, to men whose labor is among the beasts. No, surely if God would speak to anyone, he would speak to the men who work with armies and not animals, the men who balance the wealth of nations and whose voices are heard in the Senates and Parliaments of the earth. There could be no message from an angel to a shepherd because what could God say to a shepherd, what could God feel for a shepherd? And what would a shepherd do with God? All he knows are sheep. But the angels spoke and they said to the shepherds “These are glad tidings!” And the shepherds could not say otherwise, for they ran into town and they found the child and told his parents all the angel had said. And Mary, who had loved the child nine months, treasured all of it in her heart, the Bible tells us. For those hours the shepherds had forgotten it was foolish to think you could love God or that God could extend his love to you. Maybe one of them forgot so well that he took the baby in his arms awhile, while Mary stood there by him all full of love, love for her child, her son, and love for that foolish shepherd because he too, in that moment, loved her child.
But the shepherds left. The shepherds left and Luke tells us that they praised God for what they had seen and heard. For a night in December they allowed themselves to think they could have love for God, and for that evening they did not chide themselves when they felt that God loved them. But soon they were back to assuring themselves that such feelings are more wishes than reality, that the distance between a shepherd and God cannot be bridged, that he is so far from us that there is no way we could really love him, that we are so different from him that he would never love us ever in return. Perhaps some thirty years later one of the shepherds would let this wishful longing get the better of him again, and he would go to see a man who was healing the sick and preaching the kingdom of God. Perhaps another put his longing up forever and shouted with the crowd to crucify that man who dared to claim he was God’s Son. But most of them, I guess, like most of us, went on about their lives and only sometimes, when their guard was down, would find themselves crying “O that he were my brother!” O that he were a person I could love! O that I were to him and he to me that there could be love between us! O that he were my brother and I would embrace him and eat with him in my mother’s house! Then I could make him a part of my life and he would make me a part of his—O that he were my brother! O that there could be love between us! I would give anything that I could love him, and if a man offered me all the wealth of his house for that love I would utterly scorn him.
O that he were my brother! O that he were my son! He was Mary’s son. And when she felt him stirring about inside her, she loved him, and she loved him, O how she loved him when she held him in her arms that first time, her child, her son. And there was nothing feigned about that love, nothing false, nothing inauthentic or insincere about that mother’s love for her baby and her God. And Joseph loved him when he first put his hand upon the belly of his beloved, and he loved him when he set him in the manger, the son of the one whom he loved and the Son of his God. Here was God and nothing could stop Joseph and Mary from loving him; here was love from God and no one could have convinced them what they felt was not true.
And what is the distance of a thousand years or a thousand miles when the distance has been bridged between the ineffable majesty of God and those first coughs and cries of a newborn infant? And what does it matter that he is not here to shake your hand when you know that his face was once a face that human eyes could see, and that his face will be seen again? Why shall we not greet him in the streets of our lives with the kisses of our souls, why shall we not take him into our homes to treat him lovingly? O that he were my brother!—we have cried it, we have shouted it and wept it, but he is! He is our brother and he is ours to love and he has for us a love which is strong as death, as fierce as the grave, many waters cannot quench his love, nor can floods drown it. He is our brother and he calls from us that love we have been hiding all our lives, that love we were taught was foolish. But he is born among us and he is here for love, and though I cannot promise if you love him there will not still be those who think you are foolish, I can tell you they will only think so because they do not know what we know, that he is our brother, that we may love him, and he may love us. We know he is our brother because we have all heard tonight the story of Mary’s boy in Bethlehem! We know he is our brother and let us take him into our mother’s house and cherish him this Christmas, for we know that the Man who was born of Mary is a God that we may love. Rejoice! Rejoice! These are good tidings of great joy. Amen.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Theses on Scripture
1. Scripture is Scripture because it testifies to to the God who is in Jesus Christ. In this way the Old and New Testaments are the same.
2. The New Testament, in testifying to Jesus Christ, testifies also that the Old Testament is holy scripture, given for our instruction and encouragement. Nothing in Scripture testifies that the New Testament is scripture. Thus it would appear that the Old Testament is more authoritative than the New Testament, because the New Testament defers to the Old in making its testimony about Jesus, while the Old Testament makes its testimony without deferring to the New.
3. Yet the New Testament is generally considered normative for how we are to understand the Old Testament. It would then appear that the New Testament has priority, since we cannot grasp the meaning of the Old Testament without it.
4. The best way of understanding the relation between the Testaments is to think of the Transfiguration. Jesus is seen speaking with Moses and Elijah, that is, conversing with the Law and the Prophets, which are the Old Testament. Peter, James, and John, the New Testament, see this and are amazed.
5. In the Transfiguration, Jesus is also revealed in his glory. Conversation with Moses and Elijah is the truth of Jesus' life. The life of God on earth is lived in the company of the Old Testament. The New Testament only witnesses this, it is not an active part of it.
6. Yet precisely because the Old Testament is more intimate with Jesus it is less able to show us what that intimacy means. Moses and Elijah cannot stand outside of themselves to tell us about the conversation they are having with Jesus, but the Apostles, who are outside the conversation, can tell us about it. Yet the fact remains that it is Moses and Elijah who speak with Jesus and not the Apostles.
7. If the Old Testament is taken without the New, we hear all that Moses and Elijah say, but cannot tell who they are talking with. When the New Testament is taken without the Old, we hear the disciples speak very enthusiastically about something we cannot see.
8. Think of it this way: Jesus never engages with the New Testament, only with the Old Testament. But the New Testament recounts what he said when he engaged it.
9. If the New Testament has greater authority, it is because it gives us the words of Jesus; if the Old Testament has greater authority, it is because it was there that Jesus got his words.
2. The New Testament, in testifying to Jesus Christ, testifies also that the Old Testament is holy scripture, given for our instruction and encouragement. Nothing in Scripture testifies that the New Testament is scripture. Thus it would appear that the Old Testament is more authoritative than the New Testament, because the New Testament defers to the Old in making its testimony about Jesus, while the Old Testament makes its testimony without deferring to the New.
3. Yet the New Testament is generally considered normative for how we are to understand the Old Testament. It would then appear that the New Testament has priority, since we cannot grasp the meaning of the Old Testament without it.
4. The best way of understanding the relation between the Testaments is to think of the Transfiguration. Jesus is seen speaking with Moses and Elijah, that is, conversing with the Law and the Prophets, which are the Old Testament. Peter, James, and John, the New Testament, see this and are amazed.
5. In the Transfiguration, Jesus is also revealed in his glory. Conversation with Moses and Elijah is the truth of Jesus' life. The life of God on earth is lived in the company of the Old Testament. The New Testament only witnesses this, it is not an active part of it.
6. Yet precisely because the Old Testament is more intimate with Jesus it is less able to show us what that intimacy means. Moses and Elijah cannot stand outside of themselves to tell us about the conversation they are having with Jesus, but the Apostles, who are outside the conversation, can tell us about it. Yet the fact remains that it is Moses and Elijah who speak with Jesus and not the Apostles.
7. If the Old Testament is taken without the New, we hear all that Moses and Elijah say, but cannot tell who they are talking with. When the New Testament is taken without the Old, we hear the disciples speak very enthusiastically about something we cannot see.
8. Think of it this way: Jesus never engages with the New Testament, only with the Old Testament. But the New Testament recounts what he said when he engaged it.
9. If the New Testament has greater authority, it is because it gives us the words of Jesus; if the Old Testament has greater authority, it is because it was there that Jesus got his words.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
A Sermon for Ash Wednesday
Why a sermon for Ash Wednesday, you ask? Well, because that's what I was assigned in my preaching class.
A Sermon for Ash Wednesday (Judges 11:29-40)
And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord, and said, “If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord’s, to be offered up by me as a burnt offering.”
There’s hard stuff in scripture. You heard Joel tell you earlier to rend your hearts and not your garments; and is there anything that rends hearts and this story does not rend hearts? For whom shall we rend them? For the daughter, cut off in the prime of youth? For the father, who has found himself bound by honor and piety to commit an abomination against nature? For God? For God who alone is holy, who alone is just, and who must yet receive this sickening sacrifice? For whom shall we rend our hearts; for at these words they surely must be rent.
Or perhaps we shall not rend them. Perhaps this story does not grieve you, does not move the emotions of sadness in your soul. Perhaps you are not sorrowful; perhaps you are indignant. Perhaps you are disgusted that the church which serves a God of love would present the murderer of his own child as a hero in its scriptures; that such a God would allow and accept such a sacrifice. “With what shall I come before the Lord?” cries the prophet. “Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has told you, o man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.” Can the God who delivered the only son of Abraham be the God who left the only child of Jephthah to her death?
Perhaps you were not grieved. After all, you came to church tonight to enter prayerfully into a season of repentance, a season that is hard, but a season that you know, that is comfortable and expected and familiar. You came to church tonight to prepare; the house has been cleansed of its chocolate, the television, perhaps, is unplugged—or maybe the remote has just been hidden away. You have pledged not to pick up a tabloid as you check out there at the grocery and there’s a post-it on your computer: “No Solitaire.” You have given something up because it is a season of self-denial. You came because you were ready for Lent, maybe you welcomed it, maybe you welcomed the excuse to reject something, to shun a little bit of what has power over you in this world. Or maybe you came to church without any of these plans or feelings, but you came because you knew you needed Lent and knew you wouldn’t do it on your own. But you came to church, all of you to be encouraged in these weeks of penitence and self-denial, you came to be prepared for them in solemn tones, with the dimness of candles and the mark of the ash.
But where is Jephthah’s sacrifice in all of this? You didn’t come for the book of Judges; you didn’t come for a story that was hard to comprehend, even if you came for words that are hard to follow. Preacher, you say, I came to be told about my sin; I didn’t come to hear about a man sacrificing his daughter. Preacher, I came to hear about self-denial; I didn’t come to hear about some poor girl having to give up her life like this. Preacher, I came to be warned about practicing my piety before others—I know I needed that word; my husband and my friends and my children don’t really take this season seriously, and I get holier-than-thou with them. But preacher, this is a story about a man who prays in secret and is rewarded with his daughter’s blood. Preacher! I came to be told that I am dust—I did not come to see a young woman turned to ash on an altar by her father.
And the girl has no name! She has no name, the scriptures give her no name, the author of Judges has no name for her; her father never calls her by name. How she suffered! And yet we have no name for the memory, no name to put to the face. And yet we can all see that face—we may imagine it differently—but we can all see that young daughter’s face when she said to her father, “Do to me as you said you would. If we do not keep our pledges to God, what can we keep?” But she has no name, and her mother has no name. What can we say of her lineage, but that she is Jephthah’s daughter, and that Jephthah was born in Gilead to a whore? Who can tell her generation? She has no name that we can see; and yet for her a name has been written that she alone can read. To us she has no name; we can only call her suffering, a woman of sorrows and a companion, a nameless companion of grief.
Let me tell you her name, brothers and sisters, for it is a name that is above all names, a name before which every knee shall bow on earth and in heaven and in the depths below.
Consider another story of a father who sent his child to their death. There was a man baptizing Jews in the Jordan. To all that came he said “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. Put on sackcloth and remember your sin; cover yourselves in ashes and rend your hearts.” And a man of Galilee came to this baptizer; and he baptized him. And the heavens opened over him and a dove more radiant than the angels shine came down upon his head and a voice like power and majesty itself proclaimed, “This is my son, my dear son, my only son, whom I love, Jesus, in whom I delight.” And Jesus said, “O Father, I have vowed. Let me do according to the Word that has gone out of your mouth.” And the Spirit that was a dove became a fire, and it burned in him and drove him into the wilderness and he was tempted forty days. And it drove him out among the people and he taught and he healed. And it drove him down to Jerusalem, and he was tortured and beaten and taunted and he suffered and was crucified and died and was buried.
Is this a story of fewer tears? And yet we tell it and we cling to it and hold it. And shall Jephthah’s daughter remain unknown to us, when in the face of that child of Israel we may see the sorrow of the son of Mary? Surely Jephthah should have suffered death, when he himself desired the death and the subjection and the plunder of his neighbors, and not his innocent daughter, a virgin young and pure of heart, without deceit or dissimulation in her spirit. And surely Man should bear the punishment of heaven, man the devourer of riches and races, man who prays death for his Ammonites and gives his children to destruction to appease his own desires; surely Man should bear the punishment, and not the Son of Man, a lamb without blemish, spotless and pure; in him no sin was found. Yet God gave the Ammonites into Jephthah’s hand. But in return God desired of Jephthah a soul that was already his, a child of obedience and love who was according to the flesh the daughter of Jephthah. And what wrong was there that the one who is holy should take to himself a holy child of Israel, that the one who gave the wicked Ammonites into the hand of wicked Jephthah should draw close to his bosom the daughter who said, “Do according to the word that has gone out of your mouth. Father, give God what you have promised him, even if it is my life.”
The verse says Jephthah was brought very low by his daughter; he fell to the ground, to the dust and the ashes, and cried out “Ah! My daughter, you have brought me very low. I have vowed to the Lord and I cannot go back. I vowed that I would sacrifice to my God out of thanks for my victory, for I have many things that I could give him. But he has chosen the one thing which I love before all others and said ‘give me this.’” And his daughter said, “If you have vowed, you must do it; I am ready to give up my life to the Lord. But allow me two months, for me to go into the wilderness with my companions to mourn for my youth and my purity.” And Jephthah wept and granted her those months, just more than forty days to mourn.
Tonight we are compelled as her companions to put on ashes and mourn; we go into the wilderness with the daughter of Jephthah. We mourn for ourselves, for we are of the house of Jephthah and we feel his sins upon us, the sin always lurking in our hearts that demands and asks of God and yet is fearful to give him what he asks of us; for he is asking for our lives, he is asking that what we desire most be his, and we are brought very low when he asks for it, to dust and ashes. But more than all of that we mourn for the daughter of Jephthah, for the purity of her heart and her spotless obedience, an obedience unto death. For her we mourn, that she will be led to the knife and the fire, so innocent and undeserving of death. We put on ashes to be like her in her death, her death which should by any right be ours, her death to which she freely goes, a lamb of God, a sacrifice of thanksgiving, a child of sinners giving up for them the blood of their sin. Fix your eyes upon this lamb as you mourn; as you fast and as you deny yourself this Lent, take care that in all of it the eyes of your heart are fixed upon this lamb. For it is for the lamb that we go mourning into the wilderness these months of Lent, for the lamb that we dress our faces with the ash of death, for the lamb that we keep these traditions; for there arose a custom in Israel, that every year they would remember and mourn the daughter of Jephthah. Amen.
A Sermon for Ash Wednesday (Judges 11:29-40)
And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord, and said, “If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord’s, to be offered up by me as a burnt offering.”
There’s hard stuff in scripture. You heard Joel tell you earlier to rend your hearts and not your garments; and is there anything that rends hearts and this story does not rend hearts? For whom shall we rend them? For the daughter, cut off in the prime of youth? For the father, who has found himself bound by honor and piety to commit an abomination against nature? For God? For God who alone is holy, who alone is just, and who must yet receive this sickening sacrifice? For whom shall we rend our hearts; for at these words they surely must be rent.
Or perhaps we shall not rend them. Perhaps this story does not grieve you, does not move the emotions of sadness in your soul. Perhaps you are not sorrowful; perhaps you are indignant. Perhaps you are disgusted that the church which serves a God of love would present the murderer of his own child as a hero in its scriptures; that such a God would allow and accept such a sacrifice. “With what shall I come before the Lord?” cries the prophet. “Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has told you, o man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.” Can the God who delivered the only son of Abraham be the God who left the only child of Jephthah to her death?
Perhaps you were not grieved. After all, you came to church tonight to enter prayerfully into a season of repentance, a season that is hard, but a season that you know, that is comfortable and expected and familiar. You came to church tonight to prepare; the house has been cleansed of its chocolate, the television, perhaps, is unplugged—or maybe the remote has just been hidden away. You have pledged not to pick up a tabloid as you check out there at the grocery and there’s a post-it on your computer: “No Solitaire.” You have given something up because it is a season of self-denial. You came because you were ready for Lent, maybe you welcomed it, maybe you welcomed the excuse to reject something, to shun a little bit of what has power over you in this world. Or maybe you came to church without any of these plans or feelings, but you came because you knew you needed Lent and knew you wouldn’t do it on your own. But you came to church, all of you to be encouraged in these weeks of penitence and self-denial, you came to be prepared for them in solemn tones, with the dimness of candles and the mark of the ash.
But where is Jephthah’s sacrifice in all of this? You didn’t come for the book of Judges; you didn’t come for a story that was hard to comprehend, even if you came for words that are hard to follow. Preacher, you say, I came to be told about my sin; I didn’t come to hear about a man sacrificing his daughter. Preacher, I came to hear about self-denial; I didn’t come to hear about some poor girl having to give up her life like this. Preacher, I came to be warned about practicing my piety before others—I know I needed that word; my husband and my friends and my children don’t really take this season seriously, and I get holier-than-thou with them. But preacher, this is a story about a man who prays in secret and is rewarded with his daughter’s blood. Preacher! I came to be told that I am dust—I did not come to see a young woman turned to ash on an altar by her father.
And the girl has no name! She has no name, the scriptures give her no name, the author of Judges has no name for her; her father never calls her by name. How she suffered! And yet we have no name for the memory, no name to put to the face. And yet we can all see that face—we may imagine it differently—but we can all see that young daughter’s face when she said to her father, “Do to me as you said you would. If we do not keep our pledges to God, what can we keep?” But she has no name, and her mother has no name. What can we say of her lineage, but that she is Jephthah’s daughter, and that Jephthah was born in Gilead to a whore? Who can tell her generation? She has no name that we can see; and yet for her a name has been written that she alone can read. To us she has no name; we can only call her suffering, a woman of sorrows and a companion, a nameless companion of grief.
Let me tell you her name, brothers and sisters, for it is a name that is above all names, a name before which every knee shall bow on earth and in heaven and in the depths below.
Consider another story of a father who sent his child to their death. There was a man baptizing Jews in the Jordan. To all that came he said “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. Put on sackcloth and remember your sin; cover yourselves in ashes and rend your hearts.” And a man of Galilee came to this baptizer; and he baptized him. And the heavens opened over him and a dove more radiant than the angels shine came down upon his head and a voice like power and majesty itself proclaimed, “This is my son, my dear son, my only son, whom I love, Jesus, in whom I delight.” And Jesus said, “O Father, I have vowed. Let me do according to the Word that has gone out of your mouth.” And the Spirit that was a dove became a fire, and it burned in him and drove him into the wilderness and he was tempted forty days. And it drove him out among the people and he taught and he healed. And it drove him down to Jerusalem, and he was tortured and beaten and taunted and he suffered and was crucified and died and was buried.
Is this a story of fewer tears? And yet we tell it and we cling to it and hold it. And shall Jephthah’s daughter remain unknown to us, when in the face of that child of Israel we may see the sorrow of the son of Mary? Surely Jephthah should have suffered death, when he himself desired the death and the subjection and the plunder of his neighbors, and not his innocent daughter, a virgin young and pure of heart, without deceit or dissimulation in her spirit. And surely Man should bear the punishment of heaven, man the devourer of riches and races, man who prays death for his Ammonites and gives his children to destruction to appease his own desires; surely Man should bear the punishment, and not the Son of Man, a lamb without blemish, spotless and pure; in him no sin was found. Yet God gave the Ammonites into Jephthah’s hand. But in return God desired of Jephthah a soul that was already his, a child of obedience and love who was according to the flesh the daughter of Jephthah. And what wrong was there that the one who is holy should take to himself a holy child of Israel, that the one who gave the wicked Ammonites into the hand of wicked Jephthah should draw close to his bosom the daughter who said, “Do according to the word that has gone out of your mouth. Father, give God what you have promised him, even if it is my life.”
The verse says Jephthah was brought very low by his daughter; he fell to the ground, to the dust and the ashes, and cried out “Ah! My daughter, you have brought me very low. I have vowed to the Lord and I cannot go back. I vowed that I would sacrifice to my God out of thanks for my victory, for I have many things that I could give him. But he has chosen the one thing which I love before all others and said ‘give me this.’” And his daughter said, “If you have vowed, you must do it; I am ready to give up my life to the Lord. But allow me two months, for me to go into the wilderness with my companions to mourn for my youth and my purity.” And Jephthah wept and granted her those months, just more than forty days to mourn.
Tonight we are compelled as her companions to put on ashes and mourn; we go into the wilderness with the daughter of Jephthah. We mourn for ourselves, for we are of the house of Jephthah and we feel his sins upon us, the sin always lurking in our hearts that demands and asks of God and yet is fearful to give him what he asks of us; for he is asking for our lives, he is asking that what we desire most be his, and we are brought very low when he asks for it, to dust and ashes. But more than all of that we mourn for the daughter of Jephthah, for the purity of her heart and her spotless obedience, an obedience unto death. For her we mourn, that she will be led to the knife and the fire, so innocent and undeserving of death. We put on ashes to be like her in her death, her death which should by any right be ours, her death to which she freely goes, a lamb of God, a sacrifice of thanksgiving, a child of sinners giving up for them the blood of their sin. Fix your eyes upon this lamb as you mourn; as you fast and as you deny yourself this Lent, take care that in all of it the eyes of your heart are fixed upon this lamb. For it is for the lamb that we go mourning into the wilderness these months of Lent, for the lamb that we dress our faces with the ash of death, for the lamb that we keep these traditions; for there arose a custom in Israel, that every year they would remember and mourn the daughter of Jephthah. Amen.
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