Toward Attention

Closing In

"Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread drew near, which is called Passover. And the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might kill Him, for they feared the people. Then Satan entered Judas [...]" Luke 22:1-3

The Festal Day commemorating deliverance from Pharaoh draws near, commemorating the hunting angel of death thwarted by doors marked by the smeared life-blood of a lamb, commemorating the defeat of the tyrant Pharaoh and his drowning in the Sea with his troops as he closes in on them, he drowns who is typologically aligned with the Leviathan; the Pharaoh overlorded the Israelites like chattel to be herded and milked, and Moses shepherded, guided them like freemen.

During this Feast, the high ("chief") priests plot; their deathly attention is fixed on Jesus, this attention circling around him, closing in on him, waiting to pounce; it all must be done in the darkness, for the people -- whose will is their only light, and a dark light at that! -- must be managed like slaves (rather than shepherded like freemen). They would smear his blood to save themselves and their nationalized institutions (the house of God is no longer a house of prayer for all nations, but functions as a national treasury and a national flag of sorts, ethnocentric rather than theocentric) from the hunting eye of the Romans. Finally, as the darkness of murderous intent descends, Satan enters into Judas. This is anti-incarnation.  

It all reminds me of the wickedness within Heorot immediately preceding, and calling forth, Grendel, as the appropriately monstrous manifestation of the spiritual rot within the Germanic "City on a Hill."

If such an entrance of Satan results from both his hatred of the Master and the murderous avarice of these high priests, and Grendel's marauding is the result of the kinslaying intent within Heorot, are not the material objects of our sin only the manifestation of, or are they rather not drawn to us (as much as us to them) by, the very particular form of rot in our own hearts? --and where is the Lord in such a case, that they would seek to kill Him?

 

Why?

An acquaintance of mine recently sent me a letter regarding Schleiermacher. I had said in conversation that Schleiermacher was a heretic. I defined it by Schl.'s rejecting the Creed, especially the belief in the Resurrection (both of Christ, and of all the dead at the end of the Age). My colleague replied (via e-mail):

why does he NEED to confess the Nicene Creed? Why does he need to have "a trinitarian ontology" at all? And why is resurrection necessary? I think I understand, but I do not believe that those are the only marks of a Christian, if you will.

I replied:

I guess I just think that if we're gonna sell the farm on things like Resurrection and Trinity, then it seems silly to still play Christian -- then we're really something else that has inherited the debris of a dead and broken Christian life-form and iconography, whether the figure of Jesus or Sunday morning habits or chant traditions or "bad metaphysics" or whatever. And that might very well be where we all are -- but we should call it something else. "I love to play in the ruins of dead churches" and all that other Nietzschean jazz. Heidegger is probably where we should be in such a case. But that's not Christianity. If Christianity doesn't mean Resurrection, I'm not sure what it could mean, historically or otherwise. The tradition took on a certain form. That this is, when considered abstractly, a contingent development is irrelevant to the fact that it did develop this way, and no other. Critiques on the order of "it could have happened this way" or "there are power tactics in play here that led to this decision or result" or whatever are interesting, but don't secure or demonstrate anything by way of truth or falsity that they haven't already assumed. If it's true, it is thusly historical: if it's false, then criticism is simply doing what Nietzsche said he was doing.

Christianity is not providing us with contingent historical material for our improvisation: in Christ, God reveals Himself, is seen and touched. He comes to us. His hisstory is contingent, like the tradition. That does not make it less divine. Christianity is not founded on any necessary truths of reason, nor upon perspectival invariances.

I love these kinds of questions, I must admit, because they force one to answer clearly.

Outposts of Memory

"We don't live in the Byzantine Empire anymore," some people I once associated with would occasionally say derisively about others. At face value, it is clearly true. We do not live in the Byzantine Empire.

Looking at various Greek parishes, the Church building would not always reflect this. Often it is drawn from a definite tradition of Church architecture that is distinctly Byzantine. The same could be said, perhaps, about some canons that (so I'm told) presuppose the Empire is in place, though I know less about that. Most likely we could extend this to other features of modern Orthodox Church life, both within the geographical area formerly belonging to Byzantium, or at least falling in or near its heart, and well beyond, in places such as the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, and Africa.

We should not be so strict with the Greeks on this, though. Byzantium may have fallen, but it is also true that Byzantium has fallen. People remember this. They remember. Cultures have memories and traditions -- it is how they persist as a singular culture through time, and part (only part) of how they enjoy communion with those who have gone before, and how they allow those who have gone before to enrich them even at the level of their secular life. This tradition, this chain, bears one into the present, and in many ways establishes one's identity. To break this chain is akin to mutilating one's own body. The Greeks should not forget -- particularly in Greece and those other ethnoi in traditionally Byzantine areas. They should, of course, remember intelligently, and not select only certain moments for poorly-remembered and drably-rehearsed tawdry festivals of memory to connect climactically with this heritage while kitsch overruns the bulk of their lives in so many other ways, leading to kitschy expressions of kitschified memory.

However, we American converts are only rarely Greek, and so are not in any way Byzantine, and we have our own cultural memory/memories. Often we connect to Orthodoxy because we see that it is closer to certain features of our cultural memory -- which is also not a dead thing. What I have an objection to is the forced assimilation to a foreign memory via structures that displace our own heritage and memory, which memory is often the basis of our appreciating Orthodoxy to begin with, whether it serves as a basis via negativity (i.e., because we see how this heritage fails) or via positivity (because we find that Orthodoxy is the best place to preserve this memory). Unfortunately, Orthodoxy will not be the best place to preserve this memory, this Western heritage, if it insists, either explicitly or simply de facto, on every jot and tittle of the Byzantine patrimony.

A more profound unity is needed than what we have, or else we are simply assimilating to the outposts of a foreign memory.

We must start and end with Jesus, of course.

The Glory of Moses and the Glory of the New Testament

The Epistle section for today's daily scripture reading is from 2 Corinthians:

2Corinthians 3:4-11

    And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward: Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away: How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious? For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory. For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth. For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious.

I could not help but wonder, as I read this, whether the Apostle is assuming that some of this glory has to do with liturgical functions (and thus whether there is some significant liturgical continuity between the Jerusalem temple liturgy, which is typologicall united with the Sinai account here referenced), or whether the remark on "spirit gives life" (contrasted with "the letter killing") implies that the glory is not outward (and may very well have no outward manifestations), but inward (which might justify a kind of liturgical minimalism, such as is often assumed by biblical scholars to have been the case in the NT era).

I only ask this because "glory" is a technical word for theophany often, and theophany as it has to do with the divine radiance generated within a creature -- such as Moses, or, within the temple/tabernacle, in the "garments of glory," the garments that the high priest would wear.

Jesus Himself often spoke of "glory," especially in the latter chapters of St. John's Gospel.

Sorry for the sloppy thought, all.

Asking For What?

In chapter 14 of the Gospel According to St. John, there is yet another passage that I suspect I have consistently misread. I have been guilty of what, for want of a better word, I'll just call "chunk reading": I've always read this passage in isolation from the surrounding passages, as though at least parts of the text was nothing but a strung-together sequence of atomic units. Understanding why a passage is included where it is seems to me, more and more, roughly equivalent to understanding what that passage means.

Let's start with the beginning of John 14, then. Or earlier, with St. Peter's profession at the very end of chapter 13, and the Lord's declaration that Peter will not do what he professes.

"Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, the cock will not crow, till you have denied me three times."

Yet the Lord does not end on that note, but encourages all of the disciples

"Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me."

And then, as though believing in Christ was a kind of dwelling of sorts, He goes on to say

"In my Father's house are many rooms"

and how He will go to prepare a place for them.

The Lord is Himself the Way to the Father. The Lord reveals the Father, for to see Him is to see the Father: the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father. There is a mutual indwelling, a reciprocal indwelling, just as with the rooms. Then, carrying this point further, the Lord says

"The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority; but the Father Who dwells in me does His works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me; or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves."

Perhaps because of the preoccupations about "works" that the Protestants I know suffer from, which occupy much too much of my own headspace through them, I did not notice what is said here about works, or how it relates to what follows.

Works, or activity, follows from this indwelling. The Father dwells in the Son, and acts in Him: the Son's words and works are the Father's words and works -- though they do not seem to be any less the Son's as a consequence. It seems that Christ's future tabernacling in the "rooms" that the disciples themselves are will mean that they, too, will perform works under the same logic of indwelling.

"Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father."

And then, the verses in question.

"Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if you ask anything in my name, I will do it."

This passage I've always read as a very unsettling promise that Christ will do...anything we ask Him to do. If we ask in His name. Which just always made me feel uncomfortable, and it made this passage seem like an embarrasing endorsement for wish-fulfillment via Jesus.

But note the next passage, which begins

"If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even teh Spirit of truth, Whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; you know Him, for He dwells with you, and will be in you."

So clearly, indwelling and asking are not some antinomian thing. More than this, however, the focus on the passages beginning "truly, truly" and "if you love me" both have [divine/human/divine-human] activity as their subject. So the passage about the Lord doing anything if asked for "in [His] name" must have something to do with this activity, and specifically with "doing the works that [Christ] do[es]." This is all to say, that what is being promised is that the works and words of the disciple will not fall short of the words and works of Christ, if he or she is obedient to the Lord's commandments, and is indwelt by the Spirit of Christ. Such a person, if he or she is obedient and diligently asking, will not be bereft of the Lord's in-working power. And such a person should not hesitate to ask for such a grace.

Philip Pullman Interview

Can be read here.

Healing the Man Born Blind and the Works of God

In chapter nine of The Gospel According to St. John, Jesus comes upon a man blind from his birth:

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him,

"Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

Jesus answered, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him.
     "We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world."

As he said this, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle and anointed the man's eyes with the clay, saying to him,

"Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which means 'Sent').

So he went and washed and came back seeing.

Until recently, I have always passed over these verses with a great deal of discomfort, because they seemed to be proposing that God allows for people to be born with physical maladies so that He can "SHAZAM" them back into health, and up His reputation. This seemed absurd, but I couldn't see any other interpretation. Even if the rule only held true in this particular case, it seemed cruel. Aren't people ends in and of themselves? Yet even if this man were a unique case, he would be a means to "the manifestation of the works of God."

 I propose something different.

Thoughout The Gospel According to St. John, the theme of vision and seeing is at the center. "And we have seen His Glory," we read at the beginning of the Gospel: at the end of this passage about the blind man whose sight is restored, we read Jesus saying

"For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind."

Some of the Pharisees near him heard this, and they said to him, "Are we also blind?"

Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, 'We see,' your guilt remains."

The center of the Gospel is Jesus standing up in the Temple and saying "I am the Light of the World." I propose that the man blind from birth is generic, a type: he is each and all of us. This clears up a great deal of confusion. "Who sinned, this man or his parents?" --i.e., is our common human condition, our common blindness in which we are found from birth, the result of our own sins, or an ancestral sin? But Jesus does not allow either of these answers -- his condition, and ours, is not the result of divine justice.

He is a type of all of us, because he is an Adamic figure. How is he like Adam, both in type and in function? --look at how Jesus takes clay from the ground. There are Fathers -- I cannot recall which -- who see this as the Lord actually creating new eyes for the man.

"But that the works of God might be made manifest in him." What is the work of God? He is still making man, as it were. The pool "Sent" is the same word for "apostle": those who have seen God, in the Old Testament, ascend to heaven, like Isaiah, and see the divine Glory (in Acts, remember, St. Stephen sees the Lord and the Glory in his vision, and then his face is "like that of an angel"), and are made angelic, and are "sent" back. The word "sent" has strong angelomorphic overtones. It's almost a technical word. The purpose for which God has made man is to attain to this vision, to then become like Christ, to become "partakers of the divine nature" (I almost get tired of quoting that verse), to become, not angels, but angelic men and women. 

This transformation comes through some kind of recognition, if not outright vision of sorts: our encounter with Christ, and our suffering His transforming work in us (allowing him to give us eyes, as it were, and obediently going to the pool after His command). We can see from the Lord's words to the Pharisees how gentle He is: He wishes to restore sight, wishes to complete the making of Mankind, and only opposes those who claim to see but who in fact do not. This is yet another way in which He parses men out.

Jesus and the Poor

In chapter 12 of The Gospel According to St. John, we read about the anointing of Jesus with nard, Judas' protest, and the Master's reply:

Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. There they made him a supper; Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at table with him. Mary took a pound of costly ointment of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was to betray him), said,

"Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii [300 days worth of pay for a laborer] and given to the poor?"

This he said, not that he cared for the poor but because he was a thief, and as he had the money box he used to take what was put into it. Jesus said,

"Let her alone, let her keep it for the day of my burial. The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me."

Until last night, when I had read this passage I had always heard Jesus acknowledging Judas' vocalized (but not sincere) desire to feed the poor, but prioritizing Himself, or the task of anointing Him for His burial, above feeding them.

Now I see something different: Judas is mentioning no one in particular, a mere category of people whom he is posturing as loving, and neglecting to love the flesh-and-blood Lord Who is in his midst. Jesus replies that such a category will always be around, but there seems to be several ways that His words cut: the poor always need feeding, and so will always need the charity of those Christians who are in a position to love them; the poor as a category are merely a category, and are an innapropriate recipient of one's love.

"Charity begins at home": so it is said. But here there is something different happening: those who claim to love people in general are very good at hating people in particular. The Lord is not fooled by such "love," nor does His love cease on account of it. It may be thwarted by it, though: Judas hangs himself anyway.

Son of Hamas

There is a book that I've been interested in reading called "Son of Hamas." GQ did an interview with the author here.

Martha and Mary

In chapter 11 verse 28-29 of The Gospel According to St. John, we read:

[Martha] went and called her sister Mary, saying quietly, "The Teacher is here and is calling for you." And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him.

I am not quiet: not usually, I think. Perhaps rarely these days. Could I hear an invitation from the Teacher that was said "quietly"? (I do not often hear the "still small voice" over my internal noise) --and if I did, would I "rise quickly, and go to Him"?(I think I say, "I cannot attend the wedding feast, for I have these distractions to attend to" --I do not even have the pretense of responsibility that those in the Gospel offered to such an invitation.)

Grant this, O Lord! I do not often hear, and I rarely flee to You when I do.