Advent IV, A house of cedar – 18 December 2020

 

On the last Sunday in Advent the lectionary, somewhat surprisingly, provides a rather long Old Testament passage from II Samuel.  This is 1000 years before the time of Jesus.  King David is embarrassed, he says, because while he is living in comfort in a house of cedar, the sacred Ark of the Covenant, which houses the stone tablets recording the Ten Commandments, is still kept in a tent, just as it was during the 40 years of their wandering in the desert.  It is time, says David, when he should build a great temple in Jerusalem.  Nathan the prophet at first thinks that is a smart idea, but then God tells him otherwise…  Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?”[1] The answer to God’s rhetorical question is No…  God is happy in a tent[2] -- as Nathan informs David the next day.  In any case, he says, if a magnificent temple is to be built, it will be done not by David but by David’s son, in years to come.

And so it was.  Solomon built the temple in about 957 BC.  The Queen of Sheba showed up for the opening with great panoply, later celebrated by George Frederick Handel. In the innermost part of the temple, the Holy of Holies, was kept the Ark of the Covenant with the tables of the Law.  It was surmounted by two gold angels whose wings formed a sheltering loop above the Ark – it was said that the Shekinah, God’s Presence, dwelt there at the heart of Israel.  This temple was destroyed in 586 BC at the time of the Exile in Babylon, rebuilt in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah.  This one, the Second Temple, was desecrated by the Hellenic king Antiochus Epiphanes, and later by the Romans. Herod built a Third Temple, and that was destroyed by the Roman army in 70 AD and has never been rebuilt.  By this time the Jews had long understood that God is present wherever they are, in the desert, in exile, diaspora, scattered around the world in synagogues or in ghettos, in Auschwitz or Ravensbrück – the God who is perfectly at home in a tent. 

Then, in John’s Gospel, Christian scripture, we find this statement:  The Word (Logos) was made flesh, and dwelt among us (John 1:14).  The Greek word dwelt is literally pitched his tent[3] among us.  John sees in the child in the manger at Bethlehem, God as it were in a tent among us, freedom camping, you might even say… sharing our trials, our wanderings, our destiny.  Here is the shekinah, the light of God’s presence, not in a house of cedar, but pitched where people are, in our anxieties and danger, in all our regrets and unresolved issues… 

I think I understand our attachment to fine buildings, great liturgy and music.  But the future of faith is, as it always was, with those who find him dwelling first in our hearts, in the deserts of our life and history, in our fears and disasters… and in our stillness and silence and awed wonder.

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[1] II Samuel 7:7

[2] Two Hebrew words used: ohel (אֹהֶל) is a tent; mishkan (מִשְׁכָּן) is a shepherd’s hut.

[3] eskēnōsen (ἐσκήνωσεν).  skēnē (σκηνη) is a tent.

Advent III, Grace and Truth – 11 December 2020

 

The lectionary this Sunday flips us over from Mark to John’s Gospel… From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.  The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.  No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known. (John 1:16-18)

In John’s Gospel just about every word pulsates with meaning.  I think the trick with John is not to fret about whether I believe that or not, whether I can accept that – as though John were writing a manual of doctrine, rather than what he is writing, a kind of symphony in words of life with the risen Christ… The point is rather to see how closely, or distantly, at this time of my life, I can approximate to John’s ways of telling the story… telling us who Jesus is.  Mature faith has discovered a modicum of humility and that, when it comes to faith in Christ, what we do is approximate, rather than appropriate.

Here is an example:  No one has ever seen God… Well, that’s simple enough, obvious enough.  The Jews have usually got that right.  It’s Christians who want images and concepts, descriptions and definitions.  What is your concept of God is a question a Jew would be disinclined to ask.  But then John writes: It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.  Now we have to make a decision.  God the only Son…?  Jesus did not describe himself quite that way.  But it is what John is discovering – it is the risen Christ, as we encounter him in life, who lifts the veil, somewhat, and we can see something true of the Creator and Sustainer of all, the Father of love, grace and truth, the merciful judge.  So John writes: It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart[1]… he has made him known. 

So let’s look again at John’s song of incarnation.  From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.  The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.  Everything that Jews love and obey in the sacred Law is now born (borne) in a human child to human parents, incarnate, made flesh, our flesh.  Jeremiah had prophesied centuries before[2]: I will put my law within them, I will write it on their hearts.  Grace and truth, writes John, grace upon grace… he is right at the edge of what words can do, and we learn here yet again that it is nothing to do with deserving or undeserving, chosen people or not.  God creates in grace and love and restores in grace and love.  However the universe is made in all its power, wideness, mystery and complexity, that is its theme and purpose.  We are known and loved.

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[1] Heart is a euphemism.  Kolpos (κόλπος) in Greek means the womb, sometimes the bosom (hence the English colposcopy)… all a little strange if applied to God the Father.  But here John indicates the uttermost intimacy and oneness between Father and Son.  (And in our group this morning, one member pointed out that it is incongruent only if we ascribe gender to God...)

[2] Jeremiah 31:33

Advent II, Locusts and Wild Honey – 4.12.2020

 

Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.  He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.  I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” (Mark 1:6-8)

John the Baptist has always seemed to me an awkward item in the gospel narrative, not made easier by his clothing or his diet.  He defies category.  Was he Jewish?  I assume he was, but he would have been somewhat conspicuous in the synagogues.  Was he Christian? pre-Christian? proto-Christian?  And then… camel’s hair…?  Well, I come wearing sheep’s wool or a snug possum fibre mix, in winter.  Locusts and wild honey…?  I believe locusts are nourishing, but why ruin good honey?   John is conducting a rite of baptism in water, in the river.  That symbolism is as old as religion… you go down into the water with all your sins, and you rise out of the water to new life, pardoned and free.  It is an ancient way of shedding guilt, and of initiation to a new life. 

John’s main purpose however, as Mark insists, is to point away from himself…  John announces a coming one, vastly superior, he says.  I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.  I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.  This is to be something more than the forgiveness of sins, something essentially different.   

Camel’s hair, locusts and wild honey, the more I think about it, do seem to signal a distancing from the socially respectable or acceptable norms of synagogue or church, but equally from many of the expectations of secular culture and lifestyle.  Lately we have been thinking of it as moving to the edge of centre.  Jesus invites us into his company.  And in that company the distinguishing feature is the (usually) gentle, subtle but pervasive power of the Holy Spirit of God to inspire, to change things from the inside, to strengthen and enliven and renew… to recreate, to restore the image of God… the true self.  It is a company in which social and ethnic differences become no longer divisions.  The issues of sin and guilt in our lives come to be seen now in the context of love, mercy and grace.  Humility and service take precedence over power, might, mana and prestige. 

In a time like ours, when even water baptism is largely cast aside as pointless, or relegated to something Granny would like you to do for the children – or if it’s adult baptism by immersion, it’s likely to denote entry into a limited world of fundamentalist faith in any of the many forms that takes… in such a time, we do well, I think, to share some of the vision John had, of the One who would baptise with Holy Spirit, inspiring life from within, displacing ego to its proper place, a life led by Jesus, living simply.  In the incomparable words of the Prophet Micah: Doing justice, loving mercy, walking humbly…  And in one of Paul’s many ways of expressing it:  Practising faith, hope and love, these three, the greatest being love.