The lectionary, as we come within a couple of weeks of
Advent, gets increasingly difficult... for
next Sunday, a ferocious apocalyptic passage in the Book of Daniel, beyond my
wit, I’m afraid… the strange Letter to the Hebrews – I have always struggled
with it… and the brief record in Mark where Jesus predicts the rape and pillage
of Jerusalem and its temple – done indeed as we know with brutal thoroughness
by the army of Titus in 70 AD.
But also in my mind have been much more recent straws in the
wind. In conversation here last Friday
the erosion of our coasts, cliffs and beaches was mentioned… the whole matter
of climate change and its causes, and its relentless inevitability and our seeming
reluctance to face facts. One of last
Friday’s group (Eddie) talked movingly about living very much on the edge, the
miracle of his day by day by faith. It
was also, in the south, a day of storms, floods and destruction… mayhem in the
White House… another mindless shootout, and immense forest fires, in
California… a terrorist incident in Melbourne…
Much of our responsible journalism is now daily deploring the breakdown
of decency and truth, in biblical terms the removal of moral landmarks… What do we do? What do we think? How do we pray? How are our children and grandchildren going
to live? What future has a seemingly impotent,
divided and compromised church?
Faith, as we repeatedly say, is moving toward the light we
can see, one foot in front of the other.
The Letter to the Hebrews, scholars think may have been written quite
early to the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem.
Persecution was increasing, and some Christians were returning to their
Jewish faith in the hope that they might protect their families. Next Sunday’s passage is from chapter 10, and
one sentence reads: Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and goodness… Provoke...?
Provoke to love…? This is an
instance where the translators seem frightened someone will be upset if they
say what the Greek says. It says: Let us
learn together paroxysms of love and good actions… In Greek paroxysmos (παροξυσμοϛ) the word used here, means an incitement, provocation. Paroxysms of love, however...? In medicine, I find, a paroxysm is “a sudden
return or intensification of symptoms”.
The advice to the beleaguered Christians in Jerusalem seems to be simply
to pick each other up, day by day, and get on with what you know best – caring
for each other and doing good… being present and being true. That is our task in faith when, as G K
Chesterton expressed it with the First World War looming, the sky grows darker yet, and the sea rises higher.
We don’t have special formulae to explain events. We don’t have secret recipes for peace in the
world or peace of mind. We have the way
of Christ and the fathomless symbols of the cross and the empty tomb. We have each other. We have a pathway of prayer, stillness and
steadiness. We have, if we know good
teachers, a treasury of wisdom from history and literature. Always ahead is the light which, as John
writes, the darkness has never quenched. In that setting, says this writer, we learn
paroxysms of love and goodness. Rabbi
Jeffrey Myers of the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue, the scene of one of the
more recent gun atrocities in the USA, in his sermon on Shabbat to his
traumatised congregation a week later, said simply: Follow
the path of good. It is the only way to
heal…
No comments:
Post a Comment