The Wounded Messiah

Just when the people in Jerusalem are marveling over the healing of a cripple, Peter tells them that it was by the power of the very man they handed over to Pilate to be crucified that the cripple was healed. A cripple has been brought to life, so to speak, since he was functionally dead up to that point, by a man who was killed. Life and death have been brought together with the implication that the people are being offered a choice between life and death.

Peter accentuates the point by reminding them that they “disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released” to them. (Acts 3: 14) One would think that a choice between Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus Barabbas would be an easy one. After all, who wants to release a murderer and kill a manifestly just person? Well, everybody in Jerusalem it seems. Huh? The French thinker René Girard helps us understand this strange choice. In a nutshell Girard argued that society tends to resolve its crises through the collective murder of a person who is then blamed for the crisis. In his sermons in Acts, Peter clearly states that an innocent man was put to death by the people who were embroiled in social conflict. That Barabbas was also said to be an insurrectionist puts him right in the middle of the social conflict. What about Jesus of Nazareth, who Peter called “the author of life?” Jesus was the one person who was not positioned within the conflict. He was too busy being the author of life. But being the author of life had him in conflict with everybody: Pharisees and Sadducees both. That made it easy for the two main parties and then the Roman authorities, who normally hated each other, to agree on one thing: Do away with Jesus. Precisely the scenario hypothesized by Girard. This societal choice of death over life keeps a society rooted in death..

Peter sounds accusatory when he reminds the people of Jerusalem what they have done. The overall context however, is an offer of forgiveness: “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord,” (Acts 3: 19) This seems like a cheap way out for such a monstrous crime, but this forgiveness can only be activated by accepting the reality of what has been done. This is the importance of remembering the truth of what we have done. The history of white racism in the United States and the protracted difficulty in facing up to the truth of what has been done is an example of how hard accepting such truths can be and the amount of courage it takes to fully repent. That the truth about lynching, acts of collective violence, are especially hard to accept for what they are, is particularly telling. (Or not, as telling is what is normally avoided.) It is repenting through truly remembering that frees us of the past. Otherwise, we repeat the past by choosing death over the author of life time and time again. But just as the cripple has been healed by the Risen Lord, so we, too, have the chance to be healed by the author of life.

Peter excuses the people of Jerusalem on account of ignorance. They didn’t know what they were doing. This, of course, is precisely what Girard says of collective violence: the crowd does not know what it is doing when it is doing it. This is also precisely why remembering the truth is as difficult as it is important. This excuse is curiously coupled with the prophets foretelling that the Messiah would suffer. As Luke and the other synoptic Gospel writers make clear, it was not obvious to Peter and the other disciples that the Messiah would suffer until Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead with the wounds still visible in his hands, feet, and side. And yet Jesus needed only to point to the fates of the prophets, including the Psalmist, to make it clear that this is so. No wonder the crowd in Jerusalem didn’t know that when they put Jesus to death.

One would think that a person raised from the dead would be perfectly healthy and fit, but that is not the case. Even in his risen body, Jesus still bears the wounds inflicted when he was on the cross. More amazing yet, there is no sign that these wounds are cause for resentment. There is the question of whether or not the wounds were still painful. Perhaps not but probably so. Wounds that don’t hurt aren’t real. That Jesus bears these wounds without resentment attests to his profound forgiveness of what we have done. This total lack of resentment transforms these wounds. Moreover, if the wounds don’t go away, then we are permanently reminded of their reality. Again, we must remember what we have done or we will repeat the same collective violence time and again. This reflection can give us more insight into our own wounds, both wounds inflicted on us and the wounds we have inflicted on others which, of course wound us as well. The healed cripple walks, but he walks with the history of having been crippled for years.

In his First Epistle, John tells us that we do not yet know what we will be. In context of the wounded Messiah, we don’t know what we will be with our own wounds. But “when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” (1 Jn. 3: 2) Once we truly know Jesus as the wounded and forgiving Messiah, we too will be wounded and forgiving. All of this is enveloped in God’s love that makes us children of God

For an introduction to René Girard see: Living Stones in the House of the Forgiving Victim: Abiding in Humanity’s Deepest Connections and Living Together With Our Shared Desires

Unfinished Story

We all like a story that ends happily with the loose ends tied together in satisfying ways. It makes us feel good, especially if the good guys had to overcome the machinations of the bad guys and the bad guys got what they deserved. Likewise, a symphony that ends triumphantly raises our spirits. The only thing wrong with these things is that real life isn’t like that. Yes, there are happy and satisfying moments and what we might call mini-happy endings, but happily ever after isn’t a sure thing, as Sondheim showed in his musical Into the Woods where we see just how grim the ever after can be. (Among many other things, Cinderella’s marriage with Prince Charming is on the rocks.) These thoughts suggest that the feel-good happy endings are illusory. The hard reality of real life can feel all the harder for it. A more positive way to look at it is to take the happy endings eschatologically. In God’s good time, everything really will be worked out. There is much comfort in this hope and it is fundamental to the Christian vision, but sometimes we need more direct and realistic encouragement and hope along the way. Sometimes an ending to a story that doesn’t resolve everything or even anything, or a symphony that ends with chords that hang in the ear, is actually more comforting (The sixth and ninth symphonies of Ralph Vaughan Williams are good examples of this.)

Easter Sunday tends to be celebrated as the ultimate happy ending. Yes, Jesus suffered a horrible death, but he came through alive and well and happy and the gates of eternal life have been opened to everybody. But with a lectionary that gives us Mark’s Resurrection story every three years, we get something very different. It ends with a group of frightened women running away from the empty tomb in spite of the angel’s announcement of Jesus’ Resurrection. All this after a totally bleak account of a god-forsaken Christ dying on the cross. What kind of happy ending is this? From the earliest Christian centuries to the present day many have had trouble believing Mark would end his Gospel this way. That is why there are a couple of additions clumsily attached to the end that don’t even remotely match the style of Mark’s writing and outlook.

For those of us who feel better with a happy ending, Mark is a real downer. But the advantage of an unresolved ending is that it can give us pause to think about some things we might not think about if blinded by a happy ending. The frightened women running from the empty tomb make it clear that the strife indeed isn’t over and the battle isn’t done as many horrifying current events make clear. The women thought they would anoint the dead body of Jesus, but that didn’t happen. Ending the Gospel with the women anointing the body to match the anointing of Jesus’ head at the house of Simon the Leper just before the passion would have been a satisfying bittersweet ending. But we don’t ever get that. So what hope do we get from the frightened women?

For one thing, a big thing, if we don’t really know what to make of the Resurrection, if we aren’t sure what it really means for our lives, we can take heart from these women who also didn’t know what to make of it. If we feel flat-footed and flat-brained about the Resurrection, these women in their awkward, frightened flight were obviously flat-footed and flat-brained themselves. This can give us space to ask ourselves what it really does mean that Jesus is risen from the dead. How do we live with a Jesus who died but who isn’t dead after all and is very much alive here and now? When we ask ourselves these questions, the answers are hardly obvious and we are then in a position to let the questions linger rather than prematurely clutching at a fully resolved happy ending.

Mulling over these questions can help us notice that the other Gospels also leave unresolved cracks in their narrations of the Resurrection. In Matthew and Luke, where the women are reported to have told the other disciples about the empty tomb and the angel’s message, the disciples think the women are out of their minds. Nobody seems to recognize Jesus at first when he appears. Why? The moving story of the journey to Emmaus is especially illuminating. The two disciples on the road are downcast, not the least cheered up by the rumors of what the women had said. But at least they are asking questions and this gives Jesus the opportunity to lead them into further insight as to what has happened. The story of Jesus becoming recognizable in the breaking of the bread and then disappearing leaves us hanging, but it leaves room for more to come. These disciples who listened to Jesus as he opened the scriptures to them have much more to learn and to look forward to, even if they don’t know what all of it is.

The ending in Mark is so abrupt because it isn’t really the end. It is the beginning. Galilee is where the story began. The disciples are told to go back and make a new start and we are told to do the same. The obtuseness and cowardice of the disciples throughout the Gospel aren’t the last word after all. Jesus isn’t finished with them and he isn’t finished with us either. Forgiveness is sneaking in right when we weren’t expecting it. With the stage cleared of Jesus, the disciples, the women, we are all that is left with the angel to prod us on. This Gospel is our story now and it will never have an end any more than the Risen Christ has an end. Will we return to the beginning of the story and live it ourselves? Let us sit quietly with the risen Christ with all our puzzlement and disorientation and prayerfully let the Risen Lord fill our hearts and minds with the Risen Life.

The Passion in the Eucharist

The Eucharist makes present the death and Resurrection of Jesus at each celebration, regardless of the occasion. So it is that we don’t even celebrate the birth of Jesus without celebrating his death as well. But in commemorating the Last Supper of Jesus, the Eucharist on Maundy Thursday is particularly close to the Passion, being the meal during which Jesus was suffering the anxiety he was soon to express at Gethsemane.

While reflecting on this matter, I came across a few lines on this very theme by Gerard Manley Hopkins, one of my favorite poets. They made up an epigraph of a chapter in Brian Zahnd’s new book The Wood Between the Worlds,” a powerful meditation on the Cross, Not only was I moved by the lines, but I was surprised to come across some lines by Hopkins that I didn’t recognize since I thought I had studied all of his poems multiple times. That little mystery was solved when I found out that it is an early work, one written while still a student at Oriel College in Oxford, and still an Anglican. So it is only included in the most complete collections of his works. I might have read it before without it registering, but the few lines singled out in Zahnd’s book really caught my attention, as I’ve said.

The poem is called “Barnfloor and Winepress” and it pulls together the Passion of Jesus and the Eucharist into an inextricable knot, making it most appropriate for Maundy Thursday. With wrenching, sometimes violent imagery embodied in hard sounds that put Hopkins, even in this early work, decades ahead of his time, the poem provides a powerful example of how the ugliness of Jesus’ crucifixion permanently affected the aesthetic possibilities in all of the fine arts as the ugliness is sublated in the moral beauty of Jesus’ self-sacrifice and his vindication in the Resurrection. The first stanza includes these lines that use the Eucharistic imagery of the making of bread:

Thou that on sin’s wages starvest,
Behold we have the joy in harvest:
For us was gather’d the first fruits,
For us was lifted from the roots,
Sheaved in cruel bands, bruised sore,
Scourged upon the threshing-floor;
Where the upper mill-stone roof’d His head,
At morn we found the heavenly Bread,
And, on a thousand altars laid,
Christ our Sacrifice is made!

And in the second stanza, lines using grape and wine imagery to the same effect:

Thou whose dry plot for moisture gapes,
We shout with them that tread the grapes:
For us the Vine was fenced with thorn,
Five ways the precious branches torn;
Terrible fruit was on the tree
In the acre of Gethsemane;
For us by Calvary’s distress
The wine was racked from the press;
Now in our altar-vessels stored
Is the sweet Vintage of our Lord.

We have in these powerful stanzas a kind of transubstantiation, not only of the Eucharistic elements that Hopkins was clearly believing in as a high-church Anglican, but a transubstantiation of the suffering of Christ into the Eucharistic elements. The violent human sacrifices throughout human history, both before Christ and after Christ up to the present day, are transmuted into the bloodless sacrifice on the altar. (The phrase “terrible fruit” reminds me of Billy Holiday’s “Strange Fruit.”) No wonder Brian Zahnd refers to this poem in a chapter that argues that the crucifixion of Jesus is the ultimate center of human history. Even while humans continue to commit the same old same old violence as we see most painfully in Ukraine and Gaza right now, God has transformed all of it for all time. Hopkins expresses this insight in poetry:

In Joseph’s garden they threw by
The riv’n Vine, leafless, lifeless, dry:
On Easter morn the Tree was forth,
In forty days reach’d heaven from earth;
Soon the whole world is overspread;
Ye weary, come into the shade.

And then the profoundest transubstantiation of all: the transubstantiation of us into partricipation in the divine nature, one not untouched by the sufferings of Christ supporting our own:

The field where He has planted us
Shall shake her fruit as Libanus,
When He has sheaved us in His sheaf,
When He has made us bear his leaf. –
We scarcely call that banquet food,
But even our Saviour’s and our blood,
We are so grafted on His wood.

The World God Loves

John 3: 16: “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son” seems to be almost everybody’s favorite Bible verse. I don’t mind being a non-conformist when called to be and I have been known to get a conceited pleasure out of being one, but this is among my favorite verses too. However, the very popularity and familiarity of the verse can perhaps dull us to its power to impact our lives.

I will work with what seems an innocuous question: What is the world that God loved enough to send the Son into it? The word kosmos in normal usage had a neutral connotation, meaning the world in general, the world that happens to be. This corresponds to normal usage in English. In John’s Gospel, however, the word has a highly negative connotation, closer to the negative connotations of “worldly,” only much stronger than that. Most New Testament scholars interpret the word as John uses it as “the world-against-God, the world in rebellion against God,” as I learned it in seminary. Curiously, much preaching on this particular verse, including my own, seems to make it an exception; thinking of the world in a neutral way. But what if this isn’t an exception? What does this verse look like then? What does the world hostile to God look like, and what kind of deity would want to get messed up with it?

The reading from Numbers gives us a snapshot of the world against God. One would think that their deliverance from Egypt would earn some gratitude on the part of the Israelites, but all they do is grumble angrily about the hardships in the wilderness. (Num. 21: 5) When attacked by poisonous snakes that image their poisonous behavior, they repent. That’s something, but they Israelites show a pattern of turning against God time and time again when things get tough. The snake Moses puts on a pole saves the people. This smacks of sympathetic magic but surely God is telling us something here. What we have is poison driving out poison. Many medicines operate on the same principle; the Greek word pharmakon from which we get the word “pharmacy” means both medicine and poison. Somehow, God uses the poison of rebellion to cure the rebellion, perhaps because the plague reveals the truth of the poison of their rebellion. Paul writes that to the Ephesians that they “followed the ways of the world”—using “world” in much the way John does—following the desires and thoughts of “the flesh.” (Eph. 2: 2–3) One could say they were deserving of wrath because they embodied it.

In the John’s Gospel, we see much of “the world” in the sense of the rebellious world. The debates between Jesus and the enemies John calls “The Jews” are very intense. Their accusations that Jesus is possessed of a demon when he offers them freedom from sin make them look demon-possessed themselves. (Jn. 8: 48) These debates make painful reading on account of their ferocious character. In contrast to the frenzied emotive outburst of rebellion in these debates, John also shows us the cold calculating style of rebellion. When Lazarus is raised from the dead, they react to the resurrected life with a plot to kill Lazarus as well as Jesus since people are following Jesus because of this resurrection. And then there is the cold calculation of Caiaphas who says that it is better that one man die for the people than that the whole people perish. (Jn. 11: 50) John seems to have no love for these enemies of Jesus. Surely God can have no love for them. John’s dramatic portrayal of their enmity tends to reinforce our own rejection of these enemies. But these enemies are the kosmos. They are the kosmos God loved deeply enough to send his beloved son into it.

Right before John declares this love on God’s part, Jesus alludes to the serpent in the desert: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” (Jn. 3: 14–15) Jesus has turned this unsettling and cryptic gesture into a prophecy. The poison of rebellion on the part of Jesus’ enemies leads to Jesus being raised on a cross and the poison of this rebellion becomes the cure for the very same rebellion. In Ephesians, Paul, who himself had been a rebellious enemy of Jesus, experiences this very same love that motivated God to give God’s only begotten Son to make him, and us, who were dead in transgressions, alive in Christ. Not only alive, but raised up with Christ and seated with him in the heavenly realms. (Eph. 2: 4–6)

All of this sounds great–and it is beyond great–but John warns us of the judgment that the Light came into the world and we preferred darkness to light. (Jn. 3: 19 ) As the kosmos works to protect its rebellion to this blinding light, it falls into blinding darkness. How? If we slip into the default neutral understanding of “world” in the great verse proclaiming God’s love, we think this “world” is us—the good guys, and the world in rebellion is some other world—the bad guys who rebelled against Jesus. Paul had no illusions of this sort after his Damascus experience. But do we see the truth of our own grumbling in the deserts in life? Do we see ourselves as part of the kosmos Jesus loves in spite of our rebellion? Asking ourselves these questions as honestly as we can is a fundamental Lenten practice. Further on in Ephesians, Paul stresses that Christ’s raising us to His life has destroyed the barrier that had polarized Jew and Gentile–the ultimate embodiment of an us vs. them spirituality in Paul’s day. If we think this love is intended for us and not for them, we have fallen deeply into the darkness, preferring it to the Light that came into the world. Being among those who believe and have eternal life, then, is not a mental act of thinking something is true; it is about opening our eyes to the light, letting that light blind us, and then stumbling in the light instead of in the dark. It is this bumbling and stumbling that leads into the quality of life that is eternal life where there are many rooms in the Father’s house. (Jn. 14: 2)

Glamor and Glory Transfigured

It is a source of insight that the word “glamor” normally refers to a pleasing quality, one that makes the rich and famous rich and famous, but it can also mean a spell that exerts power over other people. When we think of a Hollywood actress as glamorous, we think that is a good thing, but such an actress does tend to put a spell on those devoted to her. Such careers are considered glorious, also a good thing. The word “glory” has a rich ambiguity in biblical studies. When we read the word “glory” in scripture, especially as an attribute of God, we think it means something wonderful, and sometimes it does. But the Greek word doxa can mean the opposite: disgrace. As James Alison said in one of his writings, doxa actually means “reputation.” A reputation can be good or bad. When applied to humans, glory, doxa, is associated with human glory that tends to be violent, for example a victor in war. That was the kind of glory that Roman emperors strove for and often got. If we find life dull or downright oppressive, then we crave for some glamor and glory. We want to be bespelled by someone glamorous. The glory of a victory parade for a victorious football team makes life exciting and well, glorious. For the winners anyway. Not so much for the losers.

I have come to see that these concepts of glamor and glory were instilled in me before I had any way of knowing it was happening. They were two of many filters that informed my reactions to life and still do as reflex reactions. It is unavoidable that such a thing should happen to me and everybody else. Humans are cultural animals and that means we get cultured. Becoming aware of how we are cultured and then trying to change the culture when that is desirable, is a an important challenge. René Girard, gave us much insight into this phenomenon when he wrote about the natural way humans share desires. We don’t live with our own desires, as we think; rather, we live in a sea of desires of others all around us. The desires for glamor and glory are among the desires shared among all of us.

This inculturation had an affect on how I first reacted to the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus on Mount Tabor. One could say that the image of a resplendent Jesus cast something of a glamor on me, especially with the help of Raphael’s great painting. There was much that was theologically sound in this reaction. I took it as a vision of the potential transfiguration of all creation, as Gerard Manley Hopkins said: “the world is charged with the grandeur of God.” Many gloriously beautiful works of music also transfigure the world. The Transfiguration made Jesus look like a winner, what with hanging out with two heavyweight bigwigs from the Hebrew scriptures, and in a sense that was true, but Jesus was not the kind of winner who gets ticker tape parades down Fifth Avenue.

Countering this inculturation of glamor and glory was the awareness that Jesus was about to begin the trip to Jerusalem where he was going to die on the cross. Adding a celebration of the Transfiguration at the final Sunday of Epiphany, the last Sunday before Lent, did a lot to shift attention in that direction, but there was still a tendency to think of the Transfiguration as an encouragement to the disciples—and to us—before the grimness of Lent sets in and we follow the Way of the Cross. The reactions of the disciples—the closest disciples of Jesus—fits the same inculturation of glamor and glory that I grew up with two thousand years later.

What I have come to see–and I have to give credit to thinkers like René Girard and James Alison for this—is that the disgrace of crucifixion is the glamor and glory, not the transfigured light. That is, Jesus wins glory by losing. It is because Jesus became the victim of the religious and secular powers that Jesus showed his radiance as the transfigured human. This kind of transfiguration is ugly when we take the gold plate and jewels off so many crosses gilded by them and focus on the ugly death on the cross. But this ugliness shows us the truth of the violence we inflict on each other in our search for glamor and glory. In Mark, Jesus calls himself “The Son of Man.” Much ink has been spilled on defining the phrase, but the most convincing interpretation is that it means roughly the true human being. In order to be true, Jesus had to undergo an ugly death of suffering precisely because so many other people had suffered death and mutilation and humiliation before Jesus and continue to do so, up to the present day. Much of this inflicted suffering has resulted in glory and glamor for the winners but Jesus has shown us the truth of that glory and glamor, and it isn’t pretty.

Should we toss out all bejeweled crosses? I think not. The thing to do is discern the truth in the glitter. In the great hymn Crux fidelis, the cross is “richly jeweled” but it is consecrated by the Lamb’s blood when Jesus was “nailed and mocked and parched.” We can appreciate the glamor of movie stars and electrifying pianists, but we need to watch for victims when glory has rolled over them in its wake. To quote Paul: ‘For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.” (2 Cor. 4: 6) The face of Christ is a crucified face. Paul confirms this when he says: “We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body” (2 Cor. 4: 10) Yes, the Transfiguration does point to the Resurrection and Ascension, but the only route is through the cross. The ugly death of Jesus is the source, the stream of living water flowing by the tree of life whose leaves offer healing for all nations. (Rev. 22: 2)

For more about René Girard see: Living Stones in the House of the Forgiving Victim and Living Together with our Shared Desires

Called to Repent

The calling of Jesus’ first four apostles in Mark is inspiring but it doesn’t make a lot of sense when we think about it. A complete stranger calls four complete strangers and they drop everything and follow him. (Mk. 1: 16–20) We can soften the improbability by noting that it is possible, even likely, that Jesus and these four men had sone acquaintance beforehand. but–let’s face it—answering a call from someone like Jesus just doesn’t make sense except maybe to the person who actually receives the call, and even then, the call tends to be a lot more compelling than sensible. At l east that’s what I still how I feel about my call to the monastic life. After all, a call from God tends to be disruptive to the life one has been living such as being a fisher on the shores of Lake Galilee. Does this call have anything to do with us?

We might try to distance ourselves from this calling by thinking that the apostles were exceptional people, but Mark and the other evangelists stress the ordinariness of the people called by Jesus. It’s professional religious people like ministers and monastics who should feel out of place with those first called. This ordinariness raises the suspicion that God, as Creator, calls everybody whom God has made. Such a call, then, is the norm, not an exception. This supposition is confirmed when St. Paul designates those called by God as members of an ekklesia, a word that means: “Those called out.” So all of us are called and the call makes no sense unless we accept that we are grounded in God as our creator, in which case God’s calling makes perfect, divine, sense. What else is involved with God’s calling of us?.

Jesus’ call of the four fishers follows straight upon Jesus call for repentance because the kingdom of God has come near. (Mk. 1: 15) What do we repent from? From fishing? Nothing wrong with that. As one who loves fish and seafood, I wouldn’t want all fishers to stop their work. Mark says that Jesus’ preaching began right after John had been put into prison. So persecuting prophets like John the Baptist is something we might want to repent of. But what if we are peaceful people who don’t persecute prophets, or think we don’t? In the Book of Jonah, the prophet calls on the Ninevites to repent—and they do! Since they were a violent society, one that had attacked Israel and destroyed the Northern kingdom, they had a lot of violence to repent of. But what if we aren’t invading other peoples’ countries? Jonah’s call for the Ninevites’s repentance circles back to Israel and the rest of us in a couple of ways. If Nineveh can repent surely Israel can repent; we can repent. More to the point, since Ninevites were violent enemies to Israel, who wants them to repent and become God’s people like us? Jonah didn’t want them. The call to witness to and welcome such strangers gets to the nub of what repentance is all about. It can be pretty disruptive to what we’re used to.

In his First Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul offers some cryptic directions for how we might repent: “those who have wives should live as if they do not; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them.” (1 Cor. 7: 29–31) Does this mean we should repent of marriage, shopping, mourning, or being happy? As Paul would say: “Me genoito!”—by no means! We can get some help with this passage by looking at the concept of mimetic desire on the part of the French thinker René Girard. Mimetic desire, as Girard conceives it, is the human tendency to want something, not because I want it but because somebody else wants it. This can lead to peaceful sharing but it can and does lead to violence. In this problematic passage in First Corinthians, Paul is showing his own profound insight into mimetic desire. It is bad enough to want what someone else has got just because that person has it and presumably wants to keep it. This scenario is greatly exacerbated when the person who has something purposely (though sometimes subconsciously) tries to inflame other peoples’ desire for what one has. Dostoevsky understood this problem profoundly. His intensely puzzling novel The Idiot becomes understandable when one realizes how Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin is stirring Prince Mjishkin’s desire for Natasha Philppovna in order to vindicate his own desire for her, and Aglaya Ivanova Epanchin, in turn, tries to intensify Natashya’s desire for the Prince, whom she had in hand until she played this game—all of this unfolds with tragic results. Paul would have us steer clear of this pitfall by being detached, not only from what we don’t have, but at least as much from what we do have. This misuse of mimetic desire is what Paul would have us repent of. This sort of detachment transforms the way we experience the world.

As Jesus’ ministry progresses, the disciples don’t look good, and Mark’s portrayal of them is the most negative. Perhaps the most egregious example of the disciples’ obtuseness is the way the disciples fight over who is the greatest in the face of Jesus’ predictions of his upcoming death and resurrection. Such infighting imitates the Ninevites rather than the Lord they are ostensibly following. Constant repentance, then, is needed to help us clarify what following Jesus is all about, and we have to expect it to take time. So let’s not waste any time getting started.

Singing Jesus to Sleep

In Christian devotion (and in many other religious traditions as well) there is much praise to God for creating the world. That God would consider it worth while to make a world with living creatures in it is astounding; an occasion for contemplative awe. According to the Psalter, the rivers clap their hands and the mountains sing together for joy. (Ps. 98: 8) Needless to say, the Psalmist expects humans to praise God at least as much as that if not more.

The traditional celebration of the Christ Child is enriched by the inclusion of nature. It is true that Luke doesn’t mention animals except for the sheep tended by the shepherds, but where there is a manger, there are animals, and the Magi probably didn’t walk great distances when camels were available. The tradition of farm animals being present to welcome Jesus into the world is inspired by the words of Isaiah: “The ox knows its master, the donkey its owner’s manger, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.” (Is. 1: 3) Isaiah obviously thinks the animals are better at praising God than humans. Meanwhile, the angels really show us how to whoop it up over the pastures where the shepherds are tending their flock.

It is amazing that in spite of all the human failure to praise and obey God, the Creator entered God’s own creation as a human being, as frail as any other. That is quite a lot of downward mobility for one in whom “all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities.” (Col. 1: 16) It really is too much for us to take in. Like Mary, we need to treasure these things and ponder them in our hearts. (Lk. 2: 19)

In addition to all the carols about ox and ass tending the baby Jesus and the lovely carol Angels We Have Heard on High, there seem to be more Christmas lullabies than there are stars in the sky. The lullaby for Jesus, Schlaf, mein Jesu,” (Sleep my Jesus) sung by the alto soloist in Bach’s Christmas Oratorio is among the most beautiful. As a choir boy, I sang several lullaby carols. One of my favorites was a Czech carol called the “Rocking Carol” with flowing melodic lines accompanying the lovely melody.

From the dawn of humanity, mothers have been lulling their babies to sleep. It seems quite possible that lullabies may be among the oldest songs conceived by humanity. They are among the first songs that children learn. I still remember several from early childhood, especially the Irish lullaby: “Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-rah.” It is both fitting and a deeply sound intuition to assume that the infant Jesus would have been lulled to sleep like every other baby, his divinity notwithstanding. Nothing could more deeply affirm his full humanity. The lullaby Christmas carols give us entry into a devotion of rocking Jesus to sleep as an act of devotion.

Because God became a child who was lulled to sleep, every child is Jesus, just as each person is the least (and therefor the most) of his brethren. Like every baby, Jesus was fragile and needed to be handled with care. When he grew up, nails could be driven into his hands just as easily as with any other human. Because of Jesus, every baby, every person, needs to be handled with the same gentle care expressed in these Christmas lullabies. The same applies to the whole eco-system, which is both resilient and frail, so that heaven and nature can have something to sing about. Quite a lot for us, like Mary, to ponder in our hearts.

Czech Rocking Caro lhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpa2qjIxolY

How to Look Forward to God

From time to time, some of us, probably most of us, are overcome with a feeling that something is about to happen. What it is that is coming is usually vague as in the celebrated song from West Side Story: “Something’s coming, I don’t know what it is/ But it is gonna be great.” Perhaps this longing turns out to be wishful thinking, or maybe something comes but it turns out not to be as great as hoped for. But then there are times when something really does come. John the Baptist proclaimed in the desert a conviction that something momentous was about to happen, even if he didn’t know exactly what it was going to be: “After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” (Mk. 1: 7–8) With Advent being the time of expectation and preparation, John the Baptist is a focus because of his own vocation of prophetic expectation. So how can we deepen our expectations today through his expectations in his time?

Past history can give us some sense of direction about what might be coming, as it did with John. If a parent tells a child that a special treat is coming, the child’s expectations are fueled by the special treats given previously, even if they don’t make the next treat predictable. Mark quotes the opening verses of Isaiah 40 to indicate the history that fueled his expectations. The verses in Isaiah proclaim the miraculous return of the Israelites to Jerusalem at the end of the Babylonian Exile. This remembered act of deliverance raised hope that God would do yet another great new thing in the present time of need under the Roman occupation which had exiled the Jews in their own country.

As for the present time, John did not know specifically what was coming but, from our vantage point, we know that the infant Jesus had been born and we also know what happened when this child grew up. Does that mean that for us there is no suspense? No. When we read a story for a second or third time, we may know how it ends but we find ourselves understanding much more about what the ending means by going through the story again. Surely none of us have exhausted the meanings of Jesus’ birth and death and resurrection! To give a telling example: John himself seems to have been off the mark when he said someone “stronger” than he was going to come as Jesus was born a helpless infant and Mark stresses Jesus’ weakness on the cross. Or is this weakness an unimaginable strength beyond John’s grasp? The Greek word ischyros used here means physical strength, but it can also refer to spiritual and moral strength. What does all this mean to us? We have much insight and inspiration to look forward to!

Like John, we look to the future with trepidation and hope. The author of Second Peter captures our apprehensions today by predicting that “the heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.” (2 Pet. 3: 10) That does not sound reassuring and surely is not what God wants for us; it is obviously a human possibility. But in the midst of such trials, we have a “new heaven and a new earth” to look forward to. Such a new heaven and new earth is beyond imagining; surely they are not like the mediocre visions of heaven that one literary critic referred to as a move from second class to first class accommodations attested to in bad poems..

Is our hope and expectation hopelessly vague? The prophecy in Isaiah can help us now as much as it helped the Israelites at the time of the return from exile. The road may be rough, but God will make the rugged places a plain. (Is 40: 4) Moreover, God will lead us as a shepherd leads the sheep and, again beyond imagining, “the glory of the Lord will be revealed.”

What do we do in the meantime? One thing we can and must do is wait, poised and ready for something to come. Even the impatient adolescent Tony sang in his song: “Yes it will/ Maybe just by holding still, it’ll be there.” If Tony can hold still until he meets Maria, we can hold still until we meet our God who is surely coming to meet us. The other thing we can and must do is repent. We need to straighten out the rough valleys and hills within ourselves that obstruct a highway of God, and we need to turn away from the ways we inflame the earth and turn to ways we can make the earth new. John preached and enacted a baptism of repentance; Jesus’ first admonition after being baptized himself was: Repent. Repent and wait: that is what Advent is all about. Meanwhile, something is coming from God even if we don’t know what it is.

What Kind of Messiah?

After deflecting several questions from the Pharisees, Jesus poses a question of his own:” What about the Messiah? Whose son is he?” (Mt. 22: 42) Predictably they answer: “The Son of David.” That was a standard assumption at the time. Then Jesus quotes the opening verses of Psalm 110 with its Messianic overtones. Since David was believed to be the Psalmist and to be speaking to the Messiah, Jesus asks how David can call his own son “Lord?” The Pharisees can’t answer the question and, typically, Jesus doesn’t answer it either, but lets the question hang. The question has been hanging ever since.

It seems likely that Jesus was questioning the notion of a Davidic messiah who would do what David did—win lots of battles against Israel’s enemies. As Jesus became more and more aware that he was the Messiah, the question became: What kind of a Messiah should he be? If the prevailing notion of a Davidic Messiah was not it his calling, what was his calling?

The question posed to Jesus immediately preceding the dialogue about the Messiah, asking him what the greatest commandment was, and the answer Jesus gave to that question, suggests an alternative understanding of the Messiah that Jesus was beginning to arrive at. It seems that Jesus was beginning to think he was the “Lord” addressed by David. This lead to the question: what kind of Lord should he be? Should he be a Lord whom other people were supposed to love with full heart, soul, and mind? Or was Jesus, as Lord, also to love his Lord, his heavenly Abba, with full heart, soul, and mind? This thought hints at what became known later as a high Christology, that is a Christology that affirms the divinity of Jesus. That Jesus, divine as he himself was, would turn to his heavenly Abba for guidance suggests Jesus was more interested in honoring his heavenly Abba than he was in being an object of adoration. As it turned out, Jesus learned what was at stake in loving his heavenly Abba with full heart, soul, and mind at Gethsemane. Here, Jesus, Lord as he was, was a Messiah who was deeply vulnerable as a human.

The second great commandment that Jesus cited was taken from Leviticus: the love of neighbor as oneself. (Lev. 19: 18) In Leviticus, this commandment, along with several others in the list, is framed by the Lordship of Yahweh. What is most striking about the great commandment in Leviticus is that it is in the context of not seeking revenge or bearing a grudge. The Davidic model, of course, is all about bearing a grudge against Israel’s enemies and seeking revenge against them in battle. In this verse in Leviticus, Jesus was seeing a different model for the Messiah: one who shares his heavenly Abba’s love for all people and in this love, will forswear revenge when he is killed and raised from the dead. Not what the Pharisees seemed to have been looking for.

When Paul came to see that Jesus was the Messiah, did he see a Davidic Messiah? The way he presents himself to the Thessalonians is a resounding No. Far from seeking praise from others, he cared for them as a nursing mother cares for her children. (Thess. 2: 6–8) Moreover, he suffered persecution as they suffered persecution. Sounds like he modeled himself on the way Jesus came to understand his messiahship in terms of following the two great commandments.

Disobedient Brothers

Since I commented on the Parable of the Two Brothers and the Vineyard in my book Moving and Resting in God’s Desire, I will quote my brief comments here:

One brief parable Jesus told are about two brothers, asked by their father to work in the vineyard. One said he would go but he didn’t, the other said he wouldn’t go but then he did. Which did the will of the father? (Mt. 21:28-32) Jesus’ listeners took the bait and took sides, but I don’t think that is the way to respond. Short as this parable is, it suggests that the two brothers are embroiled in mimetic rivalry to the extent that they always say the opposite of what the other says and do the opposite as well. That is, they react to each other and not at all to the father. Both then, have failed to respond to the father and both are in need of forgiveness and mercy. When Jesus responds to his listeners by pointing out that tax collectors and prostitutes believed John the Baptist and they didn’t, he is hinting that the victims of their mimetic rivalry are entering the Kingdom ahead (and maybe instead) of them.

The rivalrous context of the parable increased the likelihood that Jesus’ listeners would hear the parable rivalrously as I suggest they did. The chief priests and elders were trying to stoke tensions, which were already high, by asking Jesus by what authority he did the things he did, most especially his provocative act of cleansing the temple. Jesus deflected the question by asking them if they thought John’s baptism had come from God or was only John’s human initiative. Since the chief priests and the elders were not willing to publically commit themselves, Jesus was not going to commit himself either. He must have realized that they were not going to admit that Jesus’s authority came from heaven any more than they would admit the same of John.

It is worth noting that fraternal strife is a running thread throughout the Hebrew Bible, starting with Cain and Abel. Except for Abel who was killed, the “righteous” brother who wins each struggle can in some ways be seen to be compromised, such as Jacob having trouble believing in Esau’s forgiveness and Joseph testing his brothers severely before reconciling with them. This same fratricidal strife continues throughout Israel’s history with the strife between the divided kingdoms. The parable can also be taken as referring to fraternal strife between Jew and Gentile as is conventionally done, another layer of fraternal strife on a broader scale in Israel’s history. This strife suggests that nobody had both committed to going to the vineyard and actually doing it.

The famous hymn in Philippians 2 shows how Jesus renounced rivalry in a radical way, the same way that Jesus renounced rivalry in his altercations with the chief priests and elders. Since Jesus was not in rivalry with anybody and his attention was directed to the will of his heavenly Abba, Jesus said he would go into the vineyard and went. In this way, Jesus’ authority came from heaven. It is this obedience and renunciation, that, as Paul’s hymn says, led Jesus to the cross where his death offers us a way out of the rivalry that marked not only Israel’s history, but the history of all humankind.

See also Moving and Resting in God’s Desire