Love (and faith and hope) in a time of Corona.

These things let me remember,  

and let me pour out my breathing-self within me: 

oh, how I went along with the throng,  

how I’d process to the House of Gd, 

with the sound of ringing shouts and thanks,  

a crowd keeping the festival.  

Why are you cast down, my own breathing-self,  

and in turmoil within me? 

Wait for Gd, for yet will I thank him,  

whose very gaze brings rescue.1 

Bultmann once said that all theology is “theanthropology”: we can at best attend only to the relationship between the human and the Divine. Rabbi Tony Bayfield has recently refined this point, in insisting that all authentic theology must start with autobiography.2 A large part of the discernment process of “testing a vocation” to ordained ministry in the Church of England is repeated articulation of one’s own story. I am in a time of flux, which involves me in telling that story at interviews. All in all, locating myself in the wider narrative of our days (warts and all, on all parties) should come easily enough to me. Yet here I am struggling.  

Am I primarily a weak, fleshly human being, indeed one who himself almost certainly has a very mild form of the virus, and so must self-isolate? Am I a witness-bearer and truth-teller in my neighbourhood? (On some counts, half my parish is the epicentre of the epicentre – Newham – of the epicentre – London – of my country.) Am I one waiting to be taken on as an emergency bank health care support worker, with very focused hopes and fears? Am I a Church of England minister, adjusting to a strict ban on all corporate worship, and learning to play my role in building up a “virtual church”, lamenting the loss and celebrating the surprising gains at once? Am I co-minister and friend of my priest-in-charge, who bears responsibility as chaplain to the staff of the principal emergency mortuary, in our parish? Am I a particular pastor, with very particular responsibilities: for D., M., A., V., etc; for those whose burden differently pains me daily: funeral directors, prison staff? Am I an unsettled citizen – or just maybe a struggling Christian prophet – reacting to what I can only see as evasions and the rewriting of history by powerful politicians? The UK government, after all, seems to be passing all responsibility – blame – to the people. Their literal command is: “Be alert; control the virus...”. We are encouraged to return to work, but mocked for entering crowded tube-trains. Am I one who prays to Gd (or intends to, who is more myself when I pray), who can most authentically comment on changes to my prayer life? Do I “find” Gd “here”? 

Of course, the answer to these questions is consistently: Yes. So not so much a network of concerns, as a child’s scribble-drawing, perhaps. Little wonder that I know not what to say. But then I note that I do speak. One of the first things I did, after the government banned public worship with the Church’s full support and blessing (our Archbishops’ strong guidance went further than the government’s, I think with prudence), was draw people to the Psalms (Tehillim). I insisted (as many do) that all human life is here – joy, praise, naivety, contemplation, bewilderment, rage, hate, despair – and so here is the assurance that there will be ways to pray through this. I drew attention to Psalm 42/43 (treating them as one unit), because it is, inter alia, a psalm of lament, from one who clearly misses embodied and large-scale worship; who mourns that they no longer go “along with the throng”; who yet insists that waiting upon Gd (maybe with tears or gritted teeth) is good, valid, timely, and possible. I wrote my own translation, seeking nothing polished or poetic, but just to see what a return to the Hebrew might throw up. 

There is one other thing about this psalm-unit. Since a discussion with my spiritual director just before I was made priest (2006), it has been my custom, more often than not, to recite these psalms before I preside at the eucharist. So, more than a decade before this crisis, I was taking all the distress and lament and lostness of humankind in it as the raw material that is turned into thanksgiving (eucharisto!), through the encounter with Gd in it. This was in the first place because of the line (43.4a): ve-avo'ah el-misbach elohim el el-simchat-gili - “Oh let me go to the altar of Gd, to Gd, the joy of my rejoicing”. But, as soon as I started reciting it, I realised it was as much because of the opening (42.2): ke-ayyal ta’araog al-afike-mayyim, ken nafshi ta’arog elekah, elohim. “Just as a deer will pant for water channels, so it is my breathing-self which pants for you, O Gd”.  

Frightened and needy and desperate thirsting for Gd and Gd’s help may well be norm for human beings. This is bearable. This is met with.  

1, Psalm 42.5f. This is my own translation. For the whole psalm-unit, see http://frpatrickponders.blogspot.com/2020/03/psalm-42-and-43-bloggers-translation.html. Here also is a defence of my novel translation of nefesh as “breathing-self”, which I find unpoetic and even ugly, but still better than “soul”, and of the deliberate defective spelling of “God” as “Gd,” which strategy is indebted to R. Kendall Soulen in The Divine Name(s) and the Holy Trinity: Volume One, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky, 2011 

  

For Gd's Mercy - and More - Endure For Ever

Sermon. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford, 16.02.20.

Second Sunday before Lent (Year A)

·       Psalm136 [135]

Let me begin with an expression of gratitude. One thing about how we worship that I am grateful for. This is not to pre-empt what emerges from our review of our worship, to take place in due course. It is just a personal expression of gratitude. I am grateful that, with very few exceptions, we have within our services all the Bible readings we might have. I mean we have all thr…. four!

Yes, not for the first time, I am going to insist that we have four Bible readings. A Hebrew Bible or Old Testament reading, a Psalm, a New Testament reading, and a Gospel reading.

In terms of themes, it is the Gospel that leads. The Old Testament reading picks up or anticipates or reflects or echoes or enriches or even explains at least one aspect of the Gospel reading. And the psalm then picks up or echoes one aspect of the Old Testament reading. The choice of readings is not random (even if it can feel that way); it is carefully crafted.

So, today, I will do something unusual. I will offer some teaching on today’s psalm. For surely the psalm of the day, Psalm 136, is – if I can use the technical expression – a real humdinger!

In both the Hebrew and the Greek, it consists of 26 verses, each of which begins with some exuberance about Gd, and that exuberance receives the response “for his mercy endures for ever”. In Hebrew that is ki le-olam chasdo. Ki le-olam chasdo. It’s not hard: try it with me:

ki le-olam chasdo.

The Greek is a little trickier: hoti eis ton aiona to eleos autou. We’ll build up to that.

Let us look at verse one.

Give thanks. The Hebrew is indeed from the normal word for saying thank you (also in modern Hebrew). It is plural. We are called here to give thanks together.

It may be important to make clear that in Hebrew to give thanks means something different from to bless. To bless Gd is not to give thanks. To bless is to give honour to Gd, in whatever circumstance you find yourself. (It may well come from the word for knee – to bless is then to bend the knee in honour.)

You see, if you study Jewish prayers, you will come across a prayer that a Jewish man prays every morning, blessing Gd “who has not made me a woman”. It’s very easy to hear that as saying: “Thank you Gd for the privilege of being a man.” But it is more: “I honour you Gd, who has given me the vocation of being a male Jew, and I accept the responsibilities that go with that distinctive vocation.”

Does that sound like special pleading? Well, let me tell you that there is a special blessing “on seeing a person of unusual appearance”. (I’ll let you decide if that’s one we need to learn.) There is also a blessing on hearing bad news, especially news of a death. No religious community would command an expression of thanks on hearing of a death. The blessing – not the thanks – is “Blessed are you, LORD, our Gd and Sovereign of the Universe, the true judge.” In today’s psalm, though, we are not blessing (honouring) Gd, but giving deep, rich thanks.

To the Lord. The word for “the Lord” here would take a lot of unpacking. Not in our sheets, but in many Bibles, the word would be in capitals, all in capitals (L.O.R.D). And that is a sign that the Hebrew text does not have the normal word for “Lord” – or even an unusual word for “Lord”. Rather what you have are the four Hebrew letters that amount to Y.H.W.H in our alphabet. And Y.H.W.H. is the divine name for Gd. It is the name Gd reveals to Moses when Gd speaks out of the burning bush. Gd says it stands for something like “I will be who I will be”.

The complication is that in the Jewish tradition, such was the concern not to take this name in vain, that the speaking of the name was restricted to the High Priest, on one day of the year (Yom Kippur), in the Holy of Holies. So – you can see the problem – no one actually knows for sure how to pronounce it. So, when people come across the divine name Y.H.W.H. in the sacred texts, they have to replace it with another word, if they are to have anything to say. And usually that is indeed the word for Lord (or actually “My Lord” [with the plural of majesty]): A-do-nai.

That may seem strange, but it is a practice the Christian communities took over without reservation. All the ancient Christian texts also use some kind of “circumlocution” when they come across those letters, out of humility before the majesty of the name.

This whole business sometimes leads people to say that in the biblical or Jewish tradition, Gd has no name. But that is wrong. Gd does have a name, and Gd does share Gd’s name with us.

Gd is not distant, or in-all-senses unknowable. The human task is actually to get to know Gd, who shares his name with us. But! But we are spared the danger of speaking that name in vain to our own harm; we are spared treating Gd as someone we might think of as being at our beck and call (“Oy, god, over here!”). So that we cannot do that, we are given the gift of ignorance of how to pronounce the name, in this life.

The Hebrew word for “good” is pretty much like our word, “good”. I mean: it says that Gd is attractive and beautiful and reliable and favourably disposed and moral; no one aspect is particularly to the fore.

And so to ki le-olam chasdo; for his mercy endures for ever. The word for “for ever” (le-olam) is not so much about eternity, as an abstract concept. It is not really about being outside of time. It means more: “into the future as far as you can possibly see or imagine”. If I wanted to debase the psalm, I might suggest the translation “going forward”. But I don’t. So I won’t. So please scrub that from your mind!

The climax of the verse, and of each verse in the Hebrew, is the word for “mercy”, chasdo, in Hebrew. Well, chasdo is his mercy; mercy on its own is chesed. Except that the Hebrew is much richer than the word mercy, or at least mercy as it is understood these days. The KJV often translates it as “lovingkindness” (though not, as it happens, here). And lovingkindness does capture another aspect of the word. In what is surely a favourite verse in the Bible – “the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end” [Lamentations 3:22], it is the words “steadfast love” which are chesed in the Hebrew.

Steadfast love. Lovingkindness. We do need to be clear, though, that the word does not refer to any emotion on Gd’s part. It’s not romantic love. (Here I’ll make no reference back to Friday [Valentine’s Day]. Let us not add to the pain.) It’s not even a parent’s love for their child, in the sense that it is not that Gd looks at us and wants to go “cuchicoo”. But nor it is a duty on Gd’s part. Gd does not show us lovingkindness because some force is making Gd do so.

No. The best (least wrong) way of thinking of it is: it is Gd’s disposition. Gd’s disposition is to come close to us always with lovingkindness. It is what Gd does because of who Gd is. It is who Gd is.

And so, yes, I will say again. Hidden within this very word, chesed, is the lesson that

·       there is nothing we can do to make Gd love us more;

·       there is nothing we can do to make Gd love us less.

And so to the second verse of the 26…

I am teasing (as I hope you knew). I have reached the point of saying what I felt needed saying.

Ki le-olam chasdo!

For his lovingkindness endures for ever!

We could all do with repeating this at least 26 times every day. For psalm 136 I am grateful, and I invite you to join me in this.

Ki le-olam chasdo!

Amen.

Sermon: You are salt and you are light. You are.

Sermon. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford, 9 February 2020.

3^rd Sunday Before Lent (Year A)

·       Matthew 5.13-20

A few hundred years ago, when everything was sepia (colour had not yet come in), I went to university. I read Theology, and, liking languages as I do, signed up for Biblical Hebrew as well as New Testament Greek. More than once I was told: if you ever wanted to do serious research in the Bible, go for the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament.

·       Hebrew is thought to be harder than Greek (it isn’t);

·       the Old Testament is thought to be less important than the New (it isn’t);

·       and the Old Testament is thought to be much, much longer than the new (it is).

The point is: it is not an exaggeration to say that every single word of the New Testament has been studied, analysed, and researched. So it is that much harder to say anything original.

There is a lot of truth in that. Every single word. Certainly, I know at least one person who wrote a whole dissertation (a small book) on the word… salt. To Halas in Greek. A waste of time and energy?

Actually, it’s not ridiculous, when you think about it. “We all know” what it is to be “the salt of the earth”. Someone who is “the salt of the earth” is

·       a kind and well-intentioned person;

·       a good egg;

·       a top banana;

·       perhaps even the bees-knees.

And so on. A good person. But of course we only “know” this meaning because of this Bible text. These meanings are what we have done with – what we have made out of – the Bible text. The meaning is later than the text. So the meaning Matthew intended – or the meaning Jesus intended – has still to be worked out. We do have to dig deeper into the mines of meaning.

Fortunately, this is (for once) not an impossibly difficult task. For all the evidence suggests that the purposes of salt have changed little over the centuries. Salt is used:

·       to give flavour to food;

·       salt is used to preserve food (especially in days before fridges, but to some extent still, by choice);

·       and (more unusual this), salt is used as a fertiliser;

·       [a member of the congregation added: also for medical purposes].

Can we work out which use of salt is to the fore in today’s gospel? That is not easy. Some say because the phrase is “salt of the earth” (to halas tes ges), then the use as fertiliser is the primary meaning. Salt for the earth, in effect. Maybe. And if so, this can work to keep us humble: we are, perhaps, not a million miles away from being like manure to be worked into the mud! But the meaning is as likely to be “salt out of the earth”. So we cannot say.

You are the salt of the earth.

You are the light of the world.

Light is an easier symbol to understand, I’d say (thank goodness). But we just have to be clear that, since this text was written many centuries before electricity, here it means the light of the flame, the light of fire.

So we are salt, and we are flame.

We can say a few things about this.

First, as salt and as flame, too much of us in one place is a bad thing. Oversalted food, oversalted fields, oversalted medication, too much fire in a room – these are not just unpleasant things, they are dangerous things. So I say again, too much of us in one place is a bad thing. Except of course it’s not quite that. What is meant is rather if we are spending too much time in one place, that is a bad thing.

To be clear:

·       we gather (here we are);

·       and we are right to gather;

·       we need to gather;

·       and Gd calls us to gather.

·       It is good that we are here.

But! But we are here in order to be sent out. When at the end of the service we say or hear “Go in the peace of Christ” or “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord”, this does not mean: “The service is over; we have run out of things to say, sing, and do”. No. We mean: “We, if we can inhabit and take to ourselves all that we have experienced, now have the forgiveness, compassion and strength we need to go out into the world and truly be salt and light in the wider mess that is the world.”

Second, salt and flame are very different things.

·       Salt works when it is hidden, when it is fully worked into something bigger than itself.

·       Flame works when it is on display, when it openly radiates its light throughout.

This is important. Important for us. It reminds us that we are called to both tasks.

·       Sometimes what we do is rightly and properly utterly hidden. No one notices, and that is okay. We do the right thing. An act of forgiveness here. An act of kindness there.

·       Sometimes what we do is rightly and properly public or “out there”. Taking a stance against racism here. Shutting down some gossip there. Neither the hidden nor the public ministry is more important than the other. The wisdom is knowing when to be hidden and when to be out. Salt here; flame there. We learn this wisdom by prayer, and from each other.

Third, and I don’t want to shock you here, but: salt is salt and flame is flame! I mean: the vocation of salt is to be salt, the saltiest salt it can be. Flame is called to be flame, the brightest and flamiest flame it can be. And we are to take comfort in this.

Our ministry in the world is not to do things that are utterly alien to us, that oppose or harm our true nature. Our ministry is to be our authentic selves, whatever that means. It doesn’t always mean doing what seems to come naturally, as our instincts and drives are not always right (to put it mildly). But it does mean that our vocation will be a coming to know ourselves as we really always were, as we always are. Further, we are right to be curious about our selves, and interested and find enjoyment in discovering our selves.

You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. The Greek sentences do include the verb to be (este). You may (just perhaps) remember that I’ve said that both in Hebrew and Greek you typically do not need the verb to be. It can be implicit. You the salt of the earth. You the light of the word. These would be perfectly good Greek sentences. So it may well be that the addition of the verb to be here is emphatic. You are. Who you are is the salt of the earth. Who you really are is the enlightening flame of the world.

·       So, most of your Christian life is to be lived dispersed in the world, the world in all its pain, mess and doubt.

·       Sometimes what you do will be hidden and unthanked; no matter.

·       Sometimes what you do will be public and so risky; no matter.

·       Don’t worry. In each and every moment, you are being called to do one thing only: to be what you are. To be who you are.

I’ll add: in all the renewal we are engaged in as a parish and as a worshipping community, all the change – the small and the big - is really all about helping us – as persons and as a gathering – to become who we are. Just as we want salt to be salty and the light of the flame to be light.

As this has been a reflection on a New Testament text, and knowing you as I do, I am aware that it is very unlikely I have said anything original. I give no apology. It is said with care and love. I address this to each of you as a disciple of Christ, and, yes, to me as one such too: By the grace of Gd, be who you are.

Amen.