On the fierceness of the New Testament and the gentleness of the Old!

 

Sermon. 4/12/2022. Advent 2 (Year of Matthew)

Isaiah 11.1-10

Matthew 3.1-12

 

There is no football in this sermon.[1] I am not proud of this. I am not ashamed of this.

 

Here’s a thing that does involve some shame. Here is an attitude I think it is hard for us fully to shake off. I mean that sense that

·        the god of the Old Testament is a god of judgement, anger, war, and narrowness;

·        the god of the New Testament is a god of forgiveness, love, peace, and inclusivity.

It is a contrast deeply if quietly embedded in our society.

Even if Christians are now a minority in the country (as we are told we do), some notions are still around.

I suspect that this is one of them.

Bluntly, the god of the New Testament replaces the god of the Old, and it is good that it is so.

 

I have already said that some shame attaches itself to this habit of contrast. So my criticism is implicit already.

Let me be explicit:

this contrast, this antithesis is not a Christian belief.

It has no place in authentic Christianity.

It is at very best an oversimplification a tired Sunday-school teacher might stumble into, on an off-day.

But put more simply: it is heresy, pure.

The Christian claim is that (GOD) is One, and Revelation is one, from Genesis to Revelation.

From Genesis to Revelation, (GOD), the One (GOD),

is faithful, creative, loving, forgiving, is for us, is with us.

 

That’s not all, of course.

Another side to this is that when we think of human beings’ relationship to (GOD), we have to say: “it is complicated”.

And so, again, from Genesis to Revelation,

there is much that is attributed to (GOD)

and even much that really does seem to come from (GOD)

which is sharp, harsh, challenging and dark.

I say again: from Genesis to Revelation. In both Old and New Testaments.

 

Why do I say this now?

If ever we wanted to invert the usual contrast (the tired and heretical contrast)

between the god of the Old Testament (furious)

and the god of the New Testament (fluffy),

we could do a lot worse than begin with today’s readings.

I am thinking of the Gospel

and the text from the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament,

chosen to mirror, or echo, or anticipate, or match it, from Isaiah.

 

Even if you were not paying 100% attention to these readings, 

I think even at a headline level, the contrast was clear:

John the Baptist in the New Testament (the New) brings warning and judgement;

Isaiah in the Old Testament (the Old) brings peace and healing.

That way round.

 

Let us look at some details.

In today’s Gospel, John, the prophet of (GOD) comes and speaks of… sin. 

Worse than that, he addresses people like this:

You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?... every tree… that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming… He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand… the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.

Stern stuff. It may be even sterner than we realise. From all that John says, we might want to rescue the promise of baptism in the Holy Spirit, and say that the promise of baptism in the Spirit is something good and hopeful and joyful. But I must ask you to curb your enthusiasm. We have to remember that the word for Spirit has a wide range of meanings. The Greek pneuma, like the Hebrew, ruach, means spirit, and it also means breath, and it also means wind. It is all about motion, about energy. So when John the Baptist promises one who will baptise with… wind and fire, he may actually be promising a fire fanned into flame, an out-of-control fire, a conflagration. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

Contrast all of this (if we call it a message of crisis and purification, we are being kind) with the utterly stately-majestic poetry of the First Reading. A different prophet (not John but Isaiah) promises one who

with righteousness… shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth… The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them… They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.

No judgement, no wrath, no fire, but welcome, peace and inclusion. 

Transformation beyond your wildest dreams.

Who would not long for such a meeting with (GOD) on these terms?

Again, some details. Again, if anything, our translation understates the peacefulness and transformation of Isaiah’s vision.

Our translation says of the one to come: “with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked”. That’s the translators choice. Every bit as close to the Hebrew is to say “with the breath of his lips he shall kill off wickedness”.[2]

The underlying idea is clear:

whatever striking there has to be, it is his mouth which will do it

(speech not sword);

whatever killing-off has to be done, it is his lips which will do it

(words not weapons).

And that in turn is 

because of the spirit of gentleness (variously described in the opening verses) 

which rests upon him.

In Hebrew, the ruach (spirit, breath) rests (nachah) on this one.

Ruach – nachah.

The breathiness is there in the very sounds.

And I think the play on words is intended.

And actually the root words are ruach and nuach.

I have tried – and failed – to come up with a translation that captures this play on words:

The spirit spends free time upon him…

The air is at ease upon him…

The wind whiles away its time upon him…

The breath abides upon him…

None really works. I look forward to your suggestions later.

In any event, that stressed idea 

of rest, of restoration, of peace and ease, 

extends throughout our passage in ways that the English does not make clear.

I give my own translation of the ending. It says:

“This one the peoples will seek out. And glory will be his place of resting.”

Our translation refers to a “glorious dwelling”.

But the word translated “dwelling” is… menuchah.

Menuchah… from (yes) nuach. Place of resting,

A place of resting for the one on whom the restful spirit rests.[3]

No judgement, no wrath, no fire, but welcome, peace and inclusion.

Who would not long for such a meeting with (GOD) on these terms?

So let me say:

we need the fierceness of the Old Testament

and we need the gentleness of the New Testament.

And...

we need the gentleness of the Old Testament

and we need the fierceness of the New Testament.

The Testaments are not easily contrasted, 

and are not to be contrasted.

(GOD) is both fierce and gentle.

The life of faith exposes us to things gentle and fierce.

And it is good that it is so.

As for what combination of gentleness and fierceness will best suit the England team today, I keep my self-denying ordinance.

Amen.  

---

[1] That evening England were playing Senegal in the first knock-out rounds of the World Cup.

[2] Hebrew: U-ve-ruach sephatav yamit resha’ – resha’ is properly an adjective meaning a wicked person/thing.

Greek (LXX): kai en pneumati dia cheilion anelei asebe – “And with breath through lips he will destroy an ungodly [person].

[3] These language points are indebted to Robert Alter’s translation, ad loc.

John the Baptist, Holiness, and Joy

 

12 December 2021: Advent 3 (Year of Luke).

 

Gathering Prayer

God for whom we watch and wait,

you sent John the Baptist to prepare the way of your Son.

Give us courage to speak the truth,

to hunger for justice,

and to suffer for the cause of right,

with Jesus Christ our Lord.

First Reading (Old/Original Testament): Zephaniah 3:14-20

Canticle (in place of a Psalm): Isaiah 12:2-6

New Testament Reading: Philippians 4:4-7

Gospel: Luke 3:7-18

Reflection

Today’ theme is not hidden from us. Today’s theme is obvious. Today’s theme is John the Baptist. His name in Hebrew was Yochanan. His name in Greek is Ioannes. His name tells us something about the mercy, the grace, the kindness (or even the beauty) of God.

What do we know about John the Baptist?...

Between us, we know that he was a relative of Jesus, his cousin.

He was a priest. As the son of the priest, Zechariah, he was a priest.

He felt compelled to go into the desert. There he wore rough clothing, and ate something that got called “locusts” and something that got called “wild honey”. He came back from the desert, with a message from God. Thus we Christians say: he was a prophet. Jesus at one point says he was more than a prophet, but only after he has said he was a prophet: he was a prophet, and more.

He preached (prophesied) what we’d have to call a fierce message. That the people of faith (the people of the covenant) had lost their way, had fallen into disobedience. They needed to “repent”. This means: they really need to turn around, 180 degrees. They needed – we might say – to start again with their lives. He gave some concrete examples of this (as we have just heard), speaking to soldiers and tax-collectors.

The good news here is that he insisted you could turn your life around. You could do this, by an act of ritual washing. This washing was not a little dab of water, nor a hand-washing splash, but full immersion. You go all the way under. So it’s also a ritual drowning. Let’s not hide that – it is as dramatic as that.

Given all that we’ve said, it’s no surprise that he got into trouble with the authorities. Indeed, he ended up being imprisoned and killed by the powers-that-be. His cousin Jesus could only take to heart how dangerous speaking out – being a prophet – really is.

Here is a question which is not all that easily answered. One that is not all that often asked, truth to tell:

Was John the Baptist a Christian?

I don’t mean: did he call himself a Christian? We are pretty sure he didn’t. The word “Christian” comes later than the lives of John and Jesus. But did he ever actually consider himself – and become – a disciple of Jesus? We are not told. It’s actually tantalising. John gets his disciples to ask Jesus if he is the One who is to come. Jesus replies: look around you. And John receives this message, and thinks…

Well, if he ever had time to think (as he was soon to be killed), the gospels do not tell us what conclusions he drew. They do not tell us if John was convinced that Jesus is the One who was to come.

And yet, even given this ignorance of ours (this ignorance of the Church), we boldly call John the Baptist a “saint”. Without him, the story of Jesus would not be what it is. He is a necessary part of the story of Jesus. He is part of the Christian story. And of course, in this he is not alone. We can – we must – say the same of

·        Miriam and Moses,

·        Sarah and Abraham,

·        the Prophets Deborah and Isaiah,

·        the heroes Esther and David, and so on.

The ancestors from what we know as the “Old Testament”.(1)

I suggest there is a message for us in this, precisely for today. We might summarise it as “whoever is not against us is for us”. But maybe that’s too simple. Certainly, though, we can say: some – many – who are not explicitly in our in-group can be blessed with a holiness we need to learn from. God distributes holiness as God chooses, and not as we’d plan things. So we can – we must – expect holiness in unexpected places.

Today, then, we mark a Prophet never known to be a Christian, that great saint revered in the Church, Saint John the Baptist.

***

There is a secondary theme today. We are roughly in the middle of Advent. Advent is – as I’ve said, though it sounded weird then, as it sounds weird now – a season of reflection, and even of going-without, to help us reflect on where we are in our walk with God. (We go without good things, not to feel bad about ourselves, but to check how dependent we are on our comforts, as a way of seeing where God truly is in our lives.)

In the middle of these seasons of reflection and penitence – Advent, Lent – we take a break. We have a breather. Indeed, even the colour in Church can change, from purple to… rose. Look… We have half managed this today (thanks to a friend lending us their supply of rose). Rose – or pink, to use the normal English word – is close to purple, but lighter. This is a day we can lighten our load. Hay, today is a day when even those who are keeping Advent might allow themselves a mince pie!

Closely related to this is another name for today. Today is Gaudete Sunday – which just means Rejoice Sunday. And that’s because of our second reading, deliberately chosen for today, for our rose – our pink - day. Let us hear from it again:

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

How can St Paul - how can anyone – command anyone to “rejoice”? Surely joy is something that comes when it comes. Sometimes – not least in this place – sometimes joy is hard or even impossible to find. I get it. It’s a good point. I tend to put it this way: we do have a duty to do what we can to be ready for joy, to “orient” our lives towards the joy that is, in truth, our birthright.

And there is one hint about how to do that, within the text from St Paul: he tells us to make our requests always “with thanksgiving”. Always give thanks. There is always something to give thanks for. Give thanks for the sheer fact that you are alive. Give thanks that God promises to be with you. Give thanks for the fact that when you give thanks to God, you will be heard. These are good places to start.

So, not as a stern command, but rather as an invitation, today is also a day when we might, in all gentleness tell ourselves: “Rejoice; again I say: rejoice!”

Amen.

(1) In the Orthodox Calendar (New Style) this Sunday in Advent is the Sunday of the Forefathers. 

Prayer from Common Worship: Additional Collects, © 2017, Archbishops Council.

 

One Sent From Gd...

 

Sermon. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford. 13.12.20

Advent 3: Gaudete (Year B)

John 1.6-8, 19-28

Today’s Gospel is full of negatives and absences. What a way to begin! I really don’t wish to lower the mood – the Gaudete mood. I know we all need comfort and hope, and a reliable supply of both and more, in these days. And there are, of course, good things in today’s Gospel. But, at a rather technical level, today’s Gospel is full of negatives and absences.

Negatives.

Let’s recall John’s dialogue with those sent from Jerusalem to Bethany, across the Jordan:

J: “I am not the Messiah!”

O: “Are you Elijah?” J: “I am not.”

O: “Are you the prophet?” J: “No.”

This ever-more brutal exchange is consistent with what the Evangelist has already told us:

“He was not the Light.”

We are being led to see who John the Baptist is not, and thus already being nudged to think that there is one for whom all these negatives will fall away.

And, on cue, the Baptist says as much:

“I baptise with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me. I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.”

I think this is carefully crafted. I think the hearers of this tale are meant to feel intrigue, excitement. Who is this one? This one we know not, but who is already among us?

Do we feel that excitement? I think it’s unlikely. For most of us, we’ve heard – we’ve read – the story many times, from start to finish. And let me add, that is fine. The Gospels were written to be heard, over and over. If we are comfortable with the story, all is well.

Yet, where we cannot necessarily feel intrigue or excitement, we may yet wonder - wonder if there isn’t here an invitation to hear the story anew. We know the name of the one who is already among us. His name is Jesus. We know him, know aspects of him. He is no stranger. We need not pretend he is. And yet, do we know him as well as we could? Is he not in many ways still strange to us? Might we as-it-were start again: begin a new journey of getting to know

·        the one who changes everything, who is already among us;

·        the one who is already among us, who changes everything?  

*

And so, from the negative to the absence. I suspect you have already sensed that today’s Gospel reading is a real cut-and-paste-and-cut-and-paste job. If you look at the chapter and verses, this is confirmed, What we have are two separate excerpts taken out of the opening of John’s Gospel. And we may well have at the back of our minds the texts in that opening which are absent today. Here are some of them:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Gd, and the Word was Gd…

In [this one] was life, and the life was the light of the world. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it…

The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory…”

That’s all rather different from the tale of intrigue. This isn’t a story of people pointing to people. This is a grander-scale narrative, a panorama, a view of everything, of all that this. The themes are creation, and the nature of Gd. And it is not prose, but poetry.  

How then does it all fit together? Is it meant to? Or did the writer, or some later scribe, make a mistake? I am confident that they are meant to fit together. We hear of the origins of the universe and the nature of Gd. But before we have any chance to fool ourselves we’ve taken it seriously in, we change focus. And this too is carefully crafted. Intentionally, we are led from the telescope to the microscope.

“There came a person, sent from Gd; John, his name.”

What do we learn from this? I will put it slightly challengingly: we learn that Gd does not care about humanity! I mean: Gd does not care about “humanity” in the abstract. Gd cares only for human beings in particular.

·        For you.

·        For me.

·        For the person next to you.

·        For the person impossibly distant from you, in all possible ways.

·        For the ones you love.

·        And… for the ones you can’t stand.

We human beings cannot sustain that loving attention for literally billions of people. But, then, we are not Gd. Gd is Gd. And Gd does not care for “humanity”, but for human beings. From the absence, we learn this.

“There came a person, sent from Gd, John, his name.” And, being sent from Gd, his presence makes all the difference. This one is the very herald who says the Word-made-flesh is already among us, sometimes known, sometimes (more often, perhaps) not known.

So, indeed, today is Gaudete Sunday. Today is a day of rejoicing, albeit it of gentle rejoicing. Today is our pink (or, as we are perhaps learning to say, our “Rose” day). We are in the middle of our Advent “fast” (how’s that going, brothers and sisters?)! Better put: we are in the middle of our Advent reflections and preparations, leading up to Christmas. And here we relax any restraint we’ve put ourselves under. We, in a gentle and understated way, anticipate Christmas.

“There came a person, sent from Gd, John, his name.” And, being sent from Gd, his presence makes all the difference.

Sisters and brothers, I repeat a theme I have brought before. And I make not the slightest apology for the repetition. (You may chide me, but I will not budge.) What is said of John, can be said of you. You may think of your name; I invite you to.

“There came a person, sent from Gd, their name was [Name]. And, being sent from Gd, their presence makes all the difference.”

And, today, I am not even going to set you (to set us) the task of thinking about all the ways we might be sent from Gd into the world. There is of course a time for that. Of course, being sent from Gd implicates us in a task. Yes, vocation is a task,  a burden even. Yes, further: hardship and risk and danger and sacrifice are all involved. But! But, today (anticipating Christmas) I say: even before and outside of that task, if we are in the world (and here we are), we are sent from Gd. Our very being is sent-from-Gd.

“There came a person, sent from Gd, their name was [Name]. And, being sent from Gd, their presence makes all the difference.”

Gaudete! Let us rejoice! Amen.   

Sermon. Advent 3. Redeeming "Lo, He Comes"

Sermon. 15 December 2019. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford

Advent 3 (Gaudete), Year A

·       Matthew 11.2-11

Here’s a simple summary of where we are today:

·       We have lit a candle, which people often call “the pink candle for Our Lady”.

·       That said, that is wrong.

·       It is the rose candle for our joy, because a traditional service would begin with a call to rejoice (Gaudete!).

·       That said, we don’t do that.

·       That said, the theme linked to the candle is not Mary, nor joy, but John the Baptist.

·       That said, we were already introduced to John the Baptist last week.

·       That said, we might be invited to introduce Our Lady today, if we had chosen the canticle, the great Magnificat.

·       That said, she is not the theme and the candle is not hers!

Confused? Brothers and sisters, every Western Christian is surely confused by this great pile-up of themes. Worry not; take from it what speaks to you.

But, any way, there is something confusing about the hero of today’s candle, John the Baptist. He is difficult, and confusing. Consider what might sound like an easy question: Was John the Baptist a Christian? He was and is a saint, but was he ever a Christian? And this doesn’t mean: Was he a churchman who was baptised in the name of the Trinity and recited the creed? We know none of that applies; such things developed centuries after his death. But really the question is: Did he ever become a follower of Jesus? In today’s gospel it is clear that he is considering becoming a disciple. But we are not told whether he actually did. Did he welcome the answer to his question: “Are you the one who is to come?”, or did he find it evasive? We are not told.

So Saint John is often – and not wrongly – presented as one of the principal bridging characters. He bridges the Old and New Testaments. He bridges (for Christians) the Judaism of the Old Testament and the Second Temple and the emergent Christianity of the Jesus Community. This means, while it might be controversial, it’s not wrong to think of John the Baptist as a Jewish but not a Christian saint.  

The Jewish saint, John the Baptist… Yes! Yes, you are right in supposing I do want us to reflect on Christian approaches to Jews and Judaism. (No apologies for that.) But I am going to do so via what you may well think of diversion.

By a diversion, I mean I want us to think about… the hymn we will sing at the end of this service. That hymn is Lo, He Comes. It is a great hymn, in many ways one of my favourites. But I do have problems with it. They relate wholly to the second verse. Let me remind you:

            Every eye shall now behold him

            robed in dreadful majesty;

            those who set at naught and sold him,

            pierced and nailed him to the Tree,

            deeply wailing, deeply wailing, deeply wailing,

            shall the true Messiah see.

I can see that you will enjoy singing it. Many do. How often do we get to sing about wailing, in church, to a powerful, Wesleyan tune? Only really here. But! But I feel a need to say that the problem with this verse is this: the most natural subject in mind, for “those who set at naught and sold him/pierced and nailed him to the Tree” are… Jews, and even “the Jews”. And that is wrong, and that is bad, and even wicked. Wicked, because the underlying theme here is: at the second coming, most of humanity will rejoice, but the Jews will be found out and blamed for killing their Messiah; all they will get to do is wail for their sins.

“[T]hose who set at naught and sold him/pierced and nailed him to the Tree”. Yes, I know that a historian will say: that’s not the Jews; that must mean the Romans. Historically, the Roman overlords, in all their well-reported brutality, were responsible for the killing of Jesus. The trouble with that is that the Romans had no concept at all of a Messiah. To say to ancient Romans: “Here at last is your true Messiah! Wail!” would mean literally nothing to them.

“[T]hose who set at naught and sold him/pierced and nailed him to the Tree”. Yes, I know that a good preacher or theologian will say: that’s not the Jews; that is us, all of us. When we sin, we set in train the spiritual dis-ease which ultimately leads to the killing of Jesus. It’s good theology, but again, it doesn’t work here. It’s really the same point (though this is a harder claim to make). I am going to say that “Messiah” isn’t a Christian word. (Many, many apologies to Handel; it is certainly a Handelian word!) Messiah is an English version of the Hebrew word, Mashiach. But Christians (as their name suggests) overwhelmingly use “Christ”, the English version of the Greek word, Christos.

They both mean the same thing. They mean “anointed”, “the Anointed One”. But still the Christian preference for “Christ” over “Messiah is clear. It is clear in the New Testament, where the word Messias occurs how many times? Only twice [Jn 1.42, 4.25]. (The “Messiah” in today’s gospel is the translator’s interpretation of the Greek “Christos”.) It is clear in all our hymn books. It is clear in this hymn book [Common Praise]. You look for mentions of “Messiah”; you will find few. So, again, we are given a real nudge to think not of ourselves, but of the Jews, others, over there.

Don’t misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that when you sing, you consciously think: “the Jews killed Christ and this is about how they’ll get their comeuppance”. This is not a conscious thing. But we do have to have some historical awareness.

We do have to face clearly that from very early days, Christians have been saying “the Jews killed Christ”. And (even worse) not just a particular group of Jews, in Jerusalem around 33 AD. No. All Jews, everywhere, throughout time and space.[1] The Jewish people as a people have this guilt.

It was around – it was preached in sermon and sung in liturgy – already towards the end of the second century. Great saints like John Chrysostom (349-407) in the East and Augustine (354-430) in the West proclaimed it proudly. Martin Luther (1483-1546) also became increasingly insistent that it is so. It’s hard for us to hear this. But the historians are clear. They even speak of a “teaching of contempt”.[2] It’s not wrong to say that it has been as-natural-as-breathing for even great Christians to teach contempt for Jewish people.

It follows that we do need to go out of our way – we really need to go out of our way – to make sure we are not teaching or even hinting at that contempt now. And - in that context - to sing: “those who set at naught, and nailed him to the Tree, deeply wailing, shall the true Messiah see” must surely leave something of a bitter taste. You cannot not know that you are being given that nudge – whether directly or subliminally – to think that “the Jews killed Christ”.  

Fortunately, we do not have to abandon this otherwise lovely hymn. Nor does it need rewriting in any complicated fashion. What we can do is simply change one word, one syllable.

We can sing instead: “We who set at naught and sold him…”. That brings us back to the good, healthy theology I mentioned before. It is our sins which ultimately lead to the death of Christ. We should wail – deeply wail – that sorry state of affairs, always safe in the knowledge that we will be forgiven and restored. What is not to like?

So, brothers and sisters, I am going to encourage and, yes, urge you to do that, and not to please me (nor even to shut me up), but because it is a change that tells the gospel, that “speaks Christian” better than what is actually written in the hymn-book: “We [not “those over there” but “we over here”] who set at naught and sold him…”.

You may object on any number of grounds.

·       You may say you don’t understand what I’ve said. Please tell us this. Your preachers need to know if and how and when they are being understood, and this is a natural time for a review of our preaching.

·       You may say I have made claims but not brought much evidence. That is true. It has been (I know) a long sermon without “putting the quotes” in. But I can provide the quotations and statistics, if we seek some more teaching.

·       You may say that I’ve just preached on my hobby, my hobby-horse, Judaism. To that I want to say gently but clearly: No. To be a Christian is to engage in Jewish-Christian relations, even if we never meet a Jew. Our Scriptures, are all (or almost all) written by Jews, and are drenched in Jewish themes, like Israel, election, Hebrew heroes of faith, the hope of the prophets, and more.

·       You may say (most likely option, I’d say) that I’m a pedant! You don’t think about what you sing anything like as carefully as I’ve presupposed, and I should get over myself. To that I also say gently but clearly: No. It is precisely what we find ourselves saying or singing, without any need to reflect on it, that tells us what we truly believe. What we need to reflect on, we are still in some ways weighing up. What just launch forth into with gusto, that is what we have uncomplicatedly signed up to. That is worthy of our attention, from time to time.

Here I do finish. Please notice that I am not at all saying: We need to water down what we believe and sing, for fear of giving offence to Jews or others. I am a million miles from saying that. I am saying that here that, given how Christian history has unfolded, we have a chance and a need to improve what we sing, so that we can become better, more truthful, more authentic, and, yes, more orthodox Christians.

“We who set at naught and sold him,

            pierced and nailed him to the Tree,

            deeply wailing,

            shall the true Messiah see”

            and He will love us, forgive us, heal us,

            and give us what we need

to love and heal ourselves, heal others,

and bring and be reconciliation throughout the world.

Amen. 

---

[1] Perhaps starting with Melito of Sardis, d 180.

[2] Coined by Jules Isaac (1877-1963)