gregoryjenks

Category: Sermons

  • Advent Sunday | Christ the King

    A lecture presented in the Cathedral Church of St George the Martyr, Jerusalem on Advent Sunday, 29 November 2015 by the Very Revd. Canon Dr Gregory C. Jenks, Dean of St George’s College, Jerusalem.

    Introduction

    This is the first of four lectures to be offered at the Cathedral during Advent, and it has fallen to me to offer the inaugural address. In turn, the following presentations will be by Canon Lawrence Hilditch, Canon David Longe, and the Dean.

    Last Sunday many churches in the Western Church—whether in communion with Rome, protesting their independence, or assuming to occupy the middle way—will have observed the feast of Christ the King. In at least some of those places, the festival will have been described as ‘The Reign of Christ’. In my view that is a better option than the more common ‘Christ the King’.

    The very concept of monarchy—and especially absolute monarchy with no constitutional balances in place—is problematic in our world. It reflects a pre-modern world order, a world of empire, and a world where might truly is right.

    We may not have moved very far away from such a world even today, as this region reminds us so emphatically. But we aspire to live in a world where individuals and their families matter, where the powers of sovereigns and corporations are limited by constitution and convention, and where the democratic ideal is preeminent.

    In such a world—incomplete and flawed as it currently may be—there is simply no place for a king with absolute powers.

    The incompleteness of our democratic systems and their incapacity to cope with urgent human crises—whether they be climate change, seemingly intractable conflicts in many parts of the world, or the refugees that flee either or both—points to the need for something better yet to arrive. That might almost make the current context an Advent moment, but it is unlikely that many of us will be yearning for a tyrant, however benevolent, to sort out the mess.

    There is a more serious theological point in these introductory observations than the relevance of royal language in contemporary liturgies. How are we to speak of the mysteries of God when the language of faith that we have inherited from the past is so mortgaged to a worldview that no longer holds true for any of us? How are we to engage the contemporary world if we keep offering them tired metaphors at best, and oftentimes broken myths as well?

    I hope then, that in some small ways, this presentation will assist us to engage with the critical missional task of singing the Lord’s song in a strange (postmodern) world.

    I shall pursue that objective by proceeding in a more or less systematic way through four different set of issues, asking in each case what ‘Christ the King’ may have to say to us in each instance.

    Jesus of Nazareth

    The first set of issues that I would like to explore with you concerns Jesus, the Jewish prophet from Nazareth in the Galilee. What does it mean to describe him as ‘Christ the King’ in the first century and in the twenty-first century?

    In first-century terms, to ascribe kingship (basileia in Greek) to Jesus was to create a rival to Caesar. Caesars had many rivals, and many of them had themselves been rivals to a former Caesar before attaining the imperium themselves. So they understood rivals, and they viewed them all with suspicion. When an inscription such as ‘Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews’ was placed above the head of a crucified man, it was not so much a royal title as a charge of treason.

    Today ‘Christ the King’ may evoke the comforting words of The King of Love My Shepherd Is derived—gleaned even—from Psalm 23 and John 10, but in the first century such a claim was highly political and a direct challenge to the legitimacy and the potency of the ruling sovereign.

    Had Tiberius ever heard of Jesus, he may well have asked as Stalin is said to have asked of the Pope many centuries later, “How many legions does he have?” The dialogue between Pilate and Jesus in John 18:28–19:22 is really exploring exactly these issues.

    So many of the terms of religious devotion that we now apply to Jesus derive from ancient politics. This should not be a surprise, since the ancient world in which Christianity was born really only had two domains: the family, and politics. When speaking God’s word to the public sphere, it was necessary to use categories and terminology appropriate to politics, the life of the polis.

    In particular, terms such as ‘Son of God’, ‘Lord’ (kyrios in Greek and dominus in Latin), and ‘Savior’ (Soter in Greek) were royal titles. Such titles were to be found in massive inscriptions above city gates and on the tiny coins in a peasant’s pocket.

    When used of Jesus by his earliest followers, these were not innocent terms of devotion. They were political declarations, and the emperors understood them as such.

    Today marks the beginning of the Year of Luke in our three-year lectionary cycle, so it is especially fitting to pay careful attention to the way Luke began his Gospel. Note, first of all, the careful comments that serve as a prologue to his two-volume work, known to us as The Gospel of Luke and The Acts of the Apostles (‘Luke-Acts’):

    Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed. (Luke 1:1–4 NRSV)

    As Luke sets about the task of publishing his account of “the events that have been fulfilled among us”, he is very conscious that others have written on these topics before him. Those accounts—known to us as the Gospel according to Mark, the Gospel according to Matthew, and the Gospel according to John—were already in circulation by the time this opening paragraph of Luke-Acts was composed. Indeed, the Gospel according to Luke may itself be an enlarged edition of an even earlier Christian gospel known to scholars as the Q Gospel.

    Be that as it may, our author knows he is not the first to attempt this task. But he considers his work to be the best available, and clearly wishes his audience not rely on the earlier examples of this genre. He will provide Theophilus—and us—with the definitive Jesus story. An ‘orderly account’. This is the version he would like us to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest”; as he doubtless would have said if given the opportunity to read Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer.

    With those considerations in mind, now let’s observe how he begins his Gospel.

    Luke begins with the tale of two boys, one of whom will become the Savior of World.

    The two boys are close relatives (cousins), and both have mothers with unusual fertility challenges.

    The first is called John, and his parents are aged and childless. Clearly one of them is sterile, but this just heightens the miraculous element. A child born to elderly parents who were unable to conceive when young and healthy is surely a child of promise. Watch this lad. He will count for something when he grows up.

    The second boy is called, Jesus. His mother had a very different problem. She was not yet married. But she is also assured by an angel sent by God that she will bear a son, and the sign of the promise to her being true is that her aged and childless cousin is also pregnant.

    The story of these two boys is woven into a series of seven scenes:

    • Scene 1 – John’s miraculous conception (Luke 1:5–25)
    • Scene 2 – Jesus’ miraculous conception (Luke 1:26–38)
    • Scene 3 – Mary visits Elizabeth (Luke 1:39–56)
    • Scene 4 – John’s birth and naming (Luke 1:57–80)
    • Scene 5 – Jesus’ birth and naming (Luke 2:1–21)
    • Scene 6 – Presentation in Temple (Luke 2:22–40)
    • Scene 7 – 12-year old Jesus in Temple (Luke 2:41–52)

    The sequence of these episodes and the climatic scene in the Temple are carefully arranged to make a theological point. Perhaps several. By telling the story in this way, Luke has asserted the supremacy of Jesus over John; despite Jesus having been a disciple of John. But that was not the main point.

    Luke was writing for Christians living in the Roman Empire about 100 years after the death of Jesus. They also knew a story about two boys, one of whom who found the city of Rome. Here is the account of that founding myth as told by Plutarch, ca 75 CE:

    Some again say that Roma, from whom this city was so called, was daughter of Italus and Leucaria; or, by another account, of Telaphus, Hercules’s son, and that she was married to Aeneas, or, according to others again, to Ascanius, Aeneas’s son. Some tell us that Romanus, the son of Ulysses and Circe, built it; some, Romus, the son of Emathion, Diomede having sent him from Troy; and others, Romus, king of the Latins, after driving out the Tyrrhenians, who had come from Thessaly into Lydia, and from thence into Italy. Those very authors, too, who, in accordance with the safest account, make Romulus give the name of the city, yet differ concerning his birth and family. For some say, he was son to Aeneas and Dexithea, daughter of Phorbas, and was, with his brother Remus, in their infancy, carried into Italy, and being on the river when the waters came down in a flood, all the vessels were cast away except only that where the young children were, which being gently landed on a level bank of the river, they were both unexpectedly saved, and from them the place was called Rome. Some say, Roma, daughter of the Trojan lady above mentioned, was married to Latinus, Telemachus’s son, and became mother to Romulus; others that Aemilia, daughter of Aeneas and Lavinia, had him by the god Mars; and others give you mere fables of his origin. For to Tarchetius, they say, king of Alba, who was a most wicked and cruel man, there appeared in his own house a strange vision, a male figure that rose out of a hearth, and stayed there for many days. There was an oracle of Tethys in Tuscany which Tarchetius consulted, and received an answer that a virgin should give herself to the apparition, and that a son should be born of her, highly renowned, eminent for valour, good fortune, and strength of body. Tarchetius told the prophecy to one of his own daughters, and commanded her to do this thing; which she avoiding as an indignity, sent her handmaid. Tarchetius, hearing this, in great anger imprisoned them both, purposing to put them to death, but being deterred from murder by the goddess Vesta in a dream, enjoined them for their punishment the working a web of cloth, in their chains as they were, which when they finished, they should be suffered to marry; but whatever they worked by day, Tarchetius commanded others to unravel in the night.

    In the meantime, the waiting-woman was delivered of two boys, whom Tarchetius gave into the hands of one Teratius, with command to destroy them; he, however, carried and laid them by the river side, where a wolf came and continued to suckle them, while birds of various sorts brought little morsels of food, which they put into their mouths; till a cowherd, spying them, was first strangely surprised, but, venturing to draw nearer, took the children up in his arms. Thus they were saved, and when they grew up, set upon Tarchetius and overcame him. This one Promathion says, who compiled a history of Italy.

    When Luke chose to begin his account of Jesus with a story about two boys, he knew what he was doing. Not for him the Matthean infancy story with its echoes of Moses and the Exodus. He is ‘ordering’ his account so that his intended audience will get the point, right from the opening scenes.

    For Luke, Jesus was the boy destined to be king. This ‘Good News’ will reach all the way to Rome, as it does by the last chapter of Acts.

    The kingship of God in the Old Testament

    The idea of the ‘kingdom of God’ (basileia tou theou) is deeply rooted in the Hebrew texts of the Christian Old Testament. The phrase is perhaps better translated as ‘reign of God’ since it refers to be rule of God as sovereign over creation, rather than the object of God’s authority. Indeed, in the first-century context, ‘empire of God’ would be a better translation, since basileia was the term used for the Roman Empire in the Greek-speaking East.

    Even in the OT, the idea of kingship was problematic. It derives from the world of the city, not the village, and certainly not the world of the pastoral nomads such as Israel imagined her ancestors to have been. The ‘wandering Arameans’ of Deuteronomy 26 had no king, since there was almost other social domain apart from the family. Within the family, the patriarch was the supreme authority. Conflict tended to be between patriarchs, and between aspiring patriarchs.

    When kings first appear in the OT story they are the riles of cities in Canaan and—more particularly—the Pharaohs of Egypt. Such rulers are not agents of grace or foretastes of the messianic age. Yet in 1 Samuel 8 the people demand that they have a king to rule over them, because they wished to be like the other nations.

    Such a request was a category error.

    The covenant people are not to be like the other nations. The very essence of election, promise, and covenant is to be a special people, not a clone of the neighbors.

    In time—despite the profound theological critique of kingship offered by 1 Samuel 8 & 12—kingship became the norm for both the northern kingdom and its more rustic southern cousin. Indeed, in the south the concept of kingship was embraced with even more vigor. The Davidic dynasty secured a theological mortgage on the throne, whereas at least in the north the Yahwistic tradition retained the divine prerogative to dismiss a king and choose a new dynasty.

    Royal models for leadership within the covenant people remained unpopular in some 0f the circles from which we receive these sacred texts. The prophets were critical of the kings and their cadre of officials. Anti-royal sentiments are clearly preserved and promoted in some parts of Samuel and Kings. The Deuteronomist only wants a king who keeps a copy of the law beside his throne, and takes instruction from a Levitical priest. Ezekiel’s vision of the restored Israel has a prince, but no king.

    Despite these reservations, or maybe because of them, the idea of divine kingship became both central to the worship life of the community and also nuanced in some interesting ways. The centrality of the kingship of God is expressed in the many Psalms that proclaim, YHWH melek (The LORD is king). The sovereignty of God over the nations and over creation is especially clear in prophetic texts such as Isaiah.

    At the same time, we find that God’s kingship is described in more pastoral terms, even if the warrior God makes a re-appearance in the apocalyptic traditions that dominate the Jewish mindset in the late Second Temple period.

    In Ezekiel 34 we find God portrayed as the good shepherd, in contrast to the unfaithful and self-serving clergy of the Temple:

    The word of the LORD came to me: Mortal, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel: prophesy, and say to them—to the shepherds: Thus says the Lord GOD: Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and scattered, they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep were scattered, they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them.

    Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: As I live, says the Lord GOD, because my sheep have become a prey, and my sheep have become food for all the wild animals, since there was no shepherd; and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep; therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: Thus says the Lord GOD, I am against the shepherds; and I will demand my sheep at their hand, and put a stop to their feeding the sheep; no longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, so that they may not be food for them.

    For thus says the Lord GOD: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the land. I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord GOD. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.

    As for you, my flock, thus says the Lord GOD: I shall judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and goats: Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture, but you must tread down with your feet the rest of your pasture? When you drink of clear water, must you foul the rest with your feet? And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet, and drink what you have fouled with your feet?

    Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD to them: I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide, I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep.

    I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the LORD, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them; I, the LORD, have spoken. (Ezek 34:1–24 NRSV)

    For Christian readers of these ancient Jewish texts, this resonates with the depiction of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep, in John 10:

    I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father. (John 10:11–18 NRSV)

    When all the data for divine kingship in the OT is taken into account, we can see a nuancing of the concept from one of awesome power to one of divine care. The pastoral images of the Twenty-Third Psalm displace the warrior God of tribal religion.

    The end result is an invitation to imagine power and leadership in very different terms than ‘kingship’ might suggest. If we imagine God to exercise divine power in ways that are primarily about bringing forth life and serving the vulnerable, then we may also discern an invitation to think differently—and act differently—when exercising power or leadership within the church, within the family, or within the wider society,

    The View from Below

    Having explored some of the issues relating to Jesus and God, it may be timely to think about the significant of this divine kingship language for our understanding of ourselves and our perspective(s) on reality.

    I begin with the question of how we see Jesus. What kind of a ‘king’ do we imagine Jesus to be? If nothing else, the affirmation of ‘Christ the king’ invites us to understand the significance of Jesus in God’s cosmic purposes. But we need not trap Jesus or ourselves in a Byzantine imperial worldview.

    ‘Christ the king’ is also a statement about us, about humanity. It invites us to see that the Human One, the Son of Adam, can be the human face of God. While that may be especially true of Jesus, it is also true for each of us. We can be—and perhaps must be—the human face of God to our family, our neighbors, and even our enemies.

    There is a parallel here to the role of Mary, Theotokos, Mother of God. Mary of Nazareth was uniquely the bearer of the Christ Child. But each of us has that calling as well. Similarly, we may see in Jesus the unique historical revelation of God, but each of us may find that we serve as icons of God for those around us.

    The kingship that Christ embodies is compassionate and life-giving. It is our calling to embody that selfless love seen first in Jesus, as we make the words of 1 Corinthians 13 our personal charter:

    Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. (1 Cor 13:4–8 NRSV)

    In all of this, Christ the king is our model and our pioneer. No longer a source of fear, this ‘king’ encourages us to be all that God knows we can be.

    Reflecting on the deeper significance of Christ the King can also invite us to see God differently. As Christ the King, Jesus is not a distant authority figure, but the God who is with us and among us; indeed, one of us: Emmanuel.

    Another metaphor that I find attractive as I re-imagine the traditional concept of Christ the King, is the suggestion by Bishop John Taylor that we see God as the Go-Between God. This was the title of a book in which he explored the nature and activity of the Holy Spirit, but it comes to mind when I think about the kind of God revealed in Jesus, the one we celebrate now as Christ the King. In many ways, Jesus was the quintessential Spirit-person, and that shapes and reshapes my understanding of ‘Christ the King.

    As Christ the King, Jesus has not peaked. He is not resting on his laurels and enjoying his cosmic retirement after a grueling term of service on the earth. The Spirit of Lord continues to be present and active in the life of the Church, and that is surely an important element of our affirmation that ‘Jesus is Lord’.

    In the end, our reflection on Christ the King must also impact how we see ourselves. What does it mean to be a human being, if Jesus of Nazareth is somehow also the ultimate expression of God’s truth in the cosmos?

    If the Human One can be proclaimed as Christ the King, then that is one big leap for human awareness. The Orthodox speak of divinization as the inner reality of salvation. That may be another way to approach this same mystery. God becomes a human, so that humans can become divine. Emmanuel is more radical and inclusive than perhaps we realized.

    What does it mean for us to be alive and self-aware in this kind of world, where our God becomes one of us and one of us becomes ‘Christ the King’? What value do we place on human life, and always within the context of our own location within the web of creation?

    Is being alive and ever engaged in a process of loving transformation into the character of Christ really what matters most to us? More than success? Than wealth? Than power? Than popularity?

    Can we fashion lives, families, churches, and societies that practice that truth?

    And how would this pan out in the harsh realities of Palestine and Israel now? Where is the kingship of Christ in the streets of the Old City this Advent?

    In conclusion …

    Finally, let me try to bring all this together with some brief reflections on the significance of ‘Christ the King’ for our world.

    In the last week or so, there has been a controversy in the UK about some movie theatres banning the Lord’s Prayer as it was seen to be too ‘political’. This strikes me as an excellent example of how someone can be entirely correct and totally wrong all at the same time.

    The movie chains may have misread the ever-shifting cultural dynamics, but I suspect they did not. Given the growing lack of religious literacy in Western societies, a majority of younger people probably have no real sense of the cultural significance of the Lord’s Prayer in British life. But then they probably do not ‘get’ Shakespeare either. And it may be that the Authorized Version of the Bible—which has already lost its correct name to the more American ‘King James Bible’—is now past of our cultural past, rather than having any current cultural significance beyond the ever diminishing circle of practicing Christians. Among the discarded remnants of yesteryear’s religion, we shall find the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments.

    On the other hand, and for reasons they may never understand, the movie chains probably got this absolutely correct.

    The Lord’s Prayer is a political document. So is the Magnificat that we just sang during Evensong. These are subversive texts. They undermine the cultural assumptions of our pleasure-oriented society. If people took these ancient religious texts seriously they might change the way they vote, and choose to spend their disposable income in different ways. That would be bad for business. But good for the world.

    In a sense, no-one who is doing well from the present world order should allow us to teach people the Lord’s Prayer or chant the Magnificat in our cathedrals. If Christ really is the ‘king’, then things had better change around here.

    Christians—like our Jewish and Muslim cousins—have a higher loyalty than any corporation or any nation. The Roman emperors were on the money when they sensed that the devotees of Jesus were an existential threat to the Empire; to all empire and every empire. Then and now.

    We are advance agents of eternity. We embody the truth that the kingdom of God is drawing nigh, and in some sense is already here among us. We are not content to sell fire insurance for the afterlife, or ring-side seats to Armageddon. We want to change the world now. We want to mortgage the present to God’s future which we glimpse in the affirmation that Christ is king.

    This is exactly what those familiar words in the Lord’s Prayer invite us to imagine:

    … your kingdom come
    your will be done on earth
    as in heaven …

    ©2015 Gregory C. Jenks

  • Baptism Homily at Qasr al Yahud

    A brief sermon at Qasr al-Yahud, the traditional site of the baptism of Jesus, on the occasion of the baptism of two study tour participants on Friday, 12 June 2015.

    The text was Mark’s account of the baptism of Jesus by John (Mark 1:4–11).

    As Rodney has already mentioned, this community has already been on a journey. In the process of sharing that journey, a band of strangers has become a company of friends. People on a quest. People on a journey. Today we are sharing a very special moment in the lives of two of our community, Coral and Rudi.

    It’s not so much about the water. And it’s not so much about the place, although we can talk about the significance of the Jordan, and the symbolism and the significance of the place. But rather, it’s about intentions, it’s about hopes, and it’s about orientation.

    For our two friends, the two candidates for baptism, it’s not primarily about beliefs. And it’s certainly not a claim that they’ve got it all figured out. They’ve got ‘A’ Grades in theology. They have their doctrines all clear and everything set. But it is about identifying with the community which is gathered around the work of God in Jesus Christ.

    So it’s about a committed and intentional participation in the community of faith that flows like a river, whose source is Jesus. That community draws on his wisdom, and is inspired by his practice. And so at the heart of our community, at the heart of a community which our two friends are choosing to join today, stands the character, the figure, of Jesus.

    It’s also about the community, us as a community, and us as a fragment of the larger Christian community. Around that ancient Jew from Nazareth, there formed a community. And today, two more people, from a land that Jesus had never heard of or dreamt of, choose to join that community and stand in the company of Jesus. And today that community, who we represent, in a sense, sacramentally, embraces these new followers of Jesus. We accept them into the community of Christ. We join the journey with them and we invite them to continue their journey with us.

    Today this sacrament is also of course about God. God beyond all names. God beyond all tribes. God beyond all religions. The God whom we believe we glimpse in the person of Jesus Christ. The God who’s ever present in these ancient rocks and who has always been present in the lives of Rudi and Coral. The God who is present in our lives, even if unnamed and unknown. The God who is present in the life of our community, even our short-term travelling community. The God who’s present in the world. The God who’s present in this land and its troubled communities.

    In the tradition of the gospel that I just read, at the end of his baptism, Jesus hears the bat kol, which is Hebrew for the voice of heaven, the daughter of heaven … the holy voice. The voice says, You are my son. You are my child. You are my servant. You are my beloved. I’m really happy with you. With you I am well pleased.

    Coral, Rudi, may you both hear that voice today in your hearts. And may we all sense it, as well, as we share this moment with them and reflect on our own baptisms and our own calling to be followers of Christ. We are all God’s beloved. We are all the sons and daughters of God. God is well pleased with us. Just as we are. Amen.

    [This text was transcribed by Julianne Hughes. It has been slightly edited to change some punctuation as well as a few other minor changes for clarity of expression.]

  • Seeking Holy Wisdom

    A sermon preached in the Chapel of the Holy Spirit at St Francis Theological College, Brisbane on Friday, 4 September 2015.

    Introduction

    I especially appreciate the opportunity to preside and preach at this service today. My last regular service was Thursday, 6 August, when we celebrated the Feast of the Transfiguration—and reflected on the anniversary of the first nuclear bomb. Thankfully there have only been two such nuclear attacks, and we pray that number will never grow.

    It was a poignant day for me to preside, but most of the people present were not aware of its significance as my final rostered liturgy in this chapel.

    My first service in this chapel was 40 years ago. During the commencement service for the 1975 academic year, I was received into Anglican Church and confirmed by Archbishop Felix Arnott. It happened right here on the same step where I now stand to preach.

    Things were a tad more hierarchical then. Despite my lack of familiarity with Anglican liturgies, as a first year student I was assigned to the front row. Behind us first year students sat the second year students, and behind them the (very few) third year students. The Principal had assured me that I would be placed further back in the chapel, but the Sacristan (who ruled the chapel) had other ideas. So there I was in the front row, just here, but with no idea when to kneel, sit or cross myself.

    We said Compline every week night at around 9.30pm, even on Fridays. Indeed we had guest preachers at Friday Compline. On special days we sang the service. We used some very old service cards. Some months passed before I found they were folded, and that there were actually two inner pages which I had been missing. No wonder there seemed to be a gap in the service!

    I survived, even thrived. In fact, most of my adult life has been connected to this College and to this chapel. SFC has been for me a lifelong community of formation. A community of formation. Shaping holy lives.

    A community of formation

    A ‘community of formation’ is one way to think about the OT covenant community. Ancient Israel is often imagined as a tribal/national society commissioned by God to conquer and control, to expel the natives of the land, and to claim other people’s land as God’s gift to Israel. But I wonder whether it was perhaps intended as a community of formation? An experiment in holy living?

    That seems to have been what Micah had in mind with his classic prophetic speech:

    He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
    and what does the LORD require of you but
    to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
    (Micah 6:8 NRSV)

    A community of formation also seems a good way to imagine the disciples gathered around Jesus, just as we see in today’s Gospel reading. They were not attending a church growth seminar. They were being drawn into a new way of seeing God, and themselves, and others. It even seems that they sensed a different formation agenda when gathered around Jesus than the formation program followed in the Baptist’s circle.

    Being a community of formation is certainly one of the hallmarks of SFC. Yes, we are an academic community. We strive for good scholarship and pursue research relevant to the needs of the church and the wider community. But first of all we are a community of formation.

    This is not limited to those who are candidates for Holy Orders. We are also a community of formation for disciples and ministers, for learners and teachers. All of us are people in formation.

    In its better moments—and sometimes in its worst moments—this place can be (and often is) a community of formation.

    The quest for holy wisdom

    The quest for holy wisdom lies at the heart of this community of formation. Wisdom is so far more important than information, and much more necessary than methodology. It is better even than correct citations!

    Holy Wisdom, Sacred Sophia, is both the destination and the journey. Wisdom is not a formula to be mastered and learned by rote. Wisdom is not something to be practised repeatedly until we acquire the skills. Wisdom is evasive and subtle and unpredictable. Whereas we are often all too predictable.

    Today’s Gospel makes that delightfully clear.

    Metaphor is piled upon metaphor:

    • the friends of the groom are in party mode (but it will not last)
    • new patches on old cloths do not last
    • new wine in old wineskins explode the containers
    • old wine is always better than new wine
    • and the old is always better than the new (really?)

    No neat package of answers is offered by Jesus. Rather, the disciples are given a set of puzzles. These seem designed to tease us into the quest, rather than fast-tracking us to the destination.

    To be a community of formation is:

    • to embrace the questions
    • to live faithfully with uncertainty, even with doubt
    • to care for one another
    • to be drawn into God’s mission in the world, and often outside the church

    Yes, the followers of John may have had a great program, but wisdom’s children will focus on Jesus, Sophia’s child. As followers of Jesus we can get by without the answers to life’s questions, and flourish in a world—and a church—where answers seem rare, and certainty even more so. But we cannot get far without holy Wisdom.

    Conclusion

    Wisdom has set a table, and she calls us to the feast.

    Here is one ancient description of that sacred wisdom to be found at heart of our tradition:

    There is in her a spirit that is intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, mobile, clear, unpolluted, distinct, invulnerable, loving the good, keen, irresistible, beneficent, humane, steadfast, sure, free from anxiety, all-powerful, overseeing all, and penetrating through all spirits that are intelligent, pure, and altogether subtle. For wisdom is more mobile than any motion; because of her pureness she pervades and penetrates all things. For she is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her. For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness. Although she is but one, she can do all things, and while remaining in herself, she renews all things; in every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God, and prophets; for God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with wisdom. She is more beautiful than the sun, and excels every constellation of the stars. Compared with the light she is found to be superior, for it is succeeded by the night, but against wisdom evil does not prevail. She reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and she orders all things well.
    (Wisdom of Solomon 7:22-8:1 NRSV)

    That may all sound a bit like the first reading? I certainly hope it does!

    For us, Jesus is the child of Sophia, the Wisdom of God in human form.

    For us, the task of formation is to become more like Jesus, more like God in human form, so that others may recognise us as children of wisdom herself.

    For us, this college is a place where the quest for holy Wisdom is the main agenda, indeed the only assignment that matters in the End.

    ©2015 Gregory C. Jenks

  • A boundary crossing God

    A GOD WHO CROSSES THE BOUNDARIES

    A sermon for the third Sunday after the Epiphany (25 January 2015) at St Luke’s Anglican Church, Haifa

    Introduction

    As always it is good to be here with you, and I appreciate the privilege of giving the sermon for our liturgy this morning.

    As always we open our hearts to receive the portion of Scripture assigned for this week by the church. It is not always easy to understand the logic of the lectionary editors, but it is a valuable spiritual discipline to accept the set readings so that we pay attention to a wider array of texts than may be the case if the priest simply chose the passages that appealed to him.

    As always, as we come to the table of the Word, we are seeking to discern what the Spirit might be saying to the church, here today, here in this place, here in these words.

    Our Gospel today comprised two brief stories. One concerned the healing of a leper. The other involved the healing of a centurion’s servant. What has that got to do with us? And what might the Spirit be seeking to say to us through these stories?

    THE PURPOSE

    We can be sure that the point of these stories is not to offer us health advice. We are not intended to glean information about dealing with skin complaints, or expect a miracle cure every time we feel unwell. Just as the parable of the sower is not designed to teach farming techniques, these stories are not intended to influence how we seek medical help when we need it.

    Rather, the stories are celebrating the healing power of God that we experience in and through Jesus, and that is an important theme in these weeks of Epiphany. We can expect to encounter the God who reveals himself in all kinds of everyday situations, and we can expect that God to transform and heal our lives.

    Most of all, of course, these stories are about the significance of Jesus for us. As Christians, Jesus is our supreme epiphany or revelation of God. He not only shows us what God is like, but also what we can be like. He reveals God to us, and also reveals ourselves to us.

    CONTEXT

    That epiphany process will most likely happen in the everyday events of daily life, so that gets me thinking about context. Who we are, where we are, what we are, who we are with, and what opportunities are before us????

    You will have noticed, I expect, that these are local stories. Maybe this is so routine for you that you do not even notice it all that often. But these are stories about places not far from here. They are set near the lake in Galilee. We could be there in less than an hour!

    You are blessed to live in this land, even if living here is not always easy. When you look around the hills, and the valleys, and the lake, and the ocean – you are looking at the same sights that Jesus once viewed. A lot has changed, but a lot has stayed the same.

    As a visitor – even one who comes here often – I find myself asking if Jesus is any more present here than in my own country on the other side of the world? On this Australia Day weekend that is a question that comes to mind for me. Jesus has never walked the hills of my ancient land, but for sure he is no stranger there.

    Where ever we are in the world, Jesus calls us to follow him, to be instruments of his grace, and to be agents of God’s kingdom in that place, at this time, and among those people.

    CROSSING BOUNDARIES

    So let’s go back to the stories from today’s Gospel and see if we can discern anything the Spirit of Jesus might be seeking to say to us.

    When I do that, I notice something about these two stories. They both involve Jesus crossing very clear social boundaries in his own culture and among his own people.

    The first story involves a leper. We are not quite sure what illness such a person had, but the consequence of their skin infection was that they were outcasts. It was understood that the infection could go away and the person could be given the OK to return to everyday life in the village. But until they had been checked by the priest, no one one was to go near them. Jesus crossed the boundaries. He accepted the person back into everyday life and then sent him to the priest to get the paperwork completed!

    The second story also involves crossing pretty clear social boundaries. An army commander comes to Jesus and asks for his help as his servant is unwell. He may not have been a Roman centurion, as they were not based in Galilee at the time. But he could have been a Greek commander in the army of Herod Antipas. The same Antipas who had killed John the Baptist and had his men looking for Jesus. We often think of this story as being about the trust that the centurion had in Jesus, but it may also be a story about Jesus having great trust in this centurion not to arrest him!

    THE GOD WHO CROSSES THE BOUNDARIES

    One of the things that Jesus reveals about God this Epiphany is that our God crosses the boundaries that we like to enforce. God escapes our labels and our definitions.

    Another of the things that Jesus reveals about us this Epiphany is that God expects us also to be people who cross the boundaries, and act out of compassion. We are not to stay back behind the lines. We are not to worry what people will think about us. We are not to be afraid to take risks with people who we can barely trust.

    Imagine if we actually lived like that.

    What a different kind of place the world would be!

  • Jesus Then and Jesus Now: A Sermon

    Introduction[1]

    Audio of the sermon at the 5.00pm Mass
    Opening Prayer
    Jesus, son of Mary, you come among us
    as one we think we know all too well.
    Open our eyes
    to see you again for the first time.
    Open our hearts
    to see God in one another.
    Open our hands
    to live with compassion.
    Amen.
    First Reading: Rumi, “What Jesus Runs Away From“
    Gospel: Mark 6:1–6a
    Blessing
    With open eyes, open hearts, and open hands,
    may we be a blessing to all we meet this week,
    in the name of Jesus. Amen.

     

    Let me begin by bringing greetings from the Christian community in Palestine, and especially those communities with which I am most familiar: St Luke’s Anglican Church in Haifa and the Sabeel community in Nazareth. This is a difficult time to be a Christian in the Middle East, and I would seek your prayers for my friends there, just as they offer their prayers for us.

    My task in the homilies this weekend is to reflect with you on the significance of Jesus for our kind of faith community here at St Mary’s in Exile. Rethinking Jesus is a big part of our project, I suspect; even if not always at the top of the agenda.

    As we say at the beginning of most liturgies, “We gather to reflect on our lives in light of the Christian mystery …”

    After five years, the conversation about what kind of community we are at SMX is not yet finished. My focus in this homily today is the part that Jesus plays in our collective and personal lives.

     

    The Book

    First of all, and especially in this context, it seems appropriate to begin with my recent book, Jesus Then and Jesus Now: Looking for Jesus, Finding Ourselves.

    Yes, it is yet another ‘Jesus book’—and there have been quite a few of them in recent years. As the sub-title seeks to suggest, this one has its own character and focus. It is as much about the meaning of Jesus for today, as it is about Jesus in the first century.

    A few times recently I have asked to describe the book. When that happens I like to outline the three major sections of the book in order to indicate its own particular logic:

    The first section draws on my involvement with historical research:

    • history of the Galilee and Second Temple Judaism more generally
    • the work of the Jesus Seminar, of which I am a long-time member
    • and my involvement with the archaeology dig at Bethsaida

    This part of the book is very much about getting a fix on ‘Jesus back then’ in first-century Galilee.

    The second section draws on my work as a lecturer in Biblical Studies, and focuses on selected Jesus themes in the NT Gospels:

    • Jesus and the kingdom of God
    • Jesus and the afterlife
    • Calling Jesus names
    • The death of Jesus

    This middle section of the book is very much about getting a fix on the Jesus tradition during first 100 years after Easter. What were people thinking about Jesus and saying about him in that formative period for Christianity?

    The final section draws on my personal perspectives as a person of faith myself, and it deals with the relevance of the person of Jesus and the traditions about Jesus for us here and now:

    • Jesus as one of us
    • The significance of Easter
    • Jesus in a world of many faiths
    • Being a follower of Jesus today

    This part of the book is much more theological and much more personal. It is probably also more controversial.

    Brevity is a key virtue in this context, so let me just say a few words about my reading of Jesus as a first-century Galilean Jew and then offer some reflections on the significance of Jesus for me as a progressive Christian.

     

    Jesus Then

    I locate Jesus within Torah-observant Jewish settler communities in the Galilee. “Settler” is a term I have chosen with intent. It disturbs both my Jewish and Palestinian friends, not mention other Christians.

    It is important to keep in mind that Jesus was neither an eco-theologian nor a first-century feminist. He was a person of his time and place, and he is a stranger to us and our values.

    We may well criticise creedal Christian for divinising Jesus too easily, but we also tend to domesticate him. We recruit Jesus into our social and political agendas.

    In very brief terms, then, I see Jesus (‘back then’) as coming from a small Jewish settler community at Nazareth, with maybe not more than a dozen or so families in the settlement. The people of that newly-established community were deeply attached to their Jewish identity. This included loyalty to the Temple and cultural resistance to Hellenism.

    Jesus of Nazareth was more like a prophet (Elijah, Elisah, Hosea, Jonah, et al) than a sage or rabbi.

    ‘Prophet’ may not be a perfect category, but it is better than most others and no better one comes to mind. This seems to have been his preferred self-description and to get us about as close to his own self-understanding as we are ever likely to reach.[2] His prophetic mission put him on a collision course with imperial Rome and its local puppets.

    However we may care to label him, Jesus seems to have been a catalyst for a Jewish renewal movement centred on the “reign of God”. He was, after all, a disciple and successor to John the Baptiser, so a focus on the kingdom is not surprising.

     

    Jesus Now

    Assuming that this description is reasonably accurate, and even if it is not, I still need to address the relevance of such a Jesus here and now.

    Because I am a Christian, Jesus is central to my understanding of God and my understanding of myself. To be like Jesus and to see the character of the Christ develop within me is my religion in a nutshell.

    It could have been otherwise, and most likely would have been otherwise had I not been born and raised in a family that took its Christian faith very seriously. But my family set me up to experience life through the lens of Christian faith, and thus Jesus has been at the very centre of my worldview from as early a stage as I can recall.

    One helpful way to explore the significance of ‘Jesus then’ and ‘Jesus now’ is offered to us by Marcus Borg, who speaks of the difference between  “Jesus before Easter” and “Jesus after Easter.”

    I think Borg is onto something very important for Christian faith in this idea, as the formula upholds the essential continuity of Jesus on both sides of Easter while also recognizing that Jesus is ‘something else’ after Easter than he had been before Easter. In using these terms we are not speaking about the ontological essence of Jesus, but rather our perceptions of Jesus and our reception of the blessings that God offers us in and through Jesus.

    The prophetic identity and mission of Jesus before Easter was expressed in his actions as he healed and exorcised, taught in private and public spaces, called disciples and sent them on mission to act on his behalf, as well as when he challenged and confronted those with privilege and power. His prophetic role is seen in his teaching activity, and especially in his aphorisms and parables. In addition, his prophetic character is anchored in his personal integrity; culminating in his death on the cross.

    That Jesus—the one we knew before Easter—continues to be a significant prophetic figure with much to say to us today. That faithful humanity is enough for us, and it is as a prophet that Jesus is honoured within Islam.

    Indeed, as I see it, the faithful humanity of Jesus is itself a prophetic act that cuts across the centuries and invites us to get ready for the coming reign of God. Jesus speaks for God, and he does not always need to use words.

    But something happened to Jesus at Easter.

    This is not the moment when Jesus became God, but it is the moment when we see Jesus differently. Jesus after Easter is a combination of radical transformation and profound continuity with Jesus of Nazareth.

    It is the same Jesus. The Jesus who cared about the poor and the sick, is the Jesus in whose face shines the eternal light of God. Yet something significant has changed.

    Jesus after Easter relinquishes his role as prophet, becoming instead an epiphany (revelation) of God. Not surprisingly then, the Easter traditions in the New Testament are as much about epiphany as they are about resurrection.

    Almost certainly none of the first disciples stopped to ask themselves what had become of Jesus’ flesh and bones. It seems crass even to contemplate such a question in this context. They had glimpsed the human face of God.[3] They knew the truth of the saying that to see Jesus is to see God (John 14:9).

    Perhaps we could modify this statement slightly. Can we suggest that to see Jesus after Easter is to see God, while to see Jesus before Easter is to catch a glimpse of God?

    Jesus after Easter is the Christian encounter with God.

    This God has a human face, and it is a Jewish face..

    This God is not just compassionate, but suffers and dies and rises again.

    This God knows what it is like be alone, cold, hungry, loved, mocked, and touched.

    This God sets a table and calls us to eat.

    This God overturns the crass transactions at the centre of our lives and challenges us to become houses of prayer for all nations.

    This God has become the Spirit poured out on all flesh, so that Paul could also say, “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17).

     

    Conclusion

    As disciples of Jesus, as people who responds to the call of God who was deeply present in Jesus of Nazareth, how do we live out from that encounter with God in Jesus in our own time and place? This encounter with grace and love and forgiveness and life transforms and radicalizes my own life. How am I to put it into practice?

    However I answer that question to myself, it will not be a solo project. It will involve others and it will require me to be part of a community people seeking to fashion their own response to God in Jesus.

    We see this dynamic in the story of Jesus. The human face of God did not drop out of the sky in splendid isolation. Rather, the Word of God was born into a human family and nurtured within the village life of first-century Nazareth. Even in his death, Jesus was surrounded by people: the other victims, the perpetrators of the violence, the vested interests that stood to benefit from the violence, and the intimate circle of those who would most deeply feel the impact of his violent death.

    In between that communal birthing and dying we have the public years that leave no mark on the creeds and confessions of Constantine’s church. The hallmark of those years was that Jesus gathered a community of people around him. Our God is a gregarious god. She likes company!

    God’s preferred company are the broken and the misfits, the blind and the lame, the poor and the outcasts, widows and hemorrhaging women, parents with sick children, collaborators, and women with reputations. Cast the first stone, our God says, if you have no sin! Come as you are. Come and eat at my table.

    Given the importance of community in the life and ministry of Jesus, this is going to be a priority as I respond to my experience of God in Jesus. I am looking for a community of disciples of Jesus that is committed supporting each of its members in their personal and collective response to their encounter with God. As a priest I long to shape and serve such a community. As a Christian I want to be a part of such a community.

    In fact, I think I have found such a community here at SMX.

    Our is a community that reflects the character of our God, the God encountered in Jesus. We seek to be generous community, a church that takes our humanity seriously. This will not be a church where everything is tidy and all the questions have been answered. Most likely this will be a messy church, a church that is living with the questions rather than clinging to traditional answers, and a place where we do not have to be right in order to be loved.

    I suspect it is also the kind of church where God likes to be seen.

     

    Endnotes

    [1] A sermon for St Mary’s in Exile, Brisbane (24 & 25 May 2014).
    [2] For a more detailed discussion of this suggestion, see “One of the prophets,” chapter 4 in Gregory C. Jenks, Jesus Then and Jesus Now.
    [3] This phrase is an intentional homage to the influential book by Bishop John A. T. Robinson, The Human Face of God (London: SCM, 1973; reprinted, 2012). I read this book as a theological student and the phrase has been a part of my personal perspective on Jesus ever since.

  • Preaching the Old Testament

    A sermon by Dr Anthony Rees for the ‘Debate the Preacher’ series at St John’s Anglican Cathedral, Brisbane on Sunday, 9 February 2014. Published here at Anthony’s request.

    Last week we commenced on a four week series—Why Bother with the Old Testament?  My colleague, Rev Dr Greg Jenks gave a fascinating reflection on this, inviting us to imagine a bible without the law, a bible without the prophets, a bible without the poems.  What sort of bible would that leave us with?  A narrow one, a lighter one—and not only in size.  Greg’s position was that we should bother with the Old Testament.  For the sake of the series, I considered proposing an alternative view.  But I need you to understand something.  I am writing my second book on the book of Numbers.  To be clear, if there is a book we have not bothered with, it is Numbers.  So if word got out that I had claimed that we need not bother with the OT, that would have been very bad for me.

    Greg began by playing a little with this title—Why Bother with the Old Testament?  Is this a question, or a statement?  If it is a question, how should we inflect it?  I want to suggest that the question itself assumes that we should bother with the Old Testament.  Even if we ultimately come to a point of rejection, we can only get there through a process of bothering.  But ‘bother’ itself is ambiguous.  To bother can mean to pay attention to, to attempt to understand.  In this sense it has a positive meaning.  But I say to my son, stop bothering your sister, by which I mean agitate, disturb, and it is generally not said positively.  Can we agitate the Old Testament—can we mess with it, can we play with it, can we bother it.  If we do, is it positive or negative?  Plenty of things I read, and write, suggest that we can—but that is for another time.

    What I want to do tonight is to pick up on something that came out of the discussion which followed Greg’s sermon.  If we affirm that we should bother with the OT, how should that manifest itself in our worshipping community?  The simple answer was that we should devote preaching to it—a recognition that much, if not all of our preaching tends to focus in on the NT readings.  For a long time, that meant Paul, and the reinforcement of doctrine.  But in more recent decades, as we have understood that our lives are a narrative, not a series of propositional statements, the gospel narrative has become a more potent source for preaching.  I have to make clear that this focus on NT preaching is not universal.  Indeed, I suspect it is a western phenomenon.  In the rural areas of Fiji, you might be lucky to hear one NT sermon a month.  The same is true of Africa.  I preached a sermon from John in Kenya a few years ago, and I think the local minister was very surprised.

    So I am going to preach from an OT text—but I want to do so as a way of demonstrating what I think is another compelling reason for us to hold onto the OT.  That is, that the OT gives us an emotional vocabulary to express our human experience, that is far richer than what we find in the NT.  Much of this is lost, due to the tragically sterilising work of the lectionary compilers.  But if we were in a sense, to reclaim our scriptures, we might be surprised at what we find.  Actually, my experience is that people are always surprised at what they find.

    PSALM 22

    For centuries, one figure dominated our interpretation of the psalms; David, the charismatic, god fearing, heroic King of biblical Israel, whose story we read in the books of Solomon, Kings and Chronicles.  This king, warrior, singer and song writer was thought to be the writer of many of the psalms we have collected in this book.  The superscriptions made it clear.  A psalm of David.  It was thought that at least some of these psalms could be traced to particular events in the story of David’s life as we read it in the historical books.  For example, psalm 51 has been thought to be written as a response to David’s actions with Bathsheba; in some sense, a display of contrition in light of his moral failing.  The psalms inspired readers, being, as Ellen Davis puts it, the spontaneous outpourings of a pious King’s heart.

    The twentieth century fractured that romantic view.  No longer are these psalms valued for their insight into David’s life, which is now considered to be essentially unknowable, but instead for the way in which their more generalized language and forms have made them accessible to generations of worshippers.  These songs belong not to David, but to all those who worship the God of Israel.  As Davis says again, they are intensely personal, and yet, not private.  Their response of faith to human experience ensures that they serve as the single most important resource for both Jewish and Christian prayer.

    So it is with psalm 22, a lament, perhaps the supreme example of lament in the psalms.  The psalm divides into two major sections. Vss 1-21 are what we might generally refer to as the lament, vss 22-31 being a prayer of thanksgiving for deliverance.  The distinction between the two sections is so sharp that some scholars have suggested that these two fragments may have come from separate authors, or at least represent two independent compositions.  If we were interested in looking for an author, this may well be a clue to us.  However, if we approach the psalm with a view to reading it as a liturgical work, what we see instead is not discontinuity, but rather, a liturgical process; the lamenting prayer makes way for the praise and thanksgiving which follows the assurance of God’s gracious response.

    My, God, My God, why have you forsaken me?  The opening question leads to another—why are you so far from helping, from the words of my roaring?  And a further complaint—I cry, day and night, but find no rest, by which he means not peace, but rather, no reason to stop crying, God’s abandonment is still real to our psalmist.  This is an interesting problem.  The psalter is full of assertions that God does not abandon his people (see Psalms 9, 27, 37, 38, 71), and yet what we have in this psalm is a writer in despair, complaining bitterly at God’s abandonment.  Despite his bitterness, the writer is still some way from turning away from God.  His cry reveals his desperation, twice calling ‘my God’, what Calvin notes as a distinct profession of faith, the cry of a believer.

    The shift in vs 3 highlights the gravity of the psalmist’s theological problem.  The essence of Israelite covenant faith is that trust in God leads to deliverance.    This is the story of ‘our’ ancestors, those who cried out, trusted and found deliverance.  This story is the praise upon which Yhwh is enthroned!  The use of ‘our’ is instructive also.  There is an understanding that personal distress can be held together with a common history.  The prayer for personal deliverance is spoken in the midst of others.  This idea reiterates Davis’ comment; it is personal, but not private.

    At vs 6 the tone changes again.  The psalmist reveals something of his circumstances.  He is a worm—an object of derision, of insignificance.  People around him taunt him—all who see me, he says.  The taunts reveal to us the nature of the psalmist’s mental turmoil; God’s apparent inaction justifies the taunts of the mockers.  Their taunts have a tinge of truth to them; ‘let Yhwh deliver —let him deliver the one in whom he delights’—their taunt echoes the historical recollection of the ancestors who were ‘delivered’ in vs 4.  The irony is cutting.  God’s abandonment seems evident to the onlookers, their jibes are internalised by the psalmist.

    Again the focus shifts at verse 9.  A pattern has emerged: vs 3 commences with the words, ‘But you’, verse six, ‘But I’, and at verse nine, ‘But you’, though this time a little more emphatically.  The psalmist again looks at God’s action in the past, though this time not with Israel, but with himself.  God is imaged as a midwife, taking him from the womb and placing him on the mother’s breast.  God, the gentle, caring, compassionate midwife is tenderly concerned for the well being of this new life.  God has been intimately involved in the development of our psalmist, so much so that he proclaims, ‘since my mother bore me, you have been my god’, forming an inclusio with the opening cry of the psalm—my god, my god—god who has always been my god, why have you forsaken me?  The opening section concludes with a plea which affords us a glimpse of what lies ahead—do not be far, trouble is all around, there is no one to help.

    Vss 12-18 reveal an ever deepening despair and unravelling of the psalmist.  The language is metaphorical, the imagery powerful.  His enemies are described as wild animals; bulls, lions and dogs.  The animals are symbols of non human strength.  They are animals that represent a threat to human existence.  In the ancient world they could also represent demonic forces, an image which dramatically heightens the picture of fear that is being painted.  They surround him, stalk him and appear ready to pounce on their prey.  They seem to be ever closing—vivid contrast to God’s supposed distance.  The psalmist’s physical state is disastrous—his energy is consumed, his body battered, his heart melts, his mouth is dried out—he is fatigued and thirsty beyond the ability to speak, death is assured.  So certain are the enemies of his demise that they cast lots for his clothing—this man is beyond hope.  In fact, in the midst of this litany of disaster, God does appear, but only to lay the victim in the dust, symbolising the apparent certainty of death.

    Vs 19—But you, and here the psalmist names God Yhwh for the first time, and prays not for closeness, but for deliverance, for help.  Vss 20-21 are remarkable; ‘deliver my soul from the sword, my life (my only one) from the power of the dog; save me from the mouth of the lion’, and then, remarkably, ‘from the horn of the wild ox you have rescued me!’—the perfect tense immediately changes the tenor of the text.  No longer is this a psalm of petition, of imploring god to be close, of crying out for divine help.  This is now a prayer of assurance, you have rescued me!

    The praise that follows unfolds in sharp distinction to the lament from which it proceeds.  The lament is marked by a sense of entrapment, of an ever tightening circle of danger.  The praise and thanksgiving section however, moves ever outward in its expression, moving from brothers and sisters, to the congregation, to the offspring of Jacob, to the ends of the earth—all the families of nations, those who are dead and those who are yet to be born.  All of humanity is caught up in the psalmists vision of praise to the almighty god of his deliverance.  It hints at Isaiah’s vision—that the whole of the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God, though its scope is even wider.

    While the universal vision that this portion of the psalm presents is breathtaking, these verses contain other significant statements that we mustn’t ignore.  Vs 22 places the psalmist in the presence of friends, in opposition to the enemies that have surrounded him to this point.  That he is in the midst of the congregation also tells us that what is being described is a liturgical, religious event.  This is extended in vss 25-26, where having offered his vows in recognition of God’s action, the psalmist joins in a thanksgiving meal.  This is a symbol both of a reconciled community and fellowship with God.  The psalmist, who had previously approached death exclaims to those with whom he shares ‘may your hearts live forever’.

    The language of verse 26 is particularly significant.  The poor (the afflicted, the lowly) shall eat and be satisfied, those who ‘seek’ will praise the Lord.  James Luther Mays sees here a clear redefining of who Israel is.  It is not the trouble he has faced which has made the psalmist lowly or afflicted.  This suffering has happened to him  ‘as’ one of the lowly, and God’s response shows that he is the God of the lowly, of the afflicted, not in circumstance, but in being.  This too reaches back to vs 24 and is a realisation that God’s apparent absence was an illusion.  So the psalmist answers his own complaint—he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried.  The meal then is not just a meal of physical nourishment, but also represents a spiritual fill for those who continue to be ‘lowly’.

    In response to God’s actions on behalf of the psalmist, the nations are called to praise god.  This is an unusual move, as the nations are often pictured as god’s enemies (Ps 2).  Even more peculiar is that they are said to ‘remember’, and ‘turn’, verbs which are commonly implored of Israel.  And then they will worship, or ‘bow low’.  Interestingly, Israel is frequently warned against becoming like the nations.  Here, the nations are to become ‘like Israel’, the clear implication being that Yhwh rules the nations.

    The ever widening circle even encompasses those who have died or have not yet lived.  This lends the psalm an eschatological character, particularly with the future tense verbs of vss 27 onwards.  Death comes to all, but the delivering acts of God will be told from generation to generation; he has done it.

    The sufferer of the psalm experiences the terror of human mortality, acutely aware of god’s absence and the presence of enemies.  The prayer of the psalmist offers us a paradigm for expressing our own suffering—to use it is to set one’s self within the paradigm.  For Christians, this psalm has taken on special significance, since Jesus’ appropriation of the psalm joins him with the countless others—the company of the afflicted, and he becomes one with them in the midst of suffering.  Jesus’ use of the psalm invites us to pray with him in the midst of our own turmoil.

    But this psalm, in the end, is not about suffering.  It is, finishing with the words of Ellen Davis, about the possibility, efficacy and necessity of giving praise to god’.  He has done it.

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