Standing Under the Scriptures
March 23, 2008

Notes in lieu of our class on Easter Sunday

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

As I have said, our “Standing Under the Scriptures” class will not meet this Sunday.  But some aspects of last Sunday’s discussion are relevant to Holy Week. 

Firstly, in connection with the Gospel reading (Matthew 21.1-11), we noted that Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem was not unobtrusive but instead had royal and messianic connotations, as reflected in the crowd’s acclamation, “Hosanna to the son of David.”  It contrasted with the “messianic secret” maintained by the Synoptics up to that point.  The contrast may be accounted for by Jesus’ determination, while not directly seeking confrontation with the religious authorities, not to shy away from it either.

We spoke rather more of Psalm 22.  Jesus’ cry of dereliction from the cross was, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27.46, Mark 15.34).  It is of course the first line of this psalm.  Thus Jesus may be understood as evoking it and with it the rest of the psalm.  Three things can be seen to follow.

By his recitation, at this most critical of junctures, Jesus may be seen as having “baptized” the psalms for our use as his followers.  I have in mind the parallel with baptism itself.  This was not something that Jesus originated; John the Baptist was its practitioner.  But Jesus by undergoing it instituted it as a sacrament (along with the Eucharist one of the two dominical sacraments), in effect baptizing baptism.  His recitation from the cross would operate similarly.

He may be seen as baptizing especially the lament psalms, as they are termed, of which Psalm 22 is outstanding (but see also inter alia Psalms 38, 69).  These are expressions of hopelessness and despair without reservation; indeed in the Old Testament in general emotions are not held back.  But in the articulation of hopelessness there is somehow hope.  Verse 11 of Psalm 22 is an instance of this: “Be not far from me [my God], for trouble is near and there is none to help.”  This harks back to the second part of the beginning verse, which goes, “why are you so far from helping me?”  It also reflects a consciousness of the presence of God, to be addressed and to be called on for help.  There is a parallel here with the Confession in our Rite I Eucharistic liturgy.  The terms of this are strong: “The remembrance of [our sins] is grievous unto us, the burden of them is intolerable.”  But our use of them reflects our acceptability to God even in our sins, through his Son’s gift of himself on the cross.

Finally, the lament psalms help us to probe our own feelings of hopelessness and despair and to get to the bottom of them.  And then it becomes possible to bring them up before the Lord, who alone can effectively deal with them.  To be sure, psychotherapy does something like this, or is supposed to.  But a word of caution is needed here.  We should not suppose that it is from psychotherapy that the psalms get their validation.  Rather psychotherapy, insofar as it has validity, is validated by them.

Still within the context of Holy Week, though outside the parameters of our class, mention has recently been made of skeletons in the closet.  Whether Ezekiel had these in mind with his valley of dry bones (37.1-14) rather than the Israelites in Babylonian exile (as the text indicates), such skeletons are not to be overlooked.   What is meant by them I take to be deeds or experiences that are difficult for us to acknowledge, even to ourselves.  This may be because we fear the consequences, realistically or not, of their becoming known or, more likely, that we have been unable to come to terms with them ourselves. I am not a stranger to such things.  In my adolescence I had an experience that I was unable to speak about until I was sixty.  But part of our Christian freedom is to be liberated from these bonds, to be no longer enslaved by them.  To be sure, breaking out of them may be arduous and excruciating.  But having been given that possibility in Christ, we ought by all means to avail ourselves of it.

This is particularly true I think of those undertaking to enlighten others in the Christian faith.  For those being thus enlightened need to know in depth who is enlightening them.  But it applies also to those not holding a formal teaching office, that we should in some fashion bring into the open what we have heretofore kept hidden.  Jesus himself said, “There is nothing hid except to be made manifest, nor is anything secret except to come to light” (Mark 4.22).  In this way not only do we help ourselves to wholeness, we help others as well.  For the things which we suppose to make us different are actually those we are most likely to share with others.  And in revealing them we overcome their isolation as well as our own.

Accordingly, the Prologue of my book, which undertakes to discern a central theme of “biblical redemption history” and to apply this theme down to our own time, made as full a disclosure as I could of my skeletons.  I was not without precedent for this.  St. Augustine, in his Confessions did similarly.  So also did Jean-Jaques Rousseau in his Confessions, although his concern was with his own autonomy and goodness rather than with his accountability to God.  And I owe a similar disclosure to our class and its fellow travelers.  To this end I am attaching the Prologue, which a few of you have already seen, to this message.

The book was finished a dozen years ago, however.  So I need here to note things that have occurred since then.  The most recent of these was a brief second marriage.  This was shortly preceded by the death of my older son, after long ill health, by his own hand.  Relevant to the latter perhaps was something I said in introducing my resolution, “In Support of Anglican Unity,” at the 2000 Washington diocese convention.  For I spoke more truly than I knew.

“In these matters [the diocese’s unilateral innovations] a certain humility would become us.   At least the outcome of my pastoral reliance on our clergy with regard to my marriage persuades me of this.  At every step I sought their counsel and followed it, and at every step they were wrong, with disastrous consequences, especially for our children.”

All this account of my experiences shows I think the need to be reconciled to others as well to oneself.  So I would conclude these Holy Week reflections with something about the former.  They key to it is forgiveness, without conditions.  Only this can keep us from the bitterness that would otherwise consume us.  But such forgiveness is not a human possibility.  If we try to extend it supposing we can do so out of our own resources, in our inevitable falling short we can do great harm.  Essential to it is coming to the realization that we too have offended, perhaps more than those who have offended us, and that we have no less need of repentance.  This may seem a difficult, even impossible, acknowledgement to make.  But we can make it, we can assume the burden of it, because God has taken it on himself.   He did this on Good Friday, in his costly sacrifice for us of his Son on the cross.

See you on Easter II.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted