Standing Under the Scriptures
May 18, 2008

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

Our readings for this week are:

2 Corinthians 13.11-14: This is the conclusion of the letter, difficult by his own admission, that Paul had to write to the Corinthians on account of their toleration of sexual misconduct in their midst. It ends with a Trinitarian blessing.

Matthew 28.16-20: The risen Christ gives his disciples the Great Commission, likewise in a Trinitarian formulation.

I would say a word about these weekly notices. They happened; they were not planned. After becoming class pilot (to continue our nautical imagery), I began letting members know which readings we would be looking at---not always those in the lectionary. Then I added thoughts that had come to me too late to voice in the class. And in connection with them I went on to say what had transpired in the discussion---hence the present shape of the notices.

But however adventitious their origin, they are intended seriously. I would put it in secular terms. The essential activity of the Foreign Service is communication back and forth between Washington and overseas posts, in my day by cables and also airgrams, physically transported by diplomatic couriers. And these were of critical importance. Woe betided the drafter in the field who misstated facts or drew incoherent conclusions from them. And woe betided the reader back in Washington who failed to grasp not only what a message stated directly but also its implications. Such lapses could be career-ending; the Foreign Service did not give second chances (except perhaps to political appointees). In this it operated on not grace but judgment, severe judgment. But we accepted it because we knew an error of ours could affect millions and also because we found that we could rise to the responsibility thus placed upon us. In the church one may suppose that matters are not so urgent. But is there in fact less at stake here? Is there not rather more? .Therefore am I justified in composing these notices, and you in reading them, with any less seriousness?

Last Sunday---Pentecost---our discussion revolved around the hypothesis that I set forth previously regarding Luke’s account of the Pentecost event (Acts 2.1-13). This was that the devout Jews dwelling in Jerusalem “from every nation under heaven” represented the peoples and places to which the gospel had spread by the time Luke wrote, probably in the latter 1st century. And their comprehending of the disciples as they spoke of the wonderful works of God as “in our own native languages, in which we were born” conveyed the ability of the gospel to be understood by far-flung, diverse peoples in terms of something so intimate as their mother tongues. This may be seen as a major factor in the spread of the church, incredibly rapid for those times, throughout the ancient world. Thus Luke’s account when so interpreted conveys an even greater miracle than on the face of it.

But the greater the miracle, the greater the demand which it places upon us. (This point followed from our class discussion but we, or rather I, fell short of making it.) In the Gospel for Pentecost (John 20.19-23) the risen Christ commissions his disciples (and his followers too): “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When we considered this passage some Sunday ago, it was in the light of Tom Wright’s interpretation of the verse in his recent Baltimore lectures. According to him what is intended here is that as the Father sent Jesus to Israel, so Jesus sends us into the world---to convey his gospel. And the logic of Luke’s Pentecost account is that we need to find the present-day equivalent of the disciples’ speech in order to do so. To turn aside from this task would risk our status as Jesus’ followers, our lapsing into the sloth which I found Karl Barth decrying when I picked up volume 4, part 2 of his Church Dogmatics that you recently donated to the All Saints’ library (Barth notably characterizes sloth and pride as essentially the same).

The task of finding the present day equivalent of the disciples’ Pentecostal speech may not be simple, however. At any rate it is more complex than I thought when I wrote the “Pentecost” chapter of my book To Restore the Church that I attached to my last notice. At that time I considered that I had found it, through my discovery of the affinity of critical disciplines instilled by the Foreign Service with those of modern biblical criticism. The latter brought the biblical tradition to life for me as nothing else had. .And if it could do this for me, then it could for others also, on the basis of their own disciplines and experience. But my book never became a best-seller. That the intellectual barrier separating people from the gospel can be overcome, I still believe. But it turned out not to be the only one; beyond it lie factors such as cited in my last notice: the sense of self-sufficiency fostered by Western affluence and upper middle class status, our compulsive need to feel that we are in charge. And so long as these prevail, they will deter us from the gospel, however accessible it may be intellectually.

In principle this barrier can also be overcome, for its underlying factors are essentially illusory. In practice, however, it may be another matter, except for those whom disaster or tragedy has shattered or whose circumstances did not permit the development of this sense in the first place. (The latter would be largely true of people in the Third World today, as it was of slaves and other marginals in ancient Rome. And such have been and remain those among whom the church has spread most rapidly.) This is because the privileged and the unscathed, who are left unchastened, are especially tempted to cling to their self-sufficiency and control. What then? Is there no way for us to get through to them, even though they too have a contribution to make? I suggest that there is a way and that it lies in recognition of our own temptation and the degree to which we have fallen into it. We must further recognize that our righteousness is in Christ and not at all in ourselves, as the disciples at Pentecost themselves surely recognized. But can we do this, in view of the difficulty that it holds for us as well as for others? We in fact are enabled, by Christ’s Holy Spirit. We open ourselves to his Spirit notably by our participation in the sacraments, not just by rote but with our whole hearts. We open ourselves also by “standing under the Scriptures,” by allowing them to form us rather than conforming them to our ideas, which is the undertaking of our class.

These two ideas, the necessity of self-abasement in dealing with others and the Spirit’s empowering, are Barthian ideas. They may be seen also as reflected in T.S. Eliot’s poem “East Coker” (cited in the May “Connections”), part IV. Eliot’s standpoint mostly differed from Barth’s, albeit they were close contemporaries. Nevertheless in these respects he may be considered a Barthian. I will conclude with two East Coker stanzas.

The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer’s art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart…

The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial, flesh and blood---
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted