Standing Under the Scriptures
June 14, 2009

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

Our readings for this Sunday are:

2 Corinthians 5.6-17: Paul writes to his Corinthian converts in justification of his ministry and his performance of it.

Mark 4.26-34: Jesus draws on phenomena observable in contemporary agriculture to convey the wondrous spontaneity of the kingdom of God.

Last Sunday we looked at two cardinal passages, first Isaiah’s vocational vision, his call to be a prophet, and then Nicodemus’ meeting with Jesus “by night.: We seemed to get reasonably into the meaning of the two. But we may not have looked sufficiently at the relation between them. At any rate it came to me only later that the concern of both is with the human encounter with the divine.

Isaiah’s call to be a prophet comes to him in the temple, where he has a vision of the Lord, high and lifted up and attended by seraphs. His encounter with the presence of the Lord and his holiness overwhelms him with a sense of unworthiness. This unworthiness is corporate as well as individual. It should be noted that the concept of the free-standing individual is peculiar to modernity: “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips” (lips is sometimes used as a term for speech). But an experience that sears him, literally, purifies him. A seraph takes a live coal from the altar and touches his lips with it. And thereby his uncleanness is removed. Thus when the Lord asks, “Whom shall I send?” he is able to reply, “Here am I, send me.” We too may require purification before we are able to hear and to respond to the Lord’s call to us. And we may be purified only through being seared, emotionally and psychologically, by the experiences of life.

I noted that basic elements of Isaiah’s call---the call itself, the initial recoiling from it, the subsequent acceptance---can be seen in those of other prophets as well. This is seen already in Moses’ call. When the Lord speaks out of the burning bush, commanding him to go to Egypt and lead the Israelites out of their bondage, he demurs on the grounds, among others, of his slowness of speech. Nevertheless he goes. Jeremiah, when the Lord appoints him “a prophet to the nations,” similarly responds, “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.” But he speaks the Lord’s word anyway. Even in the New Testament Peter, the chief of the apostles, when Jesus first encounters him exclaims, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”

I also remarked that the recoiling of the prophets from their call was not to be wondered at. For the historical situation into which they were commanded to insert themselves was of the gravest. Already by Isaiah’s time Israel the northern kingdom had been destroyed by the Assyrians and the people scattered. And the Babylonians were threatening to do similarly to Judah and Jerusalem, as they did subsequently. These circumstances raised the profoundest of questions. Was the Lord unwilling or even unable to fulfil his covenant? And if so could there be any structure of meaning? Most people at the time averted their eyes from the impending catastrophe, preferring to believe that it would somehow pass them by, believing also they were not deserving of it. Similarly we in our time look away from catastrophes impending for us, while regarding ourselves as pretty good sorts. But the prophets were called to look squarely and, having done so, to declare the catastrophe to the people. No less were they called to declare to the people their corruption, their Idolatry, their disregard of social justice. Accordingly, it was not the Lord but the people themselves who had fallen short. In proclaiming this conclusion the prophets brought down on themselves the whole weight of the society that they exposed. The truth of their message did not make it any easier to receive; they could expect a life that at best was devoid of any ease. That they could bear it was thanks not to any strength of their own but to their empowerment by the Lord. But in doing so they maintained the validity of the covenant, overcoming the crisis of meaning.

Our second reading (John 3.1-17) also concerned a direct encounter with the divine, namely that of Nicodemus with Jesus. It was of a different sort but one that in some ways we can relate more directly to. Nicodemus was not overwhelmed by the divine presence the way Isaiah was. Nor was he moved to a purifying consciousness of his own unworthiness, by virtue of which he could hear and obey the Lord’s call. Instead, so far as this passage goes, he remained ambivalent, on the one hand intrigued by Jesus and his message but on the other still unwilling to give up his position in the religious establishment---he is described as a ruler of the Jews---and the mind-set in which it had formed in him. But are not we ourselves unwilling to make more than a partial commitment to the gospel, which demands our total commitment?

The ambivalence of Nicodemus may be seen in his coming to Jesus by night, so that the interest he has developed in him will not attract attention. It may be seen also in the way he addresses Jesus: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God… “ This may sound like an acceptance of Jesus’ authority. But it seems more likely to have been an attempt to ingratiate himself, thereby bringing Jesus in some measure under his control. At any rate Jesus himself seems to take it in this sense. For instead of responding in similarly flowery terms, he cuts to the chase. He asserts the necessity of being born again/from above (the original Greek anothen bears both senses) in order to see the kingdom of God, a concept bound to cut across Nicodemus’ preconceptions. Nicodemus responds with incomprehension touched perhaps with ridicule: “A man can’t re-enter his mother’s womb, can he?” Jesus amplifies being born from above/again to include being born from water and the Spirit, indicating that this new birth needs to be marked sacramentally, as in baptism. But in the end it is the work of the Spirit, which is like the wind which blows were it wills (in Greek as in Hebrew the same word means both wind and spirit). In other words, it defies human efforts, like those of Nicodemus in attempting to apply his own categories to it, to bring it under control. Still Nicodemus appears to persist in these efforts or at any rate in his incomprehension. His last response is the questioning, “How can this be?”

So it might seem that there was no hope for Nicodemus in his ambivalence, and thus no hope for us in ours. But this is not quite the end of the story. For in John’s Gospel (19.39-40) he is associated with Joseph of Arimathea in the burial of Jesus, for which he brings abundant spices. Thus his encounter with Jesus evidently produced his conversion, though so long delayed as to come after Jesus’ crucifixion. But this is a sign that however delayed our own commitment to the gospel, we may still be saved by it.

One is reminded here of Archbishop Cranmer, to whom we owe our Rite I Eucharist and other liturgies in the Prayer Book. Having boldly espoused the Reformation inaugurated by Henry VIII, after Henry’s death he was confronted by the return to Rome enforced by Henry’s daughter Mary when she came to the throne. Initially he defied Mary, then in prison he repeatedly recanted, which did not however save him from being burned at the stake. But as the fire rose around him, he renounced his recantations, thrusting the hand with which he had signed them into the flames and holding it there until it was consumed. By this gesture he surely demonstrated his salvation. And if he, as also Nicodemus, could at the last minute be saved, so also may we.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted