He was my brother

Adelphótheos! Brother of God! Ah, what won’t those Hellenists with their illumined intellects name us? What won’t they tell of us? How zealously they’ve exchanged their old poets for new, for isn’t that all they live for, poetry? Yes, their accolade is just poetry I’ve been told, but this epithet, ‘Brother of God,’ this is really too much. It’s come to the ears of the authorities here in the City, and now they’re calling on me to dispel these rumors about my brother Yeshua. They want me to stand up for Torah righteousness when the tribes and the proselytes come to Jerusalem for Pesach. 

They said to me, ‘You, Ya‘akov, we know you are tzaddik, we know you carry out the mitzvot to the least detail. Tell the ignorant rabble the truth. Yeshua is not Mashiach. Yeshua is not Hashem. We will make all the arrangements. You must tell them. You are his brother. We must not defile yet another Pesach with superstitious worship. Shema Yisra’el, Adonay Eloheynu, Adonay Echod!’

Yes, even my old ears burn to hear them, the Gentile believers in Yeshua, making so free with the Divine Name. Yet who can blame them? For he that was brother to me, whom I guarded and guided in Torah righteousness from infancy up to the day he turned, to guard and guide me—yes, I too became his disciple—he himself made bold to speak the Name. Not only did he pronounce the Unutterable with his lips in our hearing, but by his life, his teaching and his miracles, and finally his resurrection from the dead, he spoke the Name that was proven to be his before our eyes.

We not only heard, we beheld, we even touched the Name with our hands. And these others, most of whom never knew him in the flesh, take liberties that we who did know him do not take. But let not the old man in me gripe unfittingly for the sake of all the good that has come to pass through Yeshua, my brother. No matter what they call me, I know who he is. Let the new man in me tell you what I know, for I was there, I heard the first good news myself.

We didn’t know that it was good news when we first heard it. Truth can look strange when one first encounters it, different from what it later appears. It grows in us as we grow. The good news did not start with the preaching of John, whom they call the Baptist, as many think. No, the first words of it were spoken by a bodiless power. She who is now my mother saw no one, only a shaft of light too bright to look at, and then a voice. She was the first hearer, but it started even before that, and in this fashion.

My father Yosef and his youngest brother Chalfi lived in Nazareth of Galilee. Though he was my uncle, Chalfi and I were about the same age. My four brothers were much older than I and, along with my sisters, lived far from us. For many years my father and mother lived happily, and I, the youngest, benefited from the softness of their old age. I could do as I pleased. But my world was shattered when my mother suddenly died. Seeing my father’s great grief made mine seem small. I wanted to help him.

A dream I had dreamt when I was a very small child came back to me, and it felt like an oracle. In the dream I was followed wherever I went by throngs of people. They called out to me, ‘Tzaddik, chaneyni! Righteous one, favor me!’ Much of the dream I have forgotten, but how it ended was frightening. I found myself on a high pinnacle, and then I felt a strong wind blow from behind me, and I fell. I awoke with a shout, and found my mother softly stroking my face, as she smiled, and then told me to go back to sleep.

In the dream I felt lifted up, and as I grew older, remembering that feeling, I knew it could only come from delight in Torah, and I resolved to devote my life to study and fulfillment of the commandments. When my mother was taken from us, I added another condition to my vow. I would never marry, but remain chaste as a Nazir. My life would be korban, dedicated. I would serve my father in her place, until the Lord took him. Having other sons to give him descendants, he was content to have me live with him.

This was my decision, but I never told him why, until the day a kinswoman of ours, Anna, the widow of Yehoyakim, approached my father with a proposal of marriage. At first he thought she was seeking for herself, as a widow, the covering and protection of a husband who was close kin to her. But it was not for herself she asked, but for her only daughter, Miryam! My father was speechless as he listen to Anna tell the reason why, which later he retold to me.

‘From the time she was three years old,’ Anna related, ‘my Miryam had a recurring dream. She says, she was led to the Temple and in the company of maidens handed over to the High Priest, who dedicated her to the Lord. She was made korban and led into the Holy of Holies, where she was to live. Strangely, she tells that there was no ark in the Holy Place, only two creatures who, surrounding her with their wings, sang, “Rejoice, Ark that is gilt by the Spirit! Rejoice, you who are the Throne of the King!”

‘And I did not want to upset her,’ continued Anna, ‘so I just listened when she told me these things, and marveled, and asked myself, what could it all mean? But the time came for my daughter to be betrothed to a young husband, and be married, and I could put it off no longer. I said, “My daughter, it is time to give you in marriage,” but she, who was always gentle and obedient to me her mother, refused, saying she was dedicated to the Lord, and would never know a man.

‘I tried to reason with her, but to no avail, so we reached a compromise. I offered to approach you, Yosef, my close kinsman and also a respectable widower, to propose a legal marriage that would not be consummated, which would give my daughter the manly covering and protection to continue the life of a perpetual virgin, in accordance with her dream.’

My father at first refused, shocked, not knowing what to think. To listen to such tales was next to telling them oneself and being acknowledged a raving lunatic. Then, he recovered himself, and after a moment put before Anna a different solution to the problem.

‘Why not arrange a marriage between Miryam and my youngest son Ya‘akov. He too has this strange notion to remain unmarried and a virgin. Perhaps the two of them could carry on a life of righteousness together in virginity, or, if they should come to their senses and abandon these ideals, they could consummate their marriage, and have a family.’ Of course, my father made this offer entirely without consulting me. After all, if Abraham could sacrifice Isaac…

Anna remained doubtful but returned to her daughter with the new proposal. She found Miryam to be absolutely inflexible and as unapproachable as the Holy Ark itself. Meanwhile, my beloved father came to me and carefully revealed the dilemma he was in. I blush to tell you, I was furious. For someone who prized fidelity to Torah and followed the fourth mitzvah precisely, I was abashed, and then ashamed. I confessed to my father, finally, the dream that had put me on the path I had chosen. I too was korban.

Wearily, my father Yosef met again with Anna, the two of them bringing each their version of the bad news. Out of pity and fatigue my father agreed to Anna’s original proposal. After all, this has been done before. Well, almost. It’s quite common that an aged widower takes a young bride. No one need know what goes on in their bridal chamber. Still, I was adamantly opposed. ‘Father,’ I protested, ‘this appearance of marriage is a lie! Nothing but evil will come of it! Please reconsider!’ But he didn’t hear me.

I was not my father’s counselor but his servant, according to my own volition. I gave him my opinion, and then accepted his decision, though I was unhappy about it. They were betrothed, and now I had a step-mother who was nearly the same age as myself. I pondered the words of the Tehillim as I prayed, ‘How can a youth remain pure? By behaving as Your Word prescribes. I have sought You with all my heart, do not let me stray from Your commandments.’ And then things went from bad to worse.

Miryam was found with child. I was more adamant than ever that my father send her away, ‘Divorce her, do anything, just get her out of here!’ How could he marry the wench? What had become of her vow of chastity? I fumed and ranted in a way I now regret. How quickly we judge those we want to hate, and for no reason! My father almost yielded, but he dreamt too, and a voice had told him, ‘Do not fear to take Miryam into your house, for the child in her womb has been conceived not by man but by the Most High.’

Though I felt at the time that my life was over, it had only just begun. What I thought at first was nothing but bad news, became in the end the first inklings of the good news, yes, the first gospel, and I am its witness. As his youngest son, I stayed with my father and my step-mother, accepting all that happened as coming from the hand of the Lord. I began to understand that there is a spirit of Torah which transcends the written words. I learned to love without limit, because that is what the Lord does.

I need not recount for you what happened in all those years. To hear it would not tire you, because it’s so wonderful, but these stories already have their tellers. How my brother Yeshua was born in a cave, not in Nazareth of course, but on the outskirts of an obscure village, Bethlehem. How the star appeared the night he was born. How the visitors were sent. And then, how we were sent, scampering for our lives, outside Judaea, into hiding among the brethren in Egypt. I was with them in all our travels.

And when we finally returned to Nazareth to take up our real lives again, as I’ve already told you, I stayed and attended to the needs of my father and his new family. That one Pesach when our whole clan went to Jerusalem, and we somehow lost Yeshua, my father sent me ahead with the rest, while he and Miryam went back to seek their son. I think that father was granted to see him teaching in the Temple as he later would, because he would not live to see his epiphany to the people of Yisra’el.

But here I want to testify to some things that have not come to the attention of the scribes, which I had no cause to reveal in my talks before the brethren, or in my written testimonies. I feel that for me, somehow, the time is close. I am an eyewitness. An eyewitness to what? To the only event in all the world worth seeing, yet which is hidden before the face of all people. It is the resurrection. I must take the witness stand and speak, so that you can tell the brethren, should something happen to me.

When we were all in that upper room, for his last Pesach—yes, I too was there, not just ‘the Twelve’—for that supper which transformed the earthly Passover to the heavenly, my brother, yes, he whom we dare call ‘the Lord’ said concerning the Fourth Cup, ‘I shall not drink any more wine until I drink the new wine in the Kingdom of God.’ Inwardly I uttered in agreement, ‘And I shall not eat any more bread until I eat the new bread in the resurrection!’ but I was astonished at my words, and told no one. Then he said, ‘Come, let us go,’ and we left to pray with him in the garden.

Once again, what appeared as bad news, terrible news, at the time, the arrest of my brother, with the rest of us fleeing for our lives, after a night of unspeakable loneliness and horror, only became worse. A mock trial, and foregone conviction. Then, flaying, stripping, spitting, beating, and finally torturing on a scaffold outside the City gates, the innocent between the guilty, all sharing the same fate, death. And we, crazed and shattered, the guilty among the innocent, we who knew who he was, and still gave him up to those whom he excused by almost his last words, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’

My refuge after the catastrophe was in the house of my uncle, Chalfi. My aunt, his wife Miryam, along with my step-mother Miryam, and some other women—the only one among us who was man enough to do what only women were brave enough to do, watch his crucifixion, was my brother’s youngest disciple Yochanan—stayed at the place of the skull until a rich Jew who had begged his remains came to collect them. Again I am so very ashamed to remember, but the shame I felt at the time was greater.

I hid in the house of my uncle, until his wife returned, bringing with her the good news that Yeshua was alive. I didn’t know what to believe, but my heart was already pounding in expectation. Could this be true? This is what he said would happen. Obscurely, to save our sanity, he had intimated, ‘the Son of Man will be put to death, but after three days, he will rise again.’ I remembered my strange inner oracle at the supper, ‘And I shall not eat any more bread until I eat the new bread in the resurrection!’

To ease our minds a little, we took the road to visit the brethren in the village of Emmaus, Chalfi and I. We were nearly there when we overtook a stranger, and he fell in with us. It was a young man—he couldn’t have been older than twenty—and he began to talk to us. Noticing our downcast look, he asked us what was the matter. ‘Are you the only one who doesn’t know what has just happened in Jerusalem?’ we asked. He looked puzzled, so we told him what we knew about it, how all our hope was nailed with Yeshua to a cross.

‘Well, if this Yeshua were the Mashiach of Yisra’el, this is what would happen.’ And step by step, the stranger told us how the words of the prophets would be fulfilled when Mashiach appeared. We were dumbfounded. He seemed to know the whole story, even parts that we didn’t know or hadn’t thought of. The walk didn’t seem long enough. We wanted to hear more but had reached our destination. The stranger made to move on. We pressed him, ‘Brother, stay with us, for evening is at hand.’

How true the words we spoke, calling him ‘Brother,’ more than we realized. We were hungry, so we entered a well-known inn for the evening bread. We sat down, and food and drink were brought to the table. Our unknown companion took one of the hot loaves and broke it up three ways with his hands, and offered it to us. As he handed me a piece he asked, ‘Ya‘akov, will you now eat the new bread of the resurrection?’

Involuntarily I closed my eyes, feeling a faint coming on, and grasped the edge of the table to keep from falling. I heard someone suddenly stand up, and then the crash of a wooden bench as it hit the floor. I heard my uncle gasp, and then shout, ‘No! Wait! Stay with… us.’ His voice sank as quickly as one who feels that all is lost. I opened my eyes, expecting to see Chalfi and the stranger standing at the table, and a bench knocked over, but we were two at that table, with no sign of the third. After picking up the bench and sitting down, Chalfi was quiet for a moment. Then he looked at me and softly said, ‘It was him.’

So there it is. Yes, I know you’ve heard about Chalfi—he is called Klopas by the Greeks, but he was my father’s youngest brother Chalfi, and his wife is still with us, a widow now, older than we can guess—but I wanted you to know that it was I who walked that way with him, and I witness that it was the Lord that met us on the road. No, I didn’t see him. I mean, yes, I saw him but didn’t recognize him, at least not at first, not until it was too late. Eyes that should see sometimes close at the wrong moment.

Ah, but I see they’re coming for me. They call me ‘tzaddik’ and try to pay me by their flattery to say that white is black and black white. That is permissible by their reading of Torah, but not by mine. I don’t know everything yet about my brother except what I heard him say and saw him do. He was not an ordinary man. He was more than Torah righteous, that I do know. No one has ever spoken as he spoke. It is as though he were the Torah in the form of a man, not only saying but doing all that the Father does.

Yes, they will hear my testimony. Yes, I shall tell them all I can, all I know. I heard Yeshua say, ‘What I tell you in the dark, speak in the light; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim on the housetops.’ This is what I shall do. Come, brethren, walk with me to the Holy Temple, where his Mother in a vision entered where no man could enter, to become the Ark of a New Covenant and the Throne of a King. Come, help me mount the final scaffold that I may join my brother and Lord in his kingdom, where he reigns, as King of Glory, who says ‘I am the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End,’ and who makes all things new.

‘Come, Tzaddik, we are waiting.’

Simultaneously published at Eyewitnesses.

Youth

Nothing so erases the flow of time and brings me back quickly and fully to myself, the man I started out as, the seventeen year old with eyes aglow with wonder, and heart beating faster as the world of new freedom and of love opened itself before my path, nothing so brings me back, as the sweet songs of the young Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, who now, like yours truly, are also clothed with many years. When I hear them sing, I can’t help but join in, and I forget I am sixty-three, or maybe, because I want to sing these songs in the presence of my young friends, show them that there’s nothing to fear in ‘getting old,’ that in fact, there is no such thing as age, really. Who and what we are remains forever the same, and forever young. That is, unless we kill it.

I was twenty-one years when I wrote this song.

I’m twenty-two now, but I won’t be for long.

Time hurries on,

and the leaves that are green turn to brown.

I remember distinctly, singing that song at the ripe old age of twenty-one, the year I waved good-bye to my teary-eyed Mom standing in the front porch of her house in Joliet, Illinois, and drove my heavily-loaded Pinto to what I would later call ‘the Great White North,’ to Canada. I was still singing that song a year later, when I got married, wondering when I would be a grownup. Would it be now, now that I had known a woman for the first time? Was I a man yet? Or was I still just a boy?

Once my heart was filled with the love of a girl.

I held her close, but she faded in the night

like a poem I meant to write,

and the leaves that are green turn to brown.

Like the song, my life went through many turns, ups and downs, but I still never quite got past being twenty-two, and I was still singing. Not just this song, but most of the others of the melodious duo, ‘I am a Rock,’ and ‘Sounds of Silence,’ and ‘I’d rather be a sparrow than a snail’ (aka ‘El Condor Pasa’). I am still singing them today, and when I do they re-vest me in my boyhood dreams like a suit of old, comfortable clothes, and the man that looks out of these eyes and whose voice sings these songs engraved on his heart, remains the same.

No worry then, about getting old. I swear by heaven and earth, I, no, we don’t change. We’ll be the same at sixty-three, as I am now, as we were at seventeen, and will still be at seventy, eighty, ninety, and still counting. Not for nothing did Christ Jesus the Child Leader tell us that only those will enter the Kingdom of His Father who enter as children. Nor did the prophet-psalmist-king and lover David chant in vain, that those who trust, who ‘trust in the Lord are as Mount Zion’ (Psalm 125), and ‘who murmur His law day and night’ are like trees yielding their fruit in season, their leaves never fading (Psalm 1).

Ah, and that brings us back to the song, ‘and the leaves that are green turn to brown.’ I sing it now and am again what I was, and always will be, and I laugh at the fear that I could ever grow old, and I shyly smile at the boys who wrote that song, who also didn’t know what the years ahead would hold. We think when we are young we will live forever, and we can become careless. And in the pursuit of pleasure we sometimes trade our glory for shame, our youth for old age. We convince ourselves that we can be measured in years, as our coffins are measured in inches.

But no, the Truth has come to dash our delusions, if only we welcome Him in ourselves, who is forever with us, in us, even as us, being carried as always in tender arms, till that last day when we are delivered, yes, when He delivers us, and yet we will sing then as ever,

Yahweh, my heart has no lofty ambitions,

my eyes do not look too high.

I am not concerned with great affairs

or marvels beyond my scope.

Enough for me to keep my soul tranquil and quiet

like a child in its mother's arms,

as content as a child that has been weaned.

Israel, rely on Yahweh,

now and for always!

Psalm 131

Jerusalem Bible

What is the Father to do?

The words of Jesus have limitless application. What he once spoke to his hearers, the Pharisees, in first century Palestine, by way of warning, are just as much prophecy as they are parable and moral precept. Of this we can be sure, and it is this quality of the words of the prophets of Israel, and of all true prophets—that they have limitless application—that has preserved them for all peoples, cultures, and lands down to the present age.

There is a spirit of religion—and here we must be quite careful to deliberately say we are not speaking of true religion, that which causes us to come to the aid of the helpless while keeping ourselves uncontaminated by the world—yes, there is a spirit of religion which we must fight against, which the prophets battled, which Jesus contested, which encroaches on all spiritual inspiration and endeavor, especially the Church of Christ.

Christ tells us of the father with two sons. He tells us that the father asked one son to go and work in the fields that day. The boy said, ‘Yes, I will go,’ but did not go. The father had also asked the other son, who refused, saying, ‘No, I won’t go,’ but who nonetheless went. After hearing this story, the people were asked, ‘Which son did the will of his father?’ and they responded, ‘The son who went to work in the fields.’ Jesus had made his point.

We hear this story in church every year, probably more than once, and if we read our bibles regularly, we will come across it in the 21st chapter of the gospel according to Matthew. We all seem to know what it means, but we never think of applying it, except to excuse ourselves in a haphazard, unserious way. We think, ‘Well, I am neither the son who was obedient in word but not in deed, nor the disobedient who repented and worked. It’s not about me.’

Sadly, and unavoidably, but forgivably, it is about us, both as individuals and as the world of the Church. Sadly, because once we see what we ‘should have done’ we’re sad about it. Unavoidably, because when we look back at our lives, we still maintain, ‘What else could I have done?’ And forgivably, because in looking back at our lives, or at Church history, we quickly abandon regret, and forgive ourselves, and forget. Our religion gets us out of this mess.

But it isn’t real. The words of Jesus have power, though they do not use it against us, but for us. They are prophetic words, and we are caught, whether we know it or not, in the net of our own evasions. Thinking we have escaped by the grace of God, ‘He tore the net and we escaped,’ we justify our present behavior by that of our forgiven past, a past that looks more and more rosy as real history fades from view. We said, ‘Yes,’ but we did not go.

So the Church—which should lead the world in all things because it is the light of the world and the city set on a hill which cannot be hid—is found out by the unbelieving world, which has learned well from our bad example and behavior, and goes out to work in the fields while saying ‘No’ to the Father, instead of us who say ‘Yes,’ but do not go. That world now begins to teach us what mercy is, even though in disobedience it also blasphemes life.

This is a mystery. How salvation freely offered is rejected as a form of words by some who go and perform those works that pertain to the Kingdom. Even greater a mystery, how others forego the work, believing all has been accomplished, and pursue a salvation of their own making.

What is the Father to do with His two sons?

Wonderful Judge

Our God, the wonderful Judge!

How is He a wonderful Judge?

He’s a wonderful Judge because He gives us the maximum length of time to repent—a life time. He’s a wonderful Judge because He doesn’t hide His laws from us but writes them on our hearts, so we don’t have to search for them. He makes them easy to remember by keeping them ever before us, revealed not only in ourselves but in His whole creation.

He’s a wonderful Judge because He has confided to us the rewards of obedience, instantly, whenever we fulfill His commandments. He has even given into our keeping His awesome Mercy Seat from which He will acquit us of all our iniquities, so that we may learn to sit in it and reign with Him in mercy towards all others.

He’s a wonderful Judge because He has fashioned us in His very image—kings like the Father, priests like the Son, and prophets like the Spirit—and even relinquished to us His authority to judge the world. Yes, only a wonderful Judge would grant us the dignity and the liberty to judge ourselves, and this earthly life as our chance to welcome Him, or reject Him.

For it is not the righteousness of His holy laws that He has made to be our home, but it is the mercy of His living words that He has made our road and destination.

I tell you most solemnly, 
whoever listens to my words, 
and believes in the One who sent me, 
has eternal life; 
without being brought to judgment 
he has passed from death to life. 

I tell you most solemnly, 
the hour will come—in fact it is here already— 
when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, 
and all who hear it will live. 

For the Father, who is the source of life, 
has made the Son the source of life; 
and, because he is the Son of Man, 
has appointed him supreme Judge. 
John 5:24-27

Why I write

I am a writer. That’s not what I think I am; that’s what I am. I don’t know if I am a good writer or not. I mean, from a literary critic’s viewpoint, I may be nothing more than a shabby if mellifluous wanna-be. I think I write well, and I usually enjoy reading what I write. Like my favorite author, C. S. Lewis, I claim to write the books (in my case, they’re not books yet) that I wanted to read, because no one else was writing them. Actually, it’s more like this: I write because I want to see the ideas inside me from the outside. I write because I want to affirm what I think I know to be true. I also write, have written, and may continue to write in the blog format, because I really write to communicate, to connect, myself to myself (inner and outer), and myself to others. I even write sometimes to communicate, to connect, myself (and my reader) to God. I believe in Him, and in spite of my bad behavior and my worst opinions, I am compelled to witness for Him. Most of my witness is in what I do, not what I speak or write. I do not want to be a human bumper sticker. Let those who watch how I drive my vehicle understand whether I am a follower of Jesus or not.

This year I decided I would not recycle my blog posts. Some of my readers have expressed astonishment at my prolific output. It’s true that I have at times written and posted several pieces in a single day, but especially in the last few years, I have integrated earlier writing with new. I did this because there are many testimonies—that’s what I call my posts—that need to be remembered, kept in active memory, in mine and in others who like what I write. I know that for most readers it is a chore usually avoided, to backtrack through a blog and read older posts. This recycling was my method of keeping focus as well. The reason I decided not to recycle anymore is that I am reconvening the parliament of my own mind, formulating what is to be my forward path. I want to glean from this and from my other blogs essential testimonies to publish in book form. With my coming retirement in about a year’s time, I want to transition to writing in book format, and redefine how and what I write in the blogosphere. I don’t know much about where I am ‘going’ in my writing, but I am confident and certain of my motives. I do not write to teach (even if it seems that I do), nor to correct (though I sometimes fall into this through human weakness and forgetfulness).

I write to encourage, to affirm, to strengthen the weak, in me and in others. I write to allay fears, to dissipate delusions, to liberate myself and others from bondage to ‘ancestors in stone armor, calling for loyalty untrue.’ I write, like my hero, poet Walt Whitman, to ‘ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,’ yet like the psalmist, without leaving the divinely bestowed kingdom where ‘the measuring line marks out delightful places for me,’ because I trust, I know that ‘for me the heritage is superb indeed.’ Yes, for me, and for the others like me who will find my letters where I have dropped them. I want those letters to be love letters, patterned after the truest and greatest love letter the world has ever received, the holy and divine scriptures. I write because I am a word man. I want to give back with increase the word that was deposited with me. I want to prove, not who I am or even that I am, but that He is. I want to make, as best I can, the Invisible visible. Though I try and fail, I still must try. I trust not in my pen or my brain but in Him who has created me and all, and who has entrusted me with this urge: not to be known, but to make known. ‘Not by us, Yahweh, not by us, by You alone is glory deserved.’ 

This is why I write.

Is it I ?

When one knows one is ‘on death row’ and is going to die, whether by sickness, or by execution, I think it’s customary for the condemned to make a final request. What comes to my mind is a man facing a firing squad asking for a last cigarette. Small consolation to the likes of me who have never smoked. What would I ask for, really, if I were standing against that wall, knowing that in a moment it would all be over? At that point, I’m not sure anything material I could have would be worth the asking. Maybe I’d ask for a last drink of cold water. What would you ask for?

Someone might respond—I might respond if I weren’t so darned self-conscious—that he’d like a moment to make one final prayer. After all, if you know you’re going to meet your Maker and have some moral sensibility and doctrinal belief, ‘make peace with your adversary while on the way to trial,’ you might want to confess your earthly sins while you still have breath. You know you can’t escape being dragged to court, but maybe, just maybe you can settle your accounts outside and avoid being harshly sentenced by the judge. I think we all know what I’m talking about.

Consider Christ, the man we know as Jesus of Nazareth. What was his last request? He knew—the friends he had just eaten supper with didn’t really—he was going to die, and that it was for real, not just in appearance. His last request was his prayer to the Father, the one called his ‘high-priestly prayer’ that his beloved friend John recorded from memory in his gospel. This prayer wasn’t quite finished in our hearing, though, for when Jesus had gone to the garden of Gethsemane, he continued it while his disciples, even while we, had fallen asleep. What we missed we’ll never know.

But we can overhear his prayer after his last supper with his friends. What did he pray for? Let’s have a hearing. ‘Father, the hour has come: glorify your Son, so that your Son may glorify you; and, through the power over all mankind that you have given Him, let him give eternal life to all those you have entrusted to him.’ This does not sound like the kind of request a man who knows he is about to go to his death would make, not unless of course he were very sure about two things: that He is the Son of God, and that his Father can do anything He requests.

I take back what I said about not hearing the last part of his prayer. I forgot that, though John doesn’t record his words, evangelist Luke does. I wonder how he knew. In the garden Christ prayed, ‘Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, let your will be done, not mine.’ From this part of his last request, we have learned that Jesus of Nazareth was at least a real man, a human being, for sure. How could someone who starts out asking for what seems a complete impossibility close his request with what seems to be abject resignation?

Returning to John’s gospel, what else do we find? Does Jesus pray for himself in his last request to the Father? Not exactly. ‘I pray for them; I am not praying for the world but for those you have given me, because they belong to you.’ He continues praying for those whom God has given Him. ‘Holy Father, keep those you have given me true to your name, so that they may be one like us.’ He doesn’t seem to be concerned at all about the fact he is shortly to die. In fact, in his prayer he affirms, ‘I am not in the world any longer, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you.’

As it is, it appears that Christ’s last request was nothing for himself at all, but for us, and he was asking the only One he was absolutely confident would be able to grant his request. He asks for one thing, though, again and again, each time in slightly different terms. ‘I pray not only for these, but for those also who through their words will believe in me. May they all be one. Father, may they be one in us, as you are in me, and I am in you, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me. I have given them the glory you gave to me, that they may be one as we are one.’

Nothing for himself, except that he be glorified, whatever that means. (We know what it means now, but we didn’t then. Only he knew he was going to reign from the Tree.) Everything he asked for in his last request was for us. Everything. At least, I think it was for us. We’re the ones he refers to when he says, ‘but for those also.’ But I am hesitant for this reason. If he prayed for us, and if his Father in heaven was sure to grant his request, what are we doing? As bystanders to his death by torture, as hearers of the good news of his resurrection, as witnesses of his ascension to his Father, what is our last request?

‘Lord, is it I, is it I?’

Interwoven in amity

The painting reproduced above depicts the Russian priest and martyr Pavel Florensky (left) walking with the philosopher Sergei Bulgakov. In 1914 he wrote his dissertation About Spiritual Truth. During his life he published works on philosophy, theology, art theory, mathematics, and electrodynamics. Thus, he was both a scientist and a Christian.

An Orthodox brother sent me a link to a televised debate between ‘Science Guy’ Bill Nye and an Australian creationist, Ken Ham. This is not the sort of thing I am interested in, debates, especially debates on artificial antagonisms such as ‘creation versus evolution,’ but I looked at it, enough to know that, yes, just another waste of precious time. I certainly don’t blame my friend for forwarding it to me. I’m not sure where he stands on this issue, as I do know that there are many Orthodox Christians who hold to very literal and fundamentalist beliefs. Many of these are former Evangelicals, ‘born again’ Christians, disillusioned by the drift of their original fellowships into spiritual anemia.

Myself, not exactly a ‘cradle Orthodox’ but almost, I did start out holding staunchly to what would now be called creationist views. It would be difficult indeed, living in America, the seedbed of ‘fundamentalism,’ not to be affected at least a little, whether pro or con, by the vigorous promotion of such views, in the street, in the media, sometimes even in church regardless of denomination. But after growing up within the Orthodox koinonía, observing both beliefs and behaviors of those inside and outside the Holy Church, I came to the conclusion that what is called ‘fundamentalism’ is really a misnomer. A true fundamentalist deals in foundational faith, not in divisive opinions.

What I noticed very early in my life among Orthodox Christians was their unique way of presenting the Bible and its stories, especially those in the Old Testament, simply and without questioning or challenging them from a rationalist angle. When Adam and Eve were discussed, we never talked about who Adam and Eve were historically, or even if they existed at all as depicted in the Bible, but what their story meant for us and for the whole human race. Even, no, especially, in our holy ikons, the creation not only of Adam, and Eve, but of the whole of creation, is shown in beautiful and compelling color, and we are told, that ikons can represent only real events and real people. They are a graphic Bible.

So we were taught, and we accepted without resistance, that the right way to read the Bible and to view the holy ikons, is simply to accept them ‘as they are’ without raising the voice of dispute or dissension. This isn’t to say that we were forbidden to come to our own personal beliefs about either. On the contrary, it seemed we were quietly encouraged to ‘dig deeper’ and to ask the Lord, who is ‘the Only Teacher of mankind,’ to enlighten us. In fact, I would say, we had a sense that it was ‘very meet, right, and our bounden duty’ to study and seek, to further our enlightenment, not to teach others, but so that our lives would shine with the knowledge and love of God, not to argue, but to affirm.

What is at issue in controversies such as these is not really the rightness of one set of views over another, but the warfare of one barely concealed, nearly naked antagonism against another, both equally bent on personal triumph. Yes, let me reiterate, equally bent. In the debate I witnessed this evening, I was amazed at the ignorance of both the scientist and the creationist, displayed in their inability to cut through their own material spiritualism and spiritual materialism. In closing the debate, each was asked what was the driving force of his beliefs. The creationist answered first, predictably praising the Bible’s absolute, literal truth, tacking on Christ’s work of salvation as a final coup de grâce.

The scientist, or perhaps the evolutionist, for evolution is what he seemed to believe science itself is, offered as the reason for what he believed, science as an ongoing, adventurous, liberating, fulfilling, and victorious invasion and investigation by the human mind, his or anyone’s, of the material world, of all there is, and that is all there is. The universe, the whole show, and we as particularly favored to be, for no special reason other than we evolved, we fit in, the witnesses of this grand spectacle of which we are a part. He praised his teacher Carl Sagan by name, so we knew that even an atheist can look up to someone. If I seem to favor one debater over the other, forgive me, brethren. I found much to admire, and much to pity, in both.

You see, I myself am a scientist. I have no degree, but my primary and secondary education was in mathematics and the natural sciences. It was only when as a young adult at college I discovered that ‘the proper study of mankind is man’ that I switched over to history, political science, and philosophy. It suited me better, and there I have remained ever since. It was no accident, then, that when my heart awoke to love, I should seek Him, the Bridegroom of the soul, in His ancient habitation, Holy Orthodoxy. Also no accident, that in the faith of Christ and His holy apostles I should find no rend in the garment of either knowledge or wisdom. ‘Science’ and ‘religion’ are both at home here, interwoven in amity.

Let us grieve

Come, brethren, let us grieve together. We are locked in the tension between a world that has been irredeemably ruined by us and the gate to a world that is still what it always was and to which we have access if we only ever really desired it—Paradise. We know and live the only news we ever want to hear, the bad news, and avert our eyes from what we know is inevitable, but not for us because we can’t be trusted with it—the Good News. We do our daily rounds, wake, work, feed, forget, sleep, start again, never giving ourselves a moment to stop and see ourselves as we really are, only the world as it is, and if we are believers in whatever transcendent God, apply ourselves assiduously to escaping His impatient glare. We feel our failure but do not know how to please. We turn away and accept yet another day.

Not far the time is coming as the year cycles round again, what the revelator John repeats with untiring voice, ‘for the time is near.’ For us who believe in Christ or attempt, at least, to follow Jesus, the time allotted us as preparation, as pre-judgment, even as repentance, the time we do not give ourselves to stop, and turn around instead of away, is close at hand. ‘There,’ holy and divine scripture says of Him, ‘He proclaimed the Good News from God. “The time has come,” He said, “and the Kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent, and believe the Good News.”’ So we have Holy Church, that strange country which we say is ‘what salvation looks like’ coming to us with its tales, as it leads us patiently back onto the battlefield where we were born, this time with eyes open, and offers us the way out, and in.

Great and holy Lent. We hear its name mentioned and inwardly cringe as at a lion’s roar while outwardly we seek to escape by conforming to the ‘joyful sadness’ and the litanies of self-denial both spiritual and physical that lie ahead. Suddenly, in a moment, we are shown whatever one sin we are guilty of committing night and day with all our being, that for all our unconscious self-justifications we remain ignorant of, thinking ‘I am okay, I’m a good person, I haven’t killed anyone.’ Now we have something to tell the priest at our annual confession, leaving us only to worry whether we will have enough money to assist our hand-picked poor, whether we will be able to subsist on peanut butter sandwiches and lentil soup for six blessèd weeks, and whether we can apply our paltry efforts at prayer to fulfill our obligations.

Yes, let us grieve together. We are not Jews, who yearly repent for ten days, confident that they will be just as saved as we think we are, by these acts. Lucky for them, their Temple has been destroyed, is no more on this earth, and they need only repent, no longer offering bloody sacrifice. But luckier still, the Messiah whose name they dare not know stands before the only Ark of the Covenant there ever was to sprinkle His own blood, not that of bulls and rams, on the Mercy Seat, and so save them who know Him not as well as us who say we do. We are not Muslims, whose fast follows the moon as it migrates around its shortened year, impatient of the day when their Mahdi appears, accompanied by our Jesus who stands behind him. They know better than to wait for someone else to straighten out the world.

No, brethren, we are Christians, who confess the God-man, who says ‘Apart from me, you can do nothing,’ and yet who tells us, ‘You will do even greater things, because I am going to the Father.’ We are caught between His words, paralysed by our doubt, but we have our excuses. Doubt Him, no. Only doubt ourselves. We can’t believe that He has entrusted us with the keys to the Kingdom. That He has added us to the angels who guard the entrance to Paradise. ‘The world, just like us, is evil. We can’t make it better. We can only watch as it burns, and weep. Yes, just as we weep for our sins, even as we stand in them, bathing in our own blood. The old man must die before the New Man can be born. The old world must be destroyed, so the City not-made-by-hands can descend. It is all God’s work, not ours.’

And so the year keeps cycling round. It will be Lent soon, a time of Light, not of ‘night, when no one can work,’ but a season to prepare our soil, to plough it, to fertilize it, to seed it for the only crop worth planting. Yes, the old man must die in us, but we need not kill him, only keep our eyes on the New Man who we are to become, as we follow Him. Yes, the old world is evil, but that is not the world Christ comes to save, nor the world He calls us to live in. For the path He treads He walks in us, and that land is redeemed by our footsteps, or not at all. Come, brethren, let us grieve together. Then, arise and take hold of the ploughshare. Yes, we were all born on this battlefield, yet not to fight but to plant, for the prophet declares, ‘These will hammer their swords into plowshares, their spears into sickles…

‘O House of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of Yahweh.’ 

Isaiah 2:4b-5 Jerusalem Bible

He will surely come

It must hurt deeply to be a conservative today in countries like France or America. Here in the States, to be a conservative means one wants to live a common sense and decent life, to be responsible in one’s personal economy, to do as one wants to be done by. It means wanting to conserve the principles of the American Revolution (if one has had enough education to know what these are). It doesn’t have anything to do with gay bashing or blowing up abortion clinics, or even with standing around for hours protesting with placards, or having ‘tea parties.’ It doesn’t necessarily mean living in the past either. It does mean, however, that one believes in America, in its moral strengths (not the publicity kind, but the quiet kind that keeps the country moving forward, inch by inch). It pains the conservative here, to see one’s President bowing and kissing the hand of a Sa’udi king, as if he were his liege man, while not even nodding before the current Queen of our ancient royal line, of whom George III was our last king. And for the conservative Frenchman, what to make of a president whose ‘First Lady’ was almost this one, then was that one, but insecurely because of the possibly next one. Even for the French, this really must be too much.

I dropped out of political debate ages ago, and even though my precinct card shows me as a Republican, it’s not with the Republican Party that I identify. I identify with reason. I associate with tolerance. I support compassion. In actual fact, I inherited my party affiliation in the same way I became a Catholic: it was handed down to me by my parents. I thought that being a Republican meant that I held up as my hero the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, who came from my home state, Illinois, and I loved the party mascot, the elephant, strong and wise and able to remove obstacles like a Hindu god of the same species. But I grew up. I saw what was happening to my country, and whether run by this or that party, we were drifting off course. Our captains were becoming smaller and weaker of stature, until finally we found ourselves with no captain at all. I thought to myself, ‘It’s time to move to Japan.’ But I didn’t do that. It was just a frustrating dream. When problems are on the rise, it’s not time to fall asleep and dream of escape. It’s time to awake.

This is not a time to criticize or to denounce what it is that is wrong with America, or France, or any of the countries of the declining West, but a time to draw ourselves together and really seek the good that we desire. Not a time to divide or keep divided what mere rhetoric and slogan has torn apart, pitting brother against brother, and sisters against both. I remember a time, just barely remember, but it did happen, when there was a spirit in the air over my country that infiltrated many hearts and warmed them to right action, to compassion and commitment. I hear a song echoing from that past time, ‘If I had a hammer…’ and when I even whistle the tune (for I’ve forgotten enough of the words to not be able to sing it) my soul, that which animates this old body and inspires this flagging mind, is aroused by the memory of what once was, and what could yet be. ‘This song would be a better national anthem for today,’ I think to myself. ‘What we need now,’ I muse, ‘is not another president, but a Hero.’ That man is already waiting in the wings, he’s still growing in strength. But yes, he will surely come.

For the choirmaster…

The psalms appointed for the eleventh day, as I read, prayed, learned from, and was strengthened by them—praying the psalms takes away every base desire, and fills the soul with grace!—as I offered them, and as the Lord offered them to me, the unworthy, I found many savory verses that have fed and still sustain me in my earthly pilgrimage,

Take pity on me, God, as they harry me,
pressing their attacks home all day.

Yes, today as always, I am like the timid hare, who has no help, except for the God who pities me and gives me strength to run, for my enemies—the world, the flesh, and the devil—press their attacks home all day. One verse that I love so much because for me it has proven so true, is this,

Raise me up when I am most afraid,
I put my trust in You;
in God, whose Word I praise,
in God I put my trust, fearing nothing;
what can men do to me?

Yes, the Lord does in fact raise me up when I am most afraid, and though in myself I have no courage, He lifts me up into His certainty, where there is nothing to fear. The fifty-sixth psalm recounts the ways that our enemies attack us,

All day long they twist what I say,
all they think of is how to harm me,
they conspire, lurk, spy on my movements,
determined to take my life.

Yes, even though we are beset—all of us, whether we believe and desire God or not—by dangerous enemies on every side, the Lord is faithful to rescue us, seeing what we need before we ask, ‘You have noted my agitation, now collect my tears in Your wineskin!’ and He is ready, always and forever, to push back those fierce, merciless forces that attack us, ‘my enemies will have to fall back as soon as I call for help.’

In the fifty-seventh psalm is a wonderful verse that, whenever I hear it, reminds me that every adversity, like a storm, will pass, and that the best way to endure is to trust in God, and lie low,

Take pity on me, God, take pity on me,
in You my soul takes shelter;
I take shelter in the shadow of Your wings
until the destroying storm is over.

Yes, and I hear the truth that fills my whole being with gratitude whenever I remember it, that it is not by anything that I have done, or can do, that I am saved from my enemies,

I call on God the Most High,
on God who has done everything for me:
to send from heaven and save me,

But that by their own operations, those who seek our destruction are themselves destroyed,

They laid a net where I was walking
when I was bowed with care;
they dug a pitfall for me
but fell into it themselves,

Yes, how faithful, and merciful, is the Lord, both to us, and to our enemies! Merciful to us in that He saves us from them, and merciful to them because He permits their bent will to destroy others to check themselves. The focus of the psalms appointed for the eleventh day seems to be on the struggle between those who seek and serve God, the virtuous, in Hebrew, tzaddiqim, and those who seek and serve themselves, in Hebrew, resha’im. They start with the struggle from a single soul’s angle, and proceed to a social one—in society operate the same forces that attack and seek to exterminate us one by one,

Gods you may be,
but do you give the sentences you should,
and dispense impartial justice to mankind?

On the contrary, in your hearts you meditate oppression,
with your hands you dole out tyranny on earth.

Right from the womb these wicked men have gone astray,
these double talkers have been in error since their birth,

Yes, we have this to deal with too, as all of us know, who live in these declining years of mankind’s imperial systems, both in the State, and in the Church: there are those who believe themselves to be higher than the rest of us, so high that they can assert themselves to rule over us, not in righteousness, which is the way of the King (blessed be He!), but according to their corruption. The psalmist spares no words in his poetic prayer that these miscreants be removed,

God, break their teeth in their mouths,
Yahweh, wrench out the fangs of these savage lions!

May they drain away like water running to waste,
may they wither like trodden grass,
like a slug that melts as it moves,
like an abortion, denied the light of day!

Before they sprout thorns like the bramble,
green or scorched, may the wrath whirl them away!

What joy for the virtuous, seeing this vengeance,
bathing their feet in the blood of the wicked!

‘So,’ people will say, ‘the virtuous do have their harvest;
so there is a God who dispenses justice on earth!’

In the fifty-ninth psalm the focus returns to the individual in a most poignant way, and reminds me of the time of my own youth, when I had just such an enemy as the psalmist described, ‘lurking to ambush me,’

Back they come at nightfall,
snarling like curs,
prowling through the town.

See how they slaver at the mouth,
with swords between their teeth,
‘There is no one listening.’

Yes, as the psalmist testifies, I was delivered from my enemy just as he was, and without really doing anything on my own, but by waiting for the Lord to act, for He does, and without fail, never too early, never too late,

Yahweh, You laugh at them,
You make fun of these pagans.
My Strength, I look to You.

My citadel is God Himself,
the God who loves me is coming,
God will show me my enemies defeated.

Do people who know me wonder why I so often sing, especially while I work? The answer is in this psalm,

I, for my part, celebrate Your strength,
I sing of Your love morning by morning;
You have always been my citadel,
a shelter when I am in trouble.

My Strength, I play for You,
my citadel is God Himself,
the God who loves me.

Again, the struggle, now at the level of the nation, as the larger unit of human society, when I come to the sixtieth psalm I cannot but think of, and pray for, my own country and people. Its verses also memorialize for me the disaster and tragedy of ‘Nine Eleven,’ which has changed our world forever,

God, You have rejected us, broken us;
You have been angry, come back to us!

You have made the earth tremble, torn it apart;
now mend the rifts, it is tottering still!
You have allowed Your people to suffer,
to drink a wine that makes us reel.

Hoist the standard to rally those who fear You,
to put them out of range of bow and arrow, selah.
To bring rescue to those You love,
save with Your right hand and answer us!

Though the psalm calls on God to answer us, we know what the answer is, it is repentance, for the nation, just as it is for the individual. It is only this, real repentance, not official displays of it to ‘keep up appearances’ and to ‘save face,’ because only when we humble ourselves, can the Most High reign among us,

Help us in this hour of crisis,
the help that man can give is worthless.
With God among us we shall fight like heroes,
He will trample on our enemies.

Yes, He will trample on our enemies—no, He has trampled on them, ‘by death trampling down death, and upon those in the tombs, bestowing life.’

The final psalm appointed for the eleventh day, the sixty-first, is my plea, yes, mine, not just the psalmist’s, but mine, and every man’s,

God, hear my cry for help,
listen to my prayer!

From the end of the earth I call to You,
with sinking heart.

To the rock too high for me,
lead me!

For You are my refuge,
a strong tower against the enemy.

Let me stay in Your tent forever,
taking refuge in the shadow of Your wings, selah.

You, God, accept my vows,
You grant me the heritage of those who fear Your name.

Let the king live on and on,
prolong his years, generation on generation.

May he sit enthroned in God's presence for ever!
Assign Your love and faithfulness to guard him!

So I shall always sing of Your name,
fulfilling the vows I have taken, day after day.

Yes, ‘for the choirmaster, for strings, of David.’

For the time is close

Belligerent advocates of ignorant opinions held to be infallible, these are believers, though that is all they are. They have no theology. They are, in fact, atheological, locked in a mindset that is cryptically atheistic, because their god is manufactured, a crucible of molten brass that emerges as self-fashioned as the golden calf of Old Testament Aaron’s mistake, not the living God whom his brother Moses meets and speaks with, face to face.

This is islamification of the gospel—production of a false Christ, adoration by a false Bride, purification without suffering, sanctification without grace, seduction into pretended virginity, reduction of the Holy Bible into sharia law, devotion to man-made glory, not to the Glory ‘not made by hands.’ These are the greatest lies and the boldest. Once they have captured, it is hard to escape.

We think we are newly besieged by hijackers of ‘the religion of peace,’ that is, if we are politic and polite deceitful dreamers, but a brief foray into history will show us which religions, if any, are truly peaceful, and which are not, yet all are nothing more than religions.

The two closest rivals, Islam and Christianity, are both violent in history, but there seems to be this difference: In the one, following his scriptures faithfully, the believer will slay the infidel. In the other, following his Lord, he betrays Him if he slays, no matter who is slain. Yet neither can look back and claim either faithfulness or innocence.

It is Spirit, always the living God, that alone is Truth, tells the truth, and commands in truth, whose Word none can evade without retreating into falsehood, who speaks in peace, ‘Apart from me, all is nothing,’ uncoercing, and receives his servants as sons without recourse to any mediation on the part of man, ‘always, now and ever, and unto ages of ages.’

We know by hearing and seeing who brings the everlasting gospel, inwardly grasping what it is because it is already our being. And when we sense not truth but lies we flee, not into the arms of men but into our hearts, where the Kingdom has been buried deep by Him who has seeded it within us, ‘The kingdom of heaven is within you.’

Our world has long been held, pillaged and raped by purveyors of all that Christ is not, while saying they do all he commands, but his letters to us, the seven churches, are all true. All has been foretold, all has been decreed, all have followed their hearts’ desire, and therein all have hidden their personal apocalypse, yet all that is hidden is soon to be revealed.

Brethren, watch and wait. The ten day trial is about to close. Those who claim to be… and are not, will soon, for them too late, confess that it is you he loves, and go down before you. These liars will soon be silenced. And finally, finally we shall understand who these Nicolaitans really were.

For the Time is close.

To Him that was crucified

My spirit to yours, dear brother,
Do not mind because many sounding your name
    do not understand you,
I do not sound your name, but I understand you,
I specify you with joy O my comrade to salute you,
    and to salute those who are with you, before and since,
    and those to come also,
That we all labor together
    transmitting the same charge and succession,
We few equals indifferent of lands, indifferent of times,
We, enclosers of all continents, all castes,
    allowers of all theologies,
Compassionaters, perceivers, rapport of men,
We walk silent among disputes and assertions,
    but reject not the disputers nor any thing that is asserted,
We hear the bawling and din, we are reach’d at by divisions,
    jealousies, recriminations on every side,
They close peremptorily upon us to surround us, my comrade,
Yet we walk unheld, free, the whole earth over,
    journeying up and down
    till we make our ineffaceable mark upon time
    and the diverse eras,
Till we saturate time and eras,
    that the men and women of races, ages to come,
    may prove brethren and lovers, as we are.

— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Hidden

The history of mankind is shaped and given direction, we tend to think, by great events, by pivotal persons strategically placed, visible to all, as implacable as fate, that drag us in their wake, as they plow ahead into a future that could not have been any other than the one we now live in.

The vast machine and scope of the Roman Empire seeded by a single individual, Julius Caesar, which itself seeded the whole of Western civilization. The intricate apparatus and miraculous achievements of the modern natural sciences seeded by great thinkers and scientists of the Renaissance, themselves the product of plantations seeded by ancient Greek philosophers.

Our current political map of the world seeded by revolutions and wars that we know by name, caused by great men we can also name, great though not always good. Luther, Cromwell, Robespierre, Washington, Napoleon, Bismarck, Lenin, Hitler, Roosevelt, Churchill, Gandhi, and Mao. All very visible in their time, and forever after. We study them to try to understand today, which they godlike made.

But these are the externals of history only. They are not what and who really drive the race irresistibly forward, only the agents that keep us from going over the edge, or maybe bring us closer to it.

The real movers of mankind are mostly hidden, invisible to nearly all humanity when they appeared, though in time their epiphanies gradually came to light, and then slowly faded from sight as they became foundation and framework to everything else we know and see.

The world, believers and unbelievers alike, celebrates the birth of a child two thousands of years ago, born poor, homeless, and endangered, a refugee unknown to all except a mad monarch, a handful of shepherds, and perhaps three mystery men, born hidden.

A remnant of believers in who this child is today celebrate an event obscure when it occurred, his baptism in a remote river by a religious prodigy, who alone recognized when he performed it the epiphany of his God, signaled by a voice, to all but him, hidden.

A space of only three years provided this child, now a man, time to make his message known, despite the miracles that followed him, to only a few thousands of persons in a land that, though the crossroads of the world, was a backwater avoided by the wise, again hidden.

And finally, condemned to death as a common criminal by hanging on a scaffold along the roadside, exposed to the ridicule of the rabble that he came to rescue, his work the redemption by resurrection of the race of Adam, wholly unknown when it happened, was hidden.

Hidden from the world, who yet shapes and directs it, who writes its history on a hidden scroll stretched wider than the heavens and just as invisible to those who see only sky and reject it, he was, he is, and he is to come, who is Lord of all, and who is with us now, as we live even as he, hidden.

Be perfect, therefore

Sometimes it takes a lifetime before an obvious truth that we have somehow not recognized before starts staring us unflinchingly in the face. Unnerving, to say the least, but it wasn’t at first. No, at first, when I finally noticed it, it seemed an interesting and very novel discovery, and I made capital of it in my thinking and writing. It seemed no one around me had noticed this truth either, but once you see it, you wonder how it could’ve eluded you so long. At least, that’s what you might think if you haven’t already filed it in a mental ‘to do’ list, I mean, buried it, since most of the items on my ‘to do’ list usually fade out on their own because of neglect.

What truth am I referring to? Well, in my own words it is this: For a human being, to be ‘perfect’ does not mean to be morally perfect, in other words, ‘he never does anything wrong.’ Instead, it means to look upon everyone, and probably everything, and to love everyone (I won’t say probably love everything) with an equal and impartial eye. Now, what’s so obvious about this truth? And what makes me think it is true in the first place? Well, I am a Christian, which means I believe in, and try to follow, Jesus of Nazareth, the Jewish rabbi who was proven to be more than a mere human being by his death on a cross and his resurrection from the dead.

There is a curious passage in the gospels where Christ, that is, Jesus of Nazareth, actually commands his followers to be perfect. He says, ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ It seems, everyone remembers this verse, but very few remember or meditate on the preceding words, to which Christ draws our attention by his word ‘therefore.’ Being left alone with the ‘Be perfect’ command causes us to fall into some very unfortunate misconceptions, unless we think of Christ’s words as just a suggestion and not a command. In that case, they’re only an interesting proposition to be bantered about without really wanting to know what he means.

When we believe in Jesus Christ and ‘take the Bible at its word’ can we be blamed if we think that he means what he says, that he is asking us to do, and be, the impossible, and resign ourselves to confessing we’re just sinners, unworthy, incapable of living a gospel life, capping it all off with a commitment to go to church regularly and repeat ‘Lord, have mercy!’ endless times to make up for it? But this is, in fact, what most of us do, again, thinking this thought somewhere in the back of our minds, ‘I am a sinner. I can’t be perfect. Only God can be perfect. But I can at least believe. I can have faith that Christ will save me in spite of myself. Now I’m safe, right?’ Meanwhile… 

The obvious truth didn’t take long to discover, except that I never really paid attention to the first part of Christ’s words. ‘You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?’ Well, yes, I’ve read and heard this before…

‘Well, knucklehead,’ I berated myself one day, ‘why don’t you get it? Why are you still judging? Why are you still drawing distinctions between classes of people? It doesn’t matter if the people themselves help you by classifying themselves as this or that, so that you can respond by judging them more precisely, and sorting them into sheep and goats. And even if the classifications were true, that only gives you more reason to subvert them by practicing the unconditional love that is shown by God, you know, the One that Jesus calls his Father? Take another look at what Christ says about being perfect, and stop making excuses. Perfection is not about being good or bad.’

‘What? Perfection is not about being good or bad? You mean I’ve wasted all these years trying to be good, and it doesn’t really matter?’ That’s every man’s reaction to the good news. We can’t help it. It’s our nature. The only God there is appears and he isn’t what we expected. We want him to be just like us. From another angle, it’s just this: Jesus Christ comes to turn all our worlds up-side-down, but we keep turning them right-side-up again as soon as we think his back is turned. We think we can call people whom we approve of ‘good,’ but we’d never, or very rarely, risk calling anyone ‘perfect.’ ‘Nobody’s perfect,’ we like to say, usually in reference to ourselves.

And that’s not what Jesus does. In fact he doesn’t even call himself good, nor does he let others do so. When they try, he as much as says, ‘Don’t call me good. No one is good except God,’ throwing his religious hearers off their chosen roads. No one can be called ‘good’ but God, but if we take his command to be perfect seriously, we can be called ‘perfect.’ Even the apostle Paul refers to this when he says, ‘We who are called “perfect” must all think in this way.’ What way? Well, go back and read all of his epistles, starting with Philippians if you like, for that’s the one I’ve just quoted him from. The gospels point the way. The epistles of Paul put us on it, if we want to go.

So we can be ‘perfect’ but not ‘good.’ I should say that seems a fair bargain. We’ve been let off the hook, then, is that right? To be perfect doesn’t mean to be righteous, to be morally perfect? We just have to love everyone indiscriminately, without judging them? And treating them impartially? If we do that, we can get away with any fantasy we desire? Nothing is morally wrong, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone? Well, yes and no. Since Christ’s command to be ‘perfect’ isn’t addressed only to Christians (there weren’t any yet) but to all men, believers and unbelievers, it can be called universal. In fact, deep inside, everyone knows it’s true. ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

For those who believe in God and accept Jesus as the Christ (or Messiah), we can kick the universal command ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ back a notch, to where it begins, even where it springs from, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind, all your soul, all your strength, and all your heart.’ Now we see why we’re commanded to love all humans (and maybe even all creatures). And if we want a word to confirm for us the religious importance of these two commands, we need look no further than, ‘On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’ So, we’ve been tricked by God to be good by being perfect without knowing it! Very sly! 

To be perfect is nothing other than to love as God loves, and to love the other as much as we love our own. When we do this, not only do we visibly change, but everyone we encounter changes, for the better. We already knew full well what being imperfect means. We’ve spent most of our lives noticing imperfection in others, and more often than not tried to ‘correct’ it by everything from ‘constructive criticism’ to frontal assault, all in the name of love. We know what we’re doing, but worse (or better) yet, God also knows. You know, that ‘our Father who art in heaven’ fellow we’re always asking to do his will ‘on earth as it is in heaven.’ Fortunately, we can’t fool him.

All good deeds, all moral acts, all benevolence, all generosity, every good quality that we wish so hard we had been born with but are too lazy to acquire, yes, every good thing can be ours by following the command of Jesus Christ, ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’

Fire

One of the first lessons we learn as young adults, if not earlier, and sometimes at great pain, is not to make a decision when we are angry. The decision can be to speak or not to speak, to act or not to act, or even more subtly, to think, that is, to believe, or not to think. With some reflection and further maturity, we come to realize that it isn’t just anger that is taboo territory for decision making, but almost any strong emotional state. Delight or its opposite, repugnance. Love or hate. High spirits or low. Perhaps one can even include faith or doubt, although faith is more, much more than an emotional state, though its evil twin certainly is.

It’s easy to see how and why we shouldn’t act when in strong emotional states, a little harder to see how and why we shouldn’t speak, and even harder to understand the limitations we should impose on our own thoughts when we are ruled by a strong emotion. Aren’t some emotions good? Well, yes, perhaps some are, and there’s relatively few occasions when we are totally emotion-free, maybe none. The decisions we make when we are feeling good (not just feeling well) would seem to be risk-free, but uh-uh, sorry, they are not. My point is not to flaunt the obvious, or to save myself from its implications, but to say, it’s our nature.

Human beings are not God, god, or gods and goddesses (depending on your choice of religion). We are not minerals. Though some of us seem to be vegetables, that is only a metaphor we use to chasten ourselves. We are not spirits either, despite what the poets and theologians tell, but that is almost what we are and possibly what we will become ‘if we make it.’ What we are is, in a word, unstable. We flicker. We are blown to and fro. We blaze up. We die down. We can merge and lose our identity as we move on to consume other fuels. Eventually we go out, either snuffed or, retreating to our coals, glow dimly and then go black.

What does this sound like? You’ve already pictured it in your minds if you’ve read this far. It is, we are, fire. Now, think of a campfire at night. It glows. It doesn’t keep a shape. Every little shift of the wind contorts it. It burns because it has fuel. There’s wood under it. Other fires burning in other places still consume fuel, couldn’t exist without it, coal, oil, gas, it doesn’t matter what. Fire burns, and unless it has fuel, there is no fire. This is just another metaphor, but it does shed some light on our human nature. What I also want to say is, don’t take your human nature, your life really, too terribly seriously. Even most of your decisions.

Just as fire needs that fuel to keep burning, to keep existing, we cannot live, at least not for long, unless we have fuel. It may seem harsh or judgmental to hint that some fuel is better than others to keep the fire alive and burning, but it is still true. Start a handful of steel wool on fire, watch it sparkle as it is consumed, and then see the fire go out, all in a matter of seconds. Tear up a phone book and use its pages as kindling under the grate in your family fireplace. Light it and hope that it will burn long enough to catch the real fuel, alder, maple or oak logs, on fire. No one believes filling his grate with just paper will keep him warm.

It’s no accident in my choice of metaphor that wood is the fuel and paper the kindling. To get your fire going, you may start with paper, but ‘paper Christianity doesn’t have much holding power,’ I mean, it can’t hold its own, keep burning. It goes out after a few minutes. If we think a little bit harder, we can also see what the wood might be. Some of us wear tiny copies of that wood and say we stake our lives on it, but few of us bear it. Yet that wood is the only fuel that will keep us burning, and burning is our nature. ‘There is no higher way above nor safer way below…’ It seems odd to me that we should be made this way, but we are.

As I enter another calendar year of my life with wretched trepidation, I confess my humanity, my fallenness, my instability, my inability to exist on my own, my need for fuel to keep me going another year. I confess that all my thoughts, words, and actions are flawed, and the decisions I have made and continue to make are somehow outside my control, that I am just a fire blown about by the wind. But I know that the fuel I need to keep burning, because burning is my nature, has been provided. I cannot provide it. Only One can provide it and He has, so that others can be warmed by the heat as I burn, and maybe see by the light.