Like the poor, we will always have the Pharisees with us

Disclaimer: I am sure on some issues people think I am a Pharisee. They are everywhere ...!

I really like what is emerging with Pope Francis. A pope who is determined - if various actions these past weeks are anything to go by - to transform his role as 'Vicar of Christ' into one in which the emphasis is on genuine, gospel Christ-likeness rather than conformity to rules, regulations and rubrics.

Notably, Papa Francis, traditionally washing the feet of twelve people on Holy Thursday, washed the feet of two women (one of whom is a Muslim). WAIT the rules say the action is intended to be Christ-like in the sense that Christ washed the feet of twelve apostles so the Pope must wash the feet of twelve men (I think I may even have  read somewhere that they are twelve ordained men). NO the pope has said. The Christ-likeness is exemplified in foot-washing as a service to humanity; and women are human. CUE coughing and spluttering into liturgical and canonical "traddies" teacups. As Stuff reports here, the fact that it is the Pope breaking the rules has drawn somewhat casuistical responses. So we read of " canon lawyer Edward Peters, an adviser to the Vatican's high court,

"If someone is washing the feet of any females ... he is in violation of the Holy Thursday rubrics," Peters wrote in a 2006 article that he reposted earlier this month on his blog.

In the face of the pope doing that very thing, Peters - like many conservative and traditionalist commentators - have found themselves trying to put the best face on a situation they don't like lest they be openly voicing dissent with the pope.

By Thursday evening, Peters was saying that Francis had merely "disregarded" the law - not violated it."

But is this not the response one expects of (modern equivalents) of Pharisees? Damian Thompson seems to think so!

Papa Francis is challenging his church, and by extension all Christians watching and listening to him, to find the true heart of the gospel in order to live faithfully to Christ. Sometimes church rules, regulations and rubrics assist that faithful living. Sometimes they do not. At risk of being accused of soppy subjectivism I cannot conceive that Christ living in our world today (that is, a multi-cultural, inclusive, anti-hierarchical, non-racist world) would restrict foot-washing in 2013 to male "types" of the apostles. Francis has spoken, infallibly I suggest: the rules are out of date, this is how Christ would act.

Good on him!

Damian Thompson is right (for those who do not know of his writings, a very traditional and conservative Catholic, strongly in favour of Benedict's high church reformist agenda).

Here's the thing: no one needs to be a Pharisee. Those of us who fall into the modern version of the role need challenging as to what is Christ-like and what is not!

For the record: the following observations are made with no attempt to speculate further about (say) the Pope's attitude to the ordination of women; they are also made with the thought in mind that if we understand John's Gospel carefully, then there is no great reason to think that the foot-washing of John 13 was actually restricted to the Twelve, since the Beloved Disciple was in the group and he has strong arguments in favour of his not being part of the Twelve.

The flesh became the Word

If the gospels tell the story of Jesus forwards from his beginning, our reading forwards may be enhanced by recalling that the beginning of Jesus is told with hindsight because only through the resurrection is light cast on the true meaning of Jesus.

In a certain sense then, John's great gospel claim, that the Word became flesh (1:14) is only revealed to us because the initial revelation after the resurrection was that the flesh (Jesus of Nazareth) was more than who he seemed, more than the One who spoke God's words as a prophet and teacher: the flesh was, in reality, the Word of God. The flesh became (that is, was revealed to be) the Word. This was not understood before the resurrection.

Everything then turns on the resurrection and those theologians among us who have played fast and loose since the Enlightenment with the resurrection have done a lot of damage to the credibility of Christianity.

Fortunately many have remained faithful and have not bowed to Baal. One example is brought to us today by the Sydney Morning Herald, the tiny Assyrian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem.

May your commemorations and celebrations through these great holy days disclose new depth to the love of God in Christ for you.

No cross without resurrection

The resurrection forced the first Christians to think hard about the cross. Yesterday near the end of the post I noted:

Conversely, the resurrection of Jesus triggered a flood of reflection on what happened on the cross. To be sure, the risen Jesus before ascension may have contributed to this flood (Luke at least hints at this). Why does Jesus die only to be raised from the dead?

On the surface of things Jesus was crucified partly through tragic accident (innocent man in wrong place at wrong time as crazy leaders whipped up mass hysteria) and partly through some provocative action on Jesus' part (cleansing the Temple, raising Lazarus from the dead), albeit engendering a grossly disproportionate reaction from the authorities. But being raised from the dead raised larger questions. 

What was God up to?  Was there a significance to Jesus' person and work which had escaped them? 

Had the disciples missed something as they observed the surface of things rather than pressed to understand what was really going on? 

There were some clues, even without the resurrection, let alone the risen Jesus explaining things to them. 

One of those clues occurred when they were literally asleep. Indeed we probably have Jesus himself to thank for the knowledge of this clue, reference to 'this cup' in his final prayers. Citing a Lenten study I have co-authored with Lynda Paterson, published by Theology House Publications this year, we can think of the cup in this way:

‘Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done.’ 

‘This cup’ is an image of wrath and of suffering, when read against the Old Testament (e.g. Psalm 11:6; Jeremiah 25:15-16; Ezekiel 23:31-34), and other references to ‘cup’ in the New Testament (e.g. Matthew 20:22-23; Mark 10:38-39 [strangely, Luke has no parallel to these passages]; Revelation 14:9-10; 16:19).
 Why does Jesus face ‘this cup’?  

Space does not permit a full discussion of the significance of Jesus’ death but we do not do justice to the full witness of the New Testament if we downplay the cross as the place on which sacrifice for sin was made, victory over evil was secured, the depths of God’s love for us was demonstrated, and an example of righteous martyrdom was shown.  

‘This cup’ particularly points to the cross as the place on which the wrath of God against sin was borne by Jesus as the final and full sacrifice for the sin of the world. For Jesus to receive this cup was to receive the cup of unimaginable suffering. 

So we read on about ‘agony’ and ‘sweat … like great drops of blood falling down to the ground’ (22:44).[i]  

We may be prompted to ask why Jesus as Son of God needs an angel to help strengthen him. (Surely it was not because of the frailty of Jesus but because of the magnitude of the suffering he faced).

If Jesus were not raised then we would not know whether God's wrath was satisfied. That Jesus was raised demonstrated that God's wrath was satisfied. The cup had been drained by Jesus.

The resurrection, when the suffering of Jesus had been completed, enabled the disciples to understand what was really going on, that the cross was not just unimaginable physical suffering but also unimaginable spiritual suffering.

Incidentally, in our day many Christians are uncomfortable thinking about the wrath of God being visited on Jesus. But the Psalm set down for this Sunday is pretty clear, 

'The Lord has punished me severely' (118:18).

But the use of passages such as this (a commenter yesterday noted Psalms  2, 10, 116, 118, and Dt 18 as figuring in apostolic hermeneutic of the cross and resurrection) would not have taken place if Jesus were not raised from the dead.

When we talk about 'the cross' we engage in an act of remembering the painful death of Jesus as an innocent man (legally innocent before human authority, wholly innocent before divine authority) and we acclaim that something significant happened in that event. It is the only ancient crucifixion people talk about! And we only talk about it because that crucifixion was not the end of Jesus, and his burial was not the beginning of forgetting who he was. Without the resurrection there would be no cross.

PS There was no great win for the NZ cricket team yesterday. A small shadow was cast over the sunny uplit days of late summer :(

---

[i] Not all ancient manuscripts of Luke’s Gospel have verses 43 and 44.

Zero to hero

Without the resurrection, Jesus and his movement would have incurred no more than a paragraph and maybe as little as a footnote in the history of Judaism. On what we now call Holy Saturday Jesus was a zero. Dead, buried and all but forgotten. That Jesus was raised from the dead is as certain as the existence of Christianity itself. Working from the objective fact of the empty tomb and the subjective experiences of eating and drinking with the risen Jesus, the followers of Jesus knew he was the Christ, the hero sent from God, and told that to everyone they met. We know that because they were named Christians (not Jesusians).

There was a story to tell about Jesus Christ who rose from the dead and the resurrection impacted on the telling of the story. A good kind of mayhem was caused by this foxy fact in the chicken coop of sayings and deeds of Jesus. Each New Testament writing in its own way probes the real significance of Jesus of Nazareth in the light of being raised from zero to hero. The four gospels are especially interesting because we read them naturally forwards from beginning to end and it takes a certain amount of educated effort (e.g. through biblical studies) to read them as stories which have been revised backwards, from resurrection to beginning.

One simple example illustrates this, the example of what the gospel writers actually say about the beginning of Jesus. Mark presents Jesus from his baptism. Matthew gives us Jesus from his conception and birth contextualised with a genealogy going back as far as Abraham. Luke similarly but offers a genealogy going back to Adam the son of God. John - if it were a competition, he wins by an eternity - goes back before time: as the Word, Jesus existed before the beginning of creation. Where does the not zero but hero, not dead but raised One come from? The gospel writers do not disagree with one another in their respective answers: rather they outdo one another in how far back they can see in the light of the resurrection.

Then, as they move forward in telling the story, perhaps here telling it as they have heard it (revisions having occurred, perhaps, in the prior handing down through Christians sharing stories about Jesus) and maybe there retelling it as they strain to make certain points to the audience they have in mind as their readers, the gospel writers tell the story insightfully in the light of the resurrection as its significance dawns on them. I suggest we particularly see this as readers today as we appreciate the presentation of Jesus through the whole of a gospel as a certain kind of heroic figure.

Thus Matthew marshals his material about Jesus to present Jesus as the New Moses, who gives the law of the kingdom both authoritatively and in five Torah-like blocks of preaching. Mark more than any of his evangelical colleagues presents Jesus as a  'hero', a divine man who heroically stands up to Satan, releasing people from Satan's grip of illness and possession, and establishes a new power in the world, the kingdom of God. Luke takes a huge risk in simultaneously presenting Jesus as a non-threatening do gooder comfortable with Roman imperialism who is also the real Caesar of the whole world establishing a rival kingdom on a global scale. John, perhaps with the most time lapse from resurrection to composition, accepts the insights of his gospel predecessors and pushes them further: Jesus is the Word who was God, became flesh and dwelt among us, that is, the Son of God both one with the Father and sent by the Father to transform the world.

What is then fascinating is to read the gospels as these forward-yet-backwards documents which effectively are theological histories of Jesus of Nazareth. Just when we might expect that more of the impact of the resurrection would be worked into the history of Jesus, we do not find it. The resurrection, for instance, provoked mayhem on the question of identity: did a Gentile believing in this Jewish rabbi need to adopt identification as a Jew through circumcision? The controversy over circumcision rumbles through the early life of the Christian church, but it is never woven backwards into the life of Jesus. Chalk one up for the reliability of these theological histories as histories.

Approaching Good Friday we observe that the theological meaning of the death of Jesus, elucidated through Paul's writings and the Epistle to the Hebrews, scarcely impacts on the gospel narrative. Presumably the historical Jesus said very little about the meaning of his death and, remarkably, the gospels are faithful to Jesus when it must have been tempting to put words in his mouth.

Conversely, the resurrection of Jesus triggered a flood of reflection on what happened on the cross. To be sure, the risen Jesus before ascension may have contributed to this flood (Luke at least hints at this). Why does Jesus die only to be raised from the dead? Couldn't the victory and vindication of the hero be expressed through a rescue operation which prevented Jesus' death (cf. Isaac/Abraham)? Effectively the early Christians said 'Yes' to the latter question and furrowed their brows to find the answer to the former. The former question faced the reality of what actually happened to Jesus. The latter question was hypothetical (though, later, Islam would teach that it was so).

PS. Following on from yesterday, like the glory days of my youth, when the NZ cricket team beat Australia and England for the first time, NZ stands on the verge of a great win. England are 90 for 4 chasing 481 to win.

On the ongoing matter of gay marriage in NZ, Dan Dolejs of Nelson has a few words to say.

Interesting claim here that Diana's death ended the English Reformation. Er, maybe.

35 for 3 but the lead is only 274 runs and the fox got into the chicken coop

Today the Anglican Diocese of Christchurch is a bit like the overnight situation in the third test between NZ and England. NZ is 35 runs for 3 wickets in its second innings but has an overall lead of 274 runs. The innings score is challenging, the overall lead is pretty good but the fate of the match is in the balance. Yesterday parishes facing change through recommendations of the Structural Review Group heard what those recommendations are. For some parishes the recommendations might feel challenging, like 35 for 3. Overall the recommendations across many parishes are like NZ's overall lead, pretty good - see here from 25 March - but the fate of the Diocese, as a Diocese embracing change or refusing to change is in the balance. What will be our collective response to the recommendations?

We have a new Archbishop for the NZ Dioceses (= Tikanga Pakeha), Philip Richardson. A comment made here yesterday pointed to the possibility of theological disagreement with ++Philip. Well, yes, he is an archbishop not a pope! Now in this morning's Fairfax papers, who else but Glynn Cardy is talking up ++Philip as champion of the progressive cause of the day. Talk about the fox getting into the chicken coop. It is a kind of mayhem to have elected an archbishop one day only to talk him up the next in a manner likely to send the church into schism. I wonder if it ever crosses Glynn's mind that his speculations out loud in the public media might destabilize the confidence of our church in its leaders? I have sufficient regard for ++Philip to wish him a decent honeymoon in his new role as the wider church gets to know him. Now he will not be free of the tags Glynn has placed upon him!

An very interesting reflection on the situation before another archbishop, the new ABC, is posted by Brother Ivo on Cranmer. We should not underestimate ++Justin capabilities!

Meanwhile this is Holy Week and time once again to reflect on the sacred mysteries of this week. I suggest we work backwards from the Resurrection. If Jesus had died on the cross and that was the end of his life, what would his legacy have been? Not much, I suggest. A paragraph, perhaps, in the history of impact-making rabbis of Israel under the Romans mentioning some notable healings and memorable insights into the rule of God in the world. Maybe today scholars of Judaism would produce a monograph or two on ancient magicians among the rabbis, notably Jeshua ben Joseph. Perhaps there would be a brief headline making news item that the Teacher of Righteousness at Qumran had been identified by an unusually radical scholar as that same Jeshua ben Joseph.

It is the resurrection which makes the difference here, which sets the Jesus movement on a trajectory apart from Judaism and which drives the leaders of that movement to see in Jesus things which were not obvious to them when they walked the dusty roads of Palestine with him. We read the gospels forwards from Jesus' beginnings to his end because that is the way the narrative is told, but theologically we should begin with the resurrection and read backwards. What was it about the resurrection which led to the telling of the story of Jesus in the way that Matthew, Mark, Luke, John  and, yes, Paul told it?

That is why, to offer a first reflection this Holy Week, the question of the witness to the resurrection is vital to Christianity. Deny the resurrection and everything about our claims to truth falls over. Personally I find the variations between the gospels, 1 Corinthians 15 and, say, Acts 10:34-43 puzzling. Why isn't the account of that witness more consistent? Modern skeptics have driven a horse and cart full of doubts through the lack of consistency (even, some might say, inconsistency). Yet closer inspection yields more consistency than some are prepared to allow. At the bedrock of each gospel narrative is the empty tomb. They are consistent on the fact that the crucified body of Jesus was placed in the tomb, on the third day the tomb was empty, and thereafter the risen (i.e. raised up from the tomb) Jesus appeared to people.

This, further, is consistent with two accounts which do not explicitly mention the emptiness of the tomb, Acts 10:34-43 and 1 Corinthians 15:1-11. What is 'raised on the third day' phrasing in these passages about but an act of raising from the dead, a physical raising which leaves the tomb empty. Acts 10:40 beautifully distinguishes between the raising and the subsequent appearances, 'God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear.' So also 1 Corinthians 15:4-5, 'he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve'. If the tomb was not empty why mention the act of raising from the dead and not proceed straight to the accounts of the appearances of Jesus?

Running these accounts together, with all their variations, I suggest we can account for the variations in a couple of ways. First and foremost, we get the impression that Jesus appeared on a number of occasions to a range of witnesses. Between the four gospel writers and Paul's 'tradition' account in 1 Corinthians 15 we receive a set of accounts with heavy selection at work. Paul's tradition is focused on the appearances to the leadership of the Jesus movement, with the exception of the appearance to 'more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time'. The four gospels uniformly emphasise the immediate witnesses to the resurrection, women. Matthew, Mark and Luke (distinct from Acts 1) move quickly from the immediate experience of the risen Jesus to his departure (albeit somewhat implicitly in Mark). Only Acts 1 and John 21 imply a period of more than a few days or weeks in which Jesus remained with his disciples. Together these witnesses to the variety of Jesus' appearances do not provide anything like a coherent account of the history of Jesus between resurrection and ascension. That, perhaps, leads us to a second reason for the variations between accounts.

Secondly, we get the impression that the gospel writers in their gospels are focused on providing for their readers an account of the ordinary human life of Jesus, prior to death. The continuing presence of the risen Jesus via the Holy Spirit in the movement perhaps made unnecessary a prolonged account of the period between resurrection and ascension. (Luke, in his 'sequel' to the life of Jesus unveils in Acts many ways in which the risen Jesus post-ascension continues to engage with the movement). What their accounts needed was a wrap up and what we find is that the accounts of the resurrection are overlaid with conclusions to the gospels as a whole (or, in the case of Mark 16:1-8, we might say, denuded of a conclusion via intentional abruptness in the closing of the account - a kind of anti-conclusion).

Thus Matthew draws us rapidly to the Great Commission and Luke does so similarly, but in a challenging manner because in Luke 24 he almost conveys the impression that a long day (of about 25 hours?) elapses from raising to commissioning-and-ascending whereas Acts 1 is explicit that the period was 40 days. (Luke also manages the most flagrant rewriting of gospel tradition when he converts Mark's "you will see him in Galilee" into "as he said in Galilee", Mark 16:7//Luke 24:6, in the cause of confining the resurrected Jesus to Jerusalem and its environs).

John works in a different manner, having proposed through his gospel that everything is going on all at once ("my hour"): death and departure, cross and glory, descent and ascent. Thus his Pentecost occurs on the day of Resurrection but there is a epilogue or two as a week elapses before the appearance to Thomas and further time before the appearance to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias. But like his evangelical colleagues, John is all the 'resurrection' time wrapping up his gospel: this is a word to skeptics among the believers, this is a word to rival claimants for leadership of the church.

In the end, then, I am arguing that the accounts of the resurrection, between the gospels, Acts and 1 Corinthians have a coherency when we dig beneath the varied ways of wrapping up the narratives of Jesus' earthly life, acknowledge the basic facts which are shared (principally the emptiness of the tomb and the sheer multiplicity of appearances), and allow that different things mattered to different writers.

We need not doubt that Jesus rose bodily from the dead. That is the witness of the apostles. But what was the impact of the resurrection on understanding who Jesus was prior to death and is after resurrection? Jesus rising from the dead in the midst of ancient Judaism in Israel in the first century AD was like a fox in a chicken coop. A certain theological mayhem ensued. The epistles effectively tell us about the mayhem and that it was a good kind of mayhem!

What a twisted and bitter man

There is not much hope for the improvement of Anglicanism when some of its more influential commenters are as misinformed as Giles Fraser is about evangelicals. Have we ever been more insulted in our history than by this column?

Evangelicals are not perfect and we get many things wrong. But ++Justin is not the only one among us to have experienced tragedy. And only a few of us do not understand Good Friday to be a dark and solemn day in which Christ died at the hands of bitter and twisted men, actually, at our hands because we are sinners and it was because of our sin that Christ suffered.

If the Anglican Communion is to hold together then it will do so on the basis of truth and love, not fantasies and hatred.

Can the post-churchmanship ABC lead into a post-gay future?

Damian Thompson, writing about the enthronement of ++Justin Welby as the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury, makes a couple of astute points for Anglicans worldwide to ponder.

Reflecting on ++Justin's own journey in things spiritual and ministerial, he observes,

"Archbishop Welby comes from the evangelical wing of the Church, but he strikes me as someone very close to the Anglican centre of gravity. His evangelicalism is enriched by Catholic spirituality; he would be happy in any church setting – you might call him a post-churchmanship Anglican."

I think that is pretty good. Better than a silly Guardian assertion that ++JW represents a takeover of the C of E by HTB! The future Anglican church - emerging from the present - needs to be 'post-churchmanship'. It is no insult on the anniversary of Cranmer (21 March) to propose that Anglicanism in the 21st century will express its Cranmerian heritage if it continues to refresh what is 'common' to us by moving beyond our familiar divisions in churchmanship.

But Damian Thompson's blogpost headline makes another point re the future of Anglicanism.

"The new Archbishop of Canterbury, enthroned today, must wish the gay issue would go away. But it won't."

I interpret Damian to mean that despite various attempts to find a way for the issue to "go away", including wishful thinking that it would simply cease to be an issue, it isn't going anywhere. Whether it is the continued pressing from within the church for the acceptance of same sex partnerships or the continued pressing from without the church by governments/parliaments for socio-political change to relationship status, Anglican churches, at least in Western countries are not able to (bad pun coming up) put this issue to bed.

In other words, is it time for Anglicans who wish the issue would go away (I number myself among their ranks) to

(1) acknowledge that the issue is not going to go away

(2)  address the question of whether we are at peace within if we continue with divisions for the foreseeable future,

and if we are not at peace about that,

(3) work on a way for the issue to go away, an Anglican accommodation which draws inspiration from all previous Anglican accommodations.

I assume, from comments here previously, that:-

some readers are at peace with continuing to live with division/tension on the matter,

some readers would like the issue to go away because a way is found for other Anglicans to accept their totalising solution (such as full acceptance of gay marriage or full and final rejection of all talk of blessing of same sex partnerships), 

some readers in their hearts feel the only eventual way forward to get beyond the issue is separation/division/schism,

and, perhaps, only a very tiny minority of readers are keen to find an accommodation (perhaps daunted by the belief that a much larger majority are not so much averse to accommodation as utterly sceptical that it can be found).

My reflection here is that whatever we feel we would like to happen there is an inexorable logic in the situation: if we wish to remain in an Anglican church (and an Anglican Communion) with some breadth of theology in societies embracing acceptance of gay partnerships we cannot make the issue "go away" without an accommodation. We may hate that thought because it smells of 'appeasement' or 'compromise'. But do we need to get over such feeling? Could we help ourselves by analysing accommodation here in terms other than appeasement and compromise?

What if we thought of accommodation as 'making space' for sincerely held but opposing views? As we have done since the 19th century divide over "Anglo-Catholic" and "Evangelical".

Or, if we imagined accommodation here as offering 'hospitality' to those who are different to us (or, if you prefer, 'us')? As we have done in the late 20th century to charismatic Anglicans (but weren't able to do in the 18th century to Methodists).

Or, could we envisage accommodation as providing 'opportunity' to those exploring church in different ways? As we are doing for Fresh Expressions of church - a provision which carries with it lots of questions and scepticism but not, finally, rejection.

Just to head off a 'red herring' here: the depths of theological objection to the blessing of same-sex partnerships let alone to gay marriage are very deep just as the heights of theological approval of the same for those who approve are very high and there is not necessarily a straight-line analogy from the specific gulf here to the examples of division-overcome-by-accommodation above. The point to consider is not whether this is a division no worse than other divisions (if you like, a second-order division, like others, rather than a first-order division) but whether this specific, even unique division can be accommodated. Or not.

And if not, are we reconciled to a very long future of division, or are we going to separate?

There are not, as I understand the logic of the situation, an infinite number of options. ++Justin may or may not be on the right track with his talk of 'reconciliation' but he could help us with his tidy mind by asking whether we understand the limited options and whether we understand the implications of each and, in particular, do we have any strong ambition to move beyond the "gay issue" or not?

Epilogue: I have no great ideas at this stage on what an accommodation might look like. I also suggest that accommodation would not necessarily be weighted in a 'liberal' direction. Part of where my posts have been going in the last few days and weeks has been to underscore that the strength of the church at large rests on conservative congregations in a "post-Christendom" West (Shawn's astute comment yesterday about this acknowledged), and even more so in parts of the world which never enjoyed the blessings of Christendom.

[Publishing comments over the next 30 hours may be spasmodic].