AT OUR TABLE?

John 14:23: Jesus answered and said to him, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him."

     This is staggering. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit will come and live with you or me?  Is this even thinkable in any other religion? Is it ever thought about in Christianity? I've never heard it discussed. Extraordinary intimacy! The most ordinary believer can become Abraham, and more than Abraham: not only a 'friend of God', but (the) one God lives with. Not of any of the greatest patriarchs in the Old Testament was this said.
     What would it be like, to live with the Trinity? Quite literally, Heaven on earth. Thinking about it forces you to imagine Heaven, something we don't often do. In the old paintings of the Last Judgement, the painters clearly enjoyed portraying Hell a great deal more than Heaven: the latter is usually populated with rather po-faced saints standing in serried ranks with prayer-books or their official iconographic attributes in their hands, looking pious. But if you imagine it on earth, and you are old enough to resist the Big Rock Candy Mountain image, it can be easier.
     You begin with Clopas and his chum walking to Emmaus in the company of one-third of the Trinity and feeling their hearts burn within them -- burn with excitement, with brand-new understanding, and with joy. Now think of the rare moments you have felt the presence of the Holy Ghost (I make no apology for using the old term: not even my unconscious connects it with ghosts, and I dislike double disyllables.) He is the Comforter, the Helper, the Advocate, the one on, and by, your side. You may have felt his Presence during some particularly remarkable church service, or standing on a high hill surveying the "coloured counties" with the wind in your hair; at an important or emotional moment of private prayer; or bringing about a totally unexpected solution to a deeply painful situation. It's almost as if there is an extra lung breathing inside you. There is a sense of things falling into place and somehow becoming bigger. You instinctively give thanks.
     Praying "through" the Son and receiving gifts from the Spiritus Sanctus already happens on earth. What about the Father? He always seems more remote; and yet it is to him that the Son tells us to address the most famous and universal of prayers. He is the Creator of the Universe, yet we are encouraged to call him "abba" -- "baba", "papa", what small children call their father. I doubt if many of us do: the awe is too great. Yet perhaps we should: the Son said the disciples were no longer servants but sons.
     Little by little, we are perhaps getting a sense of this Heaven on earth that loving the Son and doing what he tells us to do will bring about for us. It will have something of a family. There is a Father, our Father; his Son, and therefore our brother. Irving Layton, the Canadian Jewish poet and roisterer, once said to me "Roger, Jesus is my brother. I like him; I love him; but how can you call him God? My brother farts: does God fart?" "Yup," I said. I suspect that in that family we are invited to, there is Mother Mary as well. The Holy Ghost is probably sexless, though a person. He "proceeds from the Father and the Son", says the Creed. But he is not just the love between them: he is a fully-fledged Person of the Trinity. In the family, he might be She: if Jesus is our brother, the Hagion Pneuma might be our sister, though in a shadowy sort of way.
     How to convey such stupendous intimacy without sounding cosy and ridiculous? If we love him and keep his commandments, (T)HE(Y) will come "and make our dwellling" with us. I don't think this is intended to signify a reward, but rather a consequence. Such a way of life, if and when it becomes habitual, will bring it about completely naturally. If you put your hand in the fire, you will burn; if you jump off a building you will break your neck; if you sin against God's love, you will be miserable; if you love Him and keep His commandments, you will live as part of the family, in the family house. Heaven on earth. Shit may still happen, but Heaven on earth nevertheless.

ANYTHING BUT TEMPTATION

 

In November of last year, I wrote about the expression in the Lord's Prayer that had always worried me, and that clearly worries the committees who keep updating the translations: "Lead us not into temptation". The thought of the Father leading us deliberately into temptation, then punishing us for having given in, is repellent; so the modern French version has "Do not let us enter into temptation." But taking a look at the Greek helps. To put it a little colloquially, "Do not put us to the test, but deliver us from bad stuff" is essentially what Jesus said when he taught the disciples to pray. The link of the "but" makes most sense when one stresses "deliver". Peirasmos is a trial, une épreuve as the French say, as in "the times that try men's souls". The implication, as I said back then, seems to be that we ask not to be put to the really hairy tests, like Abraham with Isaac, or Job, or Jacob who wrestled all night long with an angel. We aren't up to that sort of thing. We pray to the Father to deliver us from the ponèron, bad things, the real horror, the evil: that is not something we can do for ourselves.

It is a kindness in Jesus to propose this sentence in the exemplary Prayer: he recognises that we are ordinary folk, and that perhaps the Father may need to be reminded of this before, as in Job, giving in to the provocation of Shaitan, the Adversary.

It is in any case worth while to forget "temptation", a word that, encouraged by Oscar Wilde, needs a long rest. This is serious stuff: it is not the "temptation" of chocolate, or even of perfumed silks, of the "temptress" or the péché mignon: it is the knife at Isaac's throat, it is Exodus 4:24 "in a lodging-place by the way, the Lord met Moses and sought to kill him", it is the Lord wagering with Lucifer that Job will stand the test. Ouch. Do not, Father, make us go there. Save us from the Horror. Phew. By the skin of our teeth.

 

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CUI SERVIRE REGNARE EST

King's Messenger badge

I've been thinking about the Anglican Second Collect at Morning Prayer, which begins: 'O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom . . .' And especially, today, about that last clause. In the Collect's original Latin, it is more absolute: "cui servire regnare est', i.e. 'to serve whom is to reign'. It's the sort of saying that, in the course of Matins or private prayers, one tends -- not to ignore, but to incorporate more or less without thinking. And yet it is challenging and deserves attention.

The first thing that strikes one is, of course, the paradox, extreme in Latin but still present in the English version. What the two have in common is the word 'serve/service', and a concept opposed to it: reigning/ruling, and freedom. Let's begin with serving. It's a concept that once was universal, then was challenged, then despised, and eventually, by many, ignored.

The feudal concept of society, never completely realised, was in the Middle Ages an ideal that structured the social imagination. It was based entirely on two complementary ideas, now yoked together on police vehicles: 'To Serve and Protect'. The structure's verticality implied that whoever one was, there was someone above one and someone below one; and that one owed service to the former and protection to the latter. The knight owed service to his King, and protection to his community; the community owed him service in return. The tenant farmer owed service to his landlord, who owed him protection, whether from brigands or neighbouring land-grabbers.

What, then, was 'service'? In one sense, it was and remained the opposite of freedom. A servant is subject to the commands, to the will, and sometimes to the whim, of his master. As the Centurion in the Gospel said, 'I am a man under authority, and I have soldiers under me. I say to a man, "Go," and he goes; I say to another, "Come," and he comes; and I say to my servant "Do this," and he does it.'(Mt 8:9) He reminds us that the complement of service is authority, i.e. legitimate power.

It is not slavery. A servant may be part of a structure; but within certain rules and limits, he is free to go, whereas a slave is not. As long as the servant is engaged, though, he is bound to do his master's bidding. A soldier also is constrained to obedience, though even a conscript is not a slave. And all service, let us not forget, has certain freedoms attached, which are sometimes the reason the servant, or the soldier, chose it. They are freed from the burden of frequent choice, from the weight of responsibility, from the anguish of individual decision.

What, on the other hand, is the 'perfect freedom' attached to the service of God? (I prefer this phrase to 'regnare', which seems to me too easy: a mere exchange or flipping of the authority/obedience relation.) In the simplest sense, it is the freedom of the King's Messenger who, by right of his master's supremacy, has priority over all other servants.

For the early Christians, this freedom meant that they had not merely a right but a duty to deny service to competing authority when its demands contradicted God's. Martyrdom was often a result; on other occasions, their very public testimony to their higher service convinced their audience. This version of the 'perfect freedom' was not confined to their era: it was still present, and evident, in the WW II concentration camps, incarnated by persons like Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

For most of us, who have the privilege of living in an environment not of direct service but of semi-freedom, the case is different. Unless we are clerics, our service of God is not a direct and visible uniform, nor an evident full-time occupation. Our service, even if permanent, is necessarily diffuse and fluctuating; what, then, is our perfect freedom? It is, I believe, a freedom from less visible tyrannies that otherwise tie us down. From the leaden weight of lesser authorities and their reign over our minds and hearts, whether superiors in the workplace or joyless functionaries of government. From the fetters of depression, gloom, and fear; from the bonds of obsession, anorexia or alcoholism; from the hypnosis of media and distraction; from the seductions of politics and self-righteousness. Serving God, in prayer and simple cherishing, is a vast lifting of weights that affects every part of our humdrumlies: it is the bearable, the joyous, the glorious lightness of being.

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QUICK WORD

Words that sprang into my head upon waking, and that I share because they seem truly fruitful:

O Lord Holy Spirit, be close to me today,
that wherever I am may be Thy temple,
and whatever I do may be Thy liturgy.