This Garden World

Imagine if more Christians lived as though this were true.

“Faced with the glory of the Trinity in creation, we must contemplate, sing, and rediscover awe.  Contemporary society has become dry, ‘not for lack of wonders, but for lack of wonder’ (G.K. Chesterton).  Contemplation of the universe also means, for the believer, listening to a message, hearing a paradoxical and silent voice, as the ‘Psalm of the Sun’ suggests: ‘The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.’  Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.  ‘There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world’ (Ps 19:2-4).

   Nature therefore becomes a Gospel that speaks to us of God: ‘For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator’ (Wis 13:5).  Paul teaches us that ‘Ever since the creation of the world his (God’s) eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made’ (Rom 1:20).  But this capacity for contemplation and knowledge, this discovery of a transcendent presence in creation, must also lead us also to rediscover our fraternity with the earth, to which we have been linked since creation (cf Gen 2:7).  This very goal was foreshadowed by the Old Testament in the Hebrew Jubilee, when the earth rested and man gathered what the land spontaneously offered (cf Lv 25:11-12).  If nature is not violated and humiliated, it returns to being the sister of humanity.”

–Pope John Paul II, General Audience, ZENIT Translation, January 26, 2000

This Easter season, I’ve been trying to meditate on just what it was that Jesus accomplished when he was nailed to the cross that Friday so many years ago. Paul’s letter to the Colossians gives us an interesting insight–and one we probably don’t often think about. In Colossians 2:15, while speaking about the reality of Christ nailed to the cross, he says that Jesus “disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in him.” In the original Greek, the term Paul uses for “public example” is actually the word ”parade”. So literally, he says that Christ paraded the principalities and powers of Satan when he was on the cross.

Interestingly, it was the Romans who invented the concept of parades. For them, parades primarily served the purpose of showing off their military victories to other residents of the empire. One of the major features of the Roman parades entailed marching members of the defeated party through the city stripped naked in order to publicly shame them. Indeed, crucifixion itself was a sort of mini parade in which Rome was able to publicly shame any who dared cross her.

But here, Paul says that when Jesus hung on the cross, naked and shamed, he was, in fact, making a “parade” out of the principalities and powers of Satan. This is completely counter-intuitive! Although it seemed as though Jesus himself was being shamed, what the Romans could not see, and what we often miss as well, is that Jesus was actually parading the defeat of the powers of death by his own death on the cross. Death itself was hung on the cross and displayed powerless for all to see. This, I think, is a profound meditation, and one that I certainly have to spend some more time chewing and praying over.  If this is the reality of Jesus when he accepts his suffering in love, what might God be able to accomplish when we embrace our own crosses?

I’ve recently run across a new theory which potentially answers an issue that has puzzled Biblical scholars for years. When Luke opens both his Gospel as well as his book the Acts of the Apostles, he addresses his writings to someone named Theophilus. Speculations have abounded as to who this mysterious figure is. Perhaps the most popular is that he is a Roman official to whom Paul is offering a defense of the new Christian faith. Others suggest that Theophilus represents all of the faithful. This is largely based on the etymology of the name, which means “friend of God.”

The new theory which I have just discovered however (thanks to Tim Gray), is that Theophilus was in fact the High Priest of Jerusalem.  While I’m still wrapping my mind around this idea, its possibility opens up a whole new way of reading Lukan literature. Namely, Luke’s high content of priestly, liturgical and Temple imagery, makes a great deal more sense. Not coincidentally, Luke begins his Gospel with the priest Zechariah offering sacrifice in the Temple. It ends with Jesus’ passion which is portrayed largely in light of his priestly ministry. It has always seemed to me that so many of the images and references that Luke uses in the books would have likely been lost to a Roman reader. Why then, would they make a good defense of the faith? If, on the other hand, they were defenses of the faith offered to a Jewish, priestly audience, it would make a wonderful (albiet provocative) defense of the faith.  Richard Anderson has written a helpful blog (and, book, I think) on this topic. I’ve included a link to the blog’s first entry, in which he initially presents his theory. It follows below.  

http://kratistostheophilos.blogspot.com/2004_12_01_archive.html

Over the last several weeks, I have been heavily engaged in a writing project aimed at getting to the bottom of the Biblical notion of the “new creation” and what that has to do with the way Christians ought to interact with the created world today. Unfortunately, many Christians see environmentalism and Christianity as disparate realities. Likewise, many environmentalists see the same opposition but for different reasons. This is tremendously problematic. What do the Scriptures have to say about this? Indeed for the Bible, man is not a foreign invader into the natural world, as many secular streams of thought seem to suggest. Neither ought man be a domineering slavemaster over creation, free to use it and abuse it according to his whim, as many Christians have tended to suggest. Rather, mankind–from the beginning–was called to be a gardener. This was Adam’s primordial vocation in the garden; to tend, keep, guard and care for creation. Fundamentally, it did not belong to him. Creation is Gods’; we are but caretakers. For the Bible, this has eschatalogical consequences. Just as Jesus came to redeem humanity, and by doing so, redeemed the human body which will be raised on the last day (just as Jesus’ was), so too, he also came to redeem all of creation which will also be raised, restored and glorified on the last day. In Revelation, the prophets, St. Paul, and even in the words of Jesus himself, we are led to the reality that when he comes again, God will not obliterate the created world, leaving all of us to float off to some disembodied heaven, but rather, a new creation; a new heavens and new earth; a new heavenly Jerusalem will come down from heaven. Indeed, in the end, it will not fundamentally be us going up to God, but rather, God coming down to us.

The following is a brief passage from my project (more of which, I imagine, will follow in the coming days and weeks) explaining how Paul seems to allude to this idea in his letters.

If our assessment is correct, it is safe to say that most Christians need to change their view of the created world. The Church has long recognized that the body ought to be respected and treated with a profound honor and dignity because it is in fact the material “stuff” that the resurrected body will be composed of. Just as Jesus himself took on a human body, with all of its shortcomings and weaknesses, and then transformed that same body it when he arose on Easter Sunday, Christians are to understand that God will do the same for the rest of mankind. In Paul’s letter to the Colossians, he calls Jesus the “image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation,” saying that “in him all things were created…He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the first born from the dead.”[1]  Paul is suggesting that just as he rose from the dead as “first-born”, so will all the rest of creation follow.  Likewise, in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he assures the church there that,…in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the “first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.”[2]  

This leads to a very logical reality. If our physical bodies will be raised on the last day, they ought to have a physical dwelling place as well. Enter Scripture’s theology of a “new heavens” and “new earth.”            

In St. Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, he comforted a worried group of apparently newly converted Christians who were concerned over what exactly would happen to their loved ones who have died. Clearly, the resurrection of the dead was still a shaky concept for them. In 4:13f, Paul tells them,…

“we would not have you ignorant brethren, concerning those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him all those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord shall not precede those who have fallen asleep (emphasis mine).”  

He goes on to tell them that when Jesus returns at the time of the second coming, …

“the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord.”  

In Greek, the word for coming is parousia. The city of Thessalonica was the capital city of the Roman province of Macedonia, and thereby a very politically important city. As such, the emperor cult, or worship of the Roman emperor, was also very important. By using the term parousia, Paul was employing a technical term used to describe the visit of a political dignitary. N.T. Wright notes that this language, which would have been well known in the ancient world, speaks of

“an emperor or other dignitary making a state visit to a city or province—or even, when the emperor had been elsewhere, his return to Rome. In fact, the Greek word parousia, which has become a technical term for the literalistic construct of an early Christian hope involving the end of the space-time world, with Jesus “coming down” in a “second coming” and believers flying upwards to meet him, is drawn, not from the Bible at all, but from the world of pagan usage, where it was almost a technical term for this kind of imperial “visitation.”[3]  

Here, Wright notes that this passage has often been misconstrued to speak of what is known in some modern protestant circles as the “rapture”, in which believers will all be swept up into a sort of non-material heaven and the world as we know it will pass away. Wright clarifies the confusion:…

“the point here is that the “meeting”—another almost technical term in the Greek—refers, not to a meeting after which all the participants stay in the meeting place, but to a meeting outside the city, after which the civic leaders escort the dignitary back to the city itself.”[4] 

In other words, when Jesus comes again, Paul says that we will all be caught up in the sky to meet him as he descends on the clouds–a clear reference to the coming of the Son of Man in Daniel 7–and then we will escort him back to earth where he will come to lay claim on all of creation. The world we will return to then, will not be the earth that we know now, but rather the “new earth” which has been transformed by grace, analogous to our own resurrected bodies.  

Happy Easter to all! Lest this blog become too serious, here is a little example of the dangers of misunderstandings… 

On Sunday, I got to thinking about the terminology we use to describe the day’s liturgical significance. You may have noticed that this day is referred to as both “Palm Sunday” and “Passion Sunday.” Someone asked me recently why this is the case. The two seem as though they should be separate events. The more I pondered this, I realized that in fact, the event of Jesus’ passion can never be taken apart from his royal entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. In the Gospel accounts, Jesus is welcomed into the city as a king in the royal line of David. Several textual details attest to this: the waving of palm branches, the shouting of Hosannas to the “son of David”, the spreading of cloaks on the ground before him, and even the donkey itself on which Jesus’ rides, all hearken back to the Israelite kings of old. Likewise, the people clearly seem to understand Jesus’ symbolic actions. They are not just welcoming him as a popular traveling teacher, but indeed as the long-lost Davidic king returned to take back his throne!  

From here, as most of us may recall, the scene turns increasingly sour. Jesus–as king–pronounces judgement on his own people for their sin (instead of the cruel Romans who were oppressing his people), an act which soon leads him to his crucifixion. This then, is the content of Sunday’s Gospel reading.

For the New Testament writers, the term “Gospel” was not an abstract concept. It had a real, concrete, Old Testament context. Originating from Isaiah and Micah (both of whom Mark quotes as he begins his Gospel) the word itself meant more than “good news.” It was good news about something. What that good news was, according to the prophets, was that the long lost king would one day return to Jerusalem from the desert, and once there, he would go to the temple and then take up his throne. Isaiah also gave some new information. For those who read the prophet aright, the king returning home would be God himself (Is 40).

So what does this suggest about why it is that the Church sees Palm Sunday and the Passion as liturgically inseparable?  Simply this: Jesus’ kingship can never be separated from his crucifixion. According to the Fathers of the Church, the cross was indeed Jesus’ kingly throne, from which he poured himself out in ultimate service to his people–both those who accepted him as king and those who did not. After all, what king (or president) only serves those who support him. Jesus’ kingship is universal, and he demonstrates this by accepting the legal punishment for those who would fail to heed his words and take up arms against Rome. He likewise suffers the same death that would befall many of his followers later on. Jesus’ message is clear, and it resonates with the readings of Palm Sunday; if you will be courageous enough to follow the true king, there will be consequences to pay; there will be crosses to carry.

As much as we want to label it merely Palm Sunday, get our free branches and then go home and shape them into little designs and forget about it, the message of Palm Sunday is one that’s hard to ignore. We stand for an almost excruciatingly long reading of the Gospel account of Jesus’ Passion. Why? Simply so that every time we look at those pretty palm branches that we picked up on the way into Mass, we might remember where it all led.

For the last few days, the weather around our house here in Colorado has been gorgeous; a welcome relief from what has been one of the harsher Rocky Mountain winters in recent memory. This sunshine and warmth, along with an early arrival of daylight savings time have combined to make me deliriously happy this week. I awoke this morning however, hoping for a balmy morning run, to find the temperature quite chilly and the familiar feeling of snow in the air. This reality (that it’s really only mid-March, and not mid-May as the recent weather had suggested) reminded me of an important truth this time of year. Nature itself was reminding me that despite the feeling of spring that had permeated the latter part of the week, spring had not yet arrived. Not coincidentally, I needed a gentle nudge from mother nature to remind me likewise, that Easter had not yet arrived, and that we were, in fact, still dwelling in the relative darkness of lent.

There is a great deal of wisdom in the Church’s liturgical calendar. Vigen Guroian, a Armenian Orthodox theologian (and gardener–not coincidentally) muses about the apt chronological construction of the liturgical calendar. He says,

I have begun to understand the wisdom in the Armenian Church’s stubborn persistence in celebrating Jesus’ birth and baptism together on the sixth of January, as was the ancient practice. Jesus’ birth shines light into this darkling world and commences the death of Death itself. His baptism reveals this world’s true Maker and Ruler and the path of repentance, self-renunciation and sacrificial love that each of us must travel to inherit eternal life. In the same manner, by our personal baptism we not only receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and adoption as sons and daughters of God; we also recapitulate Jesus’ crucifixion, death burial and resurrection. (The Fragrance of God)

Likewise, St. Gregory of Nyssa reminds us that,

the Sun of Justice rose in this cruel winter, the spring came, the south wind dispelled that chill, and together with the rising of the sun’s rays warmed everything that lay in our path. Thus mankind, that had been chilled into stone, might become warm again through the Spirit, and receiving heat from the rays of the Word, might become again as water leaping up into eternal life. (From Glory to Glory)

Our disconnectedness from the created world confuses not only our senses but also our spiritual sensibilities. Could it be the Church understood that the rhythms God built into the earth actually serve as reminders of Him; signposts directing and constantly calling us back to Him? If the Fathers of the Church and the ancient rabbis were correct, then God really wrote two books of Scripture. The first, they claimed, was the book of creation itself; a book which actually teaches us how to better read the second book, that of the written Scriptures.  It’s no wonder then, that the Bible constantly evokes natural metaphors (“the just man is like a tree planted by water…” Psalm 1, “Consider the lilies of the field” Matthew 6:28, etc.).

So I’m grateful. As much as I’d like to go out for a long bike ride, or take my kayak out on the river today, I can’t. The time will come, but it’s not yet. We know indeed that just as surely as the leaves will return to the trees, the crocuses bloom with colorful buds, and the rivers run full again in April and May, that the same Christ who died on a cross on Good Friday, like a tree shedding its leaves and heading for its yearly death, will return renewed and glorious on Easter morning. Really, it seems that the brilliance of God’s created world is that everyone who has seen a tree which appears to die in the fall and knows that come spring, that tree will be resurrected to life once again, has been prepared for the mystery of the cross. Coincidence? I think not. As Jesus said, foreshadowing his own Eucharistic sacrifice, “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a grain of wheat.”

Reflecting on 1 Corinthians 11, the thought of St. John Chrysostom, and the life of Blessed Mother Theresa of Calcutta, my friend and mentor Tim Gray recently said to me that “the art of seeing the body of Jesus in the bread should train us in the art of seeing the body of Jesus in the poor.” Profound, no? This reminded me of one of Chrysostom’s homilies; a reflection on Matthew 25:

Would you honor the body of Christ? Do not despise his nakedness; do not honor him here in church clothed in silk vestments and then pass him by unclothed and frozen outside. Remember that he who said, “This is my Body”, and made good his words, also said, “You saw me hungry and gave me no food”, and, “in so far as you did it not to one of these, you did it not to me”. In the first sense the body of Christ does not need clothing but worship from a pure heart. In the second sense it does need clothing and all the care we can give it.We must learn to be discerning Christians and to honor Christ in the way in which he wants to be honored. It is only right that honor given to anyone should take the form most acceptable to the recipient not to the giver. Peter thought he was honoring the Lord when he tried to stop him washing his feet, but this was far from being genuine homage. So give God the honor he asks for, that is give your money generously to the poor. God has no need of golden vessels but of golden hearts.I am not saying you should not give golden altar vessels and so on, but I am insisting that nothing can take the place of almsgiving. The Lord will not refuse to accept the first kind of gift but he prefers the second, and quite naturally, because in the first case only the donor benefits, in the second case the poor gets the benefit. The gift of a chalice may be ostentatious; almsgiving is pure benevolence.What is the use of loading Christ’s table with gold cups while he himself is starving? Feed the hungry and then if you have any money left over, spend it on the altar table. Will you make a cup of gold and without a cup of water? What use is it to adorn the altar with cloth of gold hangings and deny Christ a coat for his back! What would that profit you? Tell me: if you saw someone starving and refused to give him any food but instead spent your money on adorning the altar with gold, would he thank you? Would he not rather be outraged? Or if you saw someone in rags and stiff with cold and then did not give him clothing but set up golden columns in his honor, would he not say that he was being made a fool of and insulted?Consider that Christ is that tramp who comes in need of a night’s lodging. You turn him away and then start laying rugs on the floor, draping the walls, hanging lamps on silver chains on the columns. Meanwhile the tramp is locked up in prison and you never give him a glance. Well again I am not condemning munificence in these matters. Make your house beautiful by all means but also look after the poor, or rather look after the poor first. No one was ever condemned for not adorning his house, but those who neglect the poor were threatened with hellfire for all eternity and a life of torment with devils. Adorn your house if you will, but do not forget your brother in distress. He is a temple of infinitely greater value.

Thinking on the previous post, I recently had the chance to listen to a fascinating interview with Richard Mouw, the president of Fuller Theological Seminary in California, speaking about the issue of gay marriage. I will post the link below. What I so appreciated about Mouw’s take on the matter was how painfully honest he was. Namely, he said that we Christians need to reflect on our own brokenness and that of humanity first. Only then can we begin to interact with the homosexual community not on an “us and them” level, but on a level where we are able to better minister to persons–struggles, crosses, inadequacies and all–and not merely the buzzwords and buzzideas that the media bombards us with. Indeed, I was particularly struck by one issue brought up during the conversation; that despite the arguments against gay marriage from most Christians, the fact remains that heterosexual marriage faces a skyrocketing divorce rate. What are we to say about this to homosexuals; many of whom are embodying the very virtues of self giving, devotion, and longevity that marriage is supposed to espouse (pardon the pun)? Personally, I don’t know. It certainly needs to give us pause though. Perhaps our focus needs to shift from constitutional ammendments and changing laws to people themselves; people–many of whom–are carrying a tremendous amount of pain and hurt. What is it the Church has to say to them? What is the life Christ is offering them, and how can we be stewards of it?

One interesting note here. It seems to me that there are few things made fun of as much as homosexuality. Looking back on growing up–particularly my time in Christian schools–I can’t think of more commonly used slanders than those usually reserved for homosexuals. The way we treat them, why should they want anything to do with us anyway? Imagine carrying a terrible and excruciatingly heavy cross, and having that very fact used against you as a way to make fun of you–and by the very people who are supposed to be the ones helping you carry it no less!

If there is one thing that Mouw recognizes, it’s that every time he has to tell a homosexual person that they should either remain celibate or change, he still gets to go home to his wife that night. This certainly doesn’t change the Church’s stance on homosexuality, but it should certainly make us more humble and caring in the way which we are to convey that teaching. What if some homosexuals really are genetically wired that way from birth? What place is there for them in the Church? What human love is there for them?

 http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/gaymarriage/index.shtml

Over the weekend, my wife and I had the chance to sit down at dinner with two of our dearest friends. One is a very well-known and respected priest from the east coast where he teaches at a prominent Catholic seminary and college. The other is a fellow teacher with me at the Catholic Biblical School (at least until our government forces him back to Malaysia–an act which seems all but imminent–perhaps more on that later) and a consecrated layman. I so treasure getting together with these friends because I feel that we are all somewhat ennigmatic in our various social and professional spheres. Namely, to conservatives, we seem terribly liberal, and to many liberals, our religious affiliations make us seem terribly conservative. Indeed, I shouldn’t complain; this, I think, is the only proper stance for a Catholic. Nevertheless, the conversations were fascinating. From ecological justice to homosexuality to immigration to sacramental realities we went, happily enjoying the rare occasion of being truly understood and appreciated.