The Good Word

You must sing the title, as in Fiddler on the Roof! Go back and try it if you did not; this blog post will improve greatly with the sound of the song ringing in your ears. Paul's beautiful demonstration of the reality of Christ’s resurrection is based on the tradition of the early Church, of which Paul himself is certainly a part, and this tradition is based on the experience of the first followers. The language of tradition, of "handing on" - "I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:3-4) - is significant because the experience of the Christians is a proof of the reality of the resurrection. I recall at a conference having a disagreement with a fellow theologian who argued that there was no "proof" of the resurrection, that faith was the only reason Christians could proclaim it. I agree that faith is essential to grasping and accepting the resurrection, but Paul’s claim is that there are witnesses. Is not the testimony of these witnesses "proof" of the resurrection? I think it is. Think of a court case: sometimes there is physical evidence - especially now it is available since forensic science is so advanced - but sometimes there is only testimony of witnesses. Why should we believe or disbelieve the testimony of witnesses?

Here is what Paul says of these witnesses and of the events they witnessed regarding Jesus Christ:

that he was buried;
that he was raised on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures;
that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve.
After that, Christ appeared to more
than five hundred brothers at once,
most of whom are still living,
though some have fallen asleep.
After that he appeared to James,
then to all the apostles. (1 Corinthians 15:4-8)

Witnesses proclaimed him dead and then they proclaimed, strangely and shockingly, that he was alive! What is so wonderful about the resurrection, apart from gaining life for the Corinthians and for us, is that it is attested by our brothers and sisters in Christ, who stated that they had witnessed it. I trust them.

We should be attentive to the reality of tradition - it is the experiences of our brothers and sisters in Christ - not something distant and far from us. It is the lived life of the community of followers of Jesus. Some of us, naturally, struggle in this life, such as P..... Read more

This Sunday we have the second half of a story Luke means to introduce in a schematical way the entire rest of his Gospel.  Jesus had explained the purpose of his Baptism, to announce a year which signaled God's good will, a year of beginning a new covenant of divine union with God's people.  Luke had earlier described Jesus' attractiveness to crowds and now has Jesus declare that he is the one to fulfill the expectations of Isaiah, to free people of all that keeps them from perfect happiness, especially from sin.

Now, our liturgy presents a different atmosphere from that of the earlier verses of last Sunday.  Yes, people seem to respond favorably to Jesus' word that "Isaiah is fulfilled today".  But, in schematic fashion, Luke has this postive turn to doubt: who is this Jesus really?  Jesus senses this growing doubt, a picture of what will be part of the fabric of his entire public life.  Jesus senses that his own will not accept him, or better, that they think they will accept him if he does miracles for them.  The Gospel will show, sadly, how even miracles did not lead many to faith in Jesus. 

For his part, Jesus chastises his audience for their lack of faith, noting that their refusal is a characteristic of human experience: the closest are the ones who are first to refuse.  Our liturgical reading emphasizes the punishment that refusal to believe in Jesus, and consequent refusal to repent as he asks will experience.  Elijah could do nothing for his own people, because of a drought God inflicted on His people for their refusal to believe and repent; only for a non-Jew would God offer salvation.  Similarly, God refused to heal sickness in Israel for Israel's sins; Elisha the prophet would be allowed to heal only a foreigner.  Cannot Israel see what it is bringing on itself, see what it will fail to possess, if it refuses Jesus?

The answer to Jesus' laments is the attempt to kill him.  Such will be the flow of the greater story to come: the response to Jesus will be the attempt to kill him.  Should he now escape 'by walking through their midst', Jesus' only escape in the full Gospel story will be his resurrection from the death imposed upon him by non-believers.  This entire story of Jesus, then, sums u..... Read more

We are coming to the end of our course, “The Cradle of Early Christianity,” after time spent journeying from Athens, to Thessalonica, to Philippi, to Pergamum (modern Bergama),  Smyrna (modern Izmir), Ephesus, and Constantinople (Istanbul).  We have surveyed the ruins of numerous ancient cities, temples, statues, churches, and seen many churches which have become mosques and then museums. A few of these churches transformed into mosques continue to function as mosques even today. It is hard not to ask what has happened to the Spirit, which lead to the transformation of the pagan Roman Empire through the work of the Apostles Paul and John, Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp of Smyrna amongst many other Christian missionaries and Church leaders.

Yesterday a group of students and I received an answer to this question, at least partially. We went to Mass at St. Anthony of Padua Church in Istanbul. The Church was so cold that we could see our breath when we exhaled in this gorgeous building. More significantly, the Mass in English was packed with people from the Philippines and Africa who lived and worked in Istanbul. They were full of fervor and joy. The second reading from 1 Corinthians 12:12-30 fit the occasion perfectly: “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit. Now the body is not a single part, but many. You are Christ’s body, and individually parts of it.” The body of Christ has many parts and numerous gifts. I have kept on looking for the heirs of the eastern Roman Empire, and there are not many of them here. For all sorts of reasons, due to conquest, infighting, political emigration and more sinister events perpetrated against them, they are not here in great numbers. Yet, the body of Christ has grown to include members who come from areas Paul could not have imagined. In sheer numbers, there are not many of them, but they are alive to the Spirit of God.

These Christians are also a wake-up call to a western Christian used to material comforts, spiritual freedom and a kind of spiritual torpor and laziness, that the Spirit is emanating from other areas than the West. It might seem like the body of Christ is not present or alive because it does not fit my historical conception of what it ought to be or because it does not reflect my neighborhood paris..... Read more

In Chapter 3, Luke presented a traditional story about what occurred around the time of Jesus' baptism; this story in the main agrees with what we read Matthew and Mark.  But it is Luke who returns for a moment to that "coming of the Spirit" upon Jesus in order to explain a purpose for that coming.  With the help of the Old Testament (Isaiah), Jesus describes what he will be doing in the rest of the Lucan Gospel.  One the one hand, the concrete examples of liberation that Jesus offers are for the most part fulfilled; he did not, however, free prisoners from jail.  On the other hand, with a more general phrasing Jesus describes his overall pressing task: to announce a year of God's favor.  Considering the rest of the Gospel and its report of what Jesus said and did, one sees that the more accurate description of Jesus' work is that contained in the general phrase; within that, one is to put the concrete examples he cites from Isaiah.  Thus, the most important result of Jesus' baptism is the offer of God's favor (to all), within which offer Jesus will perform mighty and merciful deeds which are freeing for those (relatively few) who receive them.

This offer of God's favor or love corresponds to and is defined by two further statements of Jesus early in his public life.  First, he says that he has been sent to announce the Kingdom of God.  Second, he says that he has been sent to call sinners to repentance.  The second fits into the first as means does to end: that is, one will enjoy the presence of the Kingdom if one repents. 

All of this means that, in the Lucan Gospel, Jesus means to offer entrance into the Kingdom of God through repentance, that this offer can be understood as a freeing from evil so that one may enjoy the good.  Miracles, like curing the blind, are signs of what the Kingdom will do in the fullest way, when one can enjoy the fullest freedom to become one's perfect self in all aspects.  That perfection is life forever with God.  Miracles are sings that the power to make all perfect is already among us and urging us, by the show of loving power, to repent so as to enter the fullness of what God has in store for us.  Jesus, as he cites Isaiah, will begin to free; the response he wants is repentance, by which we fully and ..... Read more

I have been musing about what it means to be beginning "Ordinary Time" for 2010. In one sense, the term has a simple liturgical meaning. "Ordinary Time" begins on the Monday after the Second  Sunday of the Year (The Baptism of the Lord). There is, paradoxically, no first Sunday in Ordinary Time. It runs until Ash Wednesday and, then, resumes again the Monday after Pentecost, until Advent. It is called Ordinary Time to differentiate it from the readings, liturgical colors( white, red, purple) for Advent, Christmas through the Baptism of the Lord; Lent, Easter until Pentecost. These seasons all celebrate and lift up special high points of Jesus’ life: his birth; his death and resurrection, ascension and the sending of the Spirit.

Ordinary Time lacks such a focus—it simply takes up many different  parables and narratives of Jesus’ ministry. One internet blogger, using the title, “Ordinary Time is also Extraordinary,” reflected that, during liturgical Ordinary Time, she can, therefore, focus on themes not found very prominently in Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter and Pentecost. During Ordinary Time, she remarked, she can concentrate on  themes such as: (1) God the creator and our creation-care; (2) Christ and the call to be his incarnational presence in a broken world; (3) The  Holy Spirit who equips our life for quite ordinary forms of service; ( 4) God’s kingdom and the cloud of witnesses who have gone before us. Is there, I wondered, an appropriate spirituality for Ordinary Time?

Ordinary Time is never really, of course, so ordinary. It takes up some 65 percent (33 weeks) of the liturgical year. In a similar way, for the bulk of our life, most days involve fairly mundane, even hum-drum, routines: going about our work; relating to friends and family; being a ‘householder’; doing our daily chores. Nothing special about them. A woman photographer and writer reflects on Ordinary Time: “In my life, not all photos or writing need to be about celebrations of life, the birthdays, graduations, weddings, holiday gatherings. Life is more than that, and when you write and take pictures, suddenly you realize what life is in its truest sense of the word. Life is 'more.' We just don’t realize that life is going on around us when it is happening most of the time."

We must not let the ordinary stay ordinary or simply sit around and wait for something "special" to celebr..... Read more

Certainly, the changing of water into wine is an astounding accomplishment; its being the first miracle story told by John about the public life of Jesus shows its ability to make clear the identity of Jesus.  "It was the first of Jesus' signs" and "the disciples believed in him".  But not only does this miracle help reveal the identity of Jesus (in John: the Word-made-flesh and the Son of God); it presents another aspect of the meaning of Jesus and of his life on earth, and it is this which I wish to reflect on here.

If one were to eliminate the objection of Jesus ("What is this to me; my hour has not yet come"), John's story has to do simply with a miracle.  But it is this objection that offers a second meaning to this story, and that meaning develops as follows.  First, the amount of wine Jesus presents is excessive to the needs of the wedding party; the group had already finished lots of wine.  Why this excess, some 120 gallons of wine at the minimum?  Second, this wine exceeds in goodness that which was first served to the wedding party.  Given that John had already noted how 'Jesus Christ' surpasses 'Moses' (1,17), we suspect that John, so famous for symbolism, means to illustrate once again how superior Jesus is the the past gifts to Israel.  Indeed, such symbolism calls to mind that wine was a symbol of the great days of the perfect kingdom for which Israel had long thirsted and believed would come from God's love some day. 

Symoblism moves us backward to Jesus' strange intervention.  His question to the 'woman' suggests that, before his hour has passed, he is most reluctant to provide the precious wine from his power.  Now, it is clear in John that the "hour" of Jesus is his death and resurrection.  This means that Jesus is unwilling to provide the fullness of the kingdom (represented in symbolism by an excess of wine) until after he dies and rises.

All of this leads to the conclusion that, though Jesus works wonders that make one think the kingdom of God is now to take place on earth, the kingdom will not come until after Jesus dies and rises.  Thus, the first story in John is a warning: no matter what Jesus will do throughout his public life, one must wait till after he dies and rises to have the f..... Read more

The strange thing about studying early Christianity in Turkey is that there are not a lot of Christians left in Turkey, the lands that were home to so much of the earliest growth and development of Christianity and the location of all seven of the first Ecumenical Councils. As we discuss how Christianity displaced, person by person, century by century, the pagan gods that predominated the Mediterranean Basin prior to the rise of Christianity, we reflect in our course on how it could even take place at all. How could a mission started by Paul, John, Barnabas, Peter, Timothy, Priscilla, Lydia and others have any success? We focus a lot on the movement of the Holy Spirit, on the experience of Jesus Christ. The ancients were not looking for gods, necessarily, but they were looking for hope and salvation. If the conversion of these lands and people is a sign of God's powerful work, what does it mean when these lands converted by the Christians are no longer Christian lands?

This is a difficult question, at least for me and our class, and we face it each time we go to an ancient site in Turkey. We went yesterday to Colossae, Laodicea, and Hierapolis, the three cities of the Lycus Valley. Paul wrote to Philemon and the Church in his house in Colossae, and Paul, or a follower, wrote to the Colossians. John wrote to the Laodiceans in Revelation. Paul also wrote, it seems, a letter to the Laodiceans which is now lost. Each of these sites is a ruin, and Colossae is not even excavated, but the Christian communities which were once here are not in the neighboring towns and cities either.  

It is true, of course, that devastations do occur, both to human life and to institutions. The Church is a minimal presence in Turkey, but it can grow, just as it first did in these lands. As we stood on the mound of the ancient city of Colossae yesterday, in the shadow of Mt. Cadmus, we thought of another devastation. My colleague, Paul Gavrilyuk, asked us to reflect on all the lives lost by earthquakes that have occurred in Turkey since ancient times. Ephesus, Smyrna, Colossae, Pergamum, Hierapolis, Laodicea, all were destroyed by earthquakes in ancient times. Turkey has suffered them in modern times too. But what was on Paul's mind as well were those lost in Haiti, for whom we offered a moment's silence and a prayer. Human suffering and loss is hard to understand, but we pray that in the fullness of time, God's will is done.

John..... Read more

For reasons having to do with airline flights, we trace the Apostle Paul's journey through Greece backwards, at least Paul's first journey through Greece described in Acts, which is often titled "The Second Missionary Journey." Acording to Acts 17:1-15, and 1 Thessalonians itself, Paul was persecuted in Thessalonica, as was the whole Church, and Paul had to be taken from town and brought to Beroea (modern Vereia), where he received a warm reception, until some of the mob from Thessalonica tracked him down. Paul was then taken to the Greek coast and went to Athens.

We had a strange replay of Paul's experiences in Thessalonica and Beroea at the small shrine to Paul in modern Vereia, built near the ruins of the ancient Egnatian Way, on which Paul most certainly travelled. I do not mean to compare our minor travails to the serious persecution Paul and the early Christians experienced, in fact our minor worries make it obvious how much Paul and his companions endured. It opened our eyes.

What were our minor travails? At the shrine in Vereia, as I was reading and discussing Acts 17:1-15 with the group, a very drunk man began shouting and gesticulating at our group from a distance and from behind a fence. Our tour guide tried to quiet him, but that just riled him up even more. He clambered over a tall fence and began yelling and making violent motions. He said that he hated Christians, and Americans, and, in fact, Obama! Our tour guide tried to defuse the situation by saying of me, "he's Canadian," but the shouting man just exclaimed that he hated Canadians too. While there was only a hint of danger for us - we were a large group of students and he one drunk man - it created anxiety and fear in our group. Tensions rose palpably. What was it like for Paul, Timothy, Silvanus and other early Christians?

They were a small, minority group in a vast empire, confronted often by mobs or authorities that did not like or understand them. More than being threatened, they were often beaten and sometimes killed. How do you live with the tension, danger and anxiety on a daily basis? How do you traavel from town to town knowing it could happen again and again?

Clearly it took human resolve, but more than that it took the power of the Holy Spirit, the love of God and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Combine this with Paul's call and his desire that all should know the salvation available through Jesus, and Paul could not stop regardless of t..... Read more

The manifestations of what God is doing for creation in Jesus continue apace, suggesting that there are even more facets for exploration than we have seen to date liturgically, rich though the past weeks have been. The template today is complex: the Isaian servant, closely resembling Moses, declares the itinerary: the journey through the waters and back into the land, the heritage that is God’s gift. Once the waters have been crossed—whether of the Jordan, the Euphrates, the Red Sea—the God signals a new relationship is “on,” different than before, and difficult to understand and accept, if we read the narratives correctly here. The servant will become credible in his role as catalyst of the relationship of justice, liberation, but in changed circumstances. It’s not what the people thought, expected. That the servant travels the same waters as the community does is key, since in the case of all three figures implied here, the journey of the people is not smooth. 

Belief comes hard, even with Isaiah, Moses, Jesus going ahead of us, walking with us. Each of them suffers and is approved. Each will, with integrity blended with some degree of failure, try to embody what God has in mind for the people. The people suffer too, in the stories lying behind these readings, but mostly at cross-purposes with God. The manifestation here, arguably, is that it does not need to be that way. What God offers to those willing to journey with the servant does not preclude suffering, to the contrary.  But it need not include cross-purposes with God. The role of the servant is to make clear what God has in mind, always a surprise, it seems fair to say. The second reading from Acts springs one of the surprises: More are included than was thought to be the case. And yet, that is not so new either. A mixed multitude followed Moses out of Egypt, and more people returned from exile than originally had “Judean passports.” So the fresh challenge here is not the fact of inclusivity but the challenge to continue to do it, lest we find ourselves at cross-purposes with God.  While we are waiting for others to widen the tents a bit, let’s us all find ways to do it as well.

Barbara Green, O.P.

We went on a tour of "classical" Athens today, with stops at the Acropolis, and the Parthenon which sits majectically upon it, and the ancient Agora. In between, quite literally, we went to the Areopagus, called Mars Hill by the Romans. The Areopagus, associated with the Greek god of war Ares, and many other figures from classical myth and literature, was also the site of the classical council of elders for Athens and later evolved into a homicide court. Students present short lectures on all of these sites for us, as do the professors and a superb Greek guide, Eleni Premeti. Ther student who presented on the Areopagus raised the issue of what the Apostle Paul was trying to accomplish in his speech to the Athenians on the Areopagus, as recorded by Luke in Acts 17.

She asked whether Paul was attempting to subvert the language of Greek culture and philosophy by adopting it in his speech to the Athenians in Acts 17 or whether he was engaging in a form of syncretism, since, as Luke records the speech, Paul does not include the name of Jesus directly. It is a question of significance for Christians of every era. Do we engage a culture in order to subvert the teachings which run counter to the truth? Or should we engage in forms of syncretism, however mild, by which we adopt aspects of culture with which Christianity might be in sympathy? How far should such syncretism extend? How far would subversion go in rending a culture? The issue of culture, it seems, goes even deeper, given that Christianity is the product of a particular culture in its earliest manifestation, which itself was influenced by the Hellenism of the preceding centuries. Christianity, like all religions, can never be "culture-free"; Christianity does not exist in a vacuum and it was not written on a tabula rasa. How many of the expressions of the earliest Christianity are themselves artifacts of a culture now gone? This does not diminish the truth of Jesus Christ, of which Paul spoke to a hostile or disinterested audience, but it does make clear that just as Paul spoke in the language of the philosophers, poets, and ordinary Greeks and Romans of his day to reach them with the Gospel, so, too, must we express the truth and reality of Jesus Christ in a language that resonates with our own culture. Paul, after all, had some success, to which the numerous Orthodox Churches scattered all over Athens bear witness twenty centuries later. But Paul was also correct about th..... Read more

I want to position my reflection between two catalysts.  First is Karen Armstrong’s assertion that mythos or sacred narrative assists us to review and experience deeply the many facets of the human predicament, notably here the choice between Good and Evil. Second is the genre of imaginative literature (see certain works of Tolkien, Lewis, Rowling, Cooper) that present us with a similar construction: How to see clearly and choose the good.

We know that today’s feast is about the showing or manifestation of God in the infant Jesus, but we have also recently celebrated the martyrdom of Stephen, the death of Holy Innocents, and implicitly the feast of St. John, all of which remind us of the cost of being disciples of Jesus, borne first and signally by him.  Today, always, Jesus galvanizes choice, and the reading from Isaiah names the poles just as the fiction writers do: the realm of darkness and the realm of light.  And the ancient Hebrew prophet maintains, in company with the writers mentioned above, that one must choose and be chosen by the light while shadowed by darkness.  The gospel reading traces the same mythos: Herod and those siding with him are bent on one choice, the preservation of powerful position, at whatever cost.  We see infant protomartyrs pay that price.  Jesus’ protodisciples, Mary and Joseph, see well and make the opposite decision: to understand the dark for what it is and flee it.  Paradoxically but inevitably, they go to Egypt and then emerge, retracing the perennial journey of slavery and liberation, death and life.  Of course their son will tread the same path again, next week: in and out of the Jordan River at his baptism.  And later, the same journey again.

As I ponder all these stories, it strikes me that the main challenge for us is to feel sufficient clarity in our call.  Harry Potter has his scar and countless reassurances of who he is; Will Stanton has mentors, emblems, unusual experiences.  I do not have these and suspect most others. are more like me than like Harry and Will.  But their clarity in the mythoi is for us, precisely because we are unsure.  If the choice must be made: Good, Evil? Light, Darkness?  How to choose—be chosen, today?

Barbara Green, O.P.