Friday, April 30

Ezekiel 25: Chapters 25 through 32 of Ezekiel contain oracles directed against the other nations with whom the Lord has reason to be displeased, Israel’s neighbors to the east and west (Chapter 25), the north (Chapters 26 to 28), and the south (Chapters 29 to 32). Chapter 25 is critical of the neighbors to the east (Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites) and to the west (Philistines).

Those to the east are criticized in order, proceeding from north to south. Since the oracles refer to the unseemly and unconscionable rejoicing of these nations at Jerusalem’s destruction, they should be dated no earlier than the summer of 586. Otherwise, the oracles in this chapter are not dated.

Oracles of this sort, scathing moral criticisms of Israel’s neighbors, go back to the earliest of Israel’s literary prophets, Amos, in the eighth century before Christ. Ezekiel’s references to the "people of the East," who will punish these offending nations, may refer to the Babylonians, but the reference is perhaps more probably to the marauding Bedouin tribes that frequently attacked from the Arabian Desert.

Psalm 40: The correct “voice” for Psalm 40 (Greek and Latin 39) is not in doubt. We know from Hebrews 10 that these are words springing from the heart of Christ our Lord and have reference to the sacrificial obedience of His Passion and death. This is the reason we pray this psalm on Friday, the day of the Crucifixion.

We may begin, then, by examining that interpretive context in Hebrews, which comes in the section where the author is contrasting the Sacrifice of the Cross with the many cultic oblations prescribed in the Old Testament. These prescriptions of the Mosaic Law, says Hebrews, possessed only “a shadow of the good things to come.” Offered “continually year by year,” they were not able to “make those who approach perfect” (10:1). That is to say, those sacrifices did not really take away sins, and their effectiveness depended entirely on the Sacrifice of the Cross, of which they were only a foreshadowing. Indeed, “it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins” (v. 4).

In support of this thesis, the author of Hebrews quotes our psalm: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire / . . . In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin / You had no pleasure” (vv. 5, 6). In fact, this theme appears rather often in the Old Testament itself. Isaiah, for example, and other prophets frequently attempted to disillusion those of their countrymen who imagined that the mere offering of cultic worship, with no faith, no obedience, no change of heart, could be acceptable to God.

The author of Hebrews, therefore, is simply drawing the proper theological conclusion when he writes: “And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins” (v. 11). What God seeks, rather, is the perfect obedience of faith, and such an obedience means the total gift of self, not the mere sacrificial slaughter of some beast.

This obedience of Christ our Lord is a matter of considerable importance in the New Testament. He Himself declared that He came, not to seek His own will, but the will of the Father who sent Him (John 5:30). This doing of the Father’s will had particular reference to His Passion, in which “He . . . became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:8). This was the obedience manifested in our Lord’s prayer at the very beginning of the Passion: “Take this cup away from Me; nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will” (Mark 14:36).

This spirit of obedience to God’s will is likewise the essential atmosphere of Christian prayer. “Your will be done” is the spiritual center and major sentiment of that prayer that the Lord Himself taught us.

Christ’s own obedience to God’s will is also the key to the psalm here under discussion, and Hebrews goes on to quote the pertinent verses, referring them explicitly to the Incarnation and Sacrifice of Jesus the Lord: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, / But a body You have prepared for Me. / In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin / You had no pleasure. / Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come— / In the volume of the book it is written of Me— / To do Your will, O God’” (vv. 5–7).

The body “prepared” for Christ in the Incarnation became the instrument of His obedience to that “will” of God by which we are redeemed and rendered holy: “By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. . . . For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified” (vv. 10, 14).

The various sacrifices of the Old Testament, which are spoken of from time to time throughout the Book of Psalms, have now found their perfection in the one self-offering of Jesus the Lord. Again the author of Hebrews comments: “Previously saying, ‘Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin You did not desire, nor had pleasure in them’ (which are offered according to the law), then He said, ‘Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God’” (vv. 8, 9).

The “He” of this psalm, then, according to the New Testament, is Christ the Lord. We pray it properly when we pray it as His own words to the Father. The “will” of God to which He was obedient was that “will” to which He referred when in the Garden He prayed: “Not my will, but Yours be done.”

This self-oblation of our Lord’s obedience to God is not simply a feature of this particular psalm; it is the interpretive door through which we pray all of the psalms. The “Your will be done” of the Lord’s Prayer is likewise the summation of the entire Book of Psalms, and what ultimately makes Christian sense of the Psalter.

Saturday, May 1

Ephesians 3:14—4:6: This text speaks of the unity of the Church by a sevenfold use of the word “one”:
(1) one body and
(2) one Spirit, just as you were called in
(3) one hope of your calling;
(4) one Lord,
(5) one faith,
(6) one baptism;
(7) one God and Father of all.

This combination of the word “one” with the number “seven” is significant, because in the Bible “seven” is the number of fullness and perfection. This text points, then, to the perfection of unity that must obtain in the Church of Jesus Christ. This is what Paul refers to here as “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

This perfection of unity, “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,” is a gift of God, but the full context of the reference shows that considerable human effort is required for its maintenance. Thus St. Paul describes Christians as “endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

That is to say, “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” does not take care of itself. It requires diligent maintenance: spoudazontes terein, “striving to guard.” This is a vigorous expression. The verb spoudazo indicates great effort, zeal, and struggle. The “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” is something that must be worked at. The other verb, tereo, which means “to guard,” indicates that “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” is subject to attack. It can be undone and destroyed. Even as a gift from God, it cannot be simply presupposed and taken for granted. It requires a certain effort at vigilance.

This effort has several aspects, but let us look at three of these, which are indicated in the text we are considering.

The first is humility and gentleness. St. Paul tells us, “walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness.” This humility and gentleness are “worthy” of our vocation as Christians.

This means, of course, that the opposite vices are “unworthy” of Christians. These vices are arrogance and harshness, which are the marks of the man of the world and the flesh. This can be a problem, because in some measure each of us brings the attitude of the world into the Church with us. Indeed, some of us spend much of our week being systematically indoctrinated with the attitudes of the world. We find it in our workplaces and our recreation. It abounds in our schools. Our magazines, televisions, and computers are full of it. Yet, arrogance and harshness can very quickly destroy, “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

How are humility and gentleness put into our behavior as Christians? St. Paul gives an indication of this in the Epistle to the Philippians: “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.”

This is the challenge Paul holds out to believers—a humble and gentle spirit, which alone is worthy of the name “Christian. Humility and gentleness lead to patience, which is the second effort indicated by St. Paul: “with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love.”

Let us note how the Apostle phrases this exhortation to patience. He does not recommend patience for the sake of patience. He does not say, “Patience is a virtue.” He says, “bearing with one another in love.” That is to say, our patience is an expression of love. The foundation of patience is love. What is the first characteristic of love? We know very well the text in 1 Corinthians 13: “Love is patient and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil.”

This is a hard message, but we must hear it, and we must brace our souls to hear it often—There is no Gospel life without patience, and there is no patience without love. We put up with certain things for the sole reason that we love. We do not endure for the sake of endurance. We endure for the sake of love, because love is the foundation of the Christian life. What St. Paul calls “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” is a description of love.

The context here in Ephesians indicates that a loving patience is not passive. This is why it is accompanied by the very active participle “striving.” This is active patience, not simple endurance. It is a patience that is alert and intentional. It is an active patience, in the sense we maintain control of our souls.

So often, when we think of patience, it is in terms of not being in charge. This is not the picture we have here in Ephesians. The patient man is in charge of his state of spirit. He is the most self-determined of men.

Humility, gentleness, and patience are all components of a larger picture, and this larger picture is the third point of these reflections. This larger picture is called “walking.” Indeed, in the expression used by St. Paul, it even means “walking around.” Paul’s verb is peripatesai, the verb from which we derive the expression “peripatetic.” This is the verb that Paul uses when he says, “walk worthy of the calling with which you were called.”

The Christian faith is not something that can simply be attached to a secular lifestyle. The Christian faith requires its own style of life—all of life, not simply the time spent in public worship. The Christian does not live as other people live. He does not regard the world as others regard it. Indeed, the Christian actively strives to put distance between himself and the pagan culture that surrounds him. His commitment to Christ will be manifest by how he speaks, the way he dresses, the conduct of his work, and the manner in which he addresses others.

The Christian does not conform. He stands out. This is why, when pagans begin to persecute Christians (as they do from time to time), they have no trouble identifying the Christians. They stand out. Conformity to the standards of the world is enmity with Christ.

There is an adage that says, “When in Rome, do what the Romans do.” What, however, did Paul tell the Romans? “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (12:2). The moral standards of pagan Rome, as Paul knew very well, were inimical to the Gospel of Christ, and he warned the Roman Christians not to conform. They were to follow a special way of “walking around.”

Sunday, May 2

Ephesians 4:7-16: This text speaks of three things: (1) the gift of Christ, (2) to each, and (3) to all.

First, it speaks of the gift of Christ, concerning which St. Paul says, “But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of the gift of Christ.” We should note that Paul does not speak simply of the generosity of God but of the “gift of Christ.” He is thinking less of the infinite bounty of God than of the redemptive work by which Christ Himself purchased what He gives us.

This is why Paul immediately speaks here of what Christ accomplished by His death and His glorification. He begins by citing the Book of Psalms, “ When He ascended on high, / He led captivity captive, / And gave gifts to men.” Paul goes on to explain the meaning of this psalm verse: “Now this, ‘He ascended’—what does it mean but that He also first descended into the lower parts of the earth?” This text is a reference to our Lord’s death and burial, which is to say that the gift of Christ is an expensive gift. It was purchased at a great price. He died, in fact, that we might have it. The gift of Christ is a gift of incalculable value, a price beyond reckoning.

Everything that we have is from the gift of Christ; our lives are full of the gift of Christ, which means that at each point in our existence we come in personal contact with the price by which that gift was purchased. At no point in our lives are we independent operators, left on our own, abandoned to our individual resources. Surrounded at all times by the gift of Christ, we are constantly in touch with motives for thanksgiving and praise
.

The sustained remembrance of this truth will remove two terrible burdens from our hearts and minds: selfishness and anxiety. Thanksgiving will set me free from selfishness, and confidence in God will liberate my soul from anxiety.

We may see this truth illustrated in the stories of the Gospels. We may think, for instance, of the apostles when their boat was besieged by the storm on the lake. It was that storm of which St. Mark says, “And a great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that it was already filling.” But what was Jesus doing? Mark tells us, “He was in the stern, asleep on a pillow.” Christ, you see, is never anxious, even when we are. He is not anxious, because His gift is sure. More than that, Christ does not regard it as reasonable to be anxious. Self-preoccupation and anxiety are highly unreasonable activities. Thus, Mark goes on, “He arose and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace, be still!’ And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. But He said to them, ‘Why are you so fearful?’”

If we were but attentive to His voice, this is what we would hear Christ saying to us all day long, “Peace, be still. Why are you so fearful?” We are surrounded, you see, by the gift of Christ, even as he sleeps in the stern of the boat. If He is not anxious, why should we be?

Second, St. Paul says, “to each one of us grace was given”—heni de hekasto hemon—“to each one of us.”

Paul describes this gift of Christ in terms of measure or proportion: “But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of the gift of Christ”—kata ton metron tes doreas tou Christou. This is to say that the gift of Christ is intentional and deliberate, not random and indiscriminate. The gift of Christ is consciously picked out and personally chosen.

The providence of Christ is not just a general oversight of the bigger picture of human history; it is the particular oversight of individual human beings, each of whom is uniquely loved. Paul’s use of the word metros here brings to mind a mother serving a meal to a child. She proportions the food on the child’s plate; she measures the amount she places in the child’s bowl. We all recognize what this means. The mother is thinking in terms of the particular needs of the child. It is not that the mother is ungenerous; she is simply being careful and solicitous for the child.

It is thus that St. Paul describes the gift of Christ; it is made according to a personal measure. It respects the unique character of each person. Christ, you see, when He descended into the lower parts of the earth, did not simply die for all of us; He died for each of us.

And this respect for the uniqueness of each of us likewise determines the measure and proportion—the metros—of His gift. Each of us is loved uniquely.

Third, the uniqueness of each of us does not mean that we are considered apart from the others. Even in their uniqueness, Christians are not individualists. The gift of Christ to each of us is directed to the building up of all of us. Paul thus describes that building up, “till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”

This is why the gift of Christ is “according to measure”—kata metron. We are living stones proportioned to fit into the larger structure, which Paul in this passage calls “the body of Christ.”

The true human destiny, the goal of human history, is not an abstraction. Paul describes it as man in His perfection, eis andra teleion, which he identifies as “the fullness of Christ.” Thus Paul uses the expression metros a second time, speaking of the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” The two “measures” are proportioned to one another. The true future of each of us is the destiny of all of us.

Meanwhile we find our proper and assigned place in Christ, according to His gift. We especially praise His goodness that He has not rejected us in our sins nor abandoned us to our darkness. We seek Him in the full assurance of His love and with a cultivated confidence in His ongoing care over our lives. At every point in these lives we welcome His gift with thanksgiving, even as we petition His blessing on the humble service we strive to render to His glory.

Monday, May 3

Ezekiel 28: This chapter contains two oracles: one against Tyre, the other against the Phoenician city of Sidon. In the first, no particular king of Tyre is indicated; the message is directed, rather, at that monarchy itself, as an embodiment of wealth and power in idolatrous rebellion against God. Idolatries of wealth invariably become idolatries of power, and in this respect it is significant that the king of Tyre is also indicted for cruelty.

The king, in addition, represented the nation itself, given over to economic aggrandizement and the love of power. As in individuals, so in nations, economic prosperity tends to breed pride, and Tyre, as we have seen, was very prosperous. Quite self-satisfied, it was no longer subject to the Divine Authority that rightly holds sway over the nations, whose eternal law is written into the structure of the world as binding on all men, and before whose Throne the peoples of the earth will in due course be summoned for judgment.

Tyre, in short, thought of itself as a god, and in this respect it was a political form of man’s initial rebellion in Eden. Satan had tempted Tyre as he had tempted Eve, and Tyre, succumbing to the temptation, now thought itself a god. Fallen like Adam, Tyre must now be expelled from the rock garden of Eden. “Stones of fire” (28:13f)—a most striking image—pictures the gold and precious stones of Genesis 2:11f as still being in their molten stage, still radiant with the heat that formed them. (Those stones will appear again in the final chapters of the Book of Revelation.)

The second oracle in this chapter, directed against the Phoenicians’ alternate capital of Sidon, is supplemented by a prose message of hope, renewal, and restoration for Israel. The editorial juxtaposition of these texts creates a literary irony that opposes Tyre’s expulsion from the garden of Eden with Israel’s restoration to its land to plant and care for its vines (verse 26). No longer will Israel be obliged to contend with the thorns and briars of Adam’s fall (verse 24).

Psalm 65 (Greek and Latin 64): The holy city of this psalm, called Zion and Jerusalem, is best thought of here as that heavenly city that is both the goal of our pilgrimage and the garnering house of our harvest. Such seems to be the sense of the next lines: “Blessed is he whom You have chosen and taken to abide with You; he shall dwell in Your courts. We shall be filled with the delights of Your house. Holy is Your temple, magnificent in righteousness.” This is that city of which it is said: “There shall be no night there: They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light. And they shall reign forever and ever” (Rev. 22:5).

Prior to its heavenly reference, this coming of all flesh to God pertains likewise to our drawing near to Him in worship, especially in bearing gifts from the harvest. The underlying Hebrew expression here, ’adeka, very often has this meaning in the specifically liturgical literature of Holy Scripture. Just in the Hebrew text of Leviticus and Numbers, for example, the word is used in this sense 138 times. The worship of the Church, which is anticipatory of, and preparatory for, the worship in heaven, is the place where all flesh may draw near unto God, because His house is a house of prayer “for all nations” (Is. 56:7; Mark 11:17).

It is no surprise, then, that our psalm will emphasize this note of geographical catholicity: “Hear us, O God our Savior, the hope of all the far reaches of the
earth, and in the distant sea. . . . The nations shall be in ferment, and those who dwell in the far reaches will be afraid of Your signs.” These “signs” of God include the wonders by which He has endowed the world, “preparing the mountains in His strength, wrapped about with power, stirring the bowl of the sea, mastering its waves.”

Tuesday, May 4

Ezekiel 29: The prophet’s attention is now turned southward, to Egypt, the land where Israel of old had first learned the ways of idolatry. In Ezekiel’s eyes Egypt is worthy of special blame for enticing Judah into rebellion against Babylon (verse 16).

This first oracle (29:1-16) was delivered on January 7, 587 (verse 1), when the siege against Jerusalem was in progress. Two years earlier, in 589, King Zedekiah of Judah had turned to Egypt for help against Babylon. In response, Pharaoh Hophra (known outside the Bible as Apries, 589-570) sent an army, which had temporarily driven off the Babylonians and made Jerusalem feel safe. But when the Babylonians came back in force, the Egyptian army fled, and the siege was renewed in earnest (cf. Jeremiah 37:5-10).

Such were the events that prompted the present condemnation of Egypt, a nation that proved to be a broken reed. (To complete our story of him, Hophra was not fortunate in his attempts to help his allies. The Greeks at Cyrene later defeated him when he tried to come to the aid of his friends the Libyans. In 570 he was deposed by Amasis [’Ahmose-si-neit], who replaced him as pharaoh and reigned from 570-526.)

In Ezekiel’s present oracle, the pharaoh embodies the nation, just as the king of Tyre represented the Phoenicians in the previous chapter and, like the king of Tyre, the pharaoh, too, is condemned for his arrogance. The dragon of the Nile, the crocodile, is the pharaoh’s mythic symbol, which also represents the ancient serpent of Eden (cf. Revelation 12). As the kingdom of Judah was beginning to sink, it had unwisely reached out and grabbed this reed to keep from drowning, but the reed broke at once.

For Egypt’s sin Ezekiel prophesies forty years of suffering, including refugee status for many of its citizens. Never again, says Ezekiel, will Egypt be a great political power.

This chapter’s second oracle, much shorter (verses 17-21), was delivered much later, on April 26, 571. Indeed, this is the latest of all the oracles for which Ezekiel provides a specific date. According to the historian Josephus, the Babylonians had maintained a siege of thirteen years against Tyre, and by 571 the siege had ended without Ezekiel’s predicted fall of Tyre (verse 18). We may imagine what this circumstance did to Ezekiel’s reputation as a prophet. Had not Deuteronomy commanded that a prophet be stoned to death if his prophecy did not come to pass?

Ezekiel addresses these concerns in the present oracle, arguing that the Lord would give Egypt to the Babylonians in recompense for their failure to take Tyre (verses 19-20). In short, the Lord is free to change His mind. In this instance the evils prophesied against Tyre have been transferred to Egypt. Prophecy, which is, after all, a great deal more than factual prediction, is often founded on an hypothesis—an “if”—even though that “if” may be only implicit. We recall that Jonah learned this lesson in his dealings with the Ninevites.

Wednesday, May 5

Ezekiel 30: There are two parts in this chapter, the first of which (verses 1-19) is a series of short oracles directed against the cities of Egypt and Sudan (Kush, which is inaccurately translated as Ethiopia in several modern versions), to regions with close political and economic ties.

The second part (30:20-26) is an oracle delivered on April 29, 587 (verse 20). The “broken arm” of the pharaoh refers to the recent defeat of the Egyptian army near Jerusalem when that army was driven away by the Babylonians who had returned to renew their siege of the city. Egypt, Ezekiel foresees, will share in Judah’s exile in some measure.

It is not surprising that some ancient Christian liturgical texts took inspiration from this chapter, especially verse 13, to speak of Jesus’ flight into Egypt as narrated by St. Matthew.

Psalm 72 (Greek and Latin 71): Two narrative sections of Holy Scripture readily come to mind in connection with this psalm. The first text is 2 Samuel 7, containing Nathan’s great prophecy about the royal house of David, which now became the beneficiary of a special covenant to guarantee that his descendants would reign forever over his kingdom. A number of lines of our psalm, especially those pertaining to the permanence and extension of David’s royal house, reflect that historical text.

The second pertinent passage is 1 Kings 3, which describes Solomon’s prayer for the “wise heart” that would enable him to govern God’s people justly. Repeatedly throughout this psalm mention is made of the justice and wisdom that would characterize God’s true anointed one.

Both aspects of Psalm 72, as well as the two narrative texts that it reflects, proved to be more than slightly problematic in Israel’s subsequent history. For example, Solomon’s vaunted wisdom as a ruler, that for which he had prayed at Gibeah, didn’t last even to the end of his own lifetime, and it was displayed among his posterity with (not to put too fine a point on it) a rather indifferent frequency. Similarly, what is to be said about the permanence of the reign of David’s household over God’s people? More than half of that kingdom broke away shortly after the death of David’s first successor, nor was any Davidic king ever again to reign on his throne after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 bc. What, then, could be said for either the prophecy of Nathan or the prayer of Solomon? How were the promises in this psalm to be understood?

As Christians, of course, we believe that the inner substance of all these prefigurings finds its fulfillment in Jesus the Lord, the goal of biblical history and the defining object of all biblical prophecy.

The Archangel Gabriel announced the fulfillment of these ancient prophecies when he told the Mother of the Messiah that “the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:32, 33). Yet other angels announced to the shepherds that “there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ [Messiah] the Lord” (2:11). He was to be at once David’s offspring and His Lord (cf. Mark 12:35–37).

As for Solomon, was he the wise king? Well, in measure, to be sure, but now behold, a greater than Solomon is here. If Solomon’s wish was to rule God’s people wisely and with righteousness (a word that comes repeatedly in our psalm), what shall we say of the One whom the New Testament calls our wisdom and our righteousness (1 Cor. 1:24, 30)?

Thursday, Mary 6

Ezekiel 31: The oracle in this chapter is dated June 21, 587 B.C. (verse 1). It is constructed of a lengthy and highly detailed poem describing Egypt as a large, imperial tree, dominating the landscape and offering shelter to all the nations (31:1-9). In his portrayal of this tree, Ezekiel once again resorts to the imagery of paradise (verses 8-9).

This poem is followed by a commentary in prose (verses 10-18), prophesying the downfall of Egypt. The great height of the tree, reaching up into the clouds, symbolizes man’s political and economic endeavors to attain heaven on earth by his own resources. To Ezekiel it is a symbol of arrogance, which he describes in terms reminiscent of the Tower of Babel. The cedar, which in olden times was symbolic of great longevity, represents man’s quest for a utopian permanence, a quest common to political idolatry.

Throughout the entire chapter the reader will observe in particular the image of water, bearing in mind Egypt’s long-time reliance on the Nile River and its highly developed system
of irrigation.

Psalm 74 (Greek and Latin 73): This poem testifies to the God who structures the world and divides it from the chaotic and random: “In Your might You hold the sea; You have crushed the heads of the dragons in the waters. Crushing the dragon’s head, You have fed him to the people of Ethiopia. You opened the springs and torrents, and You dried up the waters of Etham. The day is Yours, and Yours is the night; You prepared both the sun and the moon. You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth.”

The God of Psalm 74 is the world’s Creator, and His act of creation implies the imposition of limits: “You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth.” To create a knowable world is to pattern it according to intelligible forms, and limit is essential to the very notion of form (limit being “this” and not “that”). To say that God has “fixed all the boundaries, the determined limits, of the earth” is to say that God has already attached meaning to the structure of the world. Truth is already in the world, awaiting man’s discovery. The world already speaks the mind of God; man’s task is to listen to what it says.

Psalm 74 also testifies, nonetheless, that the sinful human mind is disposed to rebel against the formal, noetic structure that God has given to the world. Indeed, this intellectual rebellion seems often to prevail on the earth: “Why do You utterly abandon us, O God? . . . Raise Your hands against all that the enemy has done in Your holy place, against their undying pride. . . . How long, O God, will the enemy taunt us? Will the adversary defy Your name forever? . . . Remember that the enemy blasphemes the Lord, and a foolish people defies Your name.”

We modern men live late in an age of intellectual rebellion, when darkened, unrepentant hearts stand defiant before the plain speech that the Creator has placed in the very structure of the world.

Friday, May 7

First Samuel 1:1-28: It would be a comfort to think that all those who go up to the house of the Lord are led there by the Holy Spirit. It would also be an illusion. Even if experience did not testify that people sometimes attend worship with the most deplorable attitudes and for the worst possible reasons, Holy Scripture itself would caution us to realism on the point.

An early example, I suppose, is Peninnah, Elkanah’s “other wife,” who used the annual pilgrimage to Shiloh as an opportunity to render life miserable for barren Hannah. This latter she provoked severely, says the Sacred Text, “to make her miserable.” The provocation was not unintentional, we are assured, nor did it happen only once: “So it was, year by year, when she went up to the house of the Lord, that she provoked her; therefore she wept and did not eat” (1 Samuel 1:6-7). It is easy to picture Peninnah looking forward to that annual pilgrimage with the family; it was perhaps her favorite time of the year, providing her the forum for feeling superior and spreading discouragement.

Now, as it happened, the God who brings good out of evil caused everything to work out well for Hannah, and the story soon turns into an account of grace and divine visitation. Still, there was a serious pastoral problem at Shiloh, and I suspect more than one worshipper at the time wished the priest Eli, pointing to Peninnah, would suggest to Elkanah, “When your family comes next year, brother, why not leave Miss Picklepuss at home?” Perhaps his failure to do so should be counted among Eli’s several pastoral shortcomings.

Oh that Peninnah was history’s last recorded example of a surly, mean spirited individual using the time of divine worship as the occasion to make someone else feel wretched and forlorn.

Not so, however. Another is the Gospel story of “the ruler of the synagogue,” a singularly unattractive, grumpy person who objected to Jesus’ healing of a crippled woman on the Sabbath. In the midst of the spontaneous praise of God that ensued upon that gracious deed, this particular bellyacher felt it his duty to sound a warning to the congregation about liturgical proprieties: “There are six days on which men ought to work,” he declared, “therefore come and be healed on them, and not on the Sabbath day” (Luke 13:14). Quick to pass judgment on others and blinded by his own vicious, miserly spirit, this religious leader was unable to recognize the divine presence and the outpouring of grace.

Devoid of mercy, we notice, he was also without courage. Consequently, instead of confronting Jesus directly, this coward had recourse to what had always worked for him in the past—he harangued the congregation about the woman herself!

It is often said—and it is said, I think, more often than is true—that churches are full of hypocrites. Here was one occasion, however, when the Lord really did use that noun to describe someone in the place of worship. Unlike Eli, who failed to give a proper pastoral admonition to Elkanah, Jesus turned His not amused attention to this so-called ruler of the synagogue: “Hypocrite! Does not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or donkey from the stall, and lead it away to water it?”

The Lord’s indignation in this setting, which was scarcely untypical of Him (cf. Mark 3:5), suggests that a pastor’s patience in these circumstances should not be unlimited. Peninnah and the ruler of the synagogue behaved like wolves, not like sheep. They needed to be treated like wolves. The Lord gives here an example of the proper pastoral response to situations in which an individual apparently comes to church for the purpose of making other people in church miserable. Such folk need either to repent or stay home.

I began these comments by mentioning that not all churchgoing seems to be prompted by the Holy Spirit, an impression that opens the possibility of other spirits at work. One hates to consider this possibility, but there is evidence that some individuals are led to congregations for the demonic purpose of doing harm. Very early both the Didache and The Travels of Egeria mention the testing needed to settle that question. When a pastor admits someone into the congregation, we presume he is able to distinguish a sheep from a wolf. Indeed, we very much depend on it.

Friday, April 23

John 3:22-36: The position of this section of John may have been determined by the earlier reference to Baptism in 3:5. The evangelist now returns to John the Baptist for the last time.

The reference to Jesus baptizing does not mean that He did so with His own hands. From 4:2 we will learn that Jesus’ apostles normally perfomed this rite. It is not easy to determine the exact nature of this baptism, and it is difficult to affirm that it was the Christian sacrament of Baptism of which John the Baptist had spoken earlier (1:33), because the Holy Spirit will not be conferred on the Church until much later in this Gospel. However, there is no need to be apodictic on the nature of the baptism here in John 3; we may leave the question as unclear as the evangelist leaves it.

The place named in verse 23 is not identified with certainty, though we presume John’s earliest readers recognized it. The name means “springs,” which suggests that it was not a site on the banks of the Jordan. Some archeologists identify it with a site in Samaria. If true, of course, it indicates that John the Baptist had some following among the Samaritans.

In verse 24 the evangelist presumes his readers’ familiarity with the story of the death of John the Baptist (cf. Mark 6:17-29).

Verse 25 indicates the context of the words of John the Baptist. It is clear that controversies about Jewish cleansing rituals were not uncommon (cf. Mark 7:1-5).

The disciples of John the Baptist were understandably disturbed that the prestige of their leader was being eclipsed by the growing notoriety of Jesus. In answering them, John the Baptist again affirmed his own preparatory and subordinate role with respect to Jesus. He knew the ministry and task given him from heaven and dared not attempt to transcend the limits of his vocation (verse 27). Jesus, as the Messiah (verse 28), was the bride’s groom, whereas John was only His best man (verse 29).

We have here the first instance of what is a veritable mystique of the voice of Christ in the Gospel according to John. Here are some representative Johannine texts to demonstrate the richness of ideas associated with Jesus’ voice:

3:29 “He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is fulfilled.”

5:24 “Amen, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life. 25 Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live. . . . 28 Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice 29 and come forth . . .”

10:2 “But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. 5 Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”

11:43 Now when He had said these things, He cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!”

18:37 “For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.”

20:15: Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” She, supposing Him to be the gardener, said to Him, “Sir, if You have carried Him away, tell me where You have laid Him, and I will take Him away.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to Him, “Rabboni!” (which is to say, Teacher).

In verse 30 we have the final words spoken by John the Baptist in the Fourth Gospel. They not only formed a synopsis of the vocation of John, but they also served the early Christians as an apologetic testimony in their relationship to the disciples of John the Baptist.

When we considered the Lord’s recent discourse with Nicodemus, we reflected that how the conversation gradually became a theological meditation. Nicodemus faded from the scene, and the reader was no longer entirely sure who was speaking. We witness now the same literary phenomenon in this conversation between John the Baptist and his disciples. By the time we reach verse 31, it no longer appears to be a discussion, and it is difficult to say, any longer, that it is John the Baptist who is speaking. Both he and his disciples fade from the scene.

Indeed, in verses 31-36 there is a repetition of certain ideas we earlier saw in the section associated with the discussion with Nicodemus. We may list and examine these:

First, there is the image of “coming from above,” along with a contrast between earthly and heavenly things. Thus, Jesus said earlier, “If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven—the Son of Man” (3:12-13). In this later meditation we read, “He who comes from above is over all; he who is of the earth is of the earth, and of the earth he speaks. He who comes from heaven is over all” (verse 31). In both places we have the contrast between heavenly things and earthly things, and Jesus is identified as coming “from above” or “from heaven.”

Second, there is the mention of unbelief with regard to the testimony of Jesus. In the earlier meditation, we read, “Amen, amen, I say to you, We speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness” (3:11). This idea appears again in the present text: “And what He has seen and heard, that He testifies; and no one receives His testimony” (verse 32). In both places there is the crisis of unbelief.

Third, both sections of John 3 speak of the Holy Spirit. In the discourse we Nicodemus, we read, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. . . . The Spirit breathes where He wills, and you hear His voice, but cannot tell where He comes from and where He goes. Thus is everyone who is born of the Spirit”(3:5,6,8). In the present section, we read: “For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God does not give the Spirit by measure” (verse 12).

John the Baptist had earlier spoken of the Holy Spirit as pertinent to the coming of the Christ: “And John bore witness, saying, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and He remained upon Him. I did not know Him, but He who sent me to baptize in water said to me, “Upon whom you see the Spirit descending, and remaining on Him, this is He who baptizes in the Holy Spirit”’” (1:32-33).

Fourth, both parts of John 3 speak of God’s love. In the earlier section we read, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” (3:16). In the present section we read, “The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand” (verse 35).

Fifth, in both parts of John 3, Jesus is identified as God’s Son. Thus, in the earlier section we read, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him has not been judged but he who does not believe has already been judged, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (3:16-18). In the present section we read, “The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand. He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see lif
e, but the wrath of God abides on him” (verses 35-36).

Jesus’ title, “Son of God,” had already appeared, of course, much earlier in John: “we beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only Begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (1:14). Also, “Nobody has, at any time, seen God. The Only Begotten, God, He Who Is, in the bosom of the Father, He explained” (1:18). Also, “And I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God” (1:34). Likewise, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” (1:49)

Sixth, in both sections of John 3 there is the theme of eternal or everlasting life. Thus, we read earlier, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, thus must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (3:14-16). In the present section we read, “He who believes in the Son has everlasting life” (verse 36).

Seventh, in both sections of John 3 we find the theme of judgment. Thus, we read in the earlier part, “he who does not believe has already been judged, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (3:18-19). And in the present section we read, “he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him” (3:36).

Finally, both sections of John 3 are invitations to belief in Christ. The first part says, “whoever believes in Him should have eternal life” (3:15). And the second section says, “He who believes in the Son has everlasting life” (verse 36).

Saturday, April 24

John 4:1-10: Why did Jesus sit down weary by Jacob’s well? He was waiting for someone special whom He had in mind to meet that day. He was seeking me. The Samaritan woman at the well is each of us.

The Evangelist John surely knew that woman’s name, just as he knew the names of the paralytic at the pool and the man born blind, because he narrates all of these one-on-one encounters with details that he could only have obtained from the individuals themselves. So John most certainly knew their names. His omission of those names in the stories, then, has literary significance, and we are probably right to suppose anonymity for the sake of reader identification. That is to say, each of us, as we ponder the text prayer-fully, becomes that paralytic, that blind man, and that woman at the well, encountering the Lord in the power of His Scriptures.

As an “every Christian” account, the story of the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well serves to illustrate certain distinct stages in the path of conversion.

In John’s own context, this story establishes a contrast between two receptions of Jesus—that of the Jews and that of the Samaritans—and the Samaritans come out looking much better!

The three-days walk through Samaria was the shortest way of making the trip between Jerusalem and Galilee. Luke records that Jesus took that route, but in that instance the Samaritans did not receive Him favorably (Luke 9:51-53). We should observe that only John, among the evangelists, tells of a ministry of Jesus to the Samaritans.

The well is identified with the town Sychar, known today as Askar. (The well is still there and well known; it lies between Gell el-Balatah and Askar.) Jesus sat down beside the well (pege), though one papyrus manuscript says that He sat “on the ground” (ge).

What Jesus did next was nearly unthinkable in the social context of that time. A Jew, He spoke to a Samaritan. A man, He spoke in private to a woman who was not His relative. A Jew would normally never have drunk from the defiled water pot of a Samaritan. In the context envisioned by John, this whole story has the ring of improbability, not to say shock and scandal.

He asks her for a drink, and she is appropriately shocked. In response, Jesus speaks of living water—hydor zon. This was a common metaphor in the Hebrew Bible, signifying Wisdom, divine grace poured out in the last days, the Holy Spirit, and so forth. Thus:

Jeremiah 2:13—“ For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, And hewn themselves cisterns—broken cisterns that can hold no water.”

Zechariah 14:8—“ And in that day it shall be that living waters shall flow from Jerusalem, half of them toward the eastern sea and half of them toward the western sea.”

Proverbs 13:14—“ The law of the wise is a fountain of life, to turn one away from the snares of death.”

Sunday, April 25

John 4:11-26: In verses 11-12, we observe that this woman takes Jesus very literally, very much as Nicodemus took the Lord’s words about being reborn. She starts to imagine that Jesus has too high a view of Himself. We may observe that this is the second time Jesus has been compared to Jacob. Recall 1:51—“I say to you, hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

In verses 13-14, the Christian reader will recognize the New Life in Baptism, in which the living fountain of water enters into the very being of the believer. As in the dialogue with Nicodemus, the Christian reader understands what Jesus is saying, even though the Lord’s interlocutor does not.

In understanding the words of Jesus, this woman is even slower than Nicodemus (verses 15-18). The Lord’s figurative language becomes a kind of stumbling block, rather like the Lord’s speaking in parables in Mark 4 and Matthew 13. In fact, however, it is difficult to imagine how Jesus could speak more clearly than He does to this Samaritan woman.

The woman’s problem is a moral one: She is living in sin. People living in sin can hardly be able to understand the spiritual truths that the Lord enunciates here. The Lord, therefore, turns the conversation in a different direction: “Go, call your husband, and come here.” In her response and the Lord’s answer to this response, the woman is confronted with her deeds. These deeds have been brought to the light; the woman does not try to hid e them. She thus takes a step on the right path.

Embarrassed, however, she does try to change the subject. Not eager to talk about her moral failings, she introduces a theoretical question—even a liturgical question! “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers adored on this mountain, and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where it is necessary to adore.”

We observe that Jesus does not press the point about the woman’s moral state. He has said all that needed to be said, and He will permit His comment about the “five husbands” work its way into the woman’s conscience. (Which it does — cf. verse 39.)

Since she knows that Jesus can read her heart, she calls Him a prophet. Reading hearts pertains to the gift of prophecy, as we see in 1 Corinthians 14:23-25: “Therefore if the whole church comes together in one place, and all speak with tongues, and there come in those who are uninformed or unbelievers, will they not say that you are out of your mind? But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or an uninformed person comes in, he is convinced by all, he is convicted by all. And thus the secrets of his heart are revealed; and so, falling down on his face, he will worship God and report that God is truly among you.”

With regard to the woman’s question, we may first note that this conversation takes place at the very foot of Mount Gerazim, a place where the Patriarchs themselves offered sacrifice (Genesis 12:7; 33:20). Barred by Ezra from participation in the official worship in the Jerusalem Temple, the Samaritans continued to worship (adore) in their northern shrines, chiefly that on Mount Gerazim. This subject pertaine
d to the ongoing religious controversy between the Samaritans and the Jews.

Jesus answers that the question itself will soon be moot, because “the hour is coming, and now is, when the true adorers will adore the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father seeks such adorers of Him. God is spirit, and it is necessary that those who worship Him worship in spirit and truth.”

When the Bible speaks of God as “spirit,” this is less a description of His nature (that is, non-physical) than of His life-giving activity. The “spiritual” is that which has breath—gives life. This, we recall, points to the difference between John’s baptism and that of Jesus: in the baptism of Jesus, the Spirit is conferred.

When the Lord says, “the true adorers will adore the Father in spirit and truth,” He is contrasting this new worship with the provisory and temporary worship associated with the temples in Jerusalem and on Mount Gerazim. The “true” in John’s Gospel is not contrasted with the “false,” but with the provisory and inadequate: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came to be through Jesus Christ” (1:17).

At the same time, however, Jesus refuses to admit that the Jews and Samaritans are somehow equal on this matter: “You adore what you do not know; we adore what we know, because salvation is of the Jews.”

There is a rich ambivalence in this assertion that “salvation is of the Jews.” Its most obvious meaning, of course, is that the Savior comes from the Jewish people and is the heir of the promises made to the Jews. Beyond that meaning, however, there is another, which is full of irony: Salvation comes from the death of Christ, and it was the Jews who brought about the death of Christ. It was from that historical trauma that salvation came to the world!

The woman speaks of the coming of the Messiah. In fact, the Jews and Samaritans did not have an identical belief on this subject. For the Samaritans the “one to come” was not the heir to the Davidic throne. He was simply Tã’eb, meaning “He who comes,” or “he who restores.” The Samaritans thought of this person as the fulfillment of the prophecy in Deuteronomy 18:18—“ I will raise up for them a Prophet like you from among their brethren, and will put My words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I command Him.” Deuteronomy’s promise, “He shall speak to them all,” is reflected in the woman’s words, ““When He comes, He will tell us everything.”

No matter how inadequate the woman’s understanding of this promise, Jesus lays claim to its fulfillment: “I am, the one who speaks to you.” More literally, perhaps, this expression—“Ego eimi ho lalon soi”—may be translated as, “I who am speaking to you, I am.” This “I am” is from the voice in the Burning Bush and will appear several times in John’s Gospel as an auto-identification of Jesus.

Monday, April 26

John 4:27-42: We observe in this woman’s conversation what might be called a growth in Christology as the story progresses; there is a pronounced evolution in the terms by which the Lord is regarded. Thus, when the woman first meets Jesus, He is called simply “a Jew” (4:9). This is important to the story as a whole, of course, because the Lord Himself will presently declare that “salvation is of the Jews” (4:22). On the woman’s lips, nonetheless, the designation “Jew” indicates two things:

First, it says that Jesus is at first assessed only within a certain class of people. He is not yet a distinguishable person, important on His own account. And second, the word “Jew” indicates the woman’s sense of separation from Jesus, because “Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.”

Next, Jesus is addressed as “Sir” (4:11; presumably the Aramaic Mar).
This term of respect is a great step for the woman to make, indicating her change of attitude toward Jesus.

But then, within four verses “Sir” becomes “prophet” (4:19), when the Lord directs the woman’s attention to her own sins. Then Jesus takes the initiative in His own identification.

Nonetheless, she leaves the well with a question in her mind, a question about the identity of Jesus. It is the fundamental question that would in due time be addressed by the Ecumenical Councils: “Who do you say that I am?” Just exactly who is Jesus? Everyone in John’s Gospel seems to be asking questions abut Jesus’ identity: “‘This is the Prophet.’ Others said, ‘This is the Christ’” (7:40, 41).

The high point of Jesus’ identification, in this discussion with the Samaritan woman, is the Ego eimi of verse 36. These are the words from the Burning Bush, and they appear in the context of God’s revelation. John’s expression, “I am, the one who speaks to you,” comes very close to the Lord’s words in Isaiah 52:6 (LXX)—Ego eimi avtos ho lalon: “I am, the very One who speaks.”

In John’s Gospel, Jesus’ auto-identification as “I am” is the culminating point of a discussion that has been centered around the question of who He is. He is both the Messiah and the One who spoke from the Burning Bush.

It is at this point that the Lord’s disciples return, and the woman quickly departs, leaving her water pitcher, rather like the disciples earlier left their nets. Since John explicitly mentions this point, it seems likely that she left the water jar so that Jesus might drink from it.

She runs to tell her fellow citizens what has occurred. “Come,” she invites her friends, “see a Man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” (4:29).

Two points may be noted here.

First, the woman’s tentative question—“Could this be the Christ?”—bears substantially the same message that Philip bore to Nathanael: ““We have found Him of whom Moses wrote in the Law, and also the prophets—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph” (1:45).

Second, the woman’s identification of Jesus as an anthropos ties this story to the Lord’s Passion. Jesus will be identified later by Pilate as “Man”—“Then Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And [Pilate] said to them, “Behold the Man!” (19:5).

This is one of the places where John ties the story of the Samaritan well to the Lord’s Passion, as Celano perceived. Another is John 6:14—“Now it was the Preparation Day of the Passover, and about the sixth hour. And he said to the Jews, ‘Behold your King!’ But they cried out, ‘Away, away! Crucify Him!’” In John, both this meeting with the Samaritan woman and the Lord’s crucifixion take place at the same time—midday.

Jesus continues His discussion with the newly arrived disciples: In the meantime His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” But He said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know.” Therefore the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought Him something to eat?”

The failure of the disciples to understand the statement on food corresponds to the woman’s inability to understand the statement about living water, as well as Nicodemus’s misunderstanding the necessity of being born again. Jesus must be more explicit with them: “My food is that I shall do the will of Him who sent Me, and that I shall complete His work.” This is a summary of Jesus’ whole life and ministry.

In the next verse Jesus cites what was evidently a proverb about the distance between sowing and harvest: “There are still four months and the harvest comes.” In His mouth, however, it becomes a parable about God’s sowing and harvesting. This is His commentary on the message that what the woman is currently doing by way of witnessing to her countrymen. Jesus is telling the disciples to keep alert: They are about to see a harvest. In fact, as John well knew when he wrote of this scene, Samaria was to become an important step in the Gospel’s promulgation throughout the world (Acts 8). Indeed, John himself would be sent to Samaria to confirm the work of Philip’s evangelism.

These words about a prior sowing in the north country probably refer, as well, to the ancient ministry of the prophets up there: Elijah, Elisha, Amos, Hosea. The Christian preachers will reap the fruit of their sowing.

During the time that Jesus stays with the Samaritans, they come to a mature faith in Him, no longer dependent on the testimony of the woman at the well. At the end of the story, the woman’s Samaritan friends add another important Christological title: “We know that this is in truth the Savior of the world” (4:42).

This confession of the Samaritans—“Savior of the world”—forms a summary, as it were, of John’s reflections on the discourse with Nicodemus: For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” That is to say, the conversion of the Samaritans is an important step in the evangelization of the whole world.

Tuesday, April 27

Ezekiel 22: This chapter contains three oracular prophecies, joined together by a common theme: ritual uncleanness, understood either literally or as a metaphor. Ezekiel, as a priest dedicated entirely to the correct worship of the true God, was particularly sensitive to this matter of cleanness, or purity, in both the sacrifice and the priest.

The first oracle (verses 1-16), directed against Jerusalem, is full of the imagery of blood, any flowing of which rendered a person ritually unclean. Blood is also, however, an image of violence.

The second oracle (verses 17-22) is directed against all unfaithful Israelites, who are described as dross (that is, metallic impurity), which God will clean away in the coming smelting process of His historical judgment. Ezekiel doubts that any true metal will be found once this process is complete.

The third oracle (verses 23-31) is against the Holy Land itself, which suffers uncleanness because of those who live there. These have defiled God’s land with bloodshed and other forms of impurity, rendering the land unholy and no longer fit to contain the Lord’s true worship.

Psalm 45: “The kingdom of heaven,” we are told by a uniquely reliable source, “is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son” (Matt. 22:2), that marriage’s consummation being the definitive aim of our destiny, and all of history constituting the courtship that prepares and anticipates the yet undisclosed hour of its fulfillment. Thus, the end of time is announced by the solemn proclamation: “Behold, the bridegroom is coming; go out to meet him!” (Matt. 25:6).

This interpretation of history as the preparation for a royal wedding ceremony is so pervasive and obvious in Holy Scripture that we Christians, taking it so much for granted, may actually overlook it or give it little thought. Indeed, in this modern materialistic world there is a distinct danger that we too may forget that the present life is but the preparation for another, its many and manifold efforts only a provisioning for the greater future, its varied blessings but rehearsals for the greater joy.

The modern materialistic world seems to know nothing of all this, believing in no future outside of its immediate and perceived needs. To counter such forgetfulness of our future, therefore, God’s Holy Writ repeatedly reminds us of that coming wedding day of the King’s Son: “Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready. . . . ‘Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb!’” (Rev. 19:7, 9).

Thus too we are w
arned against the grave danger courted by those who refuse their wedding invitations (Matt. 22:3–10; Luke 14:17–24), as well as the exclusion awaiting those improvident souls presumptuous of entrance without preparation (Matt. 22:11–14; 25:7–12).

Psalm 45 (Greek and Latin 44) is a prophecy that anticipates and most descriptively foretells that future royal wedding. Its lines describe the “bride adorned for her husband” (Rev. 21:2): “The royal daughter is all glorious within the palace; her clothing is woven with gold. She shall be brought to the King in robes of many colors; the virgins, her companions who follow her, shall be brought to You. With gladness and rejoicing they shall be brought; they shall enter the King’s palace.”

There is even more description of the King’s Son, however, that Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world: “You are fairer than the sons of men. Grace is poured out upon Your lips. Therefore God has blessed You forever. Gird Your sword upon Your thigh, O Mighty One, with Your glory and Your majesty. And in Your majesty ride victorious because of truth, humility and righteousness.” This Son’s riding forth in victory is similarly described in the Bible’s final book: “Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. . . . And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS” (Revelation 19:11, 12, 16).

We need not guess at the identity of this Bridegroom nor be in doubt of His divine dignity, for the New Testament quotes our psalm when it speaks of the Son’s anointing by His Father: “But to the Son He says: / ‘Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; / A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your kingdom. / You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; / Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You / With the oil of gladness more than Your companions’” (Heb. 1:8, 9). This ‘anointed one’ (for such is the meaning of the name Messiah, or Christ) is Jesus, of whom the Apostles preached: “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power” (Acts 10:38).

Inasmuch as “the form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor. 7:31), then, a certain measure of detachment is necessary to prepare ourselves for the wedding feast of the King’s Son, a certain using of this world as though not using it, a refusal to take seriously its unwarranted claims on our final loyalty. So our psalm once again warns us: “Listen, O daughter. Consider and incline your ear; forget your own people also, and your father’s house. So the King will greatly desire your beauty. Because He is your Lord, worship Him.”

Wednesday, April 28

John 5:1-16: We come now to the Third Sign in John’s Gospel, the healing of the paralytic. John, having called our attention to the first two Signs, no longer feels the need to do so. He permits the reader to count them for himself.

John does not identify the feast in verse 1 (probably to be read without the definite article). One suspects that this mention of a Jewish feast day is inserted simply to explain why Jesus was in Jerusalem (after being in Galilee in the previous chapter).

The name of the pool was Bethzatha, or Bethdaida, or Bethesda. The pool may have had each of these names at one time or another. Even to this day, one can visit the pool (which, alas, is now completely stagnant and fetid) and see five sides originally covered by porticoes. It is a trapezoid transected into two parts; these are the “five” sides. The pool is near the lovely church of St. Anne.

It is also near the site of the ancient Sheep Gate, on the northern side of the city. John’s text has been expanded by an addition to verse 3 and the insertion of verse 4. Missing in the better textual witnesses, these later additions were intended to explain the conversation in verse 7.

The important point is that “Jesus saw him lying there.” This is a very important word in John’s Gospel:

“Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward Him, and said of him, ‘Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit!’ Nathanael said to Him, ‘How do You know me?’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you’” (1:47-48).

“Now as [Jesus} passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth” (9:1).

“Therefore, when Jesus saw [Mary] weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled” (11:33).

“When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold your son!’” (11:33).

This “seeing” by Jesus is an expression of prevenient grace. It is the first step toward salvation and blessing, and Jesus is the one who makes it. The important thing is to be seen by Jesus.

Jesus heals the man with simply a word of command (verse 8). The observer does not actually witness the healing; he witnesses the results of it.

The mention of the Sabbath (verse 9) prepares for the controversy that ensues. This will also be the case later on, in the instance of the man born blind: “Now it was a Sabbath when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes” (9:14). These two instances of “Sabbath violation” in John remind us of numerous such instances in the Synoptic Gospels.

There was a specific rabbinical prohibition against carrying a bed on the Sabbath. The man had obeyed Jesus. Presumably, if he had not taken up his pallet and walked, then he would not have been healed. That is to say, the man was obliged to choose between Jesus and the rabbinical understanding of the Torah. This is all the more remarkable, in that the man did not even know who Jesus was (verse 13)).

Before going on to discuss the problem about the Sabbath, it will be instructive to compare two specific instances of healings of paralytics in the gospels: this paralytic at the pool in John, and the healing of the paralytic at Capernaum in the Synoptic Gospels (Mark 2:1–12; Matthew 9:1–8; Luke 5:17–26). It also happens that these are the only two occasions of physical healing in which Jesus refers to the sins of the person whom He heals. Thus, He says to the man lowered through the roof, “Your sins are forgiven you” (Mark 2:5), and after restoring the man at the pool of Bethzatha the Lord exhorts him, “Sin no more” (verse 14).

Now it is worthy of remark that we find no references to personal sins in Gospel stories about Jesus cleansing lepers, or restoring sight to the blind, or curing other sorts of ailments. He does not say to Peter’s feverish mother-in-law, for example, “Your sins are forgiven you,” nor does He exhort the man born blind, “Go, and sin no more.” Indeed, in this latter instance the Lord specifically denies that the blind man was blind because of his personal sins (9:3). In short, only in those two instances of paralysis does Jesus refer to the sins of the people He cures, even addressing one of them with the exact words that He spoke to the woman taken in adultery: “Sin no more” (8:11).

One is disposed to wonder if there is some special reason why the restorations of the paralytics are alone distinguished in this way. Though the Gospels do not specifically address the question, one is prompted to inquire if there is not, in this kind of disability, some feature particularly symbolic of sin. Is there perhaps some aspect of paralysis itself that serves as an allegory of sin, something about the affliction that narrates the properties of sin?

This question of allegory is especially urged in the case of the paralytic at the pool, because of the recorded dialogue between this man and Jesus. The Lord’s question, when He asks the paralytic, “Do you want to be made well?” is apparently elic
ited by the fact that the fellow has been lying in that place for thirty-eight years. It is because Jesus knows that “he already had been in that condition a long time” that He makes the inquiry, “Do you want to be made well?” In other words, there is room for doubt about the man’s genuine desire for healing.

Maybe his heart and soul have become as helpless and lethargic as his body. Moreover, his response to our Lord’s question is hardly reassuring.
Instead of answering, like the blind men, “Yes, Lord” (Matthew 9:28), the paralytic immediately begins to make excuses: “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me” (John 5:7). There is his answer.

It is always somebody else’s fault, somebody else’s advantage over him, that he has not been cured. He is not to blame, poor victim; he has been lying there at the pool of Bethesda for nearly four decades, using the same excuse to explain why, in a place where healings took place frequently, he has never been healed. Year after year he just lies there. It gets easier all the time. It becomes a way of life.

This seems to be the point, then, of the question that Jesus puts to the man: “Do you want to be healed?” Perhaps, in his deeper heart, he does not want to be healed, not really, and perhaps that is the sin to which Jesus is referring when He tells him, “See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you” (5:14).

In removing his paralysis, the Lord also gives the man a straight, unambiguous order: “Rise, take up your pallet and walk” (5:8). If this paralytic wants to walk in the way of the Lord, he must begin now. No more excuses. He must not lie around one minute longer, theorizing about the mysterious relationship between divine grace and human effort. This lethargic soul must not worry whether he may be slipping into semi-Pelagianism or whatever. He must get up on his feet, put his pallet away, and get busy walking.

Conversion is grace, but it is also command. Surely wisdom too is
God’s gift, but what is the first step we take to attain wisdom? Obedience to an emphatic command: “Get wisdom! Get understanding!” (Proverbs 4:5). No more lying around, making excuses (usually involving other people who are to blame), no more theorizing abut the nature of wisdom. Just get up and get it!

Thursday, April 29

Ephesians 2:11-22: The great theme of the Epistle to the Ephesians is the reconciliation of all things in Christ. Paul introduced this theme early in the epistle, speaking of “the mystery of [God’s] will . . . that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times that He might gather together in one all things in Christ” (1:9-10).

For Paul this universal reconciliation is not a theory about history. He sees it being visibly worked out already in the actual events of history. The first fruits of this universal reconciliation can already be observed in the founding of the Church, because the Church herself is founded on a specific act of divine reconciliation—namely, the reconciliation of Jews and Gentiles in one community. This unexpected and improbable reconciliation, which was already being enacted in Paul’s own lifetime, was the beginning of a more universal, even cosmic reconciliation of all things in Christ.

Therefore, correctly to understand God’s final purpose in history, the key is to grasp this reconciliation of Jew and Gentile in the one body of the Church. We may remark on three aspects of this reconciliation.

First, the source of this reconciliation is the Cross, where the death of God’s Son neutralized the difference between Gentile and Jew. Christ Himself, after all, “is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the Cross, thereby putting to death the enmity.”

This Law, given on Mount Sinai, was what separated Jew and Gentile, but His death on the Cross “abolished” that wall of separation. By reconciling all men equally to God on the Cross, Christ reconciled them to one another. So, says, Paul, “through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.”

Second, God effected this reconciliation, not by taking away the special place of the Jews in the history of salvation, but by raising the Gentiles to share in the dignity and honor of the Jews. Thus, Paul says to the Gentiles, “Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.”

In writing these lines of great comfort, Paul is extending an image he had used just a couple of years earlier in his Epistle to the Romans. In that letter he had described the Gentile believers as branches grafted onto the ancient stock of Israel, so that they became participants in the promises and blessings of Israel.

This is an important historical thesis of the Christian faith—namely, that the Church is the legitimate heir and continuation of Hebrew history. Indeed, St. Paul sees this inheritance and continuation as the very mystery of history, “which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets: that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the Gospel” (3:5-6).

To what, then, does the Gospel unite us? To the promises and blessings of Israel. The Jews are still God’s chosen people. The grace given to us Gentiles is that in Christ we share in that same blessing. In Christ we too become children of Abraham and heirs of the promises made to Abraham.

This is the reconciliation that Paul witnessed being enacted in his own lifetime.

Third, this reconciliation is fulfilled in an historical institution, the Church. The Church is not a theory; it is not an abstraction; it is not some nebulous and invisible association. It is a concrete and quantifiable institution made up of human beings. Paul describes this institution as “joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for its building up in love” (4:16).

In the present reading Paul describes the Church as “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”

We recognize the imagery of the parts of the building. We are supposed to be “fitted together,” Paul says. That is to say, the reconciliation effected by Christ must not remain theoretical. It concretely means reconciliation among ourselves, “according to the effective working by which every part does its share.”

This can be hard work, because each of the stones in the building must be shaped, must be deliberately contoured, in order to fit into its appointed place in the building. People should not join the Church of Christ and remain as they were before. To be reconciled, which is the work of Christ, each person in the Church must assume a new shape. This is the work of mallet and chisel, and it may be painful. If we stay with Paul’s earlier metaphor of grafting onto a tree, this too can be painful. Both metaphors involve cutting, but this is how we are reconciled into the body of the Church.

We submit ourselves to this discipline for the love of Christ, who “came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near.” Indeed, says St. Paul, “He Himself is our peace.” He is our theological peace, of course, but He is also our peace of mind and heart. Christ is no abstraction; He is not a religious theory. He is Someone that we love and trust. Loving Him and trusting Him, we find our places in the Church, which is the house of reconciliation and the proper heir of biblical history.

Friday, April 30

Ezekiel 25: Chapters 25 through 32 of Ezekiel contain oracles directed against the other nations with whom the Lord has reason to be displeased, Israel’s neighbors to the east and west (Chapter 25), the north (Chapters 26 to 28), and the south (Chapters 29 to 32). Chapter 25 is critical of the neighbors to the east (Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites) and to the west (Philistines).

Those to the east are criticized in order, proceeding from north to south. Since the oracles refer to the unseemly and unconscionable rejoicing of these nations at Jerusalem’s destruction, they should be dated no earlier than the summer of 586. Otherwise, the oracles in this chapter are not dated.

Oracles of this sort, scathing moral criticisms of Israel’s neighbors, go back to the earliest of Israel’s literary prophets, Amos, in the eighth century before Christ. Ezekiel’s references to the "people of the East," who will punish these offending nations, may refer to the Babylonians, but the reference is perhaps more probably to the marauding Bedouin tribes that frequently attacked from the Arabian Desert.

Psalm 40: The correct “voice” for Psalm 40 (Greek and Latin 39) is not in doubt. We know from Hebrews 10 that these are words springing from the heart of Christ our Lord and have reference to the sacrificial obedience of His Passion and death. This is the reason we pray this psalm on Friday, the day of the Crucifixion.

We may begin, then, by examining that interpretive context in Hebrews, which comes in the section where the author is contrasting the Sacrifice of the Cross with the many cultic oblations prescribed in the Old Testament. These prescriptions of the Mosaic Law, says Hebrews, possessed only “a shadow of the good things to come.” Offered “continually year by year,” they were not able to “make thos
e who approach perfect” (10:1). That is to say, those sacrifices did not really take away sins, and their effectiveness depended entirely on the Sacrifice of the Cross, of which they were only a foreshadowing. Indeed, “it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins” (v. 4).

In support of this thesis, the author of Hebrews quotes our psalm: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire / . . . In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin / You had no pleasure” (vv. 5, 6). In fact, this theme appears rather often in the Old Testament itself. Isaiah, for example, and other prophets frequently attempted to disillusion those of their countrymen who imagined that the mere offering of cultic worship, with no faith, no obedience, no change of heart, could be acceptable to God.

The author of Hebrews, therefore, is simply drawing the proper theological conclusion when he writes: “And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins” (v. 11). What God seeks, rather, is the perfect obedience of faith, and such an obedience means the total gift of self, not the mere sacrificial slaughter of some beast.

This obedience of Christ our Lord is a matter of considerable importance in the New Testament. He Himself declared that He came, not to seek His own will, but the will of the Father who sent Him (John 5:30). This doing of the Father’s will had particular reference to His Passion, in which “He . . . became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:8). This was the obedience manifested in our Lord’s prayer at the very beginning of the Passion: “Take this cup away from Me; nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will” (Mark 14:36).

This spirit of obedience to God’s will is likewise the essential atmosphere of Christian prayer. “Your will be done” is the spiritual center and major sentiment of that prayer that the Lord Himself taught us.

Christ’s own obedience to God’s will is also the key to the psalm here under discussion, and Hebrews goes on to quote the pertinent verses, referring them explicitly to the Incarnation and Sacrifice of Jesus the Lord: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, / But a body You have prepared for Me. / In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin / You had no pleasure. / Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come— / In the volume of the book it is written of Me— / To do Your will, O God’” (vv. 5–7).

The body “prepared” for Christ in the Incarnation became the instrument of His obedience to that “will” of God by which we are redeemed and rendered holy: “By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. . . . For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified” (vv. 10, 14).

The various sacrifices of the Old Testament, which are spoken of from time to time throughout the Book of Psalms, have now found their perfection in the one self-offering of Jesus the Lord. Again the author of Hebrews comments: “Previously saying, ‘Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin You did not desire, nor had pleasure in them’ (which are offered according to the law), then He said, ‘Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God’” (vv. 8, 9).

The “He” of this psalm, then, according to the New Testament, is Christ the Lord. We pray it properly when we pray it as His own words to the Father. The “will” of God to which He was obedient was that “will” to which He referred when in the Garden He prayed: “Not my will, but Yours be done.”

This self-oblation of our Lord’s obedience to God is not simply a feature of this particular psalm; it is the interpretive door through which we pray all of the psalms. The “Your will be done” of the Lord’s Prayer is likewise the summation of the entire Book of Psalms, and what ultimately makes Christian sense of the Psalter.

Friday, April 16

1 Corinthians 16:13-24: These are the closing lines of First Corinthians. In addition to personal greetings, Paul makes one last mention of some Christian basics.

The first of these is faith, of which Paul says simply, “Stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong.” I draw you attention to the fact that all three of these imperative verbs are in the plural: Stand fast, be brave (literally “be manly”—andrízesthe), be strong.

Obviously the plural is required, inasmuch as Paul is addressing all of the Corinthians. Nonetheless, the use of the plural also indicates that he has in mind a joint effort. These are the things that a commander says to soldiers who are about to be attacked: stand fast, be brave, be strong. The survival of all of them depends on the combined efforts of each of them.

Yet, those combined efforts are more than a mere accumulation. It is not as though the faith of ten believers is ten times as strong as the faith of one believer. It is more likely the case that the faith of ten believers is closer to a hundred times as strong as one believer.

The reason for this is simple: Believers not only believe for themselves, they also support the faith of one another. For this reason, a community of faith has vastly more than the accumulated faith of individual believers. The spiritual chemistry of each believer affects the spiritual chemistry of those around him.

The major sin of those Corinthians was their failure to support the faith of one another. Each of them was acting without regard for the others. It is a plain fact that Christians cannot live that way and very long remain Christians, because the Christian faith is a corporate concern.

It is a “corporate” concern according to the etymological sense of the Latin root corpus, which means “body.” We observe that it was in First Corinthians that the Apostle Paul first introduced the image of the Christian congregation as a “body”: “for as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body.”

It is this corporate nature of the Christian faith that requires that we stand fast, be brave, and be strong. In the matter of the faith, each of us depends on all of us.

The second “basic” in this text is love, which we would expect from the corporate nature of faith: “Let all that you do be done with love”—pánta hymón en agápe ginéstho. Such is Paul’s summary of chapter 13 of this epistle, the famous list of the qualities of agape, the godly love God has for us, and we have for Him, and we have for one another in Him.

In this final chapter of First Corinthians, Paul especially mentions the affective quality of this love: “The churches of Asia greet you. Aquila and Priscilla greet you heartily in the Lord, with the church that is in their house. All the brethren greet you. Greet one another with a holy kiss.”

Christian love is more than affection, of course, but affection—the shared joy of friendship—is one of the ways in which it is expressed, and there are numerous indications of this in the Bible. For example, one thinks of that scene in the upper room of a house in a house at Joppa: “And all the widows stood by [Peter] weeping, showing the tunics and garments which Dorcas had made while she was with them.”

The sorrow of these grieving women—who are all identified as having lost their husbands—is then turned into joy, as we see in the closing line of this scene: “Then [Peter] gave her his hand and lifted her up; and when he had called the saints and widows, he presented her alive.” Luke is careful to mention, not only that the woman was restored to life, but also that she was returned to the arms of those who loved her.

The third “basic” in this text is hope. This hope is expressed in a short Aramaic prayer that was common in the ancient Church: Marana tha. Mar is the Aramaic word for “Lord.” The ending ana is first person plural possessive, “our Lord.” Tha is the singular imperative, “come.” It is a very short prayer for the Lord’s return and the end of the world. It is the summation of Christian hope.

For Christian believers the end of the world is not “doomsday.” It is the return of Christ, the Lord Jesus who went away promising to come back.

At the end of the first chapter of the earliest extant work of Christian literature, the Apostle Paul summarized the Christian life. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the coming wrath.”

This ancient liturgical prayer quoted by Paul, Marana tha, is the voice of hope. This hope, on which our lives are established, is the source of the strong faith in which Paul tells us to stand. Hope is the bright horizon that gives luster to our love for one another.

These, then, are the basics, the three things of which 1 Corinthians 13 declares that the “abide” no matter the order in which we name them.

Saturday, April 17

Ezekiel 12: Once again Ezekiel is charged to act out an elaborate pantomime as a message for his fellow Israelites in exile. Whereas the previous such actions, in Chapters 4-5, had to do with the destruction of Jerusalem and the sufferings of her citizens, the present instance is concerned with the experience of the coming new exile of those who still remained back home.

When his fellow exiles ask him, “What are you doing? (12:9), Ezekiel responds with a stirring oracle by way of explanation: To those Jewish exiles already in Babylon who are imagining that they may soon be returning to the land of Judah, Ezekiel is stressing the point, “You think this is exile? You haven’t seen anything yet!”

He emphasizes in particular the suffering destined for Zedekiah, the King of Judah. Ezekiel’s walking with covered face (“that you may not see the land”) is an eerie prophecy of the day when the Babylonians would gouge out the eyes of Zedekiah, so that the execution of his sons would be the last thing he saw in this world before going into exile (2 Kings 25:4-7; Jeremiah 39:4-7; 52:7-11).

In verse 17 the prophet begins yet another pantomime, this one much simpler, and in verses 21-28 Ezekiel is charged to challenge two more cynical slogans popular at the time. These slogans, concerned with apparently unfulfilled prophecies, will lead into his condemnation of false prophets in the next chapter.

Matthew 24:1-14: There are few parts of the Gospels so problematic as the discourse of Jesus contained in this chapter. The corresponding text in Mark 13, which is clearly the major source for Matthew 24, is the longest private instruction of our Lord recorded in Mark.

In all three Synoptics this eschatological discourse is the link between the public teaching of Jesus, culminating in His repeated conflicts with the Jewish authorities, and the account of His Passion. Indeed, it was Jesus’ prophecy of the destruction of the Temple (verses 1-2) that provided the accusations brought forth at His trial before the Sanhedrin (26:16), and it was the subject of the jeers that His enemies hurled at Him as He hung on the cross. Moreover, the position occupied by our Lord’s prophecy here indicates the relationship between the death of Jesus and the downfall of Jerusalem. We observe that in both Mark and Matthew this prophecy follows immediately on Jesus’ lament over the holy city.

With respect to Matthew 24 as a whole (as well as Mark 13 and Luke 21), this discourse forms a sort of last testimony of Jesus, in which the Church is provided with a final injunction and moral exhortation. In this respect it is similar to the farewell discourses of Jacob (Genesis 49), Moses
(Deuteronomy 33), Joshua (Joshua 23), and Samuel (1 Samuel 12). That is to say, the present chapter serves the purpose of instructing the Christian Church how to live during the period (literally “eon” in Greek) that will last until the Lord’s second coming.

This conduct will be especially marked by vigilance, so that believers may not be “deceived” (verse 4). They will suffer persecution, Jesus foretells, and He goes on to make two points with respect to this persecution. First, they must not lose heart, and second, it does not mean that the end is near. They must persevere to the end (verse 14).

The original remarks of the Apostles, which prompted this prophecy, were inspired by Herod’s fairly recent renovation of the Temple (cf. John 2:20). According to Flavius Josephus (Antiquities, 15.11.3), “the Temple was constructed of hard, white stones, each of which was about 25 cubits in length, 8 in height, and 12 in depth.” That is to say, the walls of this mountain of marble, towering 450 feet above the Kidron Valley, were 12 cubits, roughly 15 feet, thick! The various buildings of the Temple complex were colonnaded and elaborately adorned. Its surface area covered about one-sixth of the old city. The Roman historian Tacitus described it as “a temple of immense wealth.” (Histories 5.8). It was because of the Temple that Josephus remarked, “he that has not seen Jerusalem in her splendor has never in his life seen a desirable city. He who has not seen the Temple has never in his life seen a glorious edifice.”

This splendid building, said Jesus, would be utterly destroyed (verse 2). In making this prophecy our Lord steps into the path earlier trodden by Jeremiah (7:14; 9:11), who also suffered for making the same prediction.

When the disciples approached Jesus with their question, He was looking across the Kidron Valley from the Mount of Olives (verse 3), an especially appropriate place to discuss the “last things” (cf. Zechariah 14:4). The question posed by the disciples seems to combine the Temple’s destruction with the end of the world. Only Matthew speaks of “the end of the world” here. This expression will, in due course, be the last words in his Gospel (28:20).

Mark specifies that the question was answered to the first four Apostles that had been called.

Sunday, April 18

John 3:1-21: As we have begun to see, much of Johannine theology is elaborated in conversations between Jesus and certain individuals. Most of the time, these individuals can easily be understood as the historical “source” of the conversation in question. Thus far, it appears that John has relied on the personal memories of Andrew, Philip, Nathanael, and the Mother of Jesus. The material in the first part of the present chapter surely came to him through the memory of Nicodemus. Other conversations will follow, such as those with the Samaritan woman at the well, the lame man at Bethesda, Mary and Martha of Bethany, and so forth.

In this conversation of Jesus with Nicodemus, it is nearly impossible to determine exactly which words pertained to that original conversation and which words represent the Evangelist’s extended meditation on that conversation. That is to say, John himself appears to be meditating on the words of Jesus. At a certain point in this dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus, the dialogue becomes a monologue of the Evangelist himself. We will meet the identical phenomenon when we come to the words of Jesus’ prayer in John 17.

The Pharisee Nicodemus, “a ruler of the Jews” and “a teacher of Israel,” appears only three times in the New Testament. Each time Nicodemus is found only in the Fourth Gospel, it is always in the context of the Lord’s redemptive death.

First, there is the present text, in which Jesus makes His earliest explicit reference to His coming crucifixion: And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, thus must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” John next speaks of Nicodemus as the sole member of the Sanhedrin to raise his voice against the plot to take Jesus’ life (7:45–52). We do not hear of Nicodemus again until immediately after the death of Jesus, who was, at last, “lifted up” on Golgotha. In this third instance, Nicodemus appears as the companion of Joseph of Arimathea, assisting him in the Lord’s burial: “And Nicodemus, who at first came to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds. Then they took the body of Jesus, and bound it in strips of linen with the spices, as the custom of the Jews is to bury” (19:39–40). In short, whenever Nicodemus appears in this gospel, the context pertains to the Lord’s suffering and death.

This first conversation, however, does not begin on that theme. It begins with Nicodemus coming to Jesus by night, apparently with a view to knowing Jesus better. He begins by complimenting Him: “Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.”

This question implies that Jesus has been working a notable number of “signs,” though John has so far mentioned only the miracle at the wedding in Cana. That is to say, this reference is not dictated by John’s narrative, but by the actual historical situation in which Nicodemus speaks to Jesus.

Nicodemus, because he is apparently privy to conversations with members of the Sanhedrin (7:45-53), is usually understood to be a member of Israel’s governing religious body, the Sanhedrin. His sympathetic approach to Jesus indicates that there was at least some favor felt toward Jesus within the body that eventually condemned Him (12:42).

It is dark when he comes to Jesus—he comes in out of the darkness: “This man came to Jesus by night.” He is not afraid of the light. He is one of those described in this text: “But he who does the truth comes to the light.” John thus continues a major theme: “the light shines in the darkness” (1:5).

He addresses Jesus with the title of teaching authority: “Rabbi,” the same title by which the disciples already addressed Jesus in 1:38. Clearly, Nicodemus has already made some positive judgment about Jesus. He may be one of those described in the previous chapter: “many trusted in His name, seeing His signs that He did.” (2:23).

And how does Jesus respond to the compliment of Nicodemus? He completely changes the subject and poses a challenge: “Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Amen, amen, I say to you, unless someone is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’”

This kind of response is typical of Jesus: He does not permit man’s religious concerns and questions set the agenda of His revelation to man. He is the Teacher, the didaskalos sent by God. The rest of us are simply pupils. Jesus does not confine His answers to the narrow limits of our poor questions.

Jesus speaks of being born anothen, a deliberately ambivalent expression, which means both “anew” and “from on high.” This birth has already been mentioned in John: “But to as many as received Him He gave the authority to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

This birth, then, is twofold: It is new, and it is from on high. The subsequent question of Nicodemus touches only the first aspect—the newness of the birth, “rebirth”: ““How can a man be born when he is old? Is he able to enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”

While not denying that this birth is a rebirth, Jesus responds by emphasizing that the birth is “from on high”: “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. What is bor
n of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

In this response, Jesus gives a full sacramental sense to the thesis of rebirth. In the preaching of John the Baptist, there was a contrast between baptism with water and baptism with the Holy Spirit: “I indeed baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit”(Mark 1:8; cf. Matthew 3:11). This contrast is also found in the Fourth Gospel with respect to Baptism: “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and He remained upon Him. I did not know Him, but He who sent me to baptize in water said to me, ‘Upon whom you see the Spirit descending, and remaining on Him, this is He who baptizes in the Holy Spirit’” (1:32-33).

In the present text, however, both aspects of the rebirth are spoken of—both the water and the Spirit. John clearly has in mind here the mystery of Christian baptism. In this Christian mystery, there is no distinction between baptism in water and baptism in the Holy Spirit. There is only “one Baptism” (cf. Ephesians 4:5).

This double aspect of renewal was already spoken of in prophecy: “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you” (Ezekiel 36:25-27).

It is the Spirit that is stressed in Jesus’ words, however, because it is the gift of the Holy Spirit that distinguishes Christian baptism from that of John. Jesus goes on: “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’”

The distinction now is not between water and the Spirit, but between flesh and the Spirit. The flesh is that which dies, whereas the Spirit gives life: “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and life” (6:63).

Verse 8 is, once again, deliberately ambivalent: “The Spirit breathes where He wills, and you hear His voice, but cannot tell where He comes from and where He goes. Thus is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” This translation gives the plenior sense of the verse—its full theological sense. This verse can also read, however, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the wind.” That is to say, the word translated as “Spirit” also means “wind,” and the word translated as “voice” also means “sound.” In both Hebrew and Aramaic, the word for both “spirit” and “wind” is ruah. and in both languages the word for “sound” and “voice” is Qol.

What, then, is the meaning of this enigmatic verse? Jesus seems to be suggesting that an incomprehensible mystery is involved in man’s rebirth. It can be recognized, but it cannot be understood. It cannot be explained. Both its origin and its goal elude man’s scrutiny. Only Jesus Himself can legitimately speak of it: “We speak what We know and testify what We have seen.’ Nicodemus is stymied by these considerations: “How can these things be?”

Jesus responds by saying that Nicodemus, as a teacher in Israel, should already recognize here the teaching of the Prophets. If he had paid attention to the writings of the Prophets, he would already be familiar with this teaching about rebirth in the Spirit.

In the mind of John, Jesus here speaks for the Christian Church, whereas Nicodemus is the spokesman for Judaism, which has failed to understand its own Scriptures. This is the reason Jesus uses the expressions “we” and “our”: “We speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness.” This is one of the many places where John tells the story in a way that reflects the situation of the early Church with respect to Judaism. As we shall see in the story of the blind man in chapter 9, John is very concerned about the relationship of the Church to Judaism.

This is also the reason why the “you” of this same verse is likewise plural—“ you do not receive Our witness.” This accusation is not directed to Nicodemus personally, but to Nicodemus as a representative of unbelieving Judaism.

Nicodemus, then, is two things: from the perspective of history, He is already a Christian believer, but in symbolism He is still a spokesman for Judaism. In the first aspect, he is a sincere seeker. In the second, his understanding is radically defective.

This defective Judaism is in the course of rejecting the testimony of Jesus: “He came to what belonged to Him, and those who belonged to Him did not receive Him” (1:11). “I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me” (5:43). “But although He had done so many signs before them, they did not believe in Him” (12:37).

Who, then, is actually speaking here? One has the impression that the words of Jesus are gradually becoming the words of the Evangelist. Indeed, Nicodemus himself starts to disappear, and the teaching becomes detached from the visit of Nicodemus. Already in verses 11-12, this is beginning to happen. By verse 13, the transition is nearly complete, and the rest of the story becomes an internal meditation of St. John.

Up till now, says Jesus, He has been speaking of things relatively easy to understand. They represent the transition of the Prophets to the Gospel. A devout Jew, particularly “the teacher of Israel,” should be able to follow the Lord’s argument, because ideas such as “rebirth” and the “Spirit” are contained in the revelation already given to Israel. If Nicodemus is unable to grasp these things, how will he ever be able to enter the revelation of truly “heavenly” things?

It is of these heavenly things that John begins explicitly to meditate in verse 13: “No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven—the Son of Man.”

Here the subject shifts to consider the salvific work of the Son of Man. Jesus makes His earliest explicit reference to His coming crucifixion: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, thus must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should have eternal life.”

The image of the serpent comes, of course, from Numbers 21:4-9, but it is being read through Wisdom 16:5-7: “For when the fierce rage of beasts came upon these, they were destroyed with the bitings of crooked serpents. But thy wrath endured not for ever, but they were troubled for a short time for their correction, having a sign of salvation to put them in remembrance of the commandment of thy law. For he that turned to it, was not healed by that which he saw, but by thee the Savior of all.”
The expression “be lifted up,” used by our Lord in His discourse with Nicodemus, is repeated halfway through John’s Gospel, again with reference to the crucifixion: “‘And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.’ This He said, signifying by what death He would die” (12:32–33). In addition to being a reference to the crucifixion, the expression “lifted up” also alludes to a prophecy of God’s Suffering Servant: “Behold, My Servant will prosper; He shall be lifted up and glorified exceedingly” (Isaiah 52:13, LXX). As this text makes clear, the Lord’s lifting up refers not only to His crucifixion but also to His exaltation in glory.

In this respect it is useful to compare the Lord’s words to Nicodemus, as recorded in John, to the predictions He makes about His coming sufferings, as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels. It is noteworthy that what Jesus proclaims to His closest disciples in the Synoptics, He proclaims to the Pharisee Nicodemus in John. We may take Mark 8:31 as an example: “And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”

In the Markan text, as in John, the defining verb is “must” (dei), which refers to God’s determined plan of redemption. In each text also, Jesus calls Himself “the Son of Man.” Thus, in Mark 8:31, “the Son of Man must suffer many things . . . and be killed, and after three days rise again,” while in John 3:14, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” If these verses are to be regarded as theological equivalents (which seems reasonable), Mark’s inclusion of the Resurrection among the things that must happen suggests that John’s “lifted up” includes the Lord’s glorification as well as His crucifixion.

Verses 14-15 indicate that Jesus, as the object of salvific faith, is Jesus crucified. It is to that image of Jesus on the cross that believers direct their attention. This was the point of Paul’s lament to the Galatians: “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed [proegraphe] as crucified?” (Galatians 3:1). The verb Paul uses here, prographo is understood in the sense of a public placard or notice. This metaphor is his description of how Jesus was presented in the evangelization of the Galatians: Jesus was portrayed “before [their] eyes”—kat’ ophthalmous. This expression has nearly the sense of our American idiom, “in your face.” That is to say, Paul’s proclamation of Jesus on the cross had the effect of an immediate visual image.

The centrality of the Cross in the Christian Gospel is what prompts St. Paul to call it “the Word of the Cross.”: “For the Word of the Cross [ho Logos gar ho tou Stavrou] is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18). The centrality of the Cross in the Christian “vision” is shared by Paul and John.

In a passage that touches the deepest level of the Christian revelation—the very heart of the Gospel—John goes on to stress that this is a vision of God’s love for the world: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life’ (verse 16). It is arguable that John stresses love more than any other NT author. For him, the Incarnation was especially the revelation of God’s love. He says this in the cover letter that he wrote to introduce the present Gospel: “In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him” (1 John 4:9).

In this verse we find the same relationship of God’s gift of His Son as the revelation of His love, along with the thesis that the reception of this Son is conveyance of eternal life to the believer. In the Incarnation, God reveals His identity—who He is—“ Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him” (1 John 4:15-16).

This revealed love of God is not a general beneficence, a sort of nebulous benignity. It has specific reference to Jesus Himself. Somewhat later in this same third chapter of John’s Gospel, we will read: “The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand. He who believes in the Son has everlasting life” (3:35-36). That is to say, the true love of God is between the Father and the Son; it is the eternal inner life of God. In the gift of His Son, this eternal love, which is the life of God, is shared with human beings. By this revelation, they are initiated into the inner life of God. This truth is expressed in what are among the densest sentences in the Holy Scripture:

“And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me. “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me. And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:22-26).

The revelation of God’s love is not simply the conveyance of information about God. Received in faith in the crucified Jesus, it brings the believer into the mystery of God’s life by way of participation, by which God assimilates men to Himself. The communion established by this assimilation is called the Church. Human beings are first introduced to this by the vision of Jesus elevated on the Cross.

The alternative to this incorporation is what John calls “perishing”: “that whoever believes in Him should not perish.” This perishing is the fate of those who refuse the gift of God’s revelation in Jesus. God wills NO ONE to perish: “For God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him has not been judged but he who does not believe has already been judged, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (verses 17-18).

God predestined no one to hell; everyone who goes to hell goes there in defiance of God’s salvific will that all men should be saved. Unbelievers bring such perishing on themselves. In the presence of hardness of heart, Christ becomes the occasion, not the cause, of condemnation. That judgment has already started. Just as eternal life commences when the believer first turns to Jesus in faith, so the perishing begins when the unbeliever refuses to turn to Jesus. Both heaven and hell begin on this earth.

For John, the refusal of the light of Christ always implies a willful darkness of heart. It is a matter of human choice: “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone who practices vile things hates the light, nor does he come to the light, lest his works should be exposed” (verses 19-20).

In fact, John introduced this theme fairly early: “And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it. . . . It was the true light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. He was in the world, and the world came to be through Him, and the world did not know Him” (1:5,9-10). For John, the original unbelievers were the Jewish authorities, in whom he witnessed this phenomenon of a love for darkness over light. He returns to this theme at the end of the Book of Signs: “But althoug
h He had done so many signs before them, they did not believe in Him” (12:37).

In the present chapter, this refusal of faith has already made an appearance: “We speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness” (verse 11). It will come again in the course of the Bread of Life discourse: “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen Me and yet do not believe” (6:35-36).

We observe that John makes this belief or unbelief a matter of man’s choice. He seems not the slightest bit concerned about a possible charge of moralism or Pelagianism: “But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be manifest, that they were done in God” (verse 21). Later in the Gospel he will speak of God’s prevenient grace in drawing men to Himself: “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (6:44).

Monday, April 19

1 Peter 2:1-12: Having begun with hope, Peter now places the striving for holiness in its full context, which is life in the Church. Christian holiness is essentially incorporation into Christ, which is the being of the Church. Life in Christ is a social life.

For this reason the Christian’s initial effort is to purify all his social communications (verse 1). Peter’s list of communicative vices contains several that pertain to insincerity, and, by way of countering this. Peter introduces the “genuine” milk appropriate to newborn children (verse 2). Indeed, Peter’s participle artigenneta means “just now born,” and their nourishment is associated with the new birth (1:3,23).

Peter’s metaphor of milk was common among the early Christians and referent to the catechesis associated with Baptism (1 Corinthians 3:1-2; 1 Thessalonians 2:7; Hebrews 5:13; The Odes of Solomon 8.13-16; 9.1-2). Very early (at least by the second century, but perhaps earlier) this image affected even the liturgical customs at Baptism, when the newly baptized were given a cup of milk mixed with honey (Hippolytus, The Apostolic Tradition 23.2; Tertullian, Against Marcion 1.14; The Crown 3.3).

By means of this spiritual milk of Christian teaching, we “grow unto salvation” (avxsehete eis soterian). Salvation has to do with growth (cf. Mark 4:8,20; 2 Corinthians 10:15; Ephesians 4:15; Colossians 1:10). Few texts in the New Testament are more emphatic that salvation is the term of a growth, not a once-and-for-all event that is behind us. Salvation still lies before us (1:5,7,9). Drinking milk, therefore, is more than an obligation; it is a need.

Believers, having tasted this milk, know by experience that the “Lord is gracious” (verse 3; Psalms 34 [33]:9; Hebrews 6:5). In Greek this expression, chrestos ho Kyrios, differs in only one letter from “Christ is the Lord”—Christos ho Kyrios. The psalm cited here (Psalms 34, but 33 in the Greek and Latin texts used by the Church) has long been a favorite at the time of receiving Holy Communion (cf. Apostolic Constitutions 8.13.16; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 5.20; Jerome, Lettters 71.6), nor is the imagination overly taxed to think that this may already have been the case at the time of St. Peter.

Peter is describing, then, the experience of the Church, so now he turns his attention to describing the theological structure of the Church (verses 4-10). As though he has the entire Psalm 34 (33) in mind, Peter continues, “having come to whom [the Lord]—pros Hon proserchomenoi” (proselthate pros Avton in the LXX of Psalms 33;6).

Peter’s joining of these Old Testament passages together, for the purpose of exhortation, was probably already a commonplace in Christian doctrine. For example, the juxtaposition of Isaiah 8:14 and 26:16 (in verses 6,8) also appears in Romans 9:32-33. Similarly, Peter’s appeal to Hosea 1—2 (verse 10) is found likewise in Romans 9:25-26. (Once again we remark that Paul’s letter to the Romans and First Peter are both connected with the Church at Rome, a matter to be remembered when we find similarities between them.) We suspect that these applications of the Old Testament to the Christian life were standard and pre-Pauline, probably derived from the earliest Palestinian Christian sources.

Tuesday, April 20

1 Peter 2:13-25: When we have turned to Christ and received His grace, being incorporated into His Church through the Sacraments, we still find ourselves living in the world. More specifically, we still find ourselves someplace in the structures of society, our obligations to that society not whit a diminished. Indeed, it may occur to us to inquire just how our responsibilities in society may be altered by our new status as Christian believers.

That is to say. How am I, now that I am a Christian, to live as a husband? Or as a wife? Does being a Christian lay some special obligations on me as a son or daughter, perhaps obligations of which I was not aware before? What are my duties, as a Christian, with respect to my being a buyer or seller, an employer or employee? Suppose, indeed, I am a slave. How, as a Christian slave, am I to be different than I was before? In fact, suppose I own slaves. What are my duties to them, whether they are Christian or not? All such concerns about one’s station in life fall under the heading that Martin Luther called Haustafel, “household code.”

Since Christians from the very beginning have struggled to understand how the Gospel affects their duties in whatever state they find themselves, it is not surprising, therefore, that early Christian pastors addressed such concerns at length. This is true of the Apostle Paul (Colossians 3:18—4:1; Ephesians 5:22—6:9; 1 Timothy 2:8-15; 6:1-2; Titus 2:1-10), Ignatius of Antioch (Polycarp 4.1—6.3), Polycarp of Smyrna (Philadelphians 4.2—6.3), and Clement of Rome (Corinthians 270-275,286-291). It also appears in standard pre-baptismal catechesis of the period (Didache 4.9-11; Pseudo-Barnabas 19.5-7).

This is the social setting for Peter’s treatment of the same theme in the section that we come to now. Even while we are sojourners in this world, he says (2:11), we are still citizens that have obligations to society and the government, including the emperor [Nero!] (verses 13-17). Some of us are servants, with obligations to our masters (verses 18-25). Some are wives, with duties to our homes and husbands (3:1-6), and others are husbands, responsible for the wellbeing of our wives (3:7).

In the present chapter Peter speaks of Christian citizenship under the authority of the State and of Christian servants under the authority of their masters.

Like Paul in Romans 13, Peter reminds Christians that all legitimate authority in this world comes from God and must not, therefore, be disdained by those who believe they have a higher and more immediate access to God. They are to obey the government “for the Lord’s sake.” That is to say, they will be no less good citizens than non-Christians, but their motivation will be directed to Christ, as the true author of all legitimate authority in this world (verses 13-17).

This exhortation stands even today as a warning to those Christians that seem ever to be going out of their way to pick fights with legitimate governments, always, of course, appealing to the testimony of their conscience. Like Paul, Peter prefers cooperation with the government when possible, not making government’s life more difficult than it already is.

Even bolder is Peter’s exhortation to the servant, under legal obligation to a master (who, in many cases, surely, was not a Christian). These servants he reminds that God’s own Son became a servant for our sake and suffered indignities gladly out of love for God (verses 18-25).

Wednesday, April 21

E
zekiel 16: This parable is more elaborate than the one in the previous chapter, showing more evidence of allegorical detail. Both parables convey roughly the same message. Each parable is an illustration of failure. A beautiful but egregiously unfaithful wife is as useless as a cut and dried vine.

Several of the various details in this account of the harlot refer to specific periods and events in Israel’s history: the origins of the people, the time of the Covenant, the founding of the united kingdom and the prosperity of the Solomonic era, and the division into two kingdoms.

The oracle’s final part prepares the listeners for Jerusalem’s impending doom, which is to be like the earlier total destructions of Sodom and Samaria. Jerusalem, says the Lord, is more evil than either of these.

At the very end, however—after Jerusalem has fallen—appears a message of hope and renewal. Even the prophets most pessimistic about Jerusalem at this time, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, never cease to trust in God’s ultimate mercy. In particular, God will not hold children responsible for the sins of their parents, a theme to be elaborated in Chapter 18.

1 Peter 3:1-12: In the first few verses Peter finishes his treatment of the Haustafel from the previous chapter.

He begins with the wives, whom he exhorts to be submissive to their husbands. This is to be the case, says Peter, even in those instances where the husband is an unbeliever (verse 1). (This is the situation in which a woman already married becomes a Christian. In no case may a Christian woman actually marry an unbeliever—2 Corinthians 6:15-18.) In this case, as in the case of a Christian living in civil society (2:15), Peter hopes for the good influence of the believer on the unbeliever.

Peter probably intends some of his comments here to pertain to Christian women generally, and not just to wives. This is surely the case respecting chastity and modesty (verse 3-5). His concern in this regard is similar to that of Isaiah (3:16-24), who apparently enjoyed poking fun at the way the women in the eighth century loved to preen themselves.

In spite of Abraham’s frequently unhappy home life, much of it caused by wife’s dramatic mood swings, Peter still holds out for Christian wives the example of Sarah (verse 6). This is not the only time in the New Testament where Sarah is “given a pass” (cf. Hebrews 11:11 compared with Genesis 18:12-15).

Christian husbands are to be good husbands precisely because they are Christians (verse 7). What is owed to the wife is “honor,” and this because she is “weaker.” This does not refer physical weakness generally (and certainly not to any alleged intellectual or moral weakness in women, something that only an inexperienced fool would fancy), but to a certain delicacy and refinement in the female. Peter is quietly presuming that a woman’s constitution, which is far more “complicated” than a man’s, renders her inherently more vulnerable to danger, much like the delicacy of an expensive vase. Indeed, Peter even uses the metaphor of a “vessel.” This is a dining room vessel, not a ship. Certain things of beauty and delicacy in the home are given special honor. Wives are to be treated in a similar way by Christian husbands. They are NEVER to be handled roughly, not even in thought and most certainly not in word. Christian husbands are to be jewelers, not blacksmiths.

The affection, respect, deference, courtesy, compassion, and tenderness necessary to life in the home is to be extended to the larger home of the Church, and thence to the rest of society (verses 8-9). This effort will be expressed in a stern control of one’s tongue (verse 10) and the steady quest to create atmospheres of peace (verse 11). Blessing must cover all things (verse 9). (I refer the reader here to the Book of Ruth, where he is counseled to count the constant blessings that its sundry characters heap on one another. Christians must pass up no opportunity to bless.)

Thursday, April 22

Ezekiel 17: This allegorical riddle is concerned with the geopolitical maneuvering dominant in the royal court at Jerusalem during the period between 597 and 586 B.C.

The first eagle in the riddle is the Emperor Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon (604-562); the second is Pharaoh Psammetichus II of Egypt (595-589). Sitting at either end of the Fertile Crescent, both Babylon and Egypt sought to make their military, economic, and political power felt throughout the region, and each of these two great centers had its friends and confederates within the Jerusalem court.

The removed branch in the allegory is King Jehoiakin of Judah, deposed from his throne in 597 and transported to Babylon. The new seed in the allegory is King Zedekiah, who replaced Jehoiakin and served as a vassal of Babylon. Because of the many machinations in his court, Zedekiah’s foreign policy was marked by vacillation and instability. Unable to maintain his covenant with God, he was likewise unable to maintain his vassal covenant with Babylon. The one infidelity led to the other (verses 11-19).

Even though he was thriving under Babylonian suzerainty, the allegory goes on to say, Zedekiah endeavored to forsake his political obligations to the authority at the western end of the Fertile Crescent, and began to cultivate friendship with the eastern end, Egypt. Now he must pay for it. His sin consisted in seeking a purely political solution for a mainly spiritual and moral problem.

This oracle ends, nonetheless, on a note of future hope for the house of David, a hope that the Christian knows is fulfilled in great David’s greater Son.

1 Peter 3:13-22: To be baptized into Christ is to be associated with His sufferings. As Christ was victorious over death by His Resurrection, so will be those who belong to Him. Baptism, because it unites believers with the Resurrection of Christ, is a pledge and promise of their own victory over death.

In verses 18-22 Peter speaks of Christ’s descent into hell, which took on so pronounced an emphasis in Christian faith and worship that it became an article in the Nicene Creed. Peter says that Christ “went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water. There is also an antitype which now saves us—baptism (not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God), through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

The relationship of Christian Baptism to the Flood and Noah’s Ark, found here explicitly for the first time, became a common trope in Christian biblical exegesis:

“Righteous Noah, along with the other mortals at the Deluge, that is, with his own wife, with his three sons, and with their three wives, all of them being eight in number, were a symbol of the eighth day, whereon Christ appeared when He rose from thee dead, first in power forever. For Christ, being the firstborn of every creature, became again the head of another race regenerated by Himself through water, and faith, and wood, containing the mystery of Cross, even as Noah was saved by wood when he rode upon the waters with his family” (Justin Martyr, Dialogue With Trypho 138).

“Just as the waters of the Deluge, by which the old iniquity was purged—after the baptism of the world, so to speak—a dove became the herald announcing to thee earth the softening of the heavenly wrath, when she had been sent away out of the Ark, and had returned carrying the olive branch, a sign that even among the pagans signifies peace, so by the selfsame law of the heavenly dispensation, there flies to the earth—that is to say, our flesh—as it emerges from the font, having put away its old sins, the dove of the Holy Spirit, bringing us the peace of God, sent forth from heaven, where is the Church, typified by the Ark” (Tertullian, On Bapti
sm 8).

Friday, April 23

John 3:22-36: The position of this section of John may have been determined by the earlier reference to Baptism in 3:5. The evangelist now returns to John the Baptist for the last time.

The reference to Jesus baptizing does not mean that He did so with His own hands. From 4:2 we will learn that Jesus’ apostles normally perfomed this rite. It is not easy to determine the exact nature of this baptism, and it is difficult to affirm that it was the Christian sacrament of Baptism of which John the Baptist had spoken earlier (1:33), because the Holy Spirit will not be conferred on the Church until much later in this Gospel. However, there is no need to be apodictic on the nature of the baptism here in John 3; we may leave the question as unclear as the evangelist leaves it.

The place named in verse 23 is not identified with certainty, though we presume John’s earliest readers recognized it. The name means “springs,” which suggests that it was not a site on the banks of the Jordan. Some archeologists identify it with a site in Samaria. If true, of course, it indicates that John the Baptist had some following among the Samaritans.

In verse 24 the evangelist presumes his readers’ familiarity with the story of the death of John the Baptist (cf. Mark 6:17-29).

Verse 25 indicates the context of the words of John the Baptist. It is clear that controversies about Jewish cleansing rituals were not uncommon (cf. Mark 7:1-5).

The disciples of John the Baptist were understandably disturbed that the prestige of their leader was being eclipsed by the growing notoriety of Jesus. In answering them, John the Baptist again affirmed his own preparatory and subordinate role with respect to Jesus. He knew the ministry and task given him from heaven and dared not attempt to transcend the limits of his vocation (verse 27). Jesus, as the Messiah (verse 28(, was the bride’s groom, whereas John was only His best man (verse 29).

We have here the first instance of what is a veritable mystique of the voice of Christ in the Gospel according to John. Here are some representative Johannine texts to demonstrate the richness of ideas associated with Jesus’ voice:

3:29 “He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is fulfilled.”

5:24 “Amen, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life. 25 Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live. . . . 28 Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice 29 and come forth . . .”

10:2 “But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. 5 Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”

11:43 Now when He had said these things, He cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!”

18:37 “For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.”

20:15: Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” She, supposing Him to be the gardener, said to Him, “Sir, if You have carried Him away, tell me where You have laid Him, and I will take Him away.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to Him, “Rabboni!” (which is to say, Teacher).

In verse 30 we have the final words spoken by John the Baptist in the Fourth Gospel. They not only formed a synopsis of the vocation of John, but they also served the early Christians as an apologetic testimony in their relationship to the disciples of John the Baptist.

When we considered the Lord’s recent discourse with Nicodemus, we reflected that how the conversation gradually became a theological meditation. Nicodemus faded from the scene, and the reader was no longer entirely sure who was speaking. We witness now the same literary phenomenon in this conversation between John the Baptist and his disciples. By the time we reach verse 31, it no longer appears to be a discussion, and it is difficult to say, any longer, that it is John the Baptist who is speaking. Both he and his disciples fade from the scene.

Indeed, in verses 31-36 there is a repetition of certain ideas we earlier saw in the section associated with the discussion with Nicodemus. We may list and examine these:

First, there is the image of “coming from above,” along with a contrast between earthly and heavenly things. Thus, Jesus said earlier, “If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven—the Son of Man” (3:12-13). In this later meditation we read, “He who comes from above is over all; he who is of the earth is of the earth, and of the earth he speaks. He who comes from heaven is over all” (verse 31). In both places we have the contrast between heavenly things and earthly things, and Jesus is identified as coming “from above” or “from heaven.”

Second, there is the mention of unbelief with regard to the testimony of Jesus. In the earlier meditation, we read, “Amen, amen, I say to you, We speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness” (3:11). This idea appears again in the present text: “And what He has seen and heard, that He testifies; and no one receives His testimony” (verse 32). In both places there is the crisis of unbelief.

Third, both sections of John 3 speak of the Holy Spirit. In the discourse we Nicodemus, we read, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. . . . The Spirit breathes where He wills, and you hear His voice, but cannot tell where He comes from and where He goes. Thus is everyone who is born of the Spirit”(3:5,6,8). In the present section, we read: “For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God does not give the Spirit by measure” (verse 12).

John the Baptist had earlier spoken of the Holy Spirit as pertinent to the coming of the Christ: “And John bore witness, saying, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and He remained upon Him. I did not know Him, but He who sent me to baptize in water said to me, “Upon whom you see the Spirit descending, and remaining on Him, this is He who baptizes in the Holy Spirit”’” (1:32-33).

Fourth, both parts of John 3 speak of God’s love. In the earlier section we read, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” (3:16). In the present section we read, “The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand” (verse 35).

Fifth, in both parts of John 3, Jesus is identified as God’s Son. Thus, in the earlier section we read, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him has not been judged but he who does not believe has already been judged, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (3:16-18). In the present section we read, “The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand. He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the
Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him” (verses 35-36).

Jesus’ title, “Son of God,” had already appeared, of course, much earlier in John: “we beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only Begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (1:14). Also, “Nobody has, at any time, seen God. The Only Begotten, God, He Who Is, in the bosom of the Father, He explained” (1:18). Also, “And I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God” (1:34). Likewise, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” (1:49)

Sixth, in both sections of John 3 there is the theme of eternal or everlasting life. Thus, we read earlier, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, thus must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (3:14-16). In the present section we read, “He who believes in the Son has everlasting life” (verse 36).

Seventh, in both sections of John 3 we find the theme of judgment. Thus, we read in the earlier part, “he who does not believe has already been judged, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (3:18-19). And in the present section we read, “he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him” (3:36).

Finally, both sections of John 3 are invitations to belief in Christ. The first part says, “whoever believes in Him should have eternal life” (3:15). And the second section says, “He who believes in the Son has everlasting life” (verse 36).

Friday, April 9

Matthew 22:1-14: Comparing Matthew’s version of this parable with that of Luke (14:15-24), we note striking differences:

The first is the historical setting. In Luke the story comes much earlier—long before Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem—whereas here in Matthew it is contained among the controversy stories that immediately precede the Lord’s sufferings and Death.

The second is the literary setting. In Luke it follows other teaching sitting at table (“When you are invited by anyone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in the best place, lest one more honorable than you be invited by him”) and inviting the poor to meals (“when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind”). Indeed, the parable of the invited guests is immediately preceded by a verse that reads: “Now when one of those who sat at the table with Him heard these things, he said to Him, ‘Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God!’” All this is to say, Luke represents a tradition in which various teachings of Jesus about meals were handed on in a sequence determined by subject.

In Matthew, on the other hand, this parable immediately follows the parable of the servants sent to the vineyard. The link between these two parables is clearly the repeated sending of the servants. There are other similarities between the two parables, as we shall see presently.

The third difference is in the details of the parable. Whereas in Luke this is simply the story of a great supper hosted by “a certain man,” in Matthew it is the wedding celebration of the king’s son. This context, of course, links the parable to the one preceding, which was also concerned with the “son” of the owner of the vineyard.

The present parable, as it appears in Matthew, is tied to the previous parable in other ways. Once again, for example, a series of servants is sent, and in this parable, too, the servants are badly received and ill treated. The treatment and death of these servants is unique to Matthew’s account and bears the same historical meaning as verses 35-36. These servants are the prophets.

Likewise, Matthew’s version of the parable emphasizes the detailed, meticulous preparations for the festivities (verses 4 and 8, contrasted with Luke 14:18). This thorough, extensive preparation corresponds to the detailed appointments of the vineyard in the previous parable (21:33, contrasted with Luke 20:9).

Similarly, in the present parable the king punishes the offenders and burns down their city (verse 7, contrasted with Luke 14:21), just as the owner of the vineyard punished the offender in the earlier parable (21:41). Both descriptions of the punishment and destruction are prophecies of the downfall of Jerusalem to the Romans in A.D. 70.

Just as the vineyard is given to new vine-growers in the previous parable (21:41), so here the invitation to the marriage feast, declined by the first recipients of it, is extended to new people that are glad to receive it (verses 9-10). In both cases we are dealing with prophecies of the calling of the Gentiles to the Church (28:18-20).

To continue the allegory that is manifest in Matthew’s version of the parable, this final group of “servants” (verse 10) should be identified with the Apostles themselves, who traveled all the highways and byways of the world’s mission field, extending to all nations the King’s invitation to the wedding. Matthew, then, clearly discerned in this parable a narrative of the history of the Church in his own lifetime, the second half of the first century.

But Matthew is, as usual, especially interested in life within the Church, and for this reason he attaches to the present parable a shorter one (verses 1-13), not found in Luke. This is an account of an unworthy recipient of the invitation to the wedding feast, who is found improperly dressed. As the banquet begins, this unworthy person is mixed in with the rest of the guests, like the tares among the wheat (13:36-40), a bad fish among the good (13:47-50), both parables found only in Matthew. This feature of a “mix” also corresponds to the experience of the Church known to Matthew, which contained, like the Church at all times, “both bad and good” (verse 10, contrasted with Luke 14:23).

When the king approaches the offender, He addresses him as “friend” (hetaire — verse 12), the same word used by the employer to address his unjust critics (20:13) and the Savior to address His betrayer (26:50). In all these cases the address is met with silence.

Those charged with expelling this unworthy person should be seen as the angels of judgment (13:49). Only at the end is the judgment expected, separating good from bad (13:30; 25:32).

The “outer darkness” and the “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (verse 13) are Matthew’s standard metaphors for eternal damnation (8:12; 13:42,50; 24:51; 25:30).

Matthew’s distinction between “called” and “chosen” (verse 14) suggests that he may be using these terms somewhat differently from the apostles Peter (cf. 2 Peter 1:10) and John (Revelation 17:14).

Saturday, April 10

1 Corinthians 15:20-34: Arguably among the earliest themes of Christian theology was a contrast between Christ and Adam. The letters of Paul are an obvious source of this contrast, chiefly in two places, the earlier being 1 Corinthians 15, and the second, Romans 5. These two texts differ, however, in emphasis and application.
Paul's argument in 1 Corinthians 15, which may be called cosmological, has to do with the quality of created matter, the "dust" of Genesis 2-3. Paul's case here is largely centered on Adam's legacy of death and corruption, to which the Apostle contrasts the immortality of the body through the Resurrection of Christ. Adam was formed of dust, to which he returned. Because of Christ's Resurrection from the dead, nonetheless, this inheritance of corruption from Adam is not the final word about the human prospect, says Paul. Although humanity certainly shares in Adam's corruption, in Christ it is made to share in the incorruption of the Resurrection: "The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption (15:42). Thus, "as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man" (15:49).
In the later text, Romans 5, Paul returns to the contrast between Adam and Christ, but now with a different emphasis and application. He here develops the theme from an historical rather than a cosmological perspective. Whereas in Adam, Paul argues, "sin entered the world, and death through sin," through the obedience of Christ "many will be made righteous" (5:12,19). In short, "if by the one man's offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many" (5:15).
Each of these two contrasts between Adam and Christ serves the general concern of the specific epistle in which it appears. In 1 Corinthians, it is the Paschal Mystery (“Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us,” says 1 Corinthians 5:7), and in Romans it is Justification. The second, which treats of the obedience of Christ, reflects the theology of Holy Thursday and Good Friday. The first, which is based on the Resurrection, pertains to the theology of Easter.

Sunday, April 11

John 20:19-31: The philosophy embraced by Thomas the Apostle was not of an academic brand. It was, rather, the peasant variety, a common type, the truly useful school of thought that aids an ordinary man to brace up in adversity, face disaster bravely, and cope with valor on the bitter day.

A philosopher of this sort is less interested in exploring how life is pieced together, and more concerned about how to get through life without falling to pieces. Thus, he emphasizes sobriety of soul and is deeply suspicious of anything even faintly resembling fun. His aspirations are modest, the better to soften the inevitable disappointments that life will bring. Ever resigned to the next unforeseen but inexorable tragedy, fairly certain that all will come to a bad end, this philosopher tightens the reins on enthusiasm and dissuades his heart from inordinate hope. The last thing he would trust is a bit of good news.
If such a school of thought can be summarized in two sentences, those sentences might be an hypothesis and an imperative: “If anything can go wrong, it probably will. Get used to it.” One could never be too cautious, after all, or he risked getting too rosy a picture of things. Therefore, be careful. Near every silver lining lurks a cloud. Some, I suppose, would call this philosophy pessimism, but those who espouse it usually think of themselves as realists.

Such a philosopher was Thomas the Apostle, significantly known to history as “Doubting Thomas.” One suspects, however, that the doubting of Thomas had less to do with his epistemological system than with his nervous system. Ever brave to drain the draught of sadness and misfortune, he dared to imbibe joy, if ever, only in small sips.

Thomas, therefore, was very cautious about all those miracles and healings that he witnessed. Things were going far too well. There had to be a downside to the whole business. All these blind people were receiving their sight, to be sure, but who could say what they would see before the thing was all over? The deaf received their hearing just in time, thought Thomas, to listen to the latest bad news.

It came as no great surprise to Thomas, then, when he learned that disaster lay just down the road. Indeed, Thomas was the first among the Apostles to embrace the imperative of the Cross. Unlike Peter (“Get behind Me, Satan!”), he put up no resistance to the news. When Jesus declared His intention of going to Jerusalem to “wake up” Lazarus, the other Apostles expressed their fear at the prospect. “Rabbi,” they answered, “lately the Jews sought to stone You, and are You going there again?” It was Thomas who found within himself the generous strength to say, “Let us also go, that we may die with Him” (John 11:8, 16). In this scene, Thomas is no skeptic. He is, rather, very much the realist, the man who discerns the stark realities awaiting His Lord at Jerusalem, and he is resolute with respect to his own course in the matter. When it comes to the prospects for tragedy, Thomas is not deceived by any inappropriate optimism. Nor, let it be said, by cowardice. If there is one thing he knows how to take with a stiff upper lip, it is bad news. It is, so to speak, his specialty.

Thomas may also have been something of a loner, which would explain why, when the risen Lord paid His first visit to the assembled
Apostles, Thomas “was not with them when Jesus came” (20:24). He apparently had gone off to get a better grip on himself. It had been a very tough week. Just as Thomas had foreseen, Jesus’ life had ended in tragedy. This, the Apostle was sure, was the biggest tragedy he had ever seen. Yet he was coping with it somehow. Years of an inner docility to inevitable fate had schooled him in the discipline of endurance. Yes, he would get through this too. He was a man who could deal with misfortune and sorrow.

Thomas returned to the other Apostles in the “upper room” that evening, having wrestled his soul into a quiet acquiescence. It was the first day of a new week. He had faced down the disaster, and his control over life was starting to return. What he had not anticipated, however, was that the other Apostles, in his absence, would completely lose their minds. “Well, Thomas,” one of them announced, “fine time to be gone. We have seen the Lord, and you just missed Him!”

Thomas knew how to deal with sorrow. His real problem had always been how to handle happiness. And that problem was about to get a lot worse. A whole week the risen Lord would make him wait, sharing that room with the ten other men to whom he had hurled his challenge: “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe” (20:25). As each day passed, the case for skepticism was strengthened.
But then it happened. The room was suddenly filled with a great light. New evidence had arrived and stood now undeniable on the scene. Doubting Thomas sensed that his long-established thinking was about to be rather deeply shaken. However embarrassed, he rose and turned
toward the entering light, bracing himself to learn a bit of good news.

Monday, April 12

Ezekiel 7: If the Bible likens good to a seed that grows, develops, and matures, the same is likewise true of evil. Like the enemy that Jesus described as sowing tares among the wheat, Ezekiel says that is Israel is about to behold the blossoming and fruit of many years of evil sowing.

The scene of the coming judgment portrayed in this chapter is marked by the same cataclysmic finality that characterizes Jesus’ own predictions of the fall of Jerusalem. The “land” of Israel cursed in this chapter is to be understood in a geographical, not just a political, sense. That is, the very earth is cursed, like the cursing of the ground in Genesis 3. Drawn from the earth himself, man pollutes that source by his accumulated sins. God’s patience is immense. But because it is related to times and seasons, it is not infinite. The end has come, says Ezekiel. When God is “fed up,” there is nothing in this earth that can prevail against His judgment.

Psalm 2: The Book of Psalms, having begun on a theme associated with Wisdom, next turns to messianic considerations. Psalm 2 commences: “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine something vain.” The “blessed man” introduced in Psalm 1, Jesus our Lord, is an affront to the wisdom of this world. The powers of this world cannot abide Him. The moral contrast described in Psalm 1 thus becomes the messianic conflict narrated in Psalm 2.

Psalm 1 had spoken of the “counsel of the godless,” and now Psalm 2 will go on to describe that counsel: “The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers were gathered in counsel, against the Lord and against his anointed [Messiah in Hebrew, Christ in Greek].” The counsel of this world will not endure the reign of God and Christ. “Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us,” they say.

The early Christians knew the meaning of these words, and they included them in one of their earliest recorded prayers: “Lord, You are God, who made heaven and earth and the sea, and all that is in them, who by the mouth of Your servant David have said: ‘Why did the nations rage, and the people plot vain things? The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers were gathered together against the LORD and against His Christ.” And about whom are these things being said? The prayer goes on: “For truly against Your holy Servant [pais, also meaning ‘servant’ or ‘boy’] Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together” (Acts 4:24–27).

The context of this prayer was the persecution of the Church by the authorities at Jerusalem (cf. all of Acts 3—4). That is to say, the psalm’s meaning, to those Christians, was not something in the distant past; it was something contemporary to ongoing Christian history.

This psalm is not impressed by all the sinful revolution against the reign of God and his Christ. Like the first psalm, Psalm 2 will finish on the theme of the divine judgment, which blesses the just and condemns the wicked. Both psalms end much like the Creed: “He will come again in glory to judge.”

Indeed, the parallels of Psalm 2 with the “last days” described in the Bible’s final book, Revelation, are quite remarkable: the anger of the nations and the wrath of God (Rev. 11:18), the political conspiracy against God (19:19), the Messiah’s “rod of iron” inflicted on His enemies (2:27; 12:5; 19:15).

God, meanwhile, may laugh at His enemies: “He that thrones in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord will hold them in derision.” His Chosen One and Heir is already anointed. In the verse that explains the Church’s partiality to this psalm at Christmas time, the Messiah proclaims: “The Lord said unto Me: ‘You are My Son; this day have I begotten You.” These words, partly reflected at the Lord’s Baptism (Matt. 3:17) and Transfiguration (Matt. 17:5; 2 Pet. 1:17), came to express the essential Christological faith of the Church. This verse is cited explicitly in the apostolic preaching (cf. Acts 13:33; Heb. 1:5; 5:5; also 1 John 5:9) and directly answers the major question posed by Christian evangelism in every age: “What do you think of the Christ? Whose Son is He?” The (most likely) earliest of the Gospels thus commences: “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1).

“This day,” God says, “today have I begotten You.” So early in the Book of Psalms is the Christian mind elevated to eternity, that undiminished “today” of Christ’s identity—“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8). No one knows the Father except the Son and he to whom the Son chooses to reveal him (Matt. 11:27). That “blessed man” introduced in the first psalm is now proclaimed in the second psalm to be God’s only-begotten Son, the sole Mediator between God and man, the Man Jesus Christ. His is the only name under heaven given men by which we may be saved. Therefore, “Be wise now, you kings; be instructed, you judges of the earth. . . . Blessed are all that put their trust in Him.”

Tuesday, April 13

Ezekiel 8: This startling, detailed, and dramatic vision of Ezekiel occurred on September 17, 592 B.C. He is carried “in the Spirit” to Jerusalem to witness the abominations for which the city was to be punished with the wrath and the inevitability that we observed in the previous chapter. The material of this vision will occupy Ezekiel through Chapter 11, at the end of which he will be returned to Babylon. Prior to Jerusalem’s downfall in 586 many of the prophets fellow exiles in Babylon maintained the hope of returning home soon. The purpose of this and other visions of Ezekiel was to destroy such a hope by showing it to be groundless.

In this vision there are four scenes, each illustrating a discrete abomination in the temple. The first scene is at the north gate of the wall that separated the outer court of the temple from the outside world (8:3-6). (Ignore and omit the word “inner” from verse 3, in accord with the more accurate Greek text of the Septuagint. The received Hebrew text of this chapter is notoriously corrupt.) Ezekiel finds a pagan shrine in this place, an affront to the Lord’s presence in the temple.

In the second scene (8:7-13) he goes through the wall of a chamber adjacent to the gate, where he finds Israel’s elders worshipping images of animals.

In the third scene (8:14f) he crosses the outer court toward the temple’s inner court. Not yet entering the latter, Ezekiel beholds Israelite women crying for the death of Tammuz, a Mesopotamian god of vegetation. Even this alien cult is found in God’s temple.

Finally, in the fourth scene (8:16-18), Ezekiel enters the inner court, where he discovers sun-worshippers. Israel’s idolatry is complete. These men have turned their backs to God and are giving adoration to a creature.

John 21:15-25: The Greek word anthrakia (cf. the English derivative “anthracite,” a type of coal), meaning a charcoal fire, is found only twice in the New Testament, both times in the Gospel according to St. John. The first instance is in 18:18 and designates the courtyard fire where the officers and servants of the high priest stood warming themselves through the chilly night of Jesus’ trial before the Sanhedrin. Simon Peter likewise came to that place and stood near a cousin of Malchus, a servant of the high priest. It was there by the charcoal fire that Simon thrice denied even knowing our Lord, going so far as to confirm the denials with an oath.

It is most significant, surely, that that event, so embarrassing to the chief of the Twelve Apostles, is narrated in detail in each of the four canonical Gospels, for it is thus made to stand fixed forever in the memory of Holy Church.

The second charcoal fire in John’s Gospel is the one in its final scene
, the fire kindled by the Lord Himself, over which He prepared breakfast for His dispirited Apostles (21:9). After breakfast it was at this fire that Jesus would put to that same Simon Peter his threefold question: “Do you love Me?” The Apostle understood, of course, why the question was asked of him three times, for it was the very number of his own denials. At this point the chastened Peter, no longer trusting himself, relies completely on the Lord’s knowledge of his heart (21:17).

Wednesday, April 14

Matthew 23:1-12: Although individual verses of this chapter correspond to verses in the other gospels, this chapter’s construction as a whole and its setting in the last week of Jesus’ life are peculiar to Matthew. It fittingly follows the long series of altercations between Jesus and His enemies in the two previous chapters.

The present chapter commences with a warning that the Lord’s disciples are not to imitate the hypocritical, self-absorbed religion of the Pharisees (verses 1-10). It is instructive to observe that this censure is not extended to the chief priests, the Sadducees, the Herodians, and the elders. Only the scribes and Pharisees are criticized here.

This restriction of the censure indicates the setting in which Matthew wrote, sometime after the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70, at which point the priests, the Sadducees, and the Herodians were no longer part of the Jewish leadership. The Judaism with which Matthew was dealing was that of the Pharisees and the scribes, the only ones left with the moral authority to lead the Jewish people. Those other social and religious elements, though powerful at an earlier period, were not of immediate concern to Matthew. Although the priestly class are Jesus’ chief enemies in the story of the Passion, they do not figure here in chapter 23, because Matthew has in mind his own contemporary circumstance, in which the priestly class is no longer significant.

This discourse is directed to Jesus’ disciples, who are warned not to follow the example of the scribes and Pharisees (verses 1-3). The “seat of Moses” is a metaphor for the teaching authority of these men. We observe that Matthew regards these men as still having authority, very much as we find the Apostle Paul recognizing the authority of the high priest and the Sanhedrin. This authority, says the Sacred Text, is to be respected. It is the men that hold that authority who are not to be imitated!

In what respect are they not to be imitated? They lay heavy burdens on men’s backs. In context these are the burdens of legalism, a weight that makes the service of God onerous and unbearable (verse 4). This is a form of religious oppression. These “heavy burdens,” which contrast with the “light burden” of the Gospel (11:30), consisted of the numerous rules, regulations, and rubrics that governed the lives of their fellow Jews. Matthew is at one with Paul that these myriad matters were no longer essential.

It is worth mentioning, in this context, that legalism tends to return to the Christian Church from time to time, though no longer associated with the Mosaic Law. We are seldom short of Christians who like to oppress their brethren with an endless recitation of rules and rubrics. This sort of mentality renders the service of God a dreadful burden. It constitutes a scandal in the strict sense of turning men from the love and service of God.

The real motive of the Pharisees, however, was nothing but unsubtle self-aggrandizement (verses 5-7). A phylactery is a small leather box containing passages from Holy Scripture. These were worn strapped to the forehead and the arm during morning prayers, a rather literal interpretation of Exodus 13:1-16; Deuteronomy 6:4-9; and 11:13-22. The rabbis referred to these as tefillin. The fringes are the tassels that adorn the prayer shawl, in accord with Numbers 15:38-39; Deuteronomy 22:12.

By implication Matthew encourages Christians to avoid this sort of preoccupation, and he explicitly rejects the use of certain honorific titles (verses 8-10). With respect to the title of “Rabbi” (“my lord”), it is worth noting that in Matthew’s Gospel only Judas addresses Jesus by this title (26:25,49).

For Christians, who are to serve one another humbly as members of the same family, these displays are negative examples.

Thursday, April 15

Ezekiel 10: The wooden statues of the Cherubim, with their wings spread over the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies, were but symbols of the angels of the Presence, the heavenly Cherubim who serve to support the Throne of God.

Now Ezekiel sees these heavenly spirits themselves, and they are identical with the Four Living Creatures that he had beheld in his inaugural vision in Chapter 1, where they bore, as here, the Cloud of the divine Presence. They will appear again, of course, in Revelation 4.

The burning coals from within their whirling wheels, full of the divine holiness, are destructive of those whose brows have not been marked by the angelic scribe, who also appears again in this chapter.

Besides destroying the wicked, this divine fire purifies God’s loyal servants (cf. Isaiah 6:6f). As the chapter closes, the action moves to the east gate of the temple, facing the Mount of Olives. It is at this gate that Ezekiel will receive the two oracles in Chapter 11.

Psalm 18: The dramatic quality of Holy Scripture is most obvious in the Psalms, I believe, because of their enhanced sense of immediacy. In the Psalter, biblical narrative takes on a more personal and existential quality. Praying the Psalms—speaking to God in those words—renders drama inescapable.

For example, when I read of his fight from Saul, I may manage to put some distance between David and me. To recite his psalm on that occasion, however, places my feet directly into David’s sandals. I am no longer safe from the machinations of Saul! David’s words become my script: “The sorrows of the nether world surrounded me, the snares of death confronted me” (Psalm 18 [17]:5; 2 Samuel 22:6).

In praying this psalm, I assume the voice of David. I take on—in dramatic form—the character of that persecuted just man, and I identify myself with the Suffering Servant, of whom David was a prefiguration—the Man who “made peace through the blood of His cross” (Colossians 1:20).

When I recite the lines of this psalm, in short, its reference is not reduced to the things that happen to be going on in my individual life. I am playing a part, rather, in the larger and transforming drama of redemption. The paltry circumstances of my own existence are taken up, through this prayer, into the ongoing history of God’s People. I may study the Psalms as gramma, but I must pray them as drama.

Friday, April 16

1 Corinthians 16:13-24: There are the closing lines of First Corinthians. In addition to personal greetings, Paul makes one last mention of some Christian basics.

The first of these is faith, of which Paul says simply, “Stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong.” I draw you attention to the fact that all three of these imperative verbs are in the plural: Stand fast, be brave (literally “be manly”—andrízesthe), be strong.

Obviously the plural is required, inasmuch as Paul is addressing all of the Corinthians. Nonetheless, the use of the plural also indicates that he has in mind a joint effort. These are the things that a commander says to soldiers who are about to be attacked: stand fast, be brave, be strong. The survival of all of them depends on the combined efforts of each of them.

Yet, those combined efforts are more than a mere accumulation. It is not as though the faith of ten believers is ten times as strong as the faith of one believer. It is more likely the case that the faith of ten believers is closer to a hundred times as strong as one believer.

The reason for this is sim
ple: Believers not only believe for themselves, they also support the faith of one another. For this reason, a community of faith has vastly more than the accumulated faith of individual believers. The spiritual chemistry of each believer affects the spiritual chemistry of those around him.

The major sin of those Corinthians was their failure to support the faith of one another. Each of them was acting without regard for the others. It is a plain fact that Christians cannot live that way and very long remain Christians, because the Christian faith is a corporate concern.

It is a “corporate” concern according to the etymological sense of the Latin root corpus, which means “body.” We observe that it was in First Corinthians that the Apostle Paul first introduced the image of the Christian congregation as a “body”: “or as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body.”

It is this corporate nature of the Christian faith that requires that we stand fast, be brave, and be strong. In the matter of the faith, each of us depends on all of us.

The second “basic” in this text is love, which we would expect from the corporate nature of faith: “Let all that you do be done with love”—pánta hymón en agápe ginéstho. Such is Paul’s summary of chapter 13 of this epistle, the famous list of the qualities of agape, the godly love God has for us, and we have for Him, and we have for one another in Him.

In this final chapter of First Corinthian, Paul especially mentions the affective quality of this love: “The churches of Asia greet you. Aquila and Priscilla greet you heartily in the Lord, with the church that is in their house. All the brethren greet you. Greet one another with a holy kiss.”

Christian love is more than affection, of course, but affection—the shared joy of friendship—is one of the ways in which it is expressed, and there are numerous indications of this in the Bible. For example, one thinks of that scene in the upper room of a house in a house at Joppa: “And all the widows stood by [Peter] weeping, showing the tunics and garments which Dorcas had made while she was with them.”

The sorrow of these grieving women—who are all identified as having lost their husbands—is then turned into joy, as we see in the closing line of this scene: “Then [Peter] gave her his hand and lifted her up; and when he had called the saints and widows, he presented her alive.” Luke is careful to mention, not only that the woman was restored to life, but also that she was returned to the arms of those who loved her.

The third “basic” in this text is hope. This hope is expressed in a short Aramaic prayer that was common in the ancient Church: Marana tha. Mar is the Aramaic word for “Lord.” The ending ana is first person plural possessive, “our Lord.” Tha is the singular imperative, “come.” It is very short prayer for the Lord’s return and the end of the world. It is the summation of Christian hope.

For Christian believers the end of the world is not “doomsday.” It is the return of Christ, the Lord Jesus who went away promising to come back.

At the end of the first chapter of the earliest extant work of Christian literature, the Apostle Paul summarized the Christian life. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the coming wrath.”

This ancient liturgical prayer quoted by Paul, Marana tha, is the voice of hope. This hope, on which our lives are established, is the source of the strong faith in which Paul tells us to stand. Hope is the bright horizon that gives luster to our love for one another.

These, then, are the basics, the three things of which 1 Corinthians 13 declares that the “abide” no matter the order in which we name them.

Good Friday, April 2

John 18:1—19:42: The description of the Lord's death in the Gospel of John shows every sign of conveying the word of an eyewitness. Indeed, the Sacred Text itself calls attention to the first-hand reliability of this testimony: "And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you may believe" (John 19:35). Two details in John's testimony seem worthy of special examination.

First, in its description of the Lord's death, John's very suggestive wording is unique among the Four Evangelists: paredoken to pnevma (John 19:30). Generally, alas, that uniqueness is obscured in the standard English translations. They usually run something like this: "And bowing his head, he gave up his spirit" (NKJV). I confess that I have not found an English translation that substantially differs from this.

Leaving aside the tender detail about the bowing of the Lord's head in death, nonetheless, such a translation is seriously inadequate. Paredoken to pnevma, wrote John. To translate this as "he gave up His spirit" deprives the sentence of more than half of its meaning. Taken literally (which is surely the proper way to take him), John affirms that He "handed over the Spirit."

That is to say, the very breath, pnevma, with which the Lord expired on the Cross becomes for John the symbol and transmission of the Holy Spirit that the Lord confers on His Church gathered beneath. Support for this interpretation is found in the risen Lord's action and words to the apostles in the upper room in John 20:22, "He breathed on them, and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit (labete pnevma hagion).'"

Consequently, John's description of the death of Jesus-"He handed over the Spirit"-portrays the Holy Spirit as being transmitted from the body of the Lord hanging in sacrifice on the altar of the Cross. It is John's way of affirming that the mission of the Holy Spirit is intimately and inseparably connected with the event the Cross.

This interpretation, besides being faithful to the verb's literal sense, is consonant with John's theology as a whole. It was the Cross and Resurrection of the Lord-what John calls His glorification-that permitted the Holy Spirit to be poured out on the Church. John told us earlier that "the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified" (7:39).

Second, John records another detail of the scene not mentioned by the other Evangelists: "But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out" (19:34 NKJV).

Taken together, then, John records three things as issuing forth from the immolated body of Jesus: the Spirit, the water, and the blood. These have to do with the gathering of the Church at the foot of the Cross, because this is the place where the Lord's identity is known: "When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I AM" (8:28 my translation).

These components appear also in the covering letter for John's Gospel as the "three witnesses" of the Christian mystery: "And there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three are one" (1 John 5:8 my translation).

Speaking of the gathering of the Church, the Lord had declared, "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." John went on to comment, "He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die" (John 12:32-33 ESV). It is the gathered Church, then, that receives the witness of the Spirit, the water, and the blood at the foot of the Cross, thereby knowing the Son of Man's identity as "I AM". This is the revelation given in the testimony.

This threefold "witness" to Jesus has particular reference to the Sacraments of Initiation, those mystic rites by which believers are gathered into the Church: the water of Baptism, the Holy Spirit conferred in the seal of Chrismation, and the Blood consumed in the Holy Communion. These three things are theologically inseparable; that is to say, "these three are one."

In this threefold initiation into the mystery of the Cross believers are "once enlightened" in Baptism, become "partakers of the Holy Spirit" in Chrismation, and "taste the heavenly gift" in the Eucharist (Hebrews 6:4).

This threefold benediction is inseparable from its source, which is the Son of Man's body hanging in sacrifice. Each component of this grace derives from that same font.

Holy Saturday, April 3

Matthew 27:62-66: The teaching of Jesus was inseparable from His person. In the Gospel we do not find our Lord appealing to universally available religious truths, truths that could stand on their own, truths accessible to man’s mind apart from His teaching of them, truths that could outlive the person who spoke them. It is essential to grasp this fact, because it indicates an essential difference between Jesus and other “religious founders.”

To illustrate this difference we may take the example of Siddartha Gautama some six centuries earlier. When Gautama gathered his disciples to listen to his Dear Park Sermon, he certainly appealed to his own experience of a “revelation.” He referred to his enlightenment under the Bodhi tree and expounded to his followers the meaning of that experience. He defined Dependent Causation and explained how to be delivered from it.

Some historians of comparative religion are of the opinion that this is essentially what Jesus did. Although they recognize a difference in the objective content of the two efforts, they imagine that the Deer Park Sermon and the Sermon on the Mount have this in common—that both preachers were simply expounding their religious theories. According to this view, the difference between a Christian and a Buddhist would result solely from the decision about which religious teacher was believed to have “gotten it right.”

The problem here is that neither Gautama nor Jesus would agree with this assessment of the matter.

With respect to Gautama, it is important to observe that he never thought of himself as essential to his own message. Indeed, he made a point of saying that his religious experience was available to anyone who followed in his footsteps. He asked no one to take his teaching on faith. He never claimed to have discovered truths otherwise unavailable for discovery. He asked no one to believe in him as the exclusive channel of his teaching.

On the contrary, Gautama was persuaded that the Four Noble Truths would be just as true if he had never discovered them. What he had to say about the Chain of Causation would be just as valid, he believed, if he had never mentioned it. Gautama claimed to teach truths independent of himself and transcendent to his teaching of them. In short, Gautama never claimed to be the way, the truth, and the life.

When we look at Jesus, we are faced with something radically different. All that heard Him recognized that He taught as “One having authority.” Jesus expounded no truths transcendent to Himself. What He taught was otherwise unknowable and inaccessible.

Indeed, how would we know that we have a heavenly Father who loves and cares for us, except on the testimony of Jesus? Is that an obvious or otherwise available truth? Again, if Jesus had not mentioned the fact, how would we know that the very hairs of our head are all numbered? Is it really self-evident, after all, that God has even the slightest regard for every sparrow that falls? Or that a loving Father clothes in beauty the flowers of the field? We know these things for one reason only—that Jesus told us so.

Thus, the religious message of Jesus is inseparable from the authority of His own person, His own “I.” This “I” is central to His message and permeates the whole of it. The essential
feature to note about Jesus’ teaching is that it is founded on the proclamation, “But I say to you.” This “I” is the foundational component of the message, because Our Lord’s doctrine stands or falls with Himself. Jesus not only taught us that we have a Father in heaven, but He also claimed to be, in His own person, the sole access to that Father. He alone, He said, actually knew the Father.

This inseparability of Jesus and His teaching was, I submit, a major part of the crisis of Good Friday and Holy Saturday. While His dead body lay in the tomb, none of what He said could stand on its own. The authority that Jesus had claimed, to all human appearance, died with Him. If death were the last word about Jesus’ life, the Sermon on the Mount would be nothing but religious theory or plain old make-believe.
This was part of the crisis of the Cross. The teaching of Jesus, as well as the faith of those who believed that teaching, seemed radically discredited by the event of Calvary. The Apostle Paul perceived this clearly when he wrote that if Christ was not raised, we of all men are the most to be pitied.

Easter Sunday, April 4

Luke 24:13-35: The story of the two disciples walking to Emmaus on the afternoon of the day of the Lord’s Resurrection (Luke 24:13–35) is of great importance to biblical exegesis and the structure of Christian worship.

First, with respect to biblical exegesis, it may be said that the conversation of the risen Christ, as He walked with Cleopas and his unnamed companion and interpreted the Holy Scriptures for them, was the Church’s first formal course in the proper Christian interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures. From time to time, as we know, Jesus had interpreted individual passages of Moses, Isaiah, David, and other Old Testament writers, normally in reference to Himself. In that discourse on the road to Emmaus, however, Jesus devoted the entire effort and time to this theme, laying the foundation for the proper Christian understanding of the Bible. It may be said that all orthodox Christian exegesis goes back to that conversation, and we are surely correct in going to the writers of the New Testament as illustrating the interpretive patterns put forward in that conversation.

The “allegory” (Galatians 4:21–31) or “spiritual sense” (1 Corinthians 2:6–16; 2 Corinthians 3:18) of God’s holy Word is that Word’s underlying Christological reference, its relationship to the Incarnate Lord who brings it to historical and theological fulfillment. Clothed in the literary forms of history, parable, and poetry, the Bible’s deeper doctrinal message is ever its reference to the Mystery of Christ, who is at once God’s only path to us and our only path to God. Thus, every line of the Bible, every symbol and every story, every prophecy, proverb, and prayer bears its deeper significance in Christ, its meaning conveyed in the catechesis of the Church and sacramental sharing in the Christian Sacraments. It is this more profound Christological “sense” of Holy Scripture that separates the Christian from the Jew.

We may also say, in this respect, that all of Christian doctrine is rooted in our Lord’s paschal discourse to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus. The timing of that discourse is likewise significant, for it took place on the very day of His rising from the dead; on that day “the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David,” demonstrated that He “was worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals.” He was worthy to do this because He was slain and had redeemed us to God by His blood (Revelation 5:5, 9). Jesus interprets Holy Scripture—indeed, He is the very interpretation of Holy Scripture—because He “fulfills” Holy Scripture by the historical and theological events of His death and Resurrection. His blood-redemption of the world is the formal principle of biblical interpretation.

Second, in the paschal experience of those two disciples we have the initial paradigm of proper Sunday worship as the Apostles handed it down to us. The experience of those men, hearing and understanding God’s Word while their hearts burned within them, led to their recognition of Him in the breaking of the Bread. Holy Church has always understood this intricate combination of Word and Sacrament to indicate the structure of correct Sunday worship. This is the format we find in the New Testament (Acts 20:7–11) and in the earliest explicit description of Christian Sunday worship left us from the second century (St. Justin Martyr, First Apology 67).

Figures of the Resurrection: Among Old Testament figures of Easter, let us consider three, whom the mind especially associates with the Netherworld, where our Lord descended in triumph:

First, there is Ezekiel, whose prophecies we begin to read this week. He was given a vision of the Netherworld. He not only records the vision, but he tells us the exact date on which he had the vision: March 3, 585 B.C. Ezekiel writes in chapter 32 of his book of prophecies. In this vision of the Netherworld, Ezekiel beholds the diverse nations of the world lying in death, their glory laid in the grave.

“It came to pass,” he writes in chapter 32 of his book of prophecies, “it came to pass in the twelfth year, on the fifteenth day of the month”—March 3, 585 by our calendar— “the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Son of man, wail over the multitude of Egypt, and cast them down to the depths of the earth, her and the daughters of the famous nations, with those who go down to the Pit.”

Ezekiel then proceeds to list all those who have gone down in death over the centuries, those delivered to the sword, the strong among the mighty. “Assyria is there and all her company,” he tells us, “Her graves are set in the recesses of the Pit, and here company is all around her grave. . . all of them slain . . . who caused terror in the land of the living.” There too is Elam, he says, who bear their shame with those that go down to the Pit. They have set her bed in the midst of the slain. There are Meshech and Tubal and all their multitudes. There is Edom, Her kings and all her princes, Who despite their might Are laid beside those slain by the sword. There are the princes of the north, All of them, and all the Sidonians. There too is Pharaoh and all his army.”

Ezekiel’s vision of the Netherworld, the world of the dead, the great, universal grave of history is readily likened to the similar visions of Hades in the Odyssey and the Aeneid—visions in which Odysseus and Aeneas descend into the abyss and behold the judgment of history. As Homer and Virgil portrayed the netherworld in the context of the fall of Troy, Ezekiel portrays it in the context of the fall of Jerusalem, which had taken place in 587.

Hell is the place where Jesus goes to preach the Gospel to those in prison, to bring up those who belong to Him. This is where Jesus goes to declare that death has been trampled down by His own death. This is where He goes to break down the gates and render asunder the brazen bars.

Second, let us look at Habakkuk. The Church has ever regarded the third chapter of Habakkuk as a prophetic vision of Jesus' triumphant descent into hell to preach the Gospel to the spirits in prison and to bring forth the ancient saints who so eagerly awaited His arrival. The object of Habakkuk's vision is central to the Church's faith—the descent of Christ to the nether world—so central that the event itself is included in the Nicene Creed.

Third, there is Jonah, whose story we finish today. This enigmatic, stubborn, self-willed, and rebellious prophet went to the Netherworld, or at least we would think so from his experience in the belly of the whale. Jonah’s canticle says, “Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, And You heard my voice. For You cast me into the deep, I went down to the moorings of the mountains; The earth with its bars closed behind me forever; Yet You have brought up my life from the Pit.”

In his own person Jonah descended as a prophecy and type of Jesus Himself, and the authority I cite on this point is none other than Jesus, who declares, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

In these three men, I submit, we discern an outline of the theology of death and resurrection. We perceive first the judgment of death on all of human history, which Ezekiel was given to behold in his vision of the netherworld. In Habakkuk we find that the man of faith, the prophet who insisted that the just man shall live by faith, is enlighte
ned by faith to behold the Savior of the world descending to the Netherworld to assert His own claims on history. And in Jonah we find the task of the Christian Gospel, whose preacher, having died and risen with Christ, journeys off to Nineveh, to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins. Such is the drama of this night, on which Christ rises from the dead, trampling down death by death.

Easter Tuesday, April 6

Ezekiel 1: This chapter describes Ezekiel’s call to be a prophet. In the second half of summer Ezekiel received his inaugural call by the banks of the Kabari Canal, a man-made waterway that flowed out of the Euphrates, through the city of Babylon, and then back to its mother river. This “fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiakin” is calculated to be the period between April 30 of the year 593 and April 18, of the year 592. The “fifth day of the fourth month” of this year was August 4, 593. Like the inaugural callings of Moses (Exodus 3:1-4) and Isaiah (6:1-6), the calling of Ezekiel is glorious and visionary. Above the “four living creatures” who support the vault of heaven, he sees “the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.” God’s glory, because it fills all of heaven and earth, can be revealed anywhere, whether in a burning bush in the Sinai Peninsula, or in the temple at Jerusalem, or, as now, by the banks of a waterway in Babylonia.

Psalm 114 (113a): From the perspective of style, this psalm is a perfect illustration of Hebraic parallelism, a feature found in so much of the Bible’s poetry and the aphorisms of its wisdom literature. The references to Egypt/barbarous people, mountains/hills, stone/flint, rams/lambs, sanctuary/domain, are synonymous parallels, in that they are roughly repetitious. They serve the function of slowing down our prayer, making us take a calmer, more contemplative pace.

Others of the parallelisms here, Red Sea/Jordan and Judah/Israel, are merismatic, the merismus being a device of dividing a whole into representative components and addressing them separately. This serves the function of making our prayer more discursive and analytical. Our psalm combines both techniques very effectively.

In all such cases, the intent of the literary construction is to slow down our reading of the poem, making us go over everything twice, forcing the mind to a second and more serious look at the line, prolonging our prayer, obliging us not to go rushing off somewhere. Such poetry is deeply meditative, and the reader who resists its impulse will find himself with acid indigestion of the mind, serious “heartburn” in a most radical and theological sense.

There are two events described in this psalm, the turning back of the Red Sea at the Exodus, and the identical phenomenon of the Jordan River at Israel’s entrance into Canaan. These two occasions, which are also juxtaposed in Joshua 4:23, form the psalm’s twin poles, Israel’s departure from Egypt and her entrance into the Promised Land. Between these two events lie the giving of the Law and the forty years’ wandering of God’s people in the wilderness. Whereas the two poles of that crucial period, the Red Sea and the Jordan, are marked by God’s removal of the waters from their native settings, the time in between them is marked by God’s miraculously given water for His people wandering through the dry sands of the desert.

God, in short, reverses the expected course of things. He makes wet places dry, and the dry places wet. As for mountains and hills, what could be better symbols of stability, standards of the normal and expected? Mountains and hills, it would seem, are not easily moved. Nonetheless, God moves them, as was demonstrated in the earthquake shaking Mount Sinai when the Law was given. Because of the face of the Lord, that face that Moses prayed to behold on Sinai, the mountains and the hills jumped around like sheep, as it were, the normal and expected state of things becoming unstrung before the awesome face of God. Hills go skipping about!

Everything is set on its head. It is this complete dominion of the Lord that is manifested in His great acts of redemption: the Exodus, the giving of the Law, the desert wandering, Israel’s crossing the Jordan’s rocky bed into the land flowing with milk and honey.

Holy Scripture often identifies the Church in terms of Israel’s experience in the Red Sea, at Sinai and in the desert, and in the crossing of the Jordan. The pattern is quite standard in the New Testament, and readers of the multiplication of the loaves, 1 Corinthians, and Hebrews will recognize this at once. Psalm 113a, then, is very much a psalm about ourselves and our life in Christ.

Wednesday, April 7

Ezekiel 2: After his inaugural vision in Chapter 1, Ezekiel now formally receives his call in Chapter 2. The Spirit (in Hebrew Ruach), of which Ezekiel spoke in 1:4 (where the same Hebrew word is usually translated as “Wind”), now enters into him, causing him to stand up. This is the same Ruach that will enliven the dry bones in Chapter 37.

It will be another six years before Jerusalem will be destroyed, and the exiles, to whom he is sent to preach, are rebellious. Ezekiel is exhorted not to be impressed by them, nor necessarily to expect positive fruits from his preaching. In terms very reminiscent of the calls of Moses and Jeremiah, Ezekiel is instructed to continue preaching to his contemporaries, no matter how they receive his word. It is God’s word, after all, that he will speak.

Toward the end of this chapter he will be handed a scroll of God’s word, which he is instructed to eat. This is one of several places in Holy Scripture where God’s Word is likened to food.

This image also indicates the prophet is to assimilate God’s Word and to preach it from within the digestive processes of his own mind and heart. It is always the word of man as well as the Word of God. According to Christian theology God speaks to man through the inner creative workings of his mind and heart. In that inspiration by which God caused the Holy Scriptures to be written, man himself was a co-worker with God, a synergos. God's word is likewise, then, the word of some human being who is properly called an "author."

Psalm 115 (113b): One way of approaching this psalm is through the consideration of space. It speaks of heaven, earth, and the nether world, and all of these references are related to the question, posed in an early verse, about where God is to be located: “So where is their God?”

This question, posed by the unbelievers as a mockery (“Why should the Gentiles say”), is answered by the psalmist: “But our God is in heaven.” The affirmation here is not merely spatial, so to speak, for he goes on immediately to draw an inference that becomes a theme of the psalm: God “does whatever He pleases.” The verb, to “do” or “make” (‘asah in Hebrew) appears now for the first time and may be seen as a key to the psalm’s meaning. This psalm is about a God who does things.

Nothing more is said about space until a dozen verses later, when the psalmist speaks of “the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” The word “made” here is ‘oseh, the active participle of the same verb as before; it could be translated even as a substantive—God is a doer. The Lord does things.

Here, then, is heaven once more, not simply a spatial reference but a symbol of God’s omnipotence. Just as, earlier, “heaven” had to do with God’s activity (“He does whatever He pleases”), so now the reference to God’s activity leads back immediately to the thought of heaven: “The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord’s.”

In contrast to heaven there is the earth: “But the earth He has given to the children of men.” God is in heaven; He is omnipotent. Men dwell on earth; they are not omnipotent. Indeed, they will die and “go down into silence,” and this brings
us to the psalm’s final reference to space—the nether world, where the “dead do not praise the Lord.” The “sons of men” are, in themselves, but creatures of a day. They are unlike God, for there are very strict limits to what they can do. And that was exactly the note on which our psalm began: “Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to Your name give glory.”

In contrast to God, what can men, on their own, do? They can make idols. In fact, left to themselves, making idols is exactly what they will do. These idols he calls “the work of men’s hands,” the noun “work” translating here ma‘aseh, a Hebrew passive participle of the same verb we have been examining all along. That is to say, idolatry is the only thing that the children of men, left to their own devices, can do. Once again, then, we continue the theme of man’s utter weakness contrasted with God’s omnipotent activity: “Not unto us, but to Your name give glory.”

The psalmist seems to enjoy meditating on the futility of these idols, “the work of men’s hands,” for he spends considerable effort in describing their impotence. Using the mystical number seven, a standard biblical symbol of perfection, he goes on to tell what these idols cannot do: (1) “They have mouths, but they do not speak;” (2) “Eyes they have, but they do not see;” (3) “They have ears, but they do not hear;” (4) “Noses they have, but they do not smell;” (5) “They have hands, but they do not handle;” (6) “Feet they have, but they do not walk;” and (7) “Nor do they mutter through their throat.” There you have it. These idols, “the work of men’s hands,” are perfectly imperfect. They are infinitely nothing; there is simply no limit to their imperfection and nothingness.

And what becomes of the men who devote their lives to the making of these idols? They too become nothing: “Those who make them are like them; so is everyone who trusts in them.” The makers of idols (which includes any one of us who insists on going his own way) will, in the end, have nothing to show for their efforts and their lives: “The dead do not praise the Lord, nor any who go down into silence.” The silence of the idols becomes the unending silence of eternal loss. Those who make them become like them.

The children of men, therefore, must not put their trust in the works of their own hands, which are destined to perish with them. Where, then, put our trust? “O Israel, trust in the Lord . . . O house of Aaron, trust in the Lord . . You who fear the Lord, trust in the Lord; He is their help and their shield.”

Thursday, April 8

1 Corinthians 15:1-11: This reading, concerned with the meaning of the Lord’s Resurrection, might be considered under three headings:

First, the foundational principle of the event itself—the Christian religion is the world’s only religion based on a single historical fact: the historical fact of the Resurrection of Christ.

If He is not risen from the dead, wrote St. Paul, then we, of all men, are most to be pitied. If He is not raised from the dead, then everything that we do counts for naught. If his dead and crucified body fell into decay in some Palestinian tomb, then we are utter fools. If the tomb is not empty, then the Gospel is empty.

The Gospel is not a religious philosophy; it is the proclamation of a fact. The first summary of the Gospel is: “This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses. . . . Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ" (Acts 2:32,36).

Hence, "Christ is risen" is another way of saying, "Jesus is Lord." His lordship and His resurrection are synonymous, forming the fundamental thesis of the faith, through the confession of which we are saved. "If you confess with your mouth," wrote Paul, "that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved" (Romans 10:9). These two salvific assertions are substantially identical.

It is by virtue of Jesus' Resurrection that we receive justification. In fact, the first time the noun "justification" appears in the New Testament, Paul proclaims that Jesus "was raised because of our justification" (Romans 4:25). He had earlier written, "For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!" (1 Corinthians 15:17) No Resurrection, no justification.

Second, the Resurrection of Christ, as the object of prophecy, is the fulfillment of history. Paul declares in today’s reading, “He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.”

That is to say, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ was not an event isolated the historical expectations of Israel. It was, rather, the fulfillment of those expectations. We observe this quality of the Resurrection in the very mandate the risen Lord gave to the Church. The evangelist Luke portrays this conviction near the end of his Gospel:

“Then He said to them, ‘These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.’ And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures. Then He said to them, “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and rise , and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And you are witnesses of these things” (Luke 24:44-48).

It is at this point in the story that Jesus dispatches the Apostles to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth.
Their proclamation includes both the event itself and the Hebrew Scriptures that that event fulfilled. Through the Resurrection of Christ, the writings of the Hebrew people became the foundational literature of all mankind.

Third, the Resurrection of Christ becomes the formal principle of Christian thought and Christian moral behavior, which Paul refers to as having “the mind of Christ” and walking in the power of the Holy Spirit.

This principle is what Christian theology calls humanity's anakephalaiosis, or "re-Heading" (in Latin, recapitulatio). This term means that God's Son, who became man, took unto Himself the fallen race of men, in order to re-create all humanity through the reality and personal experience of His own humanity. He did this by passing through every stage of human experience and development—-the First to do so—restoring to union with God what had perished in Adam.
An early expression of this theology comes from St. Irenaeus, a second century bishop of Lyons, who wrote of God's Word, "when He became incarnate and was made man, He re-headed in Himself the long line of human beings, providing us with salvation in a brief, comprehensive manner, so that what we had lost in Adam we might recover in Christ Jesus–that is, our being in the image and likeness of God" (Against the Heresies 3.18.1).
In His assumption of our humanity, God's Word sanctified our personal histories by gaining a human, first-hand, personal familiarity with life and death, adding thereto the utterly new experience of eternal life gaining victory over death. This total assumption of human history is the basis for a new and transformed humanity. We live in the Resurrection.

Friday, April 9

Matthew 22:1-14: Comparing Matthew’s version of this parable with that of Luke (14:15-24), we note striking differences.

The first is the historical setting. In Luke the story comes much earlier—long before Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem—whereas here in Matthew it is contained among the controversy stories that immediately precede the Lord’s sufferings and Death.

The second is the literary setting. In Luke it follows other teaching sitting at table (“When you are invited by anyone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in the best place, lest one more honorable than you be invited by him”) and inviting the poor to meals (“when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind”). Indeed, the parable of the invited guests is immediately preceded by a verse that reads: “Now when one of those who sat at the table with Him heard these things, he said to Him, ‘Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God!’” All this is to say, Luke represents a tradition in which various teachings of Jesus about meals were handed on in a sequence determined by subject.

In Matthew, on the other hand, this parable immediately follows the parable of the servants sent to the vineyard. The link between these two parables is clearly the repeated sending of the servants. There are other similarities between the two parables, as we shall see presently.

The third difference is in the details of the parable. Whereas in Luke this is simply the story of a great supper hosted by “a certain man,” in Matthew it is the wedding celebration of the king’s son. This context, of course, links the parable to the one preceding, which was also concerned with the “son” of the owner of the vineyard.

The present parable, as it appears in Matthew, is tied to the previous parable in other ways. Once again, for example, a series of servants is sent, and in this parable, too, the servants are badly received and ill treated. The treatment and death of these servants is unique to Matthew’s account and bears the same historical meaning as verses 35-36. These servants are the prophets.

Likewise, Matthew’s version of the parable emphasizes the detailed, meticulous preparations for the festivities (verses 4 and 8, contrasted with Luke 14:18). This thorough, extensive preparation corresponds to the detailed appointments of the vineyard in the previous parable (21:33, contrasted with Luke 20:9).

Similarly, in the present parable the king punishes the offenders and burns down their city (verse 7, contrasted with Luke 14:21), just as the owner of the vineyard punished the offender in the earlier parable (21:41). Both descriptions of the punishment and destruction are prophecies of the downfall of Jerusalem to the Romans in A.D. 70.

Just as the vineyard is given to new vine-growers in the previous parable (21:41), so here the invitation to the marriage feast, declined by the first recipients of it, is extended to new people that are glad to receive it (verses 9-10). In both cases we are dealing with prophecies of the calling of the Gentiles to the Church (28:18-20).

To continue the allegory that is manifest in Matthew’s version of the parable, this final group of “servants” (verse 10) should be identified with the Apostles themselves, who traveled all the highways and byways of the world’s mission field, extending to all nations the King’s invitation to the wedding. Matthew, then, clearly discerned in this parable a narrative of the history of the Church in his own lifetime, the second half of the first century.

But Matthew is, as usual, especially interested in life within the Church, and for this reason he attaches to the present parable a shorter one (verses 1-13), not found in Luke. This is an account of an unworthy recipient of the invitation to the wedding feast, who is found improperly dressed. As the banquet begins, this unworthy person is mixed in with the rest of the guests, like the tares among the wheat (13:36-40), a bad fish among the good (13:47-50), both parables found only in Matthew. This feature of a “mix” also corresponds to the experience of the Church known to Matthew, which contained, like the Church at all times, “both bad and good” (verse 10, contrasted with Luke 14:23).

When the king approaches the offender, He addresses him as “friend” (hetaire — verse 12), the same word used by the employer to address his unjust critics (20:13) and the Savior to address His betrayer (26:50). In all these cases the address is met with silence.

Those charged with expelling this unworthy person should be seen as the angels of judgment (13:49). Only at the end is the judgment expected, separating good from bad (13:30; 25:32).

The “outer darkness” and the “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (verse 13) are Matthew’s standard metaphors for eternal damnation (8:12; 13:42,50; 24:51; 25:30).

Matthew’s distinction between “called” and “chosen” (verse 14) suggests that he may be using these terms somewhat differently from the apostles Peter (cf. 2 Peter 1:10) and John (Revelation 17:14).