Friday, December 28

The Holy Innocents: By way of prophetic type in the Book of Genesis, it was the dreaming of a man named Joseph that originally brought the Chosen People into Egypt. That prophetic type is fulfilled in today’s Gospel reading, when another Joseph has a dream that results in his taking the Chosen People back to Egypt. According to today’s reading from Exodus 1:8-22, it was in Egypt that the little boys were sacrificed to the fears of a sinful king. This also happens in today’s Gospel.

The account of the Pharaoh’s shrewdness in the Exodus story ties it to to two narratives: First, to the account of the serpent, “more cunning than any beast of the field,” in Genesis 3:1. Each of these two books, Genesis and Exodus, commences with a wily enemy who endeavors to deceive God’s people. Second, this theme is related to the later stories of Pharaoh’s attempts to outwit Moses.

This early verse of Exodus, then, introduces a major motif of our book: the “matching of wits,” in which the sinful wisdom of the world encounters the baffling wisdom of God. As this first chapter progresses, Pharaoh’s shrewdness is quickly outwitted by the Hebrew midwives, who are thus to be contrasted with the gullible Eve at the beginning of Genesis. Ultimately, of course, Pharaoh will be defeated by his own shrewdness, a process that the Bible calls hardness of heart.

For the first time in this book, the Israelites “pull a fast one” on Pharaoh, thus demonstrating a superior wisdom that ties this story back to the Joseph narrative at the end of Genesis. The midwives “feared the Lord,” and this was the source of their wisdom; cf. Psalm 110:10. Whereas the enemy outsmarted Eve at the beginning of Genesis, the women here in Exodus outwit the enemy.

The endeavor to kill the male children places this text in a parallel with Matthew 2:16. Beginning with the dreams of two Josephs in Genesis 37 and Matthew 1, there are many striking correspondences between the opening chapters of Matthew and the long account of the Chosen People in Egypt.

Psalms 2: 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), and 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).

Saturday, December 29

Hebrews 4:1-16: In his use of the Book of Psalms in this chapter, it is clear that the author of Hebrews believed that the meaning of that text was contemporary to himself and his readers. That is to say, the cited text was of more than historical interest.

The dominant word indicating this persuasion is “today” (semeron), which appears twice in verse 7. The voice of God, he says, must be heard today. He expounds this principle in verses 12-13, speaking of God’s word as living and efficacious, sharper than a sword. It penetrates and divides man’s inner being, judging the reflections and thoughts of his mind.

There is no stronger affirmation of the truth that God lays bare our being by the light of His word searching our souls. When the Bible is read, whether proclaimed loudly in the worship of the Church or pondered quietly in the intimacy of our homes, God speaks. His prophetic word of judgment sears into our being laying bare the secrets of our consciences. It is a “word of judgment”—logos kritikos (verse 12). It does not lie there inert on the page open before our eyes. We search the Scriptures so that the Scriptures may search us, cutting into our being to expose what we are within. This is what makes the Bible different from all other books. Only here does God speak prophetically, in the sense of placing our whole being radically under judgment.

John 1:19-28: The Evangelist speaks of a double interrogation of John the Baptist by the religious leaders from Jerusalem. It appears that the Evangelist has conflated stories of two delegations, one from the Sadducees (priests and Levites), the other from the Pharisees. He found it easy to conflate the two interrogations, since both groups apparently asked very much the same questions—all of them about John’s identity. We should presume that John the Baptist was questioned on this point several times (cf. Luke 3:7-18).

Both groups are said to represent “the Jews,” an expression that appears here for the first time in John’s Gospel. In most of the instances of this word in John, it designates Jesus’ enemies—the “Jews” as distinct from the Christians. That is to say, John’s use of this word appears to come from a period in which the Church was becoming an entity readily distinguished from the Synagogue.

Although not consistently, we find the word “Jews” already use in this sense long before John. Indeed, it appears in the earliest book of the New Testament, twenty years before the destruction of Jerusalem. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians,

For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God which are in Judea in Christ Jesus. For you also suffered the same things from your own countrymen, just as they from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have persecuted us (1 Thessalonians 2:14-15).

Sunday, December 30

Hebrews 5:1-14: The chief point our author wants to make here, with respect to the priesthood of Jesus Christ, is His compassion for sinners. He is compassionate, says Hebrews, because He suffered temptation. This theme was already introduced in Hebrews, at the end of that section dealing with the Incarnation:

Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted (2:17-18).

Our author insists that this is kind of priest we need; He must feel the same weakness the rest of us feel: “For we do not have a High Priest unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but was, like ourselves, tempted in everything.”

The temptations faced by Jesus were recorded chiefly in two blocks of narrative in the New Testament: His temptation for forty days in the wilderness, and his agony in the garden.

For all that, however, we should probably not imagine that these were the only times Jesus was subject to temptation. As the religious leaders of the Jewish people started to reject Jesus and his claims—an experience that apparently grew more intense during the course of his ministry—he began to realize that He would finish his life nailed to a cross. In fact, the gospels tell us, “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” (Mark 8:31).

It is reasonable to think that the sadness and fear of Jesus, which became critical during his agony in the garden, took hold of his soul much earlier, as he came gradually to understand how sternly his fidelity to His Father would be tested.

Jesus also knew the Scriptures. He had long ago learned the stories of Elijah, Jeremiah, and Job. He was fully aware that all those who would serve God must endure suffering. He could take personal charge of the admonition laid down by Sirach:

Son, when thou comest to the service of God . . . prepare thy soul for temptation. . . . Humble thy heart, and endure. . . . Wait on God with patience: join thyself to God, and endure . . . Take all that shall be brought upon thee: and in thy sorrow endure, and in thy humiliation keep patience. For gold and silver are tried in the fire, but acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation (Sirach 2:1-5).

This trial of Jesus’ spirit, according to the Epistle to the Hebrews, made Him compassionate. Indeed, says Hebrews, compassion is a quality God requires of every priest:

For every high priest taken from among men is appointed for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins. He can have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself is also subject to weakness.

Monday, December 31

Hebrews 6:1-12: This work, apparently a sort of sermon (logos parakleseos—13:22), was composed for a congregation in fairly dire straits. This work contains several warnings about the dangers of apostasy. To find anything comparable to this in the New Testament, we must go to the letters to the Seven Churches of Asia in the Book of Revelation. Certainly we don’t find this level of warning in any of Paul’s letters to the churches, not even in the epistles to the Galatians and the Corinthians.

The author, however, adopts a tack that may appear surprising: Instead of reviewing the fundamentals of the Christian faith, he determines to take the congregation into deeper waters. He says to them, “let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity” (ESV). He explains what he means by referring to the earlier catechesis offered to the congregation at the time of their reception into the Christian Church.

He does this by way of reminding them of the components of that catechesis: “repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.” In the Acts of the Apostles we find all these subjects as matters of instruction when people were brought to the Christian faith.

Our author refers to them here just in passing, as it were, by way of reminding the congregation briefly of things they already know.

He then reminds them of the sacred mysteries by which they were received into the Christian Church. He reminds them of their enlightenment in Baptism—indeed, he actually uses this ancient expression for Baptism: “those who were once enlightened.”

Likewise, he mentions the Holy Communion, which was part of their reception into the Church: “have tasted the heavenly gift.” He speaks of the gift of the Holy Spirit, conferred by the laying on of hands: “have become partakers of the Holy Spirit.” He briefly mentions the understanding of God’s Word imparted to those who join the Church: “have tasted the good word of God.” And finally, refers to all of these experiences as a foretaste of heaven: “the powers of the world to come.”

The author intentionally does not dwell on these things; it is sufficient merely to mention them. Indeed, he mentions them to support a warning against apostasy. He says that those who have experienced such abounding grace must not come short, because it is unlikely they will ever get such a chance again. In fact, he does not even use the word “unlikely.” He says “impossible”; “it is impossible . . . to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame.”

We recall that Jesus also used rhetorical expressions of this sort, referring to cutting off one’s hand, gouging out one’s eye, and even making oneself a eunuch. Rhetorical expressions of this sort have the merit of gaining the full attention of the listener, which they certainly do.

In short, those original listeners to the Epistle to the Hebrews knew themselves to be hearing a final warning, before it was too late.

Tuesday, January 1

Genesis 1: As a good Franciscan, Saint Bonaventure (1221-1274) loved to contemplate the wisdom of God in the wonders of Creation. This contemplation was not vague or sentimental. It was deliberately discursive, theologically guided by the beginning of Genesis, where Creation is described in a poetic narrative. That is to say, Bonaventure approached the created world through the eyes of reflective, sapiential theology, the literary model of which was the first chapter of Genesis.

Following this biblical lead, Bonaventure concerned himself with Creation on several occasions. Around 1254, he discoursed on the subject at length in his lectures on Book II of the Sentences of Peter the Lombard. He returned to the theme in his Breviloquium, a condensed theological outline composed in 1257. During the following year, he came back to God’s vestigia in universo—”footprints in the Universe”—in his Itinerarium, The Journey of the Mind Unto God. Finally, in 1273, the year before he died, Bonaventure began an extensive commentary on Genesis 1. (His elevation as a Roman Cardinal and his presidency at the Second Council of Lyons prevented its completion.)

Bonaventure’s discursive approach to Genesis 1 drew attention to its progressive note of distinctio, the ordering of Creation by the division and separation of its components (Breviloquium 2.2.1). He wrote of God’s “wisdom lucidly distinguishing all things”—sapientiam cuncta lucide distinguentem (Itinerarium 1.14). The art of “distinguishing” was one of the notable qualities and preoccupations of School Theology of the Middle Ages, and no one was better at it than Bonaventure.

Students of Holy Scripture, however, will recognize that this Scholastic preoccupation with “distinctions” works remarkably well for the first chapter of Genesis, where the inspired author structured each of the six days of the story on a series of distinctions. That is to say, a preoccupation with distinctions lends organization, not only to the divine act of Creation, but also to the human act of literary composition.

Thus, God divided the light from the darkness on Day One, thereby distinguishing day from night. The second distinction was introduced on the second day, when “God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament.”

On the third day, the land was distinguished from the waters, when God gathered the waters into seas and “let the dry appear”—wetera’eh hayabasha. On this “dry,” God caused to bloom the plants and trees, “each according to its kind.” On the third day, then, the author marked two levels of distinction: between the land and water, and among the various species of plants.

Then, having adorned the earth, on the fourth day God once again turned His attention to the heavens, where he placed two great lights, mainly for the purpose of further distinctions—”to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness.” By means of these lights, as well, time would be divided by seasons and days and years. The very purpose of the heavenly bodies was the insertion of distinctions into time.

On the fifth day, God formed creatures that would make their way through the air and the water. These self-mobile creatures, each distinct according to its kind, were distinguished from the plants created two days earlier, inasmuch as the plants were unable to move themselves. Here the author marks three levels of distinction: between self-mobile creatures and plants, between animals of the water and of the air, and among the various species of each.

For Creation’s sixth day, there were two narrative parts: the first, in which God created all the earth-bound animals, each according to its kind, and the second, in which “God created man in His image.” The Genesis narrative indicates no historical or biological continuity between the human being and the other animals. On the contrary, the Creation of human beings was distinguished from the creation of other animals by a distinct and unique act.

The final and crowning distinction, however, was between male and female human beings. Here the language is unique. Unlike the Creation account in Genesis 2, Genesis 1 does not speak of “man” and “woman,” but of zakar and neqebah—male and female.

If we compare this vocabulary with that of Genesis 2, the difference is striking. In the second story, the distinction is what we might call “personal”; it distinguishes “man” (’ish) from “woman” (’isha). In Genesis 1 the distinction is, rather, physical and biological: male (zakar) and female (neqebah).

Perhaps this distinction gains clarity if we contrast “male and female” with “masculine and feminine.” The former pair describes something physical, genetic, and absolutely immutable; a male cannot become a female, nor vice-versa. The most than be done—and this is a sin of a most serious order—is to mutilate certain organs marking of the deeper difference.

When we speak of “masculine and feminine,” on the other hand, we are not referring to sex but to gender. The terms “masculine and feminine” are not, properly speaking, biological but grammatical and psychological. That is to say, these terms are more malleable; they are open to different social, economic, and political expressions, which the terms “male and female” are not.

At the risk of oversimplification, we might say that Genesis 2 is about “masculine and feminine,” while Genesis 1 is about “male and female.” It is certainly true that Genesis 2 refers to marriage, which Genesis 1 does not.

Indeed, the Bible rarely uses the vocabulary “male and female”—zakar and neqebah—in reference to human beings. Being a specifically biological description, it most often refers to animals (in Noah’s Ark, for instance, and the various creatures sacrificed in Israel’s religion). When Holy Scripture does use this vocabulary with respect to human beings, it is in reference to “sins against nature” (Leviticus 18:22; 20:13; cf. Romans 1:26-27).

It is worth inquiring, perhaps, which distinction is deeper in the structure of Creation, “male and female” or “masculine and feminine.” Because the former is strictly biological, it might appear to be more basic.

On the other hand, one can argue that there is something in the differences of things much deeper than biology. That is to say, perhaps the terms “masculine and feminine” grasp something more fundamental in Creation than biology. Maybe we should call it “poetry.”

Wednesday, January 2

Genesis 2: On other occasions I have commented on the patience of Saint Irenaeus, who set himself to refute the complex and highly arcane speculations of the Gnostics. In order to accomplish the task, this second-century Father of the Church was obliged to read many volumes full of the most awful sorts of nonsense. He had to study writers like Valentinian and Basilides. His pursuit compelled him to become familiar with the “unmeasured silence” of the Protennoia, the “thought that dwells in light, the movement that dwells in the All.” He was required to read endless treatises about “Barbelo,” the female emanation of the Absolute; he could not escape investigating the various aeons, such as Autogenes. He had to work his way through the Syzygy and pursue theories about Mirotheaos and the Ogdoad. And so on, without end. When, in the year 202, he suffered martyrdom, I suspect Irenaeus felt a sense of relief.

Fortunately, we live in a more enlightened age. Modern people are well founded in the proven facts. For Instance, people nowadays do not adhere to exotic and improbable theories about the origins of nature and the structure of reality.

What do modern people believe on these subjects?

Well, let us take an outstanding example of modern enlightened thought. Let us consider Dr. Lawrence Krauss, who heads the “Origins Project” at Arizona State University. Dr. Krauss’s most recent book, A Universe From Nothing: Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing, was published earlier this year. It is obviously an important book, because it quickly made its way onto the best-seller list of The New York Times.

According to Dr. Krauss, the first concept we must dismiss is “God.” God, it seems, not only has nothing to do with the origin of nature or the structure of reality; God is a useless distraction. Krauss writes, “Theology has made no contribution to knowledge in the past five hundred years, since the dawn of science.”

Well, okay. We all have our little hang-ups, I suppose. If we want to be fair with Krauss, let’s give him that one. Let’s bracket God for the moment. If we cannot be theological, let us try to be at least logical, as Krauss claims to be. Let us hear him out. How does Krauss explain “Why there is something rather than nothing”?

Well, says Krauss, it wasn’t always so. Until about 13.72 billion years ago, there really was nothing. (By the way, I love the scientific precision of that extra .72 billion. A lesser thinker would simply have rounded it off to 14 billion.) Until then, nothing existed. Then—and rather abruptly, it seems—there was something.

You see, Krauss explains, the pre-existent nothing was not ordinary nothing—le rien du jour, so to speak. It was real nothing, but it was nothing charged with energy. Then, somehow, this energetic nothing exploded into something. In just a second or so, you got—whammo!—atomic particles: electrons, neutrons, protons. That’s what you got right away, as soon as the pre-existent non-existent went “bang!”

Then, about three minutes later—his calculation—protons and neutrons found their way to one another to form the first atomic nuclei. (Let me quibble: I suspect it was probably something closer to 3.72 minutes.) Then, everything sort of calmed down for about 300,000 years, while these new nuclei cooled off, so the electrons could find their way in and establish honest-to-goodness atoms.

Then, over the next billion (perhaps 1.72 billion) years, these atoms came together to form stars. Then, a couple of billion years later, nuclear reactions in the stars created heavier elements, such as iron and carbon. Eventually the stars exploded, sending iron and carbon and all the other elements out into the universe. And here we are now, we modern people, made of stardust: “One of the most poetic facts I know about the universe is that essentially every atom in your body was once inside a star that exploded.”

I am not making this up.

Krauss is not a writer of science fiction; he is a professor of theoretical physics at a notable university. So why does his stardust so closely resemble moonbeams? As the song says, even someone “sixteen going on seventeen” knows that “nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could.” I don’t look for another long-suffering Irenaeus to come along any time soon, but I do hope even young people will notice that Krauss’s theory is quite marvelously irrational.

Thursday, January 3

Genesis 3: When we think of Adam’s Fall, we should think of him as “lost.” This sums up the human condition without Christ. So . . . man is lost. Worse, he continues to get lost. It is a mistake to think of the fallen human being as somehow looking for God. Indeed, the very opposite is true. When the human race fell in Adam, a kind of spiritual inertia came into play, a force that kept him going in the same direction—away from God. Of himself man had no power of initiative to reverse the movement. This is what is meant by the Fall.

If man was to return to God, God had to take the initiative. If God had not sought man out, he would have kept going in the same direction—away. This is very clear in the biblical story of Adam’s hiding from God immediately after his disobedience. He and all his descendants would still be lying low there in the bushes if God had not come after him, inquiring, “Where are you?”

It was not that God did not know where to find Adam. It was Adam who was lost, not God. God knew where Adam was, but Adam didn’t. God’s query, “Where are you?” was intended to wake lost man up to his real situation. “Where are you?” was the inchoative proclamation of the Gospel, the merciful word that began to reverse the direction of man’s existence. Indeed, it was the first step toward the mystery of the Incarnation.

This divine inquiry was necessary because man had no interest in finding God. It was of God, on the contrary, that Adam was most afraid, because
God recognized him to be naked. God understood this and promptly provided a covering for man’s nakedness. It was the initial step toward man’s final clothing, indicated in St. Paul’s exhortation to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 13:14).

But even when confronted by his sin, Adam did not accept the accompanying guilt and responsibility. He immediately blamed Eve: “The woman You gave me, gave me of the tree, and I ate” (3:12). Indeed, this response even seems to blame God for the Fall. Adam speaks of Eve as “the woman You gave me,” as though to say, “I did not ask for a wife; this whole arrangement was Your idea. This woman, whom You designed, is the one who got me into this mess.”

Eve, for her part, follows Adam’s example of passing the blame: “The serpent deceived me, and I ate” (3:13). This too was God’s fault, of course, because He created this “creeping thing” (1:25).

Eve could hardly hold herself responsible for what had happened. Even found, that is to say, fallen man was obviously still lost. Thanks be to God, more help was on the way.

Friday, January 4

Genesis 4: Not least among the ironies of the Bible is the fact that its very first family was also its first dysfunctional family. For one thing, the boys didn’t get along. Fratricide is a useful clue.

The theological source of the problem, certainly, was the sin of the first parents in Genesis 3, though the novelist Jessamyn West did offer her own peculiar slant on the point: “Always thought Adam might’ve handled his boys better if he’d been a boy himself. . . . Worked under a handicap, as it was.”

In regard to these two brothers it is ironical, too, that the first man to die was also the first to be murdered. More ironical still, perhaps, he was murdered for his religious faith. “By faith,” Holy Scripture tells us, “Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain,” and “Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell.” Consumed with rage, he at last “rose up against his brother Abel and killed him” (Hebrews 11:4; Genesis 4:5,8). The first man to die, therefore, perished in testimony to his faith, and it was an angry unbeliever who took his life.

The key to the discernment of the first murder is the prior moral fissure dividing these two men. Murder was the fruit, not the root, of Cain’s offense. St. John tells us, “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer” (1 John 3:15). Antecedent to the killing itself, then, the killer was already “of the evil one” (3:12).

While we easily perceive that Cain killed because he was a bad man, it is important to see also that Abel was slain precisely because he was a good man. His goodness was the very reason that Cain took his life. St. John affirms it: “And why did he murder him? Because his works were evil and his brother’s righteous” (1 John 3:12). While it is said of Cain that “he perished in the fury wherewith he murdered his brother” (Wisdom 10:3), of Abel we are told that “he obtained witness that he was righteous” (Hebrews 11:4).

Thus commences the Bible’s reading of history as a prolonged chronicle of “all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel” (Matthew 23:35). The saga of persecution begins with “The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground” and ends with “How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” (Genesis 4:10; Revelation 6:10).

Abel, then, though dead since the dawn of history, “still speaks” (Hebrews 11:4). The author of this book went on to invoke this same image with respect to Jesus’ own blood. The blood of Jesus, he wrote, “speaks better things than that of Abel” (12:24). Whereas Abel’s blood cried out demanding revenge, the blood of Jesus, who is called here “the Mediator of the new covenant,” invokes the divine mercy for sinners. Such is the blood in which we have access to “the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (12:23).

Friday, December 21

Revelation 21:1-8: We now come to the final two chapters of John’s book of prophetic visions. Now we see no more battles, no more bloodshed, no more persecution. John sees, rather, the holy city, New Jerusalem, as the ultimate reality that gives meaning to all that preceded it.

In this final vision, which lasts two chapters, John is aware that seven things are gone forever: the sea, death, grief, crying, pain, the curse, and the night (21:1,4; 22:3,5). Here we are dealing with the definitive abolition of conflict, the end of chaos. The first symbol of this chaos is the sea, which has only such shape as it is given from outside of itself. The sea represents the nothingness out of which God creates all things, conferring meaning upon them. This chaos is both metaphysical and moral. It represents a nothingness replaced by the lake of fire, the second death. The sea is the hiding place of the monster and the setting where the scarlet woman thrones. This sea disappears at the coming of the new heaven and the new earth.

If we take the earth to represent man’s empirical and categorical experience, and heaven to represent man’s experience of transcendence, then the appearance of the new heaven and the new earth means the transformation of all of man’s experience. All of it is made new. The grace of God in Christ does not sanctify just a part of man’s existence, but his whole being. Man is not a partially redeemed creature. Both his heaven and his earth are made new.

Both heaven and earth are part of God’s final gift to man, the New Jerusalem, the “dwelling of God with man.” This dwelling, skene in Greek and mishkan in Hebrew (both, if one looks closely, having the same triliteral root, skn), was originally a tent made of “skins,” as the same etymological root is expressed in English. During the desert wandering after the Exodus, this tent of skins was the abode of God’s presence with His people. Indeed, sometimes the word was simply the metaphor for the divine presence (verse 3). For instance, in Leviticus 26:11 we read, “I will set My mishkan among you . . . . I will walk among you and be your God, and you shall be My people.”

Luke 1:57-66: In the case of John the Baptist, faith began before he was born. His ears could already hear the prayers of his mother and father. He could already listen to the hymns they sang at home and in the temple. The sounds of their voices were already giving shape to his soul. In proportion to his tiny abilities, his culture was already taking shape. He was already assuming his place in history.

John held his identity as a matter of memory, memory earlier than his ability to recall critically. This memory, for John, was primitive, more aboriginal than mere recollection. The man that finally placed his neck on the block for beheading is the same person as the child that was awakened by the voice of the Virgin Mary as he nestled in his mother’s womb. Through all the vicissitudes of his life, there was a personal continuity in John the Baptist.

Saturday, December 22

Revelation 21:9-27: All of history is symbolized in two women, who are two cities. We have already considered the scarlet woman who is Babylon/ Rome. The other woman is the Bride, the New Jerusalem, whose proper place is heaven, but who also flees to the desert, where she does battle with Satan (Chapter 12). Now that battle is over, however, and she appears here in her glory. That other city was seated, as we saw, on seven hills, but this New Jerusalem also sits on a very high mountain, which everyone understood to be symbolized in Mount Zion (cf. Ezekiel 40:1-2). John’s vision of the gates on the city is reminiscent of Ezekiel 48.

John’s vision here, especially verses 19-21, is also related to Ezekiel 28:12-15, where we find joined the themes of the mountain and the precious stones, for this city is also the Garden of Eden, where those stones first grew (cf. Genesis 2:10-12).

The symbolic number here is twelve, which we already considered in Chapter 12, where it was the number of the stars around the head of the heavenly woman. The identification of twelve stars with twelve stones is obvious in our own custom of birthstones to represent zodiacal signs. The symbol is not only astrological, however, but also historical, because it is the number of the patriarchs and apostles. Here, in fact, the twelve gates bear the names of the twelve tribes, who are the seed of the twelve patriarchs, while the twelve foundation stones of the city are identified as the twelve apostles.

We recall that one hundred and forty-four thousand—the number of the righteous—partly involves squaring of the number twelve. In the present chapter John stresses that the plane geometry of the holy city is square, as in Ezekiel 45 and 48. John goes beyond Ezekiel, however, in viewing the New Jerusalem as a cube, as in the Holy of Holies of Solomon’s temple (1 Kings 6:20).

Psalms 139 (Greek & Latin 138): The psalmist, instead of using one image to describe God’s knowledge of the heart, uses six: search and know, sitting down and rising up and lying down, paths and ways, thoughts and words. Obviously he wants to dwell on the thought; he is not anxious to leave it. He wants the conviction to sink deeply into his soul that God knows him through and through, so he comes at the idea from a variety of angles and aspects.

The psalm continues in the same vein: “You have beset me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me.” He is not content to say that this idea is transcendent; he must say it twice: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain to it.”

And because God’s knowledge of us is complete, it is impossible to escape His gaze. Once again the poet uses several lines to meditate on this fact, moving in several directions, as it were: “If I ascend to heaven [up!], You are there. If I make my bed in the netherworld [down!], behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning [east!] and dwell at the uttermost parts of the sea [west!], even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand hold me.”

Here we are, ten verses into the psalm, and so far there is only a single idea. The poet is still not finished with it, however. He now switches from space imagery to symbolisms of light: “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will cover me,’ even the night will be a light around me. Yea, the darkness hides me not from You, but the night shines as the day; to You the darkness and the night are both alike.” Once again he has repeated the same motif several times. God’s knowledge of our hearts is not an idea that he is disposed to let go of.

After these images of space and light, the psalmist moves to a consideration of time. He goes back to his very roots of being, his mysterious formation in the womb: “For You take hold of my inner parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb.” Is that sufficient? Oh, no. He must say it all again: “I will praise You that I am awesomely and wonderfully put together; marvelous are Your works, and my soul knows it well.” Then, using a bold comparison of his mother’s womb to the depths of the earth, he goes on to reflect on his own gestation as a prelude to his coming life: “My substance was not hidden from You, when I was being formed in secret, and strangely put together in the depths of the earth. You saw my substance, as yet unfinished, but all my days were written in Your book before a single one of them came into being.” Even in the deepest past, God knows the future.

Then there is a quick twist. The tone of the psalm has, hitherto, been calm and contemplative, but we suddenly learn that there is trouble afoot: “Surely You will slay the wicked, O God; depart from me, therefore, you bloody men.” This dramatic mention of enemies makes us realize that, even while making this deep meditation on a single theme, the poet is somehow fighting for the very life of his soul. He resolves this problem by placing his soul ever more deeply under the gaze of God: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts.”

The psalm’s final strophe thus indicates that this whole effort takes place in a situation of strife and conflict. His quest is for salvation, and salvation consists in God’s salvific knowledge of us: “If anyone loves God, this one is known by Him” (1 Cor. 8:3); “Then I shall know just as I also am known” (13:12). So the believer seeks refuge in God’s saving knowledge of him and ends by praying that God will ever lead him “in the path eternal.”

Sunday, December 23

Revelation 22:1-21: The biblical story begins and ends in paradise. Thus, in John’s vision of the river of paradise we remember the four-branched river of paradise in Genesis 2. Both here and in Ezekiel 47:1-12 there are monthly fruits growing on the banks of the river—twelve in number—obviously. Just as Adam’s curse drove the whole human race out of paradise, so the leaves of the paradisiacal tree of life are for the healing of all the nations.

The theme of the living waters is very much central to the Johannine corpus (cf. John 4:7-15; 7:38; 19:34; 1 John 5:6-8).

Heaven, portrayed here as vision and worship with the angels (verses 8-9), is for all those whose foreheads are sealed with the mark of the living God. This sealing, of course, stands in contrast to the mark of beast. (It is curious to note that, outside of the Book of Revelation [7:2-3; 9:3-4; 13:16-18; 14:1.9; 17:5; 20:4], the word “forehead” does not appear in the New Testament.) The literary background of John’s sealing is apparently Ezekiel 9:1-4.

The urgency of John’s message is indicated by the command that he not seal it up for future generations. The Lord’s coming, in fact, will be soon, and it is imperative for John’s readers to “get out” the message. John’s visions are not sealed, concealed, esoteric codes to be deciphered by future generations. John clearly expects his own contemporaries to understand what he is writing. These things “must shortly take place” (verse 6); it will all happen “soon” (1:1,3). John is warning his contemporaries that a special moment of judgment and grace is upon them and that they had better prepare themselves for it, because it is later than they think.

This final chapter of Revelation resembles in several particulars the first chapter of the book, one of which is that in both places Jesus speaks to John directly. In both chapters He is called the Alpha and the Omega (verse 12; 1:8). As in that first chapter, likewise, the references to Jesus’ swift return (verse 7, for instance) do not pertain solely to His coming at the end of time; He is saying, rather, that in the hour of their trial those who belong to Jesus will find that He is there waiting for them. The blessing in verse 7, therefore, resembles the blessing in 1:3.

In this book a great deal has been said about the worship in the heavenly sanctuary. Now we learn that Christians already share in the worship that the angels give to God (verses 8-9).

Verse 11 indicates a definite cut-off point in history, which is the final coming of Christ. Verse 12, which quotes Isaiah 40:10, promises the reward, which is access to the Holy City, eternal beatitude—the fullness of communion with God. In preparation for that reward, verses 14-16 are something of an altar call, an appeal for repentance, based on all that this book has said.

In referring to those “outside” the City, John is relying on an ancient Eucharistic discipline of the Church, called “excommunication,” which literally excluded the person from receiving Holy Communion (cf. Didache 9.5; Justin Martyr, First Apology 66.1). One of the major problems of the Christian Church, in any age, is that of distinguishing itself from the world, and the Christian Church, like any institution in history, finds its identity threatened if it does not maintain “lines” that separate it from the world. In early Christian literature, beginning with the New Testament, we find the Church insistent on making those lines sharp and clear. This preoccupation is what accounts for the rather pronounced “them and us” mentality that we find in the New Testament. It is an emphasis essential to maintain if the Church is to preserve her own identity down through history.

Monday, December 24

Matthew 1:18-25: Jesus’ family bore Joseph’s name. Although Matthew and Luke testified that Joseph was not Jesus’ biological father, it was through him that both evangelists traced Jesus’ family lineage (Matthew 1:1-16; Luke 3:23–31). Jesus inherited the messianic title, “Son of David,” not from Mary, but from the man who served him—literally—in loco patris.

Jesus “was supposed” (enomizeto—Luke 3:23) to be “the son of Joseph,” Jeshua Bar Joseph (John 1:45; 6:42). When he first addressed the citizens of Nazareth, those in the synagogue inquired, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” (Luke 4:22)

Matthew provides an instructive variation on this question: “Is this not the craftsman’s son?” (Matthew 13:55) The underlying Greek noun here, usually translated as “carpenter,” is tekton, a term including any sort of builder, craftsman, or skilled worker—even a blacksmith. A tekton was someone who constructed and fashioned things with his hands.

In short, Joseph taught Jesus those cultivated manual talents summarized by George Eliot as the inheritance bequeathed from a craftsman father: “the mechanical instinct, the keen sensibility to harmony, the unconscious skill of the modeling hand.”

Joseph passed these technical skills on to Jesus, who was also known as a tekton. A tekton was a man with talented hands, and Jesus’ hands could heal the sick and injured! Mark surely recognized the irony of calling Jesus a tekton in the context of his miracles and teaching: “And what wisdom is this which is given to him, that such mighty works are performed by his hands. Is this not the tekton?” (Mark 6:2-3)

What more did Jesus learn from Joseph? Let me suggest that he also found in Joseph an ideal son of Abraham—that is to say, a man who lived, as Abraham did, by faith.

Consider the calling of Joseph. Every vocation is unique——n the sense that the Good Shepherd calls each of his sheep by its own proper name—but there was something supremely unique in the vocation of Joseph, who was called to be the foster-father of God’s Son and the protector of that divine Son’s virgin mother. Joseph’s vocation was not only difficult; it was impossible! In a sense, Joseph had to figure it out as he went along, simply following God’s call, as best he could, wherever it led. He was obliged to “leave the heavy lifting” to God.

With so distinctive and demanding a vocation, Joseph might be excused, if, on occasion—the flight into Egypt, for instance—he felt anxious and insecure. The evidence, however, indicates that this was not the case. Joseph was not a person given to anxiety. He appeared, rather, as a man of extraordinary serenity. We find Joseph in five scenes in the Gospel of Matthew, and every single time he is sound asleep (Matthew 1:20-24; 2:12, 13, 19, 22). Whatever troubles Joseph endured, they apparently did not include insomnia.

Tuesday, December 25

Christmas: Even as we proclaim that the eternal Word assumed the concrete circumstances of an individual human life—becoming a subjective participant in human history—the redemptive significance of the Incarnation is rooted, not in the individuality of Jesus’ life, but in the general and common humanity he shares with the rest of us.

Indeed, in the New Testament one finds no impulse to treat Jesus as an “exceptional” man, as the world understands such a one: a heroic figure who rises above his contemporaries to answer the call of destiny. Such a man is different from other men.

Jesus is treated, rather, as one of us. This treatment is very different from the way their contemporaries regarded Caesar, Alexander the Great, and other “exceptional” men. Such figures were not usually thought of as mere members of the human race; they were not normally called “brothers” to the rest of humanity. They were, on the contrary, the viri illustres et clarissimi. Thus, although Plutarch’s Lives of famous Greeks and Romans was a work roughly contemporary with the composition of the gospels, its sundry biographies bear not the slightest resemblance to the gospels.

In fact, Jesus discouraged men from thinking about him in that way. He even manifested a reluctance to be called the Messiah (cf. Mark 8:29-30), inasmuch as that term had come to signify military and political ascendancy. Moreover, he deliberately assumed the role of a servant among those who followed him (John 13:4), precisely to discourage them from imitating the “rulers over the Gentiles” (Mark 10:42).

The biblical emphasis on the “common” quality of the Lord’s humanity, on the other hand, indicated more than an ethical preference on his part. His complete solidarity with the rest of the human race was a condition, rather, of His ability to redeem the human race. Such was the force, I believe, of the reference to Jesus as “born of a woman” in Paul’s account of the Son’s coming “to redeem those under the Law” (Galatians 4:4-5).

This solidarity of God’s Son with our humanity—in order to redeem humanity—gives structure to the argument made in the Epistle to the Hebrews:

Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared in the same, that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage (2:14-15).

This biological solidarity with the rest of humanity is what prompts the author of Hebrews to speak of Jesus as our “brother”: “He is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying: ‘ I will declare Your name to my brethren’” (2:11).

Our Lord’s oneness with mankind, however, is more than biological. He is not called a “brother” simply as the rest might bear that title. On the contrary, he has identified himself with human beings in the special sense of becoming their historical representative—their truly definitive spokesman: “Go to my brethren and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, my God and your God’” (John 20:17).

Indeed, in the Gospel of Matthew, this special sense of Jesus’ “brotherhood” pertains directly to eschatology. At the end of history, all human beings—“all the nations” (25:32)—will be judged on the basis of their brotherhood with Jesus: “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did to one of the least of these my brethren, you did to me” (25:40).

Wednesday, December 26

Saint Stephen: Generations of preachers have employed no little ingenuity—and sometimes a fair measure of eloquence—to expound the theological reasons for celebrating St. Stephen’s Day so close to Christmas. It is not to slight those rhetorical efforts that one reflects that “the feast of Stephen” was celebrated long before anyone thought of celebrating the birthday of the Savior. Stephen, that is to say, got into the liturgical calendar first.

Indeed, there is good reason to think that St. Stephen’s is among the oldest feast days in the Christian Church. Moreover, except for the days of Holy Week and the paschal cycle itself, it is possible that the annual commemoration of the martyrdom of St. Stephen is the oldest feast day in the Christian liturgical calendar.

In Luke’s description of Stephen’s martyrdom, several features are worthy of remark:

First, like the Savior (John 20:19; Hebrews 13:12), Stephen is executed outside the city wall (Acts 7:58), because even in this massive miscarriage of basic justice, Stephen’s murderers adhere to the Mosaic prescription (Leviticus 24:14; Numbers 15:35–36). This is ironic, because in Lukan theology this exit from Jerusalem, for the murder of Stephen, symbolizes that outward movement of the witness from Jerusalem that is so strong a theme in the Book of Acts (1:8).

Second—and also as a feature of considerable irony—it is in this scene that St. Paul is first introduced in the Acts of the Apostles (7:58). This introduction of the Apostle to the Gentiles, at exactly this point in the narrative of Acts, is of a piece with the theological significance of Stephen’s dying outside of the walls. Later on, praying in a state of trance, Paul will say to Jesus, “And when the blood of Your martyr Stephen was shed, I also was standing by consenting to his death, and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him” (22:20).

Third, there is a powerful emphasis on the Holy Spirit. It was early said that Stephen was “full of the Holy Spirit” (6:3, 5), but the statement is repeated once again in the context of his death (7:55). This emphasis, which relates Stephen’s death to the pentecostal outpouring, reflects the conviction of the early Church that martyrdom is the supreme charism of the Christian life, the final and crowning gift of the Holy Spirit that definitively seals and consecrates the testimony, the martyria, of the Church and the believer. We meet this conviction somewhat later in The Martyrdom of Polycarp and in the earliest treatises on martyrdom by the Christian apologists.

Thursday, December 27

Saint John: It is often remarked that the omission of the Transfiguration account from the Fourth Gospel is properly explained by the fact that Jesus always appears transfigured in that Gospel. In its every scene, including the Passion narrative, Jesus is suffused with the radiance of the divine light. “We beheld His glory,” says St. John in the prologue, “the glory as of the only begotten of the Father” (1:14).

Today we read that prologue, which sets the theme for John’s entire story. It is peculiar to John, whose Gospel otherwise adheres to the exact time span covered by the earliest apostolic preaching, namely, “all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John to that day when He was taken up from us” (Acts 1:21–22). Adherence to this same primitive time frame is also characteristic of the message of Peter and Paul (10:36–42; 13:23–31), as well as the earliest of the Gospels, Mark. So too John, except for his prologue.

Matthew and Luke had expanded that original time frame by adding the stories of Jesus’ conception, birth, and infancy. John’s prologue, however, escapes the confines of time altogether, rising to God’s eternity, where “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). Only then does this Gospel begin to speak of the ministry of John the Baptist (1:6, 15).

The Jesus presented in John’s Gospel, then, is the eternal Word, in whom “was life, and the life was the light of men” (1:4). Becoming flesh and dwelling among us (1:14), He is the living revelation of God on this earth. Even though “no one has seen God at any time,” John says, “the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared Him” (1:18).

These themes will appear again in the Lord’s Last Supper discourse and the long intercession that He prays at the end of it. There will He speak of his being “the way, the truth, and the life” (14:6) and refer to the glory that He had with the Father before the world began (17:5, 24).

John’s contemplative gaze at the glory of God on the face of Jesus also determines other features of his Gospel. We observe, for instance, his treatment of Jesus’ miracles. Although his narrative very intentionally includes fewer of these than do the other Gospels (20:30; 21:25), John provides them greater theological elaboration.

John limits the number of recorded miracles, which he calls “signs,” to the sacred figure seven. Leading to the commitment of faith, these seven signs commence with the fine wine of the wedding feast: “This beginning [arche, the same word as in 1:1] of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory; and His disciples believed in Him” (2:11, emphasis added).

The second sign John identifies as the curing of the nobleman’s son (4:46–54); as in the first case, the man himself “believed, and his whole household” (4:53). Next comes the curing of the paralytic at the pool (5:1–15), followed by the miracle of the bread (6:1–14), the walking on the water (6:15–21), and the healing of the man born blind (9:1–41). The final and culminating sign is the raising of Lazarus from the dead (11:1–44).

John’s recording of these revelatory signs is accompanied by theological comments on their significance, either in the detailed conversations of the narrative itself (as in the raising of Lazarus and the healing of the blind man) or by the Lord’s own further elaboration (as in the Bread of Life discourse). Thus, each of these events in the Lord’s life and ministry becomes a window through which we perceive the divine glory, and Jesus is transfigured with light through the whole narrative. In addition, two lengthy conversations, one with Nicodemus (3:1–21) and the other with the Samaritan woman (4:5–42), sound the depths of the revelation that takes place in the narrative.

At the end of the seven signs, John summarizes the tragedy of the unbelief with which the enemies of Jesus responded to His revelation (12:37–41). This unbelief leads immediately to the Lord’s Passion, which is introduced by the great Last Supper discourse.

In every scene, then, from the Lord’s appearance at John’s baptismal site all the way through the Lord’s death and Resurrection, the divine light appears among men. John records all these things that we readers, too, may “believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (20:31).

Friday, December 28

The Holy Innocents: By way of prophetic type in the Book of Genesis, it was the dreaming of a man named Joseph that originally brought the Chosen People into Egypt. That prophetic type is fulfilled in today’s Gospel reading, when another Joseph has a dream that results in his taking the Chosen People back to Egypt. According to today’s reading from Exodus 1:8-22, it was in Egypt that the little boys were sacrificed to the fears of a sinful king. This also happens in today’s Gospel.

The account of the Pharaoh’s shrewdness in the Exodus story ties it to to two narratives: First, to the account of the serpent, “more cunning than any beast of the field,” in Genesis 3:1. Each of these two books, Genesis and Exodus, commences with a wily enemy who endeavors to deceive God’s people. Second, this theme is related to the later stories of Pharaoh’s attempts to outwit Moses.

This early verse of Exodus, then, introduces a major motif of our book: the “matching of wits,” in which the sinful wisdom of the world encounters the baffling wisdom of God. As this first chapter progresses, Pharaoh’s shrewdness is quickly outwitted by the Hebrew midwives, who are thus to be contrasted with the gullible Eve at the beginning of Genesis. Ultimately, of course, Pharaoh will be defeated by his own shrewdness, a process that the Bible calls hardness of heart.

For the first time in this book, the Israelites “pull a fast one” on Pharaoh, thus demonstrating a superior wisdom that ties this story back to the Joseph narrative at the end of Genesis. The midwives “feared the Lord,” and this was the source of their wisdom; cf. Psalm 110:10. Whereas the enemy outsmarted Eve at the beginning of Genesis, the women here in Exodus outwit the enemy.

The endeavor to kill the male children places this text in a parallel with Matthew 2:16. Beginning with the dreams of two Josephs in Genesis 37 and Matthew 1, there are many striking correspondences between the opening chapters of Matthew and the long account of the Chosen People in Egypt.

Psalms 2: 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), and 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).

Friday, December 14

Revelation 16:10-21: The final three bowls of plagues stand parallel to two other biblical texts: the plagues of Egypt in the Book of Exodus and the trumpets from earlier in the Book of Revelation.

The darkness of the fifth bowl (verse 10) corresponds to the ninth plague in the Book of Exodus (10:21-29). The sixth bowl, the drying up of the Euphrates, includes the proliferation of frogs, which corresponds to Moses’ second plague against Pharaoh (Exodus 8:2-6). The hailstones that accompany the seventh bowl (verse 21) are parallel to Moses’ seventh plague against Egypt (Exodus 9:13-26).

There are also parallels between these three bowls of plagues and the three final trumpets that appeared earlier in Revelation. Thus, the fifth bowl (verse 10), like the fifth trumpet (9:1-2) causes darkness over the whole earth. The sixth bowl (verse 12), like the sixth trumpet, brings forth an invading army from east of the Euphrates (9:12-19). Finally, at both the seventh bowl and the seventh trumpet there are bolts of lightning, peals of thunder, and an earthquake (verse 18; 11:19).

The sixth bowl of plagues here is a composite. There is, first of all, a drying up of the Euphrates, so that the Parthian armies can march westward. This puts one in mind of the drying up of the Jordan, so that the Israelites could move west against the Canaanites. Because of the great difference between the two instances, however, this symbolism should be read as an example of theological “inversion” (in the sense used by John Steinbeck, who often employs biblical symbols in this way), so that the identical image is used for both good and bad meanings. With respect to the drying up of the Euphrates, John knew a precedent in Jeremiah (50:38), who spoke of the drying up of the waters of Babylon, to facilitate its capture by the Persians. Indeed, John will have a great deal to say about the fall of Babylon.

Verse 15 contains a well known saying of Jesus, in which He compares His final return to the coming of a thief in the dead of night. This dominical saying is preserved in the Gospels of Matthew (24:43) and Luke (12:39).

The final battle takes place at Armageddon (verse 16), which literally is “hill of Megiddo.” Megiddo sits on the edge of the Plain of Esdraelon and was in antiquity the site of two famous battles, in each of which a king was killed. In Judges 5 the Canaanite king Sisera was slain there, and 2 Kings 23 describes the death of Josiah there in 609. In John’s mind, Armageddon symbolizes disaster, catastrophe, and violence.

Saturday, December 15

Matthew 25:31-46: As we prepare for the feast that celebrates the first coming of Christ, we have been reading three chapters of Matthew concerned with his Second Coming. The present parable, which describes the Last Judgment, provides a vivid account of the end of history. In this parable Jesus describes Himself in three ways: as judge, as brother, and as teacher. We may take these in order.

First, Jesus appears in this parable as the final judge of the whole human race:

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats.

We do well to reflect on the extraordinary nature of Jesus’ claim—the claim to be the final arbiter of universal history. Clearly, the early Christians appreciated the uniqueness of that claim. St. Paul announced to the Athenians that God “has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained” (Acts 17:31). He was equally clear on the point when he wrote to the Corinthians: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:10).

The world can hear this claim of universal judgment only with skepticism and ridicule. They hear it with skepticism because those who adhere to the world find it impossible imagine they are going to be judged at all, for the simple reason that there are no universal moral standards by which to judge them. Indeed, it is taken as axiomatic that no one can judge anyone else. And they hear this claim with ridicule, at the thought that they will be judged by someone they don’t even believe in.

Second, in this parable Jesus appears as our brother. Indeed, his brotherhood with other human beings is the very basis of his judgment: “Amen, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me. . . . Amen, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”

Early Christian emphasis on the “common” quality of the Lord’s humanity indicated more than an ethical preference on Christ’s part. His complete solidarity with the rest of the human race was a condition, rather, of his ability to redeem the human race. Such was the force of the reference to Jesus as “born of a woman” in Paul’s account of the Son’s coming “to redeem those under the Law” (Galatians 4:4-5).

Jesus is especially our brother in dying for us. Thus, Paul speaks of “the weak brother for whom Christ died.” And he goes on to assert, “But when you thus sin against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ” (1 Cor 8:11-12). We treat human beings as our brothers and sisters, because that is how Christ regards them.

In the immortal affirmation of C. Herbert Woolston, “Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in his sight.” These awesome words were first heard in Chicago, where Woolston wrote them just before the Civil War.

“They are precious in his sight,” because he paid the price—pretium—for them. A Christian’s assessment of human worth is not based on a sentimental response, but on a fact—the historical fact of the death of Christ, the theological fact of the value of his blood. The outpoured blood of Christ is the price tag that hangs on the human being.

Human beings, that is to say, are never “marked down”; they are “marked up.” They are marked by the sign of that Cross on which their redemption was purchased. The blood of Jesus is the reason we hold all human beings are “precious in his sight.”

Third, Jesus appears today as our Teacher. This story of the Last Judgment is our Lord’s final parable before Matthew’s story of the Passion. It is the last word of Jesus’ public ministry. In this parable, our Lord discloses to us what he most wants us to know: He has made himself our brother, not only by assuming the conditions of our flesh, but by dying for us on the Cross. This is the thesis by which we are defined.

Each of us knows himself to be a blood-bought brother or sister of Christ, and he has left us a commandment that must guide our thinking and the entire measure of our lives: “”A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Sunday, December 16

Revelation 18:1-10: This chapter deals with the city of sin, Babylon. It is not a prophecy of the downfall of Rome, such as that of A.D. 410 for instance, but an affirmation of hope for the downfall of what the pagan Roman Empire stood for.

In this vision a bright angel is seen; the very earth is illumined by his brightness. He appears with a message of concern for everyone who suffers oppression. His message (verse 2) is a direct quotation from Isaiah 21:9, and the imagery reminds us of the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah. The overthrow of this city is related to its place in the world of economics and commerce (verse 3), which John sees to be idolatrous (cf. Colossians 3:5).

John’s complaint against the economic and commercial idolatry of his time should be regarded against the background of the Bible’s prophetic literature, especially the prophecies of Amos and Isaiah, who spoke out frequently against the unjust practices of the business world that they knew: price fixing, monopoly, widespread unemployment, and so forth. Actually, such considerations are among the most common in the Bible.

John’s exhortation is that the believers get out of Babylon (verse 4), which is a direct quotation from Jeremiah 51:45. In that latter text the Jews were being exhorted to flee Babylon so as not to share in that ancient city’s peril. “Going out of” a place in order not to share its destruction is a theme that appears rather often in Holy Scripture. One thinks of Noah and his sons “getting out” by building the Ark, for instance. Lot and his family are led out of Sodom by the angels, and the Israelites flee Egypt, and so forth. In Chapter 12 the woman in heaven was given two eagle’s wings so that she could flee to the desert, and in the gospels Jesus tells His disciples to flee Jerusalem prior to its destruction. The spiritual message in all this is that those who belong to Christ must put some distance between themselves and those elements of existence that are inimical to man (cf. John 17:6,11,14-16).

Luke 1:1-4: We prepare to read the Infancy Narrative in Luke by looking at this unique introduction to his Gospel. Luke, besides consulting earlier written sources, such as the Gospel According to Mark, did his own investigation (“I have followed everything carefully from the first”). More literally, Luke claims that he “followed everything from the top” (anothen).

Indeed, this pursuit “from the top” is readily perceived in the Lukan narrative, inasmuch as he begins the story of Jesus at a much earlier stage than either Mark or the apostolic preaching. Luke goes back past Jesus’ baptism by John to write of his conception, his birth, his first visit to the Temple, and even a significant event when he was twelve years old. Luke does some of the same for John the Baptist. To accomplish this, he took advantage of a source not consulted by either Mark or the apostolic preaching; this source could only have been the Mother of the Lord.

Monday, December 17

Revelation 18: 11-24: Why is the fall of Babylon so bad? Because it is bad for business! Babylon’s overthrown means very low profits on the stock market. Verses 12-13 list various products that won’t sell any more. The “futures” in frankincense and chariots are down by sixteen points, and the shekel is in free fall!

Everyone calls it a “crisis,” and they are right. In fact, John uses the Greek word krisis (“judgment”) to describe it (verse 10). The crash, when it comes, comes quickly, in a single hour (verses 10,17,19). John says that those who weep over Babylon do so from a distance (verse 10). That is, Babylon has mourners, but no helpers. At this final hour of her career, no one will stand with her. No one wants to be associated with her. She was part of an order in which true friendship had no place. It was an order founded on shared interests and profits, not on love. Babylon is bewailed, not for herself, but for her lost investments. In short, the fall of Babylon is bad for business, and John borrows heavily from Isaiah 23 and Ezekiel 27 in order to describe her plight.

We observe that John does not see Babylon fall. An angel tells him that it has already happened. John, that is to say, has no violent vision. There is no projection, here, of a vindictive spirit; it is, rather, the divine resolution of a cosmic problem. The fall of Babylon is not seen; it is revealed to John in a vision of light. John is not interested in revenge but in justice, in the setting right of the world order, and the right order of the world requires the overthrow of Babylon and idolatry, and materialism, and the hedonism for which Babylon stands as a symbol. Her fall is particularly related to her shedding of blood (verse 24). Babylon is thrown into the sea like a stone (verse 21). She is swallowed up in her own chaos (cf. Jeremiah 51:60-63; Luke 17:2,24-30).

John particularly notes the loss of musical instruments and technology, components of human life first devised by the sons of Cain (Genesis 4:17-30). Indeed, there has often been something a bit ambiguous about such music, morally considered. When King Nebuchadnezzar employed “the sound of the horn, flute, harp, lyre, and psaltery, in symphony with all kinds of music” for his idolatrous purposes, it was not the last instance when instrumental music served to deflect men from the worship of the true God. In fact, nonetheless, God designated musical instruments as appropriate to His own worship in the tabernacle and the temple. And, once again, in the Bible’s final book heaven resonates with the sounds of trumpet and harp, whereas the damned are forever deprived of such music! The sinful descendents of Cain, the very inventors of harp and flute, will never hear them again.

Tuesday, December 18

Revelation 19:1-10: The previous chapter spoke of the destruction of Babylon, pictured as a woman dressed in scarlet. The present chapter speaks of a contrasting woman, dressed in white, who is called the Bride. A wedding is planned. There is no vision of the Bride just yet, however, nor does John specifically identify her. He will see and describe her in Chapter 21.

We begin the chapter with the “Alleluia.” Although our own experience may prompt us to associate that fine prayer with the sight and scent of lilies, here in Revelation it resounds against the background of smoke rising from a destroyed city. The worship scene portrayed here is related to victory over the forces of hell. The word “avenge” at the end of verse 2 reminds us there is a principle of vengeance built into the theological structure of history, for the judgments of God are true and righteous. Sodom and Gomorrah come to mind when we read of this smoke ascending for ever and ever. The worship becomes so warm at verse 6 that Handel decided to set it to music in “The Messiah.”

By portraying the reign of God as a marriage feast, John brings together three themes, all of them familiar to the Christians of his day: First, the kingdom of God as a banquet, such as we find in Isaiah 25:6. Jesus interpreted the banquet, however, as a marriage feast (Luke 14:15-16). John stresses readiness for the feast (verse 7), much as we find in the parable of the ten maidens at the beginning of Matthew 25.

Second, the marriage theme itself, as a symbol of the union of God with man. We find this theme in the prophets (most notably Hosea, but also Isaiah and Jeremiah) and the New Testament (Ephesians 5:32, for instance). The Lamb, who is the groom here, has already been identified earlier in Revelation.

Third, the theme of the garments, which now become the clothing required for attendance at the feast. John has appealed to this imagery several times already (3:4; 6:11; 7:14). The identification of the white garments with righteous deeds puts one in mind of the parable in Matthew 22:11-13.

Luke 1:26-38: Mary, the mother of Jesus, was the living witness of the stories about herself and Joseph, the conception and birth of John the Baptist, the circumstances of Jesus’ conception, the trip to Bethlehem, the manger in the stable, the swaddling clothes, the angels and the shepherds, the Magi and their gifts, the reaction of Herod, Jesus’ circumcision, the presentation in the Temple, Simeon and Anna, and the dramatic event that occurred when Jesus was twelve years old. It was from Mary that Matthew and Luke knew these narratives.

Wednesday, December 19

Revelation 19:11-21: The chapter continues on a different theme: warfare (verses 11-21). Jesus, pictured before as the Lamb, is here portrayed as a warrior on a white destrier. The emphasis is on His vindication of justice, the motif with which the chapter began. He is called “faithful and true,” adjectives referring to Him in 3:14. These adjectives should be considered especially in the context of martyrdom. That is to say, when a person is about to die a terrible death for the name of Jesus, “faithful and true” are the words he needs to know with respect to Jesus. Like the martyrs, Jesus is here clothed in white. His eyes (verse 12) are flames of fire, much as in John’s inaugural vision (1:12-16). His garment (verse 13) is spattered with blood, a detail we saw in 14:18-20. The literary inspiration of this portrayal is the canticle in Isaiah 63:1-3.

One of the Christological titles found here is “king of kings and lord of lords,” a title going back to the ancient Assyrian emperors, who were kings over other kings. John tells us that this title appears on the “thigh,” of the Rider on the white horse. The thigh here is the place of the scabbard, where the sword hangs. It was common in antiquity to speak of the thigh as the place of the sword. With regard to Achilles, for example, Homer wrote: “And anger came on Peleus’s son, and within his shaggy breast the heart was divided two ways, pondering whether to draw from his thigh the sharp sword, driving away all those who stood between and kill the son of Atreus, or else to check his spleen within and keep down his anger” (Iliad 1.188-192). The same idiom is found in the Odyssey 11.231 and the Aeneid 10.788. The exact idiom is likewise biblical; “Gird your sword on your thigh, everyone of you,” commanded Moses to the Levites (Exodus 32:27). The expression occurs twice in Judges 3 and in Psalms 45 (44):3. Finally, in the Song of Solomon there is a description of the sixty valiant men around the king, “each with his sword upon his thigh, against alarms by night” (3:8). The title on the Warrior’s thigh, then, is inscribed on His scabbard.

The sword itself, however, is described as coming forth from His mouth, as in John’s inaugural vision in the first chapter. This image, of course, identifies the sword with the word, as in Hebrews 4:12 and Ephesians 6:17. The image of God’s word as a sword seems to have been very common among the early Christians, so we are not surprised to see it here. The Rider Himself is called “the Word of God,” in the only instance of this expression with reference to Jesus outside of the beginning of John’s Gospel.

The summoning of the scavenger birds in verse 17 is reminiscent of Ezekiel 39, which describes the defeat of the armies of Gog. We will say more about this battle scene in Ezekiel in our discussion of Revelation 20.

Thursday, December 20

Revelation 20:1-15: The most controversial part of this passage is the “thousand years,” to which several references are made. In order to prepare ourselves to understand John here, it may be useful to reflect on the literary image of the thousand years already well known to John. In the Judaism of John’s time there was the popular belief that the Messiah would reign on the earth a thousand years (as there was, more recently, in Hitler’s fantasy of a “thousand-year Reich”). This popular belief is extant in Jewish literature of the time, such as The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs and some sayings of famous rabbis. We also find a variation on this theme in the Dead Sea scrolls, which speak of the just who live a thousand generations.

John’s scene of the Messiah reigning with His loyal followers for a thousand years seems in large measure inspired by Daniel 7, in which God is portrayed as a very old man, the “Ancient of Days,” who would take the authority from the fourth beast and give it to God’s holy ones, those who are suffering persecution for His sake (Daniel 7:9-10,22,26-27). The early Christians were fond of this passage, because Jesus had identified Himself as the Son of Man, who appears in this same scene in Daniel (7:13-14).

We note that Daniel 7 speaks of “thrones” in the plural, which Christians understood to mean that they too would take part in the judgment of the beast. In other words, they too would sit on thrones along with the Messiah (Matthew 19:28). (Indeed, St. Paul would apply this idea to a practical ethical question that arose in the early Church, in 1 Corinthians 6:1-3). To say that the believers will judge does not mean, of course, that they will judge in the same sense that God does, because only God has access to the depths of the human heart.

Nonetheless, there is a true and genuine sense in which believers stand in judgment with Christ over history. In the Holy Spirit they are given to know which elements of history are good, and which bad; they are given to discern those components of history that are of value in the sight of God, and those that are not. That is to say, the disciples of Christ are forever passing true judgment over history. They are already on their thrones with the Messiah. The final judgment, at history’s end, will simply reveal that they were, all along, the authentic judges of history.

This, then, is their thousand years’ reign. It is that area of Christian experience in which Christians are already seated in the high places with Christ, already on their thrones, already judges of history. They are said to reign because they are not slaves to the beast and its image. Their reign, nonetheless, is not yet complete, because they still have ahead of them the battle with Gog and Magog.

Gog was already well known to readers of Ezekiel 38-39, who would scarcely have been surprised to hear of him, for it was the name of a person from the somewhat recent past. The Hebrew name Gog(or Gug) corresponds to the Assyrian (Gugu and the Greek Gyges. He was a famous seventh-century king of Lydia in Asia Minor, who had died in 644. Accounts of the original Gog are found in Assyrian annals and History of Herodotus. The name is not especially important for the identification of the invader; like all the other names in these chapters of Ezekiel, it is symbolic of evil realities much larger and more menacing than their historical references. Thus understood, Gog and his forces appear here in Revelation 20. (“Magog,” by the way, appears to be an abbreviation of the Hebrew min-Gog, “from Gog.” Here in Revelation he is a derived ally of Gog, much as, elsewhere in the book, one beast shares his authority with the other beast in 13:4.)

In verses 11-15 everything testifies to its own contamination by “fleeing” from the throne of God. In Chapter 4 John had seen that throne as the origin of all things, and now he sees it as the arbiter of history. Everything flees before it. This is the final judgment, and it belongs to God alone. Here we meet once again the image of the “Book of Life” that appeared earlier in 3:5; 13:8; 17:8.

Friday, December 21

Revelation 21:1-8: We now come to the final two chapters of John’s book of prophetic visions. Now we see no more battles, no more bloodshed, no more persecution. John sees, rather, the holy city, New Jerusalem, as the ultimate reality that gives meaning to all that preceded it.

In this final vision, which lasts two chapters, John is aware that seven things are gone forever: the sea, death, grief, crying, pain, the curse, and the night (21:1,4; 22:3,5). Here we are dealing with the definitive abolition of conflict, the end of chaos. The first symbol of this chaos is the sea, which has only such shape as it is given from outside of itself. The sea represents the nothingness out of which God creates all things, conferring meaning upon them. This chaos is both metaphysical and moral. It represents a nothingness replaced by the lake of fire, the second death. The sea is the hiding place of the monster and the setting where the scarlet woman thrones. This sea disappears at the coming of the new heaven and the new earth.

If we take the earth to represent man’s empirical and categorical experience, and heaven to represent man’s experience of transcendence, then the appearance of the new heaven and the new earth means the transformation of all of man’s experience. All of it is made new. The grace of God in Christ does not sanctify just a part of man’s existence, but his whole being. Man is not a partially redeemed creature. Both his heaven and his earth are made new.

Both heaven and earth are part of God’s final gift to man, the New Jerusalem, the “dwelling of God with man.” This dwelling, skene in Greek and mishkan in Hebrew (both, if one looks closely, having the same triliteral root, skn), was originally a tent made of “skins,” as the same etymological root is expressed in English. During the desert wandering after the Exodus, this tent of skins was the abode of God’s presence with His people. Indeed, sometimes the word was simply the metaphor for the divine presence (verse 3). For instance, in Leviticus 26:11 we read, “I will set My mishkan among you . . . . I will walk among you and be your God, and you shall be My people.”

Luke 1:57-66: In the case of John the Baptist, faith began before he was born. His ears could already hear the prayers of his mother and father. He could already listen to the hymns they sang at home and in the temple. The sounds of their voices were already giving shape to his soul. In proportion to his tiny abilities, his culture was already taking shape. He was already assuming his place in history.

John held his identity as a matter of memory, memory earlier than his ability to recall critically. This memory, for John, was primitive, more aboriginal than mere recollection. The man that finally placed his neck on the block for beheading is the same person as the child that was awakened by the voice of the Virgin Mary as he nestled in his mother’s womb. Through all the vicissitudes of his life, there was a personal continuity in John the Baptist.

Friday, December 7

Revelation 13:1-10: Up till now we have seen two beasts, one of them from the underworld (Chapter 11) and the other from the heavens (Chapters 12). Two more beasts will appear in the present chapter, one of them from the sea (verse 1), who also has seven heads and ten horns (cf. 12:3), and one from the land (verse 11).

The present reading is concerned solely with the first of these two latter beasts. Like the beast in Daniel 7, he is a composite of several menacing things (verse 2). He derives his “authority” from the Dragon (verses 2,4) whom we considered in Chapter 12. That is to say, this beast shares in the power of Satan.

With respect to his ten horns, two remarks are in order: First, in Daniel 7, the obvious literary background here, the ten horns seem to refer to the ten Seleucid successors of Alexander the Great. Second, here in Revelation 13 they seem to refer to Roman emperors. If we leave out Otho, who reigned over the Roman Empire for only three months, there were, in fact, exactly ten Roman emperors up to Domitian, who was responsible for the persecution of A.D. 95: Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. Almost all of these men were recognized as divine, some of them even before their deaths. Words such as theos and divus appear on their coins. This figure, therefore, symbolizes the idolatrous pretensions of the Roman Empire, which John ascribes to Satan. Those pretensions claim an unquestioned and absolute allegiance over the human spirit.

This beast of the Roman Empire combines the worst features of all the earlier empires: Daniel’s winged lion of Babylon, the bear of the Medes, the leopard of the Persians, and the ten-headed hydra of the Greeks. One may note that John lists these components in the reverse order of Daniel.

Far more than ourselves, the early Christians were aware of the power of evil in the world. They spoke of it frequently in personified forms that are difficult to interpret literally. And the Christians described their relationship to this evil as one of warfare. The terms of the conflict described here in Revelation 13 may be compared to the description in 2 Thessalonians 2:3-12. In each case there is a widespread deception of people, their enslavement and destruction by means of lies. In both of these texts a pronounced contrast is drawn between the worldlings, who are deceived and will perish, and the faithful, who will be saved by reason of their fidelity to Jesus.

Saturday, December 8

Revelation 13:11-18: Now we come to the beast arising out of the earth, a parody of Christ in the sense that he faintly resembles a lamb (verse 11). Performing great signs and bringing fire down from heaven (verse 13), he is also a parody of the two witnesses in Chapter 11; in this respect he resembles the magicians of Egypt. The Gospels, we recall, have several warnings against false christs and false prophets, who will work wonders.

Furthermore, in a parody of the sign of the living God in Chapter 7, he has his own version of the seal (verse 16). Those without the mark of the beast must suffer economic sanctions (verse 17). Political idolatry, in other words, has an important mercantile dimension, to which the Book of Revelation will return in later chapters. The adoration of the statue (verse 15), of course, is reminiscent of the fiery furnace story in Daniel.

Perhaps the easiest part of this text to discern is the meaning of the number of the beast. Indeed, John tells us that anyone with intelligence can do it (verse 18). For all that, the symbolism of the number is complex. A first mistake in attempting to read this number is that of imagining it as written out in Arabic numerals. This procedure should be dismissed immediately, because our modern numeral system, derived from the Arabs, was unknown to the writers of the Bible. In contrast, the numeral systems employed in the Bible are based entirely on the alphabet, whether Hebrew or Greek. Because of this, numbers could also stand for words, and a number of codes became possible. One of these, known as gematria, consisted in taking the prescribed numerical value of the various letters (aleph meaning one, beth meaning two, and so forth) in a name and then working little puzzles with them. There are several examples of this in Jewish works, such as the Talmud, and in early Christian writings, such as The Letter of Pseudo-Barnabas. There are also two examples of it in the Sibylline Oracles and two more in the graffiti in the excavations of Pompey.

In John’s case, his puzzle runs backwards. He gives us a number and expects us to figure out what word or name the number stands for. Obviously there are many possible combinations of letters that will add up to the value of six hundred and sixty-six. Interpreters of the Sacred Text, however, have been most partial to the Hebrew form of the name, “Nero Caesar,” which does, in fact, add up to exactly the number six hundred and sixty-six. There are other possibilities, but this explanation seems the most compelling. The number was thus a reference to Nero, the first Roman emperor who ever undertook the persecution of the Christian Church.

Sunday, December 9

Mathew 23:1-14: 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).

Monday, December 10

Revelation 14:1-13: Now we come again to the sealing of the followers of Christ, first spoken of in Chapter 7. With respect to the “following” of the Lamb (verse 4), of course, the image is found also in the Gospels. When Jesus calls on His disciples to “follow” Him, the context is the Cross. The Lamb to be followed is the Lamb of sacrifice (Mark 8:34-38; John 21:18-19).

There are three angels in this text, representing three dimensions of the final age, the proclamation of the Gospel, the judgment of God on the city of man, and the eternal, wrathful exclusion of idolatry. First, the angel of the everlasting Gospel (verse 6), whose mandate, like the mandate at the end of Matthew, is directed to all nations. These are all called to repentance and conversion to the true God (verse 7; cf. Acts 14:15). Remember that in John’s view, the judgment of God is now. The judgment of God takes place in the very proclamation of the Good News (cf. John 3:19; 18:37). The Gospel here is called eternal; it is the proclamation of the eternal mind of God, His eternal purpose of salvation, the “Mystery” of which the Epistle to the Ephesians speaks.

Second, the angel who proclaims the fall of Babylon (verse 8). This, too, pertains to the Gospel. In biblical thought, the fall of Babylon means that the true Israelites can now go home, because the exile is over. Babylon is whatever enslaves and alienates the people of God. Babylon is the city of false gods, the city that dares to raise up its tower against the face of God; it is the monument to man’s achievements without God. Babylon is the city where men do not understand one another, because each man, as it were, speaks his own private meaning. The downfall of this city certainly is Good News, which is the meaning of the word Gospel. Christians are called to leave Babylon (18:4).

Third, the angel who proclaims the eschatological outpouring of God’s wrath, to the exclusion of all idolatry (verses 9-11). This text is important because, like certain sayings of our Lord in the Gospels, it insists on the eternity of damnation. Unlike many modern men, the Bible believes that the definitive choice of evil lasts forever.

Matthew 24:15-28: We observe that Matthew, unlike Mark and Luke, explicitly sends the reader to Daniel in order to explain this reference to the Abomination of Desolation. In Daniel the Semitic expression for Abomination of Desolation is hashuqqus meshomem, which appears to be a parody of name referring to Zeus, ba‘al shamayim, “lord of heaven.” In Daniel it refers to the idol erected to Zeus in the Second Temple by the Seleucid king, Antiochus IV Epiphanes (9:27; 11:31; 12:11; cf. 1 Maccabees 1:54-64). The desecration, which had occurred in 167 B.C, only two centuries earlier, was still a vivid memory to the Jews, who understandably regarded it as a low point in their history and a source of profound shock and outrage. At that time the Temple itself was stripped of its adornments; other pagan altars were erected, and unclean animals were sacrificed upon them (Josephus, Antiquities 12.54). This had been a time of great persecution of the righteous Jews by the unrighteous, not only by pagans but also by fellow Jews.

Tuesday, December 11

Revelation 14:14-20: On the image of harvest as judgment, see Joel 4:13-14 (3:9-14). The Son of Man on the cloud is, of course, from the Book of Daniel, an image that Jesus interprets of Himself in each of the Synoptic Gospels.

Unlike ourselves, men in antiquity actually experienced harvesting with a sickle and treading grapes in a vat, both actions characterized by a distinct measure of violence. Even these relatively benign images of harvest season, therefore, strongly suggest that the “end of time” will be more than slightly daunting. It should not surprise us that the harvesting with a sickle and the trampling of a wine vat are associated with the feeling of God’s definitive wrath.

The association of anger with the treading of the grapes was hardly new (cf. Isaiah 63:1-6), and it will appear again (Revelation 19:13-15). The grape harvest arrives in September, as the seasonal period of growth comes to an end. It is natural to think of death at this time of the year.

The amount of blood in this text (verse 20) is rather dramatic. The Greek stadion being six hundred and seven feet, sixteen stadia is about two miles. A horse’s bridle is about five feet off the ground. Thus we are dealing with a great deal of blood. This must be one of the most unpleasant passages in the New Testament.

The rising pool of blood becomes a kind of Red Sea. Indeed, the following chapter will be full of imagery from the Book of Exodus: plagues, the cloud of the divine presence, the tent of testimony, Moses, the crossing of the Red Sea, and the destruction of the pursuers.

Matthew 24:29-31: That coming destruction of Jerusalem, foretold by Jesus, is seen by Matthew to be both a symbol and a first stage, as it were, of the final times of the world (as in the very last verse of Matthew’s Gospel, 28:20), when Jesus will return in glory to judge. The sounding of the trumpet and the dispatching of the gathering angels (verse 31) were standard images of the world’s last judgment (Matthew 13:41,49), and we meet them in the New Testament’s earliest book (First Thessalonians 4:16). The coming judgment of the world will be the theme of the last part of Matthew’s next chapter (25:31-46).

These verses, a very precise prophecy about a specific and definitive event, give the lie to any attempt to make Jesus a calm, benign, harmless teacher of general religious theory. This is a prophecy of His return to earth at the end of time, and the Christian Church has always read it that way.

Wednesday, December 12

Revelation 15:1-8: This shortest chapter in the Book of Revelation introduces the imagery of the seven bowls of plagues, which will be poured out in the next chapter.

The ocean of blood, with which the previous chapter ended, has now become a kind of Red Sea (verses 1-3), which also inserts the theme of the Exodus. This theme itself is appropriate to the outpouring of the plagues. Other components of the Exodus theme likewise appear in this chapter: the Song of Moses, the cloud of the divine presence, the tent of testimony, and so forth.

The “sea of glass”?(verse 2) we have already considered in Chapter 4. Beside this sea stand God’s people who have passed over it in the definitive Exodus. They are musicians—harpists to be exact—identical with the one hundred and forty-four thousand whom we saw with the Lamb in the previous chapter; there was harp music in that scene too.

These elect have “overcome,” the very thing to which John had called the seven churches in Chapters 2-3. They are now beyond the power of the beast to harm them.

John sees in heaven the tabernacle of testimony from the Book of Exodus, the traveling tent of the divine presence that Moses and the Israelites carried through the desert. This tent, however, is “heavenly,” which means that it is the original model, the very pattern that Moses copied (Exodus 25:9,40; Acts 7:44; Hebrews 8:5).

Since the tent is a place of worship, we are not surprised that John sees seven angels coming out of it, clothed in priestly vestments (verse 6; cf. Exodus 28:4; 39:29), very much as Jesus was clothed in the inaugural vision (Revelation 1:12-13).

The tent itself is full of the cloud of the divine presence, the very cloud that led the Israelites through the desert of old. When that tent was dedicated in the desert, the divine cloud took up residence within it? (Exodus 40:34-38). That cloud later took residence in Solomon’s temple (I Kings 8:1-12), where Isaiah beheld it (6:1-4). In prophetic vision Ezekiel ?saw that cloud return to the second temple built in 520-516 (Ezekiel 44:4).

The hymn in verses 3-4 should be compared with Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the temple, as recorded in 2 Chronicles 6:14-42. Both prayers, to begin with, are offered “at the sea” (verse 2; 2 Chronicles 6:12-13). Both prayers thank God for His mighty works, invoke His righteous judgments, and request the conversion of all the nations. Finally, in response to each prayer, fire comes down from heaven (verses 5-8; 2 Chronicles 7:1-2).

Thursday, December 13

Revelation 16:1-9: Three of these four plagues are right out of the arsenal of Moses. Sores on the flesh of the bad guys (verse 2) were his sixth plague. As in the account in Exodus, the intent of this plague is that the idolaters should repent, but in neither case does it happen. The second and third plagues here (verses 3-4)—the changing of water into blood—are identical to Moses’ first plague, which was regarded, we recall, as a rather easy plague, in the sense that even Pharaoh’s magicians could do it (Exodus 7:22).

Here in Revelation, these two plagues are related to the great bloodshed of persecution caused by the enemies of God’s people (verse 6; 16:5-7). This crying out of the altar puts one in mind of the earlier scene where the souls (that is, the blood) of the martyrs cried from the altar (6:9-10). In that earlier scene the saints prayed for justice to be done on earth, for the righteousness of God to be vindicated in history. Now, in the present instance, the voice from the altar praises God that such justice has been done, that God’s fidelity has been made manifest.

The fourth plague does not appear in Exodus at all; Moses had been able to blot out the sunlight, but not even he was able to make the sun hotter. Even this plague, nonetheless, does not bring the idolaters to repentance (verse 9).

Matthew 25:1-12: The coming of the Bridegroom in this parable is identical to the parousia of the Son of Man mentioned several times in the preceding chapter (24:39,44,50).

The ten maidens are divided between those who are “foolish” (morai) and those who are wise, prudent, or thoughtful. However we are to translate this latter adjective, phronimoi, it has just been used to describe the faithful servant that awaits his master’s return (24:45). Matthew is fond of this adjective, which he uses seven times. He uses the adjective moros six times—the only Synoptic evangelist to do so.

In addition, the distinction between moros and phronimos comes in the final parable of the Sermon on the Mount: “Therefore whoever hears these sayings of mine, and does them, I will liken him to a phronimos who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of mine, and does not do them, will be like a moros who built his house on the sand” (7:24-26).

Friday, December 14

Revelation 16:10-21: The final three bowls of plagues stand parallel to two other biblical texts: the plagues of Egypt in the Book of Exodus and the trumpets from earlier in the Book of Revelation.

The darkness of the fifth bowl (verse 10) corresponds to the ninth plague in the Book of Exodus (10:21-29). The sixth bowl, the drying up of the Euphrates, includes the proliferation of frogs, which corresponds to Moses’ second plague against Pharaoh (Exodus 8:2-6). The hailstones that accompany the seventh bowl (verse 21) are parallel to Moses’ seventh plague against Egypt (Exodus 9:13-26).

There are also parallels between these three bowls of plagues and the three final trumpets that appeared earlier in Revelation. Thus, the fifth bowl (verse 10), like the fifth trumpet (9:1-2) causes darkness over the whole earth. The sixth bowl (verse 12), like the sixth trumpet, brings forth an invading army from east of the Euphrates (9:12-19). Finally, at both the seventh bowl and the seventh trumpet there are bolts of lightning, peals of thunder, and an earthquake (verse 18; 11:19).

The sixth bowl of plagues here is a composite. There is, first of all, a drying up of the Euphrates, so that the Parthian armies can march westward. This puts one in mind of the drying up of the Jordan, so that the Israelites could move west against the Canaanites. Because of the great difference between the two instances, however, this symbolism should be read as an example of theological “inversion” (in the sense used by John Steinbeck, who often employs biblical symbols in this way), so that the identical image is used for both good and bad meanings. With respect to the drying up of the Euphrates, John knew a precedent in Jeremiah (50:38), who spoke of the drying up of the waters of Babylon, to facilitate its capture by the Persians. Indeed, John will have a great deal to say about the fall of Babylon.

Verse 15 contains a well known saying of Jesus, in which He compares His final return to the coming of a thief in the dead of night. This dominical saying is preserved in the Gospels of Matthew (24:43) and Luke (12:39).

The final battle takes place at Armageddon (verse 16), which literally is “hill of Megiddo.” Megiddo sits on the edge of the Plain of Esdraelon and was in antiquity the site of two famous battles, in each of which a king was killed. In Judges 5 the Canaanite king Sisera was slain there, and 2 Kings 23 describes the death of Josiah there in 609. In John’s mind, Armageddon symbolizes disaster, catastrophe, and violence.