Second Terrace

read Jayber Crow

My whole purpose here is to get you to read a book, and that book is Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry.

It’s one of those rare books that when you read the last few words in the last sentence, you want to take a step back and take a new different look at things.

Recipient of the National Humanities Medal in 2010, Wendell Berry is the author of 25 books of poems, 16 volumes of essays, and 11 novels and short story collections. Since 1965 he has lived, worked, and farmed a plot of land on the Kentucky River with his wife and children. He and his family tried their utmost to subsist completely on what they harvested from their farm, going to the store only for the most necessary un-harvestable things.

As far as I know, Berry, who is all of 86 years of age, continues to till the fields with his horse and plow.

Wendell Berry’s main theme is that people change the land by living in it. And the land changes them. If the land is used well, and if other people are dealt with in a kindly fashion, then those changes will be good, or at least not so bad. He’s been a longtime critic of modern individualism, wasteful consumerism, self-aggrandizement, and conspicuous consumption.

He is a Christian writer who “tries to take the Gospel seriously,” but he makes partisans on both sides uncomfortable: no ideology can claim him. No one in the culture wars wants to hear, nowadays, words like these: “Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy” (from his essay “Economy and Pleasure” -- which is a very fine reflection on the great John Ruskin).

Rightwingers chafe at his pacifism and environmentalism. Leftwingers get hot and bothered by his lack of enthusiasm for abortion rights. Though most  contemporary conservatives (who are really libertarians) would not agree, I think Berry is very much an old-fashioned conservative -- so old that the moderns can't recognize him. But the same thing could be said of Christianity in general these days.

In this mean season of social media, techno-reality, and frenetic restlessness, Berry bucks the tide by his quiet insistence that there is no human life without community and nature. One’s life and work ought to be rooted in and responsive to one's place, and the people around him or her. 

Enter Jayber Crow, who did just that.

Wendell Berry is an acerbic critic in his essays. But in his novels, he’s a gentle artist. He portrays the citizens (or, what he calls the “membership”) of his fictional town of Port William with compassion. Even the villains, who betray human fellowship and violate land and nature, are still treated with humane-ness.

Port William is one of the most richly imagined communities in literature, certainly on par with Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County or Harper Lee’s Maycomb, Alabama. In every one of his novels and short stories (and a few of his poems to boot), Berry has populated this town with honest depictions of human nature, good and bad.

There are joys and there are sorrows. Jayber Crow, as the sole barber of Port William, has gotten to know these stories first-hand from the confessional that old-fashioned barbershops used to be. Jayber (whose name is really Jonah) was orphaned at the age of ten, and was moved to an orphanage in central Kentucky. From there he attended Bible college in Pigeonville, as he had felt, at the time, that he had received the call to become a preacher.

But in Bible college, he wrestled with too many hard questions to allow him to preach in good conscience. “You have been given questions,” his wizened NT Greek professor told him (whose nickname was “Old Grit”), “to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out -- perhaps a little at a time.” 

There’s more than a little of Berry himself here. He’s a Christian, yes, but certainly not what you’d call a “denominationalist.” He is one of many who has justifiably struggled with the organized church. Thusly, he had Jayber opine that “Some of the best things I have ever thought of I have thought of during bad sermons.”

Jayber left Bible college and wended his way to Lexington. After a few adventures and misadventures, he ended up back in his hometown of Port William, and set up shop.

He became the oral historian of the town. Oral history is the best kind of history, as it proceeds from the deep collection of community memory. “Telling a story,” Jayber reminisces much later, as he’s retired and over seventy at the time of his narration, “is like reaching into a granary full of wheat and drawing out a handful. There is always more to tell than can be told. As almost any barber can testify, there is also more than needs to be told, and more than anybody wants to hear.”

The thing I like best about Jayber Crow is his growing -- and glowing -- recognition of his community in Port William, and what that community means, and the beautiful, poignant thing that community can be. 

Despite his honest problems with religion, Jayber comes to his clearest vision of God and his community -- ironically for him -- in church. Uncle Stanley Gibbs was the church janitor and gravedigger, but had been lately getting himself into trouble with his questionable vocabulary and his being too open about his plans for becoming a tomcat again once his old wife passed on. 

Jayber became Uncle Stanley’s successor, and cleans the church each Friday evening in anticipation of Sunday morning worship. He had avoided attending church for years, but now he sits quietly in the back. He loves the singing (“In the sweet by and by” is his favorite) despite his withering critique of most of the sermons.

One night while cleaning the church, Jayber gets sleepy and lies down on the floor. He closes his eyes and sees all the people of his cherished Port William -- people he observes and loves. The chapter concludes, “They were just there. They said nothing, and I said nothing. I seemed to love them all with a love that was mine merely because it included me. When I came to myself again, my face was wet with tears.”

Now that’s community. That’s what a town can be and should be. Jayber’s best friend, Burley Coulter, says this of what being a “member” of Port William is all about: “The way we are, we are members of each other. All of us. Everything. The difference ain't in who is a member and who is not, but in who knows it and who don't."

The "membership" of Port William consists of any person who recognizes his or her place among -- and responsibility for the well-being of -- all the land, animals, and all the people of the place. It’s being totally pro-life as in “all life.”

Port William is, or should be, your town and my town. Your family and my family. Your church and my church. Your neighborhood and mine.

Pentecost: the Descent of the Spirit

-- Pentecost icon by Ivanka Demchuk

The new language

Thousands of years ago, toward the beginning of human history, things were different: “Now the whole earth had one language and few words” (Genesis 11.1).

Humanity consisted of one, single society, and they were congregated in the flat geography of Shinar.

In their pride, they decided to build a “tower to the heavens,” which would be an idol to their own arrogant attempt at making themselves like God.

In order to save humanity from sealing their fate to be like the devil’s own self-destruction, the Lord confused their language, dividing the one society into many ethnicities and languages, with now too many words instead of just a few.

They thus scattered north, east, south, and west “abroad over the face of all the earth” (Genesis 11.9).

This was the story of the Tower of Babel.

But at the Feast of Pentecost, fifty days after the Resurrection of Christ, the scattered of Babel was utterly reversed. Instead of confusing the languages of human arrogance, God sent down the Holy Spirit to unify all the nations into one humanity, and one language.

At nine o’clock in the morning on Pentecost, the Apostles, the Theotokos, and others (totaling about 120 people) who had been gathered in the Upper Room, came out into the streets of Jerusalem, speaking that supernatural language of unity.

It was the language of the New Jerusalem. It was not ecstatic glossolalia. They were describing the “mighty words of God” (Acts 2.11), speaking in that transcendent, heavenly language – and in that transcendent speech, everyone who heard could understand – no matter where they come from or what native language they spoke.

When St Luke listed, in the second chapter of Acts, all the nations – Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Judeans, Cappadocians, residents of Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and Libya, and Rome itself – he was showing that the dispersion and division at the Tower of Babel were now being reversed.

The language of Pentecost was a Sign of the Comforter, making real in this life, and in this world, the Body of Christ, and the new culture of the New Jerusalem.

Pentecost is the reason

Pentecost is the reason why everything in the Gospel happened. In fact, you could say that Pentecost is the goal of the entire Bible, the Old Testament as well as the New. And you can go even further: Pentecost is the destiny for all Creation, all time and space – reality itself.

Pentecost is more than “the birthday of the Church.” It is the beginning of the transfiguration of humanity and all Creation, which will finally be fulfilled when “God will be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15.20).

“The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory … raised Him from the dead and made Him sit at His Right Hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come; and He has put all things under His feet and has made Him the head over all things for the Church, which is His Body, the fulness of Him Who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1.17, 20-22).

At Pentecost, we celebrate the Descent of the Holy Spirit in power, as the dawning of a new age of God’s work in the world. This Descent, at the Third Hour in the Upper Room and then spreading out into the streets of Jerusalem and from there to the whole world, depended utterly upon our Jesus accomplishing the Will of the Father.

This is the remarkable theme of Jesus’ talk with His disciples right after He washed their feet, just as a servant would do. In that talk, He let them in on the reality of what God the Father was doing – there was no deeper truth than what Jesus was telling them in that moment. 

That is why we reverently listen, in silent awe, to the long first reading of the Twelve Gospels appointed for Holy Friday Matins (which is usually done in the evening of Holy Thursday). In John 13:31-18:1, Jesus mentions Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit, four times. 

In the fourth mention, Jesus makes clear that Pentecost was His Gospel Purpose: “Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Comforter will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you” (John 16.7).

So Jesus did, in fact, “go away.” He did so at the Ascension, when “He was lifted up, and a cloud took Him out of their sight” (Acts 1.9). There are ten mysterious days of silence between Ascension and Pentecost. The disciples remained in the Upper Room in constant prayer, just as Jesus told them to.

The prayer of the Ascended King

Meanwhile, Jesus has ascended to the Right Hand of God the Father. It is at this moment that “He entered into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but His own Blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9.12). “For Christ has entered, not into a sanctuary made with hands, which is a copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf” (Hebrews 9.24).

The Lord completely achieved the Father’s Will and utterly offered Himself as a sacrifice without reserve. He poured out His Life in the entire Incarnation (Philippians 2.7) and most climactically at Gethsemane and Golgotha.

So Christ united Himself with the world, in a union that cannot be broken. That is why John 19.34 (which the priest quotes at the piercing of the Lamb in the proskomedia) is so very, very important: “One of the soldiers pierced His Side with a lance, and there came forth blood and water.” At that critical moment, the earth became the Holy Grail, touched forever, prepared for eventual and total transfiguration at the Last Day.

And because of that union, Jesus was then able to ask for and to send the Holy Spirit to His disciples and to the world. “I will pray the Father,” the Lord had promised in the Upper Room, “and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever” (John 14.16).

And that is exactly what He did in those ten days between Ascension and Pentecost.

The Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was the answer to that prayer. Nothing, absolutely nothing, that is good happens outside of prayer. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1.17).

And no good gift is better than the gift of the Holy Spirit. 

The marks of the Spirit

The Holy Spirit’s coming to us, the Spirit’s descent upon us, brings about the reality of belief and prayer and love. The Spirit in us is the actual principal of new life itself, which is our participation in the divine nature (2 Peter 1.4). The Spirit folds us into the Life of Christ Himself and changes us into a New Creation (2 Corinthians 5.17), according to the image now of the Second Adam.

The Spirit transforms us into the Body of Christ. We are literally the abiding Body of Christ that persists in the world after His Ascension.

What is that New Creation like? What is a person like who has said yes to the Descent of the Holy Spirit? Who has said, like the Theotokos, “Be it unto me according to Thy Word?”

The Theotokos herself is the one who is the perfect image of a Spirit-filled Christian. 

“By their fruits ye shall know them,” Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7.16). The fruits of the Spirit are not dramatic or spectacular. They are not weird or strange. They are, however, Salt and Light:  “The fruit of the Spirit,” says the Apostle Paul in Galatians 5.22-23, “is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law.”

Notice what is not on the list of the fruits of the Spirit: power, influence, wealth, fame, brashness, even speaking in tongues and miracle-working and signs and wonders are not on the list.

This should not be surprising. How could the marks of the Spirit be anything like the arrogance of the Tower of Babel? How could the Spirit of Christ – Who came as a meek servant – be at all associated with lust for power, wealth, and prestige? 

The fruits of the Spirit, the real Signs of the Spirit’s presence, are like the Beatitudes: they are mysterious, quiet, almost hidden: “Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth” (Matthew 6.3).

What being Spirit-filled looks like

What does a Spirit-filled Christian look like? Look no further than the Theotokos herself. And bear in mind that after Pentecost, except for a symbolic reference to her in Revelation 12.1-6), the Bible never mentions her again. Why the obscurity? Why wasn’t she at the forefront of visible history?

Because she is meek. Because she is gentle and kind. Because she is living and breathing in the fullness of love, joy, and peace  Because even then she was interceding in fervent supplication for the Church and the world.

Nothing good ever happens unless it was prayed for. And because of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, an ocean of good things – many of which are never noticed – have been requested and bestowed. Many requested for you by the Theotokos herself. And by your Guardian Angel, by your patron saint. By your departed loved ones. And by your friends here in this life.

And every time you ask for mercy in Jesus’ Name, which is exactly what the Jesus Prayer is, when Jesus takes up your prayer in the Spirit and enfolds it into His own prayer from Himself to the Father.

We ought to get to the point where we pray the Jesus Prayer with every breath. And, as Fr Sergius Bulgakov (and others) pointed out, so should we pray to the Spirit, “O heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, Who are in all places and fill all things; Treasurer of blessings and Giver of life, come and dwell within us and cleanse us from every blemish and save our souls, O blessed One.”

And these requests are always answered, with the present and the presence of the Spirit Himself. Every time you pray for mercy, you re-visit Pentecost.

This is exactly why “God so loved the world that He gave His Only-Begotten Son” (John 3.16), just so you may be “born of water and of the Spirit” and enter the Kingdom of God (John 3.5).

“The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or wither it goes: so it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3.8).

You belong in Pentecost. Pentecost is destiny and goal. It is life itself. 

Celebrating Pentecost

Pentecost is the beginning of “the Last Days.” It is the beginning of the transfiguration of humanity and all Creation, leading up to the very Last Day when the Son will subject all things to the Father, and God “will be all in all.”

Pentecost is the “revolution of Eden” and its restoration. It begins the descent of the New Jerusalem and the overturning of the Fall of Man.

This descent, this revolution, this ongoing restoration is what is really meant by the words “renewal” and “revival” – two words that are over-used and in their over-familiarity have lost their meaning.

For these are utterly eschatological terms.

This is why so many of our people, in more classically Christian times and places, decorate their churches and homes with as much greenery (in tree branches and herbs) as possible.

This is why in the old days, when Pentecost was called “Whitsunday,” that young women dressed in white (which is probably where “Whitsunday” comes from), and in the following week, everyone would be on holiday from work and take long walks in the woods and the pastures. 

They did this because Adam and Eve would walk with God under the boughs of the trees.

Churches would have proper festivals with picnics, dances, plays, and games. In England these festivals would be called “Whit-ales,” as the church would have brewed its own ale for the occasion.

Just think. The Church, back then, authentically led not through governmental power, but by joyful moral influence, through not only fasting but feasting. 

What a surprising idea: that these common village festivals – even these “Whit-ales” – were such an immediate, vivid Sign and language of the true Pentecost, the New Jerusalem.

☙

christian politics

I wasn’t sure whether the title should be “Christian Politics” or “Political Christians.” I’ll leave it up to you to decide which is better.

The question of how faith should be applied to politics is a tricky one, especially since it is possible to turn that statement around. Politics, indeed, has been and is being applied to – or rather imposed upon – faith. More than a few surveys report that there are quite a few people who use their religious label as a partisan identifier. 

When it comes to Christians and politics, there is a substantial problem. The early Christians – from the very first ones in the book of Acts through the persecution and illegality of Christianity in the Roman Empire up until its legalization by Constantine’s Edict of Milan in 313 AD – simply did not like politics. 

At all.

Don’t get me wrong. They lived happily with their fellow citizens. They didn’t withdraw into enclaves or separated communities. They didn’t look weird or act weird, as the delightful “Letter to Diognetus” (from 130 AD) makes clear.

And, contrary to general opinion, the early Christians were not standoffish. They weren’t sniffy about their non-Christian friends. They didn’t act as though everyone else had cooties.

Their problem was with politics and government. They did not hate it. They prayed intensely for civil authorities. But they harbored many doubts about the necessities of the State.

The State in a fallen world simply has to use force and the threat of death in order to suppress evil, as St Paul makes clear in Romans chapter 13. In a world that had fallen contrary to the Creation God had intended it to be – which was the Garden of Eden – the State inevitably deployed force, domination, coercion, even violence, destruction and death.

The early Christians saw themselves as the continuation of the Christ Who is Peace Himself. When they became Christians, accepting Jesus into their heart as personal Lord and Saviour, they tried their level best to act just like Him. 

So they took the Beatitudes as their personality test. They became aware of their own utter dependence upon the generosity of the Father. They mourned for those who suffered, for the victims of a fallen and cruel world. They became meek, gentle, and kind. They desired righteousness and social justice. They gave out mercy and forgiveness and grace. They were “pure in heart” – that is, they recognized the face of Jesus in their neighbor, and knew in their hearts that how they treated the “least of these” was ultimately and immediately how they treated Jesus Himself. 

They made peace wherever they lived, whether they were welcomed in society or were denounced and persecuted.

The early Christians were pretty, let’s say, “radical.” They really did hold “all things in common” (Acts 4.32).

Everyone shared their substance with each other and the poor around them. They shared their goods freely and “without measure.” Every Saturday night at Vespers they liberally distributed bread, oil, and wine – much like the Feeding of the Five Thousand.

They established the first one-stop welfare offices, the first hospitals. They collected money for famine relief and the freeing of slaves. They regularly saved unwanted babies who had been abandoned in infanticide by exposure, which was common in the Roman Empire. Peace and justice, gentleness and mercy, and generosity, comprised the character of early Christianity. 

It follows then that the Christians of the first three centuries refused to participate in violence and death. Consequently, the church discouraged Christians from participating in government and the armed forces.

And to complicate things further: the early Christians did not seek to impose their radically new character on society and the state. How could they? Having “all things in common” could never work in the “real world.” The high morality of the Beatitudes could never be legislated. 

How could early Christians ever get involved in the politics of the world? Especially when you have Jesus, the Son of God, Who utterly, totally “took upon Him the form of a slave, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross” (Philippians 2.7-8).

How can you square this radical humility, this fellowship of the Sermon on the Mount, with the scrum of self-promotion, the homo homini rattus, the violence of realpolitik in the world?

Emperor Constantine changed all this in 313 AD, when the Christian church became an imperial institution. Then it became possible for Christians to apply their faith to politics.

It also became just as possible for powerful and wealthy interests to impose their politics onto the Christian religion. 

Both possibilities have gone on ever since, especially right now.

Which is exactly why I left the title up to you.

peter missed

Today is Holy Thursday for us Orthodox, and tonight we think deeply on the betrayal of Christ and HIs arrest in Gethsemane.

Peter, attempting to defend his Friend and Teacher, famously sliced off the ear of Malchus, servant to the High Priest of the Temple.

Peter missed

Think about it. There is no way that the ear was Peter's intended target. It is impossible to aim with such precision as to slice off an ear.

Violent homicide was the aim. The neck maybe, certainly the head. Malchus should not have survived. The severed ear was but an "accident."

"No more of this," Jesus said, and He restored Malchus' ear to its rightful place (Luke 22.51).

"Put your sword back into its place," Jesus told Peter, and turning to the militia that the authorities had sent to arrest Him, He proclaimed a challenge to all who put their trust in mortal princes, wealth, and power (and all these potentialities for violence): "For all who take up the sword will die by the sword,. Do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?"

"How else," He continued, should the scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?" (Matthew 26.52-54).

How else could Jesus proceed to wage the true and only real struggle against the only real enemy: sin, death, and hell itself. There was only ever one way, and that was for the Son of Man to be lifted up so that He might go down.

The only way for Jesus to lead us free to heaven was for Him to go down and find us where we were, on Holy Saturday. The only way for Jesus to find us there was by His totally kenotic, Self-sacrificial pouring out of His Life on the Cross.

His way. Not the way of Peter's sword. 

 

bread from heaven, thunder and judgment

Bread from Heaven, Thunder and Judgment

The Gospel of Luke says that during Holy Week, Jesus “was teaching in the temple, but at night He went out and lodged on the mount called Olivet. And early in the morning all the people came to Him in the temple to hear Him” (Luke 21.37-38).

His teachings during this week are narrated in a large part of the Synoptic Gospels: Matthew 21-25; Mark 11-13; and Luke 19-21. The Gospel readings appointed by the Orthodox Church for Holy Monday through Wednesday are Matthew 24.3-26.16.

It is interesting that the Gospel of John devotes only the remainder of the twelfth chapter after telling of His Entrance into the city. This Gospel pays crucial attention to what the Lord had to say in at the Last Supper on Holy Thursday (John 13-17). But the comparatively small space given to His public address in Jerusalem (maybe in the Temple precincts), should invite special notice.

The Passover was coming soon, and the city was filled with pilgrims from all over the Mediterranean world. They were Jews, of course, along with many Greeks who were interested in Judaism. Some of these (i.e., “proselytes”) were even in the procession of conversion.

At one point, some of these Greek inquirers contacted Philip, one of the Apostles. They said “Sir, we wish to see Jesus” (John 12.21). This was the critical moment that set the final movements of the Gospel into action, and what Jesus said next made plain how significant the moment was: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12.23-24).

Again, and most poetically, we hear Christ speaking of the pouring out of His own life in sacrificial death for the sake of the entire world – the cosmos, all of humanity and creation.

This all-important theme of Jesus giving His life for the life of the world was always the main theme of His entire ministry – His teaching in words, His actions in drama, His entire life in the Divine poetry that overcame the corruption of darkness. Earlier on in John, after the Eucharistic and stupendous Feeding of the Five Thousand, Jesus spoke openly about this very theme:

“I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died But this is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the breach which I shall give for the life of the world is My flesh” (John 6.49-51).

It turns out that this Divine Self-sacrifice, this willingness to become the grain of wheat that dies to bear much fruit, was always God’s Will:

“It is too light a thing that You should be My Servant,” said God the Father to His Son in the prophecy of Isaiah, seven centuries before, “to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel. I will give You as a light to the nations, that My salvation may reach to the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 49.6).

Now in Holy Week, that universal salvation was soon to be accomplished. The Greeks – whom Jesus recognized as a symbol of the nations at the ends of the earth, just because they were Gentiles, uncircumcised, outside the written Law – had come, wanting to see this “light to the nations.”

Thus Jesus knew that the Cross was coming, that Golgotha loomed on the near horizon:

“‘Now My soul is troubled. And what shall I say? “Father, save Me from this hour”? No, for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glory Thy Name.’ Then a voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again’” (John 12.27-28).

There had been a crowd around Jesus when He was told (by Philip and Andrew) of the Greeks’ request. The words from heaven were beyond their comprehension. Some thought it was thunder. Others thought that it must have been an angel speaking to Jesus. 

I can’t help but think of the seven thunders that John heard in his first book (Revelation 10.3-4). There were words indeed that he was not even permitted to write down. Of course this thunder was the voice of God in apocalyptic judgment in response to the cry of the Son, Who had voluntarily immersed Himself in the dark tide of the fallen world:

“Afflicted, I called upon the Lord, I cried out to My God: He heard My voice from His holy temple … The Lord thundered in the heavens, the Most High gave forth His voice … For Thou wilt save a humble people and Thou wilt humble the eyes of the arrogant. For Thou wilt light My lamp, O Lord, O My God, Thou wilt light My darkness” (Psalm 17,6,13,27-28 LXX).

Thunder in the heavens is the echo of judgment, and judgment indeed is what Jesus speaks of next immediately:

“This voice has come for your sake, not for Mine,” Jesus says. “Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the Archon (i.e., ruler) of the world cast out; and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to Myself” (John 12.30-32). The Lord made clear to the disciples, on a number of occasions, “by what death He was to die” (12.33).

Early on, when Jesus spoke with Nicodemus way back in the third chapter of John, He told the “ruler of the Jews,” after He spoke of being “born from above,” that “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosever believes in Him may have eternal life” (John 3.15).

And this was all for the sake of divine love, as is clearly said in the next verse. We know it well: “For God so loved the world that He gave His Only-Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3.16).

We are too familiar with this verse. We do not appreciate it for the profound revolution that it is. All Scriptural interpretation rests on this verse. All theology, indeed, all philosophy is determined by the truth of John 3.16. Yes, it is the reason for why Jesus died on the Cross and rose again. It is the reason why He came and was incarnate.

It is also the reason why anything exists in the first place.

It is also the standard of judgment. “Now is the judgment of this world,” Jesus said as Golgotha came within His sight. The chief function of archons, or rulers, is judgment – which is much more than determining the rightness or wrongness of an issue. Judgment is the establishment of righteousness, a culture that reflects divine love.

The Archon of this fallen world not only failed at establishing a culture of love: he rebelled against love. And since the Holy Spirit is the Actualizer of Divine Love both within the Trinitarian community and in Creation, then the Spirit’s descent – which was made possible by the Crucifixion and Resurrection and Ascension – would “convince and convict the world … concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged” (John 16.8,11).

“Judged” as in condemned and replaced. Why? Because the ruler of this world ruled by hatred, violence, domination, lies, corruption, and oppression. He sought and aggrandized self. He aggregated to himself power, wielding hurt, pain, and death. 

That is why Jesus told His disciples, right before His Palm Sunday Triumphal Entry, that His own “culture,” His Body, His church, was to be completely different from the world-historic ways of the Archon of the age:

“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; even as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20.25-28).

The “culture” of Christ, the communion realized by the Holy Spirit, would be “self-outpouring” just like Jesus.

In other words, the Body of Christ, His continued presence in every Christian, is itself the judgment. The Body of Christ that was made possible by His death and Resurrection, and His request for the Spirit to be sent, was now to be extended to all the world, not just one nation.

That is why when the Greeks told Philip “We would see Jesus,” Jesus knew His time had come.

the sharp cross

Today is Cross Veneration Sunday, the Third of Lent.

The Cross is not a symbol of worldly power or political triumph. 

Today, we sing this first hymn (i.e., tropar or apolotikion): "O Lord, save Your people, and bless Your inheritance. Grant Orthodox Christians victory over their enemies, and protect Your people with Your Cross."

The "enemies" are not other nations or people at all, despite that often being said. The true and only enemy is death and corruption.

"My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight," Jesus said to Pilate (John 18.36). "Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?" (Matthew 26.53).

When Constantine saw his vision of the Cross in the sky, he mistook it as an insignia for imperial power. If what he saw in his vision before his military victory at the Milvian Bridge (312 AD) "In hoc signo vince" [i.e., “in this sign conquer”] has any meaning at all, it means to conquer the very same enemy that Jesus did on the original Cross.

The Cross has nothing to do with violence. Nothing to do with domination, coercion, self-aggrandizement, wealth expansion, or any venue of worldly power. The Lord makes this very clear:

"Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many" (Matthew 20.25-28).

The Cross should not be thought of as a sword, and it never ever should have been thought so.

The Cross is, rather, like a “sharp” -- a syringe and hypodermic needle.

Surprised? But think about it. The Cross really is an injection of divine eternal life into the soil of decay, the earth of corruption, the base of death.

Where humanity (and all creation) was languishing in death, by the Cross – by Jesus suffering and dying – God’s divinity destroyed death in His humanity.

That is why there is no Cross without the Resurrection, no Good Friday without Easter. Just because of that “injection” of divinity into our humanity, we are no longer destroyed by sin and death: we will live forever in His fellowship.

Our second hymn (i.e., kondak) for this Sunday of Cross Veneration insists on this point – that just because of the Crucifixion we are saved, because God is destroying sin and death:

“Now the flaming sword no longer guards the gates of Paradise; has been mysteriously quenched by the wood of the Cross! The sting of death and the victory of hell have been vanquished; for You, O my Saviour, did come and cry to those in hell: ‘Enter again into Paradise.’”

Look at what this hymn says:

1. The flaming sword of the cherubim no longer prevents humanity from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3.24)
2. The power of death and hell have been destroyed (Revelations 20.14)
3. Jesus invited everyone in hell to enter into Paradise – exactly what He said to the Good Thief on the Cross (Luke 23.43)

This goal was what God had been planning and working for all along: “And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13.8).

And this: “Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2.9-11).

Jesus was exalted at the Resurrection only because He was humiliated on the Cross.

The Cross cannot be and should never have been exploited for the use of force, coercion, or political opportunism, which is happening today – which is totally un-Biblical and actually anti-Christ.

Instead the opposite is true. The Cross is all about kenosis, all about Jesus pouring out His divine life for the sake of us.  The Cross is the Self-denial of the Son of God, the voluntary suffering of the Son of Man. 

And that is exactly why Jesus said "He that would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me" (Mark 8.34).

Then, and only then, will that person "not taste death" and "see the kingdom of God come with power" (Mark 9.1).

Enter the self-denial, humility and meekness of taking up your own cross, and then you can enter Jesus’ Paradise.

This is the "foolishness of God" (1 Corinthians 1.23), which is contrary to the worldly wisdom of wealth and power: "We preach Christ crucified … “

what the last judgment judges by

 

 

In the Parable of the Last Judgment (Matthew 25.31-46), the shepherd's dividing of the sheep and the goats, the Lord identifies who is being judged:

 

"Before him (i.e., the Son of Man) will be gathered all the nations" (Matthew 25.32).

 

The object of judgment is "all the nations" -- πάντα τὰ ἔθνη -- i.e., all societies, all ethnicities, all cultures and civilizations.

 

It is not self-evident that the object of judgment is each individual.

 

What is the criteria for judgment? The Parable states this clearly. It is how "the nations" treated "the least of these My brethren," whether they fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, visited the sick and imprisoned.

 

Clearly, the criterion has to do with benevolence and justice. It is the exact opposite of the aristocratic madness of Nietzsche (and his modern disciple "Bronze Age Pervert," aka Costin Alamariu) and libertarianism.

 

What is missing from many interpretations of the Parable of the Last Judgement, and its related depiction in the Great White Throne of Revelation 20.11-15), is its clear antecedent of "God as Judge" in the Old Testament, particularly in the Psalms.

 

In Psalm 49 LXX, the "God of gods, the Lord" commands us to "Offer to God a sacrifice of praise and pay to the Most High thy vows" (49.14). In Psalm 57 LXX, God the Righteous Judge exorcises "bad judgment" that is oppressive and corrupt from the earth. In Psalm 71 LXX, God calls the King to "judge the poor of the people," and to "serve the sons of the poor," and to "humble the false accuser" (71.4) -- judgment here is seen as deliverance and vindication of those who have been excluded from the divine providence of creation.: no one should be poor and hungry, naked and oppressed on God's holy earth.

 

The preeminent Psalm of Judgment is probably Psalm 81 LXX (82 English numeration). It is interesting that in several Patristic texts, the Fathers interpret this to anticipate the Ascension of Christ and His establishment as warrior King and final Judge at the Judgment, to which I heartily agree.

 

But what is missing in some recent literature on this Psalm and its eschatological portent is the Judge's criteria. Here, as in the Judgment of Matthew 25 and Revelation 20, there is no mention of religious affiliation, or even of State friendship to and support of the Church:

 

God has stood in the mighty assembly,

and in their very midst He judged among the judges.

'How long will you judge unjustly

and favor persons who are wicked?

'Defend the poor and the orphaned,

be just to the oppressed and needy;

'Rescue the poor and needy,

deliver them from the sinner's hand.'

Neither knowing nor comprehending,

they have gone on in darkness;

all the foundations of the earth shall be shaken.

'I said: You are gods, you are all sons of the Most High.

'But you shall die as men die,

you shall fall like any earthly prince.'

(Psalm 81.2-7)

 

Whether these "judges of the mighty assembly" are angels, archons, kings or actual judges, the rich or the powerful, what is crucial is the divine demand for justice, and relief of the poor, the orphaned (i.e., those without household and connections), the oppressed, the needy (i.e., those who are denied the fruits of Providence).

If it is claimed that Jesus is the Savior precisely because He is supplanting (or has supplanted) the demonic structures of the world, then one must also claim that Jesus will restore a sort of righteousness that would probably discomfit some recent writers and podcasters.

 

Who are the "wicked" in Psalm 82.2 LXX? In Psalm 13 LXX, God the Judge states exactly what that wickedness is:

 

The Lord looks down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there be any that understand and seek God.

They have all turned aside, altogether corrupted; there is none, not even one, who does good.

Do all the workers of wickedness know nothing at all? They eat up My people as they eat bread and do not call on the Lord.

Thus they were in great fear where no was, for God is in the generation of the righteous.

You treat with contempt the poor man's desire, as the Lord is his only hope. 

(Psalm 13.2-6 LXX).

 

The implication for Lent is clear:

 

By all means, confess the individual, internal passions and sins: rage and lust, gluttony and greed, pride and despair, luxury and laxity.

 

But confess more self-centeredness, especially complicity in injustice, oppression, and the deprivation of rights and providence to the poor and the alien, all the excluded from the Table of the Lord that is Creation, even in the fallen world.

 

For what is the Garden of Eden but the primordial provision of humanity by the Hand of the Lord Himself?

 

Man's self-chosen exile from Eden is not just the alienation of the individual soul, but the alienation and fracturing of human society. The corruption of sin and death is not comprised only of individual sins of concupiscence and irascibility, but more emphatically from Scripture "iniquity and strife in the city ... unrequited toil and unrighteousness ... usury and deceit" (Psalm 54.9-10 LXX).

 

How long has it been since anyone has confessed usury?

 

When it comes to the division of the sheep from the goats, "goat-ness," at least in Scripture and the early Fathers, is a lot more social than individual. So is "sheep-ness."

 

If we want to be as eschatological as the first Christians undoubtedly were, we should start by at least dismissing the false contemptuous individualism as practiced in the libertarian "nation."

 

 

voyage of the prodigal

Voyage of the Prodigal:
from Solitary Confinement
to the Father's House

 

Repentance is not individualism

The Lenten call to repentance is often mistaken for an urge to descend into subjectivity, where the awareness of sin is confined to the indefinite reaches of the self and the psychic potential for an endless discovery of sinfulness.

But repentance in the Bible is not “navel-gazing.” It is not limited to introspection or what turns out to be “psychic self-prosecution.” Morality is both personal and social.

The righteousness of the Kingdom of God is not individualism -- despite the often popular urge to do so. Such individualized and subjectivized introspection turns out to be complicit in avoiding the obligations of "religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world" (James 1.27).

The Prodigal Son is too often narrated as the descent into the disconnected soul, looking for a "nous" that is an island unto itself. But nature abhors not a vacuum but rather isolation -- and human nature is no different. “No man is an island,” so says the great English poet John Donne, “entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”

It is impossible to “find yourself” as a disconnected, independent being. The sin of the Prodigal Son is not only his acts of excess – “there he squandered his property in loose living.” When the Prodigal Son “took his journey into a far country,” the real far country is precisely the ego descending into total self-centeredness. It was a rejection of the Father’s beautiful Creation, a turning away from the community of the Father’s House, and getting utterly lost and hopeless in the darkness of self-alienation.

The Father’s gifts of restoration

When the Prodigal finally “came to his senses” in the pig pen (Luke 15.17), he was changing from being self-absorbed (which always tends toward psychotic pathology) to waking up to reality – which is the divine community of his Father’s house.

The Prodigal Son is better told -- following the original Narrator's script -- as a restoration to the community of Eden – that is, humanity as it was created to be. After having squandered the inheritance of human nature, the restored prodigal regains the marks of communion with humanity and all Creation.

The Father clothes His returning child with a robe that hearkens back to the innocence and openness, the transparency and lissomeness of Adam and Eve before the Fall. It is the baptismal robe of holiness regained. 

The shoes that were put on the feet of the Prodigal are tokens of being firmly established in the Father’s house: “having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of peace” (Ephesians 6.15).

And the ring is the sign of sonship and daughterhood, of having been brought back into the household of the Father not as a hired hand, but as a son or daughter fully restored. The ring is a badge of primordial human royalty. Humanity – the image of the Son of the Father – was always the center and meaning of Creation.

All three of these graces, these undeserved and utterly surprising festival gifts, speak emphatically of a repentant sinner being welcomed back and repositioned at the head of Creation, once again occupying the divine call in Eden:

“Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness; and let them have dominion … Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1.26,28). This is a “happy dominion,” a husbandry over Creation that mediates divine grace through man to all other creatures. This central role was abdicated by the First Adam at the Fall: this role is taken up again by the Second Adam, and in Him every prodigal is “re-invested” with royalty restored.

False way of salvation

Obviously, these gifts of the Father – the ring, the shoes, the robe – are NOT tokens of a hermeticized individual, separated from the rest of humanity and the world. Such individualism -- even dressed in Pharisaical complacency -- is a false way of theosis, i.e., salvation. Righteousness is only community: it cannot be egotistical.

Jesus warns against the temptations of false theosis, of a Pharisaical individualism that calls attention to itself:

“And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6.16-18).

The dangers of show religion

The Lord says many withering things about making a show of austere religion and publicized penance. Orthodox Christians should not be identified by what they wear, how they look, especially by how miserable they act.

The early Christians readily adopted this ethic. This can be seen in the Letter to Diognetus, written in 130 AD by an anonymous author: “Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign.”

The selfish older son

Nothing demonstrates the peril of “individualized false theosis” than the character of the Older Brother of the Prodigal Son. His is the self-isolating religiosity of the separated individual, offended that the undeserving is welcomed back home.

Who is the Older Son? Anyone who would rather eat mutton with just a few other miserable colleagues (like Job's “friends” who blamed Job’s suffering on God) than join in with the angelic assembly who all rejoice over one sinner who repents:

“ … yet you never gave me a kid goat that I might make merry with my friends” (Luke 15.29).

The Lord points to this theme in the verse that immediately precedes the Parable of the Prodigal Son:

“Just so, I tell you that there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15.10).

True Lent cannot be undertaken without a clear idea of the destination. The Father's House with "bread enough and to spare" is the House of the Greening of Spring. It is the community of Eden that is the descending New Jerusalem. It is the Upper Room of God washing human feet.

One wonders whether the Lenten journey can go anywhere if one starts out with the notion that heaven is sparse, peopled by only a few mutton-eaters. It is a terrible thing to claim – as some have done – that only a few people will end up in heaven. To say so is to misrepresent the Father, Who is “prodigal” in His desire that “no one should perish” (2 Peter 3.9 and 1 Timothy 2.4), that His marriage feast at the Last Day should be completely full (Luke 14.23).

The destination of Lent: the way home

Lent wends its way, of course, to the Edenic Tree of the Fatted Calf, the place where God pours out His life to become the Eucharist in the House of Bread, Bread broken for the Life of the World. In which life there is no individuality, only personhood and the beloved community.

The Older Son then is the one who is offended at the “music and dancing” (Luke 15.25) of homecoming, who thinks it unfair that he is paid the same after working a whole day as the one who worked only one hour. He is the one who cannot tolerate the possibility, let alone the likelihood (Matthew 21.31), that the unshriven and unclean might end up saved, just because the Father will wait as long as it takes. 

❦

resolution and desire

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” This is the most famous opening line of any novel. It’s from “Pride and Prejudice,” of course, by the matchless Jane Austen.

I’d like to turn it into the language of self-help literature:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a New Year’s resolution, in order to be kept, must be an attainable goal.” Every counselor worth their salt preaches this, not only at the turn of the year but in every goal-making moment.

It’s also a truth sure as shootin’ that unattainable resolutions fly off like litter out of unsecured trash from a pickup bed just a hundred feet from the recycling center. Just like bags, wrappers, and french fry cups splayed out on the sides of exit ramps (you know where), unkept resolutions, still displayed in journals and on refrigerator doors, stare bleakly at us with persistent reproach.

The difference between a resolution and a decision is like the difference between a policy statement and an item on today’s to-do checklist. Governments and corporations make policy statements. But regular people? It seems unnatural, maybe even inhumane, thing to do.

It is a far better thing to break down big tasks into smaller, more do-able jobs. Big decisions are a lot less tense if they are divided up into a chain of smaller ones. If you want to get fancy and make yourself a flow chart, go right ahead.

But no matter what your preferred style is, it is generally a good thing to make molehills out of mountains, not the other way around.

The main difficulty with unattainable resolutions is that we keep making them, every year. Why do we do this?

Let’s open the hood of the resolution-making machine and see what’s going on. There’s a reason why this engine keeps running. What’s the fuel that keeps that fire going?

In a word, desire.

Hmmmm. Let’s check this theory. The most common resolution has to do with exercise and weight loss: “I hereby resolve to lose ten pounds a month, and I therefore will run five miles a day on my elliptical and do twenty reps on my rowing machine every morning. Plus, I will replace my burger intake with celery.”

Upon reflection, it’s pretty clear that under this resolution, which is obviously doomed to a quick demise, is a simple desire. As in, “I want to be healthier and I want to look better.” Not at the level of Lionel Messi. But definitely somewhere in between the World Cup champion and Cousin Eddie. 

There’s nothing wrong with such desire. It’s when desire becomes iron law that things get messed up. It’s one thing to say “I want to be more like Lionel.” It’s quite another to promise yourself “I will become like Lionel – so in 2023 I resolve to eat celery and run five miles a day.”

There are obviously bad desires in the world. But there may not be so many as we think. Most people for most of the time are motivated by good desires. Maybe they get distorted and they get derailed by the mean end of fortune’s stick – but at bottom there is usually a desire for the good. 

If you look deep enough and look far enough, all desires – even the nasty rotten ones – can be traced back to a primordial desire for the Good. Plato and Aristotle said this. Later on, in the first century, Philo and Justin Martyr identified the Good as God Himself. And two centuries later, my favorite saint – Gregory of Nyssa – proposed two most intriguing ideas:

The first point is that bad desire and bad behavior happen out of a distortion of knowledge of the Good.

The second is even a wilder proposition: If anyone ever sees God the Ultimate Good – or if one ever comes to know Him as He really is, then one cannot help but to love Him. And that is true for one’s fellow human being: if you ever come to know him or her as they really are, without the masks and the costumes, then they are no longer just the “other.” They are your neighbor as they always were. They are brother and sister. They are, essentially, friend.

At the points of extremity – like at the Great Feasts, or especially when faced with one’s mortality – all the disguises fall away. The number of enemies quickly subtract toward zero.

This is a handy method for making attainable New Year’s Resolutions. It’s helpful for steering a good passage through conflict. Consider two opposing parties of protesters, lined up on opposite sides of the street. Ask yourself: “What do those guys over there ultimately want?” Looking under the surface of slogans and banners and shallow partisan opinion, what is the deepest eternal desire? Is it possible at the Beginning and the End, the desire is the same? For real goodness, for real life, for the real God?

Sure, that essential desire often gets distorted and detoured into bad existential application, even bad resolutions. But maybe, just maybe, if we get to know each other better, and listen to each other’s real stories, we can recognize a neighbor, even a friend.

After all, that is precisely why God Himself called us “friend.” He reached out over a much wider, much deeper divide, a much higher wall of enmity. 

And that simple fact should make all the difference.

the christmas samaritan

– James Tissot, Le bon samaritain

This most famous parable, even though it is probably the one most familiar to everyone, remains a deep and beautiful mystery.

It is mystery – not in being unknown or secret, but that overwhelming and quiet sense that we’re touching upon a vast, fathomless Reality. In Orthodoxy, the Great Mysteries are like cosmic icebergs – what we know about is the tip that rises above the water, but below, submerged in the blue bottomless depths is that real enormous mass of the berg: hundreds, thousands of times greater than what can be seen and measured.

We can better appreciate the Mysterious dimension of the Parable of the Good Samaritan – and how it is related so intimately with Christmas – by thinking about a few questions:

Who is the Good Samaritan?

Who is my neighbor?

Who is the priest or the Levite?

Who are the robbers?

Who is the man who got beat up, robbed, stripped naked, and left for dead in a gutter?

As far as the last two questions are concerned, most of the Orthodox fathers, writing on this parable, say that the victim represents the human soul. The robbers are the passions that darken the soul and deform human nature, weakening and corrupting it.

This is a true interpretation, and is not to be disregarded. But it is not the only one.

There is another complementary interpretation as well.

Indeed, the victim in this parable could be you or me or anyone else. And that’s just it. It is not just the “soul” or the self – it is the other.

That is, it is your neighbor.

And the robbers? 

We need to pay attention to not only what the Parable says, but also to what it does not say. Nowhere does the Lord mention that the victim did anything to deserve being robbed. He was simply and innocently on his way to Jericho, minding his own business. 

There is no hint of fault or moral irresponsibility here, which would seem to be necessary for the onset of sinful passion -- i.e., the "psychopathological" interpretation.

So the robbers who rob and beat and abandon, abandoning the victim for dead, may be just and only a hard symbol of the cruelties of life.

In the fallen world, life can get harsh and especially unmerciful. All around us, caught along the wayside, the highways and byways, tangled in the hedges, are those who’ve been “beaten up by life.” 

This is the repeated and very clear theme of the Psalms. King David, the Shepherd Poet, wrote frequently – and I mean a lot – about being beset by the “enemy,” being beaten up, lacerated and bruised, and abandoned. He lamented that no one came to help, that those he had counted on for friendship either failed to show up or even ended up playing him falsely. 

“Have regard, O God, for Your covenant,” David prayed, “for the dark places of the earth are full of the houses of cruelty” (Psalm 73.20 LXX).

Recall that Jesus Himself was steeped in the Psalms. From boyhood, the Psalms was His Prayerbook, His Hymnal, His theological text. Indeed, the Psalms came ultimately from Him in eternity and through the Holy Spirit to David and the Prophets.

But as a human and Jewish Boy, Jesus sang it and memorized it and the Psalms passed into the deep layers of His human mind.

And thus you can find the Psalms everywhere in His words – in the Beatitudes, in the Lord’s Prayer, and in every single one of His Parables.

It is impossible to interpret the Gospels without the Psalms running constantly in one’s mind.

The victim left by the wayside is simply anyone that we might come upon. Someone that you know about. Someone that you recognized as being beat up by the cruelties of life. Someone beset by the Enemy. It is really not our immediate business to determine just who or what that Enemy is: whether it is demonic, foolishness, cultural or natural catastrophe, or completely irrational and unknown.

This sort of premature "theological pathologizing" may be essentially what the Lord is condemning when He denounced judgementalism so often.

It’s not for us to determine how they got beat up, or whether it’s their fault or whether they deserved it. It’s not even up to us to “lift up the hood” and to try to figure out what passions have left them in such a state. It's not for us to ask "Who sinned that this man was born blind?" 

The robbers in this Parable are “whatever in life” left our neighbor in such a tragic condition. Our neighbor is either someone like us or unlike us, even “the other.”

In any case, though, our neighbor is obviously, according to the Parable’s own terms, someone other than you or me. Our neighbor is our fellow human, our fellow bearer of the Image of God. 

Which means that “all of humanity” comprises the Neighborhood, and every human being is our Neighbor. “Inasmuch as ye have done unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it also unto Me” (Matthew 25.40).

This is a Parable less about interiority or introspection: it is a Parable about love, about kenosis (i.e., pouring out ourselves in self-sacrifice), about servanthood. According to the Lord's own terms in this Parable, the victim is not ourselves, but other than self. The victim is our neighbor -- whether or not we recognize him or her as such, whether or not we recognize the world and all of humanity, even creation, as the "neighborhood."

As we should.

The Good Samaritan Parable is about the giving of mercy. It is rather less about psychopathology.

Here’s the pivot, the “eu-catastrophe” of this Great Story. Here is the Mystery that has been thundering in the deep:

If humanity, beaten up by the fallen world, is the victim, the “man fallen by the wayside,” then who is the Good Samaritan?

Well, obviously, the Son of God. Jesus Himself. He bathed our wounds – deserved or undeserved – with the sweet oil of His mercy. He set us upon His beast of burden – all the prophets and the apostles and saints who established His covenant and His Gospel – and took us to the Inn, which is obviously the Church.

What happened at Bethlehem was the great Good Samaritan Who came – and Alone, He recognized our pain, our poverty, our lostness in the darkness.

From Bethlehem to Nazareth, to the desert temptation, to Galilee, to Jerusalem, to Golgotha, to Hell, to the Empty Tomb, to the Right Hand of the Father.

And at every place He saw you and me, and He didn’t pass by. He stayed, and remains in co-naturality with us. He is truly the Christmas Samaritan.

Let’s do the same.

As the chiefest of Good Samaritans, as the Gift of Christmas, He said, at the end of this Parable: "Go and do likewise."

universal and anti-universal notes

-- by the hand of iconographer George Makary (https://copticicon.com/icons)

In the ongoing, too often overheated, discussion of Christian universalism, here are some notes that might be helpful, especially in avoiding unnecessary runs down the garden path.

1. Universalism does not discount the possibility of hell -- just its co-eternity with God. Any such experience is not retributive, but purgative, therapeutic & educational.
   
   Gregory of Nyssa (et al) calls this a process of "purification," in which sin and death are consumed, making the "sinner no longer a sinner." This interval is the aeon after the present time and before the end, when there will be no more aeons but eternity.
   
   
2. Hell, or purgation, is not inflicted, but arises from the attempt of the self to oppose God's Love -- hence, it is the self revoking its own essence, which is to desire God's Love.
   
   
3. Universalism is not opposed to human freedom, as is often suggested. Rather, human freedom is preserved and protected by the eternal persuasion of divine love, as proclaimed and embodied by Christ.
   
   
4. To say that Jesus shall eventually surmount all & every refusal -- even the devil's -- is hardly an abrogation of freedom, but rather a vindication of Love & the "freeing" of freedom in theosis.
   
   
5. There is a difference between "aeon" (indefinite time, an age) and "eternity" (timelessness). The NT uses the former with regard to purgation, & reserves the latter only for God.
   
   
6. The interval of purgation may be long indeed. In fact, the "eternity" to which anti-universalists refer is probably this long interval, as they cannot conceive of eternity proper.
   
   
7. The notion that God would actively inflict retribution upon His creature, or that God would allow endless perdition (or annihilation), cannot be supported by apophatic or divine absolute-ness.
   
   
8. The difficulty of God's nature as love being also a despot that wages eternal wrath is more than the clay questioning the potter. That such conflation is utterly incoherent is a mark of the image of God that will not countenance such absurdity. "My thoughts are higher than your thoughts" is a statement of infinite transcendence, not discontinuity. That the thought of eternal punishment is (or should be) offensive is a sign that humanity has received God's revelation of His nature.
   
   
9. It is legitimate, even necessary, to interpret Scripture and Tradition under the rubric of moral coherence. Doing so is precisely the work of "the Spirit leading into all truth," a continuation of Jesus' hermeneutical instruction on the road to Emmaus.
   
   
10. Hermeneutics cannot avoid being essentially theological. Thus, one must interrogate the motives for defending the notion of eternal hell & divine retribution. What does such infernalism enable? What psychological & sociological structures are founded upon it?
    
    
11. It is likely that the old notion that eternal hell was necessary for evangelism & discipline was never valid. It is the knowledge of the Father through the Son glorified by the Spirit that leads to repentance & theosis. Alone. Nothing less.
    
    
12. It is true that since Constantine and Augustine, the majority of Christian leaders & writers seemed to think of Hell as unending torment, with no hope of change. But it is at least probable that before these two figures, the majority of Christians were universalists.
    
    
13. Universalism as above has not been condemned as heretical by Eastern Orthodoxy, despite the common assumption that the 5th Ecumenical Council had done so (which it did not), & despite some local anathemas saying so. Anathemas are not dogma & are often flawed.
    
    
14. Universalism produces a highly Christological eschatology. Christ reigns through the kenotic Spirit, exorcising the demonic, destroying sin and death, until everything is in voluntary and joyous submission.
    
    
15. This universal submission (with no remainder) of Philippians 2.9-11 is a free, loving, and saving submission. It is the perfecting of the person, vs the annihilation of person in despotic oppression.
    
    
16. The reign of Christ, in the actualization of "Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done on earth" is the "exorcistic" campaign of the Body of Christ against the antichrist structure. The demonic is constantly being evicted from the material realm. Permanently.
    
    
17. "Until I make Your enemies Your footstool." When sin and death are finally destroyed, when all "sinners are made no longer sinners," as Basil the Great said, then "God will be all in all."
    
    
18. It is inconceivable then that any should remain "sinner," after "Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire" (Rev 20.14). This verse is the goal of Christ's reign, the destruction of sin and death.
    
    
19. The lake of fire is the very fire St Paul describes in 1 Cor 3.15 -- the fire that burns up sin and death, but "he will not suffer loss, but saved as through fire." This is refinement, this is therapeutic. The sinner is made "not a sinner."
    
    
20. To suggest any other purpose for fire is to suggest another nature of God, and to diminish eschatology, and finally -- if Hell is made eternal, then the Lord is made to fail.
    
    

A few things I've learned, lately, about anti-universalism (which, like gnosticism, is more a mindset than a set doctrine):

1. If one does a word cloud from this online community, then the largest terms will be "heresy," "legalist," "weak-minded," "liberal."
   
   
2. Clearly, "legalist" is being confused with "casuist" or "sophist." It is unclear how universalism could be associated with Pharisaism, which seems to have needed the doctrine of eternal perdition for its own purposes.
   
   
3. Justinian is crucial in anti-universalism, if not essential, as he seems to be its main proponent. He is platformed with the Fifth Ecumenical Council.
   
   
4. The strategy for responding to substantial questions about the actual rejection of apokatastasis by the 5th Council (which is doubtful) is to make accusations about being overly technical, even "legalistic."
   
   
5. Origen is made out as the symbol of universalism, and is quickly denatured as a straw man. Sadly, this is hardly unprecedented in Tradition.
   
   
6. But then this straw man argument disregards the universalism of Gregory of Nyssa (who was never denounced, obviously) and Isaac the Syrian.
   
   
7. Also, it seems that anathemas from all sorts of authoritative levels (even quite low ones) are given great weight in anti-universalism. Anathematization is hardly a reliable foundation for dogma, and such practice could destabilize the entire practice of Tradition.
   
   
8. Anti-universalists quote lots of Scripture about hell, & blithely reject the aeon/aïdios distinction. But universalist ref's like John 6.45, 12.32, 17.7; Acts 3.21; Romans 5.18; 1 Cor 15.21, 15.28; 1 Tim 2.4; 2 Peter 3.9 are given short shrift, or torturous re-interpretive contortions.
   
   
9. And Rev 20.14? This is a clear statement that death & hell itself (which are not creations) will be annihilated from existence. Anti-universalists struggle to interpret this robustly.
   
   
10. It seems that there is an avoidance, in anti-universalism, of dealing robustly with the difficulty of hell persisting eternally. This is evil being co-eval with God -- and is that okay in one's theology?
    
    
11. I hope that the anti-universalist Fathers would not countenance the co-evality of hell with God. I wish that would be so with contemporary writers. I think most anti-universalists really mean an aeonic, indefinite interval of hell, rather than eternity.
    
    
12. But there are those, sadly, who embrace the notion that the pain of the damned is part of the blessedness of heaven. This is execrable, and that notion remains a cancer within the history of doctrine.
    
    
13. God doesn't need anything, & the God Who is Love does not need an anthropomorphized "satisfaction" of His wrath being excited or His honor being impugned. But some anti-universalists suggest that hell "must" persist, because "justice must be satisfied."
    
    
14. The simplicity and apatheia of God will not suffer any satisfaction theory. Mercy always trumps justice, as Isaac the Syrian insists. And if God does not "need" hell, then neither does any cleric or theologian.
    
    
15. And the poor & the meek, who have the Kingdom of Heaven & shall inherit the earth? They don't need hell after death because they probably have enough of it before death. But maybe those who are not poor & meek need hell -- or rather, the doctrine of it.
    
    
16. Anti-universalists, especially those with an existentialist bent, insist that eternal hell is necessary to preserve human freedom. But this is a false opposition. The ability to reject God's love is hardly a freedom at all. There is no possibility of eternity within the confines of hell, as hell is only a negation -- it is NOT a creation. Human freedom is the person's growth toward the perfection of his or her human nature. A willing devolution is hardly freedom -- and the overcoming of that possibility is the preservation and perfection of human freedom, not its abrogation.
    
    
17. There is no doubt that anti-universalists work hard to preserve the notion of eternal hell, despite that notion's absence in the Nicene Creed. It is not clear why there needs to be such commitment.