“See that you do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.”
- Jesus (Matt 18:10)
This was one of the sentences our class was given to translate from the Greek this week. There’s nothing like translating from the original language to give freshness to a familiar passage, and this verse practically jumped off the page at me.
Jesus spoke these words just after he had finished giving a teaching on the kingdom of heaven. As illustration, he had a child stand in front of all the gathered adults, and he said “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” (Matt 18:3-6)
What an amazing passage! Yet so typical of Jesus, to turn conventional wisdom upside down… to take the smallest and most defenseless member of a community and say “be like this person”.
But back to the original verse. What jumps out at me is: “their angels always see the face of my Father”. Children don’t have just one guardian angel, they have many, and they always have immediate access to God.
It makes me wonder. I know so little of angels. I believe they exist, but I don’t believe they look anything like the little pins sold in Hallmark stores. Real angels are so majestic and powerful that humans who have met them have been immediately frightened. “Fear not” are always the first words out of the mouths of angels speaking to humans.
But I wonder… can angels whisper in our ears without us knowing? Do they help direct our thoughts to God? How many of our childhood angels remain with us throughout our lives? How many times has my life been spared because the angels assigned to me were doing their jobs and doing them well? When a child is injured is it because an angel was somehow distracted?
I wish we knew more about angels. Someday we will. In the meantime one thing I think I know: it can’t hurt to pray for our children’s angels, and for the angels of those we love, asking the Father to help them guide and keep us.
John 1:14 contains one of the most stunning statements ever written.
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”
Churches and believers everywhere read this verse every year around Christmas-time. How often do we just breeze right past it in our haste to see a baby in a manger — or more likely, to see the presents under the tree? Time to stop and consider the meaning of these words.
Our Greek textbook highlights both the translation and meaning of the verse. In the original language the phrase o` lo,gos tou/ qeou/ – “the Word of God” — would have been immediately understood by John’s contemporaries as referring to “God’s transcendent rationality that gave the universe order and purpose. [...] As such, o` lo,gos tou/ qeou/ was foreign to human ways, above us and distant from us, guiding us from afar.” (Basics of Biblical Greek, Mounce, 75)
The ancient Greek philosophers agreed with this definition and often constructed elaborate systems of thought and practice to attempt to reach the heights of heaven. Platonism — which emphasized denial of the flesh and the passions — is one famous example of this kind of thought. The philosophy is rooted in the belief that the things of the spirit and the things of the flesh are entirely different and in fact oppose each other. Therefore the flesh must be denied if the spirit is to thrive.
Yet the apostle John writes “the Word became flesh” — the word for “flesh” is sa,rx which is pronounced approx “sarke,” and makes up the first half of the English word “sarcophagus”. In other words, the Word of God became mortal. Became one of us.
This is no distant God whose superiority, utter perfection, and ultimate power keeps him apart from his creation and out of reach of his people. This is a God who is perfect spirit and is willing to commit the scandal of putting on flesh. And in doing so he overturns those who think they have all the answers, who think they have knowledge that will get them to God, or who think they honor God with better-than-thou lifestyles. He does all this just to rescue a soul that is lost. This is a God of love.
“This affirmation about lo,gos and sa,rx is the very heart of our faith. God has not abandoned us. No lowliness, no misery, no sinfulness is beyond God’s comprehension and reach. [...] This is the mystery and the power of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ.” (ibid p. 75)
I wanted to get this quote written down so I don’t lose track of it…
Not to be macabre, but I believe it does the soul good to reflect on death now and then and to think about how to go about preparing for the Final Journey. John Donne did a lot of thinking about it — and lived a life of great joy and love for God and those around him. Here’s one of his prayers which I hope to make my own:
“Into Thy Hands”
“As death is the wages of sin it is due to me; as death is the end of sickness it belongs to me; and though so disobedient a servant as I may be afraid to die, yet to so merciful a master as thou I cannot be afraid to come; and therefore into thy hands, O my God, I commend my spirit, a surrender which I know thou wilt accept, whether I live or die.”
- Devotions, XVII - John Donne
“Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me… streams of living water will flow from within him.’ By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.”
- John 7:37-39
“For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd;
he will lead them to springs of living water.
And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
- Revelation 7:17
Every now and then things in life come together in unexpected ways. An old friend used to call it “God-incidence”. It happened just now. I got an email from a friend visiting Israel which spoke to the subject of a phone conversation with a friend in North Carolina which tapped into a Spirit nudge from a few months ago which followed on a church quiet day a few months before that. One degree of separation, four times in a row? Time to pay attention!
All the messages were in one way or another about Living Water. Continue Reading »
“It pleaseth almighty God to communicate by sensible means those blessings which are incomprehensible.”
- Richard Hooker
…or, in modern language, in participating in the sacraments, “God shows us and explains to us through our senses the gifts He has given us — gifts our minds alone can’t comprehend.” This understanding of sacraments, particularly communion, is characteristic of the Anglican understanding, somewhere halfway between Catholic and Protestant. This “via media” or “middle road” was laid and marked out in large part by Richard Hooker, and all Anglicans are indebted to his reason and orderly theology for the church and the liturgy we have today.
Just one more quote in the series of Anglican theologians. For the blog’s regular readers, I’m still writing papers for Anglican Way of Theology and just started Intro to Greek today. Am loving both and still immersed. Hope to come up for air and give you all a ‘proper’ post soon!
“As Aquinas insisted, God could speak in words like we do, but He could also speak in events. He could say “rock” as we can, in order to communicate, or he could say “rock” and there would be a rock.”
– James M. Stanton
I stumbled on the above quotation this week, and it jumped off the page as expressing a profound truth. God’s word is living and active. The Psalmist describes God’s word as being alternatively a cause for hope, a thing eternal, something to be obeyed, something one can trust completely, something that gives and maintains life, “a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” (Psalm 119)
Jesus said of God’s word, “your word is truth”. (John 17:17) Which brings us back to where we began. When God speaks, truth happens. This truth may be a form of communication, or it may actively create something true where there was nothing before. When God speaks truth into a person’s life, truth takes up residence in the innermost parts of the person’s being and becomes a living reality.
A couple friends and I attended the Pittsburgh Symphony’s final concert series of the season last night, and it was spectacular. Faure’s Requiem, and the Saint-Saens Organ Symphony. Absolutely gorgeous, lengthy standing ovation at the end of the night.
To give you a taste, here’s the Sanctus from the Faure Requiem, this version recorded at Kings College Cambridge. Enjoy!
~
~
Text:
Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus, dominus deus sabbaoth Holy, holy holy Lord God of hosts
Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tua All of heaven and earth gives glory to you
The Anglican Way of Theology course is just flying by. Tomorrow I’ll be presenting my paper on Simon Patrick and the Latitudinarians, and tonight I’m working on prepping my paper on CS Lewis for Friday. I’m hoping to do something creative with his common theme that our perceptions of the world are ‘upside-down’. Here’s a quote illustrating what I mean:
“Dance and game are frivolous, unimportant down here; for ‘down here’ is not their natural place. Here, they are a moment’s rest from the life we were placed here to live. But in this world everything is upside-down. That which, if it could be prolonged here, would be a truancy, is likest that which in a better country is the End of ends. Joy is the serious business of heaven.”
- CS Lewis, from Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer
I hope I can find enough ‘upside down’ CS Lewis references to fill a four-page paper by Friday!
I’ve been listening to this CD, Phatfish: Purple Through the Fishtank, in the car for the past couple weeks and just can’t get enough of it:
Mid-album is a song — my pick for song of the week — called What Would I Do? that starts out dark and melancholy and then breaks into a rocking cry of freedom. Click here to hear a clip. The whole song isn’t available anywhere on the ‘net, but this will give a small taste. Here are the lyrics:
What…
What would I do?
Where would I go?
Who would I be
if it wasn’t for Your mercy?
Who…
Who would help?
Who could save?
Who would care
if it wasn’t for Your saving grace?
Now the old is gone
Now a new day dawns
Now the old is gone
Now a new day
Now the old is gone
Now a new day dawns
Now the old is gone
Now a new day
Side note: For those readers who (like me) love Stuart Townend’s music, Phatfish has worked extensively in live performances as his “backup band” — but don’t let that sway you one way or the other, they’re a force to be reckoned with in their own right. Here’s a bonus clip called Kingdom Coming which shows a little more of what the band can do.
Found over on the finitum non capax infiniti blog… a beautiful article on how faith responds at times in life when it seems like injustice has the upper hand. Why does God let bad things happen? Why doesn’t He step in and put a stop to the evil and wrong?
Here’s an unexpected discovery. As I’ve been getting to know Simon Patrick in preparation for our first class paper, I’ve come across the name George Bull a number of times. So tonight rather than read the assigned reading I decided to read a little Bull. (shush up there in the peanut gallery)
George Bull (1634-1710) studied at Oxford, was secretly ordained C of E prior to the Restoration, and was a contemporary of Patrick’s. The author of the text I’m reading calls him a “progressive traditionalist” — interesting way to describe a person! Continue Reading »
I’m still reading up on Anglican church history, and here’s a guy I hadn’t heard of before. Simon Patrick (1627-1707) started out life as a Presbyterian but was eventually ordained Anglican and became Rector of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden (London). He was priest there for 27 years, and according to his biographer he “stayed with his people through thick and thin, including the plague of 1665 when his ministry continued in the midst of great danger and discomfort. …in 1679 he turned down the offer of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, which was then the richest living in England, on the grounds that his own people at Covent Garden had been so good to him that he did not want to go from them.” Patrick was eventually persuaded to become a bishop, first at Chichester and then at Ely.
These are some words and advice Patrick wrote to his clergy when he was bishop of Chichester:
“We ought not only to be blameless and harmless, but to shine as lights in the world, and to show in our lives that to which we exhort our people in our sermons, being patterns to the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in faith and purity, and giving attendance to reading, to exhortation and to doctrine; that in so doing we may both save ourselves and also them that hear us.
“Consider often what a great account you have to make to God for the souls committed to your charge.
“Remember and read over frequently the vows that you made to God at your ordination, and the charge that was then given you, and examine yourselves frequently whether you do observe these or not.
“Think how sacred a trust that of souls is, which the Son of God has purchased with his own blood; and how severely he will reckon with you, if, through your ill example, bad doctrine or other neglects of your duty, those souls perish for which he died.”
A contemporary of John Donne, George Herbert was a parish priest and poet. Some of his poetry has been set to music as hymns. A quote on the subject of preaching from A Priest to the Temple, or the Countrey Parson:
Oh my Master, on whose errand I come,
Let me hold my peace, and do Thou speak Thyself;
For Thou art Love,
And when Thou teachest, all are Scholars.
George Herbert also wrote one of my favorite hymn-texts, The Call, which can be found here.
Thanks to Elaine Katz of the Anti-Bodies website for sending along this information.
Lawmakers are finally coming to understand that the plasticized bodies used in Bodies: The Exhibition are of unknown origin and could be the remains of political prisoners, and some have taken action.
John Donne (1572-1631) was a Roman Catholic convert to Anglicanism. In his youth he was, shall we say, a familiar of pub-keepers and popular with the ladies, and was known for his bawdy poetry. After his marriage, however, he matured and developed an interest in theology. Even so it took those around him nearly a decade to convince him to be ordained. He became Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and was a popular preacher in his day.
The man who advised the world “never to send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee” writes with great joy and even earthy humor. Donne is incredibly passionate. His religious poetry, some of it, is so sensuous even modern readers sometimes find it shocking or at least a little uncomfortable. Yet at the same time he had an intellect that few in his day could withstand (or can today). The thoughts in his sermons (as I read the excerpts) are like gemstones — every paragraph a string of pearls.
You have a positive and hopeful attitude toward the world. You think that nature, history, and even the pagan philosophers were often guided by God in preparation for the Advent of the Christ. You find “seeds of the Word” in unexpected places. You’re patient and willing to explain the faith to unbelievers.
