Reflection on Pascha

Reflection on Pascha

“Let us call ‘Brothers’ even those who hate us, and forgive all by the resurrection.”     This line, one of the Paschal verses, speaks very strongly that the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ are not merely about sin –  where sin is defined as committing offenses against God or  the breaking of His commandments .   The resurrection is also very centrally about what it means to be human and about humans being reconciled with other humans.   The sin of Adam and Eve introduced death/mortality into the human condition.  The fracturing of the world – alienation, separation, isolation and hostility – all come into the world with death.   It was not just a human who died with the first sin, it also was humanity as a whole and human nature which suffered a mortal wound.    Cain additionally and evilly further mangled the human condition by immediately using death, the twisted distortion of life and the consequence – the wages! – of sin,  to murder not just a fellow human being, but his brother.    The story of what Cain does to Abel reveals how little humanness or humaneness is left in mankind.  Humans take the instrument of their punishment, death, to accomplish further evil!    Death, the threatened consequence of disobeying God and the rupturing of human communion with the Creator, becomes the human’s tool for further separation and alienation – not only from God but from one another and from the rest of creation.    

Sin, as becomes so clear in Genesis, is not just or even mostly the breaking of God’s commandments – it is also the breaking and dividing and separating of humans from their natural place in the created order – the breaking of humanity’s relationship to God, to nature and the sundering of each human from each and every other human.  It was a death blow aimed at love itself.

Consequently, when the fullness (the catholicity) of salvation is comprehended, we realize the resurrection is not only about forgiving sin and overcoming our alienation from and enmity with God.  It is also about triumphing over what has happened to humans in their alienation from and enmity with each other.  It is about overcoming the loss of love and the enthronement of self-love in the human heart.   Christ’s trampling down death by His own death, is the triumph over and defeat of all death – including the death of humanity and humanness by our becoming inhuman and through our dehumanizing others.  Salvation is the undoing of the Fall of Eve and Adam.   But it also is the undoing of Cain’s fratricide and the restoration of what it means to be a brother.   It is not by accident that Christians referred to each other as brothers and sisters and to the community as brethren.    Resurrection is intended to be the restoration of brotherly love between humans – what God intended as the relationship between the children of Eve and Adam, a relationship which was destroyed by Cain when he murdered Abel.   

Humans need a restoration and reconciliation not only with God but with each other.  The history of humanity has been one long telling and retelling of the Cain-murdering-Abel story.    Cain asks, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”  And the answer is YES.   In the Gospel, Jesus is asked, “Who is my neighbor?”   He replies in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the neighbor is the one whom we have opportunity to be neighborly toward.    Jesus himself asks, “who are my brothers?”  He answers, all those who  do the will of God, they are my brothers.  The brother is anyone who follows Christ.   The object of our love is every human being, even those who hate us! 

So as we joyously celebrate the resurrection and the destruction of death by Christ, we have to ask ourselves, “are we willing to live by the resurrection?”   Are we committed to do what we sing and “forgive ALL by the resurrection”?  Are we ready to embrace as brothers those who hate us – to call our enemy not just our fellow human being, not just neighbor, but our brother?

Living the resurrection is as hard as Great Lent or as taking up the cross and denying one’s self and following Christ.   But it also is to experience the joy of Paradise, the forgiveness of Heaven, the mercy of God, the power of the resurrection, and the destruction of our final enemy, death and all that leads to separation, alienation and enmity.  It is the Faith which overcomes the world.

Reflections on the Holy Saturday Scriptures Readings

Reflections while listening to the Scripture at the Holy Saturday Vespers-Liturgy.

Whenever listening to the scriptures read, I often have thoughts come to mind about a verse or idea in the Scriptures. Here are a few of the things I thought about while listening the 15 Old Testament readings on Holy Saturday.

Genesis 1:4 “And God saw the light was good.” The very first thing that God sees as good is “light” which was also the first thing He called into existence. There is goodness in creation from the very beginning. A blessedness, which God is pleased to see. He is not indifferent to the creation He has made. He not only brings it into existence, He experiences creation (He sees it) and finds goodness in it. As the Creator, He no doubt imbued the creation with goodness, but the text also suggests that He experiences that goodness when encountering the creation. He draws goodness out of the created! Creation is not valueless in God’s eyes. It has a value and this value is not only what He put into it, it is also what He draws out of it when He encounters the created. Goodness is not simply a property of God. It is also a value that His creation possesses and something which can be experienced through encountering created things. The goodness in Christ for example is not simply the divine in Him, it is also the case that His physical body possesses such goodness, as it was meant to do from the beginning. There is no form of dualism here. If creation is not good, it is not because God has withdrawn this property from it, but rather that the created has spurned what God has given to it. Humans are to have a very particular role in creation, and that role requires the humans to be good, blessed, holy, godlike. But when humanity rejects its place in creation, it forsakes goodness and then can no longer fulfill the role God intended humans to have in the created order. Christ re-unites the goodness of God with the goodness God saw in His original creation.

Jonah – the King of Nineveh proclaims a fast in response to Jonah’s message, but the not eating food or drinking even water is not the goal of the fast. Rather the food fasting is simply to get everyone’s attention and to get everyone focused on what really needs to happen: “yes, let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence which in is his hands.” It is turning away from all evil which the king hopes will cause God to relent and not destroy the city. It isn’t letting heaps of food go uneaten which is the goal of the fast – that will not earn God’s favor. Rather by fasting, people are to stop all their normal ways of behavior so that they can concentrate on correcting the real problem – sin. That is what our Great Lent out to be for each of us as well. It is not piles of uneaten food which are going to reach up to heaven, get God’s attention, and cause God to forgive sinners. It is only our changing our hearts and repenting of evil which God will really notice and care about. Something for us to think about – we are not offering up to God uneaten foods, as God isn’t looking for such offerings from us. He is looking into our hearts and hoping to find in us hearts cleansed of sin so that He can dwell with us.

Jonah – God tells Jonah: “And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left…?” It is interesting that God’s motive in warning the Ninevites is His own love, but a particular type of love: compassion or pity. He is not desiring to save the city because of how good the people are, or how holy they are. He pities them because of their ignorance! Nevertheless He feels compassion and mercy for them and desires to save them. He doesn’t wait for them to become good and holy. God’s love is purely gratuitous and unconditional. In Lenten services we do pray for “the errors of the people” or sometimes translated as the “ignorance of the people”, a phrase found in Hebrews 9:7. God’s loving concern for people is not based on the people’s “loveability” nor on their holiness or goodness. God can also love based upon pity and compassion – another lesson for Christians.

Exodus 13:20-15:1 It is God who directs the Israelites to move to the location which will entrap them between the Egyptian army and the Red Sea. Interesting that He doesn’t lead them in such a way so as to avoid danger and difficulty, which would certainly be the way most of us would prefer and would choose. There would be no need for dramatic escapes and rescues if God didn’t lead them to a point where they needed to be saved in the first place. Moses is so confident that God will save them – He will do it all, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will work for you today…” But God, ever unpredictable, says to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward.” God it turns out is not going to do all the work in salvation. He tells Moses, “Lift up your rod and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it…” It is Moses who has to part the sea, not God! The salvation of the people is in Moses’s hands. And what is God going to be doing while Moses parts the water and enables the Israelites to escape? “I will harden the heart of the Egyptians so they shall go after them.” In other words, God is not going to stop the Egyptians, on the contrary He is going to provoke them to pursue the Israelites, while Moses is busy trying to get the Israelites away from the Egyptians. God is not trying to make things easier for Moses and the Israelites. God doesn’t drown the Egyptians, He tells Moses to stretch out his hand and to return the waters to their rightful place. God doesn’t do this act on His own, He commands Moses to do it, but then leaves it to Moses to get the job done. God does not and will not do everything for us – He cooperates with us and demands synergy from us in working with Him. He tells us what to do but then leaves it up to us whether or not we do it. This is not God-alone thinking, but true synergy.

Isaiah 61:1-19 Sometimes we Christians are too narrowly focused in our theology. For example we hear a great deal regarding how Jesus died for our sins. But Jesus came into the world to do a lot more than dealing only with sinners. “… because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn … to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit… that he may be glorified.” We Christians sometimes get so focused on sin that we forget all the things that is was prophesied that the Messiah would do. There is a whole lot more wrong with the world than just sin, there is sickness and affliction, captivity and mourning, and brokenheartedness too. Christ came not just to take on our sins, but also to heal our diseases and to take on all our ailments, spiritual, mental and physical.

The role of fasting in Orthodox Christian Spirituality

The Lord God was pretty clear what fasting meant to Him:

 5 Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
       only a day for a man to humble himself?
       Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
       and for lying on sackcloth and ashes?
       Is that what you call a fast,
       a day acceptable to the LORD ?

 6 “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
       to loose the chains of injustice
       and untie the cords of the yoke,
       to set the oppressed free
       and break every yoke?

 7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry
       and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter-
       when you see the naked, to clothe him,
       and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

 8 Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
       and your healing will quickly appear;
       then your righteousness ^[a] will go before you,
       and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.

 9 Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
       you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
       “If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
       with the pointing finger and malicious talk,

 10 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
       and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
       then your light will rise in the darkness,
       and your night will become like the noonday.   (Isaiah 58)

 The Orthodox Church certainly has placed a great deal of emphases on fasting as a normal part of Christian discipline.  This seems to be especially true because of the role monasticism has played in the history of Orthodoxy.  As Christians endeavored to take seriously being disciples of Christ, they looked for the ways and means to live out his teachings to take up the cross and to deny the self (Mark 8:34).  Combined with efforts to universalize some of the specific comments of Christ to individuals, such as “go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me”  (Matthew 19:21), Orthodox monasticism became viewed as the normative way to follow Christ. 

The monks who had given up all of their possessions to follow Christ consequently placed a lot less emphasis on charity as their main way of life, since they had in fact embraced voluntary poverty – they were in possession of nothing so they had little to give in terms of material goods.  Instead their emphasis came to be on personal self denial, abstinence, fasting from food, asceticism.   This also meant that to some extent specific teachings of Christ dealing with ministering to the hungry, to the thirsty, to the homeless, to the naked, were down played and emphasis was placed more on what the monks were better prepared to do – fast and pray.

This  has led in Orthodoxy to an almost exclusively monastic focus in the spiritual life, where Lent becomes a time of abstinence from food and increased prayer, with little mention of God’s proclamation on fasting found in  Isaiah 58.

 

But this monastic emphasis has from time to time been questioned by some Orthodox.  For example St. Maria Skobtsova, martyred by the Nazis in a death camp in 1945 was an outspoken critic of the exclusively monastic vision of Christianity that was virtually the sole focus of Orthodoxy of her day.      As St. Maria wrote commenting on the popular collection of Orthodox spiritual writings, the PHILOKALIA :  “we may note that in the first volume of the PHILOKALIA, material about the attitude toward one’s neighbor takes up only two pages out of six hundred, and in the second volume, only three out of seven hundred and fifty….  And we cannot say that it all refers to the direct question of fulfilling the commandment of the love of God – three-quarters of the remaining material in the PHILOKALIA speak mainly about fighting against gluttony, lasciviousness, and other passions.”

 

 We have to be honest that Satan is not very afraid when Christians refuse to eat meat and cheese – He never eats them himself.  Nor is he much bothered by people who keep kosher as he also never eats non-kosher foods.  But if all we accomplish during Lent is letting piles of eggs and cheese and meat go uneaten, we have done little in terms of the will of God.  For Christians all rules and regulations are supposed to be part of our love for God and love for neighbor, not for a love of keeping ritual.  But Great Lent should be a time where we lessen the burdens of others, not just unburden ourselves of the guilt we feel for not keeping the fast. 

 

Some have seen in the past several years that all of the attention members of the OCA have had to pay to dealing with scandals to have been a distraction from out true purpose in the Church  or during Lent.   But fasting is not the goal of Christianity, though certainly self denial is a work for Christians to engage in.    Great Lent is a time of repentance of our self centeredness and our self absorption.    It is the time allotted to us by the Lord to love one another and to bring an end to all of those behaviors of ours which oppress others.  Overthrowing despotic tyranny by bishops and exorcising the demons which infest the OCA and helping members to love one another and to reconcile to each other, now that would be a Great Lent.

A Needed Discussion for the OCA

With the various scandals that have paralyzed and polarized the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) over the past three years, I think it is time for the membership of the OCA to have a serious discussion on what autocephaly (self governing status) means for parish life, for diocesan life and for the Synod of Bishops.  In the past many years autocephaly has been discussed only in terms of what it means for the OCA’s institutional relationship to all other Orthodox jurisdictions and churches, but  as far as I know it has not been used as a basis for discussing the inner life of the OCA’s administration nor the life of parishes or the spiritual lives of parishioners.  If autocephaly has not impact on the life of parishes, priests and laity, then it really is nothing more than an abstract document.  If it has some kind of meaning, then it ought to impact the spiritual and missionary work of the parishes as well as the liturgical life.  But such discussions have not been permitted or attempted in the OCA.

 

Because autocephaly was used only to define the OCA’s institutional relationship to other Orthodox patriarchates and jurisdiction, it ultimately did nothing for shaping our mission to America.   In fact by focusing exclusively on autocephaly as a means to define the institution in relationship to other Orthodox institutions, autocephaly ended up contributing to what some see as the OCA as a Potemkin Village.

 

For the Bishops:  Autocephaly means that the OCA’s Synod of Bishops does not answer to some “higher authority.”     What responsibility and role does the Synod of Bishops have in shaping the OCA’s mission to America?    What specific difference has autocephaly meant to your episcopal ministry?  How is it different to be a bishop in an autocephalous church in America than being in a jurisdiction which answers directly to old world Orthodoxy?  How is autocephaly shaping your diocese and your role on the Synod of Bishops?  What responsibilities and burdens does autocephaly place upon your shoulders as a member of the Synod of Bishops?

For Priests:    Is autocephaly worth preserving?  Why or why not?  What advantage does it give us to accomplish our mission to America?   How does it hurt the mission to America? What, if any, relationship is there between autocephaly  and Orthodox jurisdictional unity in America?   What specific things should the OCA do to encourage and enable inter-Orthodox co-operation whether or not other jurisdictions recognize autocephaly?  What implication does autocephaly have for shaping (small t) tradtion in Orthodoxy in America?   What implication does autocephaly have for the liturgical life and practices of parishes?  What implication does autocephaly have for the mission of Orthodoxy to North America?

For the laity:   Autocephaly implies “self heading/governing” status for the local/territorial church.  The implication is that the leadership of an autocephalous church does not have another bishop of synod with power over it.  What difference does having the status of autocephaly mean for the training and selection of the bishops and the leadership of the Church in America?   What potential benefits are there to your life as a Christian from being in a Church in America which is autocephalous?  What impact can autocephaly have on the traditions and missionary efforts of the local parish?    What implication does autocephaly have in shaping the role of the bishop in the OCA?

Creating man – what God wanted His Son to become

“Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being”  (Genesis 2:7).

 The creation of humans by God as described in the book of Genesis is the basis for much of the Orthodox Christian understanding of what a human being is and also for our theology – who and what God is.  

The Christian Tertullian (d. ca 220AD) wrote about God’s fashioning humans from clay:

Clay “came into God’s hand… though it would have been blessed enough had it been no more than touched… So great was the matter in hand, the thing which was being constructed of that material: and so it as often receives honor as it is worked upon by God’s hands, when molded. …whatever expression the clay took upon it, the thought was of Christ who was to become man (which the clay was) and of the Word who was to become flesh (which at that time the earth was). For the Father has already spoken to the Son in these words: Let us make man unto our own image and likeness.  And God made man… unto the image of God. For the Word also is God, and who being in the form of God thought not robbery to be equal to God. Thus that clay, already putting on the image of Christ who was to be in the flesh, was not only a work of God but also a token of him.”  (De resurrection carnis 6)

 Tertullian presents the notion that when God created the first human, He did so with the idea of the Incarnation of the Word in mind.   In other words, God was creating the being that His Son, the Word of God, was to become in the Incarnation.   And, the Word of God which was at work in creation is also the very object of  that creation!  God the Word was creating the very being He was to become as the incarnate Christ.

When God fashions the clay, He forms it into that which He wants His Word, His Son, to become.  This is truly teleology at work – the creation of humans was working toward one of God’s pre-existent goals: the incarnation of the Word.  The very reason for forming the human is to create that being which the son becomes (John 1:17).

So creating the world and creating humans by God gives meaning, purpose and direction to the entire universe.   Humans were created in the image and likeness of God which in turn is revealed in the incarnation of the Word of God.  Christ, God the Word, could become incarnate as a human because humans were created in His image to begin with!

Confession: Apologize then seek forgivness

This is Just to Say

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

 

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast.

 

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold.

 

    — William Carlos Williams

 

 

A great poem to consider for what repentance is not.

For he asks forgiveness without apologizing or feeling any regret. 

He asks forgiveness with the same coldness with which He describes the plums.

But he is not sorry he ate them, he enjoyed the offense!

His asking forgiveness is pro forma, and he expects the granting of it to be the same.

You have no choice but to forgive, for the deed is done

and being angry or unforgiving won’t undo the deed, so get over it.

He asks forgiveness without offering any amends, restitution or promise to reform.

True confession, true repentance, is not “just to say,”

Rather, it is to change, reform, make right,

correct, do differently, undo, start anew, repair, make better, get it right.

When you come to confess your sins, never let it be your “This is Just to Say”,

“The Deed is Done”.

Rather let your saying be part of what you are going to change in you -

I did the deed and recognize the hurt or the harm I did to you.

Don’t walk away from confession unburdened of the deed,

But leaving the damage done.

Rather walk away carrying the change needed for you to do it right,

Admitting the wrong is not so much about unburdening you of the guilt

As it is an act of love for the other and trying to ease their load.

The Sacrifice of Abraham

One of the most heart wrenching stories in the Old Testament is the story of Abraham, in obedience to God setting out on the journey to offer his own son, Isaac, in sacrifice (Genesis 22). 

The story is set up by the description of how Abraham and his wife Sarah struggled to have a child at all.  It was the source of bitter grief between them.   And then when he was 100 years old, Abraham is finally given a son through Sarah.  But then, after enduring all these years of Sarah’s childless grief, Abraham is put to the test – will he obey God and sacrifice his own son, the son which God had specifically promised to give him and through whom God promised to fulfill His plans for the world.

Abraham is incredibly silent through the ordeal.  What can he say, but perhaps “the Lord gives and the Lord takes away”?  Who can understand this God?   Why was he given a son, just for a fleeting moment of joy and peace with his wife?   He is lost in thought, unable to speak, probably in shock and in denial about what is happening to him, to his son, to his world, to his faith.  And he is given three days to think about the death of his son, for that is how long it takes Abraham to traverse to where the sacrifice will take place.  How many times does his son die through those days of sojourning as he turns over in his heart and mind and stomach what must happen?  And each time Abraham dies with him.

We read in Genesis 22: 6-8 (NRSV):

Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together.  Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”  Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together.

At least from the Christian point of view, we see a prefiguring of Christ, God’s only son.  Isaac, Sarah’s only child – a promised and much awaited child –  must bear the wood for the sacrifice, as Christ himself will carry the wood of his cross, the means of his sacrifice. 

Abraham carries the fire and the knife – he is not allowed to not think about what is to happen.  He has to carry the instrument of his son’s death.  And he apparently says nothing to anyone about what God has told him to do.  Abraham alone carries God’s word in his heart, and it is weighing him down.  For how will he explain to Sarah what he has to do?  How will he explain murdering his own son, the son they waited so long for, suffered for, and then received through a promise and blessing from God?  The son who had taken away Sarah’s bitterness and given peace to their marriage.

And they walk on.  Sojourners headed to a final destiny.  Only Abraham understands the finality of this destination – the place from which one will not come back and from which one will never leave.

And Abraham cannot bring himself to say anything.  But Isaac, the beloved son calls his father out of his reverie and misery.  “Father!”   He is wondering where his father is, lost in thought as he seems to be walking along in dreadful, mortal silence.  Isaac’s youthful mind is observant and curious.  The world is still a mystery though to the boy, there is so much to learn.

“Here I am, my son.”  Abraham is lost in this pilgrimage, present in body but not in soul or heart.  He feels the need to locate himself, to place himself in relationship to his son.  But where is Abraham?   Near his son, yet in spirit so far away from their situation.  No doubt he choked on these words, not wanting to speak, struggling to voice a reply through a constricted throat and conflicted mind.

He intends for his voice to be assuring to his beloved son. “I am here, do not be afraid.”  Yet it is only he who is afraid, for his son is totally trusting his father.  The son asks in all innocence about the future, but his question is as sharp as Abraham’s knife.

On the other hand, Abraham does not want to assure his son of his presence, for he carries the knife, and not without purpose.  The father whose job is to protect his son, is in this story the only threat to the child.   Is  Abraham tearful, bitter or trusting?  We do not know.  He has accepted his mission, but withdrawn within himself he does not reveal his heart.  He is on a mission and must lay emotion aside lest it overwhelm him and cause him to fail.  Cold logic is in control, mind over heart.  Abraham suppressing all feeling, has stopped thinking in the darkness of his heart.   He knows what must be done.  But what logic, what reason, what rationale is there in what he has been commanded to do?  His is not to reason why, but to do is to die, for his heart will burst with the death of his son.   There is to be no peace in his life, no peace with his wife.  How will he ever justify what he is to do?   The invisible God will not be there to explain why he murdered his son, whose promised birth had caused Sarah to laugh at God.   She would not be laughing when Abraham told her that God had commanded death.

“God will provide.”  He says emptily with profound sorry, as a father who realizes the loss of his son.  He mouths the words, but his heart is not in them.  It is factual, but perhaps not faithful.  God has already told him what He has provided.  The long hoped for son, the son that finally brought  joy and peace between his wife and himself, being the most prized possession in his life, is the very thing that he must offer in sacrifice.  He will hold nothing back from God.   He will be faithful in action even if his heart is not in the deed he must do.

He says nothing more, not a word, until called by the Angel of the Lord.  His son carries the load of wood.  Abraham carries the burden of what he must do, and he is weighed down far more.

God asks much from those willing to serve Him.  He does not ask more than what He Himself is willing to do.  For God too will offer His Son, and will contemplate His death for three days.  God provides as Abraham discovers, and does not require his son’s, or His Son’s,  life to end in sacrificial death.  Isaac is spared.  His Son is raised from the dead, revealing the prophetic and prototypical meaning of the story of Abraham sacrificing his son.   Abraham is spared the loss but not the agony of losing one’s son.  Through his story we come to know the full extent of the passion of Christ, God’s only begotten Son.

 

Fasting, not all meals are blessed

In Genesis 27:1-41  we read the story of the aging Isaac who as he is approaching death decides it is time to bless his elder son Esau.  So he tells Esau to go out and capture some game and then to cook his father’s favorite meal, after which Isaac promises to bless Esau.

Meanwhile the scheming Rebekahk, Esau’s mother, obviously playing favorites with her younger son, Jacob, contrives a plan by which Jacob can get Isaac’s blessing instead of Esau.  The plan involves deception and lying and carries with it the risk that Isaac will discover the fraud and curse his younger son.   Jacob however obeys his mother and the plan goes off without a hitch and Jacob gets the blessing his mother sought for him, stealing it from his older brother.

While Rebekah and Jacob certainly are co-conspirators in the deception and in the theft of the sole blessing Isaac has to give to establish his heir as lord over the rest of Isaac’s descendents, one has to wonder about Isaac himself.  Why didn’t he bless his older son as soon as he thought about it?  Why did Isaac send  Esau away on the chase of wild game and put all of these hurdles in his path to get the blessing?  Not only does Esau have to catch the game, he has to prepare it and cook it just the way his father likes.  It’s as if Isaac was setting up a chance for Esau’s failure.   Why didn’t Isaac bless his son and then send him off on the errand for food?   Isaac’s own hunger created the scenario which caused Esau to lose his rightful blessing.

Besides all this, it will literally take Isaac one minute to pronounce the much sought after blessing, but he sends his son Esau on an open ended quest to get that one minute blessing.  For Esau has to be gone as long as it takes to find the game.  Something is amiss. 

And when Jacob immediately shows up with Isaac’s favorite food, he asks the charlatan, “how was it you found it so quickly?”  Was he disappointed?  Had he hoped Esau would be gone a long time?  Or maybe, Isaac was actually part of the Ruse, and he simply is playing his part, feigning surprise.  Of course the text suggests his aged eyes had gone blind, and perhaps his mind was not as sharp as it used to be.  But then one wonders again, why did he send Esau on this open ended quest for food before he would give him the one minute blessing?  Why did Esau have to prepare the food, rather than Isaac’s wife Rebekah?  Why was this food so important to Isaac?

In Orthodoxy, this lesson from Genesis is read during the Fifth Week of Great Lent, a time when many Orthodox are already weary of the fasting and looking forward to the Feast of Pascha, the Resurrection of Christ.  It is another reminder of how food and hunger cause bad decision making for humans and lead to further effects of sin.  Certainly the story of Eve and then Adam eating the forbidden fruit is the original sin story.  But Isaac’s hunger causes him to place being fed ahead of giving a blessing to his son.   Esau will suffer the effects of his father’s appetite and lose his blessing.  Orthodox spirituality makes much of how our appetites often lead to sin and human failing.   Of course God’s own plan is not thwarted by human appetites or human sin.  But the story no doubt ends up in the Orthodox lectionary during Great Lent as a reminder that catering to one’s own appetites can have very negative consequences on the road to God’s kingdom.   Self denial, fasting, abstinence, can allow us to seek first the kingdom of God, and then to take care of feeding our selves.

When “not God” is not righteous

When God created the heavens and the earth, He called into being that which is “not God.”  Creation, the “not God”, exists in relationship to God,  but has an existence which is different from and separate from God.   This is a wondrous mystery:  God can call into existence that which is not Him, and yet the “not God” exists in relationship to Him and has no existence apart from Him.

The original sin, and for that matter all sin, is that which is “not righteous.”  We humans, part of that which is “not God” can make ourselves unrighteous.  We are the cause of suffering and pain in the universe.  That which was originally only “not God” now becomes not righteous.  This is the true Fall of humanity.  Being “not God” was never a curse, but being “not righteous” is certainly a curse.  “Not God” has made itself not God in a way that God could not!

And the reality is as witnessed in the Scriptures, “not God” cannot stop the force or the effect of sin and unrighteousness.   Neither could God’s Law, the Torah, stop sin and unrighteousness.  In fact the humans through sin had unleashed in creation a destructive evil, a life destroying force, which  was turning “not God” into a deadly and dying place which was void of God. 

God Himself became the Savior by becoming “not God” in the incarnation.  Christ became human, took on sinful flesh, became “not God”, became a curse in order to redeem and save all of creation.  Christ restored righteousness to the “not God”.   Christ restored “not God”’s  relationship to God destroying the power of death – the power to reduce “not God” to carrion, to corpse, to dust and decay.  In His resurrection, Christ defeats the power of death and the sting of sin, which had taken the very life out of “not God.”  And through Christ Jesus, we who are “not God” become one with God, becoming all that God intended us to be when He first called that which is “not God” into being.

 

You can read more about “not God” in my book, QUESTIONING GOD.

The poverty of the Rich man; The Wealth of Lazarus

During Great Lent the daily hymns of Orthodox matins frequently deal with themes from Christ’s parables, like the Good Samaritan, the poor man Lazarus and the rich man or the prodigal son.   The canon for the Fifth Sunday of Great Lent is mostly a series of meditations on the parable of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16:19-31).  {There is a 2^nd Canon also used on the 5^th Sunday of Lent which deals with St. Mary of Egypt.  I am guessing that these 2^nd canons with their monastic themes – Sts. Gregory Palamas, John Climacus and Mary of Egypt –  are much more recent additions to the Orthodox liturgical development with the Gospel Parable themes being the older tradition.  But perhaps some reader knows that history and can comment on it}.

I found the commentary on the parable to be very insightful at points and have listed a few of the verses from the Canon right after the Parable of the poor Lazarus and the unnamed rich man:

 The Lord Jesus told this parable:  [Luke 16:19; RSV] ”There was a rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. [20] And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, full of sores, [21] who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table; moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. [22] The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried; [23] and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes, and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus in his bosom. [24] And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy upon me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in anguish in this flame.’ [25] But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. [26] And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’ [27] And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house, [28] for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ [29] But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’ [30] And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if some one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ [31] He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead.’”

 The verses of the Sunday Canon for the 5^th Sunday of Great Lent which deal with the parable follow an Orthodox pattern of interpreting the Scriptural text in a very spiritual and somewhat allegorical way.   The Canon at point offers insights into text but also a very particular way of reading the Scriptures.  The first two verses I quote simply comment on the parable itself:

Through his sins the rich man was clothed in scarlet and fine linen,

and so he burns in the flames.  (Canticle 3)

 

With their tongues the dogs licked the sores of the beggar Lazarus

showing a compassion to him in his need that the rich man never felt. (Canticle 4)

 

The first verse very pointedly does not let the rich man off the hook.   Yes he is rich but he gained his riches through sinfulness – probably greed and the sins associated with greed (lying, cheating, stealing).  The rich man lives a rich lifestyle not because he is a good man but because of the sins he has committed!  He is not a good man with a blindness to the poor – he is a bad man who compounds his badness with evil neglect of the needy.   He is wealthy because he is greedy, and he stays wealthy by never practicing charity.

 The Canon verses do not leave the parable as offering an abstract truth or value free teaching or a purely objective wisdom.  The message of the parable is meant to sink home into the heart of the listener/reader.   It is “I” who the parable and the canon are about.   It speaks to me personally.

The Canon verses draw me into the parable by speaking in the first person:

Lord, I am as wealthy as the rich man in passions and lusts,

yet in my lack of virtues I am as poor as Lazarus!  But save me! (Canticle 3)

 

Like the rich man who spent all his days in pleasure,

I am rich in the deceptive joys of this life,

but I pray You, Loving Lord, in Your compassion

deliver me from the fire as you saved Lazarus.  (Canticle 5)

 

And at the end of the Canon it summarizes for us the lesson it has drawn from the parable:

 We have all learned the meaning of this parable from the Lord.

Let us all, then, hate the rich man’s lack of compassion,

that we may escape punishment and rejoice forever with Abraham.  (Canticle 9)