Last Sunday I took my 4yo daughter to her new Sunday school class (new because she’s been promoted from the younger group), and they were looking at the story of the pharisee and the tax collector.  And I learnt something – well, saw something incredibly obvious that I hadn’t really thought about before: The underdog, whom Jesus says went home “justified before God” was the rich guy.  The rich guy in league with the Romans.  That had never hit me before: I’ve always pictured that guy as the poor, oppressed one, whose humble approach is better than the highly-esteemed pharisee.  But it’s a more provocative picture than that: It wouldn’t work as a movie,  because it’s not heart-warming.  It’s a challenge to accept that God freely accepts ANYONE who comes to him in heartfelt repentant humility… even those we might smugly dismiss as more worldly than ourselves.

On Saturday we visited a fun park for children.  When we entered, we found ourselves in front of the “Snow Queen”, who asked 3yo Cara what she would like Father Christmas to give her for Christmas.  Cara’s eyes widened and she shyly said she would like a pink suitcase.  The Snow Queen nodded knowingly and said she was sure Santa would look into it.  We went on to go on the rides and play in the play areas…

Later on in the day we joined a queue to see Father Christmas.  After about 15mins of waiting, Cara casually mentioned, “When we get to the front, Father Christmas will give me a pink suitcase.  I’m looking forward to my pink suitcase!”  I gulped… It had never entered my head that Cara might actually believe the promise of the Snow Queen. 

As it turned out, Cara fell asleep while we were still waiting in the queue, so we got out of there quicksmart.  But it strikes me that perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he said you need to approach God as a child: Children are somehow willing to humbly assume that God is both approachable and believable… just a thought

Could one say, “For the nineteenth century German, and thus for Marx, the exchange of money for goods was seen as straightforward and essentially fair”?  If not, why should one be able to say, “for the first-century Jew, and thus Paul, living by the Torah was a response to God’s grace, rather than an attempt to merit it”?  (Maico Michielin, SJT 61/4 (2008) 427, emphasis mine)

Critiques of free-market capitalism are not generally grounded on sociological evidence that consumers understand themselves -and present themselves – as greedy exploiters of the poor.  Rather, critiques generally aim to argue that consumers are effectively participating in a system that can be – or ought to be – viewed in this way.  Similarly, any critique by Paul concerning Judaism and the works of the law should not be expected to be calmly expressive of the median self-understanding of first century Jews, but rather expressive of Paul’s crisis-driven conception of what it effectively means to be a participant in this religious system, which for him has become forever transformed by his encounter with the risen Messiah.  Might Paul, for example, have come to the conclusion that his fellow Jews share a “false consciousness” regarding the function of the law, which can only be understood and remedied by starting with the solution of Christ?

A related point of interest is that, whether or not Paul perceives it as discontinuous with his former Judaism, he considers that the necessity of divine grace must be emphasised to the Corinthians, whose problems constitute an effective denial of dependence on God.  Is it possible that, as a former “zealous” Pharisee, Paul now holds to a general human inclination toward soteriological autonomy?  In order to understand Paul on this point, the need is not simply for a sociological reconstruction of first-century Judaism, but for attentiveness to the theological perspective of Paul the Pharisee, who had turned from his “earlier life in Judaism”, in which he “was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it.”  (Gal. 1:13)  It is this Paul who now characterises humans as effectively attempting soteriological autonomy – an attempt which must be countered with the soteriological accomplishment of God in Christ.

Anyway, these are just some rambling thoughts, “in process”…

There is still time for forbearance, time for long-suffering, time for healing, time for reform.  Have you slipped?  Rise up.  Have you sinned?  Cease.  Do not stand in the way of sinners, but leap aside.  For when you turn back and weep, then you will be saved.  For out of labour comes health, and out of sweat, salvation….

Do not lose heart; remember the days of old.  There is salvation, there is reform.  Take courage, do not despair.  There is no law which condemns to death without compassion, but there is grace which remits the punishment and accepts the reform.  Not yet closed are the gates; the bridegroom hears; sin does not prevail.  Renew the contest; delay not; and have pity on yourself and on us all in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be the glory and the power, now and for ever, world without end.

St Basil, to a fallen monk, fourth century CE

Australia seems to celebrate a different day for Father’s Day than the UK, and happily, I’ve been in each location for the respective celebrations, meaning I get double the amount of presents.  On the occasion of Australian Father’s Day then (today), I present this haiku, based on the experience of my previous post:

Hiding secret shame,

Peering past the table top,

Wond’ring why he smiles.

UPDATE: And one more, in honour of the various conferences I have missed (Rome, Durham, Cambridge), by being in Australia: This one is entitled Star Theologian…

Meteoric rise;

But meteors are famous

for falling quickly

My 3yo daughter, more than anything else, desperately wants to make me happy…  When she does something that she knows will disappoint me (eg disgracing herself, pants-wise, in a cafe – as she did today), she looks at me with a panic and asks, “Are you happy?  Are you happy???  I’ll make you happy – I’ll make you happy!!!”  There is a twofold irony here: a) She knows exactly what to do to avoid disappointing me, but she can’t bring herself to act on it – she still refuses her potty, or pushes away her food, or hits her baby brother); b) She does make me happy, simply because I love her: She is her daddy’s joy, and nothing can endanger that.

All of which caused me to reflect today, sitting in a cafe with a panic-stricken stinky daughter, hiding under the table and promising to make me happy…  Is this what I look like to God?

One thing that is striking about travelling around archaeological sites in Israel is the number of times you encounter a miqve – which is a ritual-cleansing bath… There are dozens of public miqvaot around the Temple in Jerusalem, there are private miqvaot in Herod’s palaces, in ordinary households… they are everywhere!  In fact, in Jewish public bath-houses, the “cold” section of the standard Roman bath-house was replaced with a miqve, so that ritual purification came first.

The picture above is of a miqve directly in front of the Jerusalem Temple from the time of Jesus: The person entered in one side, immersed themselves in the water at the bottom (the action was called “baptizein”), and came up the other side, ritually pure.

All of this drives home just how aware people in Jesus’ time would have been of ritual impurity… and it makes it all the more amazing to think of Jesus taking six stone jars of water used for ritual cleansing, and turning them into wine: Imagine if that happened at your house: Someone replaced the ritual water - which was essential for your purity before God - with wine…

“This is my blood of the new covenant, poured out for many, for the forgiveness of sins”

Why was Thomas in a less favourable position to ourselves? Why is it a blessing to believe without seeing? Again, this is related to the opening questions in this blog…
I think it all has something to do with this: God wants us to know him as the one who gives sight to the blind, and life to the dead – and so he withdraws the risen Jesus from our sight, offering us only the testimony of the cross and resurrection, delivered by followers of the hidden Lord.

So is our positive reception of this message effectively a nullification of all of our previous contemplations and searchings and ponderings? Does grace, in this sense, destroy nature – or does it come as the corrective perfecting of our previous groping for God? Of course, there is a long and heated theological debate. Luther and Barth are often thought of as being the key representatives of the idea that grace destroys nature, in opposition to Aquinas, who represents the idea that grace perfects nature.

I wonder if it would be fruitful to think about it like this: Grace resurrects nature… that is, the grace of God is not continuous with any human foundations – it crucifies human pride… on the other hand, the grace of God does enliven and bring to fullness the genuine personhood that had been crudely existent before the coming of salvific grace. In this sense, grace genuinely destroys and perfects.