Bread and stones

Posted on by albrooke

stone

. . . which of you,
if your son were to ask for bread,
would give him a stone?
or if he were to ask for a fish,
would give him a snake?

If therefore, you, being evil people,
know how to give good gifts to your children;
how much more will your Father in heaven
give good gifts to those who ask him?

Jesus’ immediate point in Matthew 7:9-11 is that if earthly fathers are reasonably unlikely to play such a grotesque practical joke on their children, God can be expected to respond to good requests with good, not trickery.

But when Jesus had stones instead of bread, what did he do?  He accepted it as something from God.  Obviously, I’m thinking about chapter 4, the temptation of Jesus in the desert — is that relevant here?  I think it is.

If I see a stone on my plate, instead of jumping to the conclusion that God is angry with me, I might contemplate the possibility that God’s immediate purpose is not the satisfaction of my hunger.

He might have something else in mind.

Worship as due

Posted on by albrooke

Can you be righteous unless you be just in rendering to things their due esteem?  All things were made to be yours and you were made to prize them according to their value.

Thomas Traherne, as quoted by C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man 10 (1947).

Risen!

Posted on by albrooke

Now, did He really break the seal
     And rise again? We dare not say;
     But conscious unbelievers feel
     Quite sure of Judgement Day.

    

Meanwhile, a silence on the cross,
     As dead as we shall ever be,
     Speaks of some total gain or loss,
     And you and I are free

 

To guess from the insulted face
Just what Appearances He saves
By suffering in a public place
A death reserved for slaves.

W.H. Auden, Excerpt from Friday’s Child (In memory of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, martyred at Flossenbürg, April 9, 1945) (1958).

Auden does not claim that we cannot say that Jesus is risen, but suggests that his resurrection is an awe-inspiring event that nearly leaves us without words.

Amen to that.

The First Word — Forgiveness

Posted on by albrooke

bnw word 1

Narrator  It seemed an endless afternoon.

In the crowd, I would suppose, was a priest, one of those who had given approval to the plot against Jesus. Perhaps he was not a bad man, merely ambitious, or jealous, or fearful. He became a witness to forgiveness.

Priest This is a terrible business – why didn’t that fellow Jesus just stay away from the people – he should have known we couldn’t allow him to go on like he was. He just acted like he wasn’t bound by any of the proprieties. Sometimes it seemed like he was speaking the most profound wisdom, then he would turn around and spout nonsense that no one could believe. Yes, it is a filthy business, and the filthy Roman soldiers love their sport.

Narrator  And Luke recounts the first word that Jesus spoke from the Cross – a word of forgiveness:

The First Word — Luke 23:32-34:  Two other criminals were also led away to be executed with him. When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals–one on his right, the other on his left.  Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”  And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.

Text from AFB, “The Endless Afternoon” (2009); photo by Fred Holland Day, “Seven Last Words of Christ (First Word)” (1898).

Vocabulary and thought

Posted on by albrooke

[L]anguage deficit leads to attention deficit.  As we deplete our ability to denote and figure particular aspects of our places, so our competence for understanding and imagining possible relationships with non-human nature is correspondingly depleted.

Robert MacFarlane, “The word-hoard,” The Guardian (02/27/2015)

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/27/robert-macfarlane-word-hoard-rewilding-landscape

MacFarlane is talking about the gradual erosion of the vocabulary of words about our natural world, but this piece reminded me of how the loss of spiritual vocabulary — words and stories — leads to an inability to pay attention to spiritual things.