Teaching by Frances Flatman on the Bible Readings for next weekend:-
We are living in a period of ever increasing instability, as the Near and Middle East goes up in flames, with the likelihood that many of the world's nations will, however unwillingly be obliged to ‘take sides’ in the war between Hamas and Israel. Throughout our lives we are all faced with opportunities to exert power over others, be that in our patterns of child care, our relationships with others in our jobs, and as each of us seek to establish our identity in relation to others. Institutions, be they forces of Law and Order, or the Church or Mosque, offer opportunities to control or seek to build up and aid the lives of others. Every human ‘sin’ we commit ultimately boils down to the issue of how we exert the abilities, training and knowledge we have in relation to others. We can be gifted and generous guides, or controlling and restricting manipulators of those under our care to their lasting detriment; we can ‘make’ lives or ‘break them’. When we ask ourselves ‘What is the point of the Incarnation?’ it seems to me that this question of how we use our powers is fundamental in answering this question.
It faced the prophet Malachi (1:14-2:2. 8-10). He was one of the writers of the late 6th century BCE when the second Temple had been rebuilt after the return of the exiles from Babylonian captivity by the Persians. This should have been a fruitful and graced time in the history of Israel, as life could be restored after nearly a century of defeat, exile, humiliation and chaos. It was a new start for Israel, with its newly rebuilt Temple and a flourishing Jerusalem welcoming pilgrims from far and wide. Yet clearly, as we see in this brief work, the prophet was appalled by his witness of the heavy handedness of the temple priests, and their blatant exploitation and abuse of worshippers. This is a very short work, and it’s well worth reading the whole to get a grip on its context, for far from going through a period of development and rejoicing, growth and grace, Malachi saw the Temple as ordered by its clergy as a place of oppression and negativity. Reading it is a searing experience and horribly familiar for us too.
When we turn to our Gospel, (Matthew 23:1-12) and increasingly near to the arrest, trial and death of Jesus, we continue those experiences of altercation between Jesus and those in authority in Jerusalem. Indeed, his complaints could almost be a continuation of Malachi. What he calls out is the behaviour of the scribes and Pharisees and priests whose entire behaviour appears to be about outward show, and their exercise of power over others, with their insistence on placing heavy burdens on them. It appears that priestly clothing was designed to compete for status, not to identify them or for the care of the people, as Jesus saw in their display of power and the demands they made over taking places of priority, or the manner in which they were addressed. My goodness, doesn’t it all sound dreadfully familiar as we look at the Church, and see the problems of the Synod with its touchy senior clergy worried over the indignities imposed on them by the seating arrangements. Some were required to sit and listen to WOMEN! It’s at this point that we have to ask again ‘What is the point of the Incarnation?’
We have to remember that Jesus was a devout and educated Jew, part of a family of committed worshippers who went to the Temple for the great yearly festivals, and whose understanding of his mission as Messiah was entirely rooted in the Old Testament which fed and developed his appreciation of who and what he was. Yet clearly, like the Malachi’s of his time, he was thoroughly disgusted by the corruption of the Jewish hierarchy as we see how his ministry grew from his contact with John the Baptist, who ought to have been a member of the temple priesthood following in the steps of his father, but who had renounced that for a far more radical outreach to the forgotten of his world. In every Gospel we meet Jesus challenging and attacking the scribes and Pharisees, clashing with the Sadducee elite and the chief priests in Jerusalem. He went for a festival, and was horrified by the authorities who defiled the Court of the Gentiles by using it as the place of sale for the sacrificial animals within the precinct of the Temple, so that they got the money, depriving the sellers outside of their livelihood. He was outraged at the Pharisees easy condemnation of the ‘sinners’, whose lifestyles offended their interpretation of the law – by then a body of teaching ever increasing to make Israel a ‘sacred’ and separate people and utterly unobtainable to the majority of the people. Jesus knew of Isaiah’s vision of a world of Gentiles worshipping God too, yet excluded; and out of all this his vision of how to be the human face of God grew and developed. Jesus understood that the Old Testament picture of God as powerful and restrictive was very much a human invention. What he met in his relationship with the God he saw as ‘Father’ became one of absolute self-gift, gift without strings, devoid of compulsion, where his task, given by God was to offer himself to the world, the final sacrifice for sin, accepting in his own body all that the world and those Temple and Jewish authorities – his religious experts - would hurl at him. So the point of the Incarnation was and is to be that vehicle for the reconciliation of God and the fallen humanity we have all become; his way is utterly devoid of power and control. All God can do is offer in abject humility which is why he is represented as a naked figure on a cross.
Clearly in writing to the Thessalonian Church (1 Thess 2:7-9.13) Paul understood this, for his image of his relationship with this community quite surprises us as he describes himself as a breast feeding mother, feeding her children. In Philippians 2 we have his use of the great hymn of the ‘self-emptying’ of God in Christ, showing this was central to his appreciation of the Incarnation and, following the Lord’s model in our Reading we have ‘We had come...to love you so much, that we were eager to hand over to you not only the Good News but our whole lives as well.’ There is a tendency to think this just hyperbole on Paul’s part. I beg to differ. Whatever he met on the Damascus road utterly transformed Paul – who had lived by the rules - into one following Christ heart, mind and body and ultimately to his own death. The point of the Incarnation is to remake us in the image/icon of Christ, convicted and thoroughly given over into his life, and it must therefore place a very big question mark against the pattern of all of our lives; and that must surely be a huge part of the lives of our priests too. Just how many Gethsemanes and Calvaries will it take?
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