Tag: communities

When Jesus comes to be baptised

The daily hymn for 14 January is “When Jesus comes to be baptised”, the second on this theme – I just didn’t get round to typing my notes until the following day.  Its composition is attributed not to an individual but to a community – the Catholic nuns of Stanbrook Abbey in Yorkshire. Perhaps this is appropriate, for the words of the hymn meditate on the sacrifice (in a metaphorical sense) that Jesus made by coming forwards to be baptised in the Jordan river.  He “leaves behind the years of safety and peace”, to bear the sins of humankind, and eventually to suffer death on the cross. 

Anyone who becomes a nun, monk or other member of a religious community, but especially those who take lifelong vows, also has to sacrifice the comforts of their former years, and to take on responsibilities – to pray regularly, to study theology, and usually to work hard at whatever occupation keeps the community going financially, be it farming, craft work or teaching.  It’s not an easy life.  

But there’s another side to this religious commitment.  Jesus, the hymn reminds us, was also called to preach the gospel, to bring comfort and healing.  There were frustrations, of course, where he preaching was opposed or healing was not possible for lack of faith.  But he must have found satisfaction when the message was received and understood, when the blind could see or the lame walk.  Likewise, nuns or monks find their satisfaction in the worship of the community, in serving retreatants or other guests, and (if they are not in an enclosed order) in work with the local community.  

When Simon Peter said to Jesus “Look, we have left our homes and followed you”, Jesus replied “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not get back very much more in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.”  (Luke 18:28-30, NRSV). By which, of course, he meant not money, but satisfaction of a more real and lasting kind.

The last verse of the hymn is a Christian doxology (praise to the Holy Trinity).  Perhaps this is because that is the form of words used at Christian baptism, but it’s widely believed that these words attributed to Jesus at the end of Matthew’s gospel were an addition by the community that Matthew belonged to.  They cannot have been used by John at Jesus’ own baptism, because he would effectively have been saying  “I baptise you in the name of the father, and yourself, and the Holy Spirit” which would make no sense.  That doesn’t mean the doctrine of the Trinity is not helpful, just that we shouldn’t see it as something taught by Jesus himself.

The Bible in a Year – 6 June

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

6 June. Ezekiel chapters 21-23

This is where Ezekiel’s prophecies turn really nasty.  In summary, chapter 21 is a pair of prophecies, poetic in form but certainly not pleasant in content, against Judah; 22 a more specific list of the sins of Judah and its leaders; and 23 another allegory (like earlier ones, but even more graphic) of Israel and Judah as prostitutes in their dealings with other nations. In one sense there is nothing new here, it is his consistent message, but now with added sex and violence (in fact if I were to quote some of these verses of the Bible, which probably do not appear in any lectionary for public reading, this blog would be blocked by content filters).

 

Is all this irrelevant to us in 21st century Britain? Unfortunately not.  These words read shockingly just days after a terrorist knife attack in a part of London that I know well: “A sword for great slaughter, it surrounds them; therefore hearts fail and many stumble. … Attack to the right! Engage to the left! – wherever your edge is directed.” (21:14-16)

 

The charge sheet of sins directed against God’s people, which are the cause of the violence of the sword that they are about to experience, includes many failings of our own society. It does not take much paraphrasing of the text of 22:6-12 to read these charges as: dysfunctional families, injustice for immigrants, insufficient support for the poorest in society, sexual violence, a financial system that leads people into debt, and dishonesty in business.  Those charges can certainly be laid against Britain today.

 

But the charges also include a loss of a sense of what is holy (26), a failing that is not mentioned in the secular media and yet is at the root of the problem. There is undoubtedly a connection between the secularisation of society and the breakdown of communities. The word ‘religion’ ultimately means ‘connection’ – connection between people as well as between us and God.

 

Is there any link between these failings in our society and the terrorism that afflicts us?  I would say yes, but not in any simplistic sense.  Our problems, like our sins, are connected increasingly with those of the world as a whole, but that does not mean that the sins of individuals have nothing to do with it. Much of Ezekiel’s prophecies are directed at nations, and the whole sweep of Old Testament history is the story of the rise and fall of kingdoms, yet the previous chapters have made it clear that sin is the fault of individual persons, and God’s judgement is also on them as individuals. This whole question of guilt and punishment is a complex one.

 

What holds it together is a sense that everything that happens, however horrible, is in some way part of God’s plan. But again, this is not to be taken simplistically.  Christianity has no sense of fatalism – “the will of God” does not mean that we have no choice.  On the contrary, none of these prophecies limits the fundamental human freedom to choose good or evil, a choice we see played out in the Bible from beginning to end. There is always a call to repent, always an opportunity to receive God’s forgiveness and love as an individual, always the option of playing a smaller or larger part in the redemption of the world rather than its condemnation.