Revelation 7:9-10, 13-14 (NRSV Updated Edition)
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Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” I said to him, “Sir, you are the one who knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
1 John 3:1-3 (NRSV Updated Edition)
See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
Matthew 5:1-12 (NRSV Updated Edition)
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he began to speak and taught them, saying:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
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"There is good prima facie reason... to think that the subversion of the apocalyptic imagination by what I have called Jesus' “eschatological” imagination is something proper to Jesus rather than something invented by a bewildered primitive community in the face of the indefinite postponement of the Day. The prima facie evidence deepens somewhat when we discover that at the root of Jesus' subversion of these dualities we always find what I have earlier called the intelligence of the victim.
"Jesus provides a prophetic criterion in terms of realizable ethical demands at the base of his subversion of these dualities; the social duality is recast in terms of the victim, so that the victim becomes the criterion for whether one is a sheep or a goat (Matt. 25) or for being a neighbour (the Good Samaritan, Luke 10); it is victims and the precariously placed who are to be at the center of the new victim people of whom the kingdom of God that is coming into being (the Sermon on the Mount, Matt. 5-6).
"It can scarcely be surprising that this insistence, more in the line of the prophetic imagination than in that of the apocalyptic imagination, comes to be also subversive of the temporal and cosmic dualities. Thus the crucified and risen forgiving victim becomes himself the presence of the kingdom in the here and now. It is this that is being claimed in the “realized eschatology” of John [eg. John 3:14-15, where it is in the exaltation of the Son of man on the Cross that 'eschatologically' irrupts into human history]: that the victim is the judge as victim and that passing into eternal life is related precisely to the criterion of the victim.
"The same is shown in the heavenly liturgy of the Apocalypse: the central criterion, around which the eternal liturgy revolves, and thus the principle of continuity between this life and the next, is the slaughtered lamb, the heavenly victim."
James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong, pg. 217
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"[All Saints] is a wonderful feast for us to celebrate [on the website] Praying Eucharistically, because whereas every time we pray eucharistically we are making ourselves present to the great rejoicing that is in heaven just there, and make ourselves aware of how that great rejoicing is trying to reach out to us and envelope us, today we celebrate that even more richly because we remember all the brothers and sisters from generations past and present who are already taking part in that great rejoicing and reaching out to us to help us be enveloped, if you like, in that great rejoicing. So it's an even richer sharing in the presence today than normally.
"Before I look at the Gospel texts I'd like to just point out how the two readings which lead up to it, which are so beautifully chosen to fit in with the feast, give us a really key hint to how to read this particular text from St Matthew. The first is from the Book of the Apocalypse we get the vision of those around the throne of the Lamb standing as one slain. First of all, the witnesses from the people of Israel, and then a crowd far greater than can possibly be counted throughout the whole world, out of every tribe, nation, tongue, language, etc etc. In other words, it's really universal, this is something that is true about being human. And then the question of who are these, and the response from the elder: they are these who've come out of the great ordeal, they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Something about the presence of us in heaven is as of people who have come through a great ordeal, have been ground through the mill, being taken through the wringer, if you like. That's how great rejoicing comes into our lives, through this process.
"And in the Epistle from St John as well, we become aware of how it's a process starting from where we are but we don't know who we are to become. We know that as we are taken into purity of heart we will find ourselves like Christ. Again going through a process, not an easy process, but a process authentic, one that brings us into being.
"Okay, having started with that, having started with washing our clothes, if you like, in the blood of the Lamb, let's look at the Lamb speaking these things in the Sermon on the Mount. First of all, Matthew is of course extremely savvy. He has Jesus go up a hill. Moses went up a hill, but Moses went up a hill to talk to God and so that God would remain hidden from the people. Jesus goes up the hill and obviously, he turns around and sits down and speaks. And interestingly, the Greek doesn't say “he began to speak,” as our translation does. The Greek says: “and he opened his mouth and taught them” - “opening his mouth he taught them.” In other words, they could see his face. That's already a comment on the difference between the Mosaic teaching, a difference which he'll continue when he says later on “You have heard it said, but I say to you.” Here is the face that can be seen, not like in Deuteronomy where we were told, “You heard the voice but you did not see the form, you did not see the visage.” Here they are seeing the face and the face is speaking to them, not from above in some distant hidden place, but as a teacher at their level, very slightly raised so as to be able to be heard for purely practical reasons.
"So the really interesting thing about this, I want to suggest, is that he's not dictating norms, he's describing a process of insiderness. He's speaking from inside, showing the kind of insiderness that he is opening up and inviting us to discover ourselves inside this. I just I bring this up because it raises questions about the words which we tend to translate either “happy” or “blessed”. We don't have much other choice in English when translating these words, and yet if you say, “Happy are the poor in heart” or “Happy are the meek” it seems to suggest for most of us a kind of an emotional state, and of course most of those who mourn aren't, as it happens, happy; those of us who are undergoing persecution aren't actually happy while that's going on. And if you say “blessed” it sounds as though it's a pious wish about something very much in the sky, 'pie in the sky', some kind of, “Oh yes it's very blessed to do those things.”
"I'd like to suggest to you a different word, a word which is not at all I should say an attempt to offer an alternative translation. This is definitely a paraphrase, but it's a word which combines happiness without making that an emotional state, and blessedness without making that a distant title, and that's the word “radiant”. “Radiant are the poor in spirit or the poor in heart,“ “Radiant are the meek,” radiant. If you translate that it's worthwhile going through the list yourselves: try the word radiant.
"Why? Because the suggestion precisely is that our Lord is talking about the sort of radiance that is the process of working through these things. And let's remember that each of these beatitudes is a sign of a particular sort of precariousness, it's one element of going through the grind... Radiance is to be found in the process of transfiguring every human pattern of desire from a position of precariousness into a sign of glory, a sign of being possessed by God's visibility. “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God,” is the central one of these of the beatitudes, that's the process. Pure of heart is not the purity of saving yourself from impure things, it's acquiring in the midst of the mill, in the midst of the wringer, a singleness of heart that is able to see God. That's 'look towards God and be radiant' - this is not looking towards God in the sanctuary of the temple, this is as you go through the wringer and find yourself given singleness of heart so you see God."
"Let me make a suggestion here about making this personal. Part of the joy of this feast is taking a little time to stop and think, not of the canonized saints we may have known in our lifetimes, which will inevitably be few, but of the signs that we're aware that there is much sanctity around us, that there have been glimpses of this hard-won radiance in our lives, in other people we've met and who have gone, as we say, to their reward, and that we were aware that something shocking, by comparison with the order of this world, was already radiant in them. We remember with joy and with gratitude those people, and ask that those signs be multiplied in your lives. ... These are the gifts of the saints which are being poured out to encourage, to help, to nourish us on our way."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Solemnity of All Saints" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1_Vy-mUFZo)
[Source of quote from Alison's The Joy of Being Wrong, and for discussion and resources on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/festivals/allsaints_a/]
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