The Body's Grace (3)

Finally, a post that recognizes more than prejudged knowledge can. Here in interpreting a book I have not read - but hope to, I find resonance with the experience I have attempted to express in all my positive writings and in all my warnings, perhaps too subtle since phrased with conditionals, about morality as the top of the pile in human relations. The top of the pile is New Creature, New Creation through the death of Jesus. The imagery of the temple and its mercy seat is strong enough to overcome the tendency to insist on our own purity prior to approaching. We shall be pure as he is pure and holy as he is holy only to the extent that our conversation is with him and not with our prejudged ideas of what he is. Such conversation is begun, continued, and completed in his death, our entry through the veil, that is to say his flesh.

Read this and love.

I wrote this and spilled my wine all over in a beautiful arc. The best chaser for red wine is white - fortunately there was a bottle of old white in the fridge - opened I don't know how long ago. That + carpet spot remover seems to have done the trick. But the walls will need repainting - nice.

Bless the Lord O my soul - is this punishment for thought or a humorous reminder of who's in charge?

It is the most serious game in town - because without such sanctification, all our desires are incurvatus in se.

Transfiguratio

Again, Beloved, I have jumped ahead to the middle of the story - the direct center for Uncle Mark. Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves; and he was transfigured before them, and his garments became glistening, intensely white, as no fuller on earth could bleach them. My work is taking longer than I thought. It may be several years before you get a complete translation into your Latin tongue. So I hope my letters anticipating the glory to come will still prove welcome.

Mark writes only a few words summarizing the message of Jesus. Can we hear it? It would seem that Jesus cannot even be sure that his direct disciples - being taught in the flesh - will hear him. (When we read ahead we shall see how slow of learning they were - but he does call the one who hears Rocky - for solid and reliable.) I should withdraw this comment and parenthesis - for surely they are learning in the days of his flesh, but we are learning in the days of our own flesh, and I can assure you, we who learn, are flesh and learn in our flesh, touched by his Spirit.

We do not ask then, 'how would he speak to us today?' as if he were not present. Yet without presuming his presence - and you might think this is almost by an act of self-deception - how can we hear his teaching except mediated by those who have gone before us and whose fleshly bodies are no longer with us? That is by their written record and its tradition.

We who do not see the foretaste of glory, how shall we see beyond our immediate view? Can we jump out of our own skins? You, Beloved, parvule somnambule, amice me, in particular, must hear and know. The task is difficult but not impossible, for it is mediated not just by written words and tradition but by Spirit. We know when we are known and we then know both the surprise of the presence, its incomparable holiness and joy, and why it is difficult to speak.

Remember, Beloved, when Jesus went into the land of Judea and remained with them and baptized - the baptizer and the baptized; each given to the other; water changed to wine; water transmuting into Spirit; Spirit given to the flesh and bones of our own promised land. Now consider the transfiguring fire - not his body as if flesh and blood could inherit, but his body as if Spirit indwells the flesh. Do not call unclean what God has made clean.

Do I give up fire for words, Beloved? God forbid.

- Put down your pen.
- It is done, my Lord, I await your word.
- Pick it up. Now write my words as fire.
- Do I understand words as fire?
- My word is fire. The water of blessing will balance the fire so it does not consume and destroy you.
- May my Lord give us this water for ever.

We are like a forest, Beloved, filled with all manner of strange creatures and luxuriant growth. I have seen the water fall into a forest. The trees are wet. They cling as you walk. If the fire falls before the water, the forest is consumed. Saturate yourself, therefore, with the water of the word and you will be caught as if in a vice. But your heart cries out with joy for the one who could destroy you in a moment does not. You say: I am alone in my knowledge; hold me. The branches will hold you. The grip is secure. You rest and you know you are not alone. Gift, gifted and giver are present. Fire on the earth, Spirit on all flesh will not destroy you. Such a Spirit, Beloved, an oil that lets fire and water burn together, reforms our judgment.

His branches have dripped fatness for us. In the shadow of his branches is such a life, let us ask with the writer of prayers: one thing I have desired of the Lord that I might behold his fair beauty for ever and visit his temple, for he will treasure me in his booth in the time of trouble. For there is trouble as the same psalmist repeatedly notes and as Jesus himself experienced.

- My enemies pick up rocks to throw at me. They lay stones of stumbling for my feet and I fall. Will you not destroy my enemies that they too might know your beauty?
- All who come to me will find rest and I will in no wise cast them out. So it is that I still the enemy and the avenger.
- What will we do for our younger sister?

The Lord and Giver of Life anoints fingers and lips, so we may fully and fitly praise the creator of heaven and earth, both the former and the latter created in one day as it is written, in the day the Lord God made earth and heaven. (I note that in some earlier work I did for you that I mistranslated this from the original tongues - I had written in die quo fecit Dominus Deus caelum et terram and I should have written in die quo fecit Dominus Deus terram et caelum.) The corrected translation closes the parenthesis of the word that begins the book in principio creavit Deus caelum et terram. You will see how careless I was to miss such an obvious feature of the text. The reversal of the words allows us to see and hear the end in the beginning.

- es ist volbracht
- a strange tongue. what is it you are hearing?
- it could be Ruth singing it, but wait, in my ears the timbre changes to a male voice echoing the words - es ist volbracht - a slow descending scale rehearsing the end of all things.

Such a light is good, translating darkness into light, and redeeming the lives of all his servants not missing a hair of the head or a tear of the eye. And what is it we are told: This is my beloved Son; listen to him. 'Beloved.' He shares our name.

God's Insomniac

Fermenting in my mind is a new idea: the statement that God loves us as God loves God. It opens the Trinity to a new understanding for me - particularly when it begins to resonate with the gospel - the question 'what is man (adam, enosh)' and the desire and answer in the Lord Jesus Christ. (Noted here with thanks to Mike Highton where I first saw it here.)

Now may he give his beloved sleep.

The Body's Grace

Do note this and the posts it points to - not too long a read.

Understanding Paul - one lay view

David Congdon has listed a set of 'models' of Paul's thought and asked a few questions.

1. Justifying address-divine righteousness model
2. Covenantal-salvation historical model
3. Cosmic-apocalyptic model
4. Mystical model
5. Judaic-eschatological model
6. Pneumatological-participatory model
7. Christological-typological model

And these are his questions

1. What is your preferred model for understanding Paul?
2. Do you find my alternative list helpful in any way? If so, how?
3. How might you augment or pare down or change my list?
4. Do you have other examples of academic manipulation?

Here is one view of the lay of the land.

Seven alternate or coordinating 'models' are a convenient number for reflection. When humans get above seven, most of us lose track of where we are. We seem to have a three-bit memory. But that's for 7 simple things. None of the above is simple. Several are already composite. I am going to boil it down to 3 to start. It will get more complex because each of the three could be subdivided by 7 and each of those in turn by 7 more (giving us just under 150 discrete items to consider with the Apostle), but the top handle will be easier to grasp.

My top 3 are Jesus, Israel, and Law. At least they are for the moment.

Around Jesus cluster seven things:

• son of David,
• Christ,
• gospel,
• Lord,
• Son of God,
• Spirit,
• resurrection

I read these from the invocation to Romans - and I think other epistles support one or more of these - e.g. Philippians on Christ/Son, 1 Corinthians on Spirit, 2 Corinthians on gospel.

Around Israel cluster seven things:

• the sonship,
• the glory,
• the covenants,
• the giving of the law,
• the worship,
• the promises;
• the patriarchs,
• the Christ.

Of course these are lifted from Romans 9 and seem to overlap with the first group - but with distinctions.

Around Law I am going to have a tougher time with a completeness of taxonomy:

• leeway (1 Corinthians),
• righteousness of God (Romans),
• freedom (Romans 8),
• purpose (Galatians 3),
• fulfillment (Romans 7),
• Gentiles (Romans 1,3,14,15),
• Scriptures (1 Corinthians).

I won't push it down any further at the moment.

Now as to preference for DG's list:

1. Justifying address-divine righteousness model - under Law-righteousness of God and Jesus-resurrection
   
2. Covenantal-salvation historical model - under Israel-covenants and Israel-giving of the Law, Law-Gentiles and Law-Scriptures
   
3. Cosmic-apocalyptic model - under Israel-promises and Law-freedom (Romans 8)
   
4. Mystical model - under Jesus-Spirit and Law-leeway
   
5. Judaic-eschatological model - under Israel-promises
   
6. Pneumatological-participatory model - under Jesus-Spirit, Jesus-resurrection
   
7. Christological-typological model - under Jesus-Christ and Law-Scriptures
   

I have to guess a bit from these titles but I suspect that

1. will deal with traditional ideas from the reformation and justifcation by faith - It's true but it's more about God than us.
2. gathers more to itself on first cut than the others 4 of my 21 subdivisions.
3. is somewhat foreign to my thinking and early Paul (1 Thessalonians) [update: but see also 1 Corinthians 5:17 and the creation groaning in Romans 8]
   
4. is where I am at - but my conversation with the Pauline corpus has been limited by my study of the Psalms these last two years. Paul told me he wouldn't talk to me till I had learned more of the thought process of his kin. His advice in Romans 8 and 10 (where he cites Deuteronomy) and 1 Corinthians 7 have all been formative for me. Romans 7 combined with the Song of Songs holds my understanding of the mystery of the Incarnation. Romans 8 (with Hebrews of course) invites a bold entry into the Holy. [e.g. Paul's 'I live yet not I']
   
5. has as limited a perspective for me as 3.
6. overlaps with 4 and 1.
7. see 2.

Is this manipulation: yes - my wordle shows I am heavily focused on the one death of Christ for us and I am also readable through my story and through most of this blog as one who does not limit the spiritual to mind and thought. The Spirit is the Lord and giver of life to our mortal bodies or there is something else we should be paying attention to.

Don't forget me

Christianity is not, properly speaking, a ‘religion of the Book’: it is a
religion of the word (Parole) - but not uniquely nor principally of the word in
written form. It is a religion of the Word (Verbe) - ‘not of a word, written and
mute, but of a Word living and incarnate’ (to quote St. Bernard). The Word of
God is here and now, amongst us, ‘which we have looked upon, and our hands have
handled’: the Word ‘living and active’, unique and personal, uniting and
crystallizing all the words which bear it witness. Christianity is not ‘the
biblical religion’: it is the religion of Jesus Christ. [Exégèse Médiévale, II/1
(Paris, 1961), pp. 196-9.]

Clear words that unbind, for the one who loves. With blessings to Macrina who reads all these things on our behalf.

For all who fail to understand plainsong

This from the Lambeth blog (it is possible to get the clerics to hear and understand - hah - I didn't know GR was not musical.)

In reciting the psalms, the brothers employ a practice that has never really worked for me -- until now. The long and pregnant pause between lines of the psalms has always seemed to me, observed in large groups, to be artificial and distracting (more worried that I'm going to start too soon and stick out like a sore thumb). But here, it is an entirely different spiritual practice. It's as if the brothers and I have become one breathing organism, finding a breathing and speaking rhythm that brings us intimately together. Rather than a distraction, it is an embodiment of the oneness life in Christ promises with one another.

As an American, I suppose, I want to voice meaning in each word, but the flatness with which the brothers recite the psalms make a strange sense to me. The reciting of the psalms becomes less about what the words mean, and more about the unity with which we are reciting them. Sounds strange, even for me to be saying. But it works. Powerfully, prayerfully and intimately.