Beautiful City – A Theological Ramble on “Godspell”– Pt. I: Jesus Musicals and Christology

 

So I had a lot of thoughts and F e e l i n g s about the 2011 revival of Tebelak and Schwartz’s musical Godspell and I wanted to share some of them here. This is gonna be a pretty disorganized piece (hence the title), but I hope that whether you’re a fan of the show or a reader of my work, you might find at least one thing that resonates or helps you understand why I feel the way I do about this show. To give my thoughts some structure, I’m turning this into a blog post series. This first piece will be divided into two sections: a longer section on theology and a shorter section on personal response.

1. Godspell vs JCS, and a Brief Diversion on Christologies

So one easy hot take is to compare and contrast Godspell with Jesus Christ Superstar, the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that came out around the same time. Conservative Christians at the time were not too fond of either of them, but both found a strong audience among secular theater-goers and (presumably) progressive Christians. Tebelak, fwiw, was gay and a lifelong Episcopalian who had considered the priesthood at various points in his life. Webber is an agnostic who says he finds Jesus fascinating as an important historical figure. These facts aren’t meant to favor one writer over the other (although I will explain below why I personally prefer Godspell), but knowing these facts does do some to explain why these shows ended up the way they did while covering very similar subjects.

The general consensus I’ve heard and would agree with is that Superstar is about the interpersonal relationships of Jesus the man, and especially his relationship with Judas Iscariot. Godspell also brings the relationship between Judas and Jesus to the foreground, but Godspell (true to its name) is ultimately more about the gospel itself. About Jesus’ teachings, about the community of love that he created, and a little bit about Jesus the Son of God.

In this respect, I’d like to propose that these two musicals unintentionally illustrate two historic approaches to understanding the person and work of Christ. Jesus Christ Superstar loosely follows a theology of Christ which is aligned with the historic Antiochene school of Christology. 

A. Antioch

(St. John Chrysostom, famed Patriarch of Constantinople and student of the Antiochene School)

The Catechetical School of Antioch was a loose affiliation/institution of theologians who trained many of the prominent clergy in the Eastern churches. It emphasized the distinction between the divine and human natures of Christ. It was most invested in historical readings of Scripture. While the orthodox Antiochene scholars certainly confessed that Christ was both divine and human, they tended to state that the divinity of God the Son was not always accessible to Jesus in his humanity. Taken to the extreme, some Antiochenes embraced the heresies of Adoptionism* or Nestorianism**. The value of this school, however, was the investment in an accessible, anthropological reading of Scripture, and an understanding of Christ that emphasized the transcendence of the Son of God and the humanity of Jesus as one of us.

Jesus Christ Superstar approaches its subject matter with a mixture of both pathos and cynicism (intentional or otherwise). Taking place entirely during the Passion, none of the theophanic moments of Christ’s life are depicted (eg, the Baptism of Christ or the Transfiguration).*** We see only his humanity, and it is a very pitiable humanity. I say this not as a criticism, clearly the show succeeds at producing a great deal of sympathy and poignancy for its characters. The presence of the divine in the show is nearly absent. The Last Supper in both shows is not given its full doctrinal weight, but Superstar tones down the spiritual significance of it more than Godspell does. In Superstar, Jesus notices the indifference of his Apostles and says “For all you care, this could be my body that you’re eating, and my blood you’re drinking.”

Jesus and Judas both talk to God, and imply that God answers, but we are only shown one side of the conversation. When Judas commits suicide and is singing the titular number to Jesus on the cross, he does so as a disembodied spirit whom Jesus is not able to interact with. Rather than the traditional account of Jesus going down to Hades and preaching to the dead, here the dead preach to a human Jesus who is doing God’s will but may or may not be able to hear them. All in all, Webber (though obviously not himself an Antiochene by confession) is showing us a Jesus who is primarily a glorified human with a relationship to God, who is nonetheless not especially divine in his capacities, outlook or body. Where he is connected to divinity, there is a clear separation between his divinity and his humanity

B. Alexandria

(St. Cyril, famed Pope (Patriarch) and student of the Alexandrian School)

The Catechetical School of Alexandria was the other major center for Christian theological training in the early Eastern Church, located at Alexandria in Eastern Roman Egypt. It traced its lineage all the way back to St. Mark, but was most strongly influenced by the teachings of Pantaenus, Origen, St. Clement and St. Cyril (above). The Alexandrians were invested in allegorical readings of Scripture, and the use of “pagan” philosophy in the service of theology. They also emphasized the union of the divine and the human in Jesus Christ. Orthodox Alexandrians recognized that Jesus’ divinity and humanity were not consumed by each other, but they tended to suggest that Christ’s divinity and humanity were always operating simultaneously and synergistically, that it was impossible to tell exactly where one ends and the other begins. Taken to the opposite extreme of the Antiochenes, some Alexandrians embraced the heresies of Monophysitism (i) or Apollinarianism (ii). The value of this school was an investment in a polyvalent, mystical approach to Scripture, and an understanding of Christ that emphasized the saving power of God’s own divinity taking on our humanity in an immanent way. 

Godspell is more invested in the ethical impact of Jesus’ life and ministry. However, it is more willing to blur the lines between the divine and human world for the sake of its message and framing of Christ. We see the Baptism of Christ on stage, and although there is no explicit depiction of the Holy Spirit or the Father, the scene is preceded by John the Baptist’s messianic song, “Prepare Ye,” and is woven in and around the song “Save the People,” a song where Jesus proclaims the coming salvation that God the Father will work in their midst for the benefit of all. This happens while the new disciples are also being baptized and receive a flower signifying their membership in the community forming organically around Christ. Jesus’ presence is charged with the eschatological promise of God being in their midst, which is a more Alexandrian reading that blurs the line between where Jesus the human ends and Jesus the divine begins.

I argue that we also see in Godspell an allusion (perhaps unintentional) to the Transfiguration. There is a scene where the stage lights are off and the disciples hold wave glow sticks around Jesus in rhythmic patterns while Jesus talks about the light within. Even if this is not an intentional reference, the visual language of the scene lends itself to the light of God being present in the midst of the people.

Before the Last Supper, Jesus sings the ballad “Beautiful City,” encouraging the disciples to continue the beloved community after his death. While it is a secularized approach in some ways, there is again that blurring of humanity and divinity where the promised city is coming, is beautiful, marked by eschatological hope, and is still “not a city of angels, but a city of man.” During the Last Supper, Jesus prays the traditional Jewish blessing over the bread and wine, and then has lines which mirror the words of institution for the Eucharist. Whether one reads it as a memorial or a sacrament, Tebelak and Schwartz choose to frame the Last Supper as an intentional institution on Jesus’ part. The table is also bathed in light and smoke, implying divine energy or grace gathered around Jesus and his disciples.

On the cross, in Jesus Christ Superstar, Jesus’ last words emphasize his human obedience to the Father: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” In Godspell, the words are less literal to the Gospel text, but they lean towards a more divine-human reading of Jesus. He says, “Oh God, I’m dying,” and the disciples respond, “Oh God, You’re dying,” with the dual meaning of expressing despair and acknowledging his divinity. Jesus’ exclamation here is also very in line with Alexandrian theology, which emphasized the idea that if Christ is truly God incarnate, then a part of God did truly die on the cross, and not just a human who represented God or who was carried through his existence by God.

Finally, though both shows are ambiguous on the Resurrection in order to place their emotional cores front and center (iii), Godspell arguably has the more explicit allusion to the Resurrection. While Superstar ends with Jesus’ death on the cross and a final overture, Godspell ends with a stirring reprise of “Prepare Ye,” intermingled with “Long Live God,” again the messianic expectation. Jesus’ body is lovingly carried by the disciples offstage. In the production I saw, they carried him upwards into the house, where a bright white spotlight was shining. Though both the Antiochenes and the Alexandrians would naturally endorse faith in the Resurrection, in a secularized context, the Alexandrian-flavored Christology of Godspell is more comfortable with depicting Jesus’ divinity infusing and breaking into the human sphere of action. As such, Godspell is more comfortable than Superstar with at least alluding to the most awe-inspiring feat of Christ the God-man, his rising from the dead.

2. Conclusions and Pointing to Pt. II

In the end, the earnestness, exuberance and eschatological hopefulness of Godspell won me over, whereas after Jesus Christ Superstar I was impressed but not moved in the same way. The interplay between grounded radical ethics, unironic joy and tenderness, and the sprinklings of luminosity and divinity in Godspell spoke to me profoundly as a queer Orthodox Christian. Watching a filmed version of the stage show, I felt a visceral sense of connection to my faith and my God, one that echoed various points along my spiritual journey where my heart “burned within me” like the disciples on the Emmaus road. Where I was surrounded by friends who were seeking Christ, and the presence of God was an animating energy of love, hope and joy in our midst. In the next part, I want to pick up the Alexandrian lens to begin to talk about what moved me about this musical in particular, drawing on my specific experiences as a queer Christian, as an Eastern Orthodox Christian, and as someone who inhabits both of those identities simultaneously.

*Adoptionism is the belief that Jesus was entirely human at his birth and that the divinity of the Son of God came and inhabited him at his baptism or later.

**Nestorianism is the belief that Jesus had a human nature and a divine nature, but that the two were entirely separate from one another, with the divine nature operating the human Jesus without experiencing any of the human things Jesus experienced directly.

***The Transfiguration is not explicitly named as such in Godspell. However, I will argue later that it does make an appearance.

(i) Monophysitism is the belief that Jesus had one nature which was an indistinct mixture of humanity and divinity. This belief is not to be confused with its orthodox Alexandrian counterpart, Miaphysitism, which is the belief that Jesus has one nature where the humanity and the divinity are united but do not dissolve into each other. The latter doctrine is the belief of the Oriental Orthodox Churches.

(ii) Apollinarianism is the belief that Jesus had a human body but a divine soul/mind.

(iii) Jesus Christ Superstar’s emotional core being the pathos of the character relationships, Godspell’s emotional core being the poignancy and ethos of the gospel and the community of disciples.

Passion Diptych -- Sts Thomas and Matthew Shepard (Poem)

 

I.

Mysteries catch us by surprise.

You live fully, freely

Calling out the world by being

In it.

Looking back, it’s easy

To see what Heaven was like,

Who it was who called you

In each moment walking on the Earth

To make of it a little bit the garden

By planting flower, pulling weeds,

And standing at the gates of gospel,

Saying,

“Look! I am free.

And how about you?”

II.

Sailing off to distant lands,

To Laramie or Chennai,

Carrying his love in that firm,

Quiet, faithful way,

And his voice was the wind within your sails.

Rome and Rabat took their prices,

Tearing flesh as only empire can,

My dear beloveds, even so you held

Your course to where He promised harbor,

For your hearts, for His words in you, saying,

“Come! come alive

And be made new.”

III.

He never asked for this

For you.

Your body pierced and torn,

And always the cry of the crowd

Pretending your light wasn’t so bright as to tear the whole damn world open,

The whole thing exposing its bones to light

And maybe love.

And yet in this the midnight of your stories,

He knew, oh so well how each spear, nail, pistol felt,

And how the crowds would twist your words, demanding your blood over the truth, that there is no truth where there is no love and so they said in mockery,

“Unless I see him broken,

I won’t believe.”

IV.

And now you’ve walked across the long and windswept plains,

Winding, weary but warm and full of everlasting,

Up to Zion.

Somewhere, He gently brushes hands across each wound,

Caresses, and you feel your own hands holding his, wounds as one.

He says, touch so deep and tender,

“You’re not a ghost, nor am I.”

And you respond, breathing in his life,

“My Lord and my God.”

Exodus Talks: Come, Receive the Light

 

Note: This reflection is the fourth in a four part series of reflections I’m writing for my final in an exegesis and preaching course in seminary. As such, these reflections may have more of the cadence of a homily than my usual material does. The text we used for study was Exodus. This fourth and final reflection is based on Exodus 24:1-18.

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God,

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil,

It gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil

[…]

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things

[…]

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

world broods with warm breast and ah! Bright wings.”*

In this poem, Victorian Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins gives praise for the splendor of God’s glory. The glory of God takes many forms. Saints from all ages have been blessed to see the Uncreated Light of God’s presence. To see it flame out, to feel it refreshing and restoring, to see the flash of the Spirit’s brightness in motion. But what can this glory tell us about the character of God, and about what God might be calling us as followers of Christ to do? In today’s texts, we are treated to revelations of God’s glory, revelations that paint a beautiful picture of what it means to seek God’s Kingdom. 

On Pascha, we chant that triumphant hymn, “Come, receive the light that is never overtaken by night, and glorify Christ!”** In so doing, we recognize not just the Resurrection, but that the history of God’s people has been a history of God leading us into God’s never-waning light. We see this in today’s text especially. The Israelites have emerged from the wilderness, through their trial with Amalek, and have come to Mt. Sinai. They have heard the new life that God is calling them to live. A life marked by a covenant of closeness with God. The people ratify the covenant by a liturgical act of sacrifice. Moses and the priests sacrifice livestock, sprinkle the blood of the livestock on the people, and share the food with the community. In the life of Israel, the blood of an animal symbolized the force of life itself. The sprinkling of blood suggests that those who follow God and walk in God’s ways will be blessed with the new life. God invites all of God’s people into new community and new closeness with God. God begins a covenant here with Israel which will in time be expanded to include all the nations. The covenant is founded on justice, love and liberation, and the inseparable praxis of the two.  Closeness with God looks like hospitality, welcome, justice and liberation, as evidenced by the elders’ audience with God in the “throne room,” an encounter which is marked symbolically and literally by these virtues.

Moses and the elders are invited to see the light of God’s presence. They are invited to see a vision of what their new life with God will look like. Sitting on the mountain, in the throne room of God’s presence, they see a “sapphire pavement,” as dazzling blue as the sky itself. Ancient interpreters both Jewish and Christian suggest that this blue pavement is a symbol of God transforming hard circumstances into life and freedom by God’s grace and power. St Ephrem the Syrian, and the Aramaic Targum tradition both suggest that the sapphire color was a reminder of the sea that God had parted for the Israelites to cross on dry land. The bricks were a reminder of the bricks they were forced to make in their slavery in Egypt. What were once obstacles to freedom are now symbols of its presence in their midst.

And before the throne of God, in the midst of this wondrous light, they eat a meal with the Creator. God invites Israel to eat together, in an act of sacred hospitality. They cannot see God’s face, but they are ushered into God’s presence. The light of God’s glory is mysterious. But it is also warm and inviting.

If we examine this moment of divine-human fellowship, we may remember the hospitality of Abraham in Genesis. In Andrei Rublev’s brilliant icon of this scene, the artist depicts the three angels as a theophany, a manifestation of the Holy Trinity. As with many icons, this one is meant to be looked through, to be participated in when we see it and are reminded of the truths about God’s character that the artist wishes to make clear to us. In this icon, Rublev reminds us of the truth of God’s hospitality. The Trinity are seated around a table with an empty seat. They gesture to one another, indicating God the Father sending Christ and the Holy Spirit. The staging of the scene invites us to be the fourth person at the banquet. This icon reminds us of our ultimate goal. We are to be deified, to participate in the life of the Trinity. God is inviting us into God’s light. The light of God is sacred hospitality, community, and communion.

In the Gospel According to St. Matthew, we see Jesus continuing to invite us into the light. In an echo to the ratifying of the Hebrew covenant, Jesus shares a meal with his apostles. The apostles share bread and wine with God in the flesh. And just as blood was poured out to establish God’s covenant with a particular nation, so now a second covenant is established by the pouring of Christ’s blood. One which is “poured out for many, for the forgiveness of sins.” The blood brings life. It would be easy to simply say that Christ’s death on the cross sanctified death, brought the forgiveness of sins, and stop there. These are all true, but just as the sacrifice in the Israelite covenant  returned as sustenance and new life for the community, Christ rose from the dead and returned to be with us as the resurrection and the life of all. God invites all of us, in our particularities, into a life characterized by freedom, hospitality, liberation, justice, and love. We are called to practice these virtues as the way of discipleship. But ultimately it is God’s light within us and within each other, God’s grace shed as energy in the world, that enables us to be made whole and made fully alive in God.

This text teaches us to hope for liberation for ourselves and one another, and to hope for the positive transformation of our communities through God’s justice being made known in our midst. Though Christians do not follow the mitzvot word for word, we can be encouraged that in the giving of the Torah, we see also God making Godself present to God’s children, a presence that brings wholeness. Jesus himself said that he did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. To bring to us as Gentiles a way to covenant and relationship with God. St James the Brother of our Lord teaches about the royal law of liberty. From the Old Testament to the New, though the specific practices of faithfulness may differ from community to community, God is always inviting us into freedom. Inviting us into God’s light.

The saints across time recognized this light. St. Dionysus the Areopagite wrote about the hiddenness of God. In an experience similar to the theophany at Sinai, St. Dionysus encourages the follower of Christ to “make our way straight to the topmost peak, beyond knowing and light, of the mystical scriptures—there where the simple, absolute and unchangeable, mysteries of God’s speaking lie wrapped in the darkness beyond light of secret—hidden silence.”*** Several centuries later, St. Gregory Palamas wrote with joy about the Uncreated Light that we can experience in intimate prayer and a life of holiness with God. And so we see God’s invitation echoed throughout the ages. Work for justice. Work for the flourishing and freedom of your neighbors. Invite one another to the banquet table. And perhaps most importantly, come to the table yourself and sit down to be renewed by the welcoming light of Christ.

*Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur,” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44395/gods-grandeur. Accessed October 21st, 2020.

**Public domain hymn, cf. “Great and Holy Pascha,” https://www.goarch.org/pascha . Accessed November 23rd, 2020.

***”Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-dionysius-areopagite/#SouIdeChaWriTerChrNeo. Accessed November 23rd, 2020

Exodus Talks: The Amalekite Within

 Note: This reflection is the third in a four part series of reflections I’m writing for my final in an exegesis and preaching course in seminary. As such, these reflections may have more of the cadence of a homily than my usual material does. The text we used for study was Exodus. This third reflection is based on Exodus 17:8-16.

In this text, we encounter an Israel under attack from a foreign enemy. They have been liberated from Egyptian oppression, and they are wandering through the wilderness. God is slowly guiding them to Canaan, the Promised Land. As they draw nearer to Mt. Sinai, they are attacked by the Amalekites. This is, on a surface reading, a text of war. Much has been made, and rightly so, of the moral and spiritual dilemma of what it means when God’s people go to war. This pattern of violence in many ways only grows more prominent when the Israelites begin their entry into Canaan. We are indebted to faithful people throughout the centuries who have interrogated these “texts of terror,” to consider why they are in Scripture, what they say, and perhaps more importantly what they do not say. For us as Orthodox Christians, the written Biblical canon is a witness to the Living Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, and it is through his presence as the Incarnate Word in the power of the Holy Spirit that we interpret the written word. We are not bound to affirm or accept the literal meaning of every word in the Bible as edifying, but we are called to wrestle with other meanings that the Spirit brings to us when we gather as the Body of Christ. With this encouragement in mind, let us accept God’s invitation through the Holy Prophet Isaiah, “’Come, let us reason together,’ says the LORD.” Let us reason and wrestle together, and see what we may discover.

The Church Fathers and Mothers used many methods to receive the Word of God from the Scriptures. Two of these methods are allegory and typology. Taking these together, perhaps we can discern something valuable for our time in this text. Typology asks the question, “Where is Jesus pointed to in this text?” One clear example is the way Moses stands to resist the Amalekites through prayer for God’s people. He stands on a mountain, a high hill. He raises his arms to Heaven. Almost in the shape of a cross. In this same way, Christ raised his arms to Heaven in his life-giving passion, interceding with his prayer and his own life-blood that his people, all of God’s children, would be given the strength to overcome the spiritual and systemic forces of death and evil that reigned in their midst. In reading Scripture typologically, we must be careful not to minimize the spiritual value of the original action, even as we acknowledge that it points for us, as does the whole canon, to the person and work of Christ. Prior to God becoming incarnate, Moses prayed faithfully on behalf of God’s people, and led them to be unified as a people. The witness of Moses still echoes forward today, not only in our community but also in the community of our Jewish siblings under God.

Another method used by the Church Fathers and Mothers is allegory. This method can be seen in many of our hymns. Consider the Katavasia of Christmas. “The furnace moist with dew was the image and figure of a wonder past nature.  For it burnt not the Children whom it had received, even as the fire of the Godhead consumed not the Virgin’s womb into which it had descended.” This is also in some ways a typology, an event in the Old Testament which can be seen to point to Christ. All typologies are allegories, but allegory encompasses more than just the presence of Christ indicated in Scripture. Here, we see the womb of the Mother of God as she carried Christ being compared to the three holy youths in the Book of Daniel who were not burned by the fiery furnace. Here, the furnace is compared to the fire of Christ’s full divinity, which shone forth even in his humanity but did not consume the Theotokos. We see that this tells us something about the mercy and humility of Christ, and the faithfulness of the Virgin to God’s request, something we could not see were we to only read the Book of Daniel literally.

In Exodus, we see another example of allegory. The people of God are being attacked by an enemy force. Moses does send warriors to fight in self-defense. Another text in Deuteronomy suggests that the Amalekite assault happened at a time when Israel was vulnerable and weary from traveling. However, Moses does not trust primarily in Israelite military might. Instead, he goes up on the mountain and prays in a very embodied and fervent way, trusting that the true spiritual source of victory is not human vigor, but the power and deliverance of God.

If we are to understand this text for our own times, we should look closely at the posture of Moses in this event. Allegory with texts such as these can easily be misapplied, making the Amalekites to be whoever it is convenient for us to hate. We should never apply this kind of thinking to another people group, to other human beings whom God loves. The spiritual nature of Moses’ solution suggests that a spiritual interpretation is necessary. That is to say, we should be concerned not so much with enemies around us, but spiritual and systemic enemies. We must conquer the Amalekite within. 

This text, read in a spiritual allegory, suggests that conflict in our lives is not to be overcome by human force, power, or violence, but by standing firm in our integrity and trusting God to bring about a good outcome. It also suggests that in any conflict involving interpersonal relationships, we are to avoid essentializing any human enemy or group of enemies as the problem, but to try and see the injustice or evil itself as the thing to be resisted in creative ways. While we may find ourselves entrenched in conflict with our neighbor, sometimes with vast power differentials, we must find ways to resist the harm they cause without seeking their destruction. We must root out the sources of evil. Broken systems that take the life of the oppressed and the humanity of the oppressor. Human greed, desire for power, fear of scarcity, and an inability to see the image of God in one another, to see Christ in one another. Amalek is all around us. And we are all God’s beloved children. For all of us to truly live as equals in dignity, honor, life and love under God, we must defeat the spirit of Amalek that lives on in our societies and in our hearts.

In St. Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus shows a way to do this. The Temple was full of people who truly wanted to love, serve and worship God. But greed and the status quo of a few powerful people had blocked access to the life giving rites that all of God’s people wanted to participate in. Jesus could have led an army of his followers into the Temple and destroyed those people who were charging unjust rates for sacrifices. On the other hand, he could have also simply gone along with it, maybe preach a sermon encouraging the moneychangers to lower their rates. But Christ did neither of these things. Instead, he organized an act of creative resistance, one which destroyed the status quo without destroying the human beings who capitulated to it. He drove out the moneychangers, proclaiming and reiterating the forgotten truth, that the Temple was to be “a house of prayer for all people,” regardless of wealth, class, origin, or status. Jesus resisted evil without seeking the death of those caught up in its power.

We are not Christ. And not every situation has a clear path to this holy mode of resistance. We will try. Sometimes we will succeed, and sometimes we will fail. Sometimes we will emerge triumphant over the spiritual forces that keep us in bondage, and sometimes we will only cause harm to one another. In all cases, however, we are called to trust that God will give resolution and victory to those who resist in faithful ways.  We are to hope for an end to evil itself, and ways of being that are contrary to the flourishing of God’s children and to hope that God will provide ways of renewal which involve human engagement but do not require its success in order to work. We are to enact creative and prayerful resistance against evil to focus our energies on supporting one another in resistance to evil rather than against the persons of those we see as our enemies. May we be led by the example and witness of Moses, the example and witness of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by his grace and power may we conquer the Amalekite within.

*In general, Orthodox hymns and their arrangements are not copyrighted and are usually public domain because they’re so old, but cf. for a source Ode 8 of the Katavasia of Nativity, http://www.saintjonah.org/services/nativity.htm

Exodus Talks: 2020 Hindsight

 Note: This reflection is the second in a four part series of reflections I’m writing for my final in an exegesis and preaching course in seminary. As such, these reflections may have more of the cadence of a homily than my usual material does. The text we used for study was Exodus. This second reflection is based on Exodus 6:1-13.

In this text, we see Moses wrestling with what it means to be called by God. Again. This is the second call narrative we see for Moses in the Book of Exodus. Some scholars suggest that this is two separate accounts of Moses’ call stitched together. While this is certainly a possibility, I can also see a profound spiritual value to reading this text as a re-calling of Moses to his work. It comes on the heels of what feels like his first failure. Moses has gone to Pharaoh, preached all that God ordered him to preach, and the oppression of the Israelites has only increased. I can imagine Moses feeling discouraged here, almost as if he has made his people worse off than before. In the midst of this discouragement, in the darkness deepening around Israel before the dawn, God calls Moses again.

We often use the phrase, “hindsight is 20/20.” That we don’t always know the best course of action when a choice is in front of us. When we look back, with our new knowledge in the present, we see more clearly what we could have done, and maybe what we should have done. God’s call of encouragement to Moses draws on this same insight. Instead of the sigh of regret that “hindsight is 20/20,” however, God uses this idea to remind Moses of the good that God has done for them, and the good that God is still beginning to do. God encourages Moses to remember God’s saving work for his ancestors: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God reminds Moses that those ancestors didn’t know God by God’s truest and deepest name, like Moses now does. God reminds Moses that God made a promise to the Patriarchs that they would be given a land for their descendants to prosper and flourish in. Moses can look back and see with 20/20 hindsight that God was faithful to the Patriarchs in cultivating a covenant and a friendship with them. And now Moses and God’s people in the present have a relationship with God that is even closer. God encourages Moses to trust that this same pattern will continue into the future. “You will know I am your God, because I will free you from the Egyptian yoke, and I will bring you to the land I promised to your ancestors.”

In the St. Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus gives us a similar promise, one that also serves as a warning against impatience. Jesus is preaching about the Kingdom of God. Christ tells his apostles, “If someone comes to you saying, ‘Look, there’s the Messiah! In the wilderness!’ Or ‘Look, here’s the Messiah! in the inner rooms.’ Don’t believe them. When I come again, it will be like lightning, striking the sky from East to West. You won’t be able to miss it. Hindsight is 20/20.” In God’s words to the apostles and to Moses, God teaches us how to hope.  We live in a world where authorities make promises that they can’t or won’t fulfill, where power and expediency are seen by many as the primary tools for accomplishing one’s desires. We are called to work for the Kingdom of God, certainly. We can’t be passive, and we can’t turn a blind eye to one another’s suffering. But we are also called to trust in the process of God’s grace working in synergy with us.  God shows up in our long laboring for each other’s liberation. We can expect the road to liberation, the road to salvation to be slow.  Ultimately, though, it is infinitely more life-giving and steadfast in the long run to partner with God, to work in faithfulness and love and hope, than to put our hopes on one mortal power to save us. And God reminds us that in the end, we will see the hope we yearn for. “You will know that I am your God, because I will free you. Because I will bring you to the place I promised.”

Let me share a few insights from Fr. Matthew the Poor, a wise elder of the Coptic Church. Fr. Matthew says that “we do not need to resort to fervent pleas and tears and emotional supplications that the Lord may come to us, for He is always present and is knocking even now. He will not stop, because He wants to enter our lives. He finds His own rest with us, and His greatest joy is to share with us our cross and our dark night, for He still loves the cross. […] The alert and simple soul notices the touch of His hand writing the story of its salvation through the years and the succession of events.”* Hindsight, beloved in Christ, is 20/20.

God calls Moses. God calls the apostles. And God calls us. God calls us to see where God has shown up into our lives. To see that as both a fruit and a future sign of the new and wonderful things God is looking to do in our midst, that God will do in our midst.  God is working to “bring good news to the poor, to liberate the captives, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” God promises to work both through our concrete actions and in ways beyond our reach. Freedom’s presence in our lives as we look back on each step of the journey is a witness to God’s righteous power, mercy and love. And at each step of the journey, our loving Lord walks with us. Carrying our burdens, helping us to carry one another’s burdens, revealing to us deeper and deeper depths of God’s name. The Great I Am. The one whose mercy endures forever. Alleluia. Amen.

*Fr. Matthew the Poor, The Communion of Love (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984), 34-5.

Exodus Talks: Mother Tzipporah, Priest of the Lord

 

Note: This reflection is the first in a four part series of reflections I’m writing for my final in an exegesis and preaching course in seminary. As such, these reflections may have more of the cadence of a homily than my usual material does. The text we used for study was Exodus. This first reflection is based on Exodus 4:18-26. 

In this passage, we see a courageous display of faithfulness. Tzipporah acts with boldness to preserve the life of her family. As she does this, she also shows us what it means for us as human beings to be the high priests of creation. Tzipporah is the daughter of the High Priest of Midian. Jethro and his people have kept the faith alive in the wilderness. Moses’ time in Midian has helped him remember what it means to be a servant of God. As they begin the journey back to Egypt, however, it is Tzipporah who will show Moses an act of faithfulness to God. Tzipporah, like her father, becomes a priest of the Most High God. She is Mother Tzipporah.

As they are spending the night on the road to Egypt, the text says that God tries to kill either Moses or his son. This is a challenging account, and it may be disturbing to many. I am going to offer an interpretation, but before I do so, I take this space as an opportunity to acknowledge that not everything in Scripture can be easily explained, and we are right in using our God-given conscience to wrestle, reject easy answers, and come to our own conclusions. Nothing I write here is meant to be an end-all be-all. Only my best effort to receive from this text whatever I can.

The text notes that God “tries” to kill Moses. What this says to me is that God is testing Moses and Tzipporah. God wants to know if they will act boldly and courageously on behalf of those in danger. Given Moses’ reluctance to answer God’s call, and the danger of the situation they are entering into, this makes some sense. Tzipporah circumcises her son, a ritual and liturgical action that reminds God of God’s covenant with Abraham. When the Israelite priests made a sacrifice to God, they knew that the sacrifice would not be consumed utterly, but returned to the community as life and sustenance. When Christ came to be both High Priest and sacrifice, he was not destroyed, but returned to life and brought eternal life to all of God’s children. When our priests offer bread and wine on the altar, these are not taken away by God but transfigured, sanctified and transformed into the Body and Blood of our Lord. They are then returned to the community as a source of life, “for faith unashamed, for love unfeigned,” and for all the other gifts God gives us through Christ in the Eucharist.

Here, we see Mother Tzipporah acting in the same role as God’s other priests across time. She trusts that in offering her son, God will not destroy any of them, but will return her faithful gesture to her in gifts of protection, life and liberation.

God’s desire is to bring that fullness of life to all people. For those who suffer under oppression, God’s restoration looks like support. Uplifting. Empowerment. For those who oppress, God’s restoration begins with humbling. Casting down. We are reminded of the Mother of God and her song, “He has put down the mighty from their thrones and has exalted the humble.” Before they set out to Egypt, God promises to restore justice between God’s firstborn son Israel, and God’s other son, Egypt. God warns Pharaoh that if Pharaoh does not respect the dignity and humanity of God’s firstborn, God will smite the firstborn of Egypt.

This may seem retributive, but it becomes more clear if we see it in the light of restorative justice and God’s desire to bring new life. God’s people are fragmented and under oppression in Egypt. Their suffering is an active situation, and they have not yet been fully united to pursue justice. Even so, there have been men and women doing courageous acts of faithfulness under oppression. Consider Mother Tzipporah, or the midwives Shiphrah and Puah. Yet it also seems clear that in order for God to enact God’s restorative justice on the Israelites and the Egyptians, something must be done to break the grip of Egyptian oppression and their fear of losing their power. This something must also bring the Israelites together as a unified people, who can act communally and in time reach out to other communities and be a blessing to the nations. God gives an opportunity through Moses’ warning for Egypt to partner with God in restorative justice, to let the Hebrews go. God will not use force unless it is clear that healing cannot begin within the status quo.

In the Gospel of St. John, we see Jesus commissioning St. Peter to be an agent of God’s justice and renewal, as an apostle and as a priest. On the seashore, after the Resurrection, Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?” And each time when Peter seeks to prove his love, Jesus tells him to act in deeds of faithful justice. Feed my sheep, tend my flock. Take care of my lambs. Here the method by which God lifts up the lowly and brings down the powerful is a different method. Christ responds to a different situation.  God’s people are under oppression from the Romans. Yet at the same time they have formed a strong consciousness of unity as a people. They have survived the Exodus and the exile. God’s restorative justice now is once again to make the enemies of God’s people into God’s friends. Jesus models this in his own life and ministry, particularly here in this encounter with Peter. Here we encounter not a stubborn Pharaoh, but a repentant apostle, one who has abandoned God but wishes to turn and receive life again. In God’s restorative justice, Jesus tells Peter that the measure of Peter’s love will be shown in how he brings together God’s flock, a flock that is already expanding to include both Jew and Gentile. This is a slower revolution, one from the inside out of Roman society. Force has been tried against the Romans and has failed to produce the desired change. The needed change is more complex and entangled, and so Christ commissions his apostles to knit together disparate peoples, to make enemies into friends, and to bring life to spaces of social and spiritual death.

St Maximus the Confessor tells us that the saints are called to “unite paradise and the inhabited world to make one earth, gathered together.”* Only some may be called to serve in the altar, but we are all of us priests of God by virtue of our baptism. And so I wonder…what separate communities are we each called to bring back together? What deeds of transformative justice can we commit or take part in? How can we bring the needs of our community to God, and act with works of faithfulness for the flourishing of all those we are in relationship with? What social inequities need to shift so that we can bring oppressed and oppressor to a level playing field? And what, maybe is one thing that each of us can do to begin to chip away at the injustices that plague our communities?

We must realize that we can be whole together in ways we cannot be whole on our own. But it requires faithful action, it requires that we offer our labor and our prayer to God not just on our own behalf, but on behalf of our neighbor. It also requires, for those of us complicit in oppression that we offer our repentance in word and in deed. As we offer all these things, in the world and on the altar, we can be encouraged by the examples of Mother Tzipporah, of St. Peter, of the Theotokos, and of all other faithful saints throughout history who chose to stand firm in the midst of death, and offer their lives to God that their people might receive life.

*in “Ecological Readings of St. Maximus the Confessor,” https://journals.wheaton.edu/index.php/wheaton_writing/article/download/580/137/