Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity – 9th Oct 2011

“She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her”. This remark made about
wisdom in the Book of Proverbs is, upon a bit of contemplation, a very
provocative one. The notion of a tree of life takes us of course back to the
Genesis account of creation, and the Garden of Eden in which the Tree of Life
stands, and from the fruit of which access is barred after the fall of humanity.
I have mentioned before that gardens, palaces and temples were constructed
on the basis of being transposed representations in the earthly space of
those multidimensional realties believed to be a part of the heavenly spaces,
even if the more literal idea of “above” and “below” is, in our contemporary
cosmological understanding, merely a picture of mental construction, while
in actual fact the heavenly and earthly spaces and inseparably bound in
communication, both having been equally created in a beginning as in
accordance with the opening verse of the Bible as we now know it.

The garden and the temple are moreover different ways of looking at
essentially the same thing, namely the presence, awe and potential danger
of God’s glory in the midst of creation. The inner sanctuary, the holy of
holies, is central to the temple building in the same way, and indeed for the
same reasons, as the trees of life and knowledge are central to the garden in
Genesis. When Mary Magdalene encounters the risen Jesus in the garden by
the tomb she meets the One who has opened the path back to the Tree of
Life out of the tomb of expulsion and has done so by the wood of that Tree
being transformed into a Cross over which He has won victory by rising from
the dead, claiming the same Cross as the most memorably ironic throne of all
time. The Temple is thereby restored but in a very new setting, even though
the central theological principles behind it – or more accurately behind the
structural detail of its up-building, have not changed in their essence.

The trees of life and of the knowledge of good and evil illustrated in Hebrew
thought the two central aspects to divine presence as witnessed through the
earthly space – the first was that such presence is ultimately the sustaining
source of life; the second was that knowledge is both to be held in high esteem
as in Proverbs, alongside the distinct concept of Wisdom (or Hokma), and yet
also it was to be regarded as dangerous, highlighting the potential fatalities

of the unknown. The holy of holies likewise represented a life source, and
contained the Shekinah – the Presence of God too brilliant to be encountered
without death, and into which space only the high priest could go once a year
and even then with a rope (or something similar) around his foot in case he
needed pulling out in an emergency. In this inner sanctuary there was the
belief that one was genuinely lifted up into the heavenly spaces and shown all
manner of things that only the chosen priest could be shown, and the idiom of
such encounter was spread out to include all “sister copies” of this sanctuary
at several traditionally holy locations other than Jerusalem (even though its
centrality remained the consistent focus), and it is also the primary motivating
factor behind the apocalyptic genre of some of the prophetic literature.

So sacred was this knowledge it could only be imparted to a chosen few and
thus any ill-advised attempt at direct encounter could easily be fatal. Yet
there was also a Jewish faction, especially in the case of the Deuteronomistic
reformers, who did not look favourably on the idea of such visions and they
were banned on the basis of being superfluous and in deadly danger of
blasphemy. Many of Jesus accusers would have been influenced by aspects of
this reform. Today’s psalm shows both the assertion of divine accompaniment
to both heights and depths alike while still admitting that “such knowledge is
too wonderful for me, I cannot attain to it.”

The greatest danger of the tree of knowledge is found in the words of the
serpent’s temptation “God knows that if you eat thereof you will be like
Him”, in other words you will compare with His knowledge of Good and Evil.
The great theologian Thomas Aquinas once remarked of God’s relation to
Good and Evil that He ‘knows of evil by pure intelligence as the negation of
goodness’ and yet He has never willingly called evil into active Being. The
great Anglican writer Dorothy L. Sayers points out that matter is not to be
considered in itself evil but rather it so happens that it is through this medium
that humanity has the ability to call evil forth into our active experience, thus giving it a manifestation and material status that it didn’t previously have #.

For a truly insightful interpretation of the story of the fall her entire essay is
well worth reading in full, but for now let us consider some New Testament

resonances of the danger of comparison with God.

In the Book of Revelation the army of Michael and his angels is distinguished
from that of the devil and his angels by the use of their respective battle
cries of “who is like God?” in the case of Michael’s army, and “who is like the
beast?” in the case of the devil’s army. The very fact of this is written into
the name Michael, formed of three Hebrew syllables (Mi-cha-el) meaning
literally “who is as/like God?”. If each angel in the devil’s army represents the
specific negation of each angel in Michael’s army, or the negation of every
individual and resonating aspect of goodness and divinity, then the victory of
Michael’s army is a powerful re-consigning of the nature of evil to something
once again known only by pure intelligence as a negation, and of no further
active consequence, just as in the vision of Revelation the sea is also no more.

Just as allowing Wisdom to be a tree of life to people is a bold statement in
Proverbs in view of the dangerous definite article of such a tree appearing
in Genesis, and its protection from human hands by cherubim and a flaming
double-edged sword, so is the statement in today’s letter of John even bolder
as he claims that we will be like God, seeing Him as HE really IS – and indeed
HE really IS, the great “I AM” repeated over again in John’s Gospel. John
makes this claim in his usual idiom of “the time is already here and yet is also
still in the process of coming”. We are, he claims, already children of God in
one sense, but in another sense have no full understanding of the vision or
perspective that such status will ultimately bring as a consequence. In Psalm 8
the Psalmist notes that human beings have been made little lower than gods,
and children of God are certainly served by angels and destined to be higher
than the angels, but the claim made in 1 John is simply staggering in its relation
to the weight of history, tradition and Hebrew idiom. Just as the reading
from Proverbs about Wisdom has paved the way to untangling the defences
of the Tree of Life so has 1 John now boldly foretold the renewed and safe
participation in the Tree of Knowledge, but this time from an unimpeachable
viewpoint formed directly by the redeeming work of the Divine.

So black and white is John’s separation of that which is from God and that
which is not that the theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church generally
distinguishes between two aspects of Church. First there is Church-as-calling,

and a potential from which we can and do continually fall short, and secondly
there is Church-as-gift, a state in which it is graciously allowed that, as John
says, those who are in the body of Christ Jesus sin no more. AMEN.

# It is also why experience cannot in and of itself be considered a fundamental and reliable theological source. A little thought should readily convince us of this, since otherwise there would be as many “churches” as types or preferences of human experience rather than the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.

Third Sunday before Advent – 6th November 2011

The Gospel of John seems to become more and more condensed the closer it
gets to the Passion narrative. The whole outlay of the time periods involved
in this Gospel progressively condenses time as well, starting from a beginning
in the relationship between God and Logos and then condensing itself into
a three year period looking at Jesus’ ministry, then a three day period of the
Passion account, a timeless sense of purpose and significance in the words “it
is finished” just before Jesus’ death and finally a whole new sense of time in
the post-Resurrection section of the Gospel. By the time we reach today’s
section in chapter 15 we are entering the start of a sizeable monologue from
Jesus to his disciples in which a simply huge amount of information is imparted
in a very small section. From the start of chapter 17 onwards the monologue
has become more like a soliloquy as Jesus addresses the Father alone and
directly, and God therefore heard in dialogue with Himself yet without the
slightest schizophrenic hint.

It is most helpful perhaps to look at the words of today’s reading verse by
verse and imagine if we can that we have not yet heard the verses that are to
follow. We find that the meaning, just like the sense of time throughout the
entire Gospel, becomes gradually compressed. We begin with…

“As the Father has loved me so have I loved you, abide in my love.”

Taken on its own this statement poses one immediate question, namely to
ask exactly how the Father has loved the Son. There is a definite sense of a
completed past action in this statement, the Greek form of the verb used
being precisely indicative of completion. The exhortation to abide, or literally
to remain now and to go on remaining, carries a sense of future permanence.
There is a sense in which, on the information thus far, the Father’s love for
the Son is a mystery but also a gift that has always been in place right from
the beginning noted in the prologue. Yet the effect of this completed past
event (which is how we see it through eyes confined to work within time does
not seem to be automatically present among the disciples since otherwise
the Greek verb would have taken a form called the perfect which denotes
specifically the inevitable, given present effect of a completed past action.
Instead what is known as the aorist form of verb is used and followed by a

present imperative. This abiding is something in which the disciples have an
active choice and it is not in this sense entirely automatic or inevitable.

Yet we still want to ask more about the nature of Father’s love for Son and we
must be careful to avoid literalizing our metaphor too much, since to judge too
heavily by relation to a generic human father and son relationship would be
to fashion God in our image rather than to allow ourselves to be remoulded
into His. It is one thing to acknowledge what the altar represents with an
equally representative bow, since that is just meeting one symbol with the
acknowledgement of another, just as if another person stretches out a hand in
a symbolic gesture of greeting most people will automatically do the same in
order to shake hands in the customary way. If someone were to follow with a
literal rather than symbolic expression such as “Hello, I’m Andrew,” then they
would receive a similarly literal acknowledgment and introduction as a result.
Neither of these are idolatrous, one meets symbol with symbol and the other
meets literal with literal. Idolatry, however, is by definition the attempt in any
way to claim to have ourselves captured divine meaning entirely within human
expression, whether such expression be material, emotional or linguistic in
its nature. The communicative love of the Trinity-in-Unity and Unity-in-Trinity
must remain always partially mysterious to us for that very reason.

Nevertheless an aspect of understanding this mystery is offered to us by Jesus
as the verses develop, a certain degree of understanding and knowledge, but
we need always to remember that only that which it is possible to express
in terms of our language and our material environment, both internal and
external, can actually be expressed. There will remain that which can’t.

The first stage in the explanation of verse 9 comes immediately in verse 10
when we are told “if you keep my commandments you will abide in my love”
and the “will” is here now emphatic and with a sense of total guarantee. The
onus is shifted from understanding the Trinitarian and communicative essence
of love to understanding the commandments that Jesus reinterprets and
summarizes, making for us thereby a burden that is easier and lighter than
would otherwise have been the case. Jesus also keeps in the Father’s love by
following His commandments, and it is left to us to decide whether we are
being told that the onus placed by the Father on the Son is far greater than

the burden made light for us. Subsequent developments, however, would
seem to force us to this conclusion. The structure of love and communication
in which we are to be held needs to be similar to that of the Trinity in terms of
congruence with it, but it will not be of the same magnitude or extent, for such
too would be an idolatrous claim.

In verse 11 this lightening of magnitude is for us that we may both be
joyous and further that that joy may grow to become complete, to become
expressible as a completed state or action in a final consummation of the
whole of history, just as Father’s love for Son was always eternally complete in
an initial beginning.

Verse 12 then makes the focus on commandment gradually ore explicit, and
now furthermore the commandment is notably singular rather than plural. “As
the Father has loved me and I have loved you” both represented as completed
actions “so you should love one another now and continue doing so over time.”

This then is made more explicit and compact still, with the note that the
greatest love is the laying down of life for friends. The implication is then made
that, since we are Christ’s friends if we follow His greatest commandment, the
mere fact that we obey such commandment means by definition that such
friendship is because he had already decided to lay down His life. Now Christ
pours out his entire human life and nature for us, just as the relationship with
the Father pours divine nature ever continually into the earthly journey in a
process known by theologians as kenosis. He then has power to lay down His
life even in the most materially literal sense, and then power to take it back
up again, implying that the power itself is not killed, since it is essential rather
than substantial, not of this world. This action then becomes a completed
action with eternal significance and now an immediate and inevitable
present effect upon the nature of created order, for which it would surely be
appropriate to use the perfect form of whatever verbs the Greek text might go
on to use to express this fact.

Now it is of course possible that many may well follow this laying down of life
quite literally – those saints known as martyrs for instance, many of whom
have eluded the specific recognition of history and were consequently duly
commemorated on All Saint’s Day on Tuesday. But not only is such laying down

only significant inasmuch as it is within the archetypical action of Christ but
also our commission is one of on-going laying down of life whereas clearly we
can only literally lay it down once. In many ways this is more challenging, to
lay down one’s life for others in a more continual yet metaphorical manner. It
is only by being formed into and within some awareness of the challenges of
making this commission habitual, and therefore abiding, that we start to intuit
more clearly as a communion what the Master is doing and thereby become
something greater than servants, even if we are always still servants as well to
whatever degree or extent.

Everything that it is possible for Christ to express of the Father in terms of
our language and our material realm He has made known, and not just in his
literal words but in the entire Activity that is ascribed to Him in John’s Gospel.
This Activity has two senses. The first sense is that in John’s Prologue that
emphasizes that all things were created through this Activity and therefore in
some way revealing of something made known from the Father – a fact which
in my view constitutes an irrevocable justification of some form of natural
theology. The second sense is that right at the end of the Gospel in which the
very closing verse keeps open the new sense of time generated within the
Gospel by asserting that, were everything that is associated with such creative
Activity to be written down in terms accessible to our language then the
entire materially accessible cosmos would not be able to contain what would
need to be written. Thus, once more, we have a protective measure against
idolatrous tendency by this sense of open Mystery, in which, as Jesus goes on
from today’s passage to say in the next chapter, chapter 16 verse 12, there are
still many things to say and to be revealed to us concerning the Father that
we cannot bear at present, and such will go on being the case throughout the
entire guiding journey of the Advocate that the Father will send.

Finally, it is within that unbroken communicative essence of the Holy Trinity
that what our language thinks of as creative intent is “chosen”. It is precisely
the fact that we are, in one important sense, passive in this creative process
of choosing that allows the fruit we are appointed to bear abiding to endure,
as the close of today’s gospel reading makes clear. It is abiding endurance of
good fruit that moulds our understanding and therefore influences that for
which we ask and petition the Father in Christ’s name. Those things that will

therefore definitively endure will be given by the Father through the Advocate,
and it is through this condensation of understanding presented to us in this
section and with cross-reference to other sections that we may best learn
why and how to love one another. Today’s first reading from Judges shows
that God looks to reliability rather than to numbers, choosing those who
stand ready to resist attack while they drink by bringing their hands up to
their mouths. Their small number merely serves to illustrate that the victory
is ultimately God’s rather than theirs, as the abiding, agricultural community
of the Hebrews, represented by the loaf of barley bread, triumphs over the
oppressive, nomadic community of the Midianites, represented by the tent.
The journey of which we are part is one whose goal is ultimately to have no
need of any tent whatsoever, abiding instead in a secure city. AMEN.