October 7 NOTES FOR REFLECTION Ordinary 27

October 7                               NOTES FOR REFLECTION                         Ordinary 27

Texts: Genesis 2:18-24; Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12; Mark 10:2-16

Theme:  Not easy this week.  The readings are a little disjointed (even in the gospel passage it's not immediately clear what the connection is between the two topics).  I'm going with "From God, to God", because I think if we scratch the surface a little we find the spiritual journey in miniature.         

Introduction.  For me the central reading today is the epistle which makes some astounding comments on Jesus' spiritual journey and our own.  In the light of that reading, we are shown in the other two something of our human propensity for descending into pointless arguments about peripheral matters.  Faced with the wonderful truth that God is our creator, we descend into silly debates about evolution versus creationism.  Faced with the gospel of love and grace we prefer legalistic arguments about divorce and remarriage.  Today for me all that is shown up for what it is by the wonderful light shining through these two short extracts from the Letter to the Hebrews.

Background.  For some time now I have been reading a variety of writers who have brought their wisdom to bear on the whole issue of how we may reconcile our biological development – our evolution into and as Homo sapiens – with our spiritual development.  Among such writers, which include biologists, philosophers and theologians, a consensus has developed around the understanding that our species has, in the course of its evolution, developed spiritually, just as it has physically and mentally.  Somewhere along the line our species became aware of Transcendent Reality – something more to life than met their eye.  It wasn't that something in our environment changed – something that wasn't there before suddenly arrived in our environment – but that something within us changed or developed.  We developed an ability to apprehend something otherwise than through our senses, that we were not previously capable of apprehending.  In short, to put it in religious terms, although God has been present for ever, our species only developed the capacity to become aware of God's presence at some stage of our evolutionary development.

As that development continued over the passing centuries, so that spiritual capacity (to give it a name) evolved and strengthened, and we came to understand a little more about this Transcendent Reality.   In particular we came to understand it as Personality rather than some sort of impersonal force or power.  To put all that in theological terms, God has chosen to reveal himself to us slowly over time, as we have become more and more capable of receiving that revelation.  As with other areas of our evolutionary history, each new breakthrough would have started with one or two individuals, spread to others, and then – in a way that still baffles even expert Darwinists - at some point it breaks out into the whole species.  [The idea made famous some years back with the concept of "The Hundredth Monkey" gives us some illustration of this breakthrough.]

We can see some idea of this in our biblical tradition.  The first eleven chapters of Genesis summarised our "cloudy past" as our faith ancestors become aware of God but have difficulty establishing a relationship with him.  This new stage is reached with Abraham, and continues through other individuals, the patriarchs, the judges and so on.  Through Moses another new stage is reached with the idea of a relationship between God and a whole people.  God continues to speak only to specially chosen people, the prophets, and so on, but the social relationship is at the heart of the whole idea of the covenantal relationship with God.  Karen Armstrong and others have written of similar clear stages developing in the other great world religions.

Then a major new stage breaks out with the coming of Jesus.  For the first time we have a person who completes in himself the human journey of growing awareness and openness to the Transcendent Reality we now call God, the journey that begins at birth and ends in complete unity with God.  As with other "evolutionary developments" his breakthrough, because he is a human being, is achievable by all other members of the species.  How?  By following the path he has cut for us – or, as he himself put it, by following the Way he is.

All this is necessarily a very brief summary of these ideas, and I need to do more work on them yet; but I have outlined them here because I think they help us to understand something of the message of our epistle reading today.

Genesis.  One of the great truths we get from biology is that life is continuous.  It doesn't die out, and then start all over again a few million years later.   However it started, it has kept going ever since, with increasing diversity and complexity, until today there are millions upon millions of different species, sub-species and who knows what.  Along the way, of course, there have been many "evolutionary failures and dead-ends", but every species has "inherited" life from its biological antecedents.  We can still claim God as the author of life, therefore, without needing to insist that he fashioned each and every species out in his workshop somewhere.  The authors of Genesis needed some sort of general starting-point, and so had this image of God the Creator making individual creatures "by hand".  Today we might say Adam and Eve represent for us the firs emergence of Homo sapiens, from whom all of our species are descended.  That the whole human race is related – is one species – is one important truth that we need to draw from these early writings. 

Another is this.  Whatever we are to make of the use of Adam's rib in the creation of Eve, this story affirms that women, just as much as men, were created by God.  The high importance given to the creation of both genders should remind us once and for all that all attempts to belittle one gender or the other are ungodly, and therefore unworthy of any person of faith.  When it comes to the so-called gender wars conscientious objection is the only proper stance for people who profess a belief in God our Creator.

 

Taking It Personally.

·        Do you accept that you are descended from "Adam and Eve", and through them you are related to all other human beings?  How does that affect your attitude to others?

·        If God chose to create two genders, does it follow that God "created" sex?  If so, how does the Church's attitude to sex reflect an understanding that sex is good because part of God's creation?

·        Give thanks for both your parents today.

Hebrews.  Here we see that evolutionary or historical understanding that in Christ a new age has dawned.  Previously God spoke through the prophets, but in these last days God has spoken through his Son.  Notice the very high Christology in these first few verse, every bit as high as St Paul and the Fourth Evangelist.  Jesus is God's appointed "heir of all things"; indeed, it was through him that God made all things.  He is also "the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being".

Fast forward to the second extract, and we find two astonishing ideas.  First, that Jesus, being fully human, started off like the rest of us (a little lower than the angels) but became crowned with glory and honour: in other words Jesus moved along the path of spiritual growth from birth through suffering to union with God.  He became perfect, not by birth but by growth.  That's shock number one.

For shock number two we pass to verses 10 to 12; and we find that we, fellow members of the human race, are invited onto the same path of spiritual development.  Don't take my word for it – read it for yourself!  And be amazed!

Taking It Personally.

·        Open in praise and worship of Christ the Son who "is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being".

·        Now ponder verse 9 slowly and deeply.  Jesus was "made a little lower than the angels" – that is, he started life fully human.  But now he is crowned with glory and honour.

·        Pause.  Have a break.  Take a deep long breath.  Then, when you're sure you're ready, read verses 10-12 very, very slowly, phrase by phrase, taking as long as you need to let it all sink into your consciousness.

·        Now sit in front of a mirror, look yourself in the eye, and say, preferably out loud, "Like Jesus, I was made a little lower than the angels.  Through Jesus I have been made a son/daughter of God, a brother/sister of Jesus, a member of his family, and with him a co-heir of all there is.  He is bringing me to glory and honour with God."

·        Now give thanks!  [And if you still have any doubts read Romans 8:16-17, and 1 John 3:1-3.  The writer to the Hebrews, St Paul, and St John can't all be wrong, can they?]

 

Mark.  This is yet another passage where the ghost of St John the Baptist hovers in the background.  Some Pharisees come to Jesus to test him: is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?  Their apparent hope is that Jesus will either say no, deeply offending Herod who had John imprisoned for challenging his right to marry Herodias, his brother's wife; or, if he says yes he will upset john's followers.  It's often assumed that Jesus simply outlawed divorce, but his answer is far more subtle than that.  Notice that he asks them, "What did Moses say?" perhaps subtly laying the ground for his subsequent suggestion that this Law came from Moses, rather than God.  They reply that Moses allowed a man to divorce his wife so long as he followed the correct procedure of giving her a certificate of divorce.  Jesus then goes behind (or above) the law by drawing on our passage from Genesis.  In effect, he says that God intended marriage to be forever and the Mosaic Law was simply a concession to the weakness of human beings. (As the Pharisees believed in the legality of divorce that must have stung his inquirers!)

Jesus then went on to talk about remarriage, which went beyond the original question, and was, in fact, what King Herod was guilty of.  Further, he implied that women could divorce their husbands, which would have been even more of a shock to the Pharisees.  Then, for no obvious reason, Mark changes the topic entirely.  Parents are bringing their young children to Jesus for a blessing.  The disciples try to shoo them away, only to be told off by Jesus, for "the kingdom of God belongs to such of them".  To enter the Kingdom of God we must be born again, become like little children, open and aware and trusting, not distracted and blinded by our tiresome adult games, our quarrels and arguments, our disagreements over evolution, sex...

Taking It Personally.

·        Compare this reading with the epistle.  Which do you find the most life-giving?

·        Are you childlike (not to be confused with childish)?

·        Can you recall any spiritual insight or learning you gained from watching or listening to a child?

·        Pray for those who are going through the pain of a broken relationship at this time.  Is there any way in which you could help any such person at this time?