An invitation to make the most of Lent

Traditionally, Christians have regarded the season of Lent as the ‘healing time’ of the Church’s year ...

# the time when we look at our lives and work out where we really are in our walk with God.

# the time when we realise afresh that ‘the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt ...’ (Jeremiah 17:9) and that our capacity for self-deception is limitless.

# the time when we allow holy Mother Church to care lovingly for us and to help us face reality as the necessary prelude to a new and wonderful healing encounter with Jesus.

OUR NEED FOR RENEWAL

Sometimes we can be psychologically, emotionally and spiritually worn down by life’s challenges, not to mention the pressure of the battle against evil (within us, within our communities, and the spiritual warfare we wage with the cosmic powers of evil) in which we were enlisted in our Baptism. 

If we are worn down right now, then this Lent can be a time of spiritual refreshing, as we respond to Jesus’ invitation to ‘come apart and rest awhile’ (Mark 6:31). 

There are also mysterious stretches of spiritual dryness followers of Jesus sometimes go through, seemingly unconnected to any particular fault or sin on our part. Memories of our long past ‘springtime of faith’ torment us, and we find ourselves banging on heaven’s door, asking for the grace to re-live those old days. God seems a million miles away.

All the great saints down through the ages struggled at times just to hang on to God in naked faith, trusting in his promises. Some of the saints - like Mother Teresa of Calcutta - endured literally decades of this, even while selflessly drawing so many others into God’s love. 

If that is where we seem to be at the moment, we, too, must hang on to God in naked faith, supported by the love and prayers of our Christian brothers and sisters, and strengthened by the grace of God in the sacraments of his presence. The main thing is not to give up. Remember the saying, ‘When the train goes into the tunnel, the safest thing is to stay on the train!’ Maybe for you this Lent will be a time when your trust in the promises God is strengthened.

SO OFTEN OUR OWN FAULT

Having recognised that we can be simply worn out, or going through one of these inexplicable periods of spiritual dryness, we need to be honest enough to admit that often our spiritual, emotional and psychological problems are connected with our relationship with God becoming dysfunctional.

In our relationships with other people, the causes of dysfunctionality are complex, and both parties are very often at fault. We need wise counsellors and psychologists to help us work out why things are as they are. 

But the one thing we know about dysfunctionality in our relationship with God is that God is never at fault. He has loved us with an everlasting love. He sacrificed everything to redeem us in Christ. He could not have done more. He made us his people and gave the Holy Spirit to dwell within us. He speaks to us through the Scriptures, and he comes to us in the miracle of Holy Communion.

He gives himself completely to us. Any dysfunctionality in our relationship with him is OUR fault.

There are at least two ways in which our relationship with God becomes dysfunctional: 

The first is when we deliberately ignore what God says in the Scriptures and try to run our own lives. Each one of us has a huge struggle to bring the various aspects of our lives into conformity with the will of God, even with the Holy Spirit within us, and the encouragement of our Christian brothers and sisters. 

But we cannot deliberately shut God out of this or that area of our life and expect our overall relationship with him to survive - any more than we could do that in our relationships with people. And we DO shut him out when we ignore his will as we find it in Scripture. The end result is that instead of the ‘life more abundant’ he wants us to have (John 10:10), we end up in a loveless hell of our own making.

The second way our relationship with God becomes dysfunctional also reflects what can happen in ordinary relationships. It’s when we become so self-absorbed, so preoccupied with what we are doing, so busy fulfilling our ambitions and goals, that we just drift from God without meaning to, and probably without realising what is happening. This seems fairly innocuous, but the end result is the same.

SPIRITUAL PARALYSIS

In Orthodox Churches, the Gospel for the Second Sunday of Lent is the account of Jesus healing the paralysed man (Mark 2:1-12). You remember this paralysed man . . . his friends got him to Jesus by pulling the roof apart and lowering him, sleeping mat and all, into the house.

The man’s physical paralysis is used in the liturgy as a picture of our spiritual paralysis, the end result of allowing our relationship with God to remain dysfunctional. 

It is also used to convey two other truths: First, that the paralysis caused by sin can only be healed by Jesus. So, it is to him we return this Lent, in order to know his forgiveness, his love and his healing power. Second, that those wonderful friends who helped the paralysed man remind us that this Lent we need to help each other as brothers and sisters in our local Church community get to Jesus in spite of the obstacles that might be in the way.

WHAT MATTERS MOST 

Lent takes us back to the basic question of our priorities. Saint Paul tells us what mattered most of all to him in these powerful words:

‘I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. 

‘For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith; that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 

‘Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.’  

(Philippians 3:8-12)

‘Faith’ for Saint Paul certainly includes believing the right things about Jesus. But it is far more than that. It means to RELY on what Jesus has done for us, and to TRUST him with the details of our daily lives. It means to abandon ourselves to his love.

The self denial, fasting and penitence that the Church urges during Lent are not ends in themselves. They are meant to help us examine our hearts so as to see clearly the areas in which we have gone astray, and to then re-focus our lives on Jesus. 

Let us draw closer to him this Lent. Let us slow down a little. Let us allow the suffering love of Jesus to impact on our hearts and minds. Let us open ourselves afresh to the Holy Spirit and experience the mending of our relationship with God and our relationships with one another.

BACK TO THE WATERS

The sign of the cross made on our foreheads with ashes on the first day of Lent -  Ash Wednesday - is a gritty reminder of our mortality and sinfulness. It is also a reminder of the price of our redemption. This little ceremony launches us on a journey through the wastelands of our lives, hungering and thirsting for the living God. We face the inner wilderness of our dangers and temptations. This is, in fact, a journey back to the baptismal waters. We make it, not primarily as individuals, but as a community of disciples growing together in our Saviour’s love.

Lent as a season evolved early in the Church’s history from the annual fasting and repentance of Christians as they prepared to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus at Easter. It was a springtime in which new converts completed their preparation for Baptism, which would take place at the great Easter Mass. It was also a time when those Christians who had been separated from Holy Communion because of serious sin received forgiveness, and were restored . 

The whole Church came to see the value of an annual season of self-examination and repentance, acknowledging that although we have been Baptised, we all betray the gift of new life we received in the waters. And so, now, as Father Alexander Schmemann writes:

‘Easter is our return every year to our own Baptism, whereas Lent is our preparation for that return - the slow and sustained effort to perform, at the end, our own “passage” or “pascha” into the new life in Christ. If, as we shall see, Lenten worship preserves even today its catechetical and baptismal character, it is not as “archaeological” remains of the past, but as something valid and essential for us. For each year Lent and Easter are, once again, the rediscovery and the recovery by us of what we were made through our own baptismal death and resurrection.’

BIBLE READINGS AT SUNDAY MASS 

THE FIRST READING:  

The First Sunday of Lent  

Genesis 2:7-9,3:1-7
We go right back to the beginning, to the Genesis account of our rebellion against God’s love. 

The Second Sunday of Lent 

Genesis 12:1-4

We hear about God’s blessing of Abraham our ‘father in faith.’ 

The Third Sunday of Lent
Exodus 17:3-7 

We hear of the Israelites, set free from slavery in Egypt, journeying through the desert, sustained by God himself. 

The Fourth Sunday of Lent

1 Samuel 16:1,6-7,10-13
We hear of the anointing of David as king, foreshadowing the kingship of his descendant, Jesus. 

The Fifth Sunday of Lent

Ezekiel 37:12-14
We hear from the prophet Ezekiel who shows how for centuries God was working in human history towards the redemption that Jesus would bring.

THE SECOND READING: 

This Lent we dip into St Paul’s letters to the Romans, Timothy, Ephesians and Philippians, and hear of the love and compassion of God who is reaching out to us in Jesus.

THE GOSPEL READING: 

The First Sunday of Lent 

Matthew 4:1-11 
We hear how Jesus battled the tempter in the desert.

The Second Sunday of Lent
Matthew 17:1-9

We hear of Jesus’ Transfiguration on the mountain where his glory was revealed to the disciples. 

The Third Sunday of Lent

John 4:5-42

We hear of the Samaritan woman at the well

The Fourth Sunday of Lent

John 9:1-41
We hear of the healing of the man born blind 

The Fifth Sunday of Lent 

John 11:1-45
We hear of Jesus raising his friend Lazarus from the dead. 

(Notice that for the Third, Fourth and Fifth Sundays of Lent, we switch to John’s Gospel and hear these powerful passages about who Jesus is, the same passages that were popular in the ancient Church for teaching new converts who were preparing for their Baptism.)

THE SACRAMENT OF RECONCILIATION

Special times have been set aside for Confessions on Shrove Tuesday, and also in Holy Week. If none of our usual times or the special times advertised will work for you, please get in touch for  an appointment.

FINALLY . . .

‘For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition of love, embracing both trial and joy; finally, it is something great, supernatural, which expands my soul and unites me to Jesus.’  (St Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897), in Manuscrits autobiographiques) 

‘At heart, prayer is a process of self-giving and of being set free from isolation. To pray is to enter into a relationship with God and to be transformed by him.’ (Kenneth Leech in True Prayer, p.10)

The Word, the Supper, the Presence

"Supper at Emmaus" by Ladislav Záborsk´y (1921-2016)

This is an edited transcript of a sermon I preached 

at All Saints' Wickham Terrace, Brisbane (Australia), 

on Easter Day, 2003, at Evensong and Benediction.

It was near the end of Easter Day, the first Easter Day. According to Luke Chapter 24, two disciples of Jesus were on their way to Emmaus - about 11 km northwest of Jerusalem.

But their walk had become a trudge.

The bottom had fallen out of their world. Jesus of Nazareth, in whom they had placed their hope for a new and better world, had been killed by the authorities. He had such promise. "He could have called ten thousand angels . . ." as the old gospel song says. How come he didn't use his supernatural power to bring in God's Kingdom then and there?

That was a question in the minds of many people.

It seems that these two had not been part of the inner circle of disciples. Most likely they were among the hundreds who heard Jesus preach and believed in him, who knew him from a distance, from among the crowd.

But there they were. Downhearted, despondent and without hope. But they became aware of someone else walking with them. Why didn't they know it was Jesus?

Commentators give all sorts of reasons. I think it was a combination of their grief, and the simple fact that they didn't expect it to be him. They might never have seen him up close, anyway.

But . . . isn't that a picture of what happens to us? Hopes and dreams crumble, communities disintegrate, businesses go under, people let us down, super funds lose their value, we get a serious illness, or we're simply engulfed by an unexplained torpor. Things like these - and many others besides - trigger off the kind of depression and fear that can destroy us from the inside out.

How many times, when we feel like that, and our walk has become a trudge, do we fail to recognise the presence of Jesus with us?

Because . . . he DOES walk with you and me. Even when we don't recognise him he walks with us because he loves us. We call that "grace". He walks with you; he walks with me. Just as on that Road to Emmaus, he draws near in a special way when our journey becomes a trudge. He is there . . . in our darkest moments.

Though they didn't recognise him, Jesus managed to take their minds off themselves and how they felt. In fact, their hearts began to change even before they realised who he was. We know that, because later on when they looked back on the experience they said: "Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?" (Luke 24:32)

There was something about his presence as he taught them from the Old Testament. ". . . beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself " (v. 27).

When they reached Emmaus, Jesus "made as if he was going further." Do you understand what he did . . . instead of imposing himself on them he gave them the prerogative of saying "yes" or "no" to what had begun happening in their lives. He does that to us!

And, do you know, we can close ourselves off to what might become a great adventure of faith, or we can - as people say - "go with the flow."

That's what they did. Even before they understood exactly what was happening to them, "they constrained him, saying, "Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent" (v.29). They invited him in.

You heard how the story ends. "Jesus went in to stay with them. When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished out of their sight" (v. 30-32). They rushed back into Jerusalem to find the Eleven, and "they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread" (v.35).

Do you see what this passage tells us about the Risen Jesus - how he makes himself known to his people?

First, he comes alongside us long before we recognise his presence, especially when we are empty and defeated. And he doesn't stop walking with us just because we are finding it hard to believe! I've already spoken about that.

Second, he opens up the Scriptures to us. When we read the Scriptures or hear them expounded, we are not just gaining intellectual knowledge. The Risen Jesus actually speaks through his Word. He speaks to our hearts, our spirits. It is a supernatural communion. His Word expands our vision, heals our souls, and gives us strength. Did you know that in our day there is an unprecedented turning to the Scriptures among Christians of all backgrounds because, to use the language of Vatican II, we actually "encounter" the risen Jesus in his Word.

Referring to a teaching of the fourth century St Ambrose, Vatican II said that "prayer should accompany the reading of Sacred Scripture, so that God and man may talk together; for 'we speak to him when we pray; we hear him when we read the divine sayings'" (Dei verbum 25).

When was the last time you blew the dust off your Bible, turned off the television, and just began reading, maybe in the Psalms, or one of the Gospels, or a letter of St Paul, all the while asking the Lord to speak to you? Have you thought about following a system (like Bible Alive) or using the weekday Mass readings for your regular time in God's Word?

If you start doing that you will grow; you will be changed; your faith will become stronger; your heart will burn within you as you hear his voice.

Third, he is still known to us in the Breaking of the Bread. High up over the main altar of St John's Horsham in the Diocese of Ballarat - the second parish I served as rector - is a beautiful stained glass window of Jesus celebrating the Eucharist at Emmaus. Every time I looked up at the altar of St John's I would be reminded of this Mass at which Jesus was - literally in his risen body - the actual celebrant. I would say to my people there that whenever we come to Mass we are not only joined to the apostles in the upper room on the first Maundy Thursday when Jesus gave us the Eucharist; we are also joined to the Emmaus disciples at the end of Easter Sunday who had the amazing honour of being the congregation at the first Mass of the Resurrection!

Then the Lord "vanished out of their sight." What's going on here? Along with many scholars of this text I believe that because Jesus had chosen the "Breaking of the Bread" to be the place where his risen tangible presence would be encountered by his people, once the disciples recognised him there, he was able to withdraw the extraordinary and special grace of his "actual" resurrection body.

There you have it. That's why I love Holy Communion. It's not "just" a symbol. Jesus comes in all of his love and risen power in the Breaking of the Bread - the Mass - to bless us, to heal us, and to fill us with his resurrection life.

I've got one more thing to say.

Many Scripture scholars believe that the encounter of Jesus with these disciples is included by St Luke specifically to teach us about the Eucharist. That is, while this passage has its deeply personal application (upon which I dwelt earlier) it is, in fact, a pattern of the liturgy itself.

The references to the Word and the Breaking of the Bread have to do with the life of the whole believing community, which is why Luke doesn't omit to tell us that the disciples rush back to the apostles in Jerusalem. And to this day it is supremely as part of the apostolic community gathered for the proclamation of the Word and the Breaking of the Bread that we actually meet Jesus.

Because of this passage of St Luke I have a special job to do tonight. If you are from a catholic background I have to encourage you to become as much a "Bible Christian" as any evangelical you might know, recognising that the risen Jesus comes to us in his Word. No more sneering at people who love the Scriptures, underline verses, or learn texts off by heart!

And if you are from an evangelical background I have to encourage you to become as catholic as the Roman Catholics and Orthodox, recognizing the real presence of Jesus in the Breaking of the Bread. No more accusations of idolatry against those who would fall down in reverence before the presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament!

In what is rapidly becoming a post-Christian age, the Lord is calling us to be "evangelical catholics", and "catholic evangelicals."

Again, it all comes together in Vatican II's Dei verbum, where we find this very important statement: "The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures just as she venerates the body of the Lord, since, especially in the sacred liturgy, she unceasingly receives and offers to the faithful the bread of life from the table both of God's word and of Christ's body"

(Dei verbum 22).

Brothers and sisters, may you know and love the risen Jesus more and more; may your hearts burn within you as you hear him speaking to you in his holy Word; and may you never fail to recognize the love, the healing power, and the holiness of his presence in the Breaking of the Bread.

Happy Easter!

Encountering Jesus - OUR Emmaus journey:

This is an edited transcript of a sermon I preached 

at All Saints' Wickham Terrace, Brisbane (Australia), 

on Easter Day, 2003, at Evensong and Benediction.

It was near the end of Easter Day, the first Easter Day. According to Luke Chapter 24, two disciples of Jesus were on their way to Emmaus - about 11 km northwest of Jerusalem.

But their walk had become a trudge.

The bottom had fallen out of their world. Jesus of Nazareth, in whom they had placed their hope for a new and better world, had been killed by the authorities. He had such promise. "He could have called ten thousand angels . . ." as the old gospel song says. How come he didn't use his supernatural power to bring in God's Kingdom then and there?

That was a question in the minds of many people.

It seems that these two had not been part of the inner circle of disciples. Most likely they were among the hundreds who heard Jesus preach and believed in him, who knew him from a distance, from among the crowd.

But there they were. Downhearted, despondent and without hope. But they became aware of someone else walking with them. Why didn't they know it was Jesus?

Commentators give all sorts of reasons. I think it was a combination of their grief, and the simple fact that they didn't expect it to be him, and they might never have seen him up close, anyway.

But . . . isn't that a picture of what happens to us? Hopes and dreams crumble, communities disintegrate, businesses go under, people let us down, super funds lose their value, we get a serious illness, or we're simply engulfed by an unexplained torpor. Things like these - and many others besides - trigger off the kind of depression and fear that can destroy us from the inside out.

How many times, when we feel like that, and our walk has become a trudge, do we fail to recognise the presence of Jesus with us?

Because . . . he DOES walk with you and me. Even when we don't recognise him he walks with us because he loves us. We call that "grace". He walks with you; he walks with me. Just as on that Road to Emmaus, he draws near in a special way when our journey becomes a trudge. He is there . . . in our darkest moments.

Though they didn't recognise him, Jesus managed to take their minds off themselves and how they felt. In fact, their hearts began to change even before they realised who he was. We know that, because later on when they looked back on the experience they said: "Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?" (Luke 24:32)

There was something about his presence as he taught them from the Old Testament. ". . . beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself " (v. 27).

When they reached Emmaus, Jesus "made as if he was going further." Do you understand what he did . . . instead of imposing himself on them he gave them the prerogative of saying "yes" or "no" to what had begun happening in their lives. He does that to us!

And, do you know, we can close ourselves off to what might become a great adventure of faith, or we can - as people say - "go with the flow."

That's what they did. Even before they understood exactly what was happening to them, "they constrained him, saying, "Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent" (v.29). They invited him in.

You heard how the story ends. "Jesus went in to stay with them. When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished out of their sight" (v. 30-32). They rushed back into Jerusalem to find the Eleven, and "they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread" (v.35).

Do you see what this passage tells us about the Risen Jesus - how he makes himself known to his people?

First, he comes alongside us long before we recognise his presence, especially when we are empty and defeated. I've already spoken about that.

Second, he opens up the Scriptures to us. When we read the Scriptures or hear them expounded, we are not just gaining intellectual knowledge. The Risen Jesus speaks through his Word. He speaks to our hearts, our spirits. It is a supernatural communion. His Word expands our vision, heals our souls, and gives us strength. Did you know that in our day there is an unprecedented turning to the Scriptures among Christians of all backgrounds because, to use the language of Vatican II, we actually "encounter" the risen Jesus in his Word.

Referring to a teaching of the fourth century St Ambrose, Vatican II said that "prayer should accompany the reading of Sacred Scripture, so that God and man may talk together; for 'we speak to him when we pray; we hear him when we read the divine sayings'" (Dei verbum 25).

When was the last time you blew the dust off your Bible, turned off the television, and just began reading, maybe in the Psalms, or one of the Gospels, or a letter of St Paul, all the while asking the Lord to speak to you? Have you thought about following a system (like Bible Alive) or using the weekday Mass readings for your regular time in God's Word?

If you start doing that you will grow; you will be changed; your faith will become stronger; your heart will burn within you as you hear his voice.

Third, he is still known to us in the Breaking of the Bread. High up over the main altar of St John's Horsham in the Diocese of Ballarat - the second parish I served as rector - is a beautiful stained glass window of Jesus celebrating the Eucharist at Emmaus. Every time I looked up at the altar of St John's I would be reminded of this Mass at which Jesus was - literally in his risen body - the actual celebrant. I would say to my people there that whenever we come to Mass we are not only joined to the apostles in the upper room on the first Maundy Thursday when Jesus gave us the Eucharist; we are also joined to the Emmaus disciples at the end of Easter Sunday who had the amazing honour of being the congregation at the first Mass of the Resurrection!

Then the Lord "vanished out of their sight." What's going on here? Along with many scholars of this text I believe that because Jesus had chosen the "Breaking of the Bread" to be the place where his risen tangible presence would be encountered by his people, once the disciples recognised him there, he was able to withdraw the extraordinary and special grace of his "actual" resurrection body.

There you have it. That's why I love Holy Communion. It's not "just" a symbol. Jesus comes in all of his love and risen power in the Breaking of the Bread - the Mass - to bless us, to heal us, and to fill us with his resurrection life.

I've got one more thing to say.

Many Scripture scholars believe that the encounter of Jesus with these disciples is included by St Luke specifically to teach us about the Eucharist. That is, while this passage has its deeply personal application (upon which I dwelt earlier) it is, in fact, a pattern of the liturgy itself.

The references to the Word and the Breaking of the Bread have to do with the life of the whole believing community, which is why Luke doesn't omit to tell us that the disciples rush back to the apostles in Jerusalem. And to this day it is supremely as part of the apostolic community gathered for the proclamation of the Word and the Breaking of the Bread that we actually meet Jesus.

Because of this passage of St Luke I have a special job to do tonight. If you are from a catholic background I have to encourage you to become as much a "Bible Christian" as any evangelical you might know, recognising that the risen Jesus comes to us in his Word. No more sneering at people who love the Scriptures, underline verses, or learn texts off by heart!

And if you are from an evangelical background I have to encourage you to become as catholic as the Roman Catholics and Orthodox, recognizing the real presence of Jesus in the Breaking of the Bread. No more accusations of idolatry against those who would fall down in reverence before the presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament!

In what is rapidly becoming a post-Christian age, the Lord is calling us to be "evangelical catholics", and "catholic evangelicals."

Again, it all comes together in Vatican II's Dei verbum, where we find this very important statement: "The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures just as she venerates the body of the Lord, since, especially in the sacred liturgy, she unceasingly receives and offers to the faithful the bread of life from the table both of God's word and of Christ's body"

(Dei verbum 22).

Brothers and sisters, may you know and love the risen Jesus more and more; may your hearts burn within you as you hear him speaking to you in his holy Word; and may you never fail to recognize the love, the healing power, and the holiness of his presence in the Breaking of the Bread.

Happy Easter!

Dr Aidan Nichols OP reviews Geoffrey Kirk's new book

Back in February I shared with readers of this blog the news that Dr Geoffrey Kirk had published WITHOUT PRECEDENT, an examination of claims often made that scripture and tradition allow (and even require) the ordination of women. It is a great read, and is especially valuable for younger people who were not around during the theological and synodical debates. The April 2016 edition of THE PORTAL (the monthly magazine of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham) contains this high praise from Dr Aidan Nichols OP:

Those who have heard Geoffrey Kirk in the flesh will know what to expect from any book coming from his hand: wit, incisiveness, and a powerful passion for the truth. Without Precedent fulfils all these expectations. 

It is very much an historian’s book. In retrospect, the reader can see that the title tells us as much. Its topic is the deafening silence of tradition on the subject of the ministerial priesthood of women – beginning with the silence of the Lord himself. Trying to locate precedents in the first millennium for the ordination of women turns out to be a triumph of hope over historical reality. And that is so whether the hope in question be vested in St Paul’s co-worker Junia (or is it really ‘Junias’?) or in Mary Magdalene (dubbed ‘apostle to the apostles’), or a daub in the catacombs that might or might not be a presiding presbyter at the Holy Mysteries. Indeed, if the wouldbe innovator is truly desperate, recourse may even be had to that hoary old chestnut Pope Joan.

As Rowan Williams declares approvingly on the book’s back cover, Without Precedent ‘quite rightly punctures some awful historical nonsense’. Incidentally, eliciting that particular commendation was quite a coup for the author. But then the former archbishop is always scrupulously fair.

Geoffrey Kirk’s elegant demolitions of these historical fantasies are based, as Williams clearly recognises, on sound scholarship. But they are not for that reason as dull as ditchwater or, in Ruskin’s phrase, as dead as leaves in November. Far from it! The five historical chapters are a very good read.

I said that Without Precedent is an historian’s book, and so it is. But it is also a judicious and convincing essay from a theologian in the tradition – I would suggest – of Austin Farrer, who is mentioned more than once in these pages. Like Farrer, Geoffrey Kirk combines two things that are rarely found together. The first is a careful attention to the exegetical ‘nittygritty’, something any close reading of the Bible will always require. The second is a poet’s respect for the symbolic vehicle in which the divine revelation carried by the Scriptures actually reaches us. The texts of the New Testament, for Geoffrey Kirk, do not enable us to assert that the Jesus of history was an advocate of women’s liberation – though equally, they do not warrant us in denying it. That is one major claim of this book, and in making it the author delights in dissipating the fog of political correctness that so often surrounds this subject. But a second claim follows on quickly enough. The New Testament revelation is a revelation in images, and those images speak with force and clarity about the essential message given to the Church. They tell of a Father’s Son who in the manner of a priestking was incarnate for us, fulfilling his kingship and priesthood on the Cross and in its sequel, the entry into the heavenly Sanctuary. Respect for revelation, not misogyny, requires the Lord’s ministerial icons to be congruent with his own masculine form.

Geoffrey Kirk protests he has only stepped in because those better qualified than he to address the arguments have feared to tread. This modesty becomes him, but it will not deceive his readers.

Those who took part with him in the struggle in the Church of England which led to the ordaining of women as priests and bishops – and, of course, to the inauguration of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham – will find in the Conclusion to this book his mature reflections on what was done and suffered then.

Geoffrey Kirk, 

Without Precedent

Scripture, Tradition, and the Ordination of Women, 

published by Wipf and Stock at Eugene, Oregon, 2016

ISBN Hardback: 978 1 4982 3083 4 £26.00

ISBN Paperback 978 14982 3081 0 £15.00

There is a Kindle edition. £7.20

The above prices from Amazon.

Forward in Faith are adverstising it at £12 (p/b) including p&p!

The Case forJesus - Interview with Dr Brant Pitre

Dr Brant Pitre is Professor of Scripture at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans, Louisiana. There are many useful resources at his website HERE. This article (from the Word on Fire website) is an interview with Dr Pitre by Brandon Vogt.

In his classic book, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis posed his famous trilemma: based on what we read in Scripture, Jesus Christ was either a liar, lunatic, or Lord. Anyone who said the things he said and did the things he did must either be a great deceiver (a liar), a confused or crazy man (a lunatic), or God himself.

However, for many modern skeptics, there's a fourth alternative which Lewis didn't include: legend. Perhaps we can't trust the Biblical narratives about Jesus. Maybe they've been altered through the centuries much like an extended child's game of “telephone.” And if that's the case, we have no reliable information about who Jesus was or what he did.

But is that really the case? Dr. Brant Pitre tackles many of these challenges in his newest book, The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ (Image, 2016). Pitre, the bestselling author of Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist, goes back to the sources—the biblical and historical evidence for Christ—in order to answer several key questions, including:

   • Were the four Gospels really anonymous? 

   • Are the Gospels folklore? Or are they biographies?

   • Were the four Gospels written too late to be reliable?

   • What about the so-called “Lost Gospels,” such as “Q” and the Gospel of Thomas?

   • Did Jesus claim to be God?  

   • Is Jesus divine in all four Gospels? Or only in John?

   • Did Jesus fulfill the Jewish prophecies of the Messiah?

   • Why was Jesus crucified?

   • What is the evidence for the Resurrection?

Today, Dr. Pitre sits down with Brandon Vogt to discuss how recent discoveries in New Testament scholarship, as well as neglected evidence from ancient manuscripts and the early church fathers, together have the potential to pull the rug out from under a century of skepticism toward the traditional Gospels. Above all, Pitre shows how the divine claims of Jesus of Nazareth can only be understood by putting them in their ancient Jewish context.

QUESTION: Let's start with a basic question: why this book and why now?

DR. PITRE: Because skepticism and confusion about Jesus and the origin of the Gospels is everywhere, and it’s spreading.

Over the years, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had people come up to me and tell me how they sent their sons and daughters off to college, only to have them come home agnostics or atheists. Over and over again I’ve been asked: Can you recommend a book for them?

Nor can I count the number of students I’ve taught over the years who’ve imbibed, from elsewhere, any number of historically unfounded claims about Jesus and the Gospels. It’s now standard fare for students to walk away from university classrooms thinking that that the Gospels were originally “anonymous”; that we have no idea who wrote them; that they certainly weren’t written by eyewitnesses; that the stories in the Gospels are like the end-product of an ancient “telephone game”; that the Gospels are more like “folklore” than biographies; that Jesus of Nazareth never actually claimed to be God; and that he only claims to be divine in the later Gospel of John—not the earlier Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

I finally decided that the problem was so widespread that I needed to write something myself. So I did. I wrote The Case for Jesus for anyone—believer, unbeliever, or a little bit of both—who’s ever wondered: How did we get the Gospels? Who did Jesus claim to be? And why does it all matter?

QUESTION: As you say, many skeptics dismiss the Bible, thinking it's little better than the “telephone game” played at kid's parties, where a message is whispered from one ear to another and usually ends up completely garbled. If the Biblical testimony was passed down for many years before it was ever recorded in writing, how can it be trustworthy?


DR. PITRE: Well, to be frank, the four Gospels wouldn’t be reliable accounts if that’s how they were written. The whole point of the telephone game is to change the original story so that everyone gets a good laugh at the end.

 The problem is of course that the telephone game analogy is completely anachronistic and simplistic—to say nothing of being academically irresponsible. It has no place in any serious book about Jesus. And yet it is still taught by skeptics everywhere as if it were a helpful analogy for how we got the Gospels.

To the contrary, as I show in The Case for Jesus, when you look at the actual historical evidence (instead of appealing to a ridiculous modern-day children’s game), you’ll find something quite different: you will discover that the four Gospels are in fact ancient Greco-Roman biographies, based on the eyewitness testimony of Jesus’ students and their followers, and written within the lifetime of the apostles. You’ll also see some of the striking differences between the four first-century Gospels and the so-called “lost Gospels”—such as the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Judas—and why these later texts are not reliable sources for the life of Jesus.

QUESTION: Agnostic scholar Bart Ehrman claims that all four Gospels were originally published without any headings or titles identifying the authors, and that it was years later—perhaps more than a century—when Christians added the names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in an attempt to give the manuscripts more authority. Ehrman concludes that because we don't know the original authors, we can't be sure the Gospels contain reliable, eyewitness testimony from people who actually knew Jesus and his disciples. Is there anything wrong with this “theory of the anonymous Gospels”?

DR. PITRE: Yes. My book begins by taking the reader step-by-step through the serious difficulties with the now widespread theory that the Gospels were originally anonymous.

First problem: no anonymous manuscripts of the Gospels have ever been found. The reason? They don’t exist. That’s a big problem for anyone who wants to claim that “originally” they were anonymous. History is supposed to work with actual evidence.

Second problem: the idea that all four Gospels circulated anonymously for almost a century before somehow miraculously being attributed to exactly the same authors by scribes spread throughout the Roman empire is completely incredible.

Finally, if you were going to falsely attribute your anonymous Gospel to an author in order to give it “authority,” then why would you choose Mark and Luke, neither of whom was an eyewitness to Jesus? If authority is what you were after, why not attribute your anonymous Gospel to Peter, or Andrew, or for that matter, Jesus himself?

As I try to show, the theory of the anonymous Gospels is both unhistorical (it has no actual text-critical manuscript evidence to support it) and uncritical (it doesn’t stand up to logical scrutiny). 

QUESTION: How can we be sure that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah in Israel? We know of other historical figures who claimed the same thing. So what's special about Jesus' claim? 

DR. PITRE: This is a great question. One of my other favorite chapters in the book is where I show why the earliest Christians—who were all Jewish Christians—came to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was in fact he long-awaited Jewish Messiah.

In large part, the answer revolves around Jesus’ two favorite expressions: “the Kingdom of God” and the “Son of Man.” As I show in the book, both of these expressions are drawn directly from the book of Daniel. Significantly, Daniel’s prophecies were interpreted by first-century Jews as not only foretelling the coming of the Messiah, but as actually giving a timeline for when he would arrive.

I can’t go into the details here, but if you get the book you’ll see that the prophecies in Daniel suggested to ancient Jews that the Messiah would actually come sometime in the first century, during the time of the Roman empire. In the midst of this fervent messianic expectation steps Jesus of Nazareth, who identifies himself with the Danielic “Son of Man” and the “Kingdom of God” and whose very death will take place at the time that Daniel says a future “messiah” would be killed.

Whenever I share this information with my students, they are often blown away. Most modern-day Christians are almost completely unaware that the book of Daniel even gives a timeline for the coming of the Messiah, much less how Jesus’ life fits into it. However, this was widely known by ancient Christians and one of their favorite arguments for showing that Jesus didn’t just claim to be the Messiah; he was actually “pre-announced” and fulfilled the messianic timetable given in the book of Daniel.

QUESTION: Some scholars say that although Jesus may have been the Messiah, he never claimed to be God (except, perhaps, in the Gospel of John which, they assert, was written much later than the other Gospels and is thus unreliable). But is this true? Did Jesus think he was God? Is this evident in Matthew, Mark, or Luke, or elsewhere outside of John?

DR. PITRE: The question of whether or not Jesus claimed to be God is really at the heart of the book.

These days, it’s standard fare for skeptics to argue that Jesus is only depicted as divine in the Gospel of John and that he never makes any divine claims in the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

This remarkably widespread idea is, to be frank, demonstrably false. As I show in the book, Jesus does indeed claim to be divine in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But he does so in a very Jewish way: using riddles, parables, and allusions to the Jewish Scriptures (that is, the Old Testament) to both reveal and conceal his identity. However, if you don’t know your Old Testament well—and let’s face it, many contemporary readers don’t—then you won’t see it. You won’t understand clearly what Jesus is saying about himself and who he is really claiming to be. In other words, many people (including some scholars) miss the Jewish roots of Jesus’ divinity.

Indeed, as you will see if you read the book, if you want to deny that Jesus claims to be divine in the Synoptic Gospels, then you had better be ready to eliminate a lot of evidence. To be sure, Jesus is fully human in the Synoptic Gospels—but he is also much more than just a man.

QUESTION: There has been much debate among Bible scholars about what the early Christians meant when they claimed Jesus had been “resurrected.” What did they not mean by that idea, and what did they mean?

DR. PITRE: Well, when the Jewish disciples claimed Jesus was raised from the dead, they were certainly not claiming that he had simply been resuscitated, or that his “spirit” lived on in the hearts of his followers, or that his “soul” had “gone to heaven” after he died. That’s just not what “resurrection” meant in a first-century Jewish context.

Instead, what they were claiming was that Jesus was now alive again in the same body that had been crucified, and that he would never die again. In other words, they didn’t go around preaching the immortality of Jesus’ soul; they proclaimed the resurrection of his body.

From the beginning, the bodily resurrection of Jesus was one of the most controversial claims made by Jesus’ disciples. In the final chapters of the book, I take a close look at the actual evidence the empty tomb and the bodily resurrection. (This makes it a perfect book for Lent and Easter!) But I also do something unique. Most books ignore the primary reason that the first Jewish Christians believed in the resurrection: they saw it as a fulfillment of Scripture. I try to show which prophecies from the Old Testament they believed Jesus had fulfilled and why the argument from Jewish Scripture was such a powerful motive of credibility for believing in the Resurrection.

  

QUESTION: Suppose you meet a Catholic college student who has sat through a few Introduction to New Testament lectures and is now reeling. The professor planted in his mind the seeds of skepticism, causing him to doubt his faith, the Scriptures, and even Jesus himself. What would you say?

DR. PITRE: That’s easy. I would tell them to read The Case for Jesus! But seriously—I would first ask the student if he could briefly explain the arguments both for and against the truth of the Gospels and the divinity of Jesus. In my experience, students who have been shaken by skeptical scholarship almost invariably have often only heard one side of the argument.

That, at least, is what happened to me when I first began studying the historical debates over how we got the Gospels and who Jesus claimed to be. Almost twenty years ago now, I went through a very dark period where I almost lost my faith (more about that in the book). I was exposed to the more skeptical arguments, but was unaware of any of the counter evidence—the manuscripts of the Gospels, the evidence from the early church fathers, the Jewish meaning of Jesus’ divine claims in the Synoptic Gospels, etc.

In the final analysis, that’s why I wrote The Case for Jesus. I wanted to put all of the key issues on the table in a readable book, give people both sides of the argument, and let them judge the evidence for themselves.