A little contemplation on the liturgy, with a linguistic turn…

The Anaphora in the Coptic rite is that part of the Eucharistic liturgy that begins with the priest praying the words,

“The Lord be with you all”,

to which the congregation respond,

“And with your spirit”.

The word anaphora is Greek and is derived from two roots: ano or ‘upward’ and phero meaning ‘to bear, carry or bring’. Thus we find it used in Matthew 17:1…

“Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves”

So, the Anaphora is that part of the liturgy where we are enjoined to allow ourselves to be carried up to God. Note that in Matthew 17:1, it is Jesus who leads the three disciples up the mountain, in that sense ‘bringing’ them. And yet, they must walk on their own legs to actually follow Him, so in that sense, they ‘bring’ or ‘carry’ themselves. Neither is sufficient to get them up the mountain by itself. Christ will not pick them up physically and carry them if they choose not walk on their own feet, and if they walk alone without Christ they will not know where to go. So also, our lifting up of our hearts to God cannot be accomplished by our own efforts, or by the grace of God alone, but the two must act in concert, in harmony.

As part of this dialogue, the priest enjoins the people to

Lift up your hearts: ano emon tas kardias

Again, the words are Greek rather than Coptic. Looking into the Greek origins reveals layers of textured meaning that are sadly lost when translated:

ano - “upward or on the top: – above, brim, high, up” (according to Strong’s; see John 3:3 anothen ).

So the Greek word has the implication not just of height, but height to the very brim: reaching up as far as possible. So we are to lift our hearts not half heartedly, but generously, fully, all the way to the brim. This in turn is derived from:

anti - “A primary particle; opposite, that is, instead or because of (rarely in addition to): – for, in the room of. Often used in composition to denote contrast, requital, substitution, correspondence, etc.”

The implication here is that our new state must be substituted for the old state. The lifting is no mere change in position, it is a change in the very nature of the thing lifted. There must be a noticeable difference, a contrast, between our hearts before and after they are lifted up.

And of course, ‘kardias’ is the Greek for heart, from which English words like cardiac and cardiology are derived. Diseases of the heart are generally life or death matters. A malfunctioning heart means that one’s life is in peril. Even the ancients understood the link between a beating heart and life. So what we are being asked to lift up to God is not just our superficial emotions, not just words from our lips, but the very deepest things that make us who we are. Nothing is to be held back from God in this encounter. The hearts we lift up contain within them our whole lives, our very existence.

This brief exchange often flits by quickly in the liturgy, and I often wonder how many people really absorb it, really take it to heart. It is the essential introduction to the prayers that follow, so essential that as far as I can tell, it is found in virtually every Christian tradition that has a Eucharistic liturgy. It origins would seem to lie very deep in the long history of the Christian faith, very close to its origins, and for that reason alone it is to be treasured and enjoyed. But more importantly, it embodies and expresses the ‘how’ of ‘how to approach God’.

There’s been a lot of discussion lately around a video by evangelist Jefferson Bethke that has gone viral called “Why I Hate Religion But Love Jesus”. You can see the video and read an excellent critique of it by an Eastern Orthodox priest here. There is not much left to be said on the topic, but of course, I must have my two cents’ worth!

As is the case with so many debates, problems arise because the words are not defined clearly. What does ‘religion‘ actually mean? What is it that this bloke hates, exactly? Anyone who loves Jesus is bound to also love ‘true religion’, a phrase used by St James in his epistle (1:26,27). He points out the difference between religion properly practiced and religion abused. I think what the bloke in the video is rebelling against is religion abused, but he just calls it ‘religion’, hence the controversy, since people think he is using ‘religion’ in the more general sense of the word, thus hating both true and abused religion together. Of course, that controversy is probably exactly what he was aiming at. What better way for an evangelist to get his message heard by millions?

The abuse of religiion is nothing new. It happened in the Jewish faith at the time of Christ, it happened in the early Christian Church in the time of the Apostles, and, surprise, surprise, it happens today. I fully join with Bethke in rejecting the abuse of religion.

But that doesn’t mean we should toss out religion altogether. As St James points out, there is a pure and true practice of religion that is acceptable before God and which enlightens, ennobles and elevates the believer. Our task as Christians is to constantly self-review, both on a personal and individual level as well as on the community level, and ask ourselves daily whether we are following that path. If we stray, repentance and return is called for.

Religion has acquired a bad name nowadays. I can see why this video has struck such a cord with so many people. In these days of universal education where children are taught to think for themselves from a young age the old ways of “just believe what you are told” no longer work, whether in religion, or politics, or in any sphere of life. Add to that the abuses by church leaders that the media loves to sensationalise, and the general move towards flexibility rather than rigidity in our daily lives, and it’s easy to see why ‘religion’, in the sense our grandparents thought of it, has fallen well out of favour.

Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. After all, Christ never came to build an institution, and He never asked people to believe in Him just out of fear of or respect for authority. He wanted people to know Him as a person, and to love Him as such. Perhaps we are finally beginning to shed a constrictive skin of institutionalism that has tended to starch and stifle our true encounter with God? Imagine a day when videos like Bethke’s don’t even raise an eyebrow, because nobody practices their religion in that way, the abusive way. Personally, I don’t like to speak of Christianity as a religion, except in a technical context. Christianity is not just an institution, or a book, or a set of ideas and rules. It is a relationship with one’s Creator and one’s fellow creations. It is a way of life. It is a state of being. It is who you are, deep down inside.  All the outer stuff follows naturally from the inner stuff, and without the inner stuff, the outer stuff is worthless.

I too hate the abuse of religion. But I think I’d be lost without true religion.

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SUPPLEMENTARY (23rd January 2012)

A younger person’s take on the subject: Glory and Rubbish

Can you handle the Truth?

There are two ways to follow Christ.

Actually, there are more, but overall, they can be grouped under two general categories: true ways and false ways. Here are just a few false ways:

Magical Thinking

If I fast for three days, I will force God to give me that job … if I run into five red traffic lights in a row, God is telling me not to buy that used car … the examples are endless.

And when, pray tell, did God agree to be our personal wizard? Can you see the similarity between this kind of thinking and casting magic spells? Is that really what Christ was all about? Oh, you will answer, but didn’t He promise that if we ask we shall receive? Yes, but is this the kind of asking He was talking about? What if two pious supporters of opposing football teams both ask God to give their team a win? How can God answer them both? (A draw is answering neither).

No, this promise cannot be understood as casting God as some kind of supernatural vending machine in our lives: put your prayer in the slot at the top, press the button, and out comes the fizzy answer at the bottom. We feel wronged when a vending machine swallows our money but doesn’t give us our product – is that how we should think of God? That would be degrading God to the level of our menial servant and it is not how a loving relationship works. A loving relationship is about uniting in spirit and thought and desire. It is about trust. It is about freely choosing to conform our limited will to His infinitely wise and loving will. And most of all, it is about loving the Beloved for His own sake, and not for what He can give me, or what I can benefit selfishly from Him. When we ask for things from God within this framework, it works beautifully.

Wishful Thinking

There is a powerful pressure on us to create God in our own image. Rather than letting the Real God be who He is, we create a kind of false God in our minds, and expect Him to always act the way we think He should. This is the kind of thinking that leads judgmental Christians to see the punishing hand of an angry God in tsunamis that kill thousands, or read God’s approval of me into the fact that I am more materially successful than my neighbour. It makes Christians adamant that God is a Republican or a Democrat. Or even that God is Catholic or Protestant, or Coptic Orthodox.

A moment’s reflection should be enough to convince us that God is Himself, and above all merely human prejudices. You cannot change reality just by thinking it different, and God is real. He does not conform to our image of Him; it is we who must alter our image to fit His reality.

I don’t need to create a God in my own image to feel good about myself; to validate myself. That is living a lie. In fact, God loves me, not because I am a jolly good chap, but in spite of who I am. He blesses my life not because I have earned such blessing in any way, but because He is love: gracious, generous, and constantly compassionate. Forget earning God’s approval – that is wishful thinking. Accept that God loves you because He is God, and love Him back because you come to be in his image, the image of love.

Over Simplification

An example of this is our tendency to reduce our relationship with God to a nice clear set of rules. This  ‘by the letter’ approach is very appealing to many people because it is so simple: so long as you carry out a list of simple instructions like pray every day, read your Bible every day, and go to church on Sundays, you are fine with God (and a jolly good chap to boot). Tick the boxes and you can sleep soundly.

Another example of oversimplification is the way we stereotype people along racial lines, because that is so much simpler than taking the trouble to see each individual for who they are. “All Muslims are arrogant fanatics who want to take over the world” – such beliefs make it so much simpler to deal with a Muslim (just hate them, they deserve it), but it is a lie. It denies the reality that there are many decent, kind and good Muslims in this world who only want to live in peace and get on with their lives, just like us.

Reality is complex. Any approach that ignores this fact is doomed to end with lies. We crave simplicity so we can understand our world, so we can feel some sense of control over it, but it is a false security.

And as for living by the letter, anyone can carry out all those ‘duties’ outwardly, perhaps even do them while convinced they are being sincere, yet their heart may still be far from God. The Old Testament is full of such cases, and in the New Testament Christ warns us more than once to beware lest on the last day He say to us, “Assuredly I say to you, I do not know you”. I fear that many of those who will hear those words said to them will be people who trusted in a comforting lie.

Following Christ is not easy and it is not reducible to a list of duties to be fulfilled. It is more about who you are as a person, the person that you become over your years of life with Him, constantly changing, constantly putting to death old ways of thinking and behaving and replacing them with new ways that are closer to the example of Christ. The practices we have called ‘duties’ can certainly be most helpful, but do not confuse the means for the end – that too is a lie. Practiced out of sincere love, things like prayer are no longer ‘duties’ but free and loving gifts to God.

There are many more examples of false ways to follow Christ, and all of them have this in common: they are based on an untruth of one kind or another. Magical thinking relies on the lie that God is a vending machine and that my desires are more important than the will of the Creator of the universe; wishful thinking relies on creating my own false image of who God is; and oversimplification relies on falsely reducing complex matters to an unreal and often unfair model.

This is not Christianity in its true form, the form for which the eternal Logos took the trouble to incarnate to reveal to us. When the Samaritan Woman in John chapter 4 asks Jesus about the right place to worship God, Jesus characteristically gives her more than she asks for:

But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. John 4:23-24

It is self-defeating to try to follow Christ who placed so much emphasis on Truth and yet evade Truth in ways like those described above. To do so is to betray one of the core foundations of what it means to be Christian. Yet by nature, we humans like security. And we feel more secure when things are simple and easy to understand. But reality refuses to be tamed. Like Aslan in CS Lewis’ Narnia books, Truth is not a tame lion, and those who hang around with Truth must be prepared for some wild, unpredictable and sometimes downright dangerous behaviour from it.

Personally, I find comfort in that thought. God has created me with an inbuilt sense of adventure, and I find that ‘wild adventure view’ of Christianity far more appealing than the sanitised, simplified, codified and pasteurised view. I also find it far more consistent with the reality I experience every day. One of the problems with a faith that accepts falsehoods is that sooner or later it must unravel as it comes into contact with reality, much like a bad scientific theory that falls apart as more data comes in. I genuinely wonder how a person who takes the false path can continue to do so without feeling that something is terribly wrong. Sometimes, to preserve our false faith, we add more and more unlikely beliefs to protect it against the evidence of real world. Eventually you end up living in a fantasy world of your own creation.

Here, strangely enough, I agree with the atheist who sees religion as little more than a fantasy created by humans to meet very human needs. A religious faith that does not include as an integral component a dogged devotion to Truth often ends up earning that criticism quite deservedly. But of course, what the atheist is criticising is not true Christianity but a ghostly parody of it. If we want to be true followers of Christ, He asks us to take off our seatbelts and trust His driving (but please don’t do this in your actual car – after all, there it is you driving, not Him). He makes no promises of safety nor of things turning out the way we would like them to. Often, they don’t. But the nice thing is that when we trust ourselves to Truth, things turn out the way HE wants them to, which is far, far better.

For me, to follow Christ is to follow Truth, since it is seeking Truth that has led me to follow Christ. I am inspired and motivated by Christ precisely because His words not only make an awful lot of rational sense, but they ‘feel’ true. More on this in my next…

Sometimes, the day just seems too short. So many of my days end with me listing all the things I had intended to get done that day and just didn’t have time for. Worst of all, there is that nagging discomfort of suspecting that I did not prioritise the tasks well. Perhaps I spent too much time on unimportant things and neglected the truly important? Days at the end of which I do not feel particularly close to God are the worst. It feels like a day wasted. If only I could split into three people for a few hours every day! Then I could send Me-A out to do half my tasks, and get Me-B to sit down and do the other half, and send Me-C (’C’ for Christian, of course!) away to have some lovely spiritual time with God. At the end of this period of time, I would reunite all the Me’s again and sleep a happy man!

 But perhaps division is not the answer. Perhaps division’s opposite, integration, is. We cannot (so far as I know) split ourselves into three functioning selves, but something we do every day is split our one self into disconnected parts. In the one physical body there may be many “Me’s”. There is the Me I am when I am working: disciplined, focused on the task, engrossed in my subject matter to the exclusion of all else. There is the Me when I am relaxing: a happy-go-lucky anything goes kind of fellow, cheery and friendly. And there is the Me who prays and reads the Bible respectfully and dutifully, secretly proud of my piety but occasionally distraught at the things my other Me’s get up to.

 If this is starting to sound a little Freudian, that’s because it is. Freud (whose ideas were highly popular, then highly unpopular, and are now making something of a comeback) saw much of our psychological problems as arising out of a falling apart of the different aspects of personality. For him, it was the id, ego and superego. We need not go that far, but we can affirm the Biblical principle that a “house divided against itself will not stand” (Matthew 12:25). I will extrapolate and say that a person divided within can never feel peace.

 There is no need for this artificial division. There is no need for being different people in different situations. Why separate your prayer life from your work life? Do you not pray for your work? Why not pray while you work? Is God not present in your office? Or do you choose to ignore His very real presence just because there are others there, or because you have work to do? Why not involve Him in your work? Why not look for Him in every person you deal with, especially the really unlovable ones (which is where He is easiest to find, surprisingly enough).

 Like a man who wears the same glasses when reading, playing golf and fixing a watch – all we do ideally should be through the lens of the presence of God.

 “I do not have time to pray”. No, actually, you have 24 hours a day. Prayer at its heart is simply a connection with God, a sense of the presence of God with us. We can communicate with Him through thoughts, words and actions. From His perspective, all we think, say and do are constantly present before Him. We cannot hide from Him, even if we try. But why try? Why not enjoy Him? Why not bask in His company, find solace in Him in times of distress and joy in Him in times of sorrow? He is to us, strength, hope, comfort, security, peace, endurance, confidence.

 In acknowledging His presence consciously we find the reality of our own selves. When we see ourselves mirrored in His eyes, we cannot avoid admitting our frailty and nakedness before Him. But those same eyes shine with love that absorbs all our sins and replaces them with a purity of heart we cannot understand nor ever adequately thank Him for.

 So: Work can be prayer. Play can be prayer. Relationships can be prayer. There is not one moment of the day that cannot be shared with Him.

 Integration leads, when perfected, to integrity. Integrity is a wholeness, a lack of division. We spend our lives locked in a deadly struggle between good and evil playing itself out in our hearts. But where there is God, evil cannot dwell. So if I keep the presence of God in my heart constantly, wherever I may be, there remains only one power in my heart and no longer two. It is only when I lose sight of Him that the struggle returns and the heart is again divided. It is only then that I can sin.

Diogenes was disturbed. It wasn’t really because he had lost his wares. It was frustrating to know that his carefully crafted ornaments were floating down the river for anyone to pick up, but that was not what disturbed him mostly now. It was not even the fact that he was wet and cold from having capsized as he crossed the river, nor even really because he had nearly drowned. No it was not the nearly drowning that disturbed him so much as the questions that nearly drowning had forced into his mind.

“If I had drowned, what difference would it have made?”

“Hello Diogenes,” a cheerful friendly voice hailed.

“Oh, it’s you Socrates.”

“Why so glum, then my friend? And why so damp? Have you been swimming in your clothes like an absent minded philosopher?”

“This is no time for jokes Socrates. I almost drowned. But that’s not the worst of it. My life has no meaning!”

“Oh, surely you are being too dramatic? Will you add the skills of the player to those of the philosopher?”

“What does my life amount to? What have I achieved? What mark shall I leave upon this world?”

“But surely, you are a master craftsman? Have you not created many a work of beauty and significance?”

“Bah, Socrates. In a few hundred years all my works will be dust or buried in the ground or forgotten in some dark corner. What difference does that make?”

“Ah, let us play this game then my friend. But surely you have made a good living from your craft, have you not? That is something to be proud of.”

“What is a good living but food for the stomach that will only be eaten by worthless worms one day?”

“Well parried. But you have enjoyed your life, have you not? You have found joy and pleasure in your craft, and in spending the money you have made through it? You have lived a pleasant life without want and with much luxury. You life has been better than that of the mean and the poor. Surely that makes for satisfaction?”

“Nay Socrates, for when we die, what shall set me apart from the mean and the poor, when we both shall turn to dust alike? There is no satisfaction there for me.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Diogenes. But I shall have the better of this argument yet. For you are no average man, my friend. Do you forget the fame that your craft has brought you? Why, your name is trumpeted from Athens to the Bosporus! In the highest halls of power they seek your skill and praise your handiwork.”

“What will fame be to me, when I am feeding the worms in the ground? How shall it help me then? And how fleeting is the fame of this life. I tell you Socrates, not a hundred years hence, the very names ‘Socrates’ and ‘Diogenes’ shall have disappeared from the earth!”

“I see that you are in a black mood indeed! Well if fame brings you no joy, then what of your family and your friends? What of the many happy days you have spent together with them? Shall these count for nothing? And what of the legacy that you leave behind you: manly Alithenus and your delightful little flower Sophia? Has not your life meant something for those who have loved you, as indeed, have I?”

“Yes, yes, yes. I have loved, and you have loved, and they have loved. And then, all is worms; worms and dust. What difference does it make to the worms if they feast upon a man who was loved or one who was alone all his life? Both taste just as sweet!”

“I see that it is the giant Chronos who lies at the heart of your disquiet, Diogenes, with his servants the worms. Why then do you not leave behind you such an edifice that Chronos himself cannot harm it? The travellers tell us stories of the far land of the Nile, where there are structures that have stood for more lives of men than any can remember; huge mountains constructed at the command of the great Pharaohs at the cost of a hundred thousand lives, built with sweat and blood, filled with unimaginable treasure, and standing against the storms of the desert. No worms here, my friend! Would that sate your lust for meaning?”

“At last you tempt me with a morsel of at least a little attraction. Yet even as I ponder it, it dissolves away into nothing. For who remembers the great Pharaoh now who caused this wonder to be erected? Who cares for him? How is the world different for all his exertions, other than to provide an oddity, a novelty that men gaze upon once with awe, then soon forget in the mean struggle of their real lives? And who is to say that even this edifice shall stand forever? The storms of the desert eat away at it little by little. Though it take a thousand years, yet sooner or later it too shall become nothing but dust once more. Nothing in this world, not the most adamant of stones, not the most beautiful of ideas, shall last.”

“I have but one last trick to play in this game of skill, but it shall be my best! Come with me, and let us sail to the far ends of the earth, where it is said there lies an island of mysteries, and there drink of the potion of life everlasting! Then we shall cheat Chronos of his prey, and we shall cheat the worms of their meat. What if you should live on forever, dear Diogenes?”

“You tempt me with a mirage, Socrates! For if these few score of years have no meaning, how shall multiplying them add meaning to them? All you have done is to extend their pitiful agony forever, and have taken away the only escape from that agony. For even if feeding the worms with my body shows that my life has no meaning, at least when I am being devoured, I shall not know it, and the agony will be done. Would you take away that relief from your dearest friend, Socrates?”

 “Then my dear Diogenes, I have sad news for you. For it seems that the meaning you seek is not to be found in this world at all! But then we must choose between two evil choices; for either the meaning of our lives exists outside this world where we cannot go, or else there is no meaning at all, and our existence is the same as our absence! Why if that be so, then why not end the agony now, instead of waiting for slow, witless nature to take its course?”

“And now you see the reason for my glum mood, friend Socrates. Let us at least soothe our pain by sharing this emptiness together for a little while. Come, I have a better idea: let us go to visit our mutual friend Plato. He is the wisest man I know. If anyone has an answer to our conundrum, surely it shall be he!”

Warning: This entry is not for the traditionalist or the ascetic. If you belong to one of those categories, better to stop reading now.

It is for the sincere Christian striving to reconcile their life in the world with their faith in Christ. 

There are certain similarities between formal prayer to God and listening to a song you like. By formal prayer I mean a prayer that is written down somewhere, such as Agbia prayers, the liturgy and so on. By song I mean a song you listen to on the radio, or more likely nowadays, on your portable electronic thingummy. 

In both cases you are paying attention to someone else’s words. Ideas, thoughts, experiences and feelings that someone else has had are embodied in language an melody and thus communicated far beyond the immediate proximity of the author. Across the oceans or across the ages, in both song and formal prayers, we share something with someone we have never met and often know very little about. 

In both cases the words and melody are not the whole story. They are not like a mathematical equation that can only be interpreted in one way. The value of art is not in what it is, but in what it can inspire. You may have noticed that the lyrics of many popular songs are fairly vague, and listeners spend many hours trying to interpret them. When asked, the composer will often evade the question, because a song doesn’t have to mean just what the author intended – it can mean different things to different people. In the same way, the words and melodies of set prayers can mean different things to different people. They can even mean different things to the same person at different times in their life. The value of a prayer is not in the words or melody itself but in what they can inspire in us. They are merely tools we use to help us achieve the real goal: connection with God. 

A good pop song will make you think and feel things you might not have experienced without it. In the same way, an effective prayer opens your mind and heart to new experiences with God, revealing new insights, changing attitudes, softening hard hearts and inspiring repentance. 

There is a certain enjoyment in a well crafted song. Our brains were created to be pleased with harmonic melodies, clever rhymes or plays on words. We are also wired to derive satisfaction from seeing things in a novel way (’Oh, I never thought of that!) All these things can also apply in a formal prayer, particularly when words are synchronised with tune. Which is why virtually all the formal prayers of the Coptic Church are sung or chanted rather than just read out blandly. It takes longer, but it adds another dimension to enrich the experience. 

A truly great song inspires action, perhaps even helps to change the world. Just think of anthems like ‘We Are the World’ that moved millions to donate to help the starving masses dying in Ethiopia in the late eighties. Folk singers like Bob Dylan used their music to influence the thinking of a whole generation. Prayer too can change the world, only in this case it can act not only through the person who hears or prays it, but additionally through the work of the Holy Spirit who hears and answers prayer. 

In modern times, our Coptic community has considered listening to popular music to be a waste of time at best, downright harmful and spiritually dangerous at worst. It is considered worldly and likely to entice the listener away from God. But I wonder if we could not view it in a more positive light? Perhaps those very skills one needs to enjoy pop music are the self same skills one needs to enjoy prayer? Given the right guidance and encouragement, I wonder if the avid music listener is not the best candidate for becoming an effective exponent of prayer? It’s just a matter of taking those skills of focus, interpretation, application and feeling someone else’s words deeply and applying them to prayer. 

Kind of lends new meaning to the old phrase, ‘On a song and a prayer’.

 Fr Ant

One of the hardest things a priest has to deal with is counselling people who are in conflict with each other. Husbands and wives arguing, brothers against sisters, children against their parents or just friends or fellow parishioners.

 How do you reconcile people who are angry with each other? People study for years to learn counselling skills, yet even then the success rate is low – just look at the number of broken marriages there are in the world around us today. Prayer can indeed do miracles, but in this area its effectiveness seems limited.

 Perhaps that’s because conflict is a free choice that we make, and God will not intervene to the point where He takes away our free will. “Free will?” I hear you exclaim, “I didn’t choose to have this conflict! It was all his fault!” Ah, there’s the rub. Few people enter into conflict intentionally. It just seems to happen all by itself. There’s nothing you can do about that is there?

 Or is there? There are some people in this world who seem to avoid these personal conflicts all their lives. They appear to live a charmed life: happy spouses and children, happy extended families, happy friends, happy neighbours, happy fellow parishioners. What’s their secret? How do they do it?

 For some of these people the secret is isolation. “Good fences make good neighbours” goes the old proverb. You keep away from me and we’ll be best of friends! Sure, that’s one solution, but is it really a viable way of life? We are social creatures and like it or not, we need, we yearn for closeness with other human beings. The peace of this lifestyle is the peace of the grave – it is only half a life.

 Others live in apparent peace but only achieve this at the cost of their health. Too shy to enter into conflict, they bottle it all up inside instead while smiling on the outside. But this can only ever be a short term solution to conflict. Sooner or later the pressure builds and builds until some apparently insignificant incident acts as the final straw and sets off a nuclear explosion of anger and conflict. No, the price for this kind of peace is just far too high.

 But there are those who neither isolate themselves from others nor bottle it all in, and yet they somehow avoid conflict. How do they do it? My suspicion is that the secret is something that lies at the very heart of the Gospel of Christ: unconditional love. It is the only thing I can think of that gives a person the strength and wisdom to stay out of conflict with others.

 Not all conflict is avoidable, mind you. Even Jesus Himself found Himself in conflicts with the Pharisees and the lawyers. But these were not personal conflicts, they were ideological conflicts; the kind one cannot avoid without sacrificing one’s deepest values. I am not talking about avoiding these, for these are unavoidable if one is to be committed to truth and justice.

 The conflicts I am talking about here are personal ones, the kind that come about out of hurt feelings, a sense of injury, a personal dislike of someone, a feeling of indignation at having been slighted or mistreated.

 Not that the two types of conflict are never mistaken for each other. One of our most effective strategies for self justification is to depict a conflict over personal issues as a conflict over the highest of moral principles. “Oh no, it is not at all personal! All I am fighting for is the principle of the thing. I will not speak to her until she apologises for insulting me, because if she doesn’t learn that she can’t get away with that sort of thing, she’ll just go and hurt others. It’s the others I’m thinking of, not me!” Oh really?

 Which is why unconditional love is such a good remedy. It teaches us to love the unlovable. It teaches us to love our enemies even while they are still our enemies, not just when they repent and apologise. That’s why it’s called unconditional. It is the love that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things”. This love never wants to teach people a lesson, not even from such ‘good’ motives. It only wants to love.

 How can such love not find inner peace? If anything is capable of changing the heart of another, it is this love. It can achieve what design and wisdom and strength and force can never achieve: a change inside another person.

 It inspires love in others. Patience with love motivates others to be patient; mercy with love inspires mercy; acceptance with love inspires acceptance in return. Unconditional love goes out and returns not empty.

 Genuine reconciliation may well be nigh impossible without the intervention of this kind of love. So perhaps it is also the best way to prevent conflict from arising in the first place. Do you want to be at peace? Seek not to change others, but to change yourself. Learn to love unconditionally.

I was recently asked to give a talk to a group of youth on how to assess one’s spiritual progress. The topic had the tongue-in-cheek subtitle: “KPI’s of spiritual growth”. For those not immersed in contemporary corporate culture, a KPI is a Key Performance Indicator: basically, a well defined and objectively measurable standard by which the performance of an employee can be measured.

This subheading didn’t grab me. The more I thought about it, the more I felt it was in fact the wrong way to go about things. You see, KPI’s are all about achievement. Meeting a KPI means you can point to your work and say, ‘I succeeded!’

What’s wrong with applying that approach to the spiritual life? The problem is that the spiritual life is not a job, nor a project to be completed. It is a relationship. Just imagine going up to your wife and saying, ‘Now dear, here are your KPI’s for this month.’ You’d be lucky to finish the day alive.

In a relationship, achievement counts for nothing; authenticity is everything. It’s not about what you can do so much as it is about who you are. So it is in spirituality. God is not impressed with our achievements. No matter how good they are, He’s seen better. The number of hours per day I pray, or the number of Bible chapters I read, or how long I fast are not going to convince God that I am a good person (though they might convince me). No amount of spiritual ‘achievement’ in the quantitative sense can cover up a hypocritical or a selfish heart.

Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also. Matthew 23:26

Sometimes, we get things mixed up. We think that by doing things like this on the outside we are justified, made ‘good’ in God’s eyes. In fact, the reality is the reverse. It is only by being ‘good’ on the inside that we can genuinely and sincerely do good things on the outside.

For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. But why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do the things which I say? Luke 6:45-46.

True spirituality is not something that can be quarantined to one corner of my life. It is not something where I can just tick certain boxes and then forget about it. It is not something of which I can one day say, ‘Phew, I’ve finished!’ No, it is a way of life, it is something that imbues the very fibre of our being, saturates every thought and word and deed. True spirituality is not something we do as much as it is something we become.

True spirituality cares nothing for achievements. In fact, when practiced properly, one does not even think of assessing one’s ‘spiritual achievements’. I do not read the Bible regularly so that I can say, ‘I read the Bible regularly’. I do it because the Bible attracts me. In it I find comfort and wisdom, guidance and sustenance and strength. Through it, I somehow touch the ineffable nature of God. So why should I count the minutes and the hours I spend reading it? Why measure so intimate and beautiful an experience shared with my God?

The ‘achievement’ approach is not only of limited use, it can be downright dangerous. It can lead to a false sense of security for one thing. Having ticked the boxes and achieved my targets, I might feel quite secure about my own righteousness. After all was I not at Church nice and early every Sunday? Did I not pray for fifteen minutes every morning and every night? But God might see things differently…

Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets.’ But He will say, ‘I tell you I do not know you, where you are from. Depart from Me, all you workers of iniquity.’ Luke 13:26-27.

And then there’s the whole issue of false pride. When all those KPIs have been achieved, how easy it is to look down on others who are not ‘performing’ so well as I! How easy to judge, for I have a ‘tape measure’ to measure myself and others and compare our dimensions. “I pray 65% more than she does” may sound stupid when you read it here, but it is not far from the thoughts we have when we feel good about our spiritual achievements. What a way to lose every blessing that comes from our spiritual practices!

Lest I be misunderstood, I am not saying that one should not constantly self-assess one’s spirituality, or that one has no right to feel joy in their spiritual life. I am simply making the distinction between assessing one’s spirituality with a tape measure, and assessing oneself as a friend or child of God. As a child of my parents, it is fitting that I ask myself if I am being a good son. Do I talk to them, listen to them, ask about their needs? But to think that if I spend two hours a week with my parents, regardless of the quality of that time and regardless of their actual needs is a very selfish relationship. Love does not watch the clock.

Similarly, there is a great deal of joy to be found in our spirituality. But it comes from the very experience of God itself. Or rather, from God Himself. Simply being in His presence, surrendering oneself to that reality, losing oneself in the glory and the light that is God – what could be more beautiful or joyful than that? The joy of meeting targets and patting yourself on the back for it pales to limpid insignificance by comparison.

Achievement is a wrong turn in our spiritual journey.

Authenticity is the signpost that tells you you’re on the right track.

Fr Ant

 When you pray, to whom do you pray?

 I am not talking about the theological description of God here, but the personal one. When I write a letter or an email to someone, I hold in my mind an image of the person to whom I am writing. That image may include things like an image of their face, a memory of the way they laugh, an emotional attitude towards them. This personal image is often far more important in guiding what I write than any purely rational facts or knowledge about the person, such as their age or address.

 So in the same way, while our dogmatic knowledge about who God is, His nature and characteristics, is important in so many ways, but when it comes to actually talking to Him, it is often thrust into the background. Rather, it is our personal, individual, idiosyncratic image of Him that most determines the quality of our prayer life (I think something similar may also be said of how we read the Bible, but I won’t go into that now).

 So when you pray, what is the image of God you hold in your mind? Who is the One you talk to? What emotional ‘colours’ does He appear to you with, and what is His personality like?

 For me, I often like to think of His actual physicality. In my mind, I hold the image of a first century Jewish man, dressed in the garb that was common to those days – a long ‘galabeya’, sandals on His feet, long hair as befits a Nazirite, and the dark brown medium length forked beard that the ancient Jewish historian Josephus described. I can imagine Him thus walking here and there, or standing on a hilltop addressing a crowd, or crouching down to look into the face of a crippled beggar. But most startling is when I imagine Him turning and gazing into my eyes.

 Those eyes! Josephus also mentioned they were piercing eyes … eyes that cut deep into the hidden heart … eyes from which no secret can be concealed … eyes that make you feel naked before them, even when fully clothed. That is a little disturbing. But then, it is a necessary disturbance for anyone who chooses to follow the Lord of Truth, for they can no longer cover their nakedness with thin layers of comfortable fantasies and excuses.

 But His gaze, I see with my mind’s eye, is also a gaze of love, of indefinable compassion and unlimitable good will. If He cuts deeply into my heart, He does so only in order to heal and to save. Here also is understanding, the understanding for which I have yearned from my youth but never found in any human being: complete, honest, true, and real.

 When I see Him in my mind, I want to be with Him. I want to talk to Him, or rather to listen to Him. I want to sit at His feet and not move. I want to keep looking into His face, a face that may not be ‘handsome’ or ‘comely’ as Isaiah suggests, and yet a face full of meaning, expression, nobility, and invincible joy. And sometimes, I find I cannot bear to look into His face. My eyes drop rather to His feet as I remember the shame of my sins and my betrayals. Then I want to bow before Him and let my tears drip softly onto His feet. These tears speak more eloquently of my humiliation and my gratitude at His mercy than any words ever could.

 And sometimes it shocks me to realise that this gentle man paying all this unwarranted attention to me is none other than the Creator of the Cosmos. Jesus is not just an image of God, and He is far more than a Godly man: He IS God! The face I look upon and that looks upon me is the face of God Himself. He is what God looks like when God becomes a man. This realisation is startling. Am I prepared to meet my God? Talking to a kind first century Jewish man is one thing, but standing face to face with powerful Lord of the whole universe is something else completely! But then, wasn’t that the whole idea of the Incarnation, to make God accessible to us?

 Please understand that I am not at all suggesting that others need to think of God in the way I have just described – as I said from the outset, we each hold our own idiosyncratic images of God in our minds. Nor should my image or yours, or any other be confused for the reality of God, or even of Christ. I know that my mental image of His face is merely reconstructed by my imagination. When I finally do come to meet Him, physically, I fully expect that He will look totally different. Orthodox iconography looks so cartoon-like rather than realistic like Western paintings because it admits that we don’t know what Jesus looked like physically; not in enough detail to reconstruct an accurate image anyway.

 But I am happy to imagine for now. Like someone writing an email to a person I have never met face to face, yet whom I feel I know intimately because of all the corresspondence that has gone on between us over the years, I eagerly anticipate the day when we can finally meet in the flesh. Inaccurate though my image may be in physical terms, the emotions and thoughts and relationship it evokes are very, very real.

At the threshold of Passion Week, I present an excerpt from an archaeological article written in 1985 by Vassilios Tzaferis. He reported on the first ever finding of the remains of a victim of crucifixion, although of course, there is a great deal of written evidence that the practice of crucifixion was by no means uncommon in the ancient world. Here he presents a brief history of Crucifixion. I warn you, some of it is not very pleasant reading.

Many people erroneously assume that crucifixion was a Roman invention. In fact, Assyrians, Phoenicians and Persians all practiced crucifixion during the first millennium B.C. Crucifixion was introduced in the west from these eastern cultures; it was used only rarely on the Greek mainland, but Greeks in Sicily and southern Italy used it more frequently, probably as a result of their closer contact with Phoenicians and Carthaginians.

During the Hellenistic period, crucifixion became more popular among the Hellenized population of the east. After Alexander died in 323 B.C., crucifixion was frequently employed both by the Seleucids (the rulers of the Syrian half of Alexander’s kingdom) and by the Ptolemies (the rulers of the Egyptian half). Among the Jews crucifixion was an anathema. (See Deuteronomy 21:22–23: “If a man is guilty of a capital offense and is put to death, and you impale him on a stake, you must not let his corpse remain on the stake overnight, but must bury him the same day. For an impaled body is an affront to God: you shall not defile the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess.”)

The traditional method of execution among Jews was stoning. Nevertheless, crucifixion was occasionally employed by Jewish tyrants during the Hasmonean period. According to Josephus, Alexander Jannaeus crucified 800 Jews on a single day during the revolt against the census of 7 A.D. At the end of the first century B.C., the Romans adopted crucifixion as an official punishment for non-Romans for certain legally limited transgressions.

Initially, it was employed not as a method of execution, but only as a punishment. Moreover, only slaves convicted of certain crimes were punished by crucifixion. During this early period, a wooden beam, known as a furca or patibulum was placed on the slave’s neck and bound to his arms. The slave was then required to march through the neighborhood proclaiming his offense. This march was intended as an expiation and humiliation. Later, the slave was also stripped and scourged, increasing both the punishment and the humiliation. Still later, instead of walking with his arms tied to the wooden beam, the slave was tied to a vertical stake.

Because the main purpose of this practice was to punish, humiliate and frighten disobedient slaves, the practice did not necessarily result in death. Only in later times, probably in the first century B.C., did crucifixion evolve into a method of execution for conviction of certain crimes. Initially, crucifixion was known as the punishment of the slaves. Later, it was used to punish foreign captives, rebels and fugitives, especially during times of war and rebellion.

Captured enemies and rebels were crucified in masses. Accounts of the suppression of the revolt of Spartacus in 71 B.C. tell how the Roman army lined the road from Capua to Rome with 6,000 crucified rebels on 6,000 crosses. After the Romans quelled the relatively minor rebellion in Judea in 7 A.D. triggered by the death of King Herod, Quintilius Varus, the Roman Legate of Syria, crucified 2,000 Jews in Jerusalem. During Titus’s siege of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., Roman troops crucified as many as 500 Jews a day for several months. In times of war and rebellion when hundreds and even thousands of people were crucified within a short period, little if any attention was paid to the way the crucifixion was carried out. Crosses were haphazardly constructed, and executioners were impressed from the ranks of Roman legionaries.

In peacetime, crucifixions were carried out according to certain rules, by special persons authorized by the Roman courts. Crucifixions took place at specific locations, for example, in particular fields in Rome and on the Golgotha in Jerusalem. Outside of Italy, the Roman procurators alone possessed authority to impose the death penalty. Thus, when a local provincial court prescribed the death penalty, the consent of the Roman procurator had to be obtained in order to carry out the sentence. Once a defendant was found guilty and was condemned to be crucified, the execution was supervised by an official known as the Carnifix Serarum.

From the tribunal hall, the victim was taken outside, stripped, bound to a column and scourged. The scourging was done with either a stick or a flagellum, a Roman instrument with a short handle to which several long, thick thongs had been attached. On the ends of the leather thongs were lead or bone tips. Although the number of strokes imposed was not fixed, care was taken not to kill the victim.

Following the beating, the horizontal beam was placed upon the condemned man’s shoulders, and he began the long, grueling march to the execution site, usually outside the city walls. A soldier at the head of the procession carried the titulus, an inscription written on wood, which stated the defendant’s name and the crime for which he had been condemned. Later, this titulus was fastened to the victim’s cross.

When the procession arrived at the execution site, a vertical stake was fixed into the ground. Sometimes the victim was attached to the cross only with ropes. In such a case, the patibulum or crossbeam, to which the victim’s arms were already bound, was simply affixed to the vertical beam; the victim’s feet were then bound to the stake with a few turns of the rope. If the victim was attached by nails, he was laid on the ground, with his shoulders on the crossbeam. His arms were held out and nailed to the two ends of the crossbeam, which was then raised and fixed on top of the vertical beam. The victim’s feet were then nailed down against this vertical stake.

Without any supplementary body support, the victim would die from muscular spasms and asphyxia in a very short time, certainly within two or three hours. Shortly after being raised on the cross, breathing would become difficult; to get his breath, the victim would attempt to draw himself up on his arms. Initially he would be able to hold himself up for 30 to 60 seconds, but this movement would quickly become increasingly difficult. As he became weaker, the victim would be unable to pull himself up and death would ensue within a few hours.

In order to prolong the agony, Roman executioners devised two instruments that would keep the victim alive on the cross for extended periods of time. One, known as a sedile, was a small seat attached to the front of the cross, about halfway down. This device provided some support for the victim’s body and may explain the phrase used by the Romans, “to sit on the cross.” Both Erenaeus and Justin Martyr describe the cross of Jesus as having five extremities rather than four; the fifth was probably the sedile. To increase the victim’s suffering, the sedile was pointed, thus inflicting horrible pain.

The second device added to the cross was the suppedaneum, or foot support. It was less painful than the sedile, but it also prolonged the victim’s agony. Ancient historians record many cases in which the victim stayed alive on the cross for two or three or more days with the use of a suppedaneum. The church father Origen writes of having seen a crucified man who survived the whole night and the following day. Josephus refers to a case in which three crucified Jews survived on the cross for three days. During the mass crucifixions following the repression of the revolt of Spartacus in Rome, some of the crucified rebels talked to the soldiers for three days.

The Crucifixion was a mode of death that symbolised the horror of man’s power over man. The very fact that human beings could do such terrible things to each other reveals the dark and frightening depths of the evil into which the human heart can plunge. How could we become like this? This behaviour is worse than that of animals, who kill only for food.

 This IS the reality of the human heart apart from the God of love.

For this reason did our God become man: to reveal these truths, and to offer us a way out …

 Reference: Tzaferis, Vassilios. “Crucifixion—The Archaeological Evidence.” Biblical Archaeology Review, Jan/Feb 1985, 44-53. http://members.bib-arch.org/publication.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=11&Issue=1&ArticleID=6 (accessed 4/15/2011)