Admiration

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  GREATER THAN THE GREATEST Hebrews 3:1–6 Brothers who are dedicated to God, you who are sharers in heaven’s calling, because of all this you must fix your attention on him whom our creed holds to be the apostle and the high priest of God, I mean Jesus, for he was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses was in all his house. For he was deemed worthy of more honour than Moses, in so far as the man who builds and equips the house has more honour than the house itself. For every house is built and equipped by someone; but it is God who builds and equips all things. Moses was faithful in all his house, but his role was the role of a servant, and his purpose was to bear witness to the things which some day would be spoken. But Christ is over his house because he is a Son. We are his house if only we keep strong the confidence and pride of our hope to the end. LET us remember the conviction with which the writer to the Hebrews starts. The basis of his thought is that the supreme revelation of God comes through Jesus Christ and that only through him can individuals have real access to God. He began by proving that Jesus was superior to the prophets; he went on to prove that Jesus was superior to the angels; and now he proceeds to prove that Jesus is superior to Moses. It might at first sight seem that this is an anticlimax. But it was not so for a Jew. For the Jews, Moses held a place which was utterly unique. He was the man with whom God had spoken face to face as with his friend. He was the direct recipient of the Ten Commandments, the very law of God. The greatest thing in all the world for the Jews was the law, and Moses and the law were one and the same thing. In the second century, a Jewish teacher called Rabbi Jose ben Chalafta, commenting on this very passage which declared that Moses was faithful in all his house, said: ‘God calls Moses faithful in all his house, and thereby he ranked him higher than the ministering angels themselves.’ For a Jew, the step that the writer to the Hebrews takes is the logical and inevitable step in the argument. He has proved that Jesus is greater than the angels; now he must prove that he is greater than Moses, who was greater than the angels. In fact, this quotation, which is used to tell of the greatness of Moses, is proof of the unique position which the Jews assigned to him. ‘Moses was faithful in all his house.’ The quotation is from Numbers 12:7.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  For the Jews, Moses held a place which was utterly unique. He was the man with whom God had spoken face to face as with his friend. He was the direct recipient of the Ten Commandments, the very law of God. The greatest thing in all the world for the Jews was the law, and Moses and the law were one and the same thing. In the second century, a Jewish teacher called Rabbi Jose ben Chalafta, commenting on this very passage which declared that Moses was faithful in all his house, said: ‘God calls Moses faithful in all his house, and thereby he ranked him higher than the ministering angels themselves.’ For a Jew, the step that the writer to the Hebrews takes is the logical and inevitable step in the argument. He has proved that Jesus is greater than the angels; now he must prove that he is greater than Moses, who was greater than the angels. In fact, this quotation, which is used to tell of the greatness of Moses, is proof of the unique position which the Jews assigned to him. ‘Moses was faithful in all his house.’ The quotation is from Numbers 12:7. Now, the point of the argument in Numbers is that Moses differs from all the prophets. To them, God makes himself known in a vision; to Moses, he speaks ‘mouth to mouth’. To the Jews, it would have been impossible to conceive that anyone ever stood closer to God than Moses did, and yet that is precisely what the writer of the Hebrews sets out to prove. He tells his hearers to fix their attention on Jesus. The word he uses ( katanoein ) is significant and full of meaning. It does not mean simply to look at or to notice a thing. Anyone can look at a thing or even notice it without really seeing it. The word means to fix the attention on something in such a way that its inner meaning, the lesson that it is designed to teach, may be learned. In Luke 12:24, Jesus uses the same word when he says: ‘ Consider the ravens.’ He does not merely mean: ‘ Look at the ravens.’ He means: ‘Look at the ravens and understand and learn the lesson that God is seeking to teach you through them.’ If we are ever to learn Christian truth, a detached glance is never enough; there must be a concentrated gaze in which we focus the mind in a determined effort to see its meaning for us. In a sense, the reason for that is implicit when the writer addresses his friends as sharers in heaven’s calling . The call that comes to Christians has a double direction. It is a calling from heaven and it is a calling to heaven.

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  By April–May of 40 Petronius’s army was encamped at Ptolemais on the Mediterranean coast, but by November he had gone eastward to Tiberias rather than southward to Jerusalem. He was prudently and wisely, but also deliberately and dangerously, delaying obeying the emperor’s instructions. Caligula’s insanity could have started the Great Roman War of 66–74 in 39–40 CE . The second element is the Jewish response . Both Josephus and Philo emphasize the huge numbers of people who confronted Petronius at Ptolemais and Tiberias. Josephus writes that a “vast multitude” of Jews “assembled with their wives and children in the plain of Ptolemais” (JW 2.192). Philo says “a countless multitude like a cloud occupied the whole of Phoenicia” and “was divided into six companies, one of old men, one of young men, one of boys; and again in their turn one band of aged matrons, one of women in the prime of life, and one of virgins” (OEG 226, 227). And Josephus again: “many tens of thousands faced Petronius on his arrival at Tiberias . . . so many tens of thousands . . . in many tens of thousands” (JA 18.270, 277, 279). The third element is nonviolent resistance. Both of these authors emphasize the nonviolent aspect of the Jewish reaction, one already evident in the calculated presence of women and children. At Ptolemais, Philo notes their comment, “‘We are, as you see, without any weapons’” (OEG 229). At Tiberias, Josephus reports that the people said, “‘On no account would we fight . . . but we will die sooner than violate our laws’” (JA 18.271). The fourth element is an agricultural strike. Both authors also emphasize that this was active nonviolent resistance by agricultural strike. At Ptolemais in late April or early May of 40 CE , “it was just at that moment the very height of the wheat harvest and of all the other cereal crops” (OEG 249). At Tiberias, by late October or early November, “the country was in danger of remaining unsown—for it was seed-time and the people had spent fifty days idly waiting” on Petronius (JW 2.200). “They continued to make these supplications for forty days. Furthermore, they neglected their fields, and that, too, though it was time to sow the seed” (JA 18.272). Herodian aristocrats appealed to Caligula, saying that “the people . . . had left their fields to sit protesting and . . . since the land was unsown, there would be a harvest of banditry” (JA 18.274). Petronius, in turn, promised an appeal to Rome on behalf of the protesters, encouraging them to “Go, therefore, each to your own occupation, and labor on the land . . . to attend to agricultural matters” (JA 18.283–284). The fifth and final element is collective martyrdom. The active but nonviolent resistance by agricultural strike was explicitly backed by a readiness for collective martyrdom.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  The writer to the Hebrews was not saying anything new when he said that obedience was the only true sacrifice. Long before him, the prophets had seen how sacrifice had degenerated and had told the people that what God wanted was not the blood and the flesh of animals but the obedience of an individual’s life. That is precisely one of the noblest thoughts of the Old Testament writers. And Samuel said, ‘Has the Lord as great delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifices, as in obedience to the voice of the Lord? Surely, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams.’ (1 Samuel 15:22) Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High. (Psalm 50:14) For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt-offering, you would not be pleased. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Psalm 51:16–17) For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God, rather than burnt-offerings. (Hosea 6:6) What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt-offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats ... bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me ... When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood ... cease to do evil, learn to do good. (Isaiah 1:11–17) ‘With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with tens of thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’ He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:6–8) Always there had been voices crying out for God that the only sacrifice was the sacrifice of obedience. Nothing but obedience could open the way to God; disobedience set up a barrier that no animal sacrifice could ever take away. Jesus was the perfect sacrifice because he perfectly did God’s will. He took himself and said to God: ‘Do with me as you will.’ He brought to God on behalf of men and women what no one had been able to bring – the perfect obedience, that was the perfect sacrifice. If we are ever to have fellowship with God, obedience is the only way. What we could not offer, Jesus offered. In his perfect humanity, he offered the perfect sacrifice of the perfect obedience.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  29 Our house was a fourteen-room typical San Franciscan post-Earthquake affair. We had a succession of roomers, bringing and taking their different accents, and personalities and foods. Shipyard workers clanked up the stairs (we all slept on the second floor except Mother and Daddy Clidell) in their steel-tipped boots and metal hats, and gave way to much-powdered prostitutes, who giggled through their make-up and hung their wigs on the doorknobs. One couple (they were college graduates) held long adult conversations with me in the big kitchen downstairs, until the husband went off to war. Then the wife who had been so charming and ready to smile changed into a silent shadow that played infrequently along the walls. An older couple lived with us for a year or so. They owned a restaurant and had no personality to enchant or interest a teenager, except that the husband was called Uncle Jim, and the wife Aunt Boy. I never figured that out. The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education. I was prepared to accept Daddy Clidell as one more faceless name added to Mother's roster of conquests. I had trained myself so successfully through the years to display interest, or at least attention, while my mind skipped free on other subjects that I could have lived in his house without ever seeing him and without his becoming the wiser. But his character beckoned and elicited admiration. He was a simple man who had no inferiority complex about his lack of education and, even more amazing, no superiority complex because he had succeeded despite that lack. He would say often, “I been to school three years in my life. In Slaten, Texas, times was hard, and I had to help my daddy on the farm.” No recriminations lay hidden under the plain statement, nor was there boasting when he said, “If I'm living a little better now, it's because I treats everybody right.” He owned apartment buildings and, later, pool halls, and was famous for being that rarity “a man of honor.” He didn't suffer, as many “honest men” do, from the detestable righteousness that diminishes their virtue. He knew cards and men's hearts. So during the age when Mother was exposing us to certain facts of life, like personal hygiene, proper posture, table manners, good restaurants and tipping practices, Daddy Clidell taught me to play poker, blackjack, tonk and high, low, Jick, Jack and the Game. He wore expensively tailored suits and a large yellow diamond stickpin. Except for the jewelry, he was a conservative dresser and carried himself with the unconscious pomp of a man of secure means. Unexpectedly, I resembled him, and when he, Mother and I walked down the street his friends often said, “Clidell, that's sure your daughter. Ain't no way you can deny her.” Proud laughter followed those declarations, for he had never had children.

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  But you can still notice that under Claudius and Nero, his texts always admit that the leaders were “prophets,” and then he contents himself by calling them “imposters” or “deceivers” or “charlatans,” or by saying that they had, compared with the violent rebels, “purer hands but more impious intentions.” Still, against that unqualified condemnation from a Jewish historian at the end of the first century CE ; here is a much more qualified one from a Roman historian at the start of the second century: “Antonius Felix [52–60] practiced every kind of cruelty and lust, wielding the power of a king with all the instincts of a slave. . . . Still the Jews’ patience lasted until Gessius Florus [64–66] became procurator: in his time war began” (Tacitus, Histories 5.9–10). Notice, by the way, that same accusation by both Josephus and Tacitus: “Felix practiced every kind of cruelty and lust.” Let us look for a moment at that program of nonviolent resistance started by Judas the Galilean and Saddok the Pharisee against the Roman census in 6 CE . It combined three elements creatively and powerfully—namely, eschatological vision, nonviolent resistance, and an acceptance of martyrdom, if necessary or inevitable. Josephus even admits that theology despite himself: They [the Jews] think little of submitting to death in unusual forms and permitting vengeance to fall on kinsmen and friends if only they may avoid calling any man master. Inasmuch as most people have seen the steadfastness of their resolution amid such circumstances, I may forgo any further account. For I have no fear that anything reported of them will be considered incredible. The danger is, rather, that report may minimize the indifference with which they accept the grinding misery of pain. (JW 18:23–24) Josephus invidiously combines all and any resistance to Rome into one massa damnata . It takes a very careful reading of his texts to distinguish clearly between, say, violent rural bandits and urban terrorists on the one hand and nonviolent prophetic martyrs on the other. Still, repeatedly, from Judas and Saddok in 6 CE until it was finally too late in 66 CE , certain Jews “with high devotion in their hearts, stood firm and did not shrink from the bloodshed [or hardship] that might be necessary” (JA 18:5) if nonviolent resistance resulted in martyrdom. “We Are, As You See, Without Any Weapons”I CHOOSE THE INCIDENT under Caligula regarding the placement of his divine statue in the Jerusalem Temple as a paradigmatic example of the ongoing program of massed nonviolent resistance between 4 BCE and 66 CE . I do so because we have reports about it from three separate sources: Josephus (twice), Philo, and Tacitus. Imagine it as a program involving these five component elements. The first element is the Roman situation. During the winter of 39–40, Caligula ordered the Syrian governor Petronius to take two of his four legions south to Jerusalem and place a statue of Caligula’s imperial divinity in the Temple.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  But, when we come to the end of conjecture, we are compelled to say, as Origen said 1,800 years ago, that only God knows who wrote Hebrews. To us, the author must remain a voice and nothing more; but we can be thankful to God for the work of this great nameless individual who wrote with incomparable skill and beauty about the Jesus who is the way to reality and the way to God. HEBREWS THE END OF FRAGMENTS Hebrews 1:1–3 It was in many parts and in many ways that God spoke to our fathers in the prophets in time gone past; but in the end of these days he has spoken to us in One who is a Son, a Son whom he destined to enter into possession of all things, a Son by whose agency he made the universe. He was the very effulgence of God’s glory; he was the exact expression of God’s very essence. He bore everything onwards by the word of his power; and, after he had made purification for the sins of men, he took his royal seat at the right hand of the glory in the heights. THIS is the most stylistically impressive piece of Greek in the whole New Testament. It is a passage that any classical Greek orator would have been proud to write. The writer of Hebrews has brought to it every possible skill and form of word and rhythm that the beautiful and flexible Greek language could provide. In Greek, the two adverbs which we have translated in many parts and in many ways are single words, polumerōs and polutropōs. Polu- in such a combination means many, and it was a habit of the great Greek orators, like Demosthenes, the greatest of them all, to weave such sonorous words into the first paragraph of a speech. The writer to the Hebrews felt that, since this letter was to speak of the supreme revelation of God, the ideas must be clothed in the noblest language that it was possible to find. There is something of interest even here. The person who wrote this letter must have been trained in Greek oratory. When he became a Christian, he did not throw his training away. He used the talent he had in the service of Jesus Christ. The lovely legend of the acrobatic tumbler who became a monk is familiar to many. He felt that he had so little to offer. One day, someone saw him go into the chapel and stand before the statue of the Virgin Mary. He hesitated for a moment and then began to go through his acrobatic routine. When he had completed his tumbling, he knelt in adoration; and then, says the legend, the statue of the Virgin Mary came to life, stepped down from her pedestal and gently wiped the sweat from the brow of the acrobat who had offered all he had to give.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  The third brother was brought forward. Enraged by the man’s boldness, the officers ‘disjointed his hands and feet with their instruments, dismembering him by prying his limbs from their sockets and breaking his fingers and arms and legs and elbows’. In the end, they tore him apart on the catapult and flayed him alive. He, too, died faithful. They cut out the tongue of the fourth brother before they submitted him to similar tortures. The fifth brother they bound to the wheel, bending his body round the edge of it, and then fastened him with iron fetters to the catapult and tore him in pieces. The sixth they broke upon the wheel ‘and he was roasted from underneath. To his back they applied sharp spits that had been heated in the fire, and pierced his ribs so that his entrails were burned through.’ The seventh brother they roasted alive in a gigantic brazier. These, too, died faithful. These are the things of which the writer to the Hebrews is thinking; and these are things which we do well also to remember. It was due to the faith of these men that the Jewish religion was not completely destroyed. If that religion had been destroyed, what would have happened to the purposes of God? How could Jesus have been born into the world if Judaism had ceased to exist? In a very real way, we owe our Christianity to these martyrs of the times when Antiochus made his deliberate attempt to wipe out the Jewish religion. The day came when the situation ignited. The agents of Antiochus had gone to a town called Modein and had erected an altar there to make the inhabitants sacrifice to the Greek gods. The emissaries of Antiochus tried to persuade a certain Mattathias to set an example by offering sacrifice, for he was a distinguished and influential man. He refused in anger. But another Jew, seeking to gain approval and to save his own life, came forward and was about to sacrifice.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  This phrase does not mean that Jesus was not really fully human. He was different from sinners in that, although he underwent every temptation, he conquered them all and emerged without sin. The difference between him and other men and women lies not in the fact that he was not fully human, but in the fact that he was the highest and best of all humanity. (5) He says that Jesus was made higher than the heavens . In this phrase, he is thinking of the exaltation of Jesus. If the last phrase stresses the perfection of his humanity, this one stresses the perfection of his godhead. He who was truly one with us is also exalted to the right hand of God. The writer to the Hebrews now introduces another aspect in which the priesthood of Jesus is far superior to the Levitical priesthood. Before the high priest could offer sacrifice for the sins of the people, he had first to offer sacrifice for his own sins , for he was a sinful man. The writer is thinking particularly of the Day of Atonement. This was the great day when atonement was made for all the sins of the people, the day on which the high priest performed his supreme function. Usually, it was the only day in the year when he personally carried out the sacrifices. On ordinary days, they were left to the subordinate priests; but, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest himself officiated. The very first item in the ritual of that day was a sacrifice for the sins of the high priest himself. He washed his hands and his feet; he put aside his gorgeous robes; he clothed himself in spotless white linen. A bullock that he had purchased with his own money was brought to him. He laid both hands on the bullock’s head to transfer his sin to it; and he made confession in these words: ‘Ah, Lord God, I have committed iniquity; I have transgressed; I have sinned – I and my house. O Lord, I beseech you, cover over the iniquities, the transgressions and the sins which I have committed, transgressed and sinned before you, I and my house.’ The greatest of all the Levitical sacrifices began with a sacrifice for the sins of the high priest. That was a sacrifice Jesus never needed to make, for he was without sin.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  (1) In the Christian life, we have a goal . Christians are not people who stroll along the byways of life in a completely unconcerned manner; they travel on the high road. They are not tourists, who return each night to the place from which they started; they are pilgrims who are always travelling on the way. The goal is nothing less than the likeness of Christ. The Christian life is going somewhere, and at each day’s ending we would do well to ask ourselves: ‘Am I any further on?’ (2) In the Christian life, we have an inspiration . We have the thought of the unseen cloud of witnesses; and they are witnesses in a double sense, for they have witnessed their confession to Christ and they are now witnesses of our performance. Christians are like runners in some crowded stadium. As they press on, the crowd looks down; and the crowd looking down are those who have already won the crown. The first-century writer Pseudo-Longinus, in his great work On the Sublime , has a recipe for greatness in literary endeavour. ‘It is a good thing’, he writes, ‘to form the question in our souls, “How would Homer perhaps have said this? How would Plato or Demosthenes have lifted it up to sublimity? How would Thucydides have put it in his history?” For when the faces of these people come before us in our emulation, they will, as it were, illumine our road and will lift us up to those standards of perfection which we have imagined in our minds. It would be still better if we were to suggest this to our minds, “What would this that I have said sound like to Homer, if he were standing by, or to Demosthenes, or how would they have reacted to it?” In truth it is a supreme test to imagine such a judgment court and theatre for our own private productions, and, in imagination, to submit an account of our writings to such heroes as judges.’ Actors would act with increased intensity if they knew that one of the greatest of their profession was sitting in the stalls watching them. Athletes would double their efforts if they knew that the stadium was full of famous Olympic athletes watching their performance. It is of the very essence of the Christian life that it is lived in the gaze of the heroes of the faith who lived, suffered and died in their day and generation. How can anyone avoid the struggle for greatness when an audience like that is looking down on us? (3) In the Christian life, we have a handicap .

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  29 Our house was a fourteen-room typical San Franciscan post-Earthquake affair. We had a succession of roomers, bringing and taking their different accents, and personalities and foods. Shipyard workers clanked up the stairs (we all slept on the second floor except Mother and Daddy Clidell) in their steel-tipped boots and metal hats, and gave way to much-powdered prostitutes, who giggled through their make-up and hung their wigs on the doorknobs. One couple (they were college graduates) held long adult conversations with me in the big kitchen downstairs, until the husband went off to war. Then the wife who had been so charming and ready to smile changed into a silent shadow that played infrequently along the walls. An older couple lived with us for a year or so. They owned a restaurant and had no personality to enchant or interest a teenager, except that the husband was called Uncle Jim, and the wife Aunt Boy. I never figured that out. The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education. I was prepared to accept Daddy Clidell as one more faceless name added to Mother's roster of conquests. I had trained myself so successfully through the years to display interest, or at least attention, while my mind skipped free on other subjects that I could have lived in his house without ever seeing him and without his becoming the wiser. But his character beckoned and elicited admiration. He was a simple man who had no inferiority complex about his lack of education and, even more amazing, no superiority complex because he had succeeded despite that lack. He would say often, “I been to school three years in my life. In Slaten, Texas, times was hard, and I had to help my daddy on the farm.” No recriminations lay hidden under the plain statement, nor was there boasting when he said, “If I'm living a little better now, it's because I treats everybody right.” He owned apartment buildings and, later, pool halls, and was famous for being that rarity “a man of honor.” He didn't suffer, as many “honest men” do, from the detestable righteousness that diminishes their virtue. He knew cards and men's hearts. So during the age when Mother was exposing us to certain facts of life, like personal hygiene, proper posture, table manners, good restaurants and tipping practices, Daddy Clidell taught me to play poker, blackjack, tonk and high, low, Jick, Jack and the Game. He wore expensively tailored suits and a large yellow diamond stickpin. Except for the jewelry, he was a conservative dresser and carried himself with the unconscious pomp of a man of secure means. Unexpectedly, I resembled him, and when he, Mother and I walked down the street his friends often said, “ Clidell, that's sure your daughter. Ain't no way you can deny her.” Proud laughter followed those declarations, for he had never had children.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  4 What sets one Southern town apart from another, or from a Northern town or hamlet, or city high-rise? The answer must be the experience shared between the unknowing majority (it) and the knowing minority (you). All of childhood's unanswered questions must finally be passed back to the town and answered there. Heroes and bogey men, values and dislikes, are first encountered and labeled in that early environment. In later years they change faces, places and maybe races, tactics, intensities and goals, but beneath those penetrable masks they wear forever the stocking-capped faces of childhood. Mr. McElroy who lived in the big rambling house next to the Store, was very tall and broad, and although the years had eaten away the flesh from his shoulders, they had not, at the time of my knowing him, gotten to his high stomach, or his hands or feet. He was the only Negro I knew, except for the school principal and the visiting teachers, who wore matching pants and jackets. When I learned that men's clothes were sold like that and called suits, I remember thinking that somebody had been very bright, for it made men look less manly, less threatening and a little more like women. Mr. McElroy never laughed, and seldom smiled, and to his credit was the fact that he liked to talk to Uncle Willie. He never went to church, which Bailey and I thought also proved he was a very courageous person. How great it would be to grow up like that, to be able to stare religion down, especially living next door to a woman like Momma. I watched him with the excitement of expecting him to do anything at any time. I never tired of this, or became disappointed or disenchanted with him, although from the perch of age, I see him now as a very simple and uninteresting man who sold patent medicine and tonics to the less sophisticated people in towns (villages) surrounding the metropolis of Stamps. There seemed to be an understanding between Mr. McElroy and Grandmother. This was obvious to us because he never chased us off his land. In summer's late sunshine I often sat under the chinaberry tree in his yard, surrounded by the bitter aroma of its fruit and lulled by the drone of flies that fed on the berries. He sat in a slotted swing on his porch, rocking in his brown three-piece, his wide Panama nodding in time with the whir of insects. One greeting a day was all that could be expected from Mr. McElroy After his “Good morning, child,” or “Good afternoon, child,” he never said a word, even if I met him again on the road in front of his house or down by the well, or ran into him behind the house escaping in a game of hide-and-seek. He remained a mystery in my childhood.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  FOREWORD Oprah Winfrey I was fifteen years old when I discovered I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings . It was a revelation. I had been a voracious reader since the third grade, yet for the first time, here was a story that finally spoke to the heart of me . I was in awe. How could this author, Maya Angelou, have the same life experiences, the same feelings, longings, perceptions, as a poor black girl from Mississippi—as me? I marveled from the first pages: “What you looking at me for? I didn’t come to stay … I just come to tell you, it’s Easter Day.” I was that girl who had recited Easter pieces—and pieces of Christmas poems, too. I was that girl who loved to read. I was that girl raised by my Southern grandmother. I was that girl raped at nine, who muted the telling of it. I understood why Maya Angelou remained silent for years. I bonded with her every word. Each page revealed insights and feelings I had never been able to articulate. I thought, Here’s a woman who knows me, who understands. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings became my talisman. As a teenager, I tried convincing everyone I knew to read it. Its author was now my favorite author, someone I idolized from afar. I knew it was Providence when, more than ten years later, as a young reporter in Baltimore, I was given the opportunity to interview Maya Angelou after her lecture at a local college. “I promise,” I insisted, "I promise if you’ll just let me speak with you, I won’t take more than five minutes of your time." As good as my word, at 4:58 I told the cameraman, "Done." Which was when Maya Angelou turned her head, angled it to the side, and with a twinkle in her eye smiled at me and asked, "Who are you, girl?" First we became friendly, then we became sister friends. When she finally told me I was her daughter, I knew I had found home. Sitting at her kitchen table on Valley Road in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, listening to her read poetry, the poetry of my childhood—Paul Laurence Dunbar, "Little brown baby wif spa’klin’ eyes"—that was my favorite place to be: at the kitchen table, or sitting at her feet, leaning over her lap, laughing out loud for real. Soaking up all the knowledge, all the things she had to teach—the grace, the love, all of it—my heart was full when I was with her. Rarely did we ever have a phone conversation during which I didn’t take notes. She was always teaching. "When you learn, teach," she said frequently. "When you get, give." I was a devoted student, learning from her up to the moment of our very last conversation, on the Sunday before she died. "I am a human being," she would always say, "therefore nothing human is alien to me." Maya Angelou lived what she wrote. She understood that sharing her truth connected her to the greater human truths—of longing, abandonment, security, hope, wonder, prejudice, mystery, and, finally, self-discovery: the realization of who you really are and the liberation that love brings. And each of those timeless truths unfolds in this first autobiographical account of her life. I’m so pleased (and I know she is, too) that an entire new generation of readers will get to know Maya Angelou’s story and be better empowered to realize their own. If you’re a first timer (as I was so many years ago) or revisiting an old friend (which is how I feel, returning to these pages), you’ll notice that even as a young writer, Maya delivered the theme that prevails throughout this book, the theme that became her siren call, a mantra that would resonate throughout all her speeches, her poems, her works—and her life. She spoke proudly, bodaciously, and often: “We are more alike than we are unalike!" That truth is why we can all have empathy, why we can all be stirred when the caged bird sings. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  That story left an indelible mark upon the memory of Israel. Centuries after this, Judas Maccabaeus and his men were facing the city of Caspis, so secure in its strength that its defenders laughed from their position of safety. ‘But Judas and his men, calling upon the great Sovereign of the world, who without battering rams or engines of war overthrew Jericho in the days of Joshua, rushed furiously upon the walls. They took the city by the will of God’ (2 Maccabees 12:15–16). The people never forgot what great things God had done for them; and, when some great effort was called for, they nerved themselves for it by remembering them. Here is the very point the writer to the Hebrews wishes to make. The taking of Jericho was the result of an act of faith. It was taken by men who thought not of what they could do but of what God could do for them. They were prepared to believe that God could turn their obvious weakness into strength that could accomplish an incredible task. After the destruction of the Spanish Armada, there was erected on Plymouth Hoe a monument with the inscription: ‘God sent his wind and they were scattered.’ When the people of England saw how the storm and the gale had shattered the Spanish Armada, they said: ‘God did it.’ When we are faced with any great and demanding task, God is the ally we must never leave out of the reckoning. The things which we find it impossible to accomplish alone are always possible with God. (2) The second story the writer to the Hebrews takes is that of Rahab. It is told in Joshua 2:1–21 and has its sequel in Joshua 6:25. When Joshua sent out spies to spy out the situation in Jericho, they found a lodging in the house of Rahab, a prostitute. She protected them and enabled them to make their escape; and in return, when Jericho was taken, she and her family were saved from the general slaughter. It is extraordinary how Rahab became imprinted on the memory of Israel. James (2:25) quotes her as a great example of the good works which demonstrate faith. The Rabbis were proud to trace their ancestry to her. And, amazingly, she is one of the names which appear in the genealogy of Jesus (Matthew 1:5).

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  The expression used for shutting the mouths of lions is that used of Daniel in Daniel 6:18, 23. The phrase about quenching the power of fire goes straight back to the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in Daniel 3:19–28. To speak about escaping the edge of the sword was to direct people’s thoughts to the way in which Elijah escaped threatened assassination in 1 Kings 19:1ff., as did Elisha in 2 Kings 6:31ff. The trumpet-call about being strong in warfare and routing the ranks of aliens would immediately make people think of the unforgettable glories of the Maccabaean days. The phrase about being made strong out of weakness might conjure up a number of pictures. It might paint the mental picture of the extraordinary healing of Hezekiah after he had turned his face to the wall to die (2 Kings 20:1–7). Perhaps more likely in the time in which the writer to the Hebrews wrote, it would remind his hearers of that epic but bloodthirsty incident told in the Book of Judith, one of the apocryphal books. There was a time when Israel was threatened by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar led by his general Holofernes. The Jewish town of Bethulia had determined to surrender in five days’ time, for its supplies of food and water were at an end. In the town, there was a widow called Judith. She was wealthy and beautiful, but she had lived in lonely mourning since her husband Manasses had died. She dressed in all her finery, persuaded her people to let her out of the town and went straight to the camp of the Assyrians. She gained entry into the presence of Holofernes and persuaded him that she was convinced of the defeat of her people as a punishment for their sins. She offered him a way into Jerusalem by stealth; and then, having gained his confidence, she killed him in his drunken sleep with his own dagger, cut off his head and carried it back to her people. The traitors within the camp were silenced, and looming defeat was turned into tumultuous victory. A woman’s weakness had become strength to save her country. The writer to the Hebrews is here seeking to inspire new courage and a new sense of responsibility by making his readers remember their past. He does it not blatantly but with infinite subtlety. He does not so much tell them what to remember as by delicate hints compel them to remember for themselves. When the Lord Protector of England, Oliver Cromwell, was arranging for the education of his son Richard, he said: ‘I would have him learn a little history.’

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  But they talked, and from the side of the building where I waited for the ground to open up and swallow me, I heard the soft-voiced Mrs. Flowers and the textured voice of my grandmother merging and melting. They were interrupted from time to time by giggles that must have come from Mrs. Flowers (Momma never giggled in her life). Then she was gone. She appealed to me because she was like people I had never met personally. Like women in English novels who walked the moors (whatever they were) with their loyal dogs racing at a respectful distance. Like the women who sat in front of roaring fireplaces, drinking tea incessantly from silver trays full of scones and crumpets. Women who walked over the “heath” and read morocco-bound books and had two last names divided by a hyphen. It would be safe to say that she made me proud to be Negro, just by being herself. She acted just as refined as whitefolks in the movies and books and she was more beautiful, for none of them could have come near that warm color without looking gray by comparison. It was fortunate that I never saw her in the company of powhitefolks. For since they tend to think of their whiteness as an evenizer, I'm certain that I would have had to hear her spoken to commonly as Bertha, and my image of her would have been shattered like the unmendable Humpty-Dumpty. One summer afternoon, sweet-milk fresh in my memory, she stopped at the Store to buy provisions. Another Negro woman of her health and age would have been expected to carry the paper sacks home in one hand, but Momma said, “Sister Flowers, I'll send Bailey up to your house with these things.” She smiled that slow dragging smile, “Thank you, Mrs. Henderson. I'd prefer Marguerite, though.” My name was beautiful when she said it. “I've been meaning to talk to her, anyway.” They gave each other age-group looks. Momma said, “Well, that's all right then. Sister, go and change your dress. You going to Sister Flowers.'” The chifforobe was a maze. What on earth did one put on to go to Mrs. Flowers' house? I knew I shouldn't put on a Sunday dress. It might be sacrilegious. Certainly not a house dress, since I was already wearing a fresh one. I chose a school dress, naturally. It was formal without suggesting that going to Mrs. Flowers' house was equivalent to attending church. I trusted myself back into the Store. “Now, don't you look nice.” I had chosen the right thing, for once. “Mrs. Henderson, you make most of the children's clothes, don't you?” “Yes, ma'am. Sure do. Store-bought clothes ain't hardly worth the thread it take to stitch them.” “I'll say you do a lovely job, though, so neat. That dress looks professional.” Momma was enjoying the seldom-received compliments. Since everyone we knew (except Mrs.

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  But surely, between 4 BCE and 66 CE , it was clear that the Jewish homeland, and maybe even Judaism itself, was living through years that would be fateful for the future. We have just seen that during those seventy years, there were so many instances of large-scale organized nonviolent resistance as to indicate a theoretical stance and a practical program for survival with dignity and integrity. Given that matrix, my next chapter on How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian focuses on the Baptism movement of John and the Kingdom movement of Jesus within it. By now you can probably guess my questions. One is whether either or both of those protest movements included violent or nonviolent resistance to Rome. If the answer is negative, another question is even more difficult. Did either or both of them avoid present human violence since they expected divine violence in the future? If the answer, once again, is negative, will we find, as so we have often found across our biblical journey, that the assertion of divine nonviolence will be adapted into its subversion? CHAPTER 10Jesus and the Radicality of GodNot “Revelation”—’tis—that waits, But our unfurnished eyes— EMILY DICKINSON , “Poem 685” (c. 1863) I COMPARE AND CONTRAST the programs of John and Jesus with no intention of exalting the latter over the former, or vice versa. I am convinced that Jesus learned tremendously from John and that he eventually changed his own vision because of what happened to his mentor. Later, when he came to disagree with John, he was still very careful not to disrespect him. Furthermore, it was probably the abiding popularity of John that protected Jesus from Antipas in Galilee. “That fox” (Luke 13:32) would have calculated carefully how long before he could execute another popular prophet. “Wisdom Is Vindicated by All Her Children”MY FIRST QUESTION ASKS whether, even within that common matrix of eschatology, nonviolence, and martyrdom, the visionary programs of John and Jesus involve continuity or discontinuity, agreement or disagreement. On the one hand, Matthew gives them both the same announcement. First, “John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near’” (3:1–2); and, later, “Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near’” (4:17). On the other hand, Luke makes their programs quite different as he has Jesus respond to John’s question from prison (7:22). To repeat the question: Are the visionary programs of John and Jesus similar or different? One rather fascinating indication of difference is in the Q Gospel—another source concerning Jesus that both Matthew and Luke used along with the book of Mark (“Q” is short for Quelle, German for “source”). It reports that opponents of John and Jesus, adversaries who disliked them both equally, described them like this: For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, “He has a demon”; the Son of Man [that is, Jesus, from Dan.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  A saint has been defined as ‘someone in whom Christ lives again’. The duty of real preachers is not so much to talk to men and women about Christ as to show them Christ in their own lives. People listen not so much to what they are saying as to what they are. (3) The real leaders, if need be, die in loyalty. They show others how to live and are prepared to show them how to die. As the Gospel of John says, Jesus, having loved his own, loved them to the end (13:1); and real leaders, having loved Jesus, love him to the end. Their loyalty never stops halfway. (4) As a result, real leaders leave two things to those who come after – an example and an inspiration. Quintilian, the Roman master of oratory, said: ‘It is a good thing to know, and always to keep turning over in the mind, the things which were illustriously done of old.’ Epicurus advised his disciples continuously to remember those who in the past had lived with virtue. If there is one thing more than any other that the world and the Church need in every generation, it is leadership like that. Then the writer to the Hebrews moves on to another great thought. It is in the nature of things that all earthly leaders must come and go. They have their part in the drama of life, and then the curtain comes down. But Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. His status above all others is permanent; his leadership is forever. Therein lies the secret of earthly leadership; real leaders are people who are themselves led by Jesus Christ. That figure, who walked the roads of Galilee, is as powerful as ever to strike at evil and to love sinners; and, just as then he chose twelve to be with him and sent them out to do his work, so now he is still seeking those who will bring men and women to him and bring him to them. THE MARKS OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE Hebrews 13:1–6 Let brotherly love be always with you. Do not forget the duty of hospitality for, in remembering this duty, there are some who have entertained angels without knowing that they were doing so. Remember those who are in prison, for you yourselves know what it is like to be a prisoner; remember those who are suffering ill-treatment, for the same thing can happen to you so long as you are in the body. Let marriage be held in honour among you all, and never let the marriage bed be defiled. God judges those who are adulterers and immoral in their conduct. Let your way of life be free from the love of money.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  His secret lay in who he was, his own sense of identity and purpose, and above all his integrity in being true to himself and his faith. Born in the far north of Scotland, he was brought up in Motherwell, a steel-producing town south of Glasgow where his family settled when he was only five, and this was the kind of place where he felt most at home. Though his association with the University of Glasgow provided a focus for his life over almost fifty years, from his first day as a student in 1925 to his retirement from the faculty in 1974, he never became an ivory-tower academic, divorced from the realities of life in the real world. On the contrary, it was his commitment to the working-class culture of industrial Clydeside that enabled him to make such a lasting contribution not only to the world of the university but also to the life of the Church. He was ordained to the ministry of the Church of Scotland at the age of twenty-six, but was often misunderstood even by other Christians. I doubt that William Barclay would ever have chosen words such as ‘missionary’ or ‘evangelist’ to describe his own ministry, but he accomplished what few others have done, as he took the traditional Presbyterian emphasis on spirituality-through-learning and transformed it into a most effective vehicle for evangelism. His own primary interest was in the history and language of the New Testament, but William Barclay was never only a historian or literary critic. His constant concern was to explore how these ancient books, and the faith of which they spoke, could continue to be relevant to people of his own time. If the Scottish churches had known how to capitalize on his enormous popularity in the media during the 1960s and 1970s, they might easily have avoided much of the decline of subsequent years. Connecting the Bible to life has never been the way to win friends in the world of academic theology, and Barclay could undoubtedly have made things easier for himself had he been prepared to be a more conventional academic. But he was too deeply rooted in his own culture – and too seriously committed to the gospel – for that. He could see little purpose in a belief system that was so wrapped up in arcane and complicated terminology that it was accessible only to experts.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  The writer to the Hebrews uses another wonderful word about Jesus and says of him that he remains forever (paramenein). That verb has two characteristic senses. First, it means to remain in office. No one can ever take the office of Jesus from him; to all eternity, he remains the introducer of men and women to God. Second, it means to remain in the capacity of a servant. In the fourth century, Gregory of Nazianzus provided in his will that his daughters would remain (paramenein) with their mother as long as she was alive. They were to stay with her and be her help and support. The papyri talk of a girl who must remain (paramenein) in a shop for three years in order to discharge by her work a debt that she cannot pay. There is a papyrus contract which says that a boy who is being taken on as an apprentice must remain (paramenein) with his master for as many days extra as he has played truant. When the writer to the Hebrews says that Jesus remains forever, there is wrapped up in that phrase the amazing thought that Jesus is forever at the service of men and women. In eternity as he was in time, Jesus exists to be of service to all people. That is why he is the complete Saviour. On earth, he served men and women and gave his life for them; in heaven, he still exists to make intercession for them. He is the priest forever, the one who is forever opening the door to the friendship of God and is forever the great servant of all. THE HIGH PRIEST WE NEEDHebrews 7:26–8 We needed such a high priest – one who is holy, one who has never hurt any man, one who is stainless, one who is different from sinners, one who has become higher than the heavens. He does not need, as the high priests do, daily first to offer sacrifices for his own sins and thereafter for the sins of the people. For he did this once and for all when he offered himself. For the law appointed as high priests men subject to weakness; but the word of the oath, which came after the law, appointed one who is a Son who is fully equipped to carry out his office forever. STILL the writer to the Hebrews is filled with the thought of Jesus as high priest. He begins this passage by using a series of great words and phrases to describe him.