Awe

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)

  Some of the words that the writer of Hebrews piles up here are amazing. He says that Jesus was without descent (agenealogētos). That is a word that, as far as we know, no Greek writer had ever used before. It may well be that, in his eagerness to stress the fact that Jesus’ power did not depend on descent, he invented it. It is in all probability a new word to describe a new thing. He says that Melchizedek was without father (apatōr) and without mother (amētōr). These words are very interesting. They have certain uses in secular Greek. They are the regular description of the homeless and people with no family ties, and of people of low birth. They contemptuously dismiss people as having no ancestry. Further, apatōr has a technical legal use in the contemporary Greek of the papyri. It is the word which is used on legal documents, especially on birth certificates, for father unknown and, therefore, illegitimate. So, for instance, there is a papyrus which speaks of: ‘Chairēmōn, apatōr, father unknown, whose mother is Thasēs.’ It is amazing that the writer to the Hebrews took words like these to stress his meaning. The Christian writers had a strange way of redeeming words as well as redeeming men and women. No phrase seemed too strong to the writer to the Hebrews to insist upon the fact that Jesus’ authority lay in himself and came from no one else. THE GREATNESS OF MELCHIZEDEKHebrews 7:4–10 Just see how great this man was – Abraham gave him the tenth part of the spoils of victory – and Abraham was no less than the founder of our nation. Now look at the difference – when the sons of Levi receive their priesthood, they receive an injunction laid down by the law to exact tithes from the people. That is to say, they exact tithes from their own brothers, even although they are descendants of Abraham. But this man, whose descent is not traced through them at all, exacted tithes from Abraham and actually blessed the man who had received the promises. Beyond all argument, the lesser is blessed by the greater. Just so, in the one instance, it is a case of men who die receiving tithes; but, in this instance, it is the case of a man whom the evidence proves to live. Still further – if I may put it this way – through Abraham, Levi, too, the very man who receives the tithes, had tithes exacted from him, for he was in his father’s body when Melchizedek met him.

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

  were concerned. Another case in point of the Grownups' Betrayal. To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow. We had been received by her mother and had waited on the edge of our seats in the overfurnished living room (Dad talked easily with our grandmother, as white-folks talk to Blacks, unembarrassed and unapologetic). We were both fearful of Mother's coming and impatient at her delay. It is remarkable how much truth there is in the two expressions: “struck dumb” and “love at first sight.” My mother's beauty literally assailed me. Her red lips (Momma said it was a sin to wear lipstick) split to show even white teeth and her fresh-butter color looked see-through clean. Her smile widened her mouth beyond her cheeks beyond her ears and seemingly through the walls to the street outside. I was struck dumb. I knew immediately why she had sent me away. She was too beautiful to have children. I had never seen a woman as pretty as she who was called “Mother.” Bailey on his part fell instantly and forever in love. I saw his eyes shining like hers; he had forgotten the loneliness and the nights when we had cried together because we were “unwanted children.” He had never left her warm side or shared the icy wind of solitude with me. She was his Mother Dear and I resigned myself to his condition. They were more alike than she and I, or even he and I. They both had physical beauty and personality, so I figured it figured. Our father left St. Louis a few days later for California, and I was neither glad nor sorry. He was a stranger, and if he chose to leave us with a stranger, it was all of one piece.

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

  4What 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.

• 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 Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  One cold autumn evening he was talking with his friends of his dear incense. Night was drawing on, and a breath of air came suddenly into the room carrying a soft and delicious scent. Neither he nor his friends had ever known so tender a perfume. He ordered one of his attendants to search the palace for its origin; but it could not be found in the palace. Then he sent his favourite, Toshikiyo Tambanokami, to find out where that incense burned, and he immediately set out with his two servants. The scent was very faint, but, when they had crossed the meadows to the bank of the river Kamo, it became stronger. It floated from the other bank of the river, so Toshikiyo crossed by a ford. This was the evening of the sixth of November, and dark, for there was no moon. They crossed the river by the pale light of the stars set high in heaven. On the other bank they found a man seated upon a rock, wearing an old cloak made of Straw and a rush hat. In his sleeves he held a censer. He had an air of peace and serenity. Toshikiyo asked him: 'Dear Stranger, why are you alone in such a place so late at night?' And while he was speaking, he smelt the perfume for which he sought, rising from the Stranger's censer. The other replied: 'I am watching the flight of the river Kamo's singing plovers.' Toshikiyo was impressed by this answer. . To be able to listen to the plovers of the river on so cold and dark a night, the man must be finely cultured and could not be of low class. He said to him more politely: 'Excuse my curiosity, but I come at the command of my master, the Shyôgun Yoshimasa, to seek the man who diffuses so sweet a perfume. Who are you, Stranger?' The man answered: '1 am not a priest who has renounced all worldly matters for the love of Buddha. Neither am I an ordinary man. Behold me rather a traveller, with no place to lay my head. I am more than sixty-six years old, but my feet are Still firm and I can walk freely.' And he arose and Started toward the pines by the water side. It was a plain reply, yet full of mystery. Toshikiyo was even more surprised than before; he held the stranger back and asked him: 'I beg you to tell me the name of the incense you burn. My master Yoshimasa would like to know it.' The man answered: 'Are you then so eager to know a trifle? If your master is thus fond of incense, take him this, although there is not much more of it.' And, giving him the incense and the censer, he went quickly away.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  Jesus is enthroned as king of the Jews, and from now on he is also king of the world. The cross in John, which we already know to be the fullest unveiling of God’s, and Jesus’s, love (13:1), is also the moment when God takes his power and reigns over Caesar. From now on, the ruler of this world is judged. This great scene, to which we shall return in more detail, summarizes the dimension we begin to hear in the music when we have turned the fourth speaker up to its proper volume, so that all four are balanced. But what then did Jesus mean in that strange but world-famous little saying about rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s? Render unto Caesar? All three synoptic gospels record Jesus’s short exchange on the subject of paying tribute to Caesar. Here is Mark’s version (Matt. 22:15–22 and Luke 20:20–36 have more explanatory detail): They sent some Pharisees to Jesus, and some Herodians, to try to trick him into saying the wrong thing. “Teacher,” they said, “we know you are a man of integrity; you don’t regard anybody as special. You don’t bother about the outward show people put up; you teach God’s way truly. “Well then: is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar or not? Should we pay it, or shouldn’t we?” He knew the game they were playing. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he said. “Bring me a tribute-coin; let me look at it.” They brought one to him. “This image,” he asked, “whose is it? And whose is this superscription?” “Caesar’s,” they replied . “Well then,” said Jesus, “give Caesar back what belongs to Caesar—and give God back what belongs to God!” They were astonished at him. (12:13–17) The saying about Caesar and God presents a famous puzzle. For those who have not been able to recognize any other “political” allusion throughout the gospel story (showing that our fourth speaker has indeed been unplugged), this constitutes “Jesus’s teaching on church and state.” And that “teaching” is taken to be that they are two distinct spheres, to each of which Jesus’s followers must give their due, in quite separate compartments of life, without confusing the two. I think it is safe to say that nobody until the late eighteenth century ever took it like that; in other words, we are hearing in that interpretation the echo of a very different set of voices, those of the European and American Enlightenment and the theory of “church and state” that they developed. In that theory, “religion” and “politics” are simply two quite different sides of life; one must not bring the one into the other.

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

  Her red lips (Momma said it was a sin to wear lipstick) split to show even white teeth and her fresh-butter color looked see-through clean. Her smile widened her mouth beyond her cheeks beyond her ears and seemingly through the walls to the street outside. I was struck dumb. I knew immediately why she had sent me away. She was too beautiful to have children. I had never seen a woman as pretty as she who was called “Mother.” Bailey on his part fell instantly and forever in love. I saw his eyes shining like hers; he had forgotten the loneliness and the nights when we had cried together because we were “unwanted children.” He had never left her warm side or shared the icy wind of solitude with me. She was his Mother Dear and I resigned myself to his condition. They were more alike than she and I, or even he and I. They both had physical beauty and personality, so I figured it figured. Our father left St. Louis a few days later for California, and I was neither glad nor sorry. He was a stranger, and if he chose to leave us with a stranger, it was all of one piece.

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

  English words ending in “-crat” explain the source of such power: from people for a democrat, from elites for an aristocrat, from wealth for a plutocrat, from science for a technocrat, from God for a theocrat—but from himself for an autocrat. Autokrator has shades of transcendence not explicitly present even in imperator . As I turn to the next question, keep in mind all that titular content packed into the Greek dedication of Priene’s main temple to Augustus. What did Augustus do to obtain and deserve such transcendental accolades? My answer comes from another and later Priene inscription as a commentary on that temple dedication. As we proceed, keep always in mind that inaugural title of imperator as supreme victor or even world conqueror. “A New Look to the Whole World”WE ARE STILL AMONG the ruins of Priene but slightly to the southeast of that temple to the divine couple Athena and Augustus. The city’s Agora, or Forum, has a long stoa along its northern side, a covered colonnade providing welcome shade from the implacable southern arch of the Mediterranean sun. Behind the stoa was the religio-political heart of the city. From east to west, the first edifice was the Prytaneion, site of the city’s sacred hearth, eternal flame, executive council, and ambassadorial venue. Next to it was the Bouleuterion, the city’s council chamber, multitiered on three sides around its central altar. Then, continuing in a row to the west, were fifteen small shrine rooms. I focus here on a two-part inscription originally preserved in one of those rooms and thence removed to the off-limits basement of Berlin’s Pergamon Museum. Around 29 BCE , the proconsul Paulus Fabius Maximus, governor of Asia Minor (now western Turkey), wrote a letter offering a golden crown to the person who submitted the best proposal for adequately honoring Augustus in that Roman province of Asia Minor. About twenty years later he awarded that prize to himself. His letter was then carved on a block of blue limestone and solemnly displayed in that shrine room at Priene: [It is a question of whether] the birthday of the most divine Caesar is more pleasant or more advantageous, the day which we might justly set on a par with the beginning of everything, in practical terms at least, in that he restored order when everything was disintegrating and falling into chaos and gave a new look to the whole world, a world which would have met destruction with the utmost pleasure if Caesar had not been born as a common blessing to all. For that reason one might justly take this to be the beginning of life and living, the end of regret at one’s birth. . . . It is my view that all the communities should have one and the same New Year’s Day, the birthday of the most divine Caesar, and that on that day, 23rd September, all should enter their term of office. This is quite clear.

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  T 1 Love Vowed to the Dead HE SHYOGUN* YOSHlMASA, A FORMER RULER of Japan, had, beside a passionate general love for all arts and delicate pleasures, a particular love for incense. He had made a collection of the various incense from the trees of every province of Japan, and his sense of smell was so nice that he could appreciate the most subtle difference in their perfume. One cold autumn evening he was talking with his friends of his dear incense. Night was drawing on, and a breath of air came suddenly into the room carrying a soft and delicious scent. Neither he nor his friends had ever known so tender a perfume. He ordered one of his attendants to search the palace for its origin; but it could not be found in the palace. Then he sent his favourite, Toshikiyo Tambanokami, to find out where that incense burned, and he immediately set out with his two servants. The scent was very faint, but, when they had crossed the meadows to the bank of the river Kamo, it became stronger. It floated from the other bank of the river, so Toshikiyo crossed by a ford. This was the evening of the sixth of November, and dark, for there was no moon. They crossed the river by the pale light of the stars set high in heaven. On the other bank they found a man seated upon a rock, wearing an old cloak made of Straw and a rush hat. In his sleeves he held a censer. He had an air of peace and serenity. Toshikiyo asked him: 'Dear Stranger, why are you alone in such a place so late at night?' And while he was speaking, he smelt the perfume for which he sought, rising from the Stranger's censer. The other replied: 'I am watching the flight of the river Kamo's singing plovers.' Toshikiyo was impressed by this answer. . To be able to listen to the plovers of the river on so cold and dark a night, the man must be finely cultured and could not be of low class. He said to him more politely: 'Excuse my curiosity, but I come at the command of my master, the Shyôgun Yoshimasa, to seek the man who diffuses so sweet a perfume. Who are you, Stranger?' The man answered: '1 am not a priest who has renounced all worldly matters for the love of Buddha. Neither am I an ordinary man. Behold me rather a traveller, with no place to lay my head. I am more than sixty-six years old, but my feet are Still firm and I can walk freely.' And he arose and Started toward the pines by the water side. It was a plain reply, yet full of mystery. Toshikiyo was even more surprised than before; he held the stranger back and asked him: 'I beg you to tell me the name of the incense you burn.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  The trials, in other words, address the theological and soteriological “why” of the cross, not only the “how.” Learning to read them in this way may be a novel art, but it is one we Western Christians should acquire as soon as possible. John is a good place to start. I have already written in some detail about John 18–19 and tried to show that, in the great scene of Jesus (and the chief priests) before Pilate, John has said an enormous amount about the significance of Jesus’s forthcoming death. John’s great scene between Jesus and Pilate is all about the “kingdom,” even though it takes place under the shadow of the cross; or, to put it the other way, it is all about the reasons for the cross, and those reasons turn out to be kingdom reasons. The link between kingdom and cross forms the inner logic of the whole narrative, stressing both the inevitability and the necessity (in human terms, it was bound to happen; in the divine plan, it had to happen) of the kingdom of which Jesus speaks being put into effect by his forthcoming death. Jesus once again takes the initiative in the conversation, introducing the discussion of different types of “kingdoms.” “My kingdom isn’t the sort that grows in this world,” he says (18:36). (We note here that the regular translation, “My kingdom is not of this world,” has contributed to, and in its turn also generated, multiple misreadings of all four gospels, appearing to suggest that Jesus’s “kingdom” is straightforwardly “otherworldly.” The Greek for “of this world” is ek tou kosmou toutou; the ek, meaning “out of” or “from,” is the crucial word.) There is no question but that Jesus is speaking of a “kingdom” in and for this world. The steady buildup, over the previous chapters, of sayings, already noted, about “the ruler of this world” being judged and cast out and about the world being overcome make it clear that in the events now unfolding we are to see the ultimate showdown between the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of the world brought to sharp focus in Jesus and Pilate. Part of John’s meaning of the cross, then, is that it is not only what happens, purely pragmatically, when God’s kingdom challenges Caesar’s kingdom. It is also what has to happen if God’s kingdom, which makes its way (as Jesus insists) by nonviolence rather than by violence, is to win the day. This is the “truth” to which Jesus has come to bear witness, the “truth” for which Pilate’s worldview has no possible space (18:38). It is at once exemplified, dramatically, by Jesus taking the place of Barabbas the brigand (18:38–40). This is the “truth” to which Jesus bears witness—the truth of a kingdom accomplished by the innocent dying in place of the guilty. And, in the broader Johannine perspective, we discover that the only word to do justice to this kingdom-and-cross combination is agape, “love.”

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

  . . Day 5 (1:20–23): And God said . . . Day 6 (1:24–31): And God said . . . And God said . . . It is hard to imagine a clearer indication of purpose or more evident index of intention. Even if eight chunks of stuff exist, they must all fit into six days because all of creation must climax with the Sabbath on the seventh day. It is as if to say, crudely and rudely, that not even God at creation could ignore the Sabbath. Or, more politely and accurately, that all of creation was crowned with and by the Sabbath. (Humanity is not the crown of creation. We are the work of a late Friday afternoon, and best work is seldom done on a late Friday afternoon.) Think, therefore, about the final message of Genesis 1 as Image, Rule, and Sabbath . First, humanity is created in the image and likeness of God (1:26a, 27). Next, that status is immediately identified as having dominion or rule over all else on Earth (1:26b, 28)—that is what our divine image means. Finally, that God whose image we bear is the God of Sabbath rest. We are to rule the Earth for, with, by, and in that Sabbath God. And that is, internally, our human destiny and identity, not just, externally, a divine decree or command. I add three comments before turning to consider what is the character of a God whose climax of creation is Sabbath rest. The first one is that God’s first gift to humanity of God’s own image and likeness is precisely what constitutes God as a God of distributive justice. What greater and more gracious act of divine justice is there than to distribute to all the human race an internal identity and destiny as God’s own image and likeness? The next comment is that not the slightest hint of threat or sanction, possible penalty, or potential punishment exists in this ecstatic vision of creation. Indeed, if one invokes internal identity and destiny rather than external decree or command, any rejection or default would beget internal consequences rather than external punishments. As I use those two terms, by the way, consequences flow internally from an act, whereas punishments flow externally from it. For example, a drunk driver hits a tree and is killed by the impact—that is a consequence; a drunk driver hits a tree and is fined by the police—that is a punishment. The final comment is that in the utopian perfection of God’s creation-dream, no blood ever stains the ground. All alike, animals and humans, are vegan and eat only “every green plant” (1:29–30)—hence, that “peaceable Kingdom” of Isaiah 11:6. I return to this understanding of Genesis 1 later in the chapter, but now I consider the character of that Sabbath God who created humankind in God’s own image and likeness. “So That Your Ox and Your Donkey May Have Relief”I BEGIN WITH THE Sabbath Day.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Their construction occupied years and, in cases, centuries were necessary to complete them. Who can estimate the prayers and pious devotion which the laying of the first stones called forth, and which continued to be poured out till the last layer of stones was laid on the towers or fitted into the finial? Their sculpture and stained-glass windows, frescoes, and paintings presented scenes from Scripture and the history of the Church. There, kings and queens, warriors, and the men whom the age pronounced godly were laid away in sepulture, a custom continued after the modern period had begun, as in the case of Luther and Melanchthon, whose ashes rest in the Castle Church of Wittenberg. In spite of frequent fires consuming parts of the great churches or the entire buildings, they were restored or reconstructed, often several times, as in the case of the cathedrals of Chartres, Canterbury, and Norwich. Central towers collapsed, as in the case of Winchester, Peterborough, Lincoln, and other English cathedrals, but they were rebuilt. In the erection of these churches princes and people joined, and to further this object they gave their contributions of material and labor. The women of Ulm gave up all their ornaments to advance the work upon the cathedral of that city, and to the construction of the cathedral in Cologne Germans in all lands contributed. The eleventh century is the beginning of one of the most notable periods of architecture in the world’s history, lasting for nearly three centuries. It has a distinct character of its own and in its service high talent was consecrated. The monks may be said to have led the way by their zeal to erect strong, ample, and beautiful cloistral establishments. These called forth in France the ambition of the bishops to surpass them. Two styles of architecture are usually distinguished in this period, the Romanesque, called in England also the Norman, and the Gothic. Writers on architecture make a number of subdivisions and some have included all the architecture of the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries under the title Gothic, or Christian Pointed. During these centuries Europe, from the South to far Northern Scotland and Sweden, was dotted with imposing structures which on the one hand vied with St. Sophia of Constantinople, and on the other have been imitated but not equalled since.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Vladimir, however, would not introduce it without compensation. He was staying at Cherson in the Crimea, which he had just taken and sacked, and thence he sent word to the emperor Basil, that he had determined either to adopt Christianity and receive the emperor’s sister, Anne, in marriage, or to go to Constantinople and do to that city as he had done to Cherson. He married Anne, and was baptized on the day of his wedding, A.D. 988. As soon as he was baptized preparations were made for the baptism of his people. The wooden image of Perun was dragged at a horse’s tail through the country, soundly flogged by all passers-by, and finally thrown into the Dniepr. Next, at a given hour, all the people of Kieff, men, women and children, descended into the river, while the grand Duke kneeled, and the Christian priests read the prayers from the top of the cliffs on the shore. Nestor, the Russian monk and annalist, thus describes the scene: "Some stood in the water up to their necks, others up to their breasts, holding their young children in their arms; the priests read the prayers from the shore, naming at once whole companies by the same name. It was a sight wonderfully curious and beautiful to behold; and when the people were baptized each returned to his own home." Thus the Russian nation was converted in wholesale style to Christianity by despotic power. It is characteristic of the supreme influence of the ruler and the slavish submission of the subjects in that country. Nevertheless, at its first entrance in Russia, Christianity penetrated deeper into the life of the people than it did in any other country, without, however, bringing about a corresponding thorough moral transformation. Only a comparatively short period elapsed, before a complete union of the forms of religion and the nationality took place. Every event in the history of the nation, yea, every event in the life of the individual was looked upon from a religious point of view, and referred to some distinctly religious idea. The explanation of this striking phenomenon is due in part to Cyrill’s translation of the Bible into the Slavic language, which had been driven out from Moravia and Bohemia by the Roman priests, and was now brought from Bulgaria into Russia, where it took root. While the Roman church always insisted upon the exclusive use of the Latin translation of the Bible and the Latin language in divine service, the Greek church always allowed the use of the vernacular. Under its auspices there were produced translations into the Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and Slavic languages, and the effects of this principle were, at least in Russia, most beneficial. During the reign of Vladimir’s successor, Jaroslaff, 1019–1054, not only were churches and monasteries and schools built all over the country, but Greek theological books were translated, and the Russian church had, at an early date, a religious literature in the native tongue of the people.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  Lots of the Judaeans read this notice, because the place where Jesus was crucified was close to the city. It was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. So the chief priests said to Pilate, “Don’t write ‘The king of the Jews’! Write that he said, ‘I am the king of the Jews’!” “What I’ve written,” replied Pilate, “I’ve written.” (19:19–22) The shaping of John’s gospel tells its own story. Jesus has, of course, been disclosed as “Messiah” at various points on the way—when talking with the Samaritan woman, for instance (4:26, 29); and there has been debate and discussion as to whether someone doing and saying the things he is doing and saying can really be the Messiah (7:26–27, 31, 41–42; 10:23; 12:34), with the authorities imposing a ban on the idea (9:22). But, for John, the “title” balances the recognition of Jesus’s kingship offered by his first disciples in chapter 1. The title is, of course, heavily ironic. Pilate knows that Jesus doesn’t conform to any meaning of the word “king” with which he is familiar. Jesus himself, as we saw, had redefined “kingship” in his conversation with the governor, insisting that his kind of kingship meant bearing witness to the truth (18:37). But now readers are invited to join together the two points, which Pilate was never going to do—the two points that, ironically, much Christian interpretation has also found very hard to combine. Readers are invited to join together not simply a Johannine “incarnational” theology with a Johannine “redemption” theology. Both of those are there, but the middle term between them is once again the evangelist’s kingdom theology. As Paul saw, the rulers of this age didn’t understand what they were doing when they crucified the Lord of glory (1 Cor. 2:8). As the Irish-American New Testament scholar Dominic Crossan commented on Matthew’s story of Pilate’s wife having bad dreams about Jesus (Matt. 27:19), it was time for the Roman Empire to start having nightmares. Sending Jesus to his death was assisting in the enthronement of the one whose bringing of justice to the nations flowed out of his sovereign, healing love (John 13:1). The point for our present purpose is that, in all four gospels, readers are strongly urged to see Jesus’s death as explicitly “royal,” explicitly “messianic”—in other words, explicitly to do with the coming of the “kingdom.” Jesus has, all along, been announcing that God’s kingdom was coming. His followers might well have expected that this announcement would lead to a march on Jerusalem, where Jesus would do whatever it took to complete what he had begun. And they were right—but not at all in the sense they expected or wanted. That is what the evangelists are saying through this particular moment in the story. This is how the kingdom is to come, the kingdom of God, which Jesus has been announcing and, as Messiah, inaugurating.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  From now on, John is saying, when we think of Jesus in the ancient messianic category of “son of God,” we are to understand that this has been fused together with the idea of Jesus as the father’s incarnate Word. And we are to understand, a deeper mystery still, that this had been the intention from the beginning. The category of messiahship itself was a category established, as it were, for God’s own use. Though this whole passage has, of course, a characteristically Johannine depth and mystery, we should not think of the synoptics’ presentation of Jesus’s baptism as any less theologically profound. In them the baptism scene is dramatic and decisive. The heavenly announcement that Jesus is “my son, my beloved one,” the one with whom God is delighted, indicates for those with biblically attuned ears that Jesus is marked out as the king of Psalm 2 and the servant of Isaiah 42: I will tell of the decree of YHWH: He said to me, “You are my son; today I have begotten you.” Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.... Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. (Ps. 2:7–10) Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.... He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching. (Isa. 42:1–4) Jesus was baptized. All at once, as he came up out of the water, suddenly the heavens were opened, and he saw God’s spirit coming down like a dove and landing on him. Then there came a voice out of the heavens. “This is my son, my beloved one,” said the voice. “I am delighted with him.” (Matt. 3:16–17) Teachers and preachers often put these texts together, bringing out two main themes. First, the echo of Psalm 2 says that Jesus is the Messiah; this, frequently, is short-circuited to mean “the incarnate one.” Second, the echo of Isaiah 42, and with it of the whole Isaianic “servant” theme, says that Jesus is the “suffering servant.” The scriptural echoes of the baptism story thus serve the normal creedal points of incarnation and cross. As I have indicated, there is nothing wrong with this. It is fine as far as it goes. But the two passages in question will simply not allow us to ignore the kingdom theme, which is so prominent in each. Psalm 2 opens with the nations raging and fighting—raging, indeed, against the true God; and the enthronement of God’s “son” is the answer.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  For him, the phrase “God’s son” would normally have meant one person and one person only: Tiberius Caesar, son of the “divine” Augustus. That’s what the coins all said—including the coin they showed Jesus a few days before (12:15–17). This points ahead to our fourth sound speaker (Chapter 7). For Mark, all the signs are that he was thinking, as many other early Christians were in his day, of the term “God’s son” as having at least four meanings. First, in the Old Testament Israel itself is “God’s son” (Exod. 4:22; Jer. 31:9). Second—and this seems to be a primary meaning in the baptism story—it is the messiah, Israel’s anointed king, who is “God’s son” (2 Sam. 7:12–14; Pss. 2:7; 89:26–27). Third, as we just noted, “son of God” was a regular and primary title taken by the Roman emperors from Augustus on. But fourth, looming up behind and beyond all of these was the sense we find in the very earliest Christian documents that all of these pointed to a strange new reality: that, in Jesus, Israel’s God had become present, had become human, had come to live in the midst of his people, to set up his kingdom, to take upon himself the full horror of their plight, and to bring about his long-awaited new world. The phrase “son of God” was ready at hand to express that huge, evocative, frightening possibility, without leaving behind any of its other resonances. We can see this already going on in the writings of Paul. It is highly likely that Mark expected his first readers to have the same combination of themes in mind. Matthew and Luke: Seeing Jesus, Thinking God Once we learn, from Mark, how we might read the story of Jesus as the story of Israel’s God returning at last, we may find it easier to recognize the ways in which Matthew and Luke are doing something very similar. (If, as most scholars still think, they both used Mark as a source, this is of course the more natural.) We begin with Matthew . Matthew makes things very clear in the frame he creates for his story. Look first at the opening of the gospel, right after the genealogy, which we noted in the previous chapter. The angel tells Joseph that Mary’s child is to be called “Jesus,” because “he is the one who will save his people from their sins”; the name “Jesus” is here being interpreted as meaning “ YHWH saves.”

• From How God Became King (2012)

  The title “son of God” expresses both halves of this complex and delicately balanced picture. It was a title, as we have seen, both for Israel and for the anointed king. But it also, in John as in Paul, acquires the associations that John has opened up as a fresh possibility through his prologue. The prologue opens with the “Word” who was God, the one through whom all things were made (1:1, 3), but it closes by telling us that the “Word,” becoming flesh, enabled us to gaze upon his glory, “glory like that of the father’s only son” (1:14). The son, intimately close to the father as he is, has made him known, has “brought him to light” (1:18). From now on, John is saying, when we think of Jesus in the ancient messianic category of “son of God,” we are to understand that this has been fused together with the idea of Jesus as the father’s incarnate Word. And we are to understand, a deeper mystery still, that this had been the intention from the beginning. The category of messiahship itself was a category established, as it were, for God’s own use. Though this whole passage has, of course, a characteristically Johannine depth and mystery, we should not think of the synoptics’ presentation of Jesus’s baptism as any less theologically profound. In them the baptism scene is dramatic and decisive. The heavenly announcement that Jesus is “my son, my beloved one,” the one with whom God is delighted, indicates for those with biblically attuned ears that Jesus is marked out as the king of Psalm 2 and the servant of Isaiah 42: I will tell of the decree of YHWH: He said to me, “You are my son; today I have begotten you.” Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession…. Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. (Ps. 2:7–10) Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations…. He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching. (Isa. 42:1–4) Jesus was baptized. All at once, as he came up out of the water, suddenly the heavens were opened, and he saw God’s spirit coming down like a dove and landing on him. Then there came a voice out of the heavens. “This is my son, my beloved one,” said the voice. “I am delighted with him.” (Matt. 3:16–17)

• From How God Became King (2012)

  The more you tell the story of Jesus and pray for his Spirit, the more you discover what the church should be doing in the present time. Because the gospels are the foundational charter for the church’s life, they must be stories primarily about Jesus; otherwise the church would be rooted in itself. Here we find, in fact, the mirror image of the Bultmannian position: unless the church’s life and mission is rooted in the historical accomplishment of Jesus, all Christian life would be either arrogance or folly, or both. (As I write this paragraph, an e-mail comes in from Christian friends working among refugees and trafficked women in one of the toughest corners of the world. Why do we do this unless it’s the work of Jesus?) But perhaps the most mysterious and powerful thing about the way the gospels are written is the way they end. Or do they? The End Is the Beginning The gospels, in fact, do not really “end” in the way many stories do. Or rather, their ending is framed as, in a sense, a new beginning. Even if we suppose (as I do not) that Mark meant his gospel to end with the women saying “nothing to anyone, because they were afraid” (16:8, where our best manuscripts now break off), there are plenty of hints earlier in the story that this would just be the start of a whole new phase of life and work for Jesus’s disciples. Jesus has, after all, already declared that the gospel of the kingdom must be announced to all the nations (13:10) and has repeated the point in relation to the woman who anointed him with ointment in Bethany: Jesus was in Bethany, at the house of Simon (known as “the Leper”). While he was at table, a woman came up with an alabaster pot containing extremely valuable ointment made of pure spikenard. She broke the pot and poured the ointment on Jesus’s head. Some of the people there grumbled to one another. “What’s the point of wasting the ointment?” they asked. “That ointment could have been sold for three hundred dinars, and given to the poor. ” And they were angry with her. “Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why make trouble for her? She has done a wonderful thing for me. You have the poor with you always; you can help them whenever you want to. But you won’t always have me. “She has played her part. She has anointed my body for its burial, ahead of time. I’m telling you the truth: wherever the message is announced in all the world, the story of what she has just done will be told. That will be her memorial.” (14:3–9) Clearly Mark did not envisage that 16:8 would be the real and final “end” to the story.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  This reinforces the warning we gave earlier, that it is possible to state the doctrine of Jesus’s “divinity” in such a way as to let it float loose from both kingdom and cross, but this is what the New Testament never does. The “God” who has become human in Jesus is the God who, as he had always promised, was returning to claim his sovereignty over the whole world (note the “other sheep” in John 10:16) and would do so by himself sharing the pain and suffering of his people, “laying down his life for the sheep.” It is all too possible to “believe in the divinity of Jesus” and to couple this with an escapist view of salvation (“Jesus is God and came to snatch us away from this world”) in a way that may preserve an outward form of “Christian orthodoxy,” but that has left out the heart of the matter. God is the creator and redeemer of the world, and Jesus’s launch of the kingdom—God’s worldwide sovereignty on earth as in heaven—is the central aim of his mission, the thing for which he lived and died and rose again. How can we even begin to understand this? Perhaps we should say that, with the hindsight the evangelists offer us, God called Israel to be the means of rescuing the world, so that he might himself alone rescue the world by becoming Israel in the person of its representative Messiah. This explains the place of David in the story. He is, in some respects at least, the man after God’s own heart, the man whose Temple-building son would be God’s own son, as God says to David through the prophet Nathan: “When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me.” (2 Sam. 7:12–14) This text, highlighted elsewhere in first-century Judaism as well, was very important for the early Christians as they struggled to understand the enormous thing that had just happened in their midst. There is a very tight nexus between God, David, the Temple—and the purposes of establishing the kingdom. The early Christians also saw that in the word “I will raise up” there was a hint of something else: resurrection. This rich, dense combination of themes reappears in a passage we looked at a moment ago, namely, Isaiah 53. In the previous section of the book, the prophet has invoked “the arm of YHWH” as a way of talking about YHWH himself, coming in person to do what he had promised, namely, to defeat the enemy and rescue his people: Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of YHWH!