Even Josephus Believed That Jesus Lived

This Sunday's Gospel reading from John 20:19-31 tells us of the appearances of Jesus in the upper room,

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’But Thomas (who was called the Twin*), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’ Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

To this day, people, even priests and bishops, deny Jesus' physical resurrection.

The late first century account by the Jewish historian Josephus, no fan of Christians, did not doubt that Jesus lived,

Now there was about this time Jesus… [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day. (Antiquities 18.3.3)

That "tribe of Christians" would have gone extinct if the resurrection had not occured.

He is Risen!

As I head into another year, join with me in remembering His defeat of Death for us as found in the words of the Bach Cantata No. 4, "Christ Lag in Todesbanden" BWV 4.

Using An Easter Message to Cover the Progressive Bases

In his Easter message to Episcopalians, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry focused on Mary Magdalene and threw in unnecessary references to Episcopalian rebelliousness and slavery for good measure. 

The Right Reverend Barbara Harris was the first woman ordained and consecrated a bishop in The Episcopal Church and in the Anglican Communion. In her memoir, entitled Hallelujah, Anyhow! [she] quotes an old Gospel hymn that says it this way:
Hallelujah anyhowNever let your troubles get you downWhen your troubles come your wayHold your hands up high and sayHallelujah anyhow!
When I get to Heaven, I want to meet one person, and her name is Mary Magdalene. Because if ever there was another Hallelujah, Anyhow sister, it was Mary Magdalene. And her life, and her example, tells us what it means to follow in the way of Jesus, in the Way of Love.
Mary Magdalene showed up when others would not. Mary Magdalene spoke up when others remained silent. Mary Magdalene stood up when others sat down.
John’s Gospel tells us that when many of the disciples fled and abandoned Jesus, Mary Magdalene stood by him at the cross. Hallelujah, Anyhow.
Against the odds, swimming against the current, Mary Magdalene was there.
John’s Gospel says in the 20th chapter, early in the morning, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene and some of the other women went to the tomb. Hallelujah, Anyhow.
They went to the tomb when it didn’t make any sense. They went to the tomb when the evidence was against them. Jesus was dead. They knew that. The power of the Empire had crushed the hope of love. They knew that. And they got up in the morning and went to the tomb anyhow. Hallelujah, Anyhow.
But more than that, John’s Gospel says it was dark. It was dark. That’s not just the time of day in John’s Gospel. The darkness in John is the domain of evil. In John’s Gospel when Judas leaves the Last Supper to betray Jesus, John inserts a parenthetical remark. When Judas leaves to betray him, John says, “And it was night.” The darkness is the domain of wrong, of hatred, of bigotry, of violence, the domain of sin and death and horror.
And early in the morning while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb, Hallelujah, Anyhow. 

The truth is, she didn’t know that Jesus was alive. She was just doing what love does. Caring for her beloved, her Saviour, her friend, in his time of death, to give him the last rites of burial. And when she got to the tomb, and the other women with them, they eventually discovered that Jesus was alive, and in the silence of the night, in the moments of despair, in the moments of the worst darkness, God had done something incredible. God had raised Jesus from the dead
The truth is, nobody saw Jesus rise from the dead, because God had done it secretly and quietly, when nobody was looking. 

When I was in high school, I learned a poem composed by James Russell Lowell. He wrote it in the 19th century, in one of the darkest periods in American history, when this country was torn asunder by the existence of chattel slavery in our midst. In this great land of freedom, there were slaves being held in bondage. And this nation literally went to war, tearing itself apart, trying to find the way to do what was right. And James Russell Lowell wrote, in the midst of this darkness, in this dark hour: 

Though the cause of evil prosper, yet ‘tis truth alone and strong . . .
Though her portion be a scaffold, and upon the throne be wrongYet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own 

Hallelujah, Anyhow.
Christ is risenThe Lord is risen, indeed.
God love you, God bless you, and may God hold us all in those almighty hands of love.

I need to point out that  James Russell Lowell wrote those verses in 1845 well before the War of  Northern Aggression.

As far as Episcopalian Easter messages go, I would rate this one as mediocre. At least Jesus was mentioned by name, but he could not come out and clearly declare that Jesus was physically resurrected.

That would have ruffled too many feathers on his flock.

The Real Easter Egg Hunt

If the Easter egg is a prize to be hunted for, then what were the followers of Jesus looking for when they found the empty tomb?  Certainly not a multicolored egg. Despite the angel's declaration, despite Mary's witness, at the end of the day the disciples were still hunting for someone they thought they had lost, not fully aware of the magnitude of the real prize that had been bought for them.

I never cared for Easter eggs, but I did like chocolate bunnies, and that is what I would hunt for while my siblings searched for eggs on Easter morning. To me, a chocolate rabbit was the great prize to be found on Easter. How wrong I was.

Likewise, I don't think the disciples had it figured out yet. The real prize, salvation, had been given to us by Jesus.

For that reason we need to stay tuned, and keep attending church to hear the rest of the story.

And that is why I wish everyone a happy Easter.

Despair As Paris Burns

The last time I visited the great cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris was in 1987. At the time, we were warned to be wary of children employed as pickpockets who roved the area of l'Ile de la Cité upon which the cathedral was built. I remember sitting in a small cafe across from the side of the building, sipping on one half of an expensive,  room temperature Coke, and studying the architecture while a French woman placed her small dog on the cafe's bar top.

Today, the stones of the cathedral, a cross, and the windows appear to be all that remain following Monday's devastating fire.

The ruins are still a wonder, and I am sure that the cathedral will be rebuilt by the French people and by contributions from around the world, but I wonder, for what purpose?

In a secularized country in which, according to at least one article,

"Church attendance is among the lowest in the world, with surveys showing that only about 5% of the total population, i.e. less than 10% of those who are nominally Catholics, now attend weekly mass...."

why should such a people spend a huge amount of money on rebuilding a gathering place for Christians to worship only to walk away following the reconstruction and go back to their old ways of ignoring the Lord's call?

Is is just to rebuild a tourist trap?

Will it be just to benefit the street vendors, cafe owners, the "gamins", and the pickpockets?

If you are not doing it for the glory of God, why do it at all?

Sigh, I guess we would want to rebuild the pyramids of Egypt if something happened to them too...

Signed,

Despairing UGP

Dating Palm Sunday Services

The question came up as to when the Church started special Palm Sunday services. The Catholic Encyclopedia has this to say,

Liturgical writers differ in assigning a time for the introduction of the benediction of palms and of the procession. Martène, "De antiq. eccl. discipl." xx, 288, finds no mention of them before, the eighth or ninth century. Peliccia, "Christian. eccl. politia", II, 308, is of the same opinion and mentions Amularius, "De div. off.", I, x, as the first to speak of them. Binterim, V, i, 173, on the authority of Severus, Patriarch of Antioch, and of Josue Stylites, states that Peter Bishop of Edessa, about 397 ordered the benediction of the palms for all the churches of Mesopotamia. The ceremonies had their origin most probably in Jerusalem. In the "Peregrinatio Sylviæ", undertaken between 378 and 394, they are thus described: On the Lord's Day which begins the Paschal, or Great, Week, after all the customary exercises from cook-crow till morn had taken place in the Anastasia and at the Cross, they went to the greater church behind the Cross on Golgotha, called the Martyrium, and here the ordinary Sunday services were held. At the seventh hour (one o'clock p. m.) all proceeded to the Mount of Olives, Eleona, the cave in which Our Lord used to teach, and for two hours hymns, anthems, and lessons were recited. About the hour of None (three o'clock p. m.) all went, singing hymns, to the Imbomon, whence Our Lord ascended into heaven. Here two hours more were spent in devotional exercises, until about 5 o'clock, when the passage from the Gospel relating how the children carrying branches and Palms met the Lord, saying "Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord" is read. At these words all went back to the city, repeating "Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord." All the children bore branches of palm or olive. The faithful passed through the city to the Anastasia, and there recited Vespers. Then after a prayer in the church of the Holy Cross all returned to their homes.

"The serpent says we shall be as gods. That is the argument we must defeat."

Over at Public Discourse, Anthony Esolen explains why you can't reason with the "Pro-Choice" crowd. He concludes in "When Reason Does Not Suffice: Why Our Culture Still Accepts Abortion" that our society's worship of autonomy, in particular the pregnant woman's ability to put her desire tp be free from the inconvenience and responsibilities of parenthood by having an abortion, is at the root of the problem,

"Then let the pro-life movement be advised. We are really asking for a moral revolution. If the child lives, the mother’s life will not be the same, because if we accept the principles that allow the child to live, none of our lives can be the same. There is no way to guarantee, as some pro-life people seem to want us to do, a world safe for the unborn child that is also a world of total sexual and economic autonomy. In any world in which autonomy is the highest ideal, the child—that incarnate sign of our dependence and existential poverty—must go. 

The serpent says we shall be as gods. That is the argument we must defeat."

 The serpent's promise is like a bad genie joke.

Man: "Make me a god."
Serpent: "Sure thing."

Poof, man turns into Molech.

The Sacrifice of Nard

(This is a re-post from 3 years ago when this Gospel selection last came around in the lectionary cycle)

This Sunday's Gospel reading is John 12:1-8 and tells us the story of Jesus' feet being anointed by Mary,

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?’ (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’

Nard or spikenard is a fragrance extracted from the root of a flowering plant of the Valerian family that grows in the Himalayas.

This perfume also appears in the Song of Solomon 1:12 and thus carries a certain romantic connotation,

"While the king sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof."

That was very costly perfume in its day. If one denarius = one day's wages for a field worker in Jesus' era, then the 300 denarii mentioned in John's account would have been one year's wages (no work on the Sabbath). Assuming a field  worker today might earn $10.50/hr (USDA data) and could work 40 hours a week for, lets say, 50 weeks, he/she might be able to earn $21,000 a year. I doubt even the wealthiest people would pay $21,000 for a pound of perfume these days, but there are some perfumes that are priced as high as $1,000,000 per ounce. Checking around, at ABC News, I found "Hermès 24 Faubourg" priced at $1,500 per ounce or $24,000 per pound to be the rough equivalent (in price) to the valuable nard described in John 12. Looking at it in today's dollars, one can understand where Judas is coming from.

Would any of us make that large a sacrifice?

For those of us cheapskates who would probably opt for a less costly alternative or one that is closer to Biblical nard, there is "Pure Spikenard Essential Oil" at 609.08 per pound (16 oz) which is available with the following description,

Botanical Name: Nardostachys jatamansi
Plant Part: Root
Extraction Method: Steam Distilled
Origin: Nepal
Color: Golden yellow to greenish color slightly viscous liquid.
Common Uses: Spikenard Essential Oil is used by aromatherapists for rashes, wrinkles, cuts, insomnia, migraines, and wounds.
Consistency: Medium
Strength of Aroma: Strong Aromatic
Scent: Spikenard Essential Oil has an earthy, harsh wood like smell that is slightly musty.
Cautions: Spikenard Essential Oil should be avoided during pregnancy.

Was Jesus worth it?

He was and is worth more than all the nard in the world.

"Every other variant of Christianity is a rivulet which goes its own way until it eventually disappears."

At the end of a lengthy discussion by  Retired United Methodist Church bishop Timothy W. Whitaker on "Christianity & Liberalism" by J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937) reprinted at Juicy Ecumenism came the following observation,

"If one believes that the kind of Christianity which is God’s cause in the world is the Christianity which is faithful to the apostolic witness as it has been received in the catholic tradition of the church, then one would view liberalism as a variant of Christianity which erodes the substance of the apostolic and catholic faith and enervates the mission of the church. Liberals tend to see their version of Christianity as the vanguard of the future, which is an odd conceit in light of how few liberal Christians there are in the context of global Christianity. It is more plausible that the historic, orthodox, apostolic and catholic faith is the future of Christianity as well as its past, and it is the great river of tradition which flows through time moving in the current of the Holy Spirit. Every other variant of Christianity is a rivulet which goes its own way until it eventually disappears."

If he were alive today, Machen would probably not have to make any corrections to his 1923 book (found here) because he was drawing his wisdom from that great river of tradition which is the past and the future of Christianity.

I understand that the river of tradition can get polluted from many sources along the way, so it needs river keepers stationed all along its course to filter out large debris and smaller contaminants.

The thought of liberal variants as rivulets that will go their own way and eventually disappear gives me hope, a hope tempered by the knowledge that new rivulets with which we shall have to contend will always be appearing.