by CCW | 19 March 2019 21:00
“This he said”, John tells, “to show by what death he was to die”; in other words, it is an allusion to the Cross. In saying this Jesus is looking back and echoing a remarkable passage from The Book of Numbers. As such it contributes to our Lenten programme about thinking sacramentally in terms of the images of the Christian sacraments in the Old Testament. The shadows of the Cross reach backwards and extend forwards, we are illumined paradoxically by its shadows.
Sin and grace are inextricably part and parcel of our sacramental thinking. The sacraments only make sense in relation to the forms of human sin and the overcoming of sin by grace conveyed sacramentally. Just consider for a moment the scene in the Book of Numbers. The people of Israel are in the wilderness journey of the Exodus. It is a journey of learning, of discipline and devotion. They are learning just what it means to be the people of Israel, the people of the Law, those who “live by the every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord”, and not by “the devices and desires of our own hearts”, of our inclinations and appetites. Such learning, as with the ancient Greeks, for instance, in Homer’s Odyssey, is learning through suffering which will contribute to a further intensification of that theme in its Christian context as learning through sacrifice.
The idea of learning through sacrifice belongs to the sacraments. Something invisible is made visible, made known to us. Like the Canaanite woman, we perceive the invisible in and through the visible. The things of the world are made the vehicles of our spiritual understanding and life, the means by which we participate in them. These words by Christ echoing Moses belong to our participation in Christ’s sacrifice. That is the whole point of the sacraments. Through the sacraments we participate in Christ’s sacrifice. It means thinking sacramentally. We are not simply passive in relation to God. His grace is given to set us in motion.
I like to think of the Book of Numbers as being the Book of Kvetching, to use a good Yiddish term; it means murmuring against things, complaining and whining. Always time for w[h]ine in Canada – with an ‘h’! Our whining and complaining are always about a failure to perceive the good that we have and enjoy. In Numbers, the people of Israel complain about the provisions of food in the wilderness. They complain about the manna from on high, what is elsewhere called “the bread of angels” (Ps. 78.25). They think back to their time in Egypt, a time when they were slaves but they focus instead on what good things they enjoyed food-wise, literally, a kind of surf-’n-turf! “O that we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at” (Numbers 11. 4-6). Manna from on high, water from the stricken rock, but that is not good enough, it seems. “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?” they complain to Moses. “For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food” (Numbers 21.5).
Moses and God, it seems, have had enough of their complaining. Why? Because it is a denial of the Providence of God, of God’s essential goodness for us. We would measure God by the appetites of our bellies rather that let God’s word measure and temper our appetites.
The divine consequence is the heavenly lesson, a strong reminder to us about what it means to be the people of God who willingly seek God’s will as being the only will for us in our lives and the only measure of our lives. “Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died” (Numbers 21.6). It has to be said that the Torah, the books of the Law, are full of some pretty tough lessons, the school of hard-knocks, we might say, but all because of the hardness of our hearts in refusing the teachings of God who seeks our freedom and our good in his will.
The effect of the fiery serpents is to awaken in the people of Israel a spirit of repentance. The sacraments always require our turning back to God in the awareness of our having turned away from God. In other words, they are all about the awareness of sin and grace. The people come to Moses and confess. “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord that he take away the serpents from us” (Numbers 21. 7). God instructs Moses to “make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and every one who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live. So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole.” I love the thinking. The people of Israel have to contemplate an image of their own sin made visible and objective before them. God’s grace uses our awareness of our sins against us to free us. They look and are healed and saved. They are turned back to the one from whom they have turned away.
Thinking sacramentally is about this turning and beholding, about this receiving what God wants us to know about his invisible, inward and spiritual grace conveyed through outward and visible forms. Such is the Cross, Jesus is saying, and such is our participation in the sacrifice of the Cross sacramentally. In the sacrament of the altar, we receive what we behold.
I have used the image many, many times but it always bears repeating. Lancelot Andrewes speaks of Christ crucified as the liber charitatis, “the book of love opened out for us to read” and from which to learn. We learn about our sin which pierces Christ and in turn we are pierced in ourselves in contrition and confession and satisfaction; such is repentance. The sacraments are about that kind of beholding and being convicted and convinced about the grace that transforms sin into mercy and healing.
Like the Canaanite woman, it takes faithful perseverance and humility to hold onto what is perceived and known invisibly in the visible, inwardly in the outwardly. This, too, is the humility of Joseph, the saint of the background, the counter to all our self-preoccupations and obsessions with ourselves. Such too belongs to the witness of Thomas Ken (1637-1711), chaplain to Charles II, Bishop of Bath and Wells and one of the non-jurors who refused to swear allegiance to William and Mary in 1689, who were installed in place of Charles II in the so-called “Glorious Revolution”. As a result, he was deprived of the see of Bath and Wells and lived in quiet obscurity for the last twenty years of his life but contributed greatly to the spirituality of the English Church through his devotional hymns.
Lord, I my vows to thee renew;
Scatter my sins as morning dew:
Guard my first springs of thought and will,
And with thyself my spirit fill.
He is, perhaps, best known for the doxology which also contributes to our thinking sacramentally for such is our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.
Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
Praise him, all creatures here below;
Praise him above, ye heavenly host:
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
We participate in what we behold and worship.
Fr. David Curry
Lenten Programme: Thinking Sacramentally II
March 19th, 2019
Comm. of Joseph and Thomas Ken
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