Canter Bridge

John the Baptist appears in the gospels as one of those existential purists who gives himself to few causes, but with all-consuming energy. Fearless before the people who trek to the Jordan to hear his fiery rants, he is equally fearless before a profligate pseudo-king. John cannot be bought. John gives the lie to cynical refrain that ‘every man has his price’. Perhaps most do, perhaps nearly all. Not John.

Yet even this passionate martyr-in-the-making must be conceded a space for his doubts. Imprisoned, John wonders not so much about the veracity of his own calling as about his quick identification of Jesus as the one whose emergence on the scene would signal the successful performance of the Baptist’s task.

When John heard in prison what Christ was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him, ‘Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?’ Jesus replied, ‘Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.’

John had correctly perceived that YHWH’s next move would prioritize the needy beyond all conventional proportion. He had discovered an antecedent, even in his mind a prediction, of his fiery calling in the vocabulary of the book called Isaiah. That prophetic vision had manifestly anticipated YHWH’s healing presence and both his announcement and enactment of transformative good news for those with empty hands and grumbling bellies. Continue Reading »

The Jesus whom Matthew presents to us sounds positively Johannine for an instant in Matthew’s eleventh chapter.

At that time Jesus said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’

These words come fast on the heels of Jesus’ denunciation of those who will criticize any of his Father’s messengers. They will find John the Baptist’s severe austerity equally as off-putting as Jesus’ party-going. Criticism becomes a convenient and effective tool in the hands of those who simply will not hear.

It is in the wake of this negative appraisal that Jesus’ words turn fondly and with a tone unaccustomed in the three ‘synoptic’ gospels towards the ‘little children’. Continue Reading »

Jesus’ twelve disciples figure prominently in the construction of an alternative Israel, one in which belonging is a function of allegiance to Jesus himself. They are the new patriarchs, sires of a new nation whose procreative dynamic is not physical but spiritual. The twelve-apostles-as-patriarchs-of-New-Israel scheme claims not to supplant the legacy of the age-old nation, but rather to fulfill its deepest promise and most-desired ambitions.

He called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness. These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

The tradition rolls these names over on its tongue. It savors the memories associated with each man, from notorious and ever-prominent Simon Peter to the little-known Thaddeus. Curiously, little is known of each of them except that Jesus called him. It is Jesus’ selective principle and initiative that alone explain the new-patriarchal identity that each of the twelve assumes. Nothing is said of their fitness or capacities. We know almost nothing of their personalities or promise.

Although one must resume that each was precious to Jesus and that a hard-won camaraderie bent their hearts and hands in time to make common cause and to share the intimacy that alone emerges from shared and sacrificial service, they are to us almost a mere cipher.

About most of them, we know just two things: Jesus called them and each, in his way, said ‘yes’.

Sanctity is tricky matter.

On the one hand, the summons to ‘be holy as YHWH is holy’ resounds from the earliest pages of Torah or ‘the five books of Moses’. Holiness is among the most condensed and potent ways of abbreviating the nature of the people whom YHWH has called into his confidence.

On the other hand, holiness morphs into pretense and hubris with astounding dexterity. It is not uncommon to discern in this or that person’s cynical glance backward upon the religion he once practiced the sunburnt assumption that it is indeed impossible to be holy. It is a ruse, a caricature, a manipulative tool that hangs from the hands of those who display the ghastliest absence of self-awareness.

Jesus might not have disagreed so strenuously with such a cynical outlook, though he would in time have nudged the conversation in the direction of true holiness. He might join the skeptic in his renunciation of off-putting sanctity while demonstrating through attentive eyes, a merciful touch, and a persistent and love-fueled loyalty that there is, after all, such a thing. Continue Reading »