The lections for today contain various passages that are considered to be eschatological in nature. Whether we read Isaiah 65 ("For I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it.") or Malachi 4 (" The sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents."), the Old Testament passage promises a day ahead when everything will be alright. In contrast, the Gospel passage (Luke 21) tell us "When some were speaking about the Temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, Jesus said, 'As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.' ... They will arrest you and persecute you. ... [Only] By your endurance you will gain your souls." Everything is not (at least by our usual way of reckoning) going to be alright!
Of course, in many ways the prophesy of Jesus in Luke 21 has already been fulfilled. Not only was the actual Second Temple destroyed in Jerusalem in 70 CE, the stones of what was still at that time a common Abrahamic faith (in the One God we all still claim to worship) have also fallen far apart with cataclysmic destructive force. And even in our separate traditions, the unifying edifices we've attempted to build or rebuild have repeatedly fallen apart into more and more splinters of antagonistic new modes of understanding. The stones could not be more completely knocked asunder! But, if you read further into Jesus' message, it doesn't look like he is talking about a single event or even events that we could ever say are over and done. He seems to think, and certainly the Church has so interpreted his words, that this message is for all of his followers in every age; that it will be our common lot to face some sort of dreadful test to our faith and our endurance in following God's will.
The Old Testament passages at first glance seem the more straightforwardly eschatological -- after all, we certainly don't have a Jerusalem right now that all peoples can call "a joy" and "its people a delight." We still need "a sun of righteousness" to "rise with healing in its wings" -- we need it desperately. In fact, I think we need it too much for us to risk dismissing these passages as references to some time yet to come. These words will never be true if they are not true now, somewhere in our inner vision, in our sense of the possible, in our sense, perhaps, of a truth that is truer than the reality of our senses.
What I suggest is that these two conflicting prophetic visions of faith in the God of Abraham are jointly visions of where we are and where we need to be, each and every day. If, to invoke Ray Cummings, "time is what keeps everything from happening at once," perhaps faith is a place where truths can dispense with the strictures of time and space, and be held in a paradoxical unity. The Isaiah 65 ideal of harmony with God is exemplified in the holy spaces of Jerusalem--the Glory of the Temple of Solomon, the Temple where Jesus worshiped and taught and defended the faith, the great Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock; it all can and must exist together forever, as I see it, outside of corrupting time and history, as physical manifestations of our collective faith(s), our mutual commitment to this prophetic vision, and the link(s) between our reality and God's. We can strive to achieve that existence and unity in God that is outside and beyond time and space, to build it in our minds and hearts, but I think only in so much as we are also always tearing down and throwing apart all those stones that we have just so laboriously put together. There is a reality that is perfect, the culmination of all that God has in mind for us and that we seek in God, but each human attempt at achieving that dream is imperfect and insufficient -- to be taken down, reexamined, revised and reshaped; always striving, never finished.
November 3 was the 410th anniversary of the death of Richard Hooker, the foremost theologian of the Anglican tradition and the person most responsible for our emphasis on reason as an equal leg (with scripture and tradition) on the "three-legged stool" of our particular branch of the faith. Reason always requires this examining, this rooting around in and through the foundation stones of our faith--unearthing, upending, recutting, repositioning, even starting over. Whenever I think that I have finally settled some question of theology or belief, I only find myself questioning it again as I encounter something challenging and new, beyond my previous experience. I know that there is an ultimate reality that is true, that is God, and I know that somehow I hold this truth in the center of my being. Nevertheless, my deliberate approaches, the ways I understand this with my mind, go off in all the wrong directions, never hit the mark--my "beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God" only worthy to be taken apart, thrown to the ground, and reassembled again and again. Perhaps where Hooker leads us is to understand that the faithful are meant to be a little like Sisyphus, always and ever in struggle; destined for a lifetime of frustrating attempts at perfecting our souls in an impossible task that, in another reality, a truer reality, we know has already been accomplished.
I think that if we could wrap our minds fully around this paradox we'd find some way to struggle through this together, as fellow travelers, with hospitality and mutual support, rather than always be tearing at each others' throats. But, how to proceed ...
Ideas?
--AnnBarbie
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