Well ya-boo!
But Wil nails it.
When I was into martial arts, there was a visit by a group of Buddhists who practiced karate. They explained they don't follow a grading system, but see three distinct stages in their development:
1: He attacks, you defend.
2: As he begins to attack, you move simultaneously to smother it.
3: The thought of attacking you passes out of his mind...
But really ... I don't know ... I'd like to think some dude menaced Our Lord, and then there was a tap on his shoulder, and he turned round to see three archangels, I mean seriously big guys, really hard-looking mofo's, with twelve legions of angels ranked up behind them
"Is there a problem?" But that's me.But seriously, if you pinned me down, I'd say I don't buy into the 'gentle Jesus meek and mild' image. I don't buy that doe-eyed image at all – looks like something inspired by a California beach-bum to me ... Lord forgive me, but it just doesn't do it for me ... so I'd say that if the bandit strode up, then Christ would meet his eye and rock his world ...
While we're on it (and I have the impression I'm skating on thin ice here, and the Holy Spirit is looking at me with that quizzical look in His eye that says 'you really going there?) my sympathy is with the disciples. I think being a follower of Christ, one of the Twelve, exercised the sphincter as much as the soul. I reckon they felt themselves on the edge of the abyss a lot of the time. They loved Him, but He frightened them ... you never knew what He was going to say or do next.
Lastly, we can draw something from John's account of the arrest in the garden:
"Judas therefore having received a band of soldiers and servants from the chief priests and the Pharisees, cometh thither with lanterns and torches and weapons."
In short, an armed mob.
"Jesus ... said to them: Whom seek ye? They answered him: Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith to them: I am he."
John uses this "I am" statement a lot in his theology, and the implication is that Our Lord's 'I am' is a reference to the self-declaration of God as given to Moses: "And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you." (Exodus 3:14).
"As soon therefore as he had said to them: I am he; they went backward, and fell to the ground. Again therefore he asked them: Whom seek ye? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus answered, I have told you that I am he."
This going backward and falling to the ground draws the parallel between Christ and the manifestation of the shekinah in the Hebrew Scriptures.
Some, of course, will argue that this is John being creative. OK. But I think John is making a point. John knows his Scripture. At the Dedication of the Temple (2 Chronicles 5) "So when they (priests and ministers of the temple) all sounded together ... and with divers kind of musical instruments, and lifted up their voice on high: the sound was heard afar off, so that when they began to praise the Lord, and to say: Give glory to the Lord for he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever... "
Maybe ... just maybe ... for the astute eye, John is setting up a comparison between the priests dedicating the temple, and the mob coming to arrest Christ, coming to tear it down.
"... the house of God was filled with a cloud. Nor could the priests stand and minister by reason of the cloud. For the glory of the Lord had filled the house of God."
But then maybe John wasn't being creative. Maybe the soldiers and the mob, who had lined the streets not long before, and welcomed Christ to Jerusalem like a king, and now turned out to lynch Him, bottled it, when face to face, when eye to eye, and when Jesus said "I am", He intended it to be a clear reference to the Hebrew Scriptures, He threw it at them, and they saw it as just that ... maybe I'm over-egging it here, but one could read it as Him saying 'who dares to come looking for me?'
And Judas was there. The mob were frightened to go up to Him themselves. Judas said, "Go on, He won't hurt you." But they were not so sure. In fact they were far from sure. No way was anyone going to walk up and place a hand on Him. "No," they said to Judas, "If He's so cool, you do it."
+++
I have no doubt.
Many regard this as somehow 'unfair'. What they mean is, they want justice, but not mercy. Really, they want revenge. Someone oughta pay. Of course, a death-bed confession counts for nothing if it doesn't come from the heart, but if it does, then everything changes, creation is made anew in the twinkling of an eye ...
Interestingly, I was going to write something about 'tough love'. So I Googled the phrase first, and found that in the US, 'tough love' has ...
Ooops.
But what really caught me was this:
Eureka!
Wil here and I often clash over the idea of God – what he presents is utterly foreign to me, but then I think he sees God as authoritarian, whereas I see God as authoritative ... that distinction completely alters how one interprets Scripture. Wil sees God as someone who needs, indeed demands, our praise, which in his book, and mine, paints a picture of a deity with problems of social integration!
I don't think God needs anything at all, least of all us ... it's we who are in need. God could be 'an absentee father', who created the world, set it off, and then left it to its own devices. There's no way we'd come close if that was the case. God would always be a philosophical abstraction.
The point I'm making is that those who insist on karma – an eye for an eye – render the cosmos mechanical, we can forgive, but apparently the cosmos can't. But I don't believe in karma. I don't believe the cosmos is hard-wired, because God is immanently present in and to it ... and God's love knows no bounds, and will not be confined by human needs for 'payback'.
There is no-one who is beyond redemption. But if we choose to refuse the outstretched hand, with all that that implies, then God will not force it upon us – that's the deal, that's tough love for real.
You did. Nice post. Looking forward to more ...
Oh, a quick PS:
On the self-declaration in Exodus 3:14. This was something I got from a theologian when I was doing my degree.
In the verse before, "Moses said to God: Lo, I shall go to the children of Israel, and say to them: The God of your fathers hath sent me to you. If they should say to me: What is his name? what shall I say to them?" (my emphasis).
Now read the next verse, not as some high-falutin, metaphysical declaration, but as a bollocking: "God said to Moses: I AM WHO AM. He said: Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: HE WHO IS."
Can you see it? 'I am God, that's who I am' kinda statement?
v15: "And God said again to Moses: Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob... "
In short, I am the One who called Abraham, I am ... I am ... I am the one who brought you here out of Egypt, and you ask me who I am? Well who the fuck are you?'
Of course, that's not what He was saying ... well He was, but I've qualified it in a rather authoritarian way, rather that the more transcendent (and less hysterical), authoritative way ...
We get used to reading the same thing over and over, and reading it the same way over and over ... and we end up in a 'can't see the wood for the trees' situation. It's useful, sometimes, to take a different tack.
But God never uses bad language. He's more creative than that!
