O Clavis David

O Clavis David, et sceptrum domus Israel;
qui aperis, et nemo claudit;
claudis, et nemo aperit:
veni, et educ vinctum de domo carceris,
sedentem in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel;
you open and no one can shut;
you shut and no one can open:
Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house,
those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

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"The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me…he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners." (Isaiah 61:1)

In this reading from Isaiah, the prophet describes the coming Servant of Yahweh. It is precisely this quote that Jesus first uses to announce the exact nature of his own ministry (Luke 4:18-19). In each case Jesus describes his work as moving outside of polite and proper limits and boundaries to reunite things that have been marginalized or excluded by society: the poor, the imprisoned, the blind, the downtrodden.

Jesus’ ministry is not to gather the so-called good into a private country club but to reach out to those on the edge and on the bottom, those who are “last” to tell them they are, in fact, first! That is almost the very job description of the Holy Spirit, and therefore of Jesus… and for that matter of us as bearers of Emmanuel, God with us!

Adapted from Preparing for Christmas with Richard Rohr

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

(St. Teresa of Avila)

The words of Isaiah's prophecy, "I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and no one shall shut; he shall shut, and no one shall open." (Isaiah 22.22 ) recur in Jesus' own mouth in Revelation 3.7-8:

And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write:

These are the words of the holy one, the true one,
who has the key of David,
who opens and no one will shut,
who shuts and no one opens:

I know your works. Look, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.

We too easily judge ourselves - our own worth in God's eyes, our worth to our fellow creatures even - by our own strength. But our strength is not at issue. As the Lord once said to Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." (2 Corinthians 12.9) It is in our very weakness that the Lord can do his best work; in our weaknesses that his words are fulfilled. The littlest faithfulness will do it, as the psalmist said: "Though I am lowly and despised, I do not forget your precepts." (Psalms 119.141 NIV)

In a stew...

I've been thinking a bit about the news reports that have been dominating reports about the church recently: the "fight" (the Guardian's word) to become the next Archbishop of Canterbury, the appalling treatment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in the USA, the latest threats from the hard men of GAFCON, and where that leaves the ordinary Christian, trying to "to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with [their] God..." (Micah 6.8)

While I was thinking about this, I stumbled on an excellent post by Greenpatches, which pointed me back to Richard Rohr's Falling Upward. Rohr says (pp.74-75):

A crucible, as you know, is a vessel that holds molten metal in one place long enough to be purified and clarified. Church membership requirements, church doctrine, and church morality force almost all issues to an inner boiling point, where you are forced to face important issues at a much deeper level to survive as a Catholic or a Christian, or even as a human. I think this is probably true of any religious community, if it is doing its job. Before the truth "sets you free," it tends to make you miserable.

The Christian truth, and Jesus as its spokesman, is the world-view that got me started, that formed me and thrilled me, even though the very tangent that it sent me on made me often critical of much of organised Christianity. In some ways, that is totally as it should be, because I was able to criticise organised religion from within, by its own Scripture, saints and sources, and not merely cultural, unbelieving or rational criteria. That is probably the only way you can fruitfully criticise anything, it seems to me...

Eventually... Catholicism became for me, and I think as it has for many, a crucible and thus a unified field. Which is why it is very hard to be a "former" Catholic, once you really get its incarnational and inherently mystical world-view...

For all its failures, it is no surprise that the Catholic world-view (note that I am not saying the "Roman" world-view) continues to produce Teilhard de Chardins, Mother Teresas, Thomas Mertons, Edith Steins, Cesar Chavezes, Cory Aquinos, Mary Robinsons, Rowan Williamses, Desmond Tutus, and Dorothy Days. I like to call it "incarnational mysticism." Once you get it, there is no going backward, because nothing is any better.

This is really an extraordinary insight. If Rohr is right, and generations of religious (and others) seem to testify that he is (just think of St Francis, or St Teresa of Avila) then we don't need to worry, for ourselves, about these troubles - perhaps not even about the inevitable pain and even anger that arise in us when we read yet another report of strife within the body of Christ. As St Paul said, "We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose." (Romans 8.28)

It's worth remembering another passage of Scripture, though. "Jesus said to his disciples, 'Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come!"  (Luke 17.1)