St Barnabas's Day

 

Bountiful God, giver of all gifts,
who poured your Spirit upon your servant Barnabas
and gave him grace to encourage others:
help us, by his example,
to be generous in our judgements
and unselfish in our service;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. AMEN.

The blessed apostle, on whose festa I was ordained Deacon 18 years ago, is given as the source of some funny ideas as this section from the "Epistle of Barnabas" attests:

"Barnabas 10:6-8 Moreover thou shalt not eat the hare. Why so? Thou shalt not be found a corrupter of boys, nor shalt thou become like such persons; for the hare gaineth one passage in the body every year; for according to the number of years it lives it has just so many orifices. Again, neither shalt thou eat the hyena; thou shalt not, saith He, become an adulterer or a fornicator, neither shalt thou resemble such persons. Why so? Because this animal changeth its nature year by year, and becometh at one time male and at another female. Moreover He hath hated the weasel also and with good reason. Thou shalt not, saith He, become such as those men of whom we hear as working iniquity with their mouth for uncleanness, neither shalt thou cleave unto impure women who work iniquity with their mouth. For this animal conceiveth with its mouth." (JB Lightfoot's translation)

Mad patristic metaphysics and dodgy biology are not really what I see as the  defining hallmarks of this good and holy saint. Grace, the gift of helping others to grow closer to god and a willingness to serve humbly for the sake of the Gospel and the Kingdom are.  I shall ignore the ancient loopiness others credited him with and honour the man in Acts.

Tertullian and other early Western theologians regarded Barnabas as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Which may have been the early Roman tradition, which Tertullian usually follows.  According to Photius (Quaest. in Amphil., 123), Barnabas wrote the Acts of the Apostles. Most modern scholars go for St Luke.

He is also traditionally associated with the Epistle of Barnabas, although modern scholars think it more likely that it was written in Alexandria in the 130s. The 6th century Decretum Gelasianum includes a Gospel of Barnabas amongst works condemned as apocryphal; but no certain text or quotation from this work has been identified.  Another book using that same title, the "Gospel of Barnabas", survives in two post-medieval manuscripts in Italian and Spanish. Contrary to the canonical Christian Gospels, and in accordance with the Islamic view of Jesus, this later states that Jesus was not the son of God, but a prophet and messenger. The book also says Jesus rose alive into Heaven without having been crucified. Allegedly, it also mentions by name, the Comforter, as Mohammad.

Happy St Barnaby's Day !

Accidents can happen

...and very nearly did this morning.  It is NEVER a good idea to give the thurible known as "Big Aggie" to a wee celebrant!!!  Luckily, I was trained on the "Diocesan Bucket" at St Ninian's Pollokshields and can handle the big beggar!  The sermon seemed to go OK, but the stand in organist chose what I can only describe as the only dirge tune in the hymnal for "At the Name of Jesus".  It meant to be a real "Can Belto" hymn to send the punters out on a high.  We got a mimsy, insipid piece of mush fit only for aged spinsters and woolly minded pantheists (lay or ordained).  "Bore it up triumphant" - mair like "bored it out of triumph".  Still it was quite fun.

Critical Wit

This splendid parody from the Anglican Cyber Ordinariate amused me:

"I am the very model of the focus of great unity
I say who is to be a bishop vis-à-vis who's not to be
And when four-thirty's come and gone with tea and crumpets for each one
I read a little Johnny Donne and give thanks for impunity

I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters theological
With books and thoughts from Genesis to Greek eschatalogical
You'll never find a brighter mind just knocking 'round and killing time
The Pauline corpus whole is mine - that's why I'm Christological

Yet even with so fine a grasp on life-behind philosophy
I'll write a poem, make a vid, and burn it all to DVD
I've yet to have a thought that wasn't captured without modesty
And posted up to interwebs in matters most postmodernly

This purple cassock hides a frame that's wracked with years of self-regret
Perhaps I'd show you after ten, but not until just then, you bet
I'd like to quote 'The Body's Grace' and get along with homophiles
But unity comes with a price and Lambeth is my domicile

Because the Thames, so fast and deep, so easily o'erflows its banks
And we have all these partnerships the world around, and we give thanks
To God the Father in whose name we obfuscate and place the blame
And dare not speak the love whose fame incites us all to spank the Yanks

Who even now would like to say that what they said and what they meant
Were justice-born and justice-done and no great cause for gross lament
When some elect and some consent, it's democratic government
So let's get on our knees, repent, and sign up for the Covenant

Yet there's a place for each and all at God's communion table
And I am called an Instrument to say that we are able
If we could only change the tide and Unity could take a ride
And Faith and Order lay aside ... Perhaps it's just a fable"

 

Wit is perhaps the most potent weapon against the bully or the egoist.  It is a shame that it seems to be necessary to use it against the ++ABC. But twas ever thus.  Ever since the wonderful Dom Gregory Dix OSB replied to the question "Don't you trust the Bench of Bishops?" with the observation that Scripture tells us not to put our trust in Princes - even princes of the Church and noted that the sign of a bishop was a crook and that of an Archbishop a double cross (Oww!), the Episcopate have been fair game for satiric wit on their words and deeds.  Of course, these days Dom Gregory would I suspect have been part of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.  ++ Rowan can console himself that Robert Runcie was lampooned as a puppet by Spitting Image and he hasn't had to endure that.

A thought on meditation and reflection.

From a slightly unexpected source:

"You do not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait. Be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, and it will roll in ecstasy at your feet."  Franz Kafka

Quite as good as  Anthony De Mello or Mother Theresa. And beautifully succinct!

Ascension Day

 

Here's a wee thought for Ascension Day:

"Some part of us is always in the process of healing... the condition of health is not a static state of perfect wellness; it is... a condition of ongoing healing. For example, a possible explanation for the cause of cancer is referred to as the "scanner theory. " This theory holds that various cells in the healthy body routinely become cancerous: but the body remains healthy because within it there is some... mechanism that scans the body for such malignant cells... and proceeds to kill them before they multiply into a growing tumor. What causes cancer then, according to the tbeory, is not a cancerous cell but rather the failure of the "scanner" to detect it... The theory is offered not because it is proven, but because it demonstrates the way in which physicians are increasingly coming to think about disease: that most disease may best be defined as a failure of the healing process."
M. Scott Peck, M.D.

At one level, the Ascension is the ultimate healing.  It heals the great division between the human race and the Divine will, symbolically recounted in the Fall narrative in the book of Genesis.  Yet it has never been a total or complete healing.  Even within the Church the wisdom has always been  "reformandus semper reformandum" - "Reformed and always in need of reform".  Again and again, the Body of Christ, the People of God  have needed healing.  The same is as true today as ever it was.  It needs healing for its attitudes to LGBT people/women/the mentally ill/the poor/non-Caucasian ethnic groups if you take the Liberal line.  It needs healing for its divergence from Scripture on morals and ethics if you take the Conservative approach.  'Twas ever thus!  and in all likelihood will be until the Parousia.  Living with the continued brokenness and dysfunctional nature of the Institutional Church is a pain and sometimes we find we can't put up with it anymore.

A modern collect for Ascension Day helps me to "Keep Buggering On" as Churchill put it:

"O God,

you withdraw from our sight

that you may be known by our love.

Help us to enter the cloud where you are hidden

and surrender all our certainty to the darkness of faith in Jesus Christ.  Amen"

(Janet Morely, as cited in Daily Office SSF)

The concept of faith in Jesus being dark is disturbing - but sometimes living faith is disturbing.  It takes us to encounter our own (and others) darkness.  And through it to healing.  The Apostles went from being Mates of the Messiah to being Friends of the Late, Dead Jesus before experiencing the healing of the Resurrection.  And then they went on to be the Gob Smacked of Galilee today and then the Babbling Linguists of Jerusalem and finally the Confused Council who hacked out a Compromise at Jerusalem. As it still sort of is.  The fact is the Church and Christians are never in "a static state of perfect wellness" - they are always in "a condition of ongoing healing".  That is our vocation.