Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

The Anointing of Jesus: Why This Waste?

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I am actually enthralled by this year’s discipline of reading through Scripture slowly, a passage at a time. How can I be so fascinated with this slow reading of passages I have known all my life? Because there is power and depth in the passages, sparkling inner depths that yield themselves to a close and tranquil examination. 


Matthew 26 6-12


 6 While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper, 7 a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table.

 8 When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. “Why this waste?” they asked. 9 “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”

This senseless love that does not count the cost does not make sense to the rational mind (mine included). Sometimes acts of love do not, as shown in the beautiful recent film, Of Gods and Men, see review.


Simon was likely a leper healed by Jesus, since lepers were otherwise required to live apart.
The woman is identified in John as Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus.


Her heart welled with love for Jesus. The best she had to give was not good enough. Mark tells us the perfume was worth a year’s wages for an average worker. Let’s say something like £40,000 in today’s money–lavished on Jesus because of her love for him!

 10 Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 

But Jesus sees the beauty in this act of pure, random love, lavished on him without considering the cost.
The Greek word used, Kallos, has an ethical as well as an aesthetic meaning.

Bu 
11 The poor you will always have with you,[a] but you will not always have me. 

There will always be poverty–because of individual fecklessness, laziness, stupidity, extravagance, bad judgement; bad luck, ill-health, natural disasters, and the villainy and greed of others.


12 When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. 13 Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

The woman may have unconsciously, prophetically known that Jesus’ time on earth was short. 

It is likely that he went to his brutal and excruciating death with the precious perfume of her anointing on him.

And that is life. The precious perfume of sweet love anoints us even along with the thorny crown of hatred

And Jesus promises that her act of lavish love will never be forgotten. 


Judas Agrees to Betray Jesus

 14 Then one of the Twelve—the one called Judas Iscariot—went to the chief priests 15 and asked, “What are you willing to give me if I deliver him over to you?” So they counted out for him thirty pieces of silver. 16 From then on Judas watched for an opportunity to hand him over.


The idol of Judas life was love of money. We are elsewhere told that he was a thief, and would help himself to money from the community’s money bags.


It appears that Jesus’s refusal to condemn Mary for her act of lavish and “wasteful” devotion tips Judas in his ultimate betrayal of Christ for–interestingly and significantly–money.


30 silver coins was about 120 denarius, 4 months wages, since a labourer earned about a denarius a day.


What are four months wages for you? Would getting that as a lump sum be sufficient for you to betray a close friend?





 

Readiness: Wise and Foolish Virgins, Blog Through the Bible Project

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Wilhelm Von Schadow, Wise and Foolish Virgins.
 The Parable of the Ten Virgins

 1 “At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. 2 Five of them were foolish and five were wise. 3 The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. 4 The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. 5 The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep.
    6 “At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’

   7 “Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. 8 The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’

   9 “‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’

   10 “But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut.

   11 “Later the others also came. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’

   12 “But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’

   13 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.

Just one life. Just one. And at the end, we will meet Christ, the bridegroom. 


Are we living in readiness for him? Or are we totally unprepared? 

Christ says, “Be ready, because you don’t know the day or the hour. And when he returns, no one can help us out. We have to take personal responsibility for our readiness.

What it means to keep one’s lamp filled with oil varies according to our calling. For me, it would mean learning to keep my eyes on Jesus through the day. Being faithful to my calling as a writer, be it “less or more, or soon or slow, mean or high” as Milton writes about his calling in Sonnet 23.


It means being kind to my husband. Investing in my kids.

This is a quiet patch in my life; I am not as involved in church stuff as I normally have been, which means a kind of simplifying when it comes to the question of what God’s will for me is, what keeping my lamp full of oil means.

To keep my eyes on Jesus. To write. To love my husband. To try to mother my kids well.

 

The Second Coming, Blog Through the Bible Project

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Close to the end and destruction of “his world”, Jesus talks about the end of the world.
The Olivet Discourse, so called because Jesus “sat on the Mount of Olives” is the fifth and last of the great discourses in Matthew.
Matthew 24
The Destruction of the Temple and Signs of the End Times
 1 Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. 2 “Do you see all these things?” he asked.“Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”
Literally fulfilled in A.D. 70 when the Romans under Titus completely destroyed Jerusalem, and the temple buildings. Stones were even pried apart to collect the gold lead that melted from the roof when the temple was set on fire.
The road from Jerusalem to Bethany, where Jesus and his disciples stay each evening, takes one alongside the Mount of Olives, which affords a spectacular view of the temple in the distance.
 3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”
 4 Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. 5 For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many. 6 You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 7 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are the beginning of birth pains.
   9 “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. 10 At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, 11 and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.
There will be deception both inside and outside the church. Though it may seem hard for us to accept this, not every “Christian” prophet is either Christian or a prophet.
 12 Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, 13 but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
   15 “So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand— 16then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17 Let no one on the housetop go down to take anything out of the house. 18 Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak. 19 How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! 20 Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. 21 For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.
22 “If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. 23 At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. 24 For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. 25 See, I have told you ahead of time.
Scary–signs and wonders will be performed by these false prophets. So one obviously would need a great spirit of discernment during these times.
   26 “So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the wilderness,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. 27 For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 28 Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.
The Messiah will appear like a flash of lightning–sudden and visible to all.
As vultures clearly indicate carrion and are themselves clearly visible, so the coming of Christ will be obvious.
   29 “Immediately after the distress of those days
   “‘the sun will be darkened,
   and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
   and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’
30 “Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. 31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.
Oh, it would be so amazing to see this–and to be one of the elect!
The nations will mourn because they now face judgment. Or perhaps with repentance.
Christ will be revealed as the eternal ruler of the kingdom of God, designated by the Ancient of Days to receive worship and to exercise dominion over the earth (Dan 7 13-14). The return of Christ is a literal event in which Christ will come in the same way that the disciples saw him go into heaven. NIV 
ESV–These will be earth-shattering events, though which creation will be radically transformed at the return of Christ. Isaiah, Peter and Revelation refer to the new heavens and the new earth. 
32 “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 33 Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. 34 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 35Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
Jesus’ words are more certain than the existence of the universe. He attributes divine authority and permanence to his own teaching–it is greater even than heaven and earth.
The Day and Hour Unknown
    36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.
 Jesus now shares four parables to explain to his disciples how and why they should be prepared for his coming: the homeowner and the thief; the good and wicked servants, the ten virgins, and the talents. 
42 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. 43 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.
   45 “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? 46It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. 47 Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. 48 But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, ‘My master is staying away a long time,’ 49 and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. 50 The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. 51 He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Since one doesn’t know when the end of our world, and the world will occur, live and act as if it is today.
With what care we would live if we knew we were going to die within the year, or the day. 

God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts

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Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights







Romans 1: 21-27
 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.


 24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

 26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Okay, let’s read through this. Because men neither glorified God, nor thanked him, their thinking tended to futility (uselessness), their hearts were darkened, and they became fools.

Their trajectory is set away from God–and so God allows them to continue on the trajectory they have chosen.

He surrenders them to their own lust. And to be surrendered to one’s own lust, without restraint or governance from God, is a very scary thing indeed.

And some men and women experienced lust for one another. “And received in themselves the penalty for their error.” What is this referring to? A prophetic reference to AIDS–a common interpretation? Or to the health risks of gay sex?

Homosexuality is a controversial topic in liberal Christian circles–is it, or is not, sinful– and since it is not a sin, or otherwise, which I am/have been particularly tempted by–and I have plenty of my own temptations–I am not going to blog further about it.

Of course this is Paul’s letter to the Romans, not mine. He is a first century Jew; he may or may not be homophobic; and the words he uses to describe homosexuality, not surprisingly for his era are “unnatural,” and verse 27, “shameful,” which is either a reference to homosexuality, or to particular homosexual practices. 

What do you think? How do you read this passage?



Jesus evades verbal traps–then springs one of his own.

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Matthew 22 23–45, Blog Through the Bible Project

Jesus comes across here as strong, intelligent, resourceful, with considerable presence of mind and courage. He thinks on his feet, fast and calmly.
This one man, along, can stand up to a crowd of pharisees, saducees and lawyers.
Go, Jesus, go, and give us your spirit, please. 
                                                                  * * * 

Okay, so the Pharisees and the Herodians unsuccessfully had a go at Jesus. Now it is the turn of the Sadducees to try and trap him theologically. Would this woman be guilty of incest?


23 That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. 24 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for him. 25 Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. 26 The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. 27 Finally, the woman died. 28 Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?”

 29 Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.
They do not know the Scriptures well enough to know that Scripture teaches the reality of the resurrection, and they do not know the power of God to create a far more wonderful world than anyone can now imagine.
30 At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 31 But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”

The present tense in the quotation from Exodus 3:6 logically implies that when God spoke these words to Moses, God was still in covenant relationship with the patriarchs, who had been dead for centuries. If the Pentateuch implies that the patriarchs are still alive, and if the rest of the OT points to the resurrection, as it does, then the Saducees should recognize God’s power to raise the patriarchs and all God’s people to enjoy his eternal covenant in eternal life. 


 33 When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching.
At his cleverness. At his nimble mind. At his depth of understanding.

Matthew 22 34–37

The Greatest Commandment

 


 34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

 37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
 Again, he brilliantly evades a trap. The two commandments he chooses are unassailable, and in a sense, they encapsulate the decalogue.
 “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” from Deut. 6:5, repeated twice a day by faithful Jews expresses the idea of total devotion to God, and includes the duty to obey the rest of God’s commandments. 

And 7 of the 10 commandments deal with one’s relationship to one’s fellowmen, summed up in Lev. 19:18, You should love your neighbour as yourself.

Whose Son Is the Messiah?

 

 41 While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, 42 “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?”
   “The son of David,” they replied.
 43 He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says,
   44 “‘The Lord said to my Lord:
   “Sit at my right hand
until I put your enemies
   under your feet.”’]
   45 If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?” 46 No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.

They did not dare to ask him any more questions, because they acknowledged the messianic import of the Psalm, Ps 110, and did not want Jesus to go on to prove that he was whom he had claimed to be–the long-awaited Messiah himself.


Jesus having answered all their questions–cleverly, or with the use of counter-questions, asks them a rhetorical question of his own: 

Is the Messiah greater than David?  



He raises the question of the Messiah.  If they had asked further he may well have told them as he told the Samaritan woman, I who am talking to you, am He. 


Fearing that, they did not dare to ask him any more questions. 

Read more: http://theoxfordchristian.blogspot.com/2011/04/jesus-evades-verbal-traps-then-springs.html#ixzz1JKhcRg00

What are REALLY the idols of your heart?

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Tash in C.S. Lewis’s Last Battle, Image by Pauline Baynes




 Romans 1 21-23


For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.


Honouring God, and being grateful to him is a safeguard against our thinking becoming futile (useless, pointless, senseless) and our hearts becoming darkened and foolish. (See more on this idea–how intelligent people can become stupid.)


If we do not thank God, we are focusing on just part of the picture, not the whole thing. Focusing on the minor patches of bleakness alone. It can lead to out “thinking becoming futile, and our foolish hearts darkened. Though claiming to be wise, we can become fools.”


Trying to keep our focus on the glory and wonder of God saves us from idolatry–worshiping and focusing on idols: things which are trivial, non-life-giving, and cruelly demanding of ever more attention and energy and devotion.


So What Are Your Idols?

David Powlison has a list of questions in Seeing With New Eyes.

Ouch, ouch, and ouch

1. What do I worry about most?

2. What, if I failed or lost it, would cause me to feel that I did not even want to live?

3. What do I use to comfort myself when things go bad or get difficult?

4. What do I do to cope? What are my release valves? What do I do to feel better?

5. What preoccupies me? What do I daydream about?

6. What makes me feel the most self-worth? Of what am I the proudest? For what do I want to be known?

7. What do I lead with in conversations?

8. Early on what do I want to make sure that people know about me?

9. What prayer, unanswered, would make me seriously think about turning away from God?

10. What do I really want and expect out of life? What would really make me happy?

11. What is my hope for the future?

Ouch, they hit close to the bone, don’t they? 

How Intelligent People Can Become Stupid.

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 Blogging through Romans is one of the interesting projects I’ve embarked on. I love it, love Paul’s thinking. The Gospels are like a primary text. A child can understand them.


Romans is like a meta-text, literary criticism, analysis. 

I love thinking it through with Paul. 

 Romans 1:21

 21 For although they knew God,
 they neither glorified him as God 
nor gave thanks to him, 
but their thinking became futile
 and their foolish hearts were darkened. 
22Although they claimed to be wise, 
they became fools 


First things first.

If one neither honours God, nor gives thanks to him, one lives a life without taking the brilliant creator of life into account.

So one’s thinking lacks vital parts of the equation–the Creator, and the ultimate end of our existence. Leaving these vital elements out of the plot and equation of life–the creator, the preserver, the one who can transform our life, the ocean in which the sun of our life will set–will make our life not quite make sense

Think of a necklace–each bead perfect in itself, but they are a jumble, clutter, until strung together into a perfect satisfying pattern.

Paul tells us in Colossians that in Christ all things hang together. Without him, there is a hollowness in all things–beauty, people, art, sex, money, writing. 

With him, all the things we love and love doing and having join together into a beautiful, satisfying pattern.


Christ, and the Holy Spirit fill the hollowness at the heart of all things, and bind the beads of our lives into a beautiful necklace.


Or in Dante’s metaphor, Love binds the scattered leaves of the universe into a single book.


We are created for worship, created for intensity, created for rapture.
When we do not worship god, we will worship

money,
success
the praise of man
social acceptance
popularity
power
significance
work
sex
friendship
children
the success of one’s children
spouse
gardens
possessions
add your own addiction:)

None of these is a solid rock to build our lives on. All of these will lead to disappointment. None of these can love us back–with the exception of the people–and they cannot fill the longing of our hearts, which are created to be filled with infinity, the infinity of God. 


If we do not honour and thank God, our thinking becomes futile, and our hearts become darkened, and in effect we become fools, because we are investing our life, our energy and our hope in what ultimately does not matter.  

Building our lives on sand, not rock, not the rock.  

 

Too Busy for Happiness. The Saddest Parable Jesus Told.

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To celebrate life together, to be together in community, to simply enjoy the beauty of creation,the love of people, and the goodness of God—these seem faraway ideals.There seem to be a mountain of obstacles preventing people from being where their hearts want to be. It is so painful to watch and experience. The astonishing thing is that the battle for survival has become so “normal” that few people really believe it can be different.”
                                                                                                              Henri Nouwen, Seeds of Hope


This is the saddest parable Jesus ever told. We are invited to a banquet. Our soul will be fed with the richest of food. There will be steak, and sirloin, wine, and bread, and honey. And great joy. 


Do we have time for all this bliss?


Nope. Too busy with business and making money to spend time with someone who wants our presence at a banquet, and asks for nothing in return. 


And so the invitation, having been turned down by the obvious suspects is now extended to the to the “the bad as well as the good.” 
And they come. “And the wedding hall was filled with guests.”


However, to accept the hospitality while refusing to respect the host by wearing the wedding garment he has provided is as bad as rejecting it in the first place. That man is banished from the banquet. 


The invitation to enjoy God, and to feast on his spiritual riches is open to everyone. However, few bother to attempt to take God up on it, and fewer to respect and value the privilege as they should. 


Many are called; but few choose to be chosen.


Matthew 22


 1 Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: 2 “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.   4 “Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’

   5 “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. 6 The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.

   8 “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 9 So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ 10 So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.

   11 “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 12 He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.

   13 “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

   14 “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”