Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

How to Evade a Trap. A Short Guide to Wisdom  

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Pharisees with Jesus

 Jesus was a truly extraordinary human being. I keep learning from him as I read through the Gospel of Matthew.

 Sometimes I am put on the spot, and asked a question, with hostile intent, by people who do not wish me well, and who, I sense, will use my words against me–people who are wolves in Tolkein’s terms, or “a brood of vipers” in Jesus’s colourful phrase in Matthew 12.

 I often get stressed and answer truthfully, hoping innocence will be protection against evil. And it sometimes is–but sometimes evil proves stronger. In the short run, at least. Good Friday teaches us that.

* * *

  In the Gospels, repeatedly, people try to trap Jesus with his words. Try to make him incriminate himself by what he says. Try to make him say things they can use against him. Interestingly, they never succeeded. He never said a single thing they could use against him in a court of law. The charges which finally led to his execution were fabricated!

He deals with each trap they lay for him differently, but most often, he sidesteps them with the agility of a ballet-dancer.

He is asked “Teacher, we want to see a miraculous sign from you.” (Matt 12:38)

Me, I might have got stressed, and tried to heal someone to disarm them, or provided a miracle in my conceit! Or panicked, and denied my ability to do a miracle. The former response—which would have been a presumptuous showing off– would have been ignored by my enemies. The latter would have been quoted against me.

Jesus, however, refuses to show off, and provide them the sign they desire.

A valid response to hostile questioning: Refuse to answer any questions you do not wish to answer. Refuse to do things your enemies ask you to do which you yourself do not wish to. Slow down enough to know what you really want to do.

Jesus says, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” (Matthew 12 39-40).

He answers to their request for a sign so cryptically that they do not dare to question him further for fear of having their own ignorance exposed. And that was the end of that.

* * *

 I am sending you out as sheep among wolves. Therefore, be as wise as a serpent, and as innocent as a dove, Jesus says. (Matt. 10:16).

What protection might a lamb, surrounded by a pack of wolves, have?

Its own innocence and goodness. The wisdom Christ exhorts it to have. And the eyes of the shepherd that are upon it.

And what should one do if one finds oneself surrounded by wolves, whose words are disingenuous, and  cannot be trusted; who lay traps for your feet; who question you with hostile intent, and will use your words against you?

Be wise as a serpent. If possible, avoid them. Avoid getting into conversation with them. Be careful when it’s unavoidable. A mentor once told me that 90 percent of wisdom is saying as little as possible. Do so. Avoid exacerbating their envy by showing off!

When asked a point-blank question, remember that one can refuse to answer.

Or can give an opaque parallel answer like Jesus does. When asked to do a miracle, talk about Jonah and the belly of a whale, and people will be so befuddled by this that they will not press you further.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant,
Success in circuit lies,
Too bright for our infirm delight
The truth’s superb surprise;  (Emily Dickinson)

Listen to your intuition. When surrounded by those you have reason to believe are hostile, slow down. Be quick to listen, slow to speak. Turn on your supernatural radar. Get real quiet and listen to another voice too, the lover of your soul.

Answer slowly and deliberately and with wisdom. Words will be given you, Jesus promises. “When you are brought before synagogues, rulers and authorities, do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say, 12 for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say.” (Luke 12 11-12). “For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict,” (Luke 21:15).

Slow down enough to hear his words.

God Comes to Those Who Dare to be Different: Do Not Be Afraid

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Why not be totally turned to fire

And when God chose to become flesh and dwell among us, the angel wisely prefaces his glorious announcement, “You have found favour with God,” with “Do not be afraid.”

You, a “virgin,” will bear a child. Do not be afraid.

Oh, the looming scandal, what would people say?

Many might have politely rejected this “blessing,” but Mary did not baulk. She accepted the potential disgrace, the disapproval, the whispers. “I am the doulos, the servant of the Lord. Be it done to me, according to your word.”

I will not be afraid.

* * *

Potential scandal and disgrace: the price Joseph paid to live with God.

Mary, engaged, “showed.”

Joseph wanted to quietly break up, but the angel challenges him, “Do not afraid.” (Matt. 1:20).

“Your wife’s baby will come too early. She will be gossiped about. You will be gossiped about. But ‘he will save his people from their sins,’” (Matt: 1:22).

Do not be afraid.

* * *

Oh, wouldn’t we love to be grabbed by God, filled with his Spirit, to live seeing the whole earth and our whole lives filled with his glory?

To live seeing God with the eyes of faith, his joy bubbling up in our hearts.

To live in his presence, hearing his voice and brilliant guidance.

To live in the continual feast, which is worship.

* * *

Ah, guess what?  Our path into experiencing the glory and joy and presence and power of God will not differ from Mary, or Joseph or Moses (Ex 14:13) or Jeremiah (Jer 1:18).

It will come with a cost. There will be a price. And the same imperative: Do not be afraid.

* * *

“Woe to you when all men speak well of you,” Jesus says (Luke 6:26). Woe to the impressive, to you who dazzle, who have it all, do it all, are the cleverest, thinnest, richest, the best-organized, best housekeeper, best cook, highest-achiever, if what you have sacrificed for all this glory is anonymous, unrecognized, unpraised, soul-blessing, joy-giving, time-consuming communion with Him who chose the dirt and mess and downward mobility of the stable floor.

* * *

Christian, if your current life isn’t giving you joy and peace and the soul-filling presence of God, you must do things differently. You must live differently. You must make room for Him.

Do not be afraid.

When Christ, the King on the white horse, whose name is faithful and true, comes to us, as he did to Mary, prepare to be shaken up.

We may ask his help to be a little thinner, a littler richer, a bit more successful, a bit more organized, for help to get our kids as shiny as other people’s Christmas-letter kids.

To get our house and garden and car and wardrobe and grooming enviable and irreproachable so all men speak well of us.

* * *

But, odds are, he has a different agenda. These things aren’t really giving us joy, are they?

“Woe to you when all men praise you,” (Luke 6:26), Jesus said. He may help us get our acts together so all men praise us. He may not. What’s important is following where he leads, step by step.

Do not be afraid.

God, I suspect, is totally unimpressed by the American Dream permeating the world—“prosperity, success and upward social mobility achieved through hard work.”

Why? Because he can give, at the snap of his fingers, all these things the pagans run after (Matthew 6: 32-33).

* * *

 God’s dream for us is different. It does not involve the things we earn or achieve through spirit-numbing, joy-crushing, body-wearying, heart-atrophying hard work, but the things He wants to freely give.

Complete Joy (John 15:11)

Peace that the world cannot give (John 14:27)

Rest (Matthew 11: 28)

Our souls filled with a fountain of living waters. (John 4:13)

Light (John 8:12).

* * *

 Christ will never agree to be an Add-On, a Plug-In to help make a life foolishly overloaded to collapsing work a little bit better, so that we can squeeze in even more.

C. S. Lewis writes: “Christ says ‘Give me all of you! I don’t want so much of your time, so much of your talents and money, and so much of your work. I want you! All of you!

I have not come to torment or frustrate the natural man or woman, but to kill it!

 No half measures will do.

I don’t want to only prune a branch here and a branch there; rather I want the whole tree out!

 Hand it over to me, the whole outfit, all of your desires, all of your wants and wishes and dreams.

Turn them all over to me, give yourself to me and I will make of you a new self—in my image.

Give me yourself and in exchange I will give you Myself. My will, shall become your will. My heart, shall become your heart.” 

* * *

 This year, in baby steps, let’s labour for the food which endures to eternal life (John 6:27).

Let Christ be our pace-setter, and let us march to his drumbeats, no faster.

For only the champagne of his joy can fill our soul. The things of this world—we’ve tried them: there is no peace, no joy, no rest in them.

And perhaps we will be a little bit fatter, and our houses a little bit scruffier, and our gardens less perfect and we will not buy the new car, furniture, kitchen and clothes (or consume our life with shopping and earning and paying for them) and our kids will be put into fewer frazzling extra-curricular activities that they will—guaranteed!!—eventually drop. If we don’t drop before they do!

God willing, we will slow down the pace of our treadmill, one by one dropping the activities and time-and-life-sucking trivial imposed “duties” we most despise.

We will become ourselves, as star differs from star in splendour (1 Cor: 15:41).

We will slow down; we will not conform; we will dare to be different; we will slowly exchange the crazy of our lives for the King.

Do not be afraid. Revise your life until is as slow, holy, star-filled, peaceful and dreamy as your soul desires.

Do not be afraid. Why not be totally changed into fire?

 

In which Scripture is a Mountain, Not a Plateau, but It is All Treasure

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Picture  Michelangelo's David

The Greek Sculpture The Spear Bearer and Michelangelo’s David 

I read Scripture as a mountain with the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament building up to the revelation of Jesus Christ in the Gospels. Acts and the letters of Jesus’s disciples  then grapple with the seismic, big bang revelation of Jesus Christ.

And so our traditional way of reading Scripture, the traditional reading plan, which gives equal weight to every verse and chapter is, ironically, a bit lop-sided. You know…every genealogy, every law, every description of temple worship given equal weight with the Sermon on the Mount and the Upper Room discourse which contains the secrets of the universe.

* * *

However, we need a little bit of Jesus of the Gospels every day, or every week, because our eyes need His corrective vision. Without the continued brain- and heart-washing of the Gospels, we forget what He taught us about how to live.

And so in my reading of the Gospels, I come to Matthew 13, “every scribe who has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.”

* * *

Jesus calls the early revelations of God which culminated in Himself treasure.  And it is treasure because the shimmering brilliance of Jesus’ teaching emerges from it.

Jesus is steeped in the Old Testament and continually quotes it, resisting the temptations of Satan with quotations from Deuteronomy, thereby validating that book. Some of his most memorable sayings, which sound startlingly original are, in fact, quotations from the Old Testament. When he reduces the Law and the Prophets to two commands, he draws on Leviticus 19:18 for “Love your neighbour as yourself” and quotes Psalm 37:11, “the meek inherit the earth”  in the Beatitudes.

* * *

Trying to understand Jesus without understanding the Old Testament is like trying to make sense of Michelangelo’s David without knowing who David the Giant-Killer was, or without knowing how Greco-Roman art inspired artists in the Renaissance (or how the Greek sculpture, “The Spear Bearer,” inspired David.)

Or admiring Raphael’s “School of Athens” without knowing that he depicted Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, Diogenes, and that the surly fellow in boots in the foreground is Michelangelo.

Or reading T.S. Eliot’s beautiful allusive “The Waste Land,” without knowing the title of the long Fire Sermon section is taken from Buddha’s eponymous sermon of the same name in which he advises his followers to give up earthly passion,  or that To Carthage then I came/Burning, burning, burning, is a reference to St. Augustine’s Confessions, when he comes to Carthage, burning with lust. The poem beats upon our pulses, speaks to our ganglia without the scholarship, but knowing its mass of literary allusion only enriches the poem for us.

So of course, the Gospels will speak to one who loves Jesus but has not taken the time to study the Old Testament so as to set him, his quotations, allusions and references in their rich context.

But the Gospels speak more richly and fully when you approach them  with a mind and heart that loves Jesus, but is also steeped in the context of the Old Testament out of which He emerged, and when you understand the 18 Old Testament books which Jesus quoted, and when you understand the old thing to which He continually contrasts the new thing He was doing.

In which Christ Desires Mercy, not Sacrifice

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Walking through grainfields

Jesus was always getting himself into trouble with the Pharisees, the stern keepers of the law, for his common sense and practicality.

 When his disciples were hungry on the Sabbath, he let them glean. (Matthew 12 :1). When he saw a man with a shrivelled hand in the synagogue on Sunday, he healed him.

Furiously accused for doing what was unlawful on the Sabbath, he answers simply, “ If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

“I desire mercy not sacrifice,” God says. He would, wouldn’t he? He does not need our sacrifices, for the cattle on a thousand hills are his.

What he does covet is our hearts, because he loves us.

He wants our hearts to be soft and gentle, because that is what his heart is like.

I desire mercy, God says.

* * *

I am becoming increasingly aware that the real battleground is within. Follow Christ becomes a joy as we increasingly win  interior battles against grumpiness, against meanness, against unforgiveness, against revenge.

On the days when I have woken up too early and am tired, I am astonished at how swiftly my inner stream of thoughts can turn to negativity. I tell Roy, “I need to be alone a bit. I am feeling negative,” to ensure I do not sin, and do harm with my words.

And then, I have to consciously turn that stream of thoughts to praise and thanksgiving.

* * *

It’s October now, autumn in England, and the leaves are falling. But we have clematis still in bloom in our garden, three rose bushes, one yellow buddleia, butterfly bush, a lone cyclamen, and a stray hellebore.

Always beauty, always something to thank God for, though the days grow shorter, and the nights longer.

And if my negative stream of thoughts turn towards other people rather than towards my own failures and struggles, then, Holy Spirit within me, remind me that God desires mercy, not sacrifice. Help me think of other people mercifully, with the same mercy the Lord God Almighty shows me, his child.

The Beatitudes, mostly, are things we do, rather than things we are. There’s hope in that!

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The Beatitudes are the blazing heart of everything Jesus taught. Once you’ve got them, once you’re living them, then you’ve begun to  “get” Jesus and the way he thinks.

And I am only beginning to!

For the Beatitudes to travel the longest journey in the world, from the head to the heart, is a life-long endeavour, a matter of stumbling, and getting up again, and I am just learning. I am a disciple, learning cognitively, emotionally, and experientially.

* * *

Mercifully, however, the Beatitudes are not ontological statements of reality. It’s not blessed are the beautiful; blessed are the brilliant; blessed are the bronze-skinned, which you either are, or are not.

Instead, it is blessed are the meek; blessed are the merciful; blessed are the pure-hearted, and these are things we choose to be and become through a series of noble choices.

We become gentle by choosing gentleness, again and again.

We become merciful by choosing to be merciful, again and again.

We develop the purity of heart which helps us see God by repenting of our sin, again and again.

Tiny step by step, we inch towards promised land where the meek inherit the earth, and we are shown mercy, and we see God.

* * *

How practically do we enter the blessedness promised in the Beatitudes? I guess it’s behavioural modification. If we are not merciful, we behave as if we are merciful. If we are not meek, we behave as if we are meek.

Blessed are the merciful for they shall be shown mercy, Jesus says. Tempted not to leave the tip after harried service? Leave it anyway. Tempted to let rip on anonymous feedback. Be merciful. Store up credit, and God, the great mathematician, will ensure that you will have mercy in your time of need.

I shopped at Amazon for years before I ever thought of selling there, and, often, voluntarily removed bad feedback I’d impetuously left, thinking, “Blessed are the merciful.”

When we started our publishing business, with just 1 title, then 5, then, 10,  too few to outsource all customer service (as we now do, of course), I personally sold books on Amazon, and often had to email to get negatives or neutrals removed. My success rate was amazing—as if the Universe, or God remembered all the times I was merciful, realising that mom and pop in their back bedroom wouldn’t be as efficient as Amazon, so why rate them that way. The mercy came back to me.

The Beatitudes are true, objective statements of reality, whether we realise them or not.

 

 

 

In which Jesus Promises Rest to the Meek

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I like Jesus’ great invitation at the end of Matthew 11:“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

I like that fact that Jesus suggests we learn meekness by observing and studying him. So, obviously, meekness is not a natural character trait like being sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic or choleric, but a learned behaviour.

I have various mantras, what Gretchen Rubin calls “splendid truths.” (One of these, adopted from her, calms me down: “There is only love.”) I need to add one more: “I will learn how to be meek and humble of heart from Jesus.” Since, obviously, it does not come naturally!!

* * *

Why would one want to be humble of heart? Because pride is silly, narrow and self-centred. We are not focused on anything important, anything worth having, but merely on self, on how others perceive us, and treat us.

Why would one want to be meek? Because being gentle is the best way to be, rather than being proud and aggressive.

And besides, the meek inherit the earth: The value of meekness, even in regard to worldly property and success in life, is often exhibited in the Scriptures. It is also seen in common life that a meek, patient, mild man is the most prospered. An impatient and quarrelsome man raises up enemies; often loses property in lawsuits; spends his time in disputes and broils rather than in sober, honest industry; and is harassed, vexed, and unsuccessful in all that he does. (Barnes Notes on the Bible.)

* * *

So how does one learn to be meek? Practice. Practice meek practices.

So that is what I am training myself to do.

Let others have the last word. If someone puts you down, let them.

Overlook lots of things. Blow things away with the breath of kindness. When spoken to harshly, you don’t need to retort in kind.   Return a gentle answer or none at all when someone gets irrational through tiredness. This is particularly useful in family life: the blind eye and the deaf ear so that one can get on with one’s work.

Ignore negativity directed at you on social media as much as possible. Block repeat offenders.

Practice, practice, practice, one step after another, until all this becomes second nature!

* * *

Learn from Jesus how to be gentle and humble, and the prize is the rest we seek, as we work–as we sleep–as we relax–as we live.

Our souls are as rested when we work, or hang out at home, as they are after a week of beach and mountain walks, because we are choosing meekness which obviates conflict, and we are choosing humility, daily defining all our grand ambitions, and then placing them in his hands to grant–or not.

Living in the “Flow” of God’s River

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waterfall_davidson_river_lg

Whoever seeks to save their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. (Matt 10:39) NIV.
If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it. (Matt 10:39) New Living Translation. 

* * *

Time cannot be saved; it is a river. It flows, 24 hours a day, 168 hours a week. You cannot save it.

Use the hours well, make them shine, and when you cannot, release them without recrimination into the river of time. Already, the giver of good gifts is sending you more.

* * *

Strength cannot be saved. The more we spend it, the more we exercise, the more our strength grows. Are our bodies telling us something?

* * *

Ideas rust and atrophy when saved. But creativity blooms in the expending of it.

“One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes,” Annie Dillard writes in The Writing Life. 

* * *

 I reflect on these things, and squirm, since, for much of my life,  I have been exceedingly precious, careful, indeed stingy with time.

Donald Miller says in Blue Like Jazz, “I believe the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil, but rather have us wasting time.” I tend to believe him

And so I have been too careful with time, grabbing too much for reading and writing, instead of investing in friendships and activities which would perhaps have brought happiness or health or peace or growth, the rough edges of my character smoothed away.

And I used to burn out with metronomic frequency, growing too tired to read and write.

* * *

Money is the other thing people try to save.

I was relatively relaxed about money as a single woman. When I married and decided not to work for money (except for spells of teaching creative writing at William and Mary and the Loft at Minneapolis), I tried to be careful with money because of guilt over wasting money Roy had earned. And when I was preoccupied about saving and investing–and what a dreadful use of time all that was!!– money was not particularly plentiful.

However, I gradually began to see money as a river from God, some of it flowing to me, giving me the desires of my heart, and some of it flowing through my hands to other people. God was giving me that money to use, or spend, or give away.  This river is not to be dammed up and saved, just enjoyed; held lightly, not held on to–for there is plenty more where that came from.

Sometimes I “lose” money, make unwise decisions; sometimes, I am taken advantage of, and money flows through my hands to someone else. That is okay; it is the nature of the river.

When I relinquished my concern about finances to God and turned my attention to other things, they were no longer a particular concern. There seemed to “always be enough.”

* * *

Hmm. Would this work with time too?

“Wasting time?” My father used to ask me with the expression of greatest disapproval and severity (though most of the time, I wasn’t!), and I turned the same disgust on myself if I judged myself to have wasted time.

But I now see “wasted time” as seeds. It’s inert; it seems nothing good came out of it. But put into God’s hands, who knows what beauty may emerge from those seeds?

* * *

So my time challenge is two-fold. To see time as a sparkling river coming towards me, and seek to use it well, while being totally relaxed when things don’t work out as I hoped, and time, apparently, has been wasted.

More, to learn the habit of surrendering my day and its hours to God, giving them to him, asking him to bless them, and work in them. (I haven’t yet learnt this habit!).

* * *

And—here is the challenging part: deliberately “lose” some time, give some time away for the sake of Jesus.

How can I do this?

Now, because my domestic skills are meagre, and because my husband is practical, I do not do much in the way of cooking, shopping, laundry or housekeeping. We have a cleaner who also does some housekeeping. We have gardening help. And Roy who works from home, keeps it running efficiently.

I have often spent more hours serving my church, in leading Bible Studies and speaking, than in serving my family

But for the sake of Jesus, I am planning to help my family in a tiny specific way.

It probably won’t be noticed, except by Jesus for whose sake I am doing it, but it will bring more peace to my soul, and since Jesus says that he who loses his life for His sake will find it, it will be a counter-intuitive surprising way of “finding” time!

So be it. Amen!