Conflicts

Thursday, April 19, 2007 -- Week of 2 Easter
[Aphege of Canterbury, Martyr, 1012]

"Morning Reflections" is a brief thought about the scripture readings from the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer according to the practice found in the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church.

Morning Prayer begins on p. 80 of the Book of Common Prayer.
Evening Prayer begins on p. 117
An online resource for praying the Daily Office is found at www.missionstclare.com
Another form of the office from Phyllis Tickle's "Divine Hours" is available on our partner web site www.ExploreFaith.org at this location -- http://explorefaith.org/prayer/fixed/index.html

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (p. 958)
Psalms 18:1-20 (morning) 18:21-50 (evening)
Daniel 2:31-49
1 John 2:18-29
Luke 3:1-14

By the time of the writing or final editing of 1 John, the Christian community it addresses has long separated from the Jewish synagogue. They have given up hope of reconciling or of successfully convincing Jews that Jesus is the promised Messiah. The language of the Johannine school toward the Jews is among the most polemical of our New Testament.

But 1 John reveals a different kind of conflict within the Gentile Christian community. Docetism is the teaching that Jesus was not really human, but rather was a divine apparition who took on the appearance of a human in order to bring true knowledge of God -- Jesus the heavenly figure who speaks divine Wisdom. When combined with Gnostic sensitivities, this true knowledge gave believers the keys necessary to escape from the futility of material existence with its inevitable decay and to ascend into the realm of the eternal spirit. Spirit, good; matter bad.

1 John is written to a community that has insisted that Jesus is the man from heaven, the heavenly human. He is fully human -- flesh and blood. This belief has proved unacceptable to some and they have left. 1 John is a statement of encouragement for those who continue in the community, and a statement of polemic about those who have left. "Children, it is the last hour! As you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. ...They went out from us, but they did not belong to us." Some see 1 John as a response to other writings from the early church such as the Gospel of Thomas.

Docetism continues in some contemporary expressions of Christianity. When Jesus is described in colors of such full divinity that the notion that he might have human limitations seems scandalous, that way of proclaiming the gospel shares some docetic qualities.
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The Book of Daniel was composed between 167 and 164 BCE in the time of the occupation of the Seleucid Syrian ruler Antiochus IV who desecrated the Jerusalem Temple, prompting the revolt of Judas Maccabeaus. The story we read today is a legend set in the second year of the famous Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar (603 BCE).

The dream that Daniel interprets describes a Colossi -- a giant statue of a god or ruler. Such statues were symbols of Greek power throughout the Hellenistic world when this book was written. The five parts of the statue represent the succession of empires that would rule Judea between 600 and 164 BCE -- Babylon (gold), Media (silver), Persia (bronze), Greece (iron), and the mixed dynasties of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid rulers (iron and clay). Note the decreasing values of the materials, symbolizing an historical decline.

The stone which destroys this Colossi is "cut out, not by human hands." It is an act of God, and the stone "became a great mountain and filled the whole earth." "The God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed." Daniel articulates the dream of an independent Jewish state under God's rule. Such a vision motivated the Maccabean revolt. After the demise of the Maccabeas, this became one of the passages treasured as a prophecy of an eventual eschatological kingdom of God.

Lowell
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The Rev. Lowell Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, AR

The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
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