"The Jews Took Up Stones"

For Christians the Most Holy Theotokos entering the Temple forms an incommensurable icon: the eternal Holy of Holies where humankind becomes physically united to God in a once-for-all, incomparably sacred, material intimacy, which shall never be surpassed. Here is the Indwelling of Almighty God, which has awakened every fiber of her being to Divine fullness and the vastness of the cosmos (and beyond) compact into this gentle, delicate, pure, inviolate and perfectly obedient girl.

Do we not see her ascent up this forbidding staircase betokening the restoration of the first Holy of Holies ..... and something far more? For the Holy of Holies of the First Temple, far from being a bloodbath involving frantic animals, represented the apex of theosis, experienced by the High Priest, in perfect spiritual union with God.

I say "the First Holy of Holies in the First Temple." At least that is what the most recent research is pointing to. And I see that Met. Hilarion Alfeyev has included The Revelation of Jesus Christ by Margaret Barker in one of this bibliographies. This is scholarly study asserts the Book of Revelation to be about, in part, the restoration of this Holy of Holies as the apex of theosis.

Now consider this convergence of Divine grace with earthly brute-power: the gentle "Yes" to of an angel set beside imperial command of vanquishing emperor; fragrant purity and goodness consenting to Life itself set beside the stench of blood worship which court the culture of death; her Divine transparency set beside massive, seemingly immovable stones; a three-year-old life bestirring the gates of pristine Eden with its life of cooperation with God set beside a monument announcing imperial oppression darkening all who bow before it.

Consider the Titian painting of the Presentation posted with this reflection depicting a massive temple with its broad staircase upon which a tiny child ascends. The people surrounding her cling and nearly worship these enormous stones and pillars. In effect, they are chained to this mammoth tomb, which stinks of death. The blood of countless animals stain its stone altar. Yet her little, luminous form ascends these broad steps barely touching the ground in a lightness of being that belongs alone to the friends of God.

The adoration and devotion to these stones of oppression recall today the "Stockholm Syndrome," which is "the psychological condition of a victim who identifies with and empathizes with their captor or abuser and their goals" (Britannica). You see this all through the Ezra-Nehemiah tradition proclaiming the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great to be nearly a god. It certainly is the condition of the post-Exile Judeans who call their Babylonian captivity and disfigurement a "Second Exodus" declaring that all who had not gone through this journey cannot be called the people of God. (Cf. Hans Georg Wunch, "'Dismiss Foreign Wives!'" OTE 34/3 (2021): 873ff.)

But this is not new. We saw it among the Hebrews whom Moses led out of Egypt:

And we see it during Jesus' lifetime as the Pharisees and Sadducees engage in endless debate concerning the correct observance of what are ultimately Mesopotamian customs. Certainly, Jesus is clear that they have nothing at all to do with God:

They jealously guard commandments, even taking the life of the first Christian martyr on account of them:

To be precise, these are the "customs" that Ezra imported from Persian scripture into the so-called Books of Moses.

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What we have considered this morning is the historical level of the Presentation of the Theotokos, including its psychological and emotional dimensions. Let us now consider this scene in terms of allegory, for a cosmic drama is playing out before us whose cast includes whole nations and the Company of Heaven.

To the north we have a people who have been invaded and reconfigured by the Assyrian Empire, called the Kingdom of Israel. To the south we have a new people and a new religion, the Jews, reprogrammed by the Babylonian and then Persian Empires. Both northern and southern peoples share the same background of of enslavement to sensual Egypt — forgetting Abraham and the desert life of prayer, always seeking God. Indeed, they have forgotten God altogether.

But this is not remarkable. We might read the all the Sacred Scriptures as a continual forgetting of God dotted with isolated revolutions of remembrance and rehabilitation, mostly found in the prophets. The entire Book of Exodus is about the rehabilitation of God's people.

But today, with the footsteps of a little girl not much more than a toddler, God has remembered them — finally and for all time.

This brings us to the mind and soul of the the Nativity Fast. We live in expectation. We put a candle in our window, so to speak, awaiting His imminent arrival. We perceive Forerunners around us heralding His longed-for appearance. They do not practice Assyrian or Babylonian customs and religious rites. They are not distracted by their many ritual distinctions, restrictions, and responsibilities. Their eyes are on God alone and far from busying themselves with ritual books, they seek to empty themselves that they might be filled with the Presence of God.

At the level of peoples, we think of the Essenes, who come to the temple not to traffic in animals for ritual slaughter but rather to bring themselves and to lay before God a good conscience and a blameless life. mind conformed to virtue. John the Baptist (who might be very well have been an Essene) speaks the very words that the Son of God will declare: "Metanoeite!     Empty yourselves of unworthiness! Be transformed! Be conformed to the mind of God!"

Yes, this is the scene we find in the Levant of the first century. And we know it very well, for it is our own scene of the past hundred years. From the 1920s to the present, our culture has been remade after the image of "Babylon" (is that not the word that was used?) — first situated in New York and then moving to Hollywood. Babylon has dominated the American mind and imagination expressed in fashions, values, and manner of living after its myriad images. American culture has been reconfigured, and the aspirations of each life (for the most part) are Babylonian as the masses pore over celebrity news stories to learn more about the details that they must master, that they must imitate.

The Trappist monk Thomas Merton was sent to live with his grandparents at a young age as his father found that child-rearing interfered with his bohemian lifestyle. (His mother, you see, had died of cancer.) In this new household, he heard the names of two figures whom he never saw. Their names came up constantly. Obviously, they were figures who were venerated and respected. But who were they ..... this "Doug" and "Mary"? It would be months before he realized that they were Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, always mentioned in tones of deference. For they were the standard of excellence in the all things — idols to be followed in all life choices and opinions.

Do you think this odd? Then consult the headlines that dominate American life today. When I was a newspaper reporter more than fifty years ago, I soon perceived that newswriters tethered to the city desk were sickened by the idea that "society news" should be included in their paper. "This wasn't real journalism," they said. Today, it has become the main attraction, the reason people buy newspapers and news magazines. You cannot follow sports. You must follow the romantic vagaries of the players. Walk into any waiting room in America, and you will see it served up in big, glossy helpings: People magazine, Us magazine, every magazine. And our children have been completely remade after images from these magazines and movies and television.

Small wonder that they should look at themselves and feel that they have come up short compared to these larger-than-life images. Their normal, healthy bodies are deemed inadequate, even called "disfigured," to the point where seek surgical solutions, in many cases their parents arranging for these surgical solutions, so that they might become more Babylonian.

Yes, we do meet with young people who have nothing of Babylon about them. They do not take drugs. They do not have tatoos. They feel that their sexual bodies are holy, a sacred offering to be reserved for marriage. Generally, they have been home-schooled and are members of intact families, raised by mothers and fathers who love each other. And the main Figure that is reverenced, Who is spoken of in tones of deference, is also a Figure who might not be visible to them. His Name is Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

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In our lesson today, we meet two women: Martha and Mary of Bethany. They are (we learn elsewhere) siblings to Jesus' dear friend, Lazarus. They are not creatures of the hybrid Babylonian religion, Judah-ism, though their home is not far from Mt. Zion. But their lives are lived in the midst of prismatic multiculturalism. The Temple religion, as we have said, is a hybrid of Mesopotamian and ancient Hebrew elements. Yet, the Levant is a place of many Hebrew thoughtworlds. There is also the layer of Roman paganism, having elements in common with Judah-ism, such as blood sacrifice to a deity. The Roman Empire, to which Palestine is vassal, is co-extensive with the Seluecid, Hellenic, Persian, Babylonian, and Assyrian Empires preceding it. That is, the Levant is teeming with ideas and values and rituals and opinions and counter-opinions that suggest a busy, even fevered, lifeworld.

This is the theme of our lesson, whose primary meaning is obviously allegorical. We do not say that Martha is influenced by Judah-ism, but she is a figure who is so absorbed in busy-ness that she cannot see past it. Her life has become one chore after another. She wakes up each morning, and all she can see is a list. She cannot pause to see the forest for the trees. She cannot reflect on the main thing before her, which is the Presence of God ..... even in her own midst.

In this sense, Martha's busy-ness with things that do not matter, even as the Living God stands by, is analogous to the priest and the Levite who pass by a bleeding man to death because they do not want to become ritually unclean. At the end of the day, which is more important: pointless busy-ness or the things that God deems essential?

Surely, anyone can see that the ultimate point of everything we do is God. God is the Beginning and End of all. He is the purpose and meaning of our lives. Learning of God and following God and, at length, becoming united to God is the primary reason for everything that we do and think and say. But, in Martha's world, God must wait .... because she has things to do. Literally, God Who is Present, must wait.

But is this also not the case with most of us? The phone rings. The Caller ID says "God." But we can't take the call. We'll have to get back to Him later. We have other things to do just now. Oh, yes, we do want to be in relationship with God, but there will be time for that later when we're not so busy.

This was the decision that I had to make when God called me .... away from a life that was overflowing with responsibilities: at Bell Labs Research, at MIT, books to be written for Addison-Wesley, a salary to be earned ..... Shall I burn all this down? And the reply from God unmistakably was, "Yes, that it what I am asking of you."

Meantime, Martha's sister Mary has emptied herself completely. She has cleared the treshing floor (to borrow a sentence from St. John the Baptist). Her life receives only the Word of God. Her mind and heart are open. Her soul receives His healing and illuminating Word. And in this intimacy, in this wholeness, she is not very far from the Kingdom of Heaven.

No so many years earlier, a little girl had ascended the steps of a forbidding slaughterhouse — its altar routed with deep gutters for the free flow of animal blood, the horns of the altar hung with the carcasses of dead animals. The entire temple system revolved around these rituals, which had nothing to do with God, indeed, which proposed a blood-for-salvation exchange instead of the transformation of heart and mind, which God requires. (The little girl's Son, in full-blown rage some decades hence, would overturn turn this nauseating scene of blasphemy and insolence.)

But today amidst these petty and pointless rituals and amongst the many who are blinded by their busy-ness, the Zion Temple receives the true Holy of Holies. This Most Holy Sanctuary will have nothing to do with blood sacrifice, but rather the gentle self-offering and obedience to God's love. And from her most pure and chaste person will proceed the Incarnation of that Love. He will heal our busy minds, and He will receive our humbled spirits cleared of so much distraction.

"The Jews took up stones" to murder God, we read in St. John's Gospel (Jn 10:31). But this they had already done when they bowed to Babylon-Persia erecting a temple of massive stones attempting to bury the Living God beneath the weight of worldly empire (and the several, vast empires preceding it). Do you see what I am saying? God's revealed to Abraham a whole new lifeworld in the Levant, which was literally paved over by the Temple at Mt. Gerizim, ordered by the Assyrian Empire, by the Temple at Mt. Zion, ordered by the Babylonian-Persian Empire. The religion of the Patriarchs was to be erased.

The Zion Temple was to become the cultic and administrative center for the Persian Province of Yehud. The religion of Abraham was to be erased. The Scriptures were to be rewritten. And the new high point of religious life would be blood sacrifice For empire is the exaltation of the world. And blood-letting is its essential display of power.

You may lightly say that imperial power is nothing to you. What control does empire have over us? Well, if you wish to the test that questions, you inevitably find that the outcome is slaughter. Blood is the power on which empire is built.

Yet does God not forget even those lost in the mania of imperial deference and its busy-ness. So He sends nearly a toddler whose tender feet will tread its massive floors and steps. Her delicate frame encompasses a power far beyond any potentate: which is purity and obedience and the Word of God.

As for the stones? These always amount to nothing at all. Soon Her Son, wielding no weapon nor donning glittering armor, will destroy this massive edifice and raise it up in three days.

As He turns His face of love to the world (even to us) His Divine command is simple: empty yourself of unworthiness; fill yourself with the Word of God; and make God's ways your own. For this is the one thing that is needed, which shall not be taken from you.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.