First Thursday December 2023: The Key of David

Welcome to First Thursday.  A full year has passed since I began sharing with you the poems and aphorisms from my book, On Giving My Word.  We are in the season of Advent, the season of expectation.  Themes of Advent are well served by a reprise of Mary, the mother of our Lord, the God bearer, not as a devotion for the Queen of Heaven, but as the human maiden of Nazareth, whose humanity is linked to the humanity of the Christ.  For a long time, I have used a story that I invented which imagines the journey of Mary, heavy with child, to Bethlehem.  It relies on, to be sure, one’s imagination as we have from the Gospel of Luke, alone, two reports, that of an annunciation to Mary in Nazareth and of a birth of a child Bethlehem, which imply that journey of some seventy miles was made late in her pregnancy.  I shaped this journey into seven meditations corresponding to seven days of travel.  Each day has at its center one the seven “O” antiphons which were originally composed as antiphons for the Magnificat sung on the last seven days before Christmas.  Later they were collected and sung as the well-known Advent Carol, “O Come, O Come Emanuel.” Each of the seven verses turns on a name of the Messiah.

          The fourth name is “The Key of David.”  This name in found in the Book of Isaiah, "And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open" (Isaiah 22:22). It also occurs in the Book of Revelation (3:7), where the words of the glorified Christ are addressed to the Angel of the Church of Philadelphia: “These are the word of the Holy One, the True One, who has the key of David, who opens, and no one shall shut.  Who shuts and no one will open.”  The key is the symbol of authority, an authority that is passed from the messiah to the church according to the Gospel of Matthew, where it is associated with the authority to guard the inclusiveness of the church, forgiving sins. 

          In my imagined journey of Mary, the fourth day finds her and Joseph in the middle stretch of the Jordan Valley, between two dusty villages, Zaphon and Adam.  On that stretch was a fortress built by Herod, the Alexandrium. It stood atop a conical mountain, clearly not the work of nature and a rather obscene intrusion on the valley built by Herod’s engineers.  It remains to this day with its eerie effect.

          A patrol of Herodian soldiers has passed them.  This encounter raised the question of the legitimacy of their authority.  Instinctively, Mary wants to trust them, even as Joseph, instinctively, distrusts them.  In time, Mary and Joseph see a small group of merchants coming towards them.

Reading now from page 150:  “Sometime after the soldiers had passed them, they spotted a group that looked like merchants, traveling north toward them. As they drew near, it was clear that some of them were wounded. Joseph rushed ahead to meet them and quickly began to help them dress their wounds. The words between them and Joseph were cryptic, but Mary could tell that Joseph was understanding what they were saying with perfect clarity. A few words had told him what had happened. Mary slipped off the donkey and joined Joseph in helping the wounded. Slowly their story was sinking into her consciousness. The group had been stopped by the same Herodian soldiers who had passed them. Their answers to the soldiers’ questions, had not been satisfactory, so the soldiers had beaten some of them. The beatings were supposed to elicit the answers that the soldier wanted and had gone on for a considerable length of time, since the merchants had no answers to give that would satisfy the soldiers.

            Why were the soldiers so insistent and what had they wanted to know?  It seems that during the past week somewhere along this road between Beth Sham and The Alexandrium, a similar squad of Herodian soldiers had been ambushed by a group of Zealots.  One of the soldiers had been killed and several wounded. The way the group’s spokesperson had pursed his lips as he recounted the story, made it clear that the injury to the soldiers gave him a great deal of satisfaction.  It was clear to Mary that these merchants held these Herodian soldiers in great contempt. It was also clear that this news neither surprised her husband nor found from him any form of rebuttal.  She had, of course, overheard her husband arguing with the men of Nazareth to the effect that Herod could not be the true king of the Jews since he was an Idumaean.  Even if he was a convert to Judaism, he could not be its king because he was not of the house of David. She had thought that Joseph argued this out of fun or for pride in his own lineage.  Now she changed her mind.  Joseph seemed to possess a seriousness about the matter that she had up to now underestimated.  

            After about an hour, the merchants resumed their journey north, and they south. Mary could not get out of her head the conundrum that those who were in authority did not respect the people and in turn they were not respected by the people, her husband included. How could one be safe in such a world where true authority was missing?  How could one feel good about bringing a child into this world?

            A phrase entered Mary’s mind, which she remembered overhearing Joseph use in his arguments with the men in Nazareth.  He would speak of the “Key of David.”  It seemed to name a hope;  name a messiah whom God would send. This messiah would bring an authority that would respect the people because it understood that it was the task of a king to serve the people. In turn this authority would be respected by the people because they would know that their life needed to be under authority.  Obviously, no man held this “Key of David:” not the Herodians who would beat witnesses, not the Roman’s whose arbitrary reign was sending her on this arduous trip, not the priests of her own people who were more concerned about their share of the sacrifice than the prayers.  Not the self-appointed Pharisees who judged everyone to be beneath them.  With the sudden loss of her innocence, she found herself with no legitimate authority unto whom she could entrust herself. Was there nothing to do except wait?

            She struggled with the puzzle. If this authority which is to come belonged to God, it would have already been here.  How else could men have come to have formed an expectation about it, if it hadn’t been with them once in some form or other? If the eternal God who will be, also once was, then he had to be right now as well. Suddenly she surrendered to the authority which had no soldiers to enforce it, no priest to parse it, and no scribe to declare it corban. At the same time, she trusted her unborn child to the protection of that authority. Whatever soldiers did or failed to do, that authority would justify bringing her child into this world.

            With her hands lifting her heavy abdomen, she prayed: “O Come thou Key of David Come.” “O Come Thou Key of David, come and open wide our heavenly home; make safe the way that leads on high, and close the path of misery.”

          The question of authority is an issue in which we finds ourselves deeply conflicted. It is obvious in those places in our world that are at war, but in our social order as well.  There is a crisis in our policing which cuts both ways.  What authority do I have to ask someone to get out of a car?   What authority am I under, that makes me get out of car?  Where does this authority come from, or is just a question of power?  Our politics is equally conflicted.  What confers authority on an elected official?  What authority asks me to respect the acts of such an official?  Or does it come down to power?  Not to long ago, it seemed that judges had an authority which was more than simply a matter of power. This seems to get disproven daily as trials become contests over power, power appoint judges, power prolong trials and counter sue. 

          We might look at the challenge of our Advent, as summoning authority, which will distribute justice and peace across the world. We might pray: Come thou the Key of David, come. Katherine Tanner, a current Episcopal theologian has made the center of her theology a book called.  Christ the Key.  In she says “Christ is the key.  . . to what God is doing everywhere.  Christ clarifies and specifies the nature, aim, and trustworthiness of all God’s dealing with us because that is where those dealings with us come to ultimate fruition.”  

          That may sound evangelical because it is, but be aware that first impact of that call, is not on those out there, those others, but is on oneself, is putting oneself under the authority of the Christ, before it is an issue for anyone else. 

Watch for some Christmas specials and, of course, First Thursday in January, the fourth.

 

Br. Jerrold Thompson of the Priory of the Incarnation in Omaha sent the following comments after watching the our You Tube video A Brief Introduction to the Meaning of Katherine Tanner for  the Local Congregation.

We are most grateful of them and pleased that he agreed to share them with you.    Michael

I just watched your talk on Tanner and find it thought-provoking on two - well, really, three - levels. I have two degrees in English literature and language and have always been fascinated with language. So the discussion around first-level and second-level God talk is especially engaging. I've often thought, although in other terms, that parish priests live in that odd and (hopefully in our best moments) creative place of combining the two. I also think that many of the problems in American Christianity arise from a lack of respect for the two levels and combining them in a creative way. Your observation about average Christian people being engaged with sound theology not so long ago is spot on and is a very real loss to the quality of theological talk. 

I was also taken by your brief story about the monk who runs from the room during the talk about the transcendence of God. Both the immanence and the transcendence have to be held in a creative tension. It's one of the great gifts of the Christian faith from my perspective, although it's very much found in Judaism as well. Again, we get into trouble when we leave one to the side, or when we are not explicit about our emphasis of one over the other in a given context. This discussion also relates back to language, and language's ability to point us in the direction of God, even reveal God, and yet never capture the entirety of God. Which also relates deeply to the subject of prayer. Interesting how prayer and language are so deeply connected. 

And finally, your unanswered question at the end. How is Tanner specifically an Anglican theologian?  You know her way better than I. I'll be interested to hear what you think!

Watch on You Tube and add comments or questions.  

 

This is the new poetry referred to in First Thursday October and it would have fit nicely in the chapter Fragments of a Natural Narrative.  I rather thought with the publication of On Giving My Word I would be cured to writing poetry.  Alas it keeps coming.  The first is out of my childhood memories and the latter is from my interest in English Romanticism which I think is undervalued as a source for understanding Christianity.

 

Fireflies and Skippers

 

As children, my brother and I

were given rock collections and chemistry sets

before we were given Bibles.

With them we quietly competed with each other,                                                                                 

and together we marveled at summer’s fireflies in the empty lot,

at skippers who walked on the pellucid water of a Vermont brook,

and pondered if one might turn milkweed sap into rubber

and spin cottonwood down into silk.

When we did receive our Bibles, we read them

as part of the same continuing story that we had begun,

with little sense of discontinuity between the sources

and have kept them in our own way well into our old age

continuing to serve that little church that gave them. 

 

 

When Poets

 

When the poet Wordsworth

               declared that nature was the anchor of his soul,

he was quickly charged with blasphemy,

not so much against an Almighty God,

but, as against the purity of the idea.

That charge overlooked the fact that nature has an unseen door,

which opens on a landscape that is not open to eyesight,

but which imagination can explore with insight.

Through that door, threads of story out pour,

giving rise to the realm of ideas,

as though it, Almighty God entered in

and became man.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

When the poet Coleridge

saw sea snakes in the moonlight,

he saw what he could not see in the sunlight,

and frost that came at midnight wrote him a poem,

on the window of his Devon country home.

His sins appear to having been a denier,

of the greatest good for the greatest number

and of eating opium off in the land of Kublai Khan.

which overlooks that good is not a number,

and that nature is not simply a calculation,

but a continuing story.                                                                                                                    

 

When the poet Seamus Haeney

saw light in a raindrop

on a December day in county Wicklow,

despite the mutters in his head

of let down and erosion,

he said, “each drop recalls the diamond absolute.”

His sins appear to have been politic,

as in the time of Troubles, he was neither

an informer nor an internee, merely a writer.

which overlooks no one walks out of troubles                                                                         

which does not have a story that

gives others room to walk as well.

 

 

The Elder of Omaha: A Book ReviewI have just read Joseph Blenkinsopp’...

The Elder of Omaha:  A Book ReviewI have just read Joseph Blenkinsopp’...:  A Book Review I have just read Joseph Blenkinsopp’s A History of Prophecy in Israel , published in 1983 and revised and enlarged in 1996 as...

 A Book Review

I have just read Joseph Blenkinsopp’s A History of Prophecy in Israel, published in 1983 and revised and enlarged in 1996 as a means of updating my understand of state of Biblical scholarship.  In my early formation I was trained to read it through the eye of “form criticism,” notable Von Rad, Noth and Cross .  I was aware of the succeeding “redaction criticism” and I have had a positive attitude toward its intent, but never has the occasion to test its results.  My current project which consists of a critical reading of the Isaish Scholl, directed me to the work of Joseph Blenkinsopp.  Blenkinsopp is the author of the Anchor Bible volumes on Isaiah.  My first pass was with the help of Brevard S. Childs Isaiah in the Old Testament Library.  It occurred to me that before l launched this next read, I ought to look at Blenkinsopp’s survey of prophecy and it has proved more that worthwhile. In his introduction he notes that one hesitates to take on such a broad survey, close to a thousand years, rather than staying within the confines of one’s own specialty. But his dare has resulted in an import aid to the student of prophesy in Israel. In his course through almost 1,000 years, he shows a detailed mastery of the material.   What he argues is that there is a dynamic unity to prophesy in the life of Israel.  While it successively changes with the challenge Israel face, it continues to contribute to the life of Israel, even to its to latter day siblings, Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity.

I highly recommend this book and look forward and I am excited to think about what Blenkinsopp will read to my next read of the Isaiah Scroll.  

 First Thursday August; Out Through the Garden.  You can find some reflections on poems that about gardening in my life taken from On Giving My Word.  It includes a brief history of gardens from Eden to my back yard.  You can view this on my You Tube channel.  Here's the link:  https://youtu.be/ynoezlP6AHA

 

On a National Narrative.

This is a follow up to the Video “First Thursday in July:  Fragments of a National Narrative” available on You Tube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJW33k-WnjM&t=9s

The opinion was offered in that video that absence or brokenness of a national narrative in American life better explains the difficulty in motivation that appear to plague all but in a particular way younger people, the Z generation.  Blaming that on character faults seems to be a mistake. My take is that absence of national narrative provides with a better understanding of what we are experiencing and how that could be changed.  In a subsequent conversation prompted by the video, has lead to the following thoughts which might be useful in extending this discussion.

A national narrative in the best of times is a work in progress.  So, if someone my age looks back and speaks of the national narrative of his or her youth, they must be wary of nostalgia and fantasy.  Still, I am looking at the fifties in the US, there was a project shaping a narrative which provided me and my contemporaries with a sense that what we were about was meaningful and that the effort it took was worthwhile.  It did so in spite of internal contradictions and misinformation, which were by no means small, and maybe not so different as now.  The question is what sustained it then and what is failing it now in our present American life?

            I would suggest that there was a sub-narrative to carry it forward.  Here is where I get religious, the sub-narrative was the Biblical narrative.  The Abraham out of Ur of Chaldea, Moses out of Egypt, David out of the sheepfold into the kingdom and finally the one that begins “on the night in which he was betrayed.”

            This is the central thesis of my book, On Giving My Word.  That may appear to be a wild and unsubstantiated claim, but where else, I would ask, the does the narrative process begin?  It is often claimed that it began with the Greeks and the Romans.  But the Greek classics, the Iliad and Odessey, are about a return home, a closing the circle by means of a restoration of wht was before.  That is myth, not narrative.  The Romans on the verge of a new age, tettered and reimagined themselves as the new Ilium, see Virgil’s “Aeneid.”  Both Greece and Roman contributed substance to the West, they did not provide it with direction.  That happened when the narrative stream of Christianity passed through them. 

            It is a new question now, to ask if it can continue to do so in our present American life.  The link is suggested by the fact that decline in the belief in God coincides with the floundering American narrative.  The decline in belief is related to a rise in doctrine, whether liberal or conservative or dismissive.  So, a liberal Christianity and a Conservative Christian seem certain that they are opposites, but viewed from the outside they look pretty much alike!  As do I dare say, the atheist!  Doctrine has risen and fallen in the course of history as a replacement for narrative. 

             So, if I was in the pastorate today, I would say to Gen Z, help me. Gen X thought that they did not need the narrative.  They thought that being American was being self-reliant and pragmatic. 

            As has happened before in American life, they find themselves in the end caught it a static reality with nowhere to go.  If you are not to be caught in this quagmire, you need to find a narrative that clarifies from where we have come and illuminates the possibilities of where we might go.  The pattern of this narrative lies in a living Christianity, as opposed to a doctrinal Christianity, which we can, together, launch in the heart of American life.   

Footnote: "living Christianity" is in fact traditional Christianity, a doing it in order to understand it.