Noli me tangere

Jennifer Green in the Ottowa Citizen researches "Noli me tangere" in John 20:17. She's done her homework!

Music for Holy Saturday from BBC Radio 3's Early Music Show, available for seven days. Playlist is as follows:-

Gesualdo: Plange quasi virgo (from Tenebrae Responsories for Holy Saturday)
The Tallis Scholars / Peter Phillips
Gimell CDGIM 015
Track 3

Palestrina: Quomodo obsuratum est aurum (from 3rd book of Lamentations for Holy Saturday)
The Choir of Westminster Cathedral
Martin Baker, Master of Music
Hyperion CDA67610
Track 8

Juan Esquivel de Barahona: O Vos omnes (A Capella Portuguesa)
Bernadette Nelson / Owen Rees directors
Hyperion CDA66867
Track 9

Morales: Incipit oratio Jeremiae prophetae (from Lamentations for Holy Saturday)
Doulce Memoire
Denis Raisin Dadre, director
Astree Naive E8878
Track 6

Victoria: Ecce quomodo moritur (from Tenebrae on Holy Saturday)
The Choir of Westminster Cathedral
David Hill, Master of Music
Hyperion CDA66304
Track 15

Alonso Lobo: Lamentations
The King's Singers
Signum Classics SIGCD 119
Track 6

From the Guardian:
The speaker of the US House of Representatives yesterday called on the international community to condemn China for its crushing of protests in Tibet, saying the crisis was a challenge to the "conscience of the world".

Pelosi said it was incumbent on "freedom-loving people throughout the world" to speak out against China's "oppression". If they did not, "we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world".

Here's her press release from March 8th on this topic.

Good Friday Liturgy: Daughters of Jerusalem

BBC Radio 4 presents: Good Friday Liturgy: Daughters of Jerusalem. The words of Carol Ann Duffy tell the story of the crucifixion from the perspective of the women who witnessed Christ's Passion. The music is striking. The narrative is told as if Mary Magdalene follows the passion sequence of events including the trial when she hears from Pilate's wife (whom she knows personally) her advice to her husband. An interlude with Veronica recalls the words of the Sermon on the Mount.

Incidentally, if you don't know the poetry of Carol Ann Duffy, winner of the T.S. Eliot prize for poetry in 2006, here's her poem, Prayer:

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child’s name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio’s prayer -

The Scotsman has a refreshing interview with Most Rev Dr Idris Jones, Primus of the Episcopal Church in Scotland:

Q: Today is Good Friday – what do you think the Easter story means to people today?

A: What I hope it would mean to people was that Christians can share with people a sense of hope, that it's possible to turn round even the most difficult situations and find a way of moving through to a good and positive outcome. I would hope that bit of the Christian message might communicate itself through Good Friday.

Q: What did you make of the (Roman Catholic] Bishop of Motherwell's comments last week about the "conspiracy" against the Church by gay campaigners, whom he described as the enemy?

A: That's a view that I do not subscribe to and, in my experience, I have seen no evidence that it is true at all.

Q: What about the fact we had such a high-profile individual making those statements? Is that negative for religion as a whole and how it is perceived?

A: I want to hedge my answer here because I think it must be the case that people have a right to speak from a religious conviction. So if somebody who is representing a particular faith feels they need to speak to a particular situation, they must have the right to do that. I think in this case it was the wrong situation to speak about and it was not the message the whole Christian community would wish to convey.

Q: Also in the press in the last few months was the Archbishop of Canterbury's comments on Sharia law: that it perhaps should be incorporated into UK law. What did you think of that?

A: As I understand it, what the Archbishop of Canterbury was saying was that, just as special provision is made for the recognition of family disputes being settled in Jewish courts, just as it's accepted that the Law Society and the medical profession have their own tribunals for disciplinary affairs – and this is seen as acceptable within the overarching law of the nation – some similar provision should be made to include those of the Muslim community. I don't think that's at all exceptional.

It's important if we're going to have an integrated community that all sections of the community feel they have been recognised and heard, and one way of doing that would be to see if it's possible to incorporate some of this special area of family decision-making within the overarching law of the land. But there can only be one law and that is the law of the land and that cannot be diluted or compromised in any way.

Larry Hurtado writes on the resurrection in Slate:-

Historically, then, how Christians have understood Jesus' "resurrection" says a lot about how they have understood themselves, whether they have a holistic view of the human person, whether they see bodily existence as trivial or crucial, and how they imagine full salvation to be manifested. Does salvation comprise a deliverance from the body into some sort of immediate and permanent postmortem bliss (which is actually much closer to popular Christian piety down the centuries), or does salvation require a new embodiment of some sort, a more robust reaffirmation of persons? This sort of question originally was integral to early Jewish and Christian belief in the resurrection. In all the varieties of early Christianity, and in all the various understandings of what his "resurrection" meant, Jesus was typically the model, the crucial paradigm for believers, what had happened to him seen as prototypical of what believers were to hope for themselves.

Simon Jenkins writes in today's Guardian:-

England's Sistine Chapel lies lost in the western reaches of Gloucestershire. It is smaller, to put it mildly, and older by 350 years. But what it lacks in grandeur it adds in serenity. I would exchange five minutes in the chancel of Kempley church for an hour in Rome. And I would have it to myself.

Here's the object of his interest.

Caravaggio's "The Taking of Christ" represents Jesus Christ being captured in the Garden of Gethsemane by soldiers who were led to him by one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot. (Commentary from the National Gallery of Art).

Caravaggio focuses on the culminating moment of Judas’ betrayal, as he grasps Christ and delivers his treacherous kiss. Christ accepts his fate with humility, his hands clasped in a gesture of faith, while the soldiers move in to capture him.



At the center of the composition, the first soldier’s cold shining armor contrasts with the vulnerability of the defenseless Christ. He offers no resistance, but gives in to his persecutors’ harsh and unjust treatment, his anguish conveyed by his furrowed brow and down-turned eyes. The image would have encouraged viewers to follow Christ’s example, to place forgiveness before revenge, and to engage in spiritual rather than physical combat.

Caravaggio presents the scene as if it were a frozen moment, to which the over-crowded composition and violent gestures contribute dramatic impact. This is further intensified by the strong lighting, which focuses attention on the expressions of the foreground figures. The contrasting faces of Jesus and Judas, both placed against the blood-red drapery in the background, imbue the painting with great psychological depth. Likewise, the terrorized expression and gesture of the fleeing man, perhaps another of Christ’s disciples, convey the emotional intensity of the moment. The man carrying the lantern at the extreme right, who looks inquisitively over the soldiers’ heads, has been interpreted as a self-portrait.

When I saw this picture in the National Gallery of Art in Dublin, I was so struck by the contrast between Christ as the object of others' actions and Christ as subject in, for example, Mark's portrait of Jesus. Caravaggio's Christ is now being forcefully grasped as he once grasped the hands of others to heal them, and was touched in turn by the woman who sought healing. It is as if those who now seize Christ seek to bend that healing power to their will. This is represented by the force of the four dark figures on the right.

Max McLean performing Mark's Gospel

Last night a group of us went to Max McLean's performance of (most of) Mark's Gospel using the NIV.

It is a powerful experience, to be sure. And there are lighter moments. Mr McLean creates a humorous portrait of the disciples' incomprehension particularly during the episodes of the feedings of the five and four thousands. This appealed to the audience of which I was a part. But since the two episodes of the healing of the blind in chapters 8 and 10 (the man healed partially and then fully and Bartimaeus--the latter being the last healing of the gospel) there is no pathos in the partially sighted disciples' incomprehension of Jesus' teaching about the suffering and death of the Son of Man.

Since Mr McLean omitted all of Mark 13 in his performance, we are presented with a non-apocalyptic Jesus. Jesus arrives in the temple, leaves it, then returns to predict its destruction in a single verse. There is no aside to the reader. Gone is the fig tree episode and its relation to the temple. Gone too are the parables of chapter 12 about the killing of the son of the vineyard owner and the widow's offering.

What remains is his interpretation of the cry from the cross in which, as Mr McLean explained to us at the end of the performance, Jesus takes upon himself the sins of the world that have been or ever will be committed. From this Jesus God turns away his face. Clearly, a human suffering Jesus in Gethsemane and on the cross is still the stumbling block it was for Peter and the disciples.

Is there any substitute for the Holy Land?

On balance, it is probably good news that Bible Park USA has assembled such a stellar cast of theologians. What gives me pause however is that these 10 academic theologians merely "guide the development of" the theme park. Here's the site itself (with no mention of said theologians).

The Coincidence of Purim and Good Friday

Something to think about this Holy Week is the coincidence of Purim and Good Friday.
From The Jewish Week News:

There are significant associations to be made between the two holidays, and more specifically between the deaths of Haman and Jesus.

Ancient Aramaic versions of the Esther story employ the term tzalab, “crucify,” to describe Haman’s demise. The first-century historian Josephus did as well. While Jews have traditionally ascribed his death to hanging with a noose, historians doubt that such methods of capital punishment were used during that period. In his Sistine Chapel interpretation of Haman’s death, Michelangelo emphasized the Christological parallels, depicting a crucifixion rather than a hanging.

For Jews of the Middle Ages, who often suffered under oppressive Christian rule, the parallels between Jesus and Haman were more subtle. While Jews never vilified Jesus himself, the way they vilified the genocidal Haman, Purim gave them the opportunity to channel their fears into an annual celebration of epic triumph over an eternal oppressor. The rabbis called that oppressor “Amalek,” noting Haman’s ancestry that is recounted in the book of Esther itself. It is noteworthy that Amalek is introduced in Genesis as the grandchild of Esau, whose Edomite line was linked by post-biblical sages to Rome and later, to Christendom.

No wonder fifth-century Byzantine rulers proscribed the Purim custom of burning Haman’s effigy, suspecting that Jews were trying to satirize Jesus’ death. Just as with the Passion Play, the Purim spiel has carried the potential to incite participants and observers alike toward an intensified hatred of the Other. The most infamous Passion Play is the Oberammergau Passion Play, called by Hitler in 1934 a “precious tool” in his war against the Jews.

It is not coincidental that vicious attacks against Jews have often taken place during the Christian Holy Week — and that one of the most heinous attacks by a Jew, the massacre of 29 Muslims at prayer by Baruch Goldstein in Hebron in 1994, took place on Purim. Goldstein attended Purim services just before setting out on his infamous mission, undoubtedly drinking up the Megillah’s message of vengeance. Esther is meant to be read as farce, but taken literally it is perhaps the bloodiest and most chauvinistic book of the entire Bible. The unholy alliance of Purim and Good Friday is an ugly tableau that appeals to the worst instincts of human nature, and that highlights the most dangerous traits embedded in both faith traditions.

These traits can be traced through liturgy, such as the Pope’s recent reintroduction of the Tridentine Latin Mass, which includes the prayer recited specifically on Good Friday “for the conversion of the Jews.” And in Jewish liturgy there is the original Alenu prayer, which chastises those who “bow to vanity and emptiness,” i.e., Christianity.

Despite it all, Jews and Christians continue to love these two holidays. That’s because, along with all the malice, Good Friday and Purim also reveal Judaism and Christianity at their most hopeful. The messianic themes so endemic to Easter are also on display in the Purim story.