Alopen — June 21

Asia, Forerunners (33-1226)
The Christian missionary Alopen and the Emperor Taizong, China. The first recoreded Christian missionary to reach China, arriving in 635. Educational card, late 19th or early 20th century.

Bible connection

“I see clearly now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him.” — The Apostle Peter tells the Gentile Roman centurion Cornelius in Acts 10: 34-35

“Stele to the Propagation in China of the Luminous Religion of Daqin.” Daqin was what the Chinese called the Roman Empire or Syria in particular.

All about Alopen (c. 635)

Above is The Nestorian Stele on its Tortoise Pedestal (added after it was found), in Beilin Museum, Xi’an, China. The monument is a stone slab erected in 781 AD during the Tang dynasty (618-907) documenting about 150 years of Christian history in China. The writing is in Chinese and Syriac. The stele was buried in 845, probably during religious persecution, and unearthed in the late Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644) around1623.

Emperor Taizong (or Tai-tsung) of Tang first heard about Jesus Christ from a Persian monk, A-lo-pen (his Chinese name — Chinese: 阿罗本 pinyin: Āluóběn), who walked all the way to the capital of China (today’s Xi’an) to bring the gospel to the Chinese. He was probably sent by Patriarch Ishoyahb II of Baghdad, who also sent missionaries to Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and India. Most likely, Alopen had been ordained a bishop because he was able to appoint men to pastor the churches he founded. What little we know about his arrival in China and the history of the work that followed is recorded on the stele.

In 635 Alopen stood before Emperor Taizong and presented him with a New Testament. He is the first missionary we know of who travelled the Silk Road all the way to China.

The stele says:

In the time of the accomplished Emperor Tai-tsung, the illustrious and magnificent founder of the dynasty, among the enlightened and holy men who arrived was the most-virtuous Olopun, from the country of Syria…

Observing the azure clouds, he bore the true sacred books; beholding the direction  of the winds, he braved difficulties and dangers. In the year of our Lord 635 he arrived at Chang-an; the Emperor sent his Prime Minister, Duke Fang Hiuen-ling; who, carrying the official staff to the west border, conducted his guest into the interior; the sacred books were translated in the imperial library, the sovereign investigated the subject in his private apartments; when becoming deeply impressed with the rectitude and truth of the religion, he gave special orders for its dissemination.

In the seventh month of 638 the following imperial proclamation was issued:

Right principles have no invariable name, holy men have no invariable station; instruction is established in accordance with the locality, with the object of benefiting the people at large. The greatly virtuous Olopun, of the kingdom of Syria, has brought his sacred books and images from that distant part, and has presented them at our chief capital. Having examined the principles of this religion, we find them to be purely excellent and natural; investigating its originating source, we find it has taken its rise from the establishment of important truths; its ritual is free from perplexing expressions, its principles will survive when the framework is forgot; it is beneficial to all creatures; it is advantageous to mankind. Let it be published throughout the Empire, and let the proper authority build a Syrian church in the capital in the I-ning May, which shall be governed by twenty-one priests.

The “Nestorian” church

Alopen was of “the Church of the East.” The Syrian church forged a different identity from the Eurocentric church of the Roman Empire. It was called the “Nestorian” Chruch by the Roman Church. So the Christians who went to China were Nestorians — at least by Roman Catholic definition.

Nestorianism was named after the Christian theologian Nestorius (386–450), Patriarch of Constantinople from 428 to 431. Nestorius was rebuked by the Councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451) for his argument about the nature of Jesus as human and divine. His main contention was that Mary should not be called Theotokos (Mother of God), since that undermines the true human nature of Jesus. He argued she should be called Mother of Christ, which he considered more orthodox in that Mary bore a human in whom God dwelled as in a temple. The Councils both affirmed that Jesus, both God and human was born by Mary and his dual natures are inseparable.

They said the natures were inseparable as in “hypostatic union” (from the Greek: ὑπόστασις/hypóstasis, translated “person, subsistence”). This is the technical term in00 Christian theology that won the Christology battle to describe the union of Christ’s humanity and divinity. His nature is one hypostasis, or individual personhood. The views of Nestorius were a fine point of understanding hypostasis, not an assertion of exclusive natures in one person. It was not his intent to elevate the human nature. But the Councils decided otherwise. He said: The Word, which is eternal, and the Flesh, which is not, came together in a hypostatic union, “Jesus Christ.” Jesus is both fully human and fully God, of two ousia (essences) but of one prosopon (person).

Elements of the break-off church did develop theology that resembled the thinking the Councils condemned. A brief definition of Nestorian Christology could be: “Jesus Christ, who is not identical with the Son but personally united with the Son, who lives in him, is one hypostasis and one nature: human.”(Wiki).  Both Nestorianism and Monophysitism (which says the Human nature of Jesus was subsumed by the divine) were condemned as heretical at the Council of Chalcedon.

Nestorius developed his Christological views as an attempt to understand and explain rationally the incarnation of the divine Logos, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, as the man Jesus. He had studied at the School of Antioch where his mentor had been Theodore of Mopsuestia. Theodore and other Antioch theologians had long taught a literalist interpretation of the Bible and stressed the distinctiveness of the human and divine natures of Jesus. Nestorius took his Antiochene leanings with him when he was appointed Patriarch of Constantinople by Byzantine emperor Theodosius II in 428.

Nestorious’ role as Patriarch was taken away and he returned to his monastery. His followers, however, applied his name to an Eastern branch of the Christian family tree. The Church of the East first blossomed in Edessa (now Urfa, Turkey) and in the well-known theological school of Nisibis (today’s Nusaybin, Turkey), where the famous poet Ephrem served as deacon. It continued to thrive in what is now eastern Turkey and Iraq.

The Church of the East is often known as the Nestorian Church, even though its connections with Nestorius are tenuous at best. The name is probably due to the fact that this church refused to recognize the 431 Council of Ephesus where Nestorius was condemned for his views on the two natures of Christ. For the most part, however, the reason for their refusal was probably more cultural rather than theological. It was a way to assert the church’s independence from the Byzantine Empire, being part of the upstart Sasanian Empire. While it’s true that Nestorianism spread to the eastern regions, many scholars agree that defining the Church of the East as Nestorian is unfair.

The official language of the Church of the East was Syriac (a form of Aramaic), one of the first languages in which the Scriptures were translated. By the eighth century, this church had spread over much of Asia and Arabia, becoming the most widespread churches in the world.

More

A reading of the Stele:

Translation of Nestorian Stele [link]

The early Chinese church is further revealed in the Jesus Sutras, discovered in 1900 in the Dunhuang oasis on the Silk Road [link]. The Jingjiao Documents, also known as the Nestorian Documents or the Jesus Sutras, are a collection of Chinese language texts connected with the 7th century mission of Alopen, and the 8th century monk Adam. The manuscripts date from between 635, the year of Alopen’s arrival in China to around 1000, when the cave at Mogao near Dunhuang in which the documents were discovered was sealed. By 2011, four of the manuscripts were known to be in a private collection in Japan, while one was in Paris. Their language and content reflect varying levels of interaction with Chinese culture, including use of Buddhist and Taoist  terminology.

The day Alopen died is unknown. This collection uses official saints days or death days to honor each member of our cloud of witnesses. We’ve placed Alopen’s day on June 21 to reflect the summer of love between China and the missionaries from Syria.

What do we do with this?

This history of the church is commonly unknown in the United States, mainly because the church and the nation see through a Eurocentric lens. The churches of the Sasanian Empire (Persia) rejected that lens in the 400’s. In welcoming their history, we become part of the true, transhistorical, transnational Body of Christ.

Emperor Taizong was remarkably open. Alopen and his companions were amazingly brave and bold. Whoever made the stele was very skilled and eloquent. The historians who have complied the mysteries of the past and the scholars who keep presenting them are honorable. The whole story of this missionary is full of brilliant, faithful people. Let’s celebrate them and appreciate the gifts each of us brings to the present story of Jesus, too.

Vernard Eller — June 18

North America, This century (1937-2025)

Bible connection

Read John 10:14-18

I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.

All about Vernard Eller (1927-2007)

Vernard Eller was an Anabaptist scholar, author, and teacher during some of the most trying eras for peacemakers and simplicity practitioners—the latter half of the 20th Century. He was part of the Church of the Brethren (“cousins” to the Brethren in Christ). Most of his work was with the West Coast part of that family. He taught for 34 years at the denomination’s college in La Verne, CA.

His most famous works are The Mad Morality and Christian Anarchy: Jesus’ Primacy Over the Powers. He was known as an effective and practical interpreter of radicals like Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Barth, and Jacques Ellul. Eller was an open critic of materialism and nationalism in the Church as well as a vocal advocate for simplicity, reducing possessions, radical sharing of wealth, and nonviolent conflict resolution.

In a 1980 issue of Messenger magazine Eller said:

“The primary thrust of my life has been to try to bring into focus four different elements not often seen as even being compatible: a strong Christian commitment; solid thought and scholarship; clear and powerful communication; and true wit and humor.”

From the intro from The Outward Bound: Caravaning as the Style of the Church

“To put the matter simply the problem with today’s congregations is that they are usually far more concerned to ‘be’ somewhere than to ‘get’ somewhere; to establish and consolidate a secure position, rather than to push on toward a goal.” But according to the New Testament, stability and security are precisely not what God intended for the church. Instead, Eller believes, the church should be a do-it-yourself, de-institutionalized, de-professionalized people in a caravan – a community of the outward bound. [video gives excerpts]

Eller’s book, The Simple Life; the Christian Stance Toward Possessions(1973), was counterpoint and companion of Ron Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger (1978). [video about it]

More

The MAD Morality: An Expose [link]

A short article “The Lord’s Supper is Not a Sacrament” [link]

House Church Central’s Vernard Eller Collection. 

Wikipedia article for Christian Anarchism [link]

Christianity Today’s obituary [link]

What do we do with this?

Read all of Professor Eller’s books!

Much of what Eller was pioneering for our age we have have summed up in the word “alternativity.” We are not only opposed to the misguided attachments of the church’s past, we are resisting the “mad” morality of the new world order. Resistance is not enough, of course, we want restoration.

It takes some thinking to be a Jesus follower! Take one aspect of this post and write a paragraph about it in your journal. Title it: “The gift Vernard Eller gave me.” Make sure to add how you expect to use the gift.

Ephrem the Syrian — June 10

Asia, Forerunners (33-1226),
Mosaic in Nea Moni of Chios (11th century)

Bible connection

How sweet are your words to my taste,
    sweeter than honey to my mouth!
Through your precepts I get understanding;
    therefore I hate every false way.
Your word is a lamp to my feet
    and a light to my path. — Psalm 119:103-105

All about Ephrem the Syrian (c. 306-373)

Ephrem (later differentiated by “the Syrian”) was born to poor farmers in Nisibis (now in south-central Turkey). Later hagiographers filled in what was not recorded about his youth. They said his Christian parents raised him for piety, but from childhood he was known for his quick temper and impetuous character. He often had fights, acted thoughtlessly, and doubted God. Once, he was unjustly accused of stealing a sheep and was thrown into prison. He heard a voice in a dream calling him to repent and correct his life. After this, he was acquitted of the charges and set free.

Not much later, the young Ephrem ran off to the mountains to learn from the hermits. Some dispute that he ever actually became a monk. Ascetic Christian discipleship was introduced to his area by a disciple of Anthony (the Great), the Egyptian desert dweller. He became the disciple of James of Nisibis, a noted ascetic, preacher of Christianity and denouncer of Arians. Under his direction Ephrem was trained in monastic virtues. Soon his talents were recognized and he was assigned to preach sermons and teach children. James took Ephrem with him to the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in 325. Ephrem led the church in Nisbis with James for fourteen years, until the bishop’s death in 338.

Ephrem lived during a time of enormous political and religious upheaval. Traditional beliefs and values were under attack from every side. Society was coming apart at the seams, and the leaders did not seem to care. All that mattered was winning the latest high-profile, public debate.  Ephrem did not mince words: “God’s flock is starving; it has been left to graze on fields of words.” Religion and politics had become hopelessly entangled, and the result was toxic.

The church was torn between two rival factions. On one side, a new breed of Christian philosophers reduced God to a concept—“an idea.” On the other, the rigidly pious spiritualized God — kept him safely in heaven, far from the nastiness of everyday life. As Ephrem saw it, the remedy for both groups was the same—“a return to the simple words of the Apostles.” For him, God was not a monarch ruling from a distant throne; He was a person revealed in his Son. “Jesus is the Bridge,” Ephrem taught, “who leads us back to the source of our life.”

Ephrem was a poet and a teacher who  taught like no one else. Educated people of his day wrote and spoke Greek; they went to school in places like Antioch and Athens. Ephrem wrote exclusively in Syriac and never left his native land. In place of human credentials, he prayed to be filled with the Spirit of God.

People who heard Ephrem speak nick-named him the “Harp of the Holy Spirit.” Today he is best remembered as a composer of hymns, over four hundred are still known. The lyrics of his songs helped to defend the faith against false doctrine, teach about various aspects of Christian belief, and express worship. His glorious “Hymn to the Light” is an example, with its words of hope in the coming kingdom (see below).

Ephrem combined contemplation with a ceaseless study of the various documents soon to become the New Testament, as well as the Tanakh. He described opening the Bible as a homecoming: “The words ran out to meet me. They flung their arms around me, took me by the hand, and led me in.” People began to come to him for counsel. He eventually wrote the first Syriac commentary on the Pentateuch (i.e. “Five Books”) of Moses. His works were read publicly in certain churches after the Holy Scripture, as Saint Jerome tells us.

After the capture of Nisibis by the Sassanid Persians in 363, Ephrem went to a monastery near the city of Edessa (now Urfa in Turkey). There he met many ascetics, some living alone in caves. He became especially close Julian, who was of one mind with him.

Near the end of his life Ephrem went to Egypt to see the work of prayer among the first monks. On his return journey he visited at Caesarea in Cappadocia with Basil (the Great), who wanted to ordain him a priest, but he considered himself unworthy. At the insistence of Basil, he consented only to be ordained as a deacon, in which rank he remained until his death. Later, Basil invited Ephrem to become a bishop, but he feigned madness in order to avoid the assignment.

After his return to his own Edessa wilderness, Ephrem hoped to spend the rest of his life in solitude, but the inhabitants of Edessa were suffering from a devastating famine. He persuaded the wealthy to aid those in need. He raised funds from the church to build a house for the poor and sick. He died serving others; in 373, having caught the plague while ministering to the sick.

Quotes

  • If the Son of God is within you, then His Kingdom is also within you. Thus, the Kingdom of God is within you, a sinner. Enter into yourself, search diligently and without toil you shall find it. Outside of you is death, and the door to it is sin. Enter into yourself, dwell within your heart, for God is there.
  • Our Lord spoke gently to teach his followers the power of gentle words.
  • Jesus is  the Medicine of Life.
  • We wear ourselves out hording power and working for personal advancement. It only adds to our insecurity and makes us unhappy. The Lord taught us in the Gospel that creation has blessings enough for everyone. He said, ‘Look at the birds of the air and the lilies of the field.” When will we look?
  • The things our Lord wants to teach us are simple, but they’re hard…. This should tell us how well our Lord knew human nature.

More

Harp of the Holy Spirit: The Life of Saint Ephrem the Syrian by Trisagion Films:

Hymn to the Light

The Light of the just and joy of the upright is Christ Jesus our Lord.
Begotten of the Father, He manifested himself to us.
He came to rescue us from darkness and to fill us with the radiance of His light.
Day is dawning upon us; the power of darkness is fading away.

From the true Light there arises for us the light which illumines our darkened eyes.
His glory shines upon the world and enlightens the very depths of the abyss.
Death is annihilated, night has vanished, and the gates of Sheol are broken.
Creatures lying in darkness from ancient times are clothed in light.
The dead arise from the dust and sing because they have a Savior.
He brings salvation and grants us life. He ascends to his Father on high.
He will return in glorious splendor and shed His light on those gazing upon Him.

Our King comes in majestic glory.

Let us light our lamps and go forth to meet Him.
Let us find our joy in Him, for He has found joy in us.
He will indeed rejoice us with His marvelous light.

Let us glorify the majesty of the Son and give thanks to the almighty Father
Who, in an outpouring of love, sent Him to us, to fill us with hope and salvation.
When He manifests Himself, the saints awaiting Him in weariness and sorrow,
will go forth to meet Him with lighted lamps.

The angels and guardians of heaven will rejoice
in the glory of the just and upright people of earth;
Together crowned with victory,
they will sing hymns and psalms.

Stand up then and be ready!
Give thanks to our King and Savior,
Who will come in great glory to gladden us
with His marvelous light in His kingdom.

Put to music in Arabic:

Hymn of Repentance by St Ephrem the Syrian (in Aramaic) [Link]

A Song of Ephrem the Syrian — Church of England Hymnal. Common Worship: Daily Prayer:

1    Behold: Fire and Spirit in the womb that bore you:  ♦
Behold: Fire and Spirit in the river where you were baptized.
2    Fire and Spirit in our baptism:  ♦
In the Bread and the Cup, Fire and Holy Spirit.
3    In your Bread is hidden a Spirit not to be eaten,  ♦
In your Wine dwells a Fire not to be drunk.
4    Spirit in your Bread, Fire in your Wine,  ♦
A wonder set apart, yet received by our lips.
5    How wonderful your footsteps, walking on the waters!  ♦
You subdued the great sea beneath your feet.
6    Yet to a little stream you subjected your head,  ♦
Bending down to be baptized in it.
7    The stream was like John who performed the baptism in it,  ♦
In their smallness each an image of the other.
8    To the stream so little, to the servant so weak,  ♦
The Lord of them both subjected himself.

Ephrem the Syrian, Nineteen Hymns on the Nativity of Christ in the Flesh  from the Catholic Library

Ephrem’s Day is celebrated on several dates. We chose to go with the U.S. Episcopalians.

What do we do with this?

Many Eastern Christians (and those of us who have been influenced by their traditions) recite the Prayer of St. Ephrem multiple times each day of Lent. There are three verses, each of which is accompanied by the Sign of the Cross and a prostration, in which the person praying kneels down on both knees and touches his or her head to the floor.

The Prayer of St. Ephrem is a prayer of petition, asking God to curb the desires of our soul that prevent us from humbling ourself before him. During Holy Week especially, as our spiritual enemies try to divide us from one another when we should all be walking together on the Way of the Cross, this prayer is a powerful reminder that true humility is something that we cannot gain on our own. We must ask God to grant it to us as a gift.

This is one of many translations of the Prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian:

O Lord and Master of my life, Keep from me the spirit of indifference and discouragement, Lust of power and idle chatter. [Sign of the Cross/prostration]

Instead, grant me the spirit of wholeness of being, Humblemindedness, patience, and love. [Sign of the Cross/prostration]

O Lord and King, Grant me the grace to be aware of my sins and not to judge my brother or sister, For you are blessed always, now and ever, and forever. Amen.” [Sign of the Cross/prostration]

Columba — June 9

Europe, Forerunners (33-1226)

Bible connection

Praise the Lord from the earth,
    you great sea creatures and all ocean depths,
lightning and hail, snow and clouds,
    stormy winds that do his bidding,
you mountains and all hills,
    fruit trees and all cedars,
wild animals and all cattle,
    small creatures and flying birds,
kings of the earth and all nations,
    you princes and all rulers on earth,
young men and women,
    old men and children.

Let them praise the name of the Lord,
    for his name alone is exalted;
    his splendor is above the earth and the heavens. — Psalm 148:7-13

All about Columba (521-597)

Columba (also Colmcille) still appeals to our imaginations almost fifteen hundred years after his death. He is credited with bringing Christianity to Scotland. He was not only a great leader, he had a big imagination that resulted in an outbreak of Celtic art we still admire. He also had a big voice and might have sang his own version of today’s psalm, since the Celtic church had a deep respect of God’s presence in creation and Columba, no doubt, met the Lord on his many daring sea voyages and missionary journeys.

He was born in Ireland, on December 7, 521 A.D. to Fedhlimidh and Eithne in Donegal (Northern Ireland). He was of “royal blood,” and might have become High King of Ireland had he not devoted his life to the church.

As a young man, Columba joined the monastery at Moville, and was ordained a deacon by the famous and influential Finnian. After studying with a bard called Gemman, Columba was ordained a priest, and then became bishop in Clonfad. Columba entered the monastery of Mobhi Clarainech and trained with the others who became “the twelve apostles of Ireland.” When disease forced the disbanding of that monastery, Columba went north and founded the church of Derry.

Tradition has it that after founding several other monasteries, Columba copied Finnian’s psalter (or was it a precious copy of the Latin Vulgate? — 6th century history was not fastidiously collected). He did this without the permission of Finnian, and thus devalued the book and broke with common decency. When Finnian took the matter to High King Dermott for judgment, Dermott judged in favor of Finnian, stating “to every cow its calf; to every book its copy” (the first copyright law!). Columba refused to hand over the copy, claiming that his converts deserved the scripture. King Dermott forced the issue militarily. Columba’s family and clan defeated Dermott at the battle of Cooldrevny in 561.

Tradition further holds that Molaisi of Devenish, Columba’s spiritual father, ordered Columba to bring the same number of souls to Christ that he had caused to die as penance.

For his theft and the deaths it caused, a penitent Columba exiled himself from Ireland. He settled at the first place where his homeland could no longer be seen across the sea. With twelve companions he started a new life, founding a monastery on the island of Iona in the year 563. They lived as Celtic monks in a community of separate cells. But Columba and his companions combined their contemplative life with extraordinary missionary activity.

Among his many accomplishments, Columba was a splendid sailor. He sailed among the islands of Scotland and traveled deep inland, making converts and founding churches. In Ireland, it is said, he had already founded a hundred churches. In Scotland he is credited with converting the Picts, including a journey to witness to the King during which he thwarted the Loch Ness monster (see more below).

Columba and the Loch Ness monster, found in British Library

Of all the Celtic saints in Scotland, Columba’s life is the best documented, because manuscripts of the Life of Columba, written by Adamnan, one of his early successors as abbot of Iona, have survived.

Columba was a poet as well as a man of action. Some of his poems in both Latin and Gaelic have come down to us, and they reveal him to be very sensitive to the beauty of his surroundings, as well as, in Adamnan’s phrase, “gladdened in his inmost heart by the joy of the Holy Spirit.”

He died on June 9 in the year 597.

More

Rod’s Columba the Creative Sufferer [link]

Dramatic video about Columba on Iona [link]

Columba (and others) and the Book of Kells [Part 1 link] [Part 2 link]

What do we do with this?

Columba might have been king if he had not been serious about Jesus. He might have been a powerful church man in Ireland if he hadn’t put himself on the wrong side of the law and started a war!

Maybe you wish you had never followed Jesus. Maybe you wish you had not done the wrong things you did. Maybe Jesus can use you anyway, starting on whatever little island you find yourself today, despite the desires and enemies that threaten to dominate your life. Consider what would happen if your future were in God’s hands (since it is).

Pentecost — June 8, 2025

Holy Days

Image result for pentecost

Bible connection

All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers. — Acts 1:14

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. — Acts 2:1-4

All about Pentecost

Pentecost Sunday is a commemoration and celebration of the receiving of the Holy Spirit by the early church. It is the birthday of the church.

John the Baptist prophesied that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire (Matthew 3:11). Jesus confirmed this prophecy with the promise of the Holy Spirit to the disciples in John 14:26.

Jesus showed Himself to his followers after His death on the cross and His resurrection, giving convincing proofs that He was alive. During this period, he told the disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the Father’s gift of the Holy Spirit, from whom they would experience His abiding presence and receive power to be His witnesses to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:3-8).

After Jesus’ ascension, the disciples returned to Jerusalem and joined together in prayer in an upper room. During the Jewish festival of Pentecost (Shavuot), just as promised, the sound of a great wind filled the house and tongues of fire came to rest on each of them and all were filled with the Holy Spirit. They experienced ecstasy and were given the power of communication, which they used to begin the ministry for which Jesus had prepared them. After the coming of the Holy Spirit, the disciples burst out of their fear, out of their room to tell the world. This was the beginning of the missional community of Jesus, the church.

More

Teaching from The Bible Project: [link]

Australians explain Pentecost in four minutes with puppets! : [link]

Thomas Oden Instead, makes a strong argument for Pentecost taking place in the home of Mark’s mother, a Jewish woman from Africa, who is mentioned in key passages in the NT. [link]

He Qi reinterprets sacred art within an ancient Chinese art idiom. His work is a blend of Chinese folk art and traditional painting technique with the iconography of the Western Middle Ages and Modern Art.

What do we do with this?

Christian churches celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, realizing that God’s very life, breath and energy live in believers. John 20:19-23 may be the core of the message about our risen Savior supernaturally appearing to the fear-laden disciples. Their fear gave way to joy when the Lord showed them His hands and side. He assured them peace and repeated the command given in Matthew 28:19-20, saying, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” Then He breathed on them, and they received the Holy Spirit (John 20:21-23).

The celebration of Pentecost Sunday reminds us of the reality that we all have the unifying Spirit that was poured out upon the first-century church in Acts 2:1-4. It is a reminder that we are co-heirs with Christ, empowered to suffer with Him that we may also be glorified with Him. the day reminds us that the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good (1 Corinthians 12:7); that we are all baptized by one Spirit into one body (1 Corinthians 12:13); and that the Spirit which raised Jesus from the dead lives inside believers (Romans 8:9-11). This gift of the Holy Spirit that was promised and given to all believers on the first Pentecost is promised for you and your children and for all who are far off whom the Lord our God will call (Acts 2:39).

Receive the gift.  This video suggests a variety of ways you might be touched.

 

Hudson Taylor — June 3

Asia, Europe, The Modern Era (1227-1936)

Bible connection

Don’t you know that those who serve in the temple get their food from the temple, and that those who serve at the altar share in what is offered on the altar? In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.

But I have not used any of these rights. And I am not writing this in the hope that you will do such things for me, for I would rather die than allow anyone to deprive me of this boast. For when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, since I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! If I preach voluntarily, I have a reward; if not voluntarily, I am simply discharging the trust committed to me. — 1 Corinthians 9:13-17

All about Hudson Taylor (1832-1905)

In 1853 a small boat left Liverpool with Hudson Taylor on board, a gaunt and wild-eyed 21-year-old missionary. He was headed for a country that was just coming into the European/American Christian consciousness: China. By the time Taylor died a half-century later, China was viewed as the most fertile and challenging mission field of all and thousands volunteered annually to serve there.

Taylor was born to a Methodist couple fascinated by the “Far East” who had prayed for their newborn, “Grant that he may work for you in China.” Years later, a teenage Hudson experienced a spiritual birth during an intense time of prayer in which, as he later put it, life stretched out “before Him with unspeakable awe and unspeakable joy.” He felt called to China. He spent the next years in frantic preparation, learning the rudiments of medicine, studying Mandarin, and immersing himself ever deeper into the Bible and prayer.

His ship arrived in Shanghai, one of five “treaty ports” China had opened to foreigners following its first Opium War with England. Almost immediately Taylor made a radical decision (as least for Protestant missionaries of the day): he decided to dress in Chinese clothes and grow a pigtail (as Chinese men did). His fellow Protestants were either incredulous or critical.

Taylor, for his part, was not happy with most missionaries he saw; he believed they were “worldly” and spent too much time with English businessmen and diplomats who needed their services as translators. Instead, Taylor wanted the Christian faith taken to the interior of China. So within months of arriving, and the native language still a challenge, Taylor, along with Joseph Edkins, set off for the interior, setting sail down the Huangpu River distributing Chinese Bibles and tracts.

When the Chinese Evangelization Society, which had sponsored Taylor, proved incapable of paying its missionaries in 1857, Taylor resigned and became an independent missionary; trusting God to meet his needs. In 1861, he became seriously ill (probably with hepatitis) and was forced to return to England to recover. In England, the restless Taylor continued translating the Bible into Chinese (a work he’d begun in China), studied to become a midwife, and recruited more missionaries. Troubled that people in England seemed to have little interest in China, he wrote China: Its Spiritual Need and Claims. In one passage, he scolded, “Can all the Christians in England sit still with folded arms while these multitudes [in China] are perishing—perishing for lack of knowledge—for lack of that knowledge which England possesses so richly?”

Taylor became convinced that a special organization was needed to evangelize the interior of China. He made plans to recruit 24 missionaries: two for each of the 11 unreached inland provinces and two for Mongolia. It was a visionary plan that would have left veteran recruiters breathless: it would increase the number of China missionaries by 25 percent. He was wracked with doubt about the dangers his plan presented. But at the same time he despaired for the millions of Chinese who were dying without the hope of the gospel. While walking along the beach on day, his gloom lifted:

“There the Lord conquered my unbelief, and I surrendered myself to God for this service. I told him that all responsibility as to the issues and consequences must rest with him; that as his servant it was mine to obey and to follow him.”

His new mission, which he called the China Inland Mission (CIM), had a number of distinctive features, including this: its missionaries would have no guaranteed salaries nor could they appeal for funds; they would simply trust God to supply their needs; furthermore, its missionaries would adopt Chinese dress and then press the gospel into the China interior. Within a year of his breakthrough, Taylor, his wife and four children, and 16 young missionaries sailed from London to join five others already in China working under Taylor’s direction.

Taylor continued to make enormous demands upon himself. He was accused of being a tyrant and people left for other missions. Yet by 1876, with 52 missionaries, CIM constituted one-fifth of the missionary force in China. Because there continued to be so many Chinese to reach, Taylor instituted another radical policy: he sent unmarried women into the interior, a move criticized by many veterans. But Taylor’s boldness knew no bounds. In 1881, he asked God for another 70 missionaries by the close of 1884: he got 76. In late 1886, Taylor prayed for another 100 within a year: by November 1887, he announced 102 candidates had been accepted for service.

His leadership style and high ideals created enormous strains between the London and China councils of the CIM. London thought Taylor autocratic; Taylor said he was only doing what he thought was best for the work, and then demanded more commitment from others:

“China is not to be won for Christ by quiet, ease-loving men and women,” …“The stamp of men and women we need is such as will put Jesus, China, [and] souls first and foremost in everything and at every time—even life itself must be secondary.”

Taylor’s grueling work pace, despite poor health, ended up with a breakdown in 1900. He also lost his wife and four of his eight children by living like the Chinese. Between his work ethic and his absolute trust in God (despite never soliciting funds, his CIM grew and prospered), he inspired thousands to forsake the comforts of the West to bring the Christian message to the vast and unknown interior of China. Though mission work in China was interrupted by the communist takeover in 1949, the CIM continues to this day under the name Overseas Missionary Fellowship (International).

More

Four-minute YouTube bio [link]

Chinese pilgrimage to Barnsley, birthplace of Hudson Taylor [link]

What do we do with this?

What do you think of Taylor’s passion for evangelism? In some ways he was strikingly anticolonial. In some ways he was self-destructively obsessive. What do you do with that? What do you think God thinks of Hudson Taylor?

The Lord’s mission also ended in Jesus’ “untimely” death. Do you think we are called to imitate him in some way?

Are you aware of a people group who need to hear the truth about Jesus? Are you called to do anything about that?

Kizito — June 3

Africa, The Modern Era (1227-1936)

Image result for st. kizito

Bible connection

When they had brought them, they had them stand before the council. The high priest questioned them, saying, “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are determined to bring this man’s blood on us.” But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.” — Acts 4:17-32

All about Kizito (1872-1886)

Kizito* was the youngest of the Ugandan martyrs who suffered death rather than renounce his faith on June 3rd, 1886. The Ugandan Martyrs refer to a group of forty-five Christians – twenty-two Catholics and twenty-three Anglicans – who were tortured and killed over a period stretching from 1885 to 1887 for their faith.  Christians were persecuted by Mwanda,  the Kabaka (ruler) during this period.  Bugandan territory is now incorporated into the Republic of Uganda.

Priests belonging to the Missionaries in Africa, commonly referred to as the White Fathers (due to their white habits), arrived in Uganda in 1879.  Their mission was met with little resistance at first as they shared their faith among the people of Buganda.  That changed when the Kabaka, Mutesa, died and was succeeded by his son, Mwanga.  Mwanga viewed Christianity as a threat to his power.

The Christian views on morality – especially the teaching that pedophilia was a sin – did not endear them to Mwanda, who was a pedophile and routinely solicited sexual favors from his young pages.  His chief page, Joseph Mukasa was a Catholic who did his best to protect his young charges.  He even had the courage and conviction to confront Mwanga and insist he give up his sinful ways.  Mwanga’s response was to have him beheaded.

Joseph Mukasa was succeeded as chief page by Charles Lwanga who also was a Catholic and who also was vigorous in his protection of the young pages.  Mwanga became increasingly enraged as the pages, Kizito among them, continually refused and rebuffed his sexual advances. Mwanga eventually had the pages brought before him and gave them a choice to renounce their Christian faith and live or choose to keep their faith and die.

Many of the pages including Charles Lwanga and Kizito chose their faith.  There were fifteen in the group who were bound and made to walk two days to Namugongo where they would be killed.  One of the Christians, Matthias Kalemba, was martyred enroute.

Upon reaching Namugongo, Charles Lwanga was the first to be burned at the stake.  The following is a moving excerpt taken from the Catholic News agency:

The executioners slowly burnt his feet until only the charred remained.  Still alive, they promised him that they would let him go if he renounced his faith.  He refused saying, “You are burning me, but it is as if you are pouring water over my body.”  He then continued to pray silently as they set him on fire.

The other pages were burned alive together.  As they were being executed, their faith remained strong until the end, as they prayed and sang hymns.

The death of these martyrs had quite the opposite effect the Kabaka intended. Many witnessing the horrific deaths of these amazing young men who gave their young lives so willingly for their faith asked to be baptized.

* The Bugandan kinship structure may be unfamiliar to you if you grew up in the United States.

  • Kizito’s birth father was Lukomera of the Lungfish (Mamba) Clan, and his mother, who bore Lukomera nine children before she deserted him and died, was Wanga-bira of the Civet-cat (Ffumbe) Clan.
  • Nyika (or Nyikomuyonga), Guardian of Kabaka Mwanga’s umbilical cord, is often said to be the father of Kizito, but it was by adoption only. The paternal relationship arose from a blood-pact between Nyika’s father Kiggwe and a member of the Lungfish Clan named Mitalekoya.
  • Kiggwe, a descendent of Kabaka Kateregga and a member of the Leopard (Ngo) Clan, was county chief of Ggomba when he made this alliance. Later he incurred the royal displeasure, was deprived of his office and possessions and became virtually an outlaw, because he was out of favor with the Kabaka. In this time of adversity, the blood-pact stood him in good stead.
  • Because of it, the Lungfish Clan gave him and his family asylum and aid, and Mitalekoya became a second father to his son Nyika, who adopted Kizito into royal circles.

More

Uganda martyrs: Tracing the roots of St. Kizito

Mwanga – the king who killed the Uganda martyrs

What do we do with this?

The church in Uganda remains attentive to sexuality. That seems predictable, since some of its foundation is resistance to sexual predators. Most contexts prove dangerous for Christians, if not everyone. What is prowling around like a lion, as Peter sees it, trying to devour your heart and soul?

The main pressure the King of Buganda felt in the time of Kizito was from colonizers. The French Catholics and English Anglicans were in league with their respective country’s rush to “protect” areas of Africa. Muslim traders were eager to have fortified trading posts and a beachhead for Islam. Evangelism coupled with colonization is one of the stains on Christian history. Like Joseph told his brothers, “You meant it for evil but God used it for good.” Africa is now the continent with the most Christians. Have you experienced or done anything evil that God used for good? Praise God for the goodness, and consider what justice and forgiveness mean to you.

Eusebius — May 30

Asia, Forerunners (33-1226)
6th century Syriac portrait of St. Eusebius of Caesarea from the Rabbula Gospels

Bible connection

The Rock, his work is perfect,
and all his ways are just.
A faithful God, without deceit,
just and upright is he;
yet his degenerate children have dealt falsely with him,
a perverse and crooked generation.
Do you thus repay the Lord,
O foolish and senseless people?
Is not he your father who created you,
who made you and established you?
Remember the days of old;
consider the years long past;
ask your father, and he will inform you,
your elders, and they will tell you. — Deuteronomy 32:4-7

I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.

Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not become idolaters as some of them did, as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play.” — 1 Corinthians 10:1-6

All about Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260/265-339)

No collection of the great figures in the history of the church would be complete without including the premier historian of the church, Eusebius of Caesarea. He lived during a very formative period for the Church and his writings reflect every aspect of it. There was once a biography of Eusebius, written by his successor as Caesarea’s bishop, but like so many of his own writings, it is lost. So we know nothing for certain about his early life. He was probably born in Palestine, certainly baptized at Caesarea and ordained a presbyter (elder) there under his teacher and friend, Pamphilus — so closely did he follow this Origen devotee that he called himself Eusebius Pamphili (son of Pamphilus) after he died.

In 303 the co-emperors Diocletian and Galerius ordered the “great persecution,” and Pamphilus was martyred within seven years. Eusebius too, was imprisoned but managed to avoid his mentor’s fate. The persecutions turned the historian’s attention to the martyrs of his own time and the past. He writes:

“We saw with our own eyes the houses of prayer thrown down to the very foundations, and the divine and sacred Scriptures committed to the flames in the market-places, and the shepherds of the churches basely hidden here and there, and some of them captured ignominiously, and mocked by their enemies” (Church History 8.2.1).

Collecting those personal histories led him to the history of the whole Church and finally to the history of the world, which, to him, was only a preparation for Church history.

Imagine writing a comprehensive history of the Church’s last three centuries — that means you start in 1725. Now imagine no one has ever written such a history before, so there’s no single collection of key documents, no books profiling key figures, no chronology of major events, no Google, not even a fixed system of dating the past. When Eusebius undertook such an effort, he felt trepidation. In his introduction to the The Church History  (or Ecclesiastical History) [Internet Archive] he writes:

“I feel inadequate to do it justice as the first to venture on such an undertaking, a traveler on a lonely and untrodden path. But I pray that God may guide me and the power of the Lord assist me, for I have not found even the footprints of any predecessors on this path, only traces in which some have left various accounts of the times in which they lived.”

Around 313, about the time of Constantine’s Edict of Milan, Eusebius became bishop of the Palestinian city of Caesarea. There he continued work on his church history, which he began during the persecutions. He also wrote a 15-volume refutation of paganism called Preparation, and Demonstration of the Gospel [Internet Archive], demonstrating Christ’s fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. He also completed his Chronicle of world history.

Just as Eusebius was writing about Christianity’s defeat of paganism, one the greatest threats to the Church was developing within it. Arius, a presbyter from Libya, was gaining followers around the empire, teaching, “There was a time when the Son was not.” Egyptian bishop Alexander and his chief deacon, Athanasius, fumed at the teaching. The argument spread throughout the empire, promising to rip the church in two. Constantine, God’s chosen instrument, as Eusebius saw him, called the Council of Nicaea to close the fissure.

Since his earliest days with Pamphilus, Eusebius had been enthralled with the teachings of Origen, who has been criticized for 1,800 years for believing the Trinity is a hierarchy, not an equality. This led Eusebius to be less concerned with Arius’ heresy than the threat of disunity in the Church. When Arius was censured, Eusebius, who thought the entire debate brought Christianity the “most shameful ridicule,” was among the first to ask he be reinstated.

At the Council of Nicaea, Eusebius (whose name means “faithful”) attempted to mediate between the Arians and the orthodox. But when the council was over and Arius was anathematized, Eusebius was reluctant to agree with its decision. He eventually signed the document the council produced, saying, “Peace is the object which we set before us.” But a few years later, when the tables flipped and Arianism became popular, Eusebius criticized Athanasius, hero of the council. He even sat on the council that deposed him. Eusebius wasn’t himself an Arian—he rejected the idea that “there was a time when the Son was not” and that Christ was created out of nothing. He simply opposed anti-Arianism.

As the Arian controversy continued to rage, Eusebius stayed in Caesarea, declining a promotion to become bishop of Antioch, and wrote. Among his most famous writings of this final period was another history: a praise-filled Life of Constantine, his adored political leader.

Eusebius wrote many other things, including an important treatise on the location of biblical place names and the distances between them. He also created a system to  number passages of the Gospels and made a table so readers could find the parallels between Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. This numbering exists in almost all the Greek manuscripts we have. It became a central idea behind how people read the Bible.

Holy History

His famous Church History shares a missionary purpose with Eusebius’s more explicitly apologetic writings. The opening words state his six interests:

  • It is my purpose to write an account of the successions of the holy apostles;. …
  • to relate the many important events that are said to have occurred in the history of the church;
  • to mention those who have governed and presided over the church in the most prominent parishes and those who in each generation have proclaimed the divine word either orally or in writing;. …
  • to give the names. … of those who through love of innovation have run into the greatest errors;. …
  • to recount the misfortunes that immediately came upon the whole Jewish nation in consequence of their plots against our Savior;
  • and to record the ways and the times in which the divine word has been attacked by the nations and to describe the character of those who at various periods have contended for it in the face of blood and tortures, as well as the confessions that have been made in our own days, and finally the gracious and kindly succor that our Savior has afforded them all.

Eusebius later added a seventh interest: the canon of New Testament Scripture. Athanasius’ definitive list of books stems from Eusebius.

He begins his Church History by describing the divine nature of the pre-existent Christ and the “scattering of the seeds of true religion” among human beings from the beginning of time. Many people throughout history rejected this divine teaching, but it was always available. This point was crucial to Eusebius because it answered a significant question from pagans: If Christianity is the only true religion, why was it so late in coming to the world?

Furthermore, the affirmation that Christianity began at Creation was central to Eusebius’s theology of history. To bolster his claim that God’s plan reached its climax in Christ, he had to trace that plan back through all time. On this basis, he could show how God continued to work through the church as well.

Eusebius wrote the History for ordinary Christians and interested non-Christians. This broad audience was not interested in doctrinal questions, so Eusebius gives such questions little attention. Instead, he concentrates on what would have popular, and enduring, appeal: sensational tales of martyrdom, juicy tidbits about famous leaders, lively quotations, and personal reflections.

Eusebius’ history has, in retrospect, many defects, both in style and method. For instance, he assumes, inaccurately, that the early church looked just like the church he knew. He displayed no sense of doctrinal or institutional development, especially in the Latin West, a region about which he knew little.

Eusebius can also be accused of whitewashing what he did know. As he introduced accounts of persecution in his day, he stated that he was including only what would be profitable:

We shall not mention those who were shaken by the persecution nor those who in everything pertaining to salvation were shipwrecked. … But we shall introduce into this history in general only those events which may be useful first to ourselves and afterwards to posterity (Church History 8.2.3).

Other complaints about Eusebius include his inattention to coherent narrative, his occasionally careless use of sources, and of course his belief that Christianity and the Roman state belonged together. But this negative picture can be exaggerated, and modern readers should be grateful that Eusebius collected material that would otherwise be lost.

Whatever may be said about Eusebius’s inability to organize his materials, he nonetheless had keen insight into themes that would have abiding interest for future generations. Who can forget the scenes recorded by Eusebius?

  • The apostle John fleeing the bathhouse upon finding Cerinthus, “the enemy of the truth,” there.
  • Justin Martyr in a philosopher’s cloak preaching the Word of God.
  • Polycarp confessing his faith before the governor: “Eighty-six years I have served Christ, and he has done me no wrong; how can I blaspheme my king who saved me?”
  • Blandina, the slave girl, hanging on a stake as if on a cross, but inspiring her fellow martyrs, “who saw the One who was crucified in the form of their sister.”
  • Origen’s father admiring his sleeping boy as one in whom the divine Spirit was enshrined.

Eusebius did not perfect the discipline of church history, but he took the crucial first step of considering world events from a Christian perspective. It is a tribute to his accomplishment that scholars continued his pursuit—though none attempted to rewrite what he had written for centuries.

More

The Wikipedia page is extensive [link]

Catholic criticisms and congratulations regarding Church History [link]

Podcast: Eusebius: History from the Wrong Side of History | Way of the Fathers with Mike Aquilina:

What do we do with this?

Many people know Eusebius as the “Father of Church History.” But did he write history? Because of his style of weaving short entries into a broader scheme he has been called one of the fathers of  journalism. Others call him a propagandist – he did call Emperor Constantine “most beloved by God,” and described the fourth-century church as being brought to “a state of uniform harmony.” However we evaluate his achievements, his works remain foundational for our knowledge of the church in its first three centuries. And this foundation stands firm despite noticeable cracks.

Have you ever written your own personal history of faith in your day? It would be interesting to see who and what influenced you, what heresies you faced, what nonsense in the church you had to endure, even your persecutions! Give it a try and see how God blesses it.

Ascension Day — May 29, 2025

Holy Days

Bible connection

Now when He had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, who also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.” Acts 1:9-11

All about Ascension Day

Ascension Day is traditionally celebrated on a Thursday, the fortieth day of Easter (or of Eastertide, the season after Easter). Some groups have moved the observance to the following Sunday.

N.T. Wright thinks Ascension Day is important and he suspects you don’t. His theological point of view is so seldom-considered that it might be important for us to study the following section of his book Surprised by Hope. Consider what Luke says happens to Jesus after he rises from the dead and see if it changes how you see the world.

Many people insist—and I dare say that this is the theology many of my readers have been taught—that the language of Jesus’ “disappearance” is just a way of saying that after his death he became, as it were, spiritually present everywhere, especially with his own followers. This is then often correlated with a nonliteral reading of the resurrection, that is, a denial of its bodily nature: Jesus simply “went to heaven when he died” in a rather special sense that makes him now close to each of us wherever we are. According to this view, Jesus has, as it were, disappeared without remainder. His “spiritual presence” with us is his only identity. In that case, of course, to speak of his second coming is then only a metaphor for his presence, in the same sense, eventually permeating all things.

What happens when people think like this? To answer this, we might ask a further question: why has the ascension been such a difficult and unpopular doctrine in the modern Western church? The answer is not just that rationalist skepticism mocks it (a possibility that the church has sometimes invited with those glass windows that show Jesus’s feet sticking downward out of a cloud). It is that the ascension demands that we think differently about how the whole cosmos is, so to speak, put together and that we also think differently about the church and about salvation. Both literalism and skepticism operate with what is called a receptacle view of space; theologians who take the ascension seriously insist that it demands what some have called a relational view. Basically, heaven and earth in biblical cosmology are not two different locations within the same continuum of space or matter. They are two different dimensions of God’s good creation. And the point about heaven is twofold. First, heaven relates to earth tangentially so that the one who is in heaven can be simultaneously anywhere and everywhere on earth; the ascension therefore means that Jesus is available, accessible, without people having to travel to a particular spot on earth to find him. Second, heaven is, as it were, the control room for earth; it is the CEO’s office, the place from which instructions are given. “All authority is given to me,” said Jesus at the end of Matthew’s gospel, “in heaven and on earth.”

The idea of the human Jesus now being in heaven, in his thoroughly embodied, risen state, comes as a shock to many people, including many Christians. Sometimes this is because many people think that Jesus, having been divine, stopped being divine and became human, and then, having been human for a while, stopped being human and went back to being divine (at least, that’s what many people think Christians are supposed to believe). More often it’s because our culture is so used to the Platonic idea that heaven is, by definition, a place of “spiritual,” nonmaterial reality so that the idea of a solid body being not only present but also thoroughly at home there seems like a category mistake. The ascension invites us to rethink all this; and, after all, why did we suppose we knew what heaven was? Only because our culture has suggested things to us. Part of Christian belief is to find out what’s true about Jesus and let that challenge our culture.

This applies in particular to the idea of Jesus being in charge not only in heaven but also on earth, not only in some ultimate future but also in the present. Many will snort the obvious objection: it certainly doesn’t look as though he’s in charge, or if he is, he’s making a proper mess of it. But that misses the point. The early Christians knew the world was still a mess. But they announced, like messengers going off on behalf of a global company, that a new CEO had taken charge. They discovered through their own various callings how his new way of running things was to be worked out. It wasn’t a matter (as some people anxiously suppose to this day) of Christians simply taking over and giving orders in a kind of theocracy where the church could simply tell everyone what to do. That has some times been tried, of course, and it’s always led to disaster. But neither is it a matter of the church backing off, letting the world go on its sweet way, and worshiping Jesus in a kind of private sphere.

Somehow there is a third option…We can glimpse it in the book of Acts: the method of the kingdom will match the message of the kingdom. The kingdom will come as the church, energized by the Spirit, goes out into the world vulnerable, suffering, praising, praying, misunderstood, misjudged, vindicated, celebrating: always—as Paul puts it in one of his letters—bearing in the body the dying of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed.

What happens when you downplay or ignore the ascension? The answer is that the church expands to fill the vacuum. If Jesus is more or less identical with the church—if, that is, talk about Jesus can be reduced to talk about his presence within his people rather than his standing over against them and addressing them from elsewhere as their Lord, then we have created a high road to the worst kind of triumphalism. This indeed is what twentieth-century English liber­alism always tended toward: by compromising with rationalism and trying to maintain that talk of the ascension is really talk about Je­sus being with us everywhere, the church effectively presented itself (with its structures and hierarchy, its customs and quirks) instead of presenting Jesus as its Lord and itself as the world’s servant, as Paul puts it. And the other side of triumphalism is of course despair. If you put all your eggs into the church-equals-Jesus basket, what are you left with when, as Paul says in the same passage, we ourselves are found to be cracked earthenware vessels?

If the church identifies its structures, its leadership, its liturgy, its buildings, or anything else with its Lord—and that’s what happens if you ignore the ascension or turn it into another way of talking about the Spirit—what do you get? You get, on the one hand, what Shakespeare called “the insolence of office” and, on the other hand, the despair of late middle age, as people realize it doesn’t work. (I see this all too frequently among those who bought heavily into the soggy rationalism of the 1950s and 1960s.) Only when we grasp firmly that the church is not Jesus and Jesus is not the church­ when we grasp, in other words, the truth of the ascension, that the one who is indeed present with us by the Spirit is also the Lord who is strangely absent, strangely other, strangely different from us and over against us, the one who tells Mary Magdalene not to cling to him— only then are we rescued from both hollow triumphalism and shallow despair.

Conversely, only when we grasp and celebrate the fact that Je­sus has gone on ahead of us into God’s space, God’s new world, and is both already ruling the rebellious present world as its rightful Lord and also interceding for us at the Father’s right hand—when we grasp and celebrate, in other words, what the ascension tells us about Jesus’s continuing human work in the present—are we rescued from a wrong view of world history and equipped for the task of justice in the present…We are also, significantly, rescued from the attempts that have been made to create alternative mediators, and in particular an alternative mediatrix, in his place. Get the ascension right, and your view of the church, of the sacraments, and of the mother of Jesus can get back into focus.

You could sum all this up by saying that the doctrine of the trinity, which is making quite a come back in current theology, is essential if we are to tell the truth not only about God, and more particularly about Jesus, but also about ourselves. The Trinity is precisely a way of recognizing and celebrating the fact of the human being Jesus of Nazareth as distinct from while still identified with God the Father, on the one hand (he didn’t just “go back to being God again” after his earthy life), and the Spirit, on the other hand (the Jesus who is near us and with us by the Spirit remains the Jesus who is other than us). This places a full stop on all human arrogance, including Christian arrogance. And now we see at last why the Enlightenment world was determined to make the ascension appear ridiculous, using the weapons of rationalism and skepticism to do so: if the ascension is true, then the whole project of human self-aggrandizement represented by eighteenth century European and American thought is rebuked and brought to heel. To embrace the ascension is to heave a sigh of relief, to give up the struggle to be God (and with it the inevitable despair at our constant failure), and to enjoy our status as creatures: image-bearing creatures, but creatures nonetheless.

The ascension thus speaks of the Jesus who remains truly human and hence in an important sense absent from us while in another equally important sense present to us in a new way. At this point the Holy Spirit and the sacraments become enormously important since they are precisely the means by which Jesus is present. Often in the church we have been so keen to stress the presence of Jesus by these means that we have failed to indicate his simultaneous absence and have left people wondering whether this is, so to speak, “all there is to it.” The answer is: no, it isn’t. The lordship of Jesus; the fact that there is already a human at the helm of the world; his present intercession for us—all this is over and above his presence with us. It is even over and above our sense of that presence, which of course comes and goes with our own moods and circumstances.

Now it is of course one thing to say all this, to show how it fits together and sets us free from some of the nonsense we would oth­erwise get into. It’s quite another to be able to envisage or imag­ine it, to know what it is we’re really talking about when we speak of Jesus being still human, still in fact an embodied human—actually, a more solidly embodied human than we are—but absent from this present world. We need, in fact, a new and better cosmology, a new and better way of thinking about the world than the one our culture, not least post-Enlightenment culture, has bequeathed us. The early Christians, and their fellow first-century Jews, were not, as many moderns suppose, locked into thinking of a three-decker universe with heaven up in the sky and hell down beneath their feet. When they spoke of up and down like that they, like the Greeks in their different ways, were using metaphors that were so obvious they didn’t need spelling out. As some recent writers have pointed out, when a pupil at school moves “up” a grade, from (say) the tenth grade to the eleventh, it is unlikely that this means relocating to a classroom on the floor above. And though the move “up” from vice chairman of the board to chairman of the board may indeed mean that at last you get an office in the penthouse suite, it would be quite wrong to think that “moving up” in this context meant merely being a few feet farther away from terra firma.

The mystery of the ascension is of course just that, a mystery. It demands that we think what is, to many today, almost unthinkable: that when the Bible speaks of heaven and earth it is not talking about two localities related to each other within the same space-time continuum or about a nonphysical world contrasted with a physical one but about two different kinds of what we call space, two different kinds of what we call matter, and also quite possibly (though this does not necessarily follow from the other two) two different kinds of what we call time. We post-Enlightenment West­erners are such wretched flatlanders. Although New Age thinkers, and indeed quite a lot of contemporary novelists, are quite capable of taking us into other parallel worlds, spaces, and times, we retreat into our rationalistic closed-system universe as soon as we think about Jesus. C. S. Lewis of course did a great job in the Narnia sto­ries and elsewhere of imagining how two worlds could relate and interlock. But the generation that grew up knowing its way around Narnia does not usually know how to make the transition from a children’s story to the real world of grown-up Christian devotion and theology.

More

From Bishop Barron:

Charlotte Riggle lists some traditions of the day. [link]

Encouragement from the Vatican. [link]

Here is a nice, Evangelical summary of why the ascension of Jesus is important. [link]

What do we do with this?

What do you think? Can you do some theology with Tom Wright and Robert Barron?

Pray: Thank you for the living hope you give me—you have gone before me and I will go behind you, you intercede for me and remain present with me, you will come again.

For some of us, this theology is hard to understand. The teachers refer to all sorts of thinking we have not studied, past and present: Plato, the Enlightenment, scientific materialism and various breeds of Christian theology. Don’t give up! Try taking the time to slowly move through the material again and see what begins to come clear to you. If you talk to someone about it, you might understand even more. Let them help you make sense of today’s Bible reading.

Hold together the certainty of God-with-us and the mystery of Jesus-gone-before-us.

Mechthild of Magdeburg — May 28

Europe, The Modern Era (1227-1936)
Sculptor: Peter Paul Metz, 1896. Church of Gordian and Epimachus, Merazhofen, Germany

Bible connection

It is necessary to boast; nothing is to be gained by it, but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord.  I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows.  And I know that such a person—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows —  was caught up into paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.  On behalf of such a one I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. But if I wish to boast, I will not be a fool, for I will be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me,  even considering the exceptional character of the revelations.  — 2 Corinthians 12:1-7

All about Mechthild of Magdeburg (c. 1208-c. 1282/94)

Mechthild is the author of The Flowing Light of the Godhead. She is one of the best-known  beguines. For most of her adulthood, she lived in a communal house in Magdeburg (now in Germany). Women became beguines because they had the same aspirations that contributed to the founding of the Franciscans and Dominicans in the same era: the desire to return to the ideals of early Christianity and imitate more closely the lives of the apostles, to be unworldly while living in the world. Beguines were usually under the direction of a parish priest, but because of their similarities  to the Franciscan and Dominican communities, they often associated with them. They were regularly criticized for being loosely overseen and, as mysticism arose among them, were accused of being unorthodox.

In composing her book, Mechthild felt constrained to answer two questions. What gives a woman with no formal education, no special training in theology, and no place in an approved religious order the right to speak to on theological matters and sharply criticize the clergy? What’s more, by whose authority did she write, or why should she expect to be taken seriously?

The few facts we have of Mechthild’s life come from her own works and subsequent introductions to them. Her familiarity  with the literature of the German court places her from a noble lineage at some low or medium level. She says at age twelve she was “greeted” by the Holy Spirit. An infilling continued daily for over three decades. About 1230, as a twentysomething, she left home for a beguinage in Magdeburg. About 1250, in her forties, she revealed to her spiritual director, Heinrich of Halle, the spiritual favors she had been granted. He commanded her to write her book “out of God’s heart and mouth.” For the next ten years she completed five books. During the next ten years, she decided she was not finished and completed two more.

She finished the seventh book at the Cistercian community at Helfta, under the guidance  of its second abbess, Gertrud of Hackeborn. She retreated there about 1270. She became feeble and blind and needed to dictate the final chapters.

A manuscript of Flowering Light was discovered in 1861 in which the Low German vernacular of Mechthild (“low” means northern Germany) had been translated into the High German of Bavaria. Until then the main versions of her work derived from Latin translations by Dominicans in Halle sometime before 1298. In comparing the texts, scholars discovered the Latin translators toned down her criticism of the clergy and some of her erotic imagery. The later manuscript clarified some of her language which was obscure to people who were not Low German speakers from the 13th century.

Mechthild’s work has no antecedents or descendants. Most “revelations” of her time just reported what happened to the mystic. Mechthild uses her revelations as starting points for reflection. She uses every form of writing available in her time to express what the greetings mean:

  • Religious forms: the vision, hymn, sermon, spiritual instruction and tract, prayer, liturgy, litany, and prophecy.
  • Courtly forms: love poetry, allegorical dialogue, dialogue between lovers, the messenger’s song, and the exchange (Wechsel).
  • Other forms: autobiography, drama, epigrammatic poetry and wisdom literature, anecdote, letter, parody, nursery rhyme and polemics.

Love is the force that compels Mechthild to write. She is not coming up with a system of theology.

Quotes:

Prayer is naught else but a yearning of soul … it draws down the great God into the little heart; it drives the hungry soul up to the plenitude of God; it brings together these two lovers, God and the soul, in a wondrous place where they speak much of love.

The soul is made of love and must ever strive to return to love. Therefore, it can never find rest nor happiness in other things. It must lose itself in love. By its very nature it must seek God, who is love.

The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw and knew I saw all things in God and God in all things.

Stupidity is sufficient unto itself. Wisdom can never learn enough.

From suffering I have learned this: that whoever is sore wounded by love will never be made whole unless she embraces the very same love which wounded her.

More

The Flowing Light of the Godhead online. This version also available in print. [Goodreads]

Poems collected by the Poetry Foundation [link]

A meditation on her sayings [YouTube]

YouTube purveyor of esoterica spends 30 minutes on Mechthild to good end:

What do we do with this?

Use her poem as your prayer:

I cannot dance, O Lord,

Unless You lead me.
If You wish me to leap joyfully,
Let me see You dance and sing—
Then I will leap into Love—
And from Love into Knowledge,
And from Knowledge into the Harvest,

The sweetest Fruit beyond human sense.

There I will stay with You, whirling.

Consider how brave Mechthild was to leave her family and join a radical community. Consider how she felt the need to keep her spiritual life a secret for so long. Consider how she followed the command of her confessor and applied herself to writing her book. Consider how she broke with tradition and found her own voice, even when her kindred spirits came under criticism. Especially if you are a woman, enjoy the story of someone who got through a thick glass ceiling.