James Alison Theology

Jesus the Forgiving Victim (three biblical hermeneutic talks)

Three talks James Alison gave to the Preaching Peace Initiative’s gathering in Rome in summer 2025. In these talks, James applies the hermeneutic of “Jesus, the Forgiving Victim” and reflects on the gift of the Spirit, who is not the “consolation prize”, but is the living hermeneutical presence that interprets the work of Jesus, who is the criterion of God.  What you’ll hear in these talks is an anthropology of human flourishing that takes seriously the fact that God comes to humanity, humanly. James calls it the “Sideways God”. 

Published with the permission of the the Preaching Peace Initiative of Street Psalms.

AI-enabled transcripts, not edited:

On Acts 1:6-11, Acts 2:1-8

Anyhow, so this session, thanks to Chris’s introduction, is entitled Dr. Alison’s soporrific, just so that those who want to go to sleep can. Unlike his vaguely punitive remarks about those who snore, I would merely suggest that those who snore have had an overdose and need an intervention. So if someone snores, kind of nudge them generally. Okay, that’s that’s uh we we’ll survive like that. So I’ve been asked to talk about hermeneutics and I get three shots at doing this with you which is a very great privilege. So thank you very much indeed uh Chris

and the overall the overall drift I’m going to try and tell you first is something which is absolutely basic about hermeneutics and which we very rarely remember once we get into it but it seems important as a starting place is that when we come to a scriptural text mostly we assume that we have got somehow to dominate it. And also that we know more about it than those silly half-educated goons who wrote the things. And I want to say d uh if that’s where we’re starting, we’re not going very far. That the whole purpose of the thing being a thing called hermeneutics is the following. There is God who created everything that there is that is and is before us and knows more than us. And God has given us a criteria for who God is. God’s word. The word logos could be word. It could be criterion for who he is. It’s who Godself is in the person of Jesus who came amongst us and did something in particular which we’re going to be looking at in just a second. At the end of which He breathed out. And what he breathed out, God’s criteria for God. And of course, if you’re God and you have a criteria for God, that couldn’t be less than God, right? I mean, go God couldn’t have a little criteria because it wouldn’t be God. So God’s criteria for God is God. But God breathes out God’s interpretation of God’s criteria for God. In other words, there has been a longstanding effort to get through to us something from someone who knows more than us, but to get through to us at an entirely human level. So, what are we talking about when we’re talking about hermeneutics? We’re talking about the breath, the inspirational breath, turning us into expanders of what they are trying to tell us. Essentially a passive exercise and I don’t mean passive in the sense of give up and let someone else do something. I mean passive in the sense that we are secondary to it, not its initiators. Is that a is that a good a good thing? And that’s hugely important because one of the things about that is that it makes you relax in front of texts rather than thinking you need to beat them to death and see if you can extract a tiny little slither of meaning from somewhere. Does that does that make sense? So that’s if if I can get anything across to you about the basic of hermeneutics is this is another driven operation. We are invited into an interpretational exercise. Relax. Okay. So we’re going to start because well what I want us to do over the three days is advance from the gift of the Holy Spirit to how the Holy Spirit strangely comes amongst us with certain anthropological parameters which I know is something that you’ve all been working on. And then on the third day something called Catholicity with a small C. Small C. I know we’re in Rome. I deliberately avoided putting my t-shirt saying priest on even though it’s in rainbow colors because I didn’t want to frighten you today. I’ll do that tomorrow though. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition. Yeah. And

but the point of Catholicity, as you will see, is not something extrinsic to basic Christianity. It’s something intrinsic to basic Christianity. It’s something to do with the outwardgoingness and the finding ourselves involved in the otherness which is essential to Christianity. So that’s I hope the path I’m going to be taking on. Does that sound like a plan? You say, “Yay, brother. Amen.” Or something to that effect. I hope. Great. Excellent. Good. Well, you have the texts um in the in the booklet for today. a couple of texts and these texts come well for us because we are between the feast of ascension which was yesterday at least here in Rome. I guess in some of your uh in some of your churches it will have been it will be on Sunday it gets transferred. Is that right? Is ascension always on the Thursday? It’s on the Thursday. It’s on the th Yeah, it’s usually on the Thursday. In many dasises in the world they push it to the Sunday because they think they won’t get anybody to come to church on a Thursday. Whatever. But the normal thing is it’s on a Thursday so as to make Pentecost 50 days after. Yeah. Okay. You’ve got it. You know the math. So Pentecost ascension yesterday and Pentecost next Sunday. So we have readings that are actually specifically related to that. Now these readings are utterly familiar to you. You don’t even need me to go through them in any obvious way. What I want to do is before we get to them is to give you some little hints of what are being fulfilled in the background and particularly two hints. We’re going to start with uh one of my favorite passages in the book of Isaiah. So this is from Isaiah 6. This is the very first temple vision in the in the Bible. In the year that King Aziah died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up. Okay. Yes. High and lifted up. Same verb as you have there. And he was lifted up. Very important. And his train filled the temple. No, this is a I think it meant his long dress, not a train, but never mind. Above it stood the saraphim.

a couple of them. Each one had six six wings. With Twain, he covered his face. With Twain, he covered his feet. Euphemism for covered his balls. And with Twain, he did fly. They’re like people in front of a soccer a soccer penalty match. So, two, two, and two. Yeah, you’ve seen the pictures of them. It’s because they their genitals shouldn’t be shown to the Lord. Okay. Right. And one cried unto another and said, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door shook at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Okay, Isaiah 6. You all know it. A vision which the prophet Isaiah has in the holy place above the altar in the holy of holies. He sees the Lord. This is the temple vision. So the lifting up is the enthronement right in the ancient temple. And the clouds that were uh taking him away were not celestial clouds. They were clouds of

from incense. Incense. Yes. Wonderful. The whole point is that if you’re in the holy place, there’s lots of incense and the house was filled with smoke. And while he was going, so he was going and they’re gazing up towards heaven saying, “Oh, wrong place for them to be gazing.” So suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. So these are here we have the seraraphim at the same level as they saying, “Why do you stand looking up to heaven?” said, “Where are you looking? You’ve got this wrong. You’re in a helicopter vision. This is a holy place vision. That’s the way you’re supposed to be looking. This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. So they’re scratching at when did you when did we see him go into heaven if it wasn’t just now on the helicopter? Oh, it was when he was on the cross with two failed seraphs, one on either side of him of who to whom one was prophed but to whom one was promised. Today you will be with me in paradise. Paradise being a way of referring to the holy of holies. Perodis it was the original garden the original understanding of the holy of holies was that it was the celestial garden from which the wicked priest had been thrown out that’s in the book of Ezekiel but who later became Adam when they leersized the story it was a good you know it was a high priestly story and then they made it a lay story when they were in Babylon because the Babylonians were too complicated about things like that so bring it down we have here the two angels saying when you see him how will you see him go well you will see him go in the same way as He came in other words crucified between two apparent sinners in the place of death and shame and that’s where his place with incense is exactly the same as what John says when John says when he was glorified it’s always referring to the same thing how will you see him go you will see him come as you saw him go in his going is his coming and that’s if you like what we live in we live in the time of in his going is his coming okay but then we more than this and the dream continues because Isaiah’s Isaiah’s vision clearly had too much I need to speak up had too much to unpack in it and so it had to be developed over several days. Now, another piece of Isaiah, and this is one which I think is very important because it’s quite clear how important this is for Luke in the Pentecost story. And it’s amazing how little we hear about this, but it’s bringing us close to the issue of some sort of anthropology of the spirit. This is Isaiah 59:15 to 21. Truth is lacking and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. I know that many of you have departed from evil and been made praise. So this is not unfamiliar. This is not an unfamiliar logic to many of you. The Lord saw it and it displeased him that there was no justice. He saw that there was no man and wondered that there was no one to intervene.

Then his own arm brought him victory and his righteousness upheld him. In other words, doesn’t seem to be anybody to help sort this out. Well, I’d better go and do the damn thing myself. He put on righteousness as a breastplate and a helmet of salvation upon his head. He put on garments of vengeance for clothing and wrapped himself in fury as in a mantle. Okay, this is Isaiah not quite getting it yet. Part of the mystery of what is being enacted between ascension and Pentecost is where’s the anger? Where’s the revenge that this was supposed to come? We knew, but we knew that it was going to come as a form of revenge. And in fact, Jesus was always just chopping off those bits of the gospel. Remember in Nazareth, he said, “This is the day um this is the day of the jubilee of the Lord when the prisoners will be set free.” And then he doesn’t quote the last line which says, “And the day of the vengeance of the Lord.” And so they get worked up. I said, “Why are you only saying the words of grace?” Okay. So he then says according to their deeds so will he repay wrath to his adversaries reququital to his enemies to the coast and he will render a quitital. So quite an angry package is being announced in in the case of Isaiah. So they shall fear the name of the Lord from the west and his glory from the rising of the sun. So that’s from the east since in those days too the sun rose. Okay, never mind. You know that for he will come like a rushing stream and the word is bios which is exactly the same word guess what as you have in your texts for acts as the rush of a violent wind

which the wind of the Lord drives and it’s actually the wind of the Lord the rushing stream that is the Lord our translation has to come out like that and he will come to Zion as a redeemer to those in Jacob who turned from transgression says the Lord. Remember that immediately after this Peter will stand up and preach and people will start to repent. That is literally Zion being turning from transgression. And as for me, this is my covenant with them, says the Lord. My spirit which is upon you and my words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart out of your mouth or out of the mouth of your children or out of the mouth of your children’s children says the Lord from this time forth and forever more. In other words, all this weird coming in to do justice even with the bits of vengeance that are left, what’s going to be the net result of it?

I shall put words in your mouth. What happens when if you put words in your mouth? Do you choke? No. What you do? Speak. Ah, you speak. It will become possible to speak in new ways. This will be done at a human level. You will all become interpreters because the Holy Spirit will be teaching you how to speak. That’s going to be absolutely central in what we see. So now let’s look at this uh passage again. So 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. Well, we’ve seen the uh um uh the rush of the violent wind we’ve seen. And it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Huh? House. What house?

Sorry. Well, I think it may have been, but in one sense it doesn’t matter. The point is it’s the house. What was the house in Isaiah’s temple? The temple. Okay. So, what is this now? It’s not the temple. Which means, and this is part of the mystery of the thing, God has left the temple. Before the spirit of God had to stay in the holy place, except that it left in Ezekiel. it abandoned if you remember. But the point was that everywhere else was contaminated with death. But now Jesus has occupied the space of death and breathed out his spirit. He’s assumed death, which means that the spirit can now rest amongst humans and is not bothered by death and corruption because thou wilt not let thy holy one know corruption. You remember that? That’s when so John John goes in in in John’s gospel, John follows Peter into the tomb and sees and believes. What does he see? He sees the clothes laid there. And what does he believe? He doesn’t yet believe in the resurrection because it says therefore they did not yet understand. What does he see? He sees nobody. Thou hast not let thy holy one see corruption. If the linen robes were wrapped on one side uh left, that meant that the sticky gum, all the spices which had been put into them the night before by Joseph of Arythea and France hadn’t stuck to his body. And the whole point of putting spices on somebody’s body when they had died was to stop the stench of corruption. But what it would tend to do is to glue the corpse to the sheet. So if you have an unglued corpse, if you have an unglued sheet with no sticky stuff, thou hast not let the holy one all of this, you know. Okay. Sorry. Excuse me. I would make that joke. Sorry. But it’s quite fun when you when you say Yeah. Okay.

So divided tongues as of fire appeared among them. Okay. Now, how do you imagine a divided tongue? If I hear the word, it sounds like a snake, doesn’t it? In all the in all the baddy films, they have fork for fork tongues. But it’s not what it means. And it’s a bad translation. Divided tongues. Um the word which in in Greek is let me let me look it up so that I don’t make a complete fool of myself amongst those of you who really know. Um because it’s a quote from Zechariah. Yes. Behold, the day of the Lord is coming when the spoil taken from you will be divided in the midst of you. So the dividing up, it means aortioning out. It’s not referring to the as it were the the visible form of the tongue. It’s it’s saying tongues will be aortioned out to you. And what that means because the portions in the sacrifice were what?

Well, every time you receive the Eucharist, you receive a portion. That’s the portion. In the temple, the portions were chunks of meat which the priests would burn. They would have to gnaw at the endrails. Not a bunch of fun, which is why they sometimes had vinegar with it, which was another thing reenacted. But there we are. Um, but the idea was to hold a loft a nice burning chunk of of a leg of lamb burning here with a with a flame. Okay. So that’s a burning portion. So the portion is now being divided out. Jesus who was the portion is now being divided out among you in this room. In other words, the temple is now you with the portion divided out amongst you. The fire has come back to the temple. That’s a a central part of what’s going on here. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the spirit gave them ability. Okay? Began to speak in other languages. So the the promise of the words, the ability to speak has come out. Now there were devout Jews from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem. Okay. So, diaspora diaspora Jews probably as then as now far more Jews spread out around the Eastern Mediterranean world than actually in Israel. Um, and they would all have known the Bible in Greek, which is why St. Luke is particularly useful to us and to them because St. Luke is the one who uses always the Greek version of the Old Testament to make the New Testament comprehensible to us. Which is why, hint hint, he’s the easiest cheat uh for he’s the easiest cheat for second graders like myself when it comes to actually in terms of reading reading the Bible and working out what’s going on. Why? Because you only need one search engine in your computer to search for oh Luke has a word here. I wonder where it comes in the Septuagent. And then if you look at it where it comes in Sepu, it almost invariably says perfectly straightforward. This is this is where it is. Anyhow, so there I’m giving away all my trade secrets. the very worst magicians.

So there were devout Jews from the Jasper, from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered. Well, bewildered. H

actually the word is scattered. So that’s actually referring to the diaspora. And remember that that’s what happened in the um the word of in the um whatchamacallit in the Tower of Babel. In the Tower of Babel in Genesis, behold, they are one people and they all have one language. Is this is only the beginning of what they will do and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible. Come, let us go down and confuse their language that they may not be understood. They may not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad. Scatter diaspora. But it says, “Come, let us go down there and confuse.” Okay. Well, they come together. It says at this time, the crowd gathered. So they’re coming together. And was bewildered. Was confused. And guess what the Greek word is, which is the same as the Greek word for babelis. It means confusion. That’s what the So babble is just confused speak, right? is a confused being because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over all the face of creation. So what are we having here? We’re having humanity taken back to a place where a real language is at last being spoken. But it’s not a sort of a translation agency. It says, “Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear each of us in our own native language?” So Galileans would have spoken Aramaic with a recognizable regional accent. And these are Jews from everywhere who for whom their native language might have been Latin if they lived in in Rome or in Italy or Greek or Paththeon or Arabic or there were any number of languages. Some of them would have had some hints of Aramaic. Very few of them, if any of them, would have known Hebrew, which was already a a dead language reserved for the kind of priestly cast. You you would learn some chunks of it if for your barits versus to be able to recite it in in temple, but uh you are very unlikely to have unless you had gone into the you know the the the legal or clerical profession in Jerusalem. You’re very unlikely to know Hebrew. So are not all these who are speaking Galileans. And it’s not as though there was a particular Galilean here who said, “Are Paththeon speakers gather around and they could all gather around him and listen to it in Paththeon and Roman speakers over there?” No, no, Greeks over there, dear.

It wasn’t like that at all. No, the extraordinary thing is that as they listened to the people, each one was being spoken to from within and the language was speaking itself through them. In other words, something that was true about all humans everywhere was speaking itself into being so that they could begin to understand it. And it was going to go to every nation under the sun, fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy. And over the next few months or years in Jerusalem, that’s what happened. we see the the rough ride that that process had for getting going and particularly the the oddness of the noncoming of vengeance and how long it took them to get over that. How long it took them to be aware no this is this is not a a vengeful thing. There’s something else going on here. Uh the atonement was something that was simply a gift to enable us to step out completely of that world that which was given. And so now we can begin to learn to work out how to speak again without being dominated by the fears, the angers, the rivalries, the overag against of all our cultures. And yet all the stuff that we heard from Isaiah 59, truth is lacking and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. So the scapegoat mechanism was at work. And that’s now going to be undone from within by people learning how to speak and not allow themselves to be run by that. And that is going to open up humanity so that we can actually take part in becoming real humans which is what the whole of the exercise was about in the first place. Does that kind of make sense? Have I gone over time? I don’t know who told me. I have not timekeeper. Oh, is it 10 more minutes? Oh dear. Well, would anybody like to raise questions, put me right, answer things?

If you don’t, I have plenty more that I could tell you. Doc Dr. Allison’s verba is is is quite a is quite a problem. Okay. Well, because I thought that it was going to take longer to get to here. I left out something which is really quite important which is that all that I’m going to be sharing with you in the next few days presupposes something which may not have been obvious to you uh initially but I hope is becoming more obvious to you as we do work like we’re doing with the street psalms which is how completely different the understanding of what Jesus was doing in going to his death is than what most of us were brought up Most of us were brought up with some or other version of a payment of ransom to an angry to an angry father. Well, no. Luckily, the more we can see about these texts and and this is the joyous thing, the more we pick up about what’s going on in the Jewishness of the texts, the more we see that that really isn’t a possible vision. And particularly it’s in all three synoptic gospels this is very clear but it’s particularly clear in Luke and that’s that the whole purpose of what Jesus was doing was in order to give us the Holy Spirit. But the giving of the Holy Spirit wasn’t simply, well, I have this thing in my back pocket and I will give it to you as though there was some sort of unnecessary whiffle that has been kept back from us and that if we behave properly, it will be given to us. No. From the moment Jesus appears on the scene and starts his ministry, what’s the first thing that happens? He goes into the Jordan. Okay. And what appears over him?

Okay. So, what is that dove?

No. Think Jewish. When was the last time a dove came over troubled waters? Noah. Noah. Noah. And then before that, creation. Exactly. In other words, that which had been hovering over the void.

Then in bird form, waiting for somewhere to rest because the violence was still all over the earth in terms of the flood and it hadn’t yet found a place to rest. Finally, it’s coming and it’s resting on him. And what does that mean? It means okay now the peaceful purpose of creation is going to be made whole. This is the one who’s going to do it. And what’s doing it going to look like? Well, it’s going to look awfully like being drowned and then coming up out of the waters. And curiously, the ancient right that that is most similar to is the right of ordination. For priests, the idea was that they would be dunked in the waters and then come up. And once they came up, and the same word is used for Jesus coming up out of the waters, it refers to them coming up and being able to live in the holy place. Because in the Holy of Holies, where death was no more, that was the purpose of ordination. Priests were people who because they had gone through what we would now call baptism, but this ordination right, they were able to live where God was before creation. In other words, where death wasn’t, which is why it was terribly important that nothing to do with death ever go into the holy place. So what is Jesus doing? The spirit is coming upon him and he then is possessed by this incredible need to be to give us a baptism. Do you remember this all the discussion at the beginning is John has baptized you with water but this one will baptize you with Holy Spirit and we think oh well that’s nice that means that there’s a little dunking here and there’s a little laying on of hands there no the dunking bit that’s right as regards as regards John but as to the laying as the the Holy Spirit no the whole of Jesus’s life was making the Holy Spirit livable by us up to and into his death so that finally by going to his death completely voluntarily exactly in the midst of all our violence exactly as described by Isaiah. Finally, the Holy Spirit is able to become completely at peace with human reality. Death is conquered by Jesus being able to assume death. This is a deliberate road. And at the very end, he breathes out. That’s the giving of the Holy Spirit is his breathing out. Which is why now St. Luke of course very nicely illustrates everything for us with beautiful scenes. John as you know describes the whole thing quite differently. John in John Pentecost is on the evening of uh of the first day of the week when Jesus breathes into them the Holy Spirit on the first evening of the week. Luke separates it out so that we can see what the narrative is. But the purpose of the narrative is that the whole of Jesus’s life was showing us what the spirit was. Teaching his disciples, remember, how to heal and cast out demons and all those sorts of things. Sending them out two by two so that they wouldn’t be rivals with each other, only giving them one one purse between the two of them so they would learn how not how to squabble when they’re when they’re on mission, etc. All of that stuff, all of that stuff was so that we would be able to receive Holy Spirit. And his breathing it out is exactly as he says in John’s gospel, not a compensation prize because I’ve gone away. They say, “Don’t worry, I’ll give you the Holy Spirit. You won’t mind.” No, it was the whole purpose of him doing it from the beginning. If he’s there, he’s just another potential rival. But because he’s gone, and we’ll see this in John’s gospel, because he’s gone, he’s given us the whole dynamic that he made possible because he lived it out humanly up to his death, of living as if death were not, of not being dominated and run by death, and therefore of becoming able to speak and reinterpret everything from the inside since the beginning of creation, which is what Luke is trying to tell us with all those uh with all those images. Now, I hope you can see that this is a vastly more rich and interesting account of why Jesus died for us. Does it forgive sins? Yes, of course it forgives sins. It forgives sins on the way to something much bigger because sins are our problem. Sins are not God’s problem. God can’t be bothered with all that. He’s got, you know, far bigger things to be to be on about. But the fact that we might be able to be set free, not to be run by these things because we’re being brought to life. Now, that’s a real gift. And that’s the emphasis. The moment you start looking at the Holy Spirit patterns in the synoptic gospels and in a different way in John, you can see that this this act of holiness undoing the temple where the spirit was restricted for fear of death to us where corrupt and deathbound as we may be, God has no problem at all in sharing our muckiness, our failedness and turning it into something glorious and finding ourselves on the inside of working that out without fear or favor is what hermeneutics is all about. Now, am I okay? Okay. Thank you.

On John 15:26-16:15

Good morning. Good morning. Excellent. Well, you have the text, right? Everybody has it. John 15 26- 16:15. So, yesterday we had a look at kind of the big Pentecost texts with some of their background. With some of their background. use the diaphragm. Um, the idea being to give you always an ever more anthropological sense of what is going on when we talk about the Holy Spirit. Why is this? Because we’re very used to accounts of the Holy Spirit in which the Holy Spirit becomes, as it were, whiffle God. There’s God God who creates and Jesus God who saves and then there’s whiffle God who wiffles around the place and none of us and none of us really know what’s going on. Okay? And that’s not how it is.

It becomes easier to keep whiffle God in the old view of how Jesus’s death affected us. the ransom paying view to the wrothful father, it becomes easier to maintain it. Why? Because the only purpose of whiffle god in that picture is to give you a bit of viagra after you’ve been saved.

Okay, I know not to be despised, but um

but the point is that once you’ve been saved, you just kind of need a moral boost. Moral boost. Moral. Okay. And that’s the purpose of whiffle God. Blows around, comes upon you, gives you a moral boost. So you behave properly because the whole point of Christianity is behave. Now this is nonsense. All of this is nonsense. It’s nonsense on stilts, as I believe your beloved Benjamin Franklin uh once said.

Something much more interesting is going on, and it’s going on at an anthropological level. I began to talk about it yesterday when we talked about what was the spirit that had come across come upon Jesus at the baptism. We saw not only it was the bird from Noah but

yes yeah the the hovering one from before creation and that finally the hovering one had settled upon Jesus and enabled him to live into

what I feel like live into death.

It’s it’s it’s what I feel like this time of morning any day. Nothing to do with you. Living into death. Why? So as to enable us to be set free from death. But what that also meant was that this was finally how God became horizontal. And that’s what we need to look at because if you stick with the old sacrificial version that we’ve been brought up in, one of the things that happens is that whenever we get a a panic of some sort, we need to go whoops to God and see if God can sort it out. Whereas God is saying, “Whoops, look between yourselves. That’s where I am.”

In other words, from the beginning, the whole point of what we call the incarnation was not a quick dip in and out so as to sort out a problem, but God wanting to come at our level, be completely at the human level. So in the gospels, in the synoptic gospels, what are the only paternal words? What are the only words that God the Father speaks? What’s the only voice? What’s the only words that a voice from heaven says? This is my son. Listen to him. In other words, I’m not talking to you. He’s the mouth. Okay, important. But really, we have to understand that because we think, okay, nice mouth, but we really want to get back to you cuz you’re the one with the thunderbolts. And he’s saying, “No, no thunderbolts. That’s your imagination. listen to him. Okay. But that means that the Holy Spirit which he gives us is also at the horizontal level which is why I call the Holy Spirit sideways God. And I think it’s hugely important that we, especially if we’re keen in working anthropologically with the gospel, understanding how it’s in between us in whatever sort of social circumstance we are, that we’re not dealing with a an excessively supernatural thing. The most supernatural thing about God is that God wants to come amongst us at this level. And just to show that I’m not making it up, this passage. Okay. When the advocate comes whom I will send to you from the father, the spirit of truth who comes from the father, he will testify on my behalf. So the advocate, what’s an advocate? A lawyer. A lawyer. What sort of lawyer? Defense attorney. A defense attorney. absolutely key in biblical terms. The defense attorney was the goel, the redeemer. I know that my redeemer liveth literally I know that my advocate liveth for those of us who love lawyers. This is a nice a nice thing. I know that my lawyers are alive. No, but the goel the advocate was opposed to the satan the accuser. Those were the two prosecution council, defense council. But here’s something interesting. When the advocate comes, who I will send to you from the father, the spirit of truth who comes from the father, how is it that the defense council who we would think of as a partisan figure, how is it that the partisan figure is the spirit of truth?

What does that say about the kind of world in which we are learning to be truth tellers?

It means that truthtelling is always going to sound like getting people off accusations. And it’s well worth remembering that there isn’t any form of simple neutral truth that is not getting us out of some sort of accusatory way of being. And that’s enormously important.

Which means that when we are talking about work, advocacy work, what are we doing?

We’re just trying to make the truth visible. That’s what this is what this is about. It’s not special pleading. Special pleading is when we want to be kind to someone, but really we think that if everything was as it is, they should be where they are. That’s special pleading. Special pleading is false friends. We’re going to plead for you, but we’re going to kind of say, “You really deserve it, but we’re going to try to be see if we can find someone to be nice for you.” No, that’s actually not advocating for the truth at all. Advocating for the truth is understanding that the truth needs to be made visible in the midst of a potentially accusatory world and system. Okay. So the spirit of truth who comes from the father now he says he will testify on my behalf. Testify

bear witness. Bear witness. And that’s going to be hugely important because that is the structure of the New Testament. I know this is unfair question, but here we are. Priest, Spanish Inquisition and all that. What is the official Catholic term for New Testament?

Sorry. Apostolic witness. Apostolic witness.

Apostolic witness. Yay. High five over the inver. Apostolic witness. Why? Because what is the point of the text of the New Testament? accept

the witness borne by a group of people to what they saw happened in their midst and then eventually put into writing. That at least is the Catholic understanding. But the key thing is the witness. Some people who report seeing something and who report not having understood it at first and only understanding it afterwards. That’s the absolutely key thing in the New Testament. So when we come to Hermenute the question is do we believe these guys?

Do we believe that they are bearing witness to something greater than themselves? Or do we think we know more than we than they do about what they’re talking about? Because if the latter, which is very often the way we’re taught to read, there’s no point. We’re not picking up the voice of the other that was trying to get something across to them so as to make it available for us to live in the same space. Does that make sense? So he will testify on my behalf. You and this is a lovely part. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning. So he’s talking to the the apostolic group here, isn’t he? In other words, ever since John’s baptism, you’ve been hanging around with me. You’ve seen all the things that I’ve done. You’ve asked questions. Some of the things you’ve understood, some of the things you haven’t understood. But you’ll bear witness that those things happen. And the spirit of truth who comes will teach you to make sense of those things. In other words, the spirit will bear witness on my behalf. It will actually fill out your lousy misunderstanding minds. Was it uh hard of heart and dull of intelligence? Whatever it was he called the disciples on the road to mar something like that. um the spirit will fill out and bear witness to what God was actually doing in this thing and because you have accompanied it the whole time you will be able to make human sense of it. You see that so just it’s important to think of this every little word in St. John has anthropological clout. If he says testify, we say testify. No, testify actually has this way clout. This is important for him. I’ve said these things to you to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the synagogues and indeed the churches. Indeed, because this is not anti-Semitic at all. the the use of the words which we now take in an anti-semitic sense does not refer to a them. It refers to an us in any religious in any religious setting. Remember that the word Jews in John’s gospel refers to the yudoi.

the leadership group who came back from Babylon and produced the new religion of the second temple amongst the Hebrew people. So at the time they were much more like a uh we would call a partisan political cultural group something like the wigs or the Tories than an ethnic term. They became an ethnic term later. But here in Rome where there’s a very very old Jewish community, what is the term? Some of you who have visited the quarter, what what is the term for Yeah.

No, that the how do how do Italians refer to the Jews?

le or the Hebrew the Hebrews and actually that’s much the older form uh for talking of the ethnicity. So we read it talks about the Jews in St. John’s gospel that must mean Jews like like Netanyahu. No it doesn’t. It means a pre-ethnic group who dominated the religious setup in the land occupied by Hebrews. Now lots of Hebrews were Jews. But it hadn’t yet become the ethnic term which it became later. So that therefore it’s completely wrong. It’s a complete anacronism for us to use the gospel to point at the Jews. Which is why a good translation of the synagogues might be out of your assemblies. Except that’s unfair if you belong to the Assemblies of God because you think they’re getting at you. They think that they’re getting at you, but it’s not. But you get the point. Translate anthropologically in every case. They will put you out of their religious assemblies. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so, they’re offering worship to God. Now, why would that be?

because they have a completely different anthropology of God.

The kind of anthropology of God that says yes, keep hard lines between in and out and if anybody dares to threaten, kill the bastards. Which if you remember was exactly what Romulus did to Ramos on the hill we visited the other day. That’s the sort of God that keeps law and order.

This is the sort of God that’s constantly cracking everything open. And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me.

But I’ve said these thing to you so that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told you about them. In other words, you’re going to find yourselves living in a world where these two versions are alive and well. And one will be God demanding sacrifice and finding willing hands unfortunately to do it. And anybody who suggests fraying the edges of the boundaries is an automatic threat. And the other who’s actually constantly exploding from within the edges and saying they’re not real. They shouldn’t be there.

You may remember that I told you about them. I did not say these things to you from the beginning because I was with you. But now I’m going to him who sent me. Yet none of you asks me where are you going? Okay. So I ask you where is he going?

What’s what’s the last thing that they will see of him in that bodily form? Sorry. The cross. Yeah. He’s going to his death. But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the advocate will not come to you. You see what we were talking about Jesus occupying the space of death. So that only with the space of death occupied could spirit no longer kept out by human domination by death actually become present amongst humans and start to make us daughters and sons of God that that’s absolutely essential. Jesus is doing something deliberately so as to put us in a position where we get something else. Do you see that there’s nothing whiffly going on here? And he’s saying quite specifically that my going to my death is absolutely a central part of this package. If I don’t do that, the spirit won’t be able to come upon you. You won’t have the ability to interpret all things as true from the beginning and undo all the accusations. Why? Because you won’t have seen me occupy the space of death, bearing all the accusations and known that it was completely false and that God’s judgment is on those who did this, not on the one to whom it was done.

In other words, I will have become the criteria for what God actually looks like in our midst. But if I don’t go, you won’t get that.

But if I go, I will send him to you. So that’s the thing gone, breathed out in all the synoptic gospels at the end of John’s gospel. It’s tetaresti. The whole thing is concluded, completed, finished. sealed, requited, atoned. Each one of those words is a possible translation for for the Hebrew word behind tetilstste.

And then we have this beautiful little again anthropological trio of phrases. And when he comes, so when this is the spirit coming, when the advocate comes, he will prove the world wrong. That’s what advocates do, don’t they? They try to prove people things in court. He will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment. About sin because they do not believe in me. What does that mean

for those who do not believe in him? Who is he? This person who has gone to the cross. He’s a sorry criminal. Yep.

Yeah, that as well. Well, the two key things which are just I just for convenience use these two phrases because remember he was judged by the political power and the religious power. He was a sedicious blasphemer. It’s good for us to remember that. Why? Because if the icon of God is a sedicious blasphemer,

then those who believe in him do not believe in anything that government or religion says.

And that’s an enormously important point.

The icon of God is not a bigger backup for government or a bigger backup for priesthood. It’s the whatever it is, the spanner in the monkey wrench. Do you have monkey wrenches? Yeah. Boom. It’s the It completely throws that whole question into chaos. So he will prove to pro prove the world wrong about sin because they do not believe in me. For those who believe in him, what has happened?

They’ve seen that God actually loves the world so much and in this way that he allowed his son or sent his son to occupy the space of shame and blasphemy and sedition and death. So that we should know that however inclined we are to put people in that space ourselves and however inclined we are to run away from that space ourselves it doesn’t matter he loves us anyhow and therefore sin consists in just not letting go letting go of the ways in which we were tied into that being forgiven is oh my god I used to think that That was the right thing to do. And now I’m being let go and I’m being able to become a sister or brother of the sedicious blasphemer. But you see the huge difference made by the voice of the accuser and the voice of the advocate

about righteousness because I’m going to the father. And what’s the key thing about righteousness here? What is it that makes unrighteous? Basically death and its corruption.

Now people will be wrong about death. Death has nothing to do with God. Jesus has occupied the space of death and therefore he’s gone to his father and thereafter death need no longer be a dominating factor in our lives. And you remember the phrase from the epistle uh to the Hebrews, which I don’t, but there are some good Protestants here. Who will quote to me the some good Protestants here? Who will quote to me uh who will quote to me the Sorry. No, no, no.

Okay. Well, never mind. We’ll look it up afterwards.

But basically, he did this so as to set them free from death and the fear of the devil who had held them bound all their lives. Do you remember that? Or my approximation of it. Typical papist muddling things. There we are. About righteousness because I’m going to the father and you will see me no more. And that’s a vital thing. And he’s saying that’s part of it. It’s because I’ve occupied the space of death and I’m not actually hanging around indefinitely. There’s no me for you to be in rivalry with. You are going to be me at this level. You are going to be taking this forward. It’s actually going to be much better for you that I’m not hanging around there like a school monitor or even a prefect from the era above going, “Oh, come on. Get in line.” you know,

but how often do we treat Jesus as though he’s kind of that? And he’s saying, “No, I’m getting out of the way.” Self- aacing is God’s God’s middle name. Why? So that we can be him. And and he remember he says, “When I go greater things than I, you will, you will do. Greater things than I have, you will do.” That’s part of this. He’s saying, “I’m not going to be in any way a scandal to you. There’s no, you can’t have rivalry with me because I’ve gone to my death. I’ve taken rivalry out of the game.” But going to my death isn’t a magic thing. It means I have gone. But you will have all the inner dynamic that was me and you will be doing that. Hence all the stuff about vines and you know pruning and all of that stuff. Okay, remember that.

And the third thing about judgment because the ruler of this world has been condemned. So when what was the moment of triumph of the ruler of the world in John’s gospel? Can you remember where it was? It actually comes after this passage in the gospel when Judas leaves. He says this is the hour of darkness. So it comes with the betrayal, the accusation and then the joint Judeo-Roman sentencing, the sedicious blasphemer, the squabble between the authorities as to who was the king of the Jews, which is essentially how John presents it as as a tussle about the word king and how important that is in us being able to see that the king is the one who is crowned. found and enthroned on a cross in shame and in mock vestments

and at the same time he has the tunic taken off him and what was the tunic

was seamless wasn’t it? So it was the same as the temple veil and the temple veil represented the beginning of creation. So here is the great high priest who in the ancient right of the atonement the great high priest would come through the temple veil and immediately have the high priestly tunic put on him because the idea was that this was the great high priest coming into creation to make it glorious. So what do we have in all of that running backwards? The last thing that happens to Jesus before he’s put on the cross is he unveils his flesh so that we can get to see what God looks like amongst us on the cross literally. And then naturally enough, Romans being Romans know how to fulfill the Hebrew scriptures. So they cast lots for the uh uh they cast lots for who’s who to get to keep the the cloak. A bit of a a model for them poor deers because of course in the right of the atonement there were two there were two sheep or goats weren’t there. The one who acted in for for Yahweh basically because they didn’t the high priest didn’t want to get killed each year. So they had a sheep to stand in for the high priest who was standing in for for the Lord. And then they had another one who was standing in for good Protestant. Aazel. Come on. Surely you can give me an Aazel. Who’s standing in for Aazel? But guess what? What Jesus is doing? He’s standing in for both at the same time outside the camp. So both the political and the religious judgment is being undone. But that’s the point about judgment because the ruler of the world has been condemned. and about judgment means the word is crisis. It’s from which we get the word criteria. Now we will have God’s criterion for what God looks like. And what is God’s criterion for what God looks like? Well, it’s this. It’s this person who has gone to this place. And the spirit, you remember I yesterday I said we have God. We have God’s criterion for God, which is also God. Because how could God have a criterion for God that was less than God?

And then we have God’s interpretation of God’s criteria for God, which is the spirit. God’s giving us the capacity verbally to interpret all things. And that’s absolutely central because if you don’t have the capacity to interpret, you’re always going to run the risk of turning the criteria against itself of making the cross just another sort of bloody sacrifice rather than the undoing from within of all sacrifices and so getting the whole thing stopped up. So Dr. ‘s brief guide to the Holy Trinity. God, God’s criteria for God and God’s interpretation of God’s criteria for God. Each one of which is God. Okay? Because if you have a God who doesn’t include criteria, you’re making it up. If you have God with criteria but no sure way to interpret, you’re going to find yourself interpreting it according to the bad old ways. It’s only when you have God and the criteria and the interpretation that we’re going to be kept in life. Do you see the point of that? And again, each one of these is a quite simple anthropological point about sidewaysness. I still have many things to say to you. How are we doing on time? Are we okay? I still have many things. I still have many things to say to you as well, but we don’t

But you cannot bear them now. Okay. When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. And this is again absolutely vital. Why do we leave this out of our Bibles and indeed out of our church church doctrine? The whole of the Christian thing is based on the presumption that it’s an ongoing learning exercise that the spirit will teach us how to keep alive the essential fact ever contemporarily and learn amazing new things on the way.

For when he comes he will not he will guide you into all truth. For he will not speak on his own. So, he’s not going to just whiffle around and say, “Oh, I’m feeling rather spiritual today. Let me um I don’t know, bless some froth or something.” Um, but will speak whatever he hears and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. Glorify.

Again, we tend to have an over celestialized use of the word glorify means give good reputation to speak well of.

In other words, this is part of the testifying. It’s part of making available Jesus’s true reputation, the one that God gives him to us as a constant exercise so that we can actually understand what truth and innocence and holiness looks like in the midst of endless fakery. the attempts to go back to the bad old ways which seemed more fun to go back to Egypt to use Old Testament language. He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. Okay? So, it’s not he’s going to declare strange things about God the Father. He’s going to take what is mine. In other words, what is Jesus doing? Not what would Jesus do. What is Jesus doing? He’s going to declare it to you. He’s going to say, “This is the work of the Lord.”

Making linguistically and interpretatively available at this level our undoing of the world of sacrifice and hatred and accusation and false gods. All that the father has is mine. In other words, forget any more outside god stuff. outside God stuff doesn’t want to be outside God anymore. Outside God has given everything to me. The only relation you have to God now directly is a fraternal relationship. It’s as you create fraternity or siblingity with me that you become children of the father. Not as you grab the father and say I want to belong to you. So who are the insiders? No. He says go and make brothers and sisters and then you will discover that your I am your father. You see the difference. It’s enormously important that difference because that way the only way we can get it right is by creating new forms of inside and outside and guess what? Sacrifice. This way we’re constantly overcoming that and discovering an ever more realistic and ever wider world.

All that the father has is mine. For this reason, I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. In other words, the father when the father sends the holy spirit, which in John’s gospel is on Sunday evening and in Luke’s is several weeks later, but it’s the same thing. It’s giving to you the declaration of what Jesus has really been doing all along at this level so that you can carry on doing it yourselves. That’s the purpose of this exercise. So finally when and that’s not this is not in in this text but it’s absolutely part of the same uh the same dimension when in the great passage of creation which is John 20 this is John 20 is if you say where in the Bible does it talk about where is the passage about creation most oh Genesis no it’s John 20 Genesis is the backdrop so as to enable you to understand John That’s the way round. It’s not how does the New Testament fit into the Old Testament. It’s how does the Old Testament enable us to read the New Testament. It’s a vital distinction. It’s a vital distinction. Or else we tend to find ourselves wanting to trap Jesus into being a solution to all sorts of problems we find in the Hebrew scriptures rather than allowing the Hebrew scriptures to become illuminated as we see what Jesus has been doing. Does that make sense? Anyhow, when the great moment of appearance appears on the evening in the locked room, why is it locked in the house? For fear of the Was that an ethic an ethnic people? No. And and curiously, what sort of Jews were frightened of going into what sort of room? What was the one room that Jews would have been frightened to go into? of holies. The Holy of Holies. Okay. So, here we have John with beautiful irony because everything in John is ironic, which is how you know he’s a good Jewish writer because Hebrew is a a language which allows endless. Sorry. A little louder. Yes. Excuse me. I will ramp it up. Um, how you know, how you know that this is a a piece of Johannine irony is because the holy place into which Jewish people were frightened to go and which couldn’t be gone into because of the threat of death. So even the high priest when he went in and he had been ordained so that he would be able to live outside death even he had to go in with a cord around his his ankle because if he had a heart attack and died whoops they needed to be able to or he came out. Okay. So here finally the great high priest appears in this now entirely leasized holy place.

the living one, the most high, the the definitive apotheiois of God in the whole of the scriptures is is that one. And what does definitive apotheiois do apart from say peace be with you? Shows the signs meaning I am the one to whom all that narrative history happened. This is the narrative history that you know about. Peace be upon you. As the father sent me, so I sent you. In other words, I was sent to come amongst you at this level. I’ve done it now. Now you are going at this level. And then what does he do? He breathes into them. Usually translated in most of our Bibles, breathes onto them. But it’s the exact same verb in Greek as Yahweh breathing into Adam’s nostrils in the book of Genesis. And if they’re happy to translate it breathe into in Genesis, why aren’t they happy to translate it breathe into in John? I don’t know. That’s up to them. But the important thing for us is that we know that the real creation of the real Adam is going on there. And then he says, “Whatever sins you forgive, they are forgiven. And whatever sins you don’t, they are retained.” Well, and if you’re a Catholic, you think, “Oh, that means that God suddenly gives power to priests and popes and bishops and things to forgive and all the rest of you can buy indulgences instead.” No, it doesn’t mean that. Surprise, surprise. I mean, I just want to What it means is from now on the whole exercise of opening up creation is going to be at your level. No more outside God. It is now going to be the human anthropological exercise of learning how to forgive each other, which means stepping out of that world of accusation and putting to death so that you can become ever more cooperative and realistic and discover what this creation thing is really all about. But this is going to be at your level now. No more outside God. Now inside God anthropologically declaring things to you at this level and opening you out to be able to function in this way. How are we doing for time? Uh five more minutes. Do you really want five more minutes? You have them if you’d like. Any any questions? Any

a question. So I’m wrestling with, you know, you called it the whipple god, but now we have this horizontal relationship and essentially it’s left to us to do what is right through the Holy Spirit as the Holy Spirit guides us. But I’m still wrestling with, you know, how I’ve been formed. Yeah. Yeah. And I want to know, so I have scripture that says that Jesus is sitting at the right hand of the father and making intercessions for us. Y how does that play in all of this? And am I wrong now when I pray to seek God’s guidance and ask God for help and to think that God is still working miracles in the world? Because I I do. Yes. Good. That’s wonderful. Of course, God is helping. Of course, God wants you to want more and more from God and to ask. Now, the actual language of sitting at the right hand of God, that’s ascension language. And that comes from the ancient right of the enthronement. Uh where at the very end of the recreation of or the what’s the word the renewal of creation uh the king the god king Solomon for instance would be raised up and enthroned at the right hand of God. He would become the right hand is a way of saying God but not exactly God. Okay? It’s like the lamb being in the midst of the throne because it’s a bit of a muddle to have a lamb who’s also a human being and a throne and God the father altogether. Sorry. Yes, I must speak louder. But the point of that language is to say all this is happening at this level. You’re right to ask it. Of course, more the more we desire, the more the spirit is opening us up to desire more. And it’s not that it’s a consolation prize. It’s what’s pushing us. And I think that that’s the difficult thing for these last chapters of John is that people thinking, well, maybe the spirit’s a consolation prize. And Jesus is saying, “No, it’s not the consolation prize. It’s the purpose of the whole damn thing. It’s how I get to push you and you get to push each other into opening things up together. It’s how the protagonism of God works amongst you. And I think that that’s the the difficult thing is for us to imagine that the change of relationship is always in the in between. And that’s the really difficult thing. any situation that we’re in by interpretation the in between can be altered and that’s if you like where the creator spirit is coming uh is coming to life and producing the fullness of creation it’s but yes please don’t let me stop you praying uh to to to God on high or singing or singing lovely or singing or singing lovely hymns about about all that language but just be aware uh that’s what it is. It’s ancient lurggical language and that the real thing has replaced it with something actually at this level. That doesn’t stop us using our imagination in whatever way seems to us to make better sense. Unless we find ourselves being trapped into wanting to take revenge on our enemies and beating their heads against the rocks, you know.

Are we We’re through. Thank you.

On Acts 10:1-48

Okay. Well, day three. So, a little recapitulation. I hope you noticed what we were doing on day one. We were investigating the giving of the Holy Spirit and how that was an end in itself. In fact, a much more important end than other ends that we have usually used when talking about what Jesus was doing. right? Going up to his death in order to give us something and then the difference that made to the world of the temple and its fulfillment in our midst. Do you remember that? And having looked at that on the first day, then yesterday we tried to look more at this spirit that has been given as having what I called anthropological dimensions, meaning at the human level. Yep. Something given to us sideways so as to push us on sidewaysly, if one can say such a thing. Does that does that make sense? but indicating that this is something being done being given to us by a human who has occupied the fullness of the space of humanity including death so that we can now become fully human not being run by death in how we live this out. Right? So we’ve gone from the spirit if you like undoing a form of sacred to the spirit coming alongside us as humans. And now we’re going to look at a third dimension which is the spirit opening up Catholicity. So remember those have been the two themes that we’ve been looking at the anthropology and the catholicity and how they come together. So that’s what we’re going to be looking at today. Now the word Catholicity, don’t be frightened of it just because it sounds like Catholic or be very frightened indeed depending on but it comes as you as you know all know from Greek meaning uh according to everything absolutely all and people therefore thought that well that means universal but universal can be a sort of a totalitarian notion of you must all belong and a baby and that’s a way of being universal but it’s very much how the kingdoms of this world want you to be universal. So the question is what is the sort of becoming all together? That is a way of being one. In other words, together as one. Holy, which means as being forgiven. People who are stepping out of having been taking part of lynch mob ways of making unity over against others. So one holy Catholic meaning gradually moving out to everywhere so that nowhere is left out but not according to any imposition but according to people discovering who they are alongside and with each other and then finally that this is done apostolically. You know the four notes of the creed, one holy, catholic, apostolic. Apostolically meaning starting off from real human beings who were witnesses to something and is done at this level in some actual genuine human link with real people nutty and crazy as they may have been. Uh and obviously apostolicity Catholics we understand it particularly with the link to Peter. But there are other communions with St. Andrew or whichever other apostle was the was their local emissary if you like. But again the important thing is that this is being done at a human level. This is not some sort of nosis that comes upon people. We’re talking about genuine human creations of the possibility of us being together which once opened cannot be closed down. Okay. So that’s uh a basic thing. But what we what I want to show us today or to look today is at how this started to become instantiated to the surprise of all those involved because this is always a surprising fact. Catholicity comes upon holy people despite themselves. And this is a very very important part of what we’re what we’re looking at. What I also have hoped to do on day one and on day two was show how this is directly linked to what Jesus was doing. And that this understanding which I will open out for you depends on Jesus himself having gone to his death in such a way that any form of creation of unity over against a victim can be seen to be what it is a fake unity. And that what is being offered instead is the victim having occupied that space in advance and saying, “Yeah, yeah, I get it. This is what you do to people. But how about we play a different game?” Having occupied that space already so that it’s possible to have a unity that is not over against anyone at all. That’s my shorthand definition of what is meant by Catholicity. It means not over against anyone at all much more than the universal element is the quality element of there being in principle no one who is not part of it or as the late Pope Francis buried a few yards away said to

which got people upset the Pharisees as usual and so he repeated it and said to okay So that’s part of what we’re part of what we’re looking at. What is difficult to bring out because we are so used, I’m afraid, to rather flat readings of text is how Luke or whichever gospel writer, but we’re going to look at Luke today brings out Jesus doing something without Jesus even being mentioned. But I hope you will see that it’s this dynamic that we’ve been looking at over the last couple of days that is brought to light in this passage. So we are in Acts 10. Acts 10. Um the Holy Spirit has come down at Pentecost. A whole lot of things have being done have been done. Signs, wonders, discussions, etc. All of which make sense to a whole lot of excuse me Hebrew texts which for us it’s a matter of arudition but for them it wasn’t audition that’s one of the things that is important to remember things that seem aridite to us were not aerudite to them they would have had memory knowledge of a great deal of the texts that were being referred to certainly they would have known all of the texts of Leviticus and Leviticus Because the beginning of Acts is a mass series of undoings of bits of Leviticus, dying, dying, dying, dying. We’re going to see a bit of that today. And that’s tremendously important because Leviticus was in a sense the setting up of the holiness code by the creation of a people set apart. And this is the undoing from within of that and saying, “No, that was a temporary measure. Now the people set apart is opened up for toos to but that it’s not simply by some verbal decree. It’s by an anthropological change being made possible through what Jesus was doing and is doing. So that’s what we’re going to look at in this Acts 10 passage. So in Cesaria there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of the Italian cohort as it was c as it was called. In other words, he was an Italian. He was a devout man who feared God with all his household. He gave arms generously to the people and prayed constantly to God. Okay, so this means there’s a technical term here. He was a godfearer. And that’s a technical term for the kind of well-intentioned gentile who throughout the the Eastern Mediterranean world hung out with and attended worth worship with Jews in their synagogues. They had accepted Mosaic preaching concerning one God and all of that, but they hadn’t undergone the full conversion ritual, including circumcision and all that, which would have made them formally speaking Jews. So if you like they were second-ass citizens within the Jewish uh worshiing world and they were wellreceived. I mean this was not a when I say secondass citizens I don’t mean in a uh well you know we we’ll allow you in you dirty little thing. No these were well regarded um uh people and there was a special area set aside for them to be present in the synagogue. Uh so this was this was a standard thing. This is this is not and there’s another there’s another centurion in a different part of the gospel who’s part of the same uh who’s part of the same group the uh a godfier and so one afternoon at about incidentally this would mean that they would know the scriptures because they would have heard Moses and the prophets read uh on every Sabbath. So one afternoon at about 3:00 he had a vision in which he clearly saw an angel of God coming in and saying to him Cornelius. He stared at him in terror and said, “What is it, Lord?” So, he knows what sort of thing is a a godly word rather than a a pagan divinity irritation. Uh, so he answered, “Your prayers and your arms have ascended as a memorial before God. Now send men to Jopa for a certain Simon who is called Peter. He’s lodging with Simon, a Tanner whose house is by the seaside.” Okay. Why is Peter staying with a Tanner? Apart from the fact that he might have liked staying in houses with people who had the same name as he. No. Do you know anything about tanners? Well, they engage in tanning. Basically, leather leather leather work.

Do you know how how one of the ways you turn hides into leather of the sort that enables us to buy expensive handbags in Rome?

It involves treatment with certain sorts of acid and the acid used at the time was uric acid. You know how uric acid is obtained? Okay, good. It means that one of the things that everybody knew about tanneries was that they were about the most smelly and disgusting places you could possibly be. And it was also very important to be able to measure who contributed their urine because of course passers by could contribute urine. And it was very important to know what percentage of the urine was Jewish and what percentage was gentile because according to that the leather product would be acceptable or not for sale to Jews would have a higher price if it could be. But there were also there were certain sorts of leather which while actually makes very certain sorts of hides which might actually make very good leather things like footballs and soccer balls and things like that though I don’t think they’d invented that yet poor benited Roman emperor but um pig for instance but if you were a Jewish person you couldn’t possibly really handle a pig skin object but would a Jewish tanner be able to make them well depending on the degree of Gentile or Jewish urine. So, you get the point. Okay, I don’t want to go into this too detail. You don’t need to know too much about this, but just imagine the smell. Okay, imagine the smell. Anyhow, point of this. What is the point of this disquisition on ancient urinals? The point of this is that this is about the least pure place you could possibly be within anything within any part of the Juda Judeaic system. Possibly the least pure place you could possibly be was a tannery. Okay, just it means that Simon is perfectly happy to hang out in pretty impure places. Okay, so the angel spoke to him and left. He called two of his slaves and a devout soldier from the ranks of those who served him and after telling them everything, he sent them to Jopa. So off they go to Japa. Now about noon on the next day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. He’s near the sea, so with a bit of like nice breeze to remove other things. He became became hungry and wanted something to eat. And while it was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw the heaven opened and something like a large sheet coming down and some translations a large sail. That might have been important because some say that the sail was from Noah’s ark. Now I didn’t realize that Noah’s arc had sails because of all the beasties that were in it. But so the word sail or sheet there interesting possibilities as regard its translation there. Something like a large sheet coming down being lowered to the ground by its four corners. In it were all kinds of for-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air. Then he heard a voice saying, “Get up, Peter. Sacrifice and eat. Kill and eat. The word is the sacrificial term for for killing. It says here sacrifice and eat. But Peter said, “By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.” So what do you mean by that? Well, after the very first atonement sacrifice in the book of Leviticus,

something goes seriously wrong. and couple of Aaron’s kids decide to offer uh fire, holy incense to the um to the altar and for whatever reason they they get the incense wrong. It’s not at all clear why. I don’t know what wrong incense is, but there we are. Um and the fire rushes out and kills them. And this is a bit, you know, for Aaron, their dad, this is a bit of a bad move. He’s got two other sons. Okay. But anyhow, so they they um they wrap up the sons and the other sons and carry them out. And Moses is wondering what on earth is going this. Then he says, “I see what’s happened. We’ve God needs us to show what is the appropriate proximity and distance from God.” And then God says to Moses, “Now I will show you how to distinguish between things that are holy and profane and things that are clean and unclean. And the things that are holy or profane, that’s a distinction to do with the temple and worship. And the clean and unclean is a distinction to do with daily living, food, house, etc., etc.” And literally the whole of the book of Leviticus thereafter is an explanation of the holiness code. What it means to be holy and to eat clean or live clean as opposed to being profane or unclean. In other words, any observant Jew would be completely familiar with the things that were being distinguished against and why it was important for them to be distinguished against. Because holiness is a frightening and powerful thing. And if it comes out and yaps you, you end up like Aaron’s kids. And Aaron’s other kids then have to bury you. Okay. So Peter gives an absolutely standard reply. He may think this is some sort of satanic verse. This is some sort of satanic temptation to do something that I really shouldn’t do. But also he’s being told to sacrifice, which is slightly odd because he wasn’t a member of the Levitical family. He wasn’t a uh he wasn’t a member of the Aeronic or the tribe of of Levi.

So the voice said to him again, a second time, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This happened three times and the thing was suddenly taken up to heaven. Okay. What else had happened to Peter three times? Sorry. Okay. And where had he been at that time?

He’d been in the courtyard of the high priest, hadn’t he? Fire by a fire in the courtyard of the high priest. And he’d seen Jesus being taken into the the house of the high priest. And three times people had said, “Oh, you know that guy.” And three times he had said, “No, far be it from me.” In other words, he was making a similar gesture now to the food that he had made to Jesus and something was to do with a kind of repugnance and shame about the one whom he was distancing himself from. Okay. Now, while Peter was greatly puzzled about what to make of the vision that he had seen, suddenly the men sent by Cornelius appeared. They were asking for Simon’s house and were standing by the gate. And here we have something which doesn’t come out well in English, but if you look at the Greek, I hope you will be duly astounded. They called out to ask whether Simon, who was called Peter, was staying there. So imagine them standing outside and shouting loudly. In Greek, it is exactly the same verb as the verb for the [  ] crowing. The [  ] crows with the same verb as as Yeah. So Luke know Luke knew exactly what he was doing. But the hope is that we understand that there is something psychological going on here that is to do with Jesus who is not there and but yet all the things that we were looking at yesterday in terms of my father will send you the spirit and he will declare to you that which is of me. Do you remember that yesterday? Okay. Laboratory laboratory experiment. So while Peter was still there thinking about the vision, the spirit said to him, “Look, three men are searching for you. Now get up, go down, and go with them without hesitation, for I have sent them.” Now you think to yourself, or at least I think to myself. If the spirit can just tell people to go and do things, why didn’t the spirit just come to Peter and say, “Listen, go down to Caesar and baptize these folks.” Why didn’t the spirit do that? If the spirit is perfectly capable of giving logical instructions of the sort that can be obeyed, why not

echo horizontal? The really important thing is that Peter works it out for himself because the following decisions are going to be made at the human level and yet are going to be oracular as we will see.

So Peter went down to the men and said, “I’m the one you’re looking for. What is the reason for your coming? He’s got over his shamefulness in the in the face of questioning about who he might be and he’s now straightforward.” So they answer, “Lelius, a centurion, a righteous and a god-fearing man who is well spoken of by the holy the whole Jewish people, was directed by a holy angel to send few to come.” So Peter invited them and gave them lodging. The next day he got up and went with them and some of the brothers and sisters from Japa accompanied him. The following day they came to Cesaria. It’s about 40 mi a 40 mile walk but that would have been quite a normal uh day or couple of days uh at the time. Cornelus was expecting them and had called together his relatives and close friends. So now we have a gentile household presided over by its patius in good Roman style.

On Peter’s arrival, Cornelius met him and falling at his friend at his feet worshiped him. But Peter made him get up, saying, “Stand up. I’m only a mortal.” Because because Cornelius associated him with the angel, he imagined that there was something more going on here than might meet the eye. And as he talked with him, he went in and found that many had assembled. And he said to them, “You yourselves know that it is improper for a Jew to associate with or to visit an outsider. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.” Now, probably when when it says that he shouldn’t that Jews should not associate them, not because people would think that they were disgusting, but because if you would go into a gentile’s house, you might find uh traces of milk and meat mixed in the saucepan or the wrong sort of of herbs mixed in the kitchen. All of which from a Jewish perspective created impurity. So, this is not we’re not talking about, you know, necessarily impurity. We’re just talking about I don’t know if if any of you have ever had uh gone and had a meal in the house of an Orthodox uh or or very observant Jewish Jewish family. These things are very carefully these things are very carefully protected the the kind of things in the right order in the right place and the non-mixing of things different sorts of pots and pans that you’re not allowed to mix. Anyhow, it would be assumed that gentile houses will be full of all the wrong things in the wrong places. So source of confusion curse but he’s saying okay you know that it’s uh wrong or or it’s considered improper to to visit but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.

That’s rather odd because in the vision in the what was it in the vision was about food wasn’t it? What has happened that having been told to sacrifice food he saw that there was a person being involved if you like. It’s how how we understand the gap between the food coming down and him saying God has shown me not to call anyone profane or unclean. That is the center of this horizontal movement. Now, we have to recreate that. We have to understand that ourselves. Luke doesn’t say he assumes we can work it out. And it’s not easy to work out for us because we’re so unaccustomed to the world of sacrifices. But here’s the thing. One of the things that Peter would have known in his instruction, the instruction was given to him was take, sacrifice, and eat. Now the instruction sacrifice he would know perfectly well meant you sacrifice something which stands in for you. So for instance for a Jewish person wanting to u atone for something or to pay off something a lamb would be the standard thing that you use to redeem. A lamb could stand in for a person. It was a clean and proper thing to sacrifice. a pig. Never. Gentiles could sacrifice pigs. Gentiles could have pigs standing in for them as things to be sacrificed. But therefore, the shocking thing is Peter beginning to be aware that the same sacrificial instruction concerning food and the repugnance of the other was linked to him having been ashamed of Jesus on the one hand, but him also realizing that Jesus had been prepared to stand in for the Jewish people. He was the lamb. Right? Furthermore, and this is what he’s clearly beginning to think about and hadn’t been thought about before, and this is why St. Luke sets it up very carefully in Jesus’s three prophecies of his death. The first prophecy is, I will be handed over into the hands of the high priests and scribes and Pharisees. And the second one is I will be handed over into the hands of men anthropoi. And in the third one I will be handed over to the to the

oh come on Gentiles. I will be handed over to the Gentiles. And it literally says and they did not understand what he meant at that time. In other words, it’s clearly very significant. So Peter has begun to think, “Oh my God, yes, he was handed over to the Gentiles. That means he was happy to stand in for them as well as for us.” That’s quite a shocking realization because from the Gentiles, you know, any beast would do for a sacrifice, crocodiles, reptiles, the birds, any number of weird things. So, he’s beginning to see, oh, there’s actually something universal about that. Anyhow,

so when I was just also to mention this, here we are in the shadow of St. Peter’s. This is the first uh and only scriptural infallible papal pronouncement. It’s important that you should know that God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean. That is quite literally the most important thing Peter ever said. Without it, there would be no gentile Christianity.

It was the beginning of a new universality such as had never been mentioned before. Was Peter using the power of the keys to unbind heaven for the Gentiles. And later on in Acts, he says, “You know that I was given the authority to do that and you know that I pronounced as an oracle.” In other words, they understood exactly what had been going on here. He was taken to the place where he could see for himself that this was going to happen. So Cornelius replied, “Four days ago at this very hour and 3:00 I was praying in my house when suddenly a man in dazzling clothes stood before me. He said, “Cornelus, your prayer has been heard and your arms have been remembered blah blah blah. Therefore I sent for immediately and you’ve been kind enough to come. So now of us, all of us are here in the presence of God to listen to all that the Lord has commanded you to say.” So part two of the infallible pronouncement. Then Peter began to speak to them. I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every people anyone who fears him and practices righteousness is acceptable to him. Boom. Quite literally. Is that the first encyclical? First encyclical. Yeah. Realization and cyclical. But that is outside the gospels. That is certainly the most important phrase in the New Testament. And in fact, if you’re if you’re interested, um Paul even repeats it in in Romans 2, for God shows no partiality. It was clearly a tremendously important uh point because and Paul is discussing the relationship between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians at that point. So he’s clearly taken this as something that is that is repeated. I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every people, anyone who fears him and practices righteousness is acceptable to him. You know, the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ, he is Lord of all. And then he gives his stump speech. He’s been giving a stump speech now for several years in different parts of Israel and Samaria, Judea and Samaria. In other words, this is the first time that he’d gone outside the Jew uh the Jewish and Samaritan hinterland of people who were in some way related to the book.

How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. How he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil. For God was with him. So we are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree. And that bit of Peter’s preaching had got stronger. He didn’t mention it the first time, but it it had got stronger. Hanging him on the tree meant that he was cursed by God. This was part of the revolutionary thing. According to the law, Jesus died to death as cursed by God. You remember yesterday’s point of being a sedicious blasphemer. Yeah. In other words, but God raised him up and with that God undid the whole of the law because if according to the law you’re cursed by God and yet you turn out to be God yourself, then the law gets relativized.

But it’s a hugely important point for their understanding. Hence the the mention of it here. But God raised him up on the third day and allowed him to appear not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. Again, this is not a Gnostic matter. This is something that happened horizontally. People had had to be prepared psychologically so they would be able to bear witness to what had happened. You remember what we saw in John yesterday? The Holy Spirit will teach you, will bear witness on my behalf, and you yourselves, you too will be witnesses. You who have been me from the beginning will be witnesses. Do you remember that? That’s it. Well, this is the same thing here. This would be incomprehensible if Jesus hadn’t been doing things in their presence so that they could see what was happening. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets uh testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. So quick test. While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. So again, the holiness of God, the thing that the temple had been designed to keep away from death because it was such a frightening thing that needed to people to be have very clear distinctions between the sacred and the profane, the clean and the unclean. had come out of the temple already and started to create the new temple as we saw uh on the first day and was now coming into a place where it came upon Gentiles. In other words, the whole of the purity law has gone because the purity law was specifically designed so as to make you a people set apart, distinguished, separated from. That’s what all the old language of holiness and sacred meant

for they heard them speaking in tongues and extoing God. Then Peter said, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days. Okay, please notice it’s not Peter turns up, commands them to be baptized, and then the Holy Spirit comes, which maybe is what one thinks happens at a confirmation service. You come and you kneel and the bishop pats you on the cheek, lays hands on you, puts a little bit of oil, and then you get the Holy Spirit, right? No, it’s the other way around. What has happened here? The initiative has come from a Roman offstage who has sent without really understanding what he’s doing a message to Peter who doesn’t really understand why he’s being called. And little by little, he works it out such that when he finally gets there, he starts to explain what’s going on, thinking, well, you know, I’m I’m the the A team and you know, you’re you’re you’re very decent secondass citizens, but I’m awfully glad you ask what’s going on, so we’re here to to tell you about that. And then boom. Oh my god. I I thought that I was the first class citizen and you were second class citizens, but now Oh, we’re we’re the same.

You’re not a a you where a we. And of course, the moment a former other becomes part of a wei, it’s not the wei that simply

imposes itself. On the other, the Wii becomes a mix. Uh the majority of you who are Americans, your country becomes browner. The Wii is not the same as two eyes or U’s who are in some sort of tension. And that is terribly frightening for people for whom an eye over against a U is absolutely vital and who have all sorts of good reasons in their head, holy seeming reasons in their head why the other should be other. And yet the spirit of the one who died in the place of shame

for Gentiles as well as for Jews meant that the only thing that now matters is are you going to be able to be together without sacrificing people? Are you going to be able to be together and not over against anyone at all? And that is the beginning of Catholicity. So Peter gets what’s going on and having made his eracular pronouncement obviously to his own shock he’s obviously going through learning he said the first thing is I’ I’ve learned not to call anyone profane or unclean then he gets to God has no partiality and then he gets to well how can I withhold baptism you’re you are the same as me it is for them as it was for us.

Then they invited him to stay for several days. Well, I think it finishes there. Now, obviously the matter goes on because some of the people who were with him were a little bit iffy about this and you’re being very lax.

We need to call up the presbyatory and ask them to come down and put you right. You’ve all been there and we we all we all have that and a terrible row then obviously happened for quite some time until in Acts 15 after it’s much no doubt a much more ironic version of it than it was in fact by the time we get to Acts 15. It’s the last time Peter gets to say anything in the New Testament. And he just reminds them after all this discussion has gone on with people wanting to say, “No, no, no. They should come and they should obey the law of Moses.” And um Peter saying, “Well, come on. We not even we really managed to do that. So why impose it on anybody else?” And then Peter says, “You besides you heard that I was set up from the beginning to say something and I said it and and you all recognized it.” And so they say, “Yeah, that’s right, actually.” And so then at this time Peter who’s been standing it as a kind of a if you look at the role of Peter in Acts from the moment he first speaks after Pentecost until his final speech he’s kind of deflating he’s a deflating Moses and then James becomes Aaron and writes down the little the little passage saying we write write these these recommendations to you don’t eat coke Don’t eat strangled meat. Um, avoid a list of four things. I forgotten what they are, but anyhow, basically the most minimal instructions for common all commonal living incidentally, which none of which keep because it meant that for the first seven or eight centuries, all Christians kept kosher, even gentile Christians, the rules about the strangle strangled meat. It was only apparently when uh the baptism of the German tribes started in the seventh or eth century that the German tribes just couldn’t think of why are these people so muddled muddled about having blood in their sticks

and so that fell by it fell by the side. But yeah, how many of you keep kosher as regards butchery and things like that? No, you don’t. Or go to halal butchers in order to No, you don’t. Okay. So, that’s one of the things just to show you that this is an ongoing learning process. But at the center of it is the recognition that the movement of tools is not a decree. It’s not an imperious piece of univers universalizing from a central boss. It’s a very vulnerable learning process as people are brought close to the place of shame and discover that one who is occupying that place already is allowing them to befriend the other and the other to befriend them and therefore for them to become something entirely new and that’s the dynamic of Catholicity. Undoing the sacrificial world from within opens us up to the possibility of allowing all of us to become builders up of each other so as to become a sign of a new whole or dos Stol.