This past Sunday, my thoughts were brought back to the question of Jesus. If I had been called to do a homily on the reading and the lesson at Evensong, here's what I might have said.
I began this journey of translating the Old Testament in 2006. At the time I had buried myself in the New Testament in lots of ways, also using software to analyze parallel passages in the Gospels, using a diagramming tool to image the keywords of the epistle to the Hebrews, reading with intensity in Revelation and Romans, and generally putting up with my surface knowledge of the NT. I had read the OT of course and even studied the sacrificial system with the help of some excellent scholars, like Jacob and Jo Milgrom 20 years ago (2001) at a conference in Cambridge.
(I cannot find a record of this Cambridge conference online any more except on this blog under the label Milgrom. How frail are our memories. And we have such a noisy electronic record. I am currently reading East-West Street, the origins of genocide and crimes against humanity. Philippe Sands creates the personal history of several protagonists from fragments of paper evidence out of the silence of the Shoah. A contrast in method.)
Having translated the Tanach, what then do I make of Jesus? When Peter jumped to his conclusion, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." what did he mean? (Uh - Bob you don't like that word mean.)
But I love what Jesus has demonstrated: exactly what is implied though not so easy to read in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Jesus shows what it 'means' - yes I will use that word here - to be a fully accountable 'son' of God. (Interesting that Matthew adds 'living' to God. There is something present about that word.)
What is this 'son'? Having now having had to read the OT (known to Judaism as the Tanach) in some detail, I extend son to signify child and thereby to include all sorts and conditions of humanity, girls as well as boys, and all the variations in body parts and capacities that are demonstrated in the human condition, able or not.
The 'sonship' - what I might like to call 'the fullness of being a child of the living God', is 'described' in the Epistle to the Hebrews, how this human learned to hear with God's voice. I was reminded of my obligation to explain what I thought about Jesus this past Sunday since I had to read at Evensong. The first reading was a reading from Ecclesiasticus 38 - I think that's right - (have I already forgotten) and the second lesson was Hebrews 8. I think I can say that the Mystery called me back to church for that one lesson.
I can scarcely call Ecclesiasticus more than a reading (text is below) - but it is interesting. It describes a religious separation between attaining wisdom by study of the Word of God, something that the writer claims requires leisure, and all the other professions in the world, like shepherding (David), herdsman (Amos), potter (even the Most High), maker of seals, and so on. Nevertheless, Ecclesiasticus describes our time, when the Word of God is the property of the cult and the scholar, rather than of the people.
But Hebrews is a lesson. How does it describe how Jesus learned 'the fullness of being a child of God'?
Hebrews clearly points to the Tanach, and particularly to the Psalms as the working out of 'our childhood' and our responsibilities to each other in our full set of communities. According to the writer to the Hebrews, whoever it was, specifically quotes the psalms as the conversation between Father and Son, Parent and Child, couched of course in the language and expectations of the time.
In other words, the homilist who writes the letter claims that Jesus demonstrates this knowledge of the conversation in the Psalms and lives his 'sonship', maturing and informed through the Psalms. (To be fair to Ecclesiasticus, the writer of chapter 38 does point to the Psalms as well, once to Psalms 1:2.)
Here is the list of the psalms used in Hebrews: (extracted from my book Seeing the Psalter, 2010)
- Psalms 2:7, Hebrews 1:5, 5:5;
- Psalms 8:5-7, Hebrews 2:6-9;
- Psalms 22:23, Hebrews 2:12;
- Psalms 40:6-8, Hebrews 10:5-7;
- Psalms 45:7-8, Hebrews 1:8-9;
- Psalms 50:14, Hebrews 13:15;
- Psalms 56:11, Hebrews 13:6;
- Psalms 95:7-11, Hebrews 3:7-11, 15, 4:7, 4:3-5;
- Psalms 97:7, Hebrews 1:6;
- Psalms 102:25-26, Hebrews 1:10-12;
- Psalms 104:4, Hebrews 1:7;
- Psalms 110:4, Hebrews 5:6, 7:17, 21;
- Psalms 118:6, Hebrews 13:6;
- Psalms 135:14, Hebrews 10:30.
Or for another view, here is the usage in the sequence of chapters in the homily called the letter to the Hebrews:
- Psalms 2:7, Hebrews 1:5, 5:5;
- Psalms 97:7, Hebrews 1:6;
- Psalms 104:4, Hebrews 1:7;
- Psalms 45:7-8, Hebrews 1:8-9;
- Psalms 102:25-26, Hebrews 1:10-12;
- Psalms 8:5-7, Hebrews 2:6-9;
- Psalms 22:23, Hebrews 2:12;
- Psalms 95:7-11, Hebrews 3:7-11, 15, 4:7, 4:3-5;
- Psalms 110:4, Hebrews 5:6, 7:17, 21;
- Psalms 40:6-8, Hebrews 10:5-7;
- Psalms 135:14, Hebrews 10:30.
- Psalms 50:14, Hebrews 13:15;
- Psalms 56:11, Hebrews 13:6;
- Psalms 118:6, Hebrews 13:6;
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