Hans Urs Von Balthasar on Fear

"Fear mercilessly grips the human throat. It fills the psychiatrists' consulting rooms, populates the psychiatric hospitals, increases the suicidal figures, lays blast-bombs, sets off cold wars and hot wars. We try to root it out of our souls like weeds, anesthetizing ourselves with optimism, trying to persuade ourselves with a forced philosophy of hope; we make all possible stimulants available, domesticate the nomadic urge by means of the tourist industry; we invite people to engage in every form of self-alienation.

Others preach from outside, as it were, that we should "simply" trust in Jesus, but such consolation eludes us.

The Catholic reality does not eliminate fear, it transforms it. In the Eucharist and the forgiveness of sins the event of the cross becomes really present; but its fear also becomes present, its fear that gathered up and exceeded all the world's fear. This was a fear that had been offered to God, a fear on our behalf, designed to free the sinner from fear.

Jesus' prophetic words to the Church constantly alternate between terrible facts to which we can only respond in fear - "I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves" (Mt 10:16)- and words encouraging us to overcome fear because it is God-given: "Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me" (Jn 14:1)" - Fr. Hans Urs Von Balthasar "In the fullness of faith" p. 20-21

Malachi's Lenten Message

"For I hate divorce, says the Lord, the God of Israel, and covering one’s garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts. So take heed to yourselves and do not be faithless.
You have wearied the Lord with your words. Yet you say, ‘How have we wearied him?’ By saying, ‘All who do evil are good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them.’ Or by asking, ‘Where is the God of justice?’
See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?
For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.
Then I will draw near to you for judgement; I will be swift to bear witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow, and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.
For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, have not perished. Ever since the days of your ancestors you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, ‘How shall we return?’" - Malachi 2.16-3.8

A few things stick out to me here. God is talking about St. John the Baptist obviously with the messenger who purifies, and the offering of Judah as Christ's crucifixion - that's the offering - Or the Eucharistic Sacrifice (because it says it is of Old, and in Mal 1, it has the verse about a perfect sacrifice).... In any case, the Sacrifice of the cross and the sacrifice of the mass are the same sacrifice, so it's still being presented which makes sense of the verse, or perhaps it is just that it stretched through all time past and future. But again as John judged the hypocritics of his day as Christ did, so the final judgment is foreseen here where some are purified (purgatory for Catholics, whatever the hell the Orthodox believe in -they probably all disagree-, or sanctification for Protestants).

I like that verse about the Lord not changing and therefore the true covenant people will not change. So the Church being the new israel in the covenant will be purified - but they will be saved - and they will be cleansed of sin and Christ's pure sacrifice will be theirs which will please God.

At least that's what I got from it. I'm probably going to get destroyed by the covenant theologians wanting the great wall of China between OT and NT covenants, and the Catholics who try to make everything a proof-text for later developed doctrine.

Whatever..... what it practically means is God is kicking my ass right now with bad stuff that's happened this week and i need some explanation so i go back to the scary part of the Old Testament which makes more sense than this week's readings of "In him (Christ) every one of God's promises is a yes" -which sounds nice, but isn't really true, as I'm still praying for what I've been praying for for the last 3 years, etc.

Hence why the Old Testament and Lent makes sense. God obviously still has discipline and wrath to dish out, even to his kids. But eventually we'll be able to say that this cosmic child abuse 'made us the men we are today'. Blah blah C.S. Lewis problem of pain....blah blah Ken Gire Sanctification... blah blah life sucks at times.

yep. good thing everyone stopped reading this blog. heh.

I'll close on a good quote from Rabbi Abraham Heschel (who the emergents all love): God remains unreal to those who view him as anything less than a consuming fire. (or something like that.)

Now off to class.

Worship is Scary: Fearing God

I just got back from Mass at St. Alexander's. It is a fairly modern Roman Catholic church, there are giant stained-glass windows and a huge Jesus with outstretched arms at the centre of the church. There are the stations of the cross (via crucis), pews, pianos, not too different from some Anglican churches aside from the obvious things I've mentioned. The Homily (sermon) was on Jesus the Good Shepherd, and all of the liturgy was about Jesus actually, every other word was Christ, and Mary and the Pope only got one name drop a piece the whole time. One thing was unusual though to my low church experience, we had to kneel for the Eucharist - which if you believe as I do, it's Jesus, it isn't that big of a deal to have to kneel - and we had things to recite that I didn't know - luckily I have memorized the Apostles Creed etc, but not everything.

I was thinking, as I knelt and dodged the people rushing forward and back to the pews in a synchronized pattern, man this is a bit strange and uncomfortable to me. Then I thought about what the Mass claims to be and a few other things. The Mass is supposed to be (it can be argued of course) an ancient service handed down by the apostles, and I figure if I felt comfortable through all of it, and it simply catered to my needs, how would that by Christ-centred and Historic Christianity. I started to think, maybe worshipping God IS supposed to be a bit scary.

Proverbs says 'the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom', but we are to love God perfectly and St. John writes that 'perfect love casts out fear' it's a bit of a paradox. Some people translate 'fear' as 'reverence', and that might be closer to it. I decided to go through the bible and see whether worship involved fear.

In Exodus 19 it describes when God is about to give the law to Moses. It says that God descended onto the mountain in a dense cloud, and that "all the people who were in the camp trembled". In Exodus 24:17 it says "the LORD was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel". I can't find it now - I wish I could, but I read a verse the other day where the people of God were to go before the Lord but they were too terrified and wanted Moses to do it, because they were afraid. These are God's people here, Israel, the body which now includes the church (for you covenant theologians out there). It is interesting to me that God's worship was on his terms, his way, not what was comfortable, little to nothing about the law was 'like everyone else' or 'comfortable'.

In Isaiah 6 when Isaiah has a vision of heaven, even the angels cover their faces from God, and the description of heaven is scary. I mean they burn his lips with a coal for his ordination, come on!

In the gospels Jesus message and God's truth got him killed. And he said lots of scary things about fearing God who can kill the body and the soul.

In Acts 4 the believers pray for boldness because they are persecuted so much. In Acts 5 God strikes Ananias and Sapphira DEAD for commiting a high handed sin against God (or a mortal sin for Catholics). God is scary, there's no getting around it.

Philippians 3:20 it says that 'our citizenship is in Heaven' St. Paul describes the church as a colony of Heaven - something the Philippians understood as the city of Philippi was a Roman colony of Greece. The people were different from the surrounding towns, they spoke Latin, they had Roman culture and Roman food etc. So when Paul describes what we are to be like - it is a description of something unrecognizable to the culture, completely 'un-seeker sensitive' in appearance, but seeker sensitive in love/charity. Likewise Peter's epistle calls us 'aliens in this world'.

Finally in Revelation 4, when St. John is witnessing the worship in Heaven, he describes a crazy Rainbow-colored, lightning-shooting, throne with people chanting a liturgy over and over for all eternity, falling on their faces before God, surrounded by strange scary sounding animals. This is God. This is worship, and it's not hard to imagine that being in the presence of Almighty God worshipping the Creator of the Universe, maybe should fill us with 'fear and trembling' - as we are told by Paul to work out our salvation in. (Phil.2.12)

I guess the thesis of all this is, I think Bill Hybels is wrong, God wants loving people, but still, people who fear him, people called out to be different and strange to those around them. Not churches that are afraid to put up crosses because they might 'offend' people... maybe that offends Jesus, I mean he seemed a little attached to the cross if I remember (forgive me for that off colour joke).