By chhotebhai
Kanpur, Dec 2, 2019: Christmas is a time when devout Christians use the invocation “Maranatha.”
It is the concluding line in the Bible that means “Come Lord Jesus” (Rev 22:20). It is most appropriate for Advent. This phrase is earlier used by St Paul in his benediction to the Corinthians (cf 1 Cor 16:22), where the expression means “Our lord has come”. Has Jesus already come, or is he yet to come? That is precisely the meaning of Christmas. He comes, ever comes.
This Aramaic phrase was apparently in common usage, which is why St Paul used it to bless the Hellenists (Greek speaking) believers in Corinth. In the title I have also used the Hebrew word Manna. Devout Christians believe this to be the miraculous heavenly bread with which God sustained the chosen people during their 40-year sojourn in the desert (cf Ex 16:12ff).
But Manna does not mean bread. It was an exclamation “What is it?” as it was an inexplicable phenomenon. Exegetes tell us that it was actually a sweet resin exuded by a desert tree tamarix mannifera, when its bark was burrowed by the insect gossyparia manniparia. Coincidentally, the lime tree in my garden is displaying the same phenomenon at the time of writing. The Bedouin tribe in the Sinai peninsular (Arabs) called it Mann, and the correct Hebrew word is Manhu.
Devout Christians maybe shocked at this mythologizing of a miraculous (divine intervention) event. Rather than weakening my faith it actually strengthens it. If both faith and science are seeking after truth then they must be pointed in the same direction. They are two sides of the same coin. Faith seeks to tell us WHY things happen, while science tells us HOW things happen. They are complementary, not contradictory.
The problem arises when one encroaches on the competence of another, as with Darwin or Galileo. Science teaches us that for 20 billion years creation has been evolving, and still is. The Genesis account of creation is divided into seven days. That may be interpreted as seven stages of creation that are actually compatible with science – heat, light, gas, liquid, solid etc.
Unfortunately many learned people sometimes encroach on another’s territory and use clever arguments to arrive at erroneous conclusions. Two such instances are Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code and Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. I have deconstructed both their hypotheses earlier, but will briefly touch on them here.
Brown at least admits that he is writing fiction, though his not so hidden target was to demythologise Jesus and more particularly the Catholic Church. I give two examples. He compares the apple in the Garden of Eden to Newton’s theory of gravity. He uses da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper to “prove” that Jesus’ “wife” Mary Magdalene was seated next to him.
Tough luck for Brown; because there is no reference to an apple in Eden, nor elsewhere in the Bible, as it is not a Mediterranean fruit. This common misconception may have crept in after St Jerome, the first exegete, translated the Bible into Latin, in the 4th century. The Latin word for evil, as in Genesis, is malum, as in malafide or malnutrition. The Latin botanical name for apple is malus pumila. Malum may have got corrupted to Malus in the course of time.
Da Vinci, who was born 1600 years after the Last Supper, did a painting of it with a blue sky, golden locks and a dining table. How could there have been a blue sky at night? Semitics like Jesus sat on the ground to eat, unlike the Romans at table. Jesus, the Asian, did not have blonde hair!
On the other hand Hawking claimed that there was no beginning and end of time, therefore no creation nor Creator, because the universe was circular, not linear, and the sum total of all matter was zero. My counter argument was that a sphere has both linear and circular dimensions. A book of accounts may have both credit and debit entries, and yet have a zero balance. Hawking was using a thermometer to measure length and a tape to measure temperature. Having used the wrong tools he, but naturally, arrived at the wrong conclusions!
I am an ordinary worker like Jesus the carpenter. He knew his profession and that of others like shepherds, farmers and fishermen. Hence he spoke their idiom, to which his listeners responded by saying “He taught them as one who had authority and not as their scribes” (Mat 7:29). A scribe is a writer, just as a cleric is; one who can read and write. Jesus reportedly wrote just once, that too in the dust (cf Jn 8:5). I too am not a scribe/cleric under a roof, but more like a scribbler on the roof! So I shall adopt Jesus’ approach.
During one of my first gospel journeys in 1976 (with just a small cloth shoulder bag and no money) I had constantly experienced the power of God’s word. When I landed up in Allahabad, Father Dhiranand Bhatt, of revered memory, asked me to share my experiences with the seminarians.
I was speaking of the power of the Word of God in my life. A young man in the last row kept asking me what I meant by that. On inquiry, Father Bhatt later told me that he was the professor of Sacred Scripture, freshly returned from Rome. It reminds me of what George Menezes wrote in the introduction to one of my books, that there is a difference between studying about the good shepherd, and actually knowing him.
Let me give another allegory. Though approaching 70, I am a “normal” man who is attracted to women, including their physical attributes. However, had I been a professor of anatomy, constantly dissecting women’s cadavers, I may have developed a repulsion or insensitivity to the human body. Is this what happens to scripture scholars dissecting scripture?
Psychologists study the sub-conscious being. There are levels of consciousness and resultant actions. It is sometimes compared to peeling an onion. There is always another layer below, finally leaving one with nothing. It would then be a fatal error to deny the very existence of the onion. Some existentialists who are always looking for proof, end up with nothing, as with Jeanne Paul Sartre, who eventually committed suicide.
It reminds me of the warning of the former superior general of the Jesuits, Father Pedro Arrupe. He had famously said that in the spiritual life there is no such thing as mathematical assurance. He came from a solid scientific background, besides experiencing the horrors of Hiroshima in World War II, so knew what he was talking about.
I revert to Jesus, the non-scribe/ non-cleric. He compared the kingdom of heaven to a small mustard seed that grew into a mighty tree (cf Lk 4:31 ff). Had he been born in India he would have given the illustration of the pipal tree. Its seed is tiny. Yet it grows without nutrients in the tiniest crack in a rock, and eventually splits it wide open. The seed and the tree are in inverse proportion, having no physical semblance to each other. The same may be said of the life and growth of the church, as an organised body. It may have little or no resemblance to the tiny seed planted in apostolic times. That doesn’t disprove its DNA.
Another analogy. A human embryo has little or no resemblance to a grown up human being. Yet it has all those qualities, though not discernible to the naked eye. The same may again be said of the church. After 2000 years of its existence it would be an exercise in futility to turn the clock back to its embryonic stage. Nicodemus said as much to Jesus, “How can a grown man be born again? He certainly cannot enter his mother’s womb and be born a second time” (Jn 3:4).
But Jesus talks of another rebirth, a spiritual one (cf Jn 3:6). As a married man I understand this. When I got married 35 years ago I was certain that I loved my wife. Now I cannot say this with the same certitude. It is not that I do not love her. Rather it is because our love has grown, evolved and mutated. Love can never be static. It must keep evolving.
So too for faith. It cannot and should not remain static. John the Baptist warned the status quoists against taking pride in the faith of their ancient father Abraham (cf Mat 3:9). Even today there are many traditionalist/ conservative Catholics who cannot digest the changes wrought by Vatican II. More recently they are up in arms against the just concluded Amazonian Synod that, among others, recommended a married clergy.
Faith, like love, must change, evolve, mutate. There is always the risk of going off on a tangent. That should not deter us from seeking constant research, reform and renewal, while also holding fast to the roots of our faith in Jesus and his eternal Word. In all humility, be we scribes or scribblers, we could learn from St Ephraem, one of the early church fathers. He said that the Word of God was like a deep well. Every time one visited it one found something new.
May that unquenchable thirst for truth, faith and love be our guiding light. As enlightened Christians we can approach this Christmas by saying with faith Maranatha, and with reason Manna.
(This writer has developed these thoughts in greater detail in his books “The Trinity & Me”, “Beyond 2000 – The Other Side” and “An Unfinished Symphony.”)