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Unspeakable Beauty

By John

Original post by Becoming Fully Alive blog site (June 25, 2015)

Someone once asked St. Pachomius to tell them of a vision he saw so that they could learn from it.

He replied:

“If you see a humble man with a pure heart, that would be greater than all the visions; because through that vision, you would see the invisible God. Do not ask for a better vision.”

If seeing just one godly man can have such a profound impact on a person, then how glorious would it be to see three godly men living in unbroken communion and mutually offering their lives to Him?

Reading through 1 Samuel, I was awed to read about three such men reflecting the beauty of the Holy Trinity. They are only mentioned in two verses, and to my knowledge they are not mentioned again in the Bible:

“…three men going up to God at Bethel will meet you, one carrying three young goats, another carrying three loaves of bread, and another carrying a skin of wine. And they will greet you and give you two loaves of bread, which you shall receive from their hands.” 1 Samuel 10:3-4

Who Are They?

The first thing that is said about these men is that they are “going up to God at Bethel.”

What a beautiful verse!

How great would it be to be described by nothing else but how focused you were on pursing God? These men were not described by their relationships, their occupation, or even where they came from (which was very traditional in those times) but they were simply described by their pursuit of God.

Bethel, which means house of God, is significant because it was one of the first places where God met with His chosen people. This is actually the same place Jacob dreamed of a ladder reaching to heaven, having angels ascending and descending on it and having the Lord standing above it. (Genesis 28:12-13)

It almost sounds like these three men are on their way to climb this ladder to ‘go up to’ God.

Living in Communion

I can imagine that these men held one another accountable and encouraged each other in Him as they made this journey up to God together. They were not wise in their own eyes and knew the power of having a companion so as not to travel alone (Ecclesiastes 4:12).

Truly did the Psalmist speak of men such as these:

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is or brothers to dwell together in unity! Psalm 133:1

It also seems as though these men of faith had all things in common. Surely there was one goat and one loaf of bread for each of them rather than one man having three goats and another having three loaves of bread to himself. Each brought what they had and made up for what the other lacked.

Furthermore, they had one spirit as they did anything together; it was never one of them doing an action individually. The following phrase makes this clear: “they will greet you and give you two loaves of bread.” They didn’t live in communion with just themselves, but from their abundance they were able to provide for the for needs of those they came into contact with. They only kept for themselves what they needed.

Thinking about how these men might have greeted those in their path I can only think they were genuine, warm, and heartfelt. They were the type of people to ask you how you were and would actually care to hear your response. They were the type of men that didn’t just say “God bless you” to people without actually being a source of blessing to them (as witnessed by their free gift of bread).

Worshiping in Spirit and Truth

These men were worshiping God the way He intended them to worship Him.

It’s likely that the goats they were taking with them were intended to be sacrificed – one for each of them – as a sin offering:

“or if his sin which he has committed comes to his knowledge, he shall bring as his offering a kid of the goats, a male without blemish. And he shall lay his hand on the head of the goat, and kill it at the place where they kill the burnt offering before the Lord. It is a sin offering.” (Leviticus 4:23-24)

They were not only worshipping God in their relationship with one another, with their giving of themselves physically and emotionally to others, but they were also giving God glory by living a life of repentance.

These men remind me of Melchizedek in that they also prophetically brought bread and wine to offer to God as a prefigurement of the Eucharist. They also seem to be “without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life” (Hebrews 7:3) but worship God continually.

What beautiful men!

We are all called to be like our Lord, God, Saviour, and King, Jesus Christ.

Along with that though, we are called to live in harmony and communion with one another and to be an icon of the Holy Trinity. It was the unity that these men had that made them special. Their relationship with one another was a reflection of God Himself.

These three men of faith are a beautiful example of perichoresis, which is a term used to describe how the three Persons of the Trinity are One God. Perichoresis is the divine dance of Love where there is a complete and mutual giving and receiving. It involves Persons in harmony having perfect consideration for each other.

Lord, give us to reflect Your unspeakable beauty!

Repentance and Mercy

Adapted from a sermon by Aidan Mclachlan

“To fall in love with God is the greatest romance, to seek Him, the greatest adventure to find him. The greatest human achievement”.
St Augustine

The two main events of Thursday Eve are the betrayal by Judas and the anointing of the feet by the spikenard woman. Two remarkably different people who approached the Lord in very different ways.

Each time we read the gospels and come to the calling of the twelve disciples, we come to Judas. He is described as the one “who also betrayed Him”. All too quickly we assume that the sin of Judas was betrayal. But we ask ourselves, did any of the other disciples betray Christ? The answer would be a resounding, yes! St Peter, who denied Christ three times certainly betrayed Him and yet he remained the rock on which Christ builds His church. In fact, we have all sinned and sin is no less than spurning God’s trust and love for us. It is in short, a betrayal. Is there then no hope for us?

I think we find the true sin of Judas not in betrayal but in despair, and from this despair, his failure to repent. But was Judas not repentant? Didn’t he try to return the silver coins? Judas, so absorbed in the world, tried to overcome his crime on his own without seeking God, or His mercy. What he felt most guilty of, was his role in killing Christ and there was no way that he could reverse this and bring Christ from the dead.

But God could. By this time, Judas’ despair overwhelmed him, and his guilt had consumed him. He was nothing but a vessel of wretched misery and anguish. With no hope on Earth, he ended his life and with it, his hope in heaven as well. If only Judas had suffered a little longer. If only he had endured. If only he had waited a few more days for Christ’s glorious resurrection. He failed to see Christ as God, and that He could kill his despair, before it killed him.

Now if we turn to the second key character, the spikenard woman. We find in the Gospel of Matthew and Mark, a story of a woman who was a friend of Jesus. She anoints Christ’s head, not his feet, in the town of Bethany just before His passion. A different story is presented in Luke; a story of a sinner woman who anoints Christ’s feet and dries them with her hair, with no association with Christ’s passion. Most likely, these are two different events. One performed by a sinner woman, and the other by a friend. One clearly an act of repentance and one seemingly an act of affection.

In the Gospel of John, we find Christ at Bethany just before His passion, similar to Matthew and Mark’s gospels. Yet the woman washes Christ’s feet like the sinner woman in Luke’s Gospel. What is the point of seemingly fusing the two stories, and the two women? This is to show the transformative power of repentance. St John keeps the action of a sinner woman in washing His feet, but the timing in the Gospel narrative of the other woman, a friend of Christ. This Indicates that through her repentance, she went from being a sinner woman to being a friend of God.

The Greek word metanoia is commonly understood as repentance but it is so much more than that. It is a change – a transformation! The spikenard woman becomes an example to us for proper penitence, weeping at Christ’s feet, having both her sins and her Lord before her eyes. The spikenard woman is also a revelation of God’s love that though we fail, though we betray Him, though we put nails in His hand, and a spear in His side, He will overcome our weaknesses and transform us to something greater, a friend of His. Finally we can marvel at God’s love and mercy, just as she did. This is true repentance, born from true love, true faith, true hope, and given to the one that is the fulfilment of love, faith and hope.

If we compare the repentance of the spikenard woman to Judas, we find that she had trust in the salvation of the Lord that Judas did not. Unlike Judas’ attempt at repentance, this woman did not aim for a worldly goal. She was rightly criticised by the apostles for not selling that oil and giving the money to the poor, because it made little sense to the world. Yet out of love, she gave up what was likely her most expensive possession. She wept and begged and pleaded for mercy. This is true repentance.

How can we discover this heart felt repentance? With wonder! We can see that God in all this greatness can overcome any obstacle, even despair. With this wonder, we can behold all that God has made and done for us and so grow in love like the spikenard woman. With this wonder, we can honestly say like the apostle, “if God is for us, who can be against us” (Romans 8:31). How is it that God became Man? How is it that God could suffer? How is it that God could rise again from the dead? How is it that God could make the corruptible incorruptible?

We are blessed not to have logical explanations for many of these questions because if we had them, we may suddenly lose our sense of wonder in favour of something much less marvellous. We discover this wonder from the world around us when we discover that the world is transparent. Through it, we see the beauty and the light of God. The English word cosmetic meaning beauty, comes from the Greek word cosmos, meaning universe. The world becomes an icon of God and we see through it. We cannot be like Judas, who saw the world as an end in itself, because this road leads to despair. We must instead see the world, its beauty and the Lord Almighty in their height of greatness, and not reduced to it.

May we all seek and discover the wonder of the Lord this Holy Week, and for the rest of our days.