What went wrong?
Jesus came to give the possibility of figs in season, holidays when we need them, and work when we crave labor.
What is wrong?
Beauty creates desire, love, and love longs for the beloved. God, sovereign omnipotent God, could do whatever He wanted to do. God also loves us. That is frightening if you think about it, but thank God, He is good. Beauty calls to beauty and waits. Why? God has given beauty to us and so allows us consent. Love calls to love, but true love waits for consent from the beloved.
Fig trees are not persons. They live and grow as they must. If the world is out of harmony with God, the fig tree is cursed and is ugly. People, however, are not fig trees. We can choose to become the servants of the Lord. God gives us the ability to choose.
We can give and receive love.
In ancient times, groups like the Epicureans advanced atheism out of fear of what gods could do in an afterlife. The chance that the afterlife was the way Homer pictured it, where most of us end up, even the heroes, as gibbering shades preferring any life on earth to death, was so dreadful that annihilation of consciousness was preferable! Even if there was a small chance for an Elysium, some place of reward, the Epicureans knew most humanity would not end up in the “good place.” The reasonable fear of the endless, mindless, pandemonium of hades, the gibbering dead, was enough to hope Homer wrong.
The good news that Paul and other apostles brought to the ancient world was not that there was a reality beyond bodily life. That possibility was heard every time the ancients heard Homer recited. They asked similar questions to those that Shakespeare would put in Hamlet’s mouth when he contemplated suicide. What was in the undiscovered country beyond death? What dreams would come to those who slept? Better to be a functional atheist, putting the gods out there somewhere, and cancel any probability for an afterlife. The gods could not be trusted, they were too often unholy. You could not even trust the gods to stay “bought.” They demanded sacrifice, but no matter how many sacrifices they received in this life, a god might turn on a person After death your soul went to hades forever and the gods might become bored and change their disposition toward a former favorite. Deals were made and broken.[1] Giving such gods power in an endless afterlife was fearful, so the afterlife had to go. A complete death meant fear was minimized and that was the best happiness the Epicureans could imagine.
As Ovid showed in Metamorphosis, a god’s love might be a prelude to rape. Zeus wanted what he wanted and had the power to get what he wanted. Nobody wise desired too much attention of such a god. Worship was not to establish a relationship, but to escape attention. Be pious, the impious might draw wrath, but do not be too pious. Great piety could attract divine attention and the love of the gods burned cities, destroyed kingdoms, and left nothing good. They mightbless you. Sometimes the gods rewarded good behavior if they mood struck them.[2] They were unpredictable, unwise, unworthy of a free man’s worship.
Worship was not the right response to such a god, even if one found a morally decent one. They were not omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent. They were more like us than they were like the I AM, the very ground of being! In the stories about encounters with these beings, they behaved more like comic book heroes, for good and bad, than God. You might have a favorite comic book hero, you might even find a decent one, Athena in Odyssey was alright if you happened to be Odysseus, but you do not worship such a being. Honor? Maybe. Venerate? Perhaps. Worship? No.
Mostly, however, too much religion was not good for a man.
In the middle of this mixed up mess came the Gospels. The Jewish people proclaimed that whatever the gods were, there was a God utterly unlike them. One could doubt the existence of the gods, or affirm their demonic ways were real, but there was something utterly Other. There was one Omnipotent one and logically there could be only one![3]
Imagine that this good God chose to love us. This was not something the greatest Greek philosophers, Plato, and Aristotle, could comprehend. If God was so good, beautiful, and full of truth, the only thing worth His attention was Himself. What should such a God do? Aristotle suggested that He could only think about Himself!
The miracle of Christmas was that God did love us, certainly through no merit or goodness in humankind. God loved His creation, seeing still the very image of His own goodness and beauty in us, however marred. He wanted to redeem us, but because His redemption was based on love and not mere desire, He allowed for our consent.
God need not have created persons with the ability to choose. God chose to love us and so gave us the ability to accept or reject His love. With God’s love comes great His great beauty, the divine romance, but any person can reject that offer.
Consider that God sent Gabriel. In part this was because God created Gabriel to bring messages and like any good father, God delights to let His children do what they were designed to do:
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, with a message for a girl betrothed to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David; the girl’s name was Mary. The angel went in and said to her, ‘Greetings, most favored one! The Lord is with you.’ But she was deeply troubled by what he said and wondered what this greeting could mean. Then the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for God has been gracious to you; you will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David, and he will be king over Israel for ever; his reign shall never end.’ ‘How can this be?’ said Mary. ‘I am still a virgin.’ The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; for that reason the holy child to be born will be called Son of God. Moreover your kinswoman Elizabeth has herself conceived a son in her old age; and she who is reputed barren is now in her sixth month, for God’s promises can never fail.’ ‘I am the Lord’s servant,’ said Mary; ‘may it be as you have said.’ Then the angel left her.[4]
God asked. Mary could have said “no” and missed this moment in history. Mary was no fool, she knew that mortals were in trouble near immortal beings. Gabriel told her that she was favored of God. She was still “deeply troubled” and the angel tried to clam her fears. The gracious God was choosing to give her a son, the very son of God. This son would rule as king of Israel forever.
Mary asked a question.
This brave woman wished to know how such a thing was possible given her virginity. Her ability to question, to answer for herself, makes this beautiful. Mary would receive a child from God, and this would be a blessing like the child that her kinswoman Elizabeth would have The Spirit that would overshadow her was holy. Mary chose. She said “yes” and so became the mother of God.
This moment began the restoration of the relationship between God and humankind. Mary made a different choice than Mother Eve. Our first mother rejected the will of God. The results were, predictably horrid, but this was not God’s fault. A person cannot say “no” to the beloved and have the full relationship. God allowed Eve (and Adam) to continue to live, sustaining them, granting them a long physical life. What they could not have is what they had rejected: continuous eternal life in harmony with God and God’s will. They would have made themselves miserable.
Perhaps it is significant that Eve answered the serpent’s questions. She did not think to question the lies she was hearing because the fruit was desirable. Instead, Eve gave skewed answers and took and ate.
Mary met a different angel, glorious Gabriel, and dared to ask a question of Gabriel! She did not embrace something because it was immediately desirable, being the Queen Mother of the King of Israel! Instead, she asked and then made herself servant to the good God. As a result, she received Jesus!
This beautiful daughter of Israel had a mind, will, and body in harmony with God. She gave her beauty to God. She heard the word of God and acted on that word. She was blessed among all of us!
[1] Zeus himself allowed favorites to die in the Trojan War as part of his dealings with other gods. “Zeus loves me.” did not mean he would not trade away your life for peace with his fractious wife Hera. See Iliad XIV.
[2] See the charming (and exceptional!) story of Philemon and Baucis where a loving poor couple receive a reward for their piety. Ovid. Metamorphoses (p. 200-203). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.
[3] If God is all powerful, then if there were another all powerful being, say Bizarro God, then God and Bizarro God could not defeat each other. They would be equally powerful, thus not all powerful. If God is all powerful, then Bizarro God cannot exist!
[4] Luke 1: 26-38 Revised English Bible from the Olive Tree software program.
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