Category Archives: New Testament

We Have Heard With Our Ears

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  • The proclamation of the Epistle on St. Luke’s day (photo by Kate Stronk)
  • St. James proclaims the decision of the apostolic council
  • Moses receives the Word to proclaim to the judges of Israel

When Moses went and told the people all the Lord’s words and laws, they responded with one voice, “Everything the Lord has said we will do.” Moses then wrote down everything the Lord had said. (Exodus 24:3-4)

Nowadays most Americans think their experience of God should be intellectual and cerebral. They expect to encounter God by reading or in a text. They discount the importance of their bodies when experiencing the divine. They often think that they cannot experience God except in their minds. Many are sure that what they think is more important than what they do.

Throughout the Bible, however, people do not encounter God by reading but by their hearing or with their eyes. Exodus 24 describes how the 70 leaders and judges of the Israelite clans gathered at Mt. Sinai heard Moses proclaim the covenant and commandments long before they were written down. On the foothills of Mt. Sinai, these 70 judges saw the same thing St. John saw in the Book of Revelation: the Lord enthroned in glory on a sapphire pavement brighter and more pure than the sky. They glimpsed eternity.

Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” He is that divine Word. It is by hearing that we encounter the Word made flesh and his words. Jesus told the apostles, “Many prophets longed to see what you see.” The apostles saw the Word made flesh. During the pandemic, we learned again about how important it is—that it is possible—to receive Holy Communion with our eyes when we cannot receive the Sacred Host in our mouths. 

We turn to God so that we can hear him. We open our eyes so that we can see him. In Psalm 40, King David says, “You have given me ears to hear you.” The epistle to the Hebrews quotes this, understanding Christ as the one whose ears hear what the Father says. The prophet Isaiah picks up on this theme as well, speaking for the Messiah: “The Lord God wakens my ear to hear as the learned” (Isaiah 50). What we hear, what we listen to you shapes and forms us in fundamental ways. Who we listen to reveals who we are and who we want to be.

The Word was meant to be heard, not read. This was due, in part, to widespread illiteracy and the difficulty of having books easily accessible. But even when more people can read and books are available, the Word is still meant to be heard. The Word is meant to be experienced viscerally, in our guts not just in our heads. Even when we pray —by ourselves in our rooms—the words of our prayer should be heard and not just recited in our heads; all the spiritual guides have always taught that we should move our lips and feel our breath forming the words of our prayer even if we cannot hear them. We pray with our whole bodies, not just our heads. Never just with our heads.

Listening to the Word of God, experiencing the divine with our ears forms us to be the Body we want to be. We want to hear the Word of God and keep it. We want to hear the Word of God and become that word ourselves. We need to practice listening on a daily basis and cut through the inner static or feedback we all have in our heads. Slowly reading a psalm every day helps us do this. Sitting quietly for a few minutes and saying the Jesus Prayer, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me” (Luke 18:38) can help us do this. 

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20).

I am Sending my Angel

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  • Moses receiving the Law on Mt. Sinai from the Logos

See, I am sending my angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. (Exodus 23:20)

The Lord promises Moses that not just any angel but MY angel will lead the Chosen People to the Promised Land. This particular angel–named Metatron in Jewish folklore but sometimes also identified with Michael–would be the guardian angel of the people, just as each nation/language group–there were thought to be 70 or 72 such “nations”–had a guardian angel.

Christians understand this reference to MY angel, however, to be either the Holy Spirit or the Logos himself. (As Christians understand the Logos to be the divine Person speaking with Moses, it seems more consistent that the reference to “my angel” would be the Spirit rather than the Logos referring to himself in this way.) Almost all the appearances of “God” or “the Lord” in the Old Testament are understood to be the Logos, anticipating his coming among us; throughout the Gospel According to St. John, the point is made that no mortal has ever met or seen or experienced the Father–only the Son, who reveals the character of the Father by the Son’s self-revelation.

Prophets, such as Malachi, also refer to “God’s angel” in a way that Christians understand to be referring to the Logos. The angel who appeared in the fiery furnace in the book of Daniel is understood to be the Logos, the divine messenger sent to protect the three young men. As “angel” means “messenger,” it is one way that early Christians understood Christ: he is the divine messenger of the Father.

As theology became more sophisticated, Christians understood this understanding of Christ as an “angel” was inadequate. But many were reluctant to abandon theological language that had been in use since the earliest days. It was this adherence to a previous “orthodoxy” that came to be known as heresy–heresy meaning “choice” and it was a choice to reject the theological advances of the Church as she came to understand Christ more clearly.

Faithful adherence to Tradition or stubborn heretical obstinacy … a fine line divides these two attitudes. Only by faithful discernment, “listening,” can we distinguish between them as the Church adjusts her language so that the Gospel can be clearly understood in new times and places. The message must remain the same even as vocabulary changes.

“Do not boil a kid in its mother’s milk”

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“Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.” (Exodus 23:19)

I remember as an undergraduate that someone read this verse and gasped, “Who would boil a kid in its mother’s milk!?” They were aghast at such an idea and it took several minutes for them to understand this the “kid” in question was a baby goat, not a human child.

Even so, few people would cook goat in milk nowadays. But no one makes rules about things that don’t happen. So we can deduce that several non-Israelite cultures in the Middle East evidently did cook goat in milk—a kind of cream-of-goat soup or a stew with a splash of milk in it—and the point of this command is that the Hebrews should not cook in the same ways as their neighbors.

The Hebrews already understood that they should not eat meat with “the life” (blood) still in it. Now they are told not to cook meat with milk. Is there a connection?

In the ancient and medieval worlds—really, until the early 1700s—milk and semen were thought to be blood that various organs (breasts and testes) had heated until it became warm and frothy. Blood, milk, and semen were all the same bodily fluid at different temperatures. So the command not to cook with milk is equivalent to being told not to eat meat with blood still in it.

Because of this identification of blood/milk, preachers have identified the Blood of Christ in Holy Communion with the milk Mother Church suckles her children—the Faithful—with. (In the second-third century, newly baptized people would receive the Precious Blood from one chalice and warm milk with honey from another chalice because they had been brought in to the Church, the true Promised Land that flows with milk and honey.) As Christ identified himself with a mother hen who gathers her chicks beneath her wings to protect them, his Blood is also the milk that sustains the newborn Christian who is newly baptized.

Images of the Blessed Virgin nursing the Christ Child is a Eucharistic image. She nurtured her Child with her milk, which is her blood. That milk/blood then becomes Christ’s own body/blood as a child. As he grows, that body/blood grow and mature and he then gives us his Body/Blood in Holy Communion. Everything human about Christ was given to him by his mother; we participate in his family connections when we participate in him. Body/Blood are fundamental to our humanity and sharing his, we share in everyone who also shares in him. (Read more about the Nursing Madonna here.)

Most Christians still refused to eat meat with blood in it until the 1600-1700s. Nowadays few people cook goat with milk but that’s because cuisine habits have changed, not because milk is still identified as a variation of blood. We forget how differently our Christian ancestors lived and what they took for granted; what do we think is self-evident today that will surprise Christians in three hundred years?