“He
‘was from the beginning,” and for a time was made visible and palpable, the
Only-begotten Son of God. Why did He come, what new thing did He tell us? What
did He want to teach us?
“Why did He
do what He did, that the Word [Himself]
should be made flesh, that God ‘over all things’ should suffer shame at the
hands of men, that He should allow His face [the Face of God] to be
mauled by the hands [of men] which He Himself had made?
“What does He want to teach us
through this? What does He want to show us? What does He want to say to us?
“Let us hear: for unless our hearing
bears fruit, unless it results in the answers to the foregoing questions [unless we see Christ, unless we are
drawn to Christ, unless our lives are changed, unless we see ourselves as
sinners in need of a Savior] , then simply hearing
the story about how Christ was born, and how Christ suffered, is a mere pastime
[a game!] of the mind,
not an enlightening of it.” Augustine;
The First Homily of First John, Section 4.[i]
Augustine
asks at least eight questions in the above quotation. What are our answers?
Augustine
has a few preaching styles, including runs of divine eloquence that mirror the
beautiful crescendos of Romans 8:31 – 39 and Hebrews 11:32 – 40; he uses all of
his styles to support his pastoral preaching and teaching, which in turn is
designed to facilitate the communication of Jesus Christ through the
Scriptures. Augustine takes his listeners and readers on a exegetical and
devotional journey (he doesn’t separate the two – he can’t), showing them
his engagement with Christ in the Scriptures, showing them how he
wrestles with passages, shouts in passages, cries in passages, and is puzzled
in passages…all the time looking for Christ in passages.
Asking questions is what a good
teacher and pastor does; it is what a disciple of Jesus Christ does – and we
learn to work through our questions as we seek the face of God in Jesus Christ.
Sometimes we see dimly, sometimes more clearly, sometimes in such glorious
light that we must fall on our faces before His Face. Augustine models this
humble and fruitful approach as he leads us in an encounter with the Living
Word.
Augustine asks at least eight
questions above, what might be our responses?
He ponders the cosmic irony of the
Creator being abused by the hands of men He Himself created – He created the
men and He created the very hands on those men that are beating His face into a
pulp. Is this not a mystery? Augustine wants to know what this means.
Augustine also wants to know what it
means that God, Who is “over all things,” should suffer shame and ridicule by the
men He created. Why is it that the “Word should be made flesh” and suffer these
indignities, suffer such pain, suffer such rejection? What is it that God wants
us to hear in all of this? What does God want us to see? What does God want us
to know?
But before Augustine proceeds to
explore the answers to his questions he has a point to make, a point for his
congregation some 1,600 years ago, a point for all those in the fourth century
who read his words, and a point for us today: “…simply hearing the story
about how Christ was born, and how Christ suffered, is a mere pastime [a
game!] of the mind,” if we don’t hear and see and touch and feel and
know what it is that God is saying to us through Christ Jesus and the
Incarnation and Cross. In other words, this is more than a story, this is God
revealing Himself to us through Christ, and if all we hear and recite is the
story of Bethlehem and Golgotha – we are playing mind games.
It is as if Augustine is saying to
his congregation, “What are we doing here? Is it simply to recite a historical
record? Because if that is all it is, then we are playing games, we are engaged
in a religious pastime. If we cannot hear beyond the words that are read aloud,
if we cannot see beyond the text of Scripture unto Christ in the heavens, if we
do not see God manifested beyond the story and into the cosmos and our own
hearts – if Jesus Christ is not coming to us through all of this…then we are
playing mind games.
Where am I in all of this? Where are
you? Where are our congregations?
i.Note:
While the text I am quoting is from the NPNF, which is in the public
domain, I am updating the English and paraphrasing when required to achieve a
smoother sense for the contemporary reader. I am also using brackets [ ] to give
a fuller sense of the context. In all of these instances I am striving to be
faithful to the context and Augustine’s line of thought. I encourage the reader
to explore these homilies in full – your patience will be rewarded.
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