Life on the Edge: Holy Saturday and the Recovery of the End Time

By Brother John of Taize

Is the Christian faith something that can peacefully exist alongside all the other aspects of an ordinary human life, or does it by its very nature turn that life into something else? The author of this book, a member of a monastic community for over forty years, obviously has a vested interest in the answer. But even for believers caught up in the day-to-day life of society, work, and family, the question is an important one, at least if they are seeking a measure of consistency in the life they are living. And does not the very fact that the question of the importance and urgency of faith needs to be asked witness to the eclipse of an eschatological outlook among Christians, at any rate in the mainstream Churches? Could this oversight not explain why an eschatological understanding of faith, one which sees it as a radical, world-changing reality, has been forced to take refuge, often deformed to the point of being unrecognizable, in small "fanatical" groups on the margins of the Christian world?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Oct 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9781498243032

Brother John of Taize

Brother John of Taizé is the author of several books in English and French, including most recently A Multitude of Friends: Reimagining the Christian Church in an Age of Globalization (2011), I Am the Beginning and the End: Creation Stories and Visions of Fulfilment in the Bible (2007), and Reading the Ten Commandments Anew: Towards a Land of Freedom (2004).

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Life on the Edge

Holy Saturday and the Recovery of the End Time

Brother John of Taizé

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LIFE ON THE EDGE

Holy Saturday and the Recovery of the End Time

Copyright ©

2017

SARL Ateliers et Presses de Taizé, Communauté de Taizé CS

10004

,

71250

Taizé, France. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

199

W.

8

th Ave., Suite

3

, Eugene, OR

97401

.

Cascade Books

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

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8

th Ave., Suite

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www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn:

978

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1

-

5326

-

1793

-

5

hardcover isbn:

978

-

1

-

4982

-

4304

-

9

ebook isbn:

978

-

1

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4982

-

4303

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2

Cataloging-in-Publication data:

Names: Brother John of Taizé

Title: Life on the edge : Holy Saturday and the recovery of the end time / Brother John of Taizé.

Description: Eugene, OR : Cascade Books,

2017

|  Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: ISBN 978-1-5326-1793-5 (paperback) | ISBN 978-1-4982-4304-9 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-1-4982-4303-2 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Holy Saturday. | Eschatology.

Classification: LCC BV

55

B

7

2017

(print) | LCC BV

55

(ebook)

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

Published in French by Ateliers et Presses de Taizé,

2017

under the title Terre de Passage: Le samedi saint et la redécouverte de l’au-delà.

Table of Contents

Title Page

List of Biblical Books Quoted

Introduction

I. The Question of Eschatology

Chapter 1: The Dilemma

A People of Hope

The End of the Age

The Time Has Come!

Already and Not Yet

II. Biblical Elements for Understanding Holy Saturday

Chapter 2: Universal Solidarity

The Kingdom of the Dead

To the Lowest Place

Numbered with the Transgressors?

The Disarming of Evil

Preaching to the Dead

Light from the East

A Paradoxical Victory

Chapter 3: The Silence of God

Do Not Hide Your Face!

Lost in Exile

The Sound of Silence

From Absence to Silence

Chapter 4: The Sabbath

A Useless Day

The Enthronement of God

A Day of Joy, Freedom, and Rest

Jesus and the Sabbath

Saturday or Sunday?

Inspiration from the Liturgy

The Sacred Triduum

III. The Holy Saturday Space and Time

Chapter 5: Life in the Borderlands

Liminality

Between Death and Resurrection

John: In and Not of the World

Paul: In but Not According to the Flesh

Outside the Camp

The Pope and the Periphery

A Majority Religion?

The Monastic Alternative

A New Era?

Chapter 6: Now Is the Time!

The Kairos Is Here!

Christ, Our Passover

The Hour of Jesus

The Eternal Now

Time as Music and Dance

Light in the Darkness

Keep On Running

Hope Cannot Disappoint

And the Future?

A Time to Build

Postscript: A Life Beyond All Our Hopes

IV: Living the Holy Saturday of History

Chapter 7: Emptiness and Fullness

A Successful Revolution

The Days of the Messiah

Enter through the Narrow Gate

Holy Saturday, a Passover

The Kairos as Tipping-Point

A Scorched-Earth Policy

Technocracy and Capitalism

And Fulfillment?

Sacramental Logic

Rejoice in the Lord Always!

The Other Side of the Story of Jesus

Bibliography

BY THE SAME AUTHOR:

The Pilgrim God: A Biblical Journey

(Washington: The Pastoral Press,

1985

/Dublin: Veritas,

1990

)

The Way of the Lord: A New Testament Pilgrimage

(The Pastoral Press/Veritas,

1990

)

Praying the Our Father Today

(The Pastoral Press,

1992

)

God of the Unexpected

(London: Geoffrey Chapman/Mowbray,

1995

)

The Adventure of Holiness:

Biblical Foundations and Present-Day Perspectives

(New York: ST PAULS/Alba House,

1999

)

At the Wellspring: Jesus and the Samaritan Woman

(New York: ST PAULS/Alba House,

2001

)

Reading the Ten Commandments Anew:

Towards a Land of Freedom

(New York: ST PAULS/Alba House,

2004

)

I Am the Beginning and the End:

Creation Stories and Visions of Fulfilment in the Bible

(New York: ST PAULS/Alba House,

2007

)

A Multitude of Friends:

Reimagining the Christian Church in an Age of Globalization

(Maryknoll NY: Orbis,

2011

)

List of Biblical Books Quoted

Gen Genesis

Exod Exodus

Lev Leviticus

Num Numbers

Deut Deuteronomy

1 Sam 1 Samuel

2 Sam 2 Samuel

1 Kgs 1 Kings

2 Kgs 2 Kings

1 Chr 1 Chronicles

2 Chr 2 Chronicles

Neh Nehemiah

Job Job

Ps Psalms

Prov Proverbs

Isa Isaiah

Jer Jeremiah

Lam Lamentations

Ezek Ezekiel

Dan Daniel

Hos Hosea

Amos Amos

Jonah Jonah

Mic Micah

Hab Habakkuk

Zeph Zephaniah

Zech Zechariah

Mal Malachi

Wis Wisdom

Sir Sirach/Ecclesiasticus

2 Macc 2 Maccabees

Matt Matthew

Mark Mark

Luke Luke

John John

Acts Acts of the Apostles

Rom Romans

1 Cor 1 Corinthians

2 Cor 2 Corinthians

Gal Galatians

Eph Ephesians

Phil Philippians

Col Colossians

1 Thess 1 Thessalonians

2 Thess 2 Thessalonians

1 Tim 1 Timothy

2 Tim 2 Timothy

Heb Hebrews

Jas James

1 Pet 1 Peter

2 Pet 2 Peter

1 John 1 John

Rev Revelation

Mark 14:36 par = Mark ch. 14, v. 36 and the parallel texts in Matthew and Luke

All biblical translations are by the author.

Introduction

I have come to set the earth on fire. (Luke 12:49)

In the final analysis, there is only one crucial question for the Christian Church, and it is by that question that it stands or falls—the question of eschatology. That word, puzzling to many and used in all sorts of ways, means literally the science of the last, the ultimate realities. In these pages it is not employed in the classic sense of the four last things—death, judgment, heaven, and hell—but in a much more contemporary and yet basic sense, one which gets to the very heart of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. Is the Christian faith what it appears to be when viewed from without, one particular example of what people call religion, namely, doctrines and practices dealing with the spiritual side of life? Or is it what it claims to be in its foundational documents, something much more mysterious and elusive: the assertion that the last or ultimate things have somehow entered into our world to transform it radically? And if this is in fact the case, where are the signs of this? What is different in our world because a man lived 2,000 years ago in Palestine, was tortured to death, and is considered by his followers still to be somehow alive?

To put the question another way, is the Christian faith something that can peacefully exist alongside all the other aspects of an ordinary human life, or does it by its very nature turn that life into something else? The author of this book, a member of a monastic community for over forty years, obviously has a vested interest in the answer. But even for believers caught up in the day-to-day life of society, work, and family, the question is an important one, at least if they are seeking a measure of consistency in the life they are living. And does not the very fact that the question of the importance and urgency of faith needs to be asked witness to the eclipse of an eschatological outlook among Christians, at any rate in the mainstream churches? Could this oversight not explain why an eschatological understanding of faith, one which sees it as a radical, world-changing reality, has been forced to take refuge, often deformed to the point of being unrecognizable, in small fanatical groups on the margins of the Christian world?

Two things have guided my attempt to find an answer to this question of eschatology—a dissatisfaction and a hunch. When theologians reflect on the way in which the Absolute has entered into our human condition through the coming of the Christ, they generally speak of a paradox or tension between the already here and the not yet. In other words, fulfillment is somehow both a present and a future reality. Now this statement, as a way of defining the situation, is irreproachable and in fact necessary. God’s ways are not our ways, and God’s actions do not fit neatly into our human categories. The difficulty, and my dissatisfaction, comes from the fact that this formulation of a paradox is often taken for an explanation, something which dispenses us from having to search further—and that it most certainly is not. The expression already here and not yet is the beginning of the search for deeper understanding, not the end of the road.

This is true, incidentally, for a number of dogmatic definitions. As attempts to safeguard the mystery they are inescapable, but strictly speaking they do not explain anything. To confess with the Council of Chalcedon that Jesus Christ is true God and true man laid to rest a number of false views concerning the identity of the Savior, and oriented all future theological discourse in a certain direction. But had it been seen as the final word, it would have made theological reflection impossible. If we want to understand more clearly how, in Jesus, his humanity and his divinity are related, this is not in order to exhaust the inexhaustible mystery of his being, but to situate ourselves correctly in relation to him. In the same way, the relationship between the already here and the not yet of God’s Kingdom needs to be understood better if we want to know how to live our lives as Christians in the world today. This is true notably in what concerns Christian hope. What can we legitimately hope for on the basis of the Gospel, and what is instead an illusion or a mere projection of human aspirations onto the deity?

Secondly, for a long time I have had the hunch that in order to answer the question of the end times, we must turn to a day in the Christian calendar that has largely been forgotten, at least in the West—Holy Saturday. Forgotten, perhaps understandably, because the gospels speak so little of it; nothing seems to be happening then. Nonetheless, as the day on which Christ’s death and resurrection meet, it could offer us a privileged vantage point from which to examine the link between earth and heaven, present and future, between an ending and a new beginning.

In speaking with others about my reflections, I have been struck by the extent to which so many of our contemporaries resonate with the topic of Holy Saturday. That day on which all is fulfilled but nothing is visible seems more and more relevant to people at the beginning of this new millennium. Could it be that, historically speaking, we are in a kind of Holy Saturday period, an age when so many hopes have been revealed as illusory and no one is sure what to put in their place? If this is the case, then perhaps what was first of all a personal investigation may turn out unexpectedly to be of interest to many others.

The book begins with an introductory chapter that sets forth the dilemma of Christian eschatology. It ends by relating this question to the topic of Holy Saturday. The next part of the book examines different elements of that day from a biblical perspective, first from the viewpoint of Jesus, namely his descent to the dead (chapter 2), then from the point of view of the disciples, the experience of God’s absence or silence (chapter 3) and the meaning of the Jewish institution of the Sabbath (chapter 4). Little by little we discover that Jesus, by his Passover from death to life, inaugurated the true Sabbath, setting a new space and time, possessing their own logic, at the heart of the old. The following section attempts to describe this space (chapter 5) and time (chapter 6). The concluding chapter recapitulates my findings and draws some conclusions, showing how the rediscovery of Holy Saturday can give valuable indications for each person’s faith and for the presence of the Church in this historical Holy Saturday we may well be in the process of living.

Let me express here my heartfelt gratitude to Anna Braw, who kindly agreed to read the manuscript, for her suggestions and corrections.

I

The Question of Eschatology

1

The Dilemma

What does it mean to be a Christian? To this key question our contemporaries would give a host of replies, ranging from to be a good person to to go to church every Sunday to to be born again through an encounter with Jesus Christ as my personal savior. To find a more authoritative answer, one upon which a lasting consensus can be built, we need to turn to the foundational documents of Christianity known as the New Testament. Let us take three texts more or less at random that deal with this topic. At the end of the Gospel according to Saint John, here is how the evangelist describes his reason for writing it:

These things were written that you might believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that believing you might have faith in his name. (John

20

:

31

)

And at the beginning of the Gospel according to Mark, the first words spoken by this Jesus give the essential lines of his message:

The time has come and the Reign of God is at hand: change your outlook and believe in the Good News! (Mark

1

:

15

)

Finally, Saint Paul writes to the first women and men who accepted Jesus as their Messiah in the Greek city of Corinth:

The Messiah has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. (

1

Cor

15

:

20

)

The Messiah, the Son of God, God’s Reign, raised from the dead . . . these are not commonsense or abstract, philosophical concepts; they are not expressions readily comprehensible to us, nor to most people in the course of history. These words situate us quite unambiguously in the thought-world of a particular human group at a specific time and place—that of the Jewish people approximately 2000 years ago. This is a language used to express the hope of Israel, and these texts claim that, through the events in the life of a particular individual, Jesus of Nazareth, this hope is now being realized: the Messiah has come, God’s Reign is at hand, the resurrection has begun. Here in a nutshell is the good news asserted by the disciples of Jesus. To understand the authentic significance of the Christian faith, then, we must begin with a consideration of the worldview of the nation into which this man was born.

A People of Hope

Without a doubt, one of the things that distinguished the tiny nation of ancient Israel from all others was its unique vision of human history, expressed in a narrative found in its sacred writings, what Christians would later call the Old Testament. This narrative describes the activity of a god unlike any other: not simply the god of a particular people, in competition or in collaboration with other similar deities, but the Creator and Ruler of the entire universe. According to the story, this God entered into a special relationship with Israel in order to make of them a kingdom of priests (Exod 19:6), in other words a living sign of his presence at the heart of the world he created.

The God of the Hebrew Bible, far from being indifferent or indisposed to human beings, was passionately concerned for them and their welfare. This God was fundamentally benevolent, a compassionate and generous God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness (Exod 34:6), and the universe he created was very good (Gen 1:31).

It does not take much insight to discern a basic dilemma that follows from this outlook. The world as we observe it and live in it day by day does not appear to correspond fully to this description of its Creator and his intentions. This is not a new discovery: very early on people were struck by the apparent incompatibility that existed between a good God and a world which was not always good, notably from the point of view of the human beings who live in it. A powerful god who was less than fully benevolent or, alternatively, a benevolent god whose power was limited and contested would seem to correspond better to our world than the portrait of the deity given in the Bible.

Different solutions have been proposed to this seeming incompatibility between an omnipotent and loving God and a less-than-perfect world. If we remain on a purely speculative level, none of them seem fully satisfactory. The most common attempt at a solution focuses on human freedom of choice. To fill the universe, God took the risk of creating beings whose behavior was not fully programmed in advance. Human beings are endowed with intelligence and volition; they attempt to understand the world and act in consequence. They can therefore err or even, because of their limited viewpoint, behave intentionally in ways seemingly beneficial to themselves but not to the people and things around them. This risk taken by God involves a renunciation: it means that God does not simply wish, by fiat, to direct the universe and human society in the best possible way. Human choice must be taken into account, and so divine power must somehow find a way not to abolish the freedom of the human actors but rather to enlighten it so that it follows the best path.

The Bible certainly takes into account this vision of human freedom. Not primarily, however, as an explanation or justification of the way things are, but rather as part of the problem. We look in vain in the Bible for a satisfactory intellectual comprehension of the apparent paradox between the goodness of the Creator and the state of the created world. What we find instead is an eventual solution. In a word, the Bible attempts to offer and to describe a hope.

This hope already springs up in the very first pages of the Hebrew Scriptures. If the Bible is essentially the story of God’s relationship of love with the created world, the first eleven chapters of the book of Genesis offer a kind of prehistory of this narrative that establishes its dramatic character. They set up the need for a plot, so to speak, by indicating why this relationship is problematic and needs to be worked out over time. In them we discover a universe which is good in itself but is marred by the human tendency to act, not according to the perspective of the Creator, but on the basis of our own limited outlook. Nevertheless, the Bible affirms that no human error or self-centeredness is able completely to annul God’s positive creative intention. Even in the most extreme case, the story of the Great Flood in Genesis 6–9, when God seemingly repents of ever having created humankind, he finds one righteous man, Noah, and through that one individual and his family, everything can begin again.

God is likewise able to turn human error into good. The attempt to build a tower in Babel to reach the skies (Gen 11) leads to the diversity of languages by which the human race is divided and scattered. At the same time, providentially, this apparent failure populates the earth and prepares the way for a oneness which is not uniformity, but the reconciliation of differences and their preservation in a wider unity.

But it is in chapter 12 of Genesis that we pass from prehistory to history as such. There, in the story of Abraham, the theme of hope already comes into its own as a leitmotif of the biblical narrative. It is expressed by another related theme, that of promise. The unknown God who breaks into the patriarch’s life one day comes not to warn or to condemn, but with the promise of a blessing, in other words the announcement of greater life not only for him but also for his descendents and, through them, for all of humankind:

The Lord said to Abram: Go from your land and your kindred and your father’s house to the land I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great. Be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and those who curse you I will curse, and in you shall be blessed all the families of the earth. (Gen

12

:

1

–

3

)

This promise of greater life becomes the motivating force behind the story, not just of the book of Genesis, but of the entire Hebrew Bible. In the following books, the promise is made more concrete through an act of political liberation and the gift of a land, but it never exhausts itself in particular acts of divine favor. It always aims further.

Although it is not always easy to establish a chronological sequence in the biblical data, since the final versions of a good many of its books have undergone a complex evolution over the course of centuries, one can presume that the first expressions of hope in the Bible are linked to a specific state of affairs—victory in battle, a successful journey, return from captivity. In the books of the great prophets of Israel, however, these particular events are already seen as signs of something vaster and more significant.

For example, the expression the day of the Lord may at first have been a way of focusing attention on a particular intervention of God to rescue a beleaguered people. In Isaiah 9:4, the day of Midian refers to the story in Judges 6–7, which tells of Gideon’s victory, with a handful of men, over a far superior military force by means of divine help. But gradually, the expression the day of the Lord takes on a much more universal significance, coming to stand for the end of all oppression and human arrogance, which are consumed by the fire of God’s passion. In the prophetic books, the day of the Lord thus implies the total destruction of evil, including that within the nation of Israel. That explains why at times its saving intention is lost sight of and it seems, rather, to be above all something to be dreaded (see Amos 5:18–20; Isa 13:6–22; Zeph 1:14–18). Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that this destructive moment is merely the necessary prelude to the establishment of a new state of affairs, a time when God’s promises to his faithful will finally be fulfilled:

On that day . . . the Lord will assemble the outcasts of Israel and gather the dispersed of Judah . . . You will say on that day: I will give thanks to you, O Lord. . . . On that day you shall not be put to shame . . . on that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak. The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love. (Isa

11

:

11

–

12

;

12

:

1

; Zeph

3

:

11

,

16

–

17

)

What appears to be mere destruction and anguish, when viewed from the perspective of those who cling to their illusory privileges and securities, is shown in fact to be a new beginning, the entry into a renewed world.

The End of the Age

In the centuries just before the Common Era, the hope of Israel coalesced into an global vision of history. Some six hundred years before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the Babylonian armies invaded the tiny kingdom of Judah, destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem and deported the nation’s rulers. This unprecedented catastrophe in Israel’s history was not without unforeseen positive consequences: it was in the land of Babylon that priests and scribes had the time and inclination to collect their ancient traditions and turn them into a coherent narrative—the core of the Hebrew Bible as we know it. Some fifty years later, thanks to a shift in world politics, the Jews were allowed to return to their homeland. But this return manifestly did not correspond to expectations; they were still a captive people, ruled by a host of empires that succeeded one another on the stage of history.

In those years, the hope of the nation was linked less to specific events than to a radical transformation of Israel’s circumstances, to a new world order. Naturally this hope was not understood and expressed in the same way by all. At this stage, it is an error to imagine a series of dogmatic truths accepted by everyone in detail. But the main lines of this expectation, based on a re-reading of the old prophetic books and of past history, and fuelled by the often unfavorable events of the present, nonetheless form a coherent whole. It went something like this:

God will enter into history and once again act in our favor. God will destroy all our enemies and allow us to live in peace and prosperity as his people, bringing together the scattered tribes into one nation. This nation will return to God with all its heart, living out the covenant by putting into practice God’s laws and commands. The other peoples on earth, seeing all that God has done for his people, will come to Jerusalem to learn from God and to walk in his ways. This will inaugurate an era of peace, not only for Israel but for the entire world. None of the faithful will be excluded from this time of fulfillment; even the dead will share in it. And