hearing God

 

Have you ever heard God’s voice?

And, if so, has that been an exceptional experience, or is it a familiar one?

God is spirit, and so the way God speaks to us differs from a face-to-face conversation with another human being, because human beings are animals we can see, with vocal cords, and lips we can read.

But the human animal is also spirit, for God has breathed God’s own spirit into the human animal. This is what distinguishes us from every other animal, including our hominid ancestors. (God gave them life, but gave us something more: I would suggest, for the very purpose of conversation with a spiritual being.) And so we don’t only communicate body to body — including, but by no means limited to words — we also communicate spirit to spirit.

People who have experienced a bereavement will often have conversations with the person they have loved but no longer see. My own parents are still alive, but we live at a physical distance; nonetheless, there are times when I hear my mother’s voice, or my father’s voice. Distance and death come between the physical, but the spirit is not bound by such constraints. Some might say that is just the imagination or the subconscious; but I would suggest that the imagination and the subconscious are to the spirit what vocal cords and body language are to the flesh.

We have other ways of communicating spirit to spirit. These include writing. I can read words written down by someone who lived many centuries before me, and their spirit speaks to mine.

God speaks to us in many ways, including through our imagination and our subconscious — that is, through visions and dreams, and a voice in our head that is not our own conscious voice — and through things written down — whether the Bible, which is so important to some (much as I love the Bible, I think it is more a way we learn to recognise God’s voice speaking to others than a primary way God speaks to us) or the writings left to the Church by those we cal saints, or any other work written by a fellow human animal into whom God had breathed the spirit.

God also speaks to us through such other human animals who do stand in front of us, whose vocal cords move air waves that hit our ear drums, whose lips we might read.

The best way to learn to hear God’s voice is to be present to the possibility that God would want to speak with us at all. Whether what follows is constant chat or long companionable silence might depend on your personality or season of life or simply the overall length of the conversation.

But to hear God’s voice is not at all unusual, not the preserve of the exceptionally holy or the mentally ill.

 

questions, crises

 

Luke presents the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost to a Greek audience as the Church becoming the new Delphi, or site of pneumatic utterances; and to a Jewish audience as the Church becoming the new Creation/beginning/Genesis 1, with the Spirit/wind/breath of God hovering over what is as-yet unformed and calling it into being with a word.

That word — whether the utterance of an oracle or the series of “Let there be…”-s in Genesis 1, empowers the addressee to venture into the unknown, to become. In this, there is release, and a great deal of freedom, of choice.

If you could ask God anything, in relation to your life, what would it be?

Life has many stages of becoming, and each stage has its own crisis to which we need an answer, the very first of which — in the first eighteen months of life — is, am I safe? For young adults — which today, in the West, probably lasts until around age 40 — a key question is, am I loveable? Not just in regard to romantic relationships, but friendship, wider family, even whether we are able to love ourselves. For those in middle adulthood, the question is something to do with significance, whether anything we create will outlast us, or have a positive impact on the world. Whether we will accomplish anything. For the older generations, a key question is, am I content? Have I been able to answer that earlier crisis around accomplishments, and am I able to accept the inevitable losses of life, which accelerate at this stage?

These are all questions we might ask of our oracle of choice, or, indeed, bring before God.

These are all questions God cares about, because God cares for you intimately. These are crises the Spirit of God empowers us to face, wrestle with, and overcome — though not necessarily in the ways we might have imagined.

These are questions and crises the Church should be asking and discerning an empowering word and a faithful, if necessarily improvised, response to that word, together.

If you could ask God anything, in relation to your life, what would it be?

 

new Delphi

 

Luke is a culturally Greek follower of Jesus, writing for a culturally Greek audience.

If you lived in that world, and you needed to make a big decision, a decision that either way would change your life, and especially any decision that would impact upon other people, you would first go and seek guidance from the Oracle at Delphi. There, the Pythia (priestess) would enter the inner chamber, sit on a special seat, and breathe in the spirit of Python. In a trance state, she would utter oracles, foretelling the future in intelligible but ambiguous sentences.

When Luke recounts the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, he describes the event in such a way as to make the explicit claim that the Church — wherever it was found — was the new Delphi.

Two thousand years later, we still seek oracles to help us make significant decisions. Baby Boomers tend to take counsel from trusted family members or friends. Generation X (their younger selves would be amazed to hear) are most likely to seek the advice of an expert (including podcasts). Millennials, many of whom describe themselves as ‘spiritual, not religious,’ advocate meditation and mindfulness, and voraciously consume self-help books. Generation Z, the youngest adults, look to Web 2.0 content creators and social media influencers, with a marked and growing divide between young women — largely left-leaning and environmentally aware — and young men — in large numbers turning to the right, and influencers who argue that feminism has destroyed society.

Whatever our preferred source of counsel, we are all prone to confirmation bias. In this regard, too, we are no different from our ancestors. The oracles were notoriously ambiguous and interpreted according to the supplicant’s own desire. The legendary king Croesus enquired of the Pythia whether he should go to war with his neighbour. On being told that if he crossed a certain river he would destroy a great empire, he took this as a good omen, only to have his army defeated and his own great empire destroyed. The oracle was both an accurate and ambiguous foretelling. All too often, we suffer a similar fate, at our own hand.

In depicting the Church as the new Delphi, Luke foretells a community where the Spirit of God speaks in intelligible utterances that are weighed by men and women, youth and old age, together, as the best guarantor of not falling into the trap of Croesus. This takes us beyond our own generational, or gendered, preferences, into a more rounded discernment, as we recognise the gift that God has given to each one, as God sees fit.

Too often, my own charismatic evangelical tradition has determined what to do and sought the Holy Spirit to baptise our own interpretation. Whereas God, being a god who speaks but who does not coerce or violate human will, most often speaks in ambiguous, rather than deterministic, utterances. And then invites us to bear witness to what unfolds.

The crowd gathered at Pentecost, who heard the great things of God declared in their own native languages, asked, ‘What does this [utterance, phenomenon] desire to be?’ What does the future that is being foretold wish to become? This is less a question seeking definite knowledge and more a question paying attention to whatever will unfold.

What would it look like in practice for the local church to be such an attention-paying community of prophetic priests and priestesses available to the wider communities in which we are set? To be the new Delphis?

 

foretold

 

Next Sunday the Church celebrates Pentecost, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit of God on all humankind fifty days after Jesus’ return from the dead.

Luke records for us that the disciples were sitting/enthroned in an inner chamber when the Spirit came upon them with the sound of a violent wind and what looked like flames dividing and sitting on them. This Spirit caused them to declare the great things of God such that visitors to Jerusalem — come to attend the pilgrim festival — from all around the Greco-Roman world, including Crete, heard them in their own birth-languages. The crowd are amazed and ask, ‘What does this desire to be?’ but others believed the disciples to be drunk.

Peter challenges this conclusion, claiming, instead, that what they were witnessing was the fulfilment of prophetic utterances by the Jewish prophet Joel, who foretold a time when God would pour out his Spirit upon all flesh, such that ‘your sons and daughters shall prophesy,’ the young receive prophetic visions and the elders dream prophetic dreams. Peter underlines the inclusion of both men and women in this eruption, which would be validated by portents in the heavens and signs on the earth, blood and fire and smoke. And all who called upon the Lord’s name would be rescued and preserved.

Luke writes for a primarily gentile audience, shaped by Greek mythology. And in the retelling of the Church calendar, Acts 2 (the Day of Pentecost) follows Acts 16 (Paul in Philippi). Both are linked in the Greek imagination to Delphi.

The Temple of Apollo at Delphi played a central role in their world. Indeed, many believed it to be situated at the centre of the world. But the centrality had more to do with the prophetic utterances of the Oracle, whose insight was sought by anyone about to undertake any civil, political venture.

The young god Apollo (a son of Zeus, so of the younger generation of Olympians), who was already associated with prophecy, took control of Delphi from older gods. Seeking priests to serve him, he chose Cretan sailors (or possibly pirates). They joined the established priestesses, who had long served at the temple complex. Once upon a time, they had sought prophecy in dreams, but at some point Dionysus, the god of wine, another son of Zeus and half-brother of Apollo — and a death-and-resurrection god — had also come to Delphi, and now the priestesses sought prophecy through a form of intoxication. As supplicants came in hope of a prophetic word to guide them, the priestess would enter the inner chamber, where she would sit on a throne, and inhale a mind-altering smoke, the spirit of divination.

But the Titan Gaia was angry with Apollo for killing the giant serpent Python (in an act of self defence) and sought to have him thrown into Tartarus, the jail deep within the underworld. Gaia also gave mortals in general the ability to receive dreams and visions, so that they would no longer come to Delphi to seek the utterances of the Pythia, the priestess who took her ceremonial name from Python. Zeus, however, ensured the safety of his son, and revoked Gaia’s gift to mortals, guaranteeing Delphi’s central place in the world.

From Cretans to smoke, from pilgrims from every corner of the world to what might be perceived as drunken prophetic utterances, from an alleged centre of the world to inner chambers and thrones, from dreams and visions released released or withheld, there are so many parallels between Pentecost and Delphi. While the details might be unfamiliar, it is hard to imagine Luke’s audience finding the account unrecognisable.

But by placing this story at the outset of his Acts of the Apostles, Luke is making a foretelling of his own: that the Spirit that empowers mortals to participate in the life of God — specifically in the risen life of Jesus — will come to usurp the spirit that gave prophetic utterances to the Oracle at Delphi.

That the stories of the gods of Olympus, the stories they had known since birth, the stories of their native tongue, would find their fulfilment in the story of the Jewish people whose own story was fulfilled in Jesus the anointed Lord, through whom all might be saved from the perils of this uncertain age.

The thing about the utterances of the Pythia was that they were ambiguous, prone to be interpreted in line with the desires of the enquirer. So, for example, Croesus, the rich-beyond-your-wildest-dreams king of Lydia (where the first woman to become a follower in Jesus in Europe originally came from) sought the Oracle before going to war. He was told that if he crossed a certain river, he would destroy a great kingdom. Taking this to refer to his enemy, he advanced, to the destruction of his own kingdom.

When the Spirit empowered a group of Galileans to declare the great things of God in such a way that the speakers of many local languages heard and understood in their native tongue, they asked, ‘What does this [utterance] desire to be?’ What, indeed? Luke will answer that question in the story he has just begun to tell. But what will that story become in the lives of his audience? And what does it desire to be in your life, and mine, today?

 

of stories and spirits

 

To begin with, the growth of the church was, with a few notable exceptions, a renewal movement among Jews. People who shared a mythos — stories by which their world was formed and sustained and navigated — in common: the patriarchs, the exodus, the wanderings in the wilderness and the land promised to Abraham’s descendants, the exile. Preachers like Peter and Stephen rehearsed those stories, and showed how Jesus fulfilled them.

But mid-way through Acts, Luke pivots from Peter to Paul, and from a mission primarily to Jews to church-planters increasingly hitting up against Greco-Roman culture, and an entirely different mythos. In Lystra, Paul and Barnabas are assumed to be the Greek gods Hermes and Zeus.

In Philippi, the church-planters meet a slave-girl who possesses, or is possessed by, the spirit of Python. Python was the giant serpent who guarded the stone at Delphi, the centre of the world. This stone was precious to Zeus, for his father, the titan Chronos, had swallowed the first five of his children, whole, at birth, to prevent any of them from usurping him. But he had been tricked into swallowing the stone instead of his youngest son, allowing Zeus to grow up to rescue his siblings and overthrow the titans.

Zeus’ wife, Leto, conceived twins, the goddess Artemis and the god Apollo, incurring the jealous wrath of Zeus’ principal wife, Hera. Hera ordered Python to abandon his post, and pursue and kill Leto and her offspring. Python caught up with them with the infants were four days old; but from his mother’s arms, Apollo fired arrows at the serpent, killing it.

When Paul defeats the spirit of Python with the arrow that is the name of Jesus, Luke’s audience might well expect the crowd to assume that Paul was Apollo in their midst. But because his actions have cost a group of (essentially) bandits — a popular enemy of the heroes or mortal children of the gods — their income stream, Paul and Silas are thrown into Tartarus, the deepest prison chamber of the underworld, where the titans had imprisoned monsters, and the Olympians, in turn, had imprisoned the titans.

Only two mortals had ever returned from the underworld, the realm presided over by the god Hades and guarded by the three-headed dog Cerberus. One was Theseus, a son of Poseidon (god of the sea) who had ventured into the underworld on a quest to abduct Persephone, the wife of Hades. Theseus was the hero best known for killing the Minotaur. (Persephone only lived in the underworld for a third of every year, but Theseus and his bestie Pirithous are not the sharpest crayons in the crayon box.) The other was Heracles, a son of Zeus (god of the sky) and another object of Hera’s wrath. She had caused him to go mad, and in that state kill his wife and children; and, seeking penance, had forced him into a series of increasingly impossible tasks, culminating in kidnapping Hades’ hound Cerberus. Heracles succeeded, rescuing his cousin Theseus, who had been trapped in the underworld since failing in his own quest, as an added bonus. But he was prevented from also rescuing Theseus’ friend, Pirithous, by an earthquake.

However, it is an earthquake that liberates Paul and Silas from prison, and creates the opportunity for an encounter with their jailer whereby he, too, comes to put his trust in Jesus. Just as death could not keep hold of Jesus, so it cannot keep hold of Paul and Silas. They are participating in the resurrection. And just as Jesus’ risen life meant life for others, so did their participation in that risen life.

We create and sustain our world through stories, whether the great myths or the social media posts of a deranged president, whether the sacred libraries of religious faith or the daily news corporations. And those stories have life breathed into them by certain spirits, whether the spirit of Python, that purports to tell us our fortune, or the Holy Spirit, who empowers us with the risen life of Jesus, or some other spirit.

Which stories will you choose to be shaped by? Which spirit will you seek to be inspired by?

Where will that story, and that spirit, take you?

 

good news, bad news

 

When Paul and Barnabas give a man born lame the ability to walk, the citizens of Lystra believe them to be the gods Hermes (the Messenger) and Zeus, and make preparations to honour them with sacrifices and a feast. This is a perfectly reasonable assumption, given their cultural frame of reference.

Therefore, when Paul defeats (the spirit of) Python in Philippi, we would expect the local population to assume that he was the god Apollo. Instead, Paul and Silas are thrown into Tartarus, the deepest dungeon of the underworld.

The difference is that in Philippi, Paul’s proclamation of the good news of salvation in the name of Jesus results directly in loss for a gang who have invested in grooming a vulnerable child for their financial gain.

Such people have always been dangerous.

The gospel should always be good news for the most vulnerable, and a problem for those who would exploit them.

 

cloud

 

While Luke records Jesus’ ascension — twice — for a primarily gentile audience whose reference point would be the cloud-enveloped Mount Olympus, home of the gods, the witnesses to the ascension and the first people they recounted this event to were Jews.

I don’t think that it would have been hard for the disciples to tell people about the ascension of Jesus into heaven — however that sounds to our ears — because it made sense within the Jewish mythos. Among other stories, it resonated with:

the ascent of Moses into the thick cloud enveloping Mount Sinai, to meet with the God who had just brought his people out of captivity in Egypt;

the dedication of the temple in Jerusalem built by king Solomon, the son of king David, when God descended on his earthly footstool, the temple being filled with the cloud of God’s glory;

the carrying of the prophet Elijah into the heavens, without having tasted death, in a fiery chariot pulled by fiery, flying, spirit horses;

the exilic prophet Daniel’s vision of the Son of Man, a vision symbolising the people of God being brought before the heavenly court by the prosecutor — the satan — but vindicated by God, the Judge.

So for Jews hearing testimony of Jesus’ ascension, they would hear a claim that Jesus is the new Moses, who leads God’s people out from captivity to sin and death, and establishes a new covenant; the new Solomon, a royal descendant of David who establishes a new temple; the new Elijah, greatest of prophets, through whom the community lives in fidelity to the covenant; the new Son of Man, or people of God, vindicated by God and released from their exile.

Whether they accepted or rejected the claim, they would recognise it as a claim to meet their most fundamental longings.

Jesus is all this and more, the fulfilment of the Jewish mythos, just as he is also — as Luke will set out — the fulfilment of the Gentile mythos. The one to whom every story points, and in whom every story comes home.

That we live in a culture that so easily dismisses mystery reveals the impoverishment of our imagination. But the human — heart and mind and soul and strength — is created for mystery, is refreshed and restored through encounters with mystery.

In the ascension of Jesus, our human nature is taken up into mystery, for our salvation, our being made whole.

 

true story

 

What is not to like about Greek mythology? It is full of tales of gods and mortals that have stood the test of time, and many re-tellings (say hi to Percy Jackson from me). They do so because they reveal to us something of what it is to be human in this world, a world in which we see rapacious men seek to claim and consolidate power for themselves, and neighbours caught up in generational wars.

And that is what myths do. They are stories that are true, a true reflection of the world. When we dismiss them as nonsense woven by people who profoundly lacked our knowledge of the world, we show our ignorance, our failure to understand their purpose, the difference between a thing (the cosmos, say) and its significance. When Christians dismiss the gods of Greece, or any other culture, as not real, we diminish our understanding of the created order, which is both seen and unseen.

I believe that the Olympian gods exist, or existed. I am not a monotheist, that is, someone who believes only one God exists. I am a monolatrist: that is, I believe in the existence of many gods — we might also call them angels, demons, powers, principalities — and I even revere some (this afternoon I shall attend a neighbouring parish church dedicated to the archangel Gabriel) but I only trust my life to (believe in) one God; I only offer my existence, as a living sacrifice, to one God.

The issue that I have with the gods of Mount Olympus is not that they are false, so much as that they are inadequately true.

Their stories reveal much about the world, but leave us at its mercy. And while we are blessed by the earth, we also suffer. When it comes to human dealings, we both suffer evil at the hands of others and inflicted evil on others by our own hand — whether imposing vengeance for some real or imagined slight, or withholding good from those in need.

The story of Jesus is the best story I know. It is the story in which all stories find their fulfilment, in which all life can find its fullest meaning and purpose.

It is the story of the restoration of all things, the healing of every relationship, however torn they have become.

 

He ascended into heaven

 

Today is Ascension Day, the day the Church remembers that forty days after he was raised from the dead, Jesus returned — physically, bodily — to heaven, ascending into the clouds. From there, ten days later, he would send the Holy Spirit, made visible as fire that engulfed the disciples without burning them.

What do you make of this claim?

Luke, the author of the two-part work Luke-Acts, writing for a Gentile audience, records Jesus’ ascension into heaven twice: at the end of his first volume, and the start of his second volume. How would the audience he wrote for understand this event?

According to Greek mythology, the generation of gods before the Olympian gods were the Titans. The Titan Chronos (Time) castrated his own father, Uranus (the sky, heavens) (this is why the sky bleeds red each evening and morning) and swallowed five of his own children, at birth, to prevent them from usurping him. But he was tricked, by his wife Rhea, into swallowing a stone instead of their youngest child, Zeus.

When Zeus had grown, he worked with his grandmother (and great-grandmother) Gaia (Earth) to release his siblings from their father’s stomach, and together, with help, they fought the Titans over a ten-year war. Despite being one of the Titans, Prometheus — who had created humans from clay — chose to side with the children of Chronos.

After the Olympians won, and had thrown most of the Titans into Tartarus, they wanted to decide what sacrifices mortals should offer to them as gods. Prometheus, the great champion of his creation, tricked Zeus into choosing the fat-covered bones of an animal sacrifice, so the humans could enjoy the meat. Angry at having been tricked, Zeus revoked the gift of fire from mortals. But Prometheus stole fire from the gods and brought it back to his cherished creatures.

As punishment, Zeus had Prometheus chained to a mountain where an eagle — symbol of Zeus, and, later, symbol of the Roman empire — would eat his liver. Every night, the liver would regenerate, only to be eaten again the following day, in an eternal torment. However, later, Zeus’ son Heracles persuaded his father to allow him to set Prometheus free. But by then, Prometheus and the humans had been further punished by the creation of woman — Pandora — who succumbed to the temptation of opening a jar containing every evil known to humanity, releasing them into the world, leaving only hope in the bottom of the jar.

The parallels between Prometheus and Jesus include:

Chained to a mountain/hung from a tree;

Liver eaten by an eagle/side pierced by a Roman soldier;

(Sometimes) welcome on Mount Olympus, the cloud-shrouded home of the gods where mortals could not go/ascending into the clouds to the realm of God (and remaining there);

The one who returns fire to humans/the one who sends the Holy Spirit — known in the past by a limited few, but now given to all — made visible as fire.

These are clear parallels, but there are also transformative differences:

Jesus is not crucified because he has angered the sky god, but by mortals to whom he had been sent by the God of heaven and earth with a message of reconciliation;

This god is not persuaded by another actor to show mercy to Jesus, but raises him in accordance with his own will, in an act of vindication and of judgement on those who had put Jesus to death;

Jesus’ willingness even to die, and to freely forgive his executioners, is an acceptable sacrifice from humans to God;

Jesus takes every evil known to humanity into himself and contains and nullifies them there, and instead will pour out God’s permanent, affirming, presence with mortals.

In this way, Luke presents Jesus as the one who is victorious over the older Titans as well as the younger Olympian gods; as the one who fulfils Greek mythology — the hopes and fears of a culture — not through violence but through being humble enough to allow himself to be placed into the hands of humans, to love even his enemies, those who sought to erase him.

Of course, our cultural context is not the same as that of those for whom Luke wrote. But the myth — the true story that transcends its original telling, by which the world is ordered — remains.

 

He descended into hell

 

According to Greek mythology, only two mortals had descended into the underworld realm of the dead and returned to the world of the living. Both were demi-gods.

Theseus was a son of Poseidon, god of the sea. Among the many adventures of Theseus were his six labours, in which he defeated six villainous bandits, one at each of the six entrances to the underworld. Theseus joined his friend Pirithous in his attempt to abduct Persephone, the wife of Hades, god of the underworld. However, they failed in their quest, remaining trapped.

Heracles was a son of Zeus, God of the sky. Among his many adventures were the twelve tasks. Driven mad by Hera, who vented her anger towards her husband at his illegitimate children, Heracles murdered his own wife and children. Restored to his right mind, he sought out the pythonic Oracle at Delphi to discover how he could atone for his sins. Unknown to him, the Oracle spoke only as directed by Hera, who determined that his penance would be to serve king Eurystheus for ten years and perform any task the king required of him. The king initially set Heracles ten tasks, later adding a further two, the last of which was to capture Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog of the underworld, and present him before Eurystheus. While on this quest, Heracles found his cousin, and Persephone was persuaded to grant him clemency (though Pirithous remained captive). Hades was persuaded to let his nephew borrow his dog, on the condition that Cerberus was returned unharmed.

In Acts 16, Luke, the biographer of Jesus and historian of the early church, describes Jesus as the one who is victorious over the Greek monsters, gods, and heroes. But he does not defeat them through heroic labours — even if the church told the story of Jesus dying, descending to the realm of the dead, preaching there, (harrowing hell) and returning to the world of the living on the third day.

Jesus is victorious over both the giant serpent Python and the god Apollo through Paul noticing the girl whom others saw only as child labour to be exploited, and freeing her with just an authoritative word.

Jesus is victorious over the monstrous dog Cerberus and the god Hades (along with Theseus and Heracles, and Poseidon and Zeus) through Paul expressing compassion towards the man tasked with denying him his freedom.

This is dynamite.

It is radically different from the way in which Greek gods and mortals see, and treat, one another.

This is how the church grew exponentially over the following three centuries.

Through care.

 

Jesus and the fulfilment of Greek mythology

 

In the earliest recorded proclamations of Jesus as Saviour and Lord, the likes of Peter and Stephen show how Jesus fulfils Jewish hopes and expectations. But as Gentiles start to profess faith in Jesus, there is a need also to demonstrate ways in which Jesus fulfils their own mythologies or meaning-making stories.

When Paul and his companions arrive in Philippi, they encounter a young slave girl who possesses/is possessed by the spirit of Python, by which she utters oracles. She informs all who gather to hear her that these men are slaves of the Most High God who brings them news of a way of salvation (that Way being Jesus). Paul commands the spirit to release the girl and depart. Realising that their means of making an income from the girl is now lost, her owners have Paul and Silas brought before the magistrates, who have them beaten and thrown into the innermost cell of the city prison. That night, an earthquake jail-brakes them, causing the gaoler to intend to fall on his sword. But Paul prevents him from doing so, as none of the prisoners have escaped. In severance, the gaoler asks them what he must do to be saved from destruction into divine protection, and professes Jesus as Lord, bringing Paul and Silas into his home, washing their wounds, being himself baptised along with his household, and hosting a feast in honour of his guests.

According to one version of the story, Zeus, the king of the Olympian gods and serial adulterer, fathered the twins Artemis and Apollo by the goddess Leto. Zeus’ (older sister and) principal wife, Hera, was angered by her husband’s infidelity, and sent the giant serpent Python, who guarded the centre of the world (obviously in Greece) to pursue and kill the pregnant Leto. Leto evaded capture, Python only catching up with her when her twins were four days old. Carrying them in HR arms as she ran, she told her son to shoot at her attacker (both twins were acclaimed archers, apparently from birth) and Apollo’s arrow killed Python. Apollo then took the shrine of the Oracle at Delphi, previously guarded by Python, for his own shrine.

In vanquishing the Python who possessed the slave girl, Paul is, in effect, claiming that Jesus — the Way of salvation — fulfils the role of Apollo, that is, the aspirations invested in Apollo.

For such audacity — mortal heroes claiming equality with an Olympian god — Paul and Silas are judged and sentenced to Tartarus, the furthest point of the underworld from the earth, that is, the innermost cell of the jail. Tartarus had originally been the prison in which the Titans held the three one-eyed monsters and three one-hundred-armed monsters captive. But Zeus had freed them, enlisting their help in overthrowing the Titans (Zeus’ father Chronos had swallowed his older sisters and brothers). Now Tartarus was the prison for mortal kings who had defied the Olympian gods. Only two mortals — the demi-gods Heracles (a son of Zeus) and Theseus (a son of Poseidon) — had ever returned from the realm of the underworld to the earth above (Theseus, held captive, had been rescued by Heracles, who met him at the edge of Tartarus while undertaking one of his twelve labours).

The gaoler functions as both Cerberus, the three-headed hound that guards the realm of the dead (a canine goaler) and also Hades, god of the underworld, who brings Paul and Silas up out of the pit of Tartarus to feast with him in Elysium, that part of the underworld reserved for heroes.

In effect, in this short account of Paul’s time in Philippi, Jesus is demonstrated as being victorious over the giant creatures Python and Cerberus, the heroes Heracles and Theseus, and the gods Apollo, Hades, Zeus, and Poseidon. Indeed, in time, the followers of Jesus would outnumber the followers of the gods, and his story would become the story in which fears were brought to peace and desires fulfilled.

We humans seek salvation — being delivered from dissonance into wholeness, from danger into safety — through the stories we tell. While the Greek and other ancient mythologies no longer have cultic worshippers, they still have a hold on our imagination. There are, some say, only so many stories, retold over and over in different clothes, in different cultures. We have our own cultural stories, our own epic heroes (celebrities). Luke, the first historian of the church, sought to show how Jesus fulfilled the stories of both Jews and Greeks. In our day, Jesus fulfils the stories — the hopes and fears, the aspirations — we tell, seeking our own security in an uncertain world. Jesus is still Lord (not the servant of Christian Nationalists).

 

a good story : part 5

 

The motto of Sunderland, the city where I live, is NIL DESPERANDUM, AUSPICE DEO, which roughly translates as, ‘Do not despair, trust in God.’

The words are adapted from a line in the Odes of Horace, spoken by Teucer. Teucer was a mythical Greek prince, son of the king of the island of Salamis, who took part in the decade-long siege of Troy. This intractable conflict, between relatives on either side of the Aegean Sea, was provoked by Zeus, king of the gods of Olympus, to deal with human over-population and, at the same time, the personal problem that his serial sexual violence towards (goddesses and) human women (alike) had resulted in the birth of many demi-god heroes, whose very existence was an affront to Zeus’ wife, Hera. If they could be provoked to destroy one another, Zeus’ problems might go away.

At Troy, Teucer (a grandson of Zeus) found fame as an archer, often firing at the Trojans from behind the giant shield of his older half-brother, Ajax. (Zeus eventually broke his grandson’s bow, just to influence the balance of the war.) Teucer was also one of the men who finally breached Troy’s defences inside the wooden horse. But towards the end of the war, Ajax, despairing at being overlooked in favour of Odysseus to inherit the fallen Achilles’ armour, took his own life. Teucer insisted that Ajax be buried where he died. After the war, on returning home, their father accused Teucer of negligence for not having brought Ajax’s body, and armour, home, and banished him for ever. At this point, Teucer set out onto unknown seas in search of a new home, inspiring his companions that there was no need to despair (at their banishment) with Teucer as their guide, for the god Apollo had assured him of success: he will found a new Salamis elsewhere.

Do not despair, trust in God.

But does it matter which god?

In Acts 16, Paul and his companions set sail from the Troad — the vicinity of ancient Troy — across the Aegean Sea to Macedonia (north of the Achaeans who went to war against Troy, but by now — that is, Paul’s time — both what we would recognise as Greek).

Paul comes as the new Teucer, a man exiled from his birth community, who has set out on the Sea of life in an uncertain world, proclaiming not himself as a guide backed by one or another member of the feuding family of Olympian gods, but Jesus as the leader (guide) backed by the God of the Jews.

(Luke, who records Paul’s story, is the new Homer, and a rival storyteller to Horace, who, by fascinating coincidence had served in the Battle of Philippi, where Paul would arrive a hundred years later, and who had reimagined Teucer’s story to proclaim Octavian — later, Augustus — as the founder of a new beginning.)

The question is, which story will you choose? Which guide, or leader to follow? Teucer? Augustus? Jesus? Someone else?

To whom will you look when tempted to despair?