This blog follows the daily bible readings of the Catholic Church
Reading 1, Acts 13:26-33
26 ‘My brothers, sons of Abraham’s race, and all you godfearers, this message of salvation is meant for you. 27 What the people of Jerusalem and their rulers did, though they did not realise it, was in fact to fulfil the prophecies read on every Sabbath. 28 Though they found nothing to justify his execution, they condemned him and asked Pilate to have him put to death. 29 When they had carried out everything that scripture foretells about him they took him down from the tree and buried him in a tomb.
30 But God raised him from the dead, 31 and for many days he appeared to those who had accompanied him from Galilee to Jerusalem: and it is these same companions of his who are now his witnesses before our people. 32 ‘We have come here to tell you the good news that the promise made to our ancestors has come about. 33 God has fulfilled it to their children by raising Jesus from the dead. As scripture says in the psalms: You are my son: today I have fathered you.
Gospel, John 14:1-6
1 Do not let your hearts be troubled. You trust in God, trust also in me. 2 In my Father’s house there are many places to live in; otherwise I would have told you. I am going now to prepare a place for you, 3 and after I have gone and prepared you a place, I shall return to take you to myself, so that you may be with me where I am.4 You know the way to the place where I am going.
5 Thomas said, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’
6 Jesus said: I am the Way; I am Truth and Life. No one can come to the Father except through me.
Both passages can be interpreted with the help of Oikos Theology, which as far as I know, is my own invention. It is an understanding of God based on the many passages in the scripture which use the image of God’s house or household (oikos ion Greek). I will append some relevant material to this blog.
“There are many dwelling places in my Father’s House”
The witness of the bible is that God wants to build a house or household which includes all his creatures. The Old Testament portrays two steps on the way to this household: the Holy Temple and the Holy People. The temple is God’s house to which Israel ascends, so that it may stand in the presence of the holy God, according to his covenant, receiving forgiveness and reaffirmation as a son within God’s household. The New Testament sees those steps as ambiguous because the temple could become a place of ritual divorced from obedience, and the status of God’s son could be, as it was for the kings who accepted this title, an invitation to power rather than responsibility.
In Jesus, according to Luke, God has provided a new holy place, which is the sacrificial obedience of Jesus; and a new family, which begins with the resurrection of Jesus as his true son. As disciples, we stand within the holiness of Jesus’ life and death; and by the power of his resurrection we are forgiven, and enabled to be God’s household.
Oikos is the Greek root of economy (household management), ecology (the study of the earth as a household for living things) and ecumenism (the church as inclusive of all human households)
In the Acts passage, Paul argues that God’s true son has been rejected and crucified by his own people, who thought they were protecting God’s family; but now his status as the true son of God is revealed by his resurrection, and by the message of forgiveness made in his name. The Acts depicts the extension of God’s household over the known world, and into its centre of power.
John sets out the doctrine of the house of God more directly:
- The father’s household is both extensive and varied (many dwelling places).
- Jesus’ death is astonishingly depicted in the image of the wife and servants who go ahead to make the house into a home for the family.
- Jesus’ resurrection is depicted as his gracious return to lead the family into its home.
- What is the household, and where is it? It is the holy presence of the father into which we enter through the following Jesus who is the way, understanding Jesus who is the truth, and being raised up by Jesus who is the life.
- People can enter God’s house “through Jesus” even if they do not know his name, by their response to his spirit.
- The household of God encompasses both earth and heaven. We do not begin our tenancy when we die, but here and now, in the life of faith.
APPENDIX ON OIKOS THEOLOGY
oikos
The English words, economy, ecumenical and ecology are all derived from the Greek word, OIKOS, a house. This means that three of the most crucial concerns of humanity, the management of our wealth, the co-existence of different belief systems in a common world, and the understanding of our living space, are linked in English by their common origin.
The Greek OIKOS meant household as well as dwelling, so that OIKONOMIA meant household management, and this was expanded to refer to the management of a nation’s wealth; OIKUMENE meant the inhabited world, and this was used by the early Christian Church to refer to itself as open to the peoples of the world; and ECOLOGY, originally OEKOLOGIE in German, was invented by the 19th century zoologist Ernst Haeckel to describe the study of the earth as the habitat of its creatures.
The word is in my mind because, after my retirement as a parish minister of the Church of Scotland, we’ve been moving house, a process that combines the most ancient emotions with the most modern procedures: at the back of our minds there was fear of not having a roof over our heads, or of living in a threatening environment; at the same time we were learning how the housing market works in Scotland today and the cost of replacing old furniture with new.
We had saved for retirement by buying a small house which we let out to students in Aberdeen. We did so reluctantly, unhappy in the role of landlord, but unable in a time of rapid inflation to see any other way of securing the value of our savings. This proved unexpectedly beneficial when we decided to settle in Dundee, where house prices are much lower than in Aberdeen.
The process of finding capital and an “oikos” links not only traditional and modern concerns but also the personal and the political.
That’s enough to encourage the study of this root word and its uses. As I’m familiar with the Bible and Christian traditions, I’ll work within them, without any implication that other traditions of thought are irrelevant.
HUMAN HOUSES AND GOD’S HOUSE
The Bible has reverence for the house, as the dwelling place of a family. Although the patriarchs of the Jewish Bible are travellers, their temporary dwellings are noted as places to remember. In the stories of the patriarchs, the welcome of guests into the dwelling space is described in detail, and the moral obligation of protecting one’s guest is assumed. A whole system of etiquette and honour is based on the house. This system can be turned to the host’s advantage, as when Laban takes advantage of the fugitive Jacob for additional labour on his farm, while Jacob as guest takes revenge by removing himself, his flocks and his wives from their paternal household. The house is where life is either fostered or destroyed.
It is assumed in these writings that God has a dwelling place in heaven or in the heavens but that God also comes to visit, if not to dwell, on the earth. God “pitches his tent” with the people, a mode of dwelling that indicates a prolonged but not permanent abode. Human beings may facilitate God’s visitation, but have no control over it.
A few examples:
Abraham welcomes God in the shape of three men to his tent, entertains them and receives the promise that Sarah will conceive in her old age. The narrative expresses a simple dignity, an earthy humour, a deep faith.(Genesis 18)
Jacob, in flight from Esau, pillows his head on a stone and dreams of angels ascending and descending a ladder from heaven. Waking he says, “Surely this is the house of God (Beth-El) and the gate of heaven.” (Genesis 28)
In the Exodus from Egypt, God accompanies Israel as cloud by day and fire by night. Later God commits himself to the “tent of meeting” and the “ark of the covenant” which was placed in it. These provide the people with access to the divine. (Exodus 13)
The extended narrative of the royal succession in Samuel and Kings is based on a pun about God’s dwelling. Nathan the prophet tells King David that he will not build a “house” for God (he will not establish a Temple), but that God will build a “house” (a dynasty) for him. This play on words suggests that God’s dwelling is more a community than a cathedral. David has to learn that his dynasty must be founded on justice rather than personal or familial advantage. (2 Samuel 9-1 Kings 2)
Even when David’s dynastic successor, Solomon builds a “house” (Temple) for God, the traditional story gives him the great prayer (1 Kings 8):
“But will God indeed dwell on earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You. How much less this house that I have built…..Yet when your servant prays towards this place, hear from heaven your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.”
God dwells amongst his people as their partner in a covenant of justice and as a holy presence in the temple cult. Prophet and priest in Israel work out their different theologies of God’s dwelling but are united in their conviction that God wants to abide with mortals. Both “The House of the Lord” and the “House of Israel” are described as the dwelling place of God.
The power of these ideas comes from the rigour with which the writers depict the otherness of God. The God of Israel is in nobody’s pocket: terrifying even to the holiest of humans, he is unpredictable and passionate in defence of his divine honour, his “name”. It is a miracle therefore, that this God wants to dwell with his people.
AFTER THE “EVICTION” FROM ISRAEL
The catastrophic history of the royal house of David culminating in the destruction of the temple in 586 BCE, opened the door to new pictures of God’s dwelling:
God will dwell by his “Spirit” resting on a new king, “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might”. He will establish a peaceable kingdom. (Isaiah 11)
God will dwell on earth in his “servant” at whom the kings of the earth are amazed and say, “All we like sheep have gone astray and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” This servant is identified as Israel itself. In this picture God’s dwelling becomes a dark and sorrowful vocation. (Isaiah 53)
God will dwell by his law in the hearts of the faithful: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”(Jeremiah 31)
God will himself come as shepherd-king to his people: “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down. I will seek the lost, and bring back the strayed, and bind up the injured.” (Ezekiel 34)
God will dwell amongst his people in a new and purified temple. “As the glory of the Lord entered the temple by the gate facing east, the spirit lifted me up and brought me to the inner court; and the glory of the Lord filled the temple.” (Ezekiel 43)
God dwells with people as divine wisdom: “Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn her seven pillars, she calls from the highest places in town, ‘You that are simple, turn in here! Come, eat of my bread.’” (Proverbs 9)
In their different ways each of these pictures proposes a new image of “God’s house.”
I can’t imagine people for whom the house in which they want to live does not constitute a house of God, that’s to say, a place as open to their spiritual as to their material aspirations. This is of course the trap into which the estate agent lures us: we are not just viewing living space but a theatre for our dreams, so we respond to a sales rhetoric which distorts reality. Kitchens are holy hearths as well as food outlets.
A HOUSE OUT OF THIS WORLD?
There is another tradition in the Jewish Bible. Scholars call it apocalyptic from the Greek word for “revelation.” It would seem that certain groups in Israel began to think of the sinful and unjust world as utterly removed from God. If God came to dwell, that would mean the end of the world–process, or at least the end of the spiritual powers who until now had ruled the world. The swirling visions of Apocalyptic writing, as in the Book of Daniel, or the Christian book of The Revelation, are notoriously hard to interpret, giving plenty of scope for diligent cranks but they all present God’s dwelling as a hope beyond the horizon of the historical world. For such thinkers God’s coming to dwell in the world involves a cosmic renewal.
The writers of the Christian New Testament make use of almost all these traditions of thought applying them to the person and ministry of Jesus, and to life in the first Christian communities. It seems that Jesus himself used and re-interpreted some of these motifs, especially in his parables.
Few of the writings in the New Testament are untouched by apocalyptic ideas. That’s very clear in some of Paul’s letters, and of course in the book of Revelation. They want to tell the reader that in Jesus Christ, God’s new tent in the world, the cosmic renewal has begun, that the ruling powers of the earth are already or will soon be defeated, and that God himself will dwell with mortals, and they shall be his people and he will be their God. (Revelation 21)
Another term used by scholars is eschatology, from the Greek “eschaton” the last thing, the end. Apocalyptic uses scenarios of the “last days”, and is concerned that God should have the last word on the history of the world. There is obvious disagreement amongst different New Testament writers about the extent to which God’s eschatological dwelling with people is already realised in Jesus. All agree that it has been to some extent, but they differ in their view of what is yet to come.
OUT OF THIS WORLD HERE AND NOW
My own analysis is that all the eschatological and apocalyptic hopes are carefully woven into the narrative of the Gospels in such a way that the ordinary space and time of Jesus’ life become, for the reader, the definitive dwelling place of God. People of faith invented apocalyptic images to express their hope for the world. The gospel writers insist that in Jesus’ life, in his stories, healings, arguments, discourses, and in his death, the ultimate issues about the world are addressed. The “last things” are not in fact cosmic catastrophes but rather the wise, wonderful, compassionate, angry, suffering presence of Jesus.
“No-one,” Jesus is reported as saying, “can enter the strong man’s house, unless he has first tied up the strong man” (Mark 3)
Here’s another house, one which belongs to the Devil, a strong man indeed. If Jesus is going to invade this dynasty and rescue its subjects (the poor, the mad, the sick), then he must tackle the strong man himself. The four Gospels tell us, according to their different theologies and storytelling schemes, how he did this.
Healings
Jesus’ parable about the “House of Spirits” is instructive:
Luke’s Gospel 11:24-25
24 ‘When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting-place, but not finding any, it says, “I will return to my house from which I came.” 25When it comes, it finds it swept and put in order. 26Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first.’
All Bible readers have criteria by which they think they can recognise the very voice of Jesus. We can’t all be right. In my own case the sobriety, humour and moral wisdom of this story convince me that Jesus told it. When Jesus calls a person a house, he means that they are not isolated individuals, but open to the transpersonal forces of their society. There is no possibility of “being void”: a person will be tenanted for good or ill. There is a choice only of who the tenant(s) will be. This is equivalent to Bob Dylan’s song, “You gotta serve somebody”. He says that you don’t have a choice whether to serve, but you can choose whom you will serve: it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody. In this song Dylan uses the biblical language of service, which often covers the same ground as the oikos language, and in some cases merges with it, (for example in the story of the prodigal son) but is less adaptable and profound.
Mark’s Gospel Chapter 2
1: And when he returned to Caper’na-um after some days, it was reported that he was at home.
2: And many were gathered together, so that there was no longer room for them, not even about the door; and he was preaching the word to them.
3: And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men.
4: And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and when they had made an opening, they let down the pallet on which the paralytic lay.
5: And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “My son, your sins are forgiven.”
6: Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts,
7: “Why does this man speak thus? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
8: And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, “Why do you question thus in your hearts?
9: Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, `Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, `Rise, take up your pallet and walk’?
10: But that you may know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins” — he said to the paralytic —
11: “I say to you, rise, take up your pallet and go home.”
12: And he rose, and immediately took up the pallet and went out before them all; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”
In stories of Jesus’ healings our ears should prick up whenever we hear of houses. In the story of the paralysed man and his friends, they hear that Jesus is in a house: he has established a “house of God” in the village. People are drawn to it as if by a magnet, until it can admit no more. The paralysed man is also understood as a closed house, but in this case his sins, that is, his acceptance of religious judgements made against him, have closed him to God. The man’s friends “break into” the house of God, where Jesus breaks into the closed house of the man’s life by declaring the forgiveness of his sin. When pious bystanders criticise Jesus for speaking on God’s behalf, he demonstrates that the healing power has also freed the man from his paralysis. In this healing Jesus, in the strength of God, ties up the “strong man”, the power of evil, and ransacks his house; and God comes to dwell in the man who was paralysed.
Mark’s Gospel 5:22-43
Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Ja’irus by name; and seeing him, he fell at his feet,
23: and besought him, saying, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.”
24: And he went with him. And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him.
25: And there was a woman who had had a flow of blood for twelve years,
26: and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse.
27: She had heard the reports about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment.
28: For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I shall be made well.”
29: And immediately the haemorrhage ceased; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.
30: And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone forth from him, immediately turned about in the crowd, and said, “Who touched my garments?”
31: And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, `Who touched me?'”
32: And he looked around to see who had done it.
33: But the woman, knowing what had been done to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him, and told him the whole truth.
34: And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
35: While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler’s house some who said, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?”
36: But ignoring what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.”
37: And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John the brother of James.
38: When they came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, he saw a tumult, and people weeping and wailing loudly.
39: And when he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a tumult and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.”
40: And they laughed at him. But he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was.
41: Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Tal’itha cu’mi”; which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.”
42: And immediately the girl got up and walked (she was twelve years of age), and they were immediately overcome with amazement.
43: And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.
In the masterly storytelling of Mark the healing of a sick woman is nested in the story of the healing of a twelve year-old girl. Jesus is asked to come to Jairus’ house. It is noted that he is a synagogue official. On his way, in the midst of a crowd drawn to Jesus as the dwelling of God, a woman suffering from continuous bleeding who has found no help from doctors, touches his cloak. She, from within the socially constructed house of uncleanness, breaks through the taboo and knocks at God’s door. Jesus, the one in whom God dwells, reaches out across the taboo of purity, to invite her in. But now messengers arrive to say that the girl has died. Perhaps Jesus’ delay in healing the sick woman has allowed this to happen but Jesus asks the father to trust him. When they arrive, the house has become a house of death: ritual wailing and other women’s ministrations to the dead have begun. The young Jewess, daughter of Zion, is in the power of the “strong man.” Religious rules isolated the dead as sources of pollution. As Jesus prepares to break into this “closed house” he is mocked for his cavalier attitude to death, “She’s only sleeping,” he says. Jesus goes to the girl, takes her hand, and says in Aramaic, “Talitha Cumi!” which means something like, “Time to get up, my wee dove.” She gets up, and walks. Her age, the age of transition from girlhood to womanhood is noted at the end of the story. A true understanding of this story, as of all the stories in Mark’s gospel is only given to the second- time reader who knows of Jesus own death and resurrection. From that perspective the story of Jesus walking into the house of death to bring life has added meaning, and the beautiful Aramaic injunction to the girl, can be heard as the eschatological call of the one in whom God dwells for a new awakening of women, of society, of the world: it’s time to get up.
Springtime
We moved into our new house at the beginning of Spring. It is unlike any house we have previously inhabited as it’s only three years old, built as part of a so-called spacious village of new modern building on the northern edge of Dundee. The young couple who sold it were moving upmarket into a five bedroom version of the same house, believing that they should be establishing themselves as soon as possible. They have one child.
The house has three bedrooms, of which the one on the ground floor is intended as the “master” bedroom. (the word “master”, almost unused elsewhere in society is beloved of estate agents);kitchen, dining room, living room are one large open plan area. The young couple have added a conservatory to the rear. The garden is small to the back, smaller to the front, but there is a substantial garage and parking space for three cars!
Spring is appropriate because of course we are making a new beginning, all of us: me, due to retirement; my daughter due to a positive change in her own life which has brought her back to live with us; my wife, retired now for ten years, who will have her privacy invaded daily.
There are many tasks to be started, some of which are essential to our comfort, like installing a shower in the upstairs bathroom; others which will determine the way we use the house, like purchasing storage for books; others again which are little things that need working out. How do you replace one of these spotlights in the kitchen ceiling?
From time to time we all reveal an underlying tiredness and unease, by the odd loss of temper or a hurt silence or frenetic activity. We acknowledge that just when it would be good to rely on well-loved buildings and routines we can’t do so, but must try to begin again. There is also a deeper loss of which we don’t speak. My ministry had created many problems with its demands on my time, but it had given me a transcending purpose, which is now absent. I wonder what I am and how I can make relationships with dear ones, neighbours, and society, which express a new identity.
Philip Larkin writes wonderfully about the Spring as the season for which the human spirit may not be ready or may have readied itself too often:
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
How can afresh be more than once?
Jesus’ Encounters and Controversies.
Mark’s Gospel 3: 20,21 and 32-35
Then he went home;
20: and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat.
21: And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for people were saying, “He is beside himself.”
And his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside they sent to him and called him.
32: And a crowd was sitting about him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you.”
33: And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?”
34: And looking around on those who sat about him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers!
35: Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother.”
In Mark’s Gospel there are small indications that Jesus was known to have a house in Capernaum. It’s quite possible that a man who by trade was a carpenter/builder, should have built or renovated a house for his own use but it was unusual for a single man to do this. The unusual is however what Mark teaches the reader to expect from Jesus. His family obviously felt that for a respected villager to become a wandering preacher indicated madness and they came to take him home.
If the house is traditionally the family place, in this incident Jesus redefines both family and house. He places clear limits on the authority of the natural family, and gives pride of place to the emergent family of those who in company with him “do the will of God.” This is scandalous to all who place family responsibilities at the centre of their moral code, but comforting to the small groups of Christian believers reading Mark’s story in each other’s houses throughout the Roman Empire. The “oikos” of Jesus is the locus of a new and revolutionary family of human beings.
Luke’s Gospel 19
1: He entered Jericho and was passing through.
2: And there was a man named Zacchae’us; he was a chief tax collector, and rich.
3: And he sought to see who Jesus was, but could not, on account of the crowd, because he was small of stature.
4: So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was to pass that way.
5: And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchae’us, make haste and come down; for I must stay at your house today.”
6: So he made haste and came down, and received him joyfully.
7: And when they saw it they all murmured, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.”
8: And Zacchae’us stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded any one of anything, I restore it fourfold.”
9: And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham.
10: For the Son of man came to seek and to save the lost.”
Zacchaeus’ house is the material symbol of his success as a collaborator with the Roman occupiers of his land. It has been gained at the expense of his fellow Jews, and at the cost of his own reputation: he is scum.
Jesus’ public decision to invite himself to Zacchaeus’ house is scandalous to the crowd and startling to the tree-nested Zacchaeus, who can only acknowledge this initiative with joy. He is affirmed as a person by Jesus presence in his house. The words of a very different biblical author come to mind:
“Behold! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone opens the door, I will come in; and I will eat with him and he with me” (Revelation 3:20)
In response to Jesus’ advance of trust, Zacchaeus opens his house to the community, offering restitution to those he has harmed, and a commitment of his wealth to the poor. The house is no longer a place of oppression but now a place of victory over evil. Jesus proclaims its new status, “Salvation (i.e. God’s victory) has come to this house today.”
Mark’s Gospel 11: 15-18
And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons;
16: and he would not allow any one to carry anything through the temple.
17: And he taught, and said to them, “Is it not written, `My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”
18: And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and sought a way to destroy him; for they feared him, because all the multitude was astonished at his teaching.
Scholars have demonstrated that the trading booths occupied the Court of the Gentiles in the Temple complex. This was a public area open to people of all nationalities whereas the Court of Israel was open to Jews only, on pain of death. Jesus behaves as a prophet jealous for the reputation of God with all nations (Gentiles), clearing their court of the racist carelessness of his own people, who have identified the temple as their house, subject to their customs. Jesus identifies it as the house of God, and quoting the prophets, opens it to all peoples: in the new world of Jesus message, the house of God is multi-ethnic.
This word of Jesus is challenging to all religious people in a time of competing fervour and fundamentalism. The world’s religions are a storehouse of wisdom for a genuine challenge to the destructive power of global capitalism. But if their clergies build their own power through authoritarian fanaticism, rather than extending the reach of their faith through honest dialogue with other religions, the opportunity will be wasted. This is not a plea for some kind of religious mish-mash, but rather for a critical fellowship that gets the markets out of the temple.
Matthew’s Gospel 21: 14-16
And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them.
15: But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant;
16: and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, `Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast brought perfect praise’?”
The blind and the lame were excluded from the priesthood of Israel as unclean. The gospel of Matthew which is very concerned with the logic of Jesus’ healing work ( It quotes Isaiah 53,”He took their illnesses upon himself.”), gives the reader this picture of a Holy House where the blind and the lame are not only received but healed. This inclusive action of Jesus is furthered by his robust defence of children’s active participation in a public religious event. The house of God welcomes the gifts of all.
The Parables of Jesus
Luke’s Gospel 11:5-13
And he said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, `Friend, lend me three loaves;
6: for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’;
7: and he will answer from within, `Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything’?
8: I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him whatever he needs.
9: And I tell you, Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
10: For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.
11: What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent;
12: or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?
13: If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
The point of the parable is not that God is like the friend in bed, but has the same logic as verse 13, “If you, evil as you are, would get up to answer a pestering friend, how much more will God be ready to answer the insistent prayers of his children?” God’s house is open to his children, which also means that the children must knock on the door: there is room for human initiative in relation to God.
The passage also uses ordinary human behaviour as a standard for teachings about God. “Don’t imagine that God’s stingier than you are!”
Gifts
The computer equipment in this photograph was given to me: the printer a present from my family; the laptop is a retirement gift from the church people. Much of the money for furnishing the house was a gift from my uncle; some of the capital for its purchase a shared equity loan from the national church. Without the generosity of others, I’d be much poorer.
I grew up in a generous state, during the post-war Labour administration. I received free health care from the new NHS, cheap food from subsidised farming, education in a grant-aided grammar school, to which I travelled on a British Rail suburban train. I was part of a manse family living on the free-will liberality of church members, conscious of a spiritual inheritance from previous generations.
I am not a self-made person but time and again enabled to build my life by the generosity and encouragement of others. I have always been an avid reader, reading a swathe of classics before I could understand them and developing a life-long interest in science, especially astronomy and biology. Finding pleasure as well as instruction in books has left me grateful to those who write, as I can’t imagine myself as I would have been without them. The same is true of music which came into my life through the church, was fostered by the wonderful provision in Glasgow of free musical training, and helped to flourish by attending orchestral concerts for sixpence. The same civic provision enabled me to go the theatre for nine pence. There was no chance that I would grow up unaware of the rich contribution of the dead (including those killed in war) to the welfare of the living.
Early awareness of the generosity of others sensitizes a person to every kind of generosity, and helps one become generous in turn. Nothing angers me more than meanness of spirit, as for example in the popular press, whose greatest joy is in bringing someone down, either because they’ve made a public mistake, or performed badly, or been caught in some scandalous activity. It’s not that I deprecate a robust criticism of public people, or even savage satire at the expense of the powerful, both of which have value, but the routine reduction of persons and issues to a yah-boo verdict diminishes us all.
I want our new house to be a place of generous relationship with family, friends, neighbours and the rest of the world.
The scandalous generosity of God’s house is the subject of the most famous parable.
Luke’s Gospel 15: 11-32
Then Jesus said, ‘There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, “Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.” So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and travelled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, “How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.’ ” So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” But the father said to his slaves, “Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” And they began to celebrate.
‘Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, “Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.” Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, “Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!” Then the father said to him, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.” ’
Familiarity with this text can blind us to the stranger aspects of its characterisation. At least in Jewish eyes, and probably in many contemporary eyes as well, the father is a wally: he’s far too soft on his younger son who should never have been given the half- inheritance in the first place but rather a good whacking for his effrontery. When this sorry son drags himself home, the father is so overcome by his sentimental love for him that he forgets his parental dignity and duty to his elder son, throwing a party where a sober probation would have been more appropriate.
The parable says that God is so daft with love for his rebellious children, that he puts his whole household “at risk” for their sake. Those who don’t understand this, don’t understand the God of Jesus.
The house of God is for those who have turned their backs on it.
The indignity of God is the theme of another parable.
Luke’s Gospel 14:15-24
15 On hearing this, one of the people at the table with Jesus said to him, “How blessed are those who eat bread in the Kingdom of God!” 16 But he replied, “Once a man gave a banquet and invited many people. 17 When the time came for the banquet, he sent his slave to tell those who had been invited, `Come! Everything is ready!’ 18 But they responded with a chorus of excuses. The first said to him, `I’ve just bought a field, and I have to go out and see it. Please accept my apologies.’ 19 Another said, `I’ve just bought five yoke of oxen, and I’m on my way to test them out. Please accept my apologies.’ 20 Still another said, `I have just gotten married, so I can’t come.’ 21 The slave came and reported these things to his master. “Then the owner of the house, in a rage, told his slave, `Quick, go out into the streets and alleys of the city; and bring in the poor, the disfigured, the blind and the crippled!’ 22 The slave said, `Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.’ 23 The master said to the slave, `Go out to the country roads and boundary walls, and insistently persuade people to come in, so that my house will be full. 24 I tell you, not one of those who were invited will get a taste of my banquet!'”
This is a parable of the crisis in Judaism brought about by the ministry of Jesus: the rich (in money, health, social position and righteousness) are too busy with their wealth to respond. That’s why it’s open house for the “poor” only. God’s indignity is not that he invites the poor who respond, but that he invites the rich who despise him. The house of God is a house of the poor because the rich have better houses of their own.
Sayings of Jesus
Luke’s Gospel 9:56
As they were going along the road, someone said to him, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’ To another he said, ‘Follow me.’ But he said, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ But Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’ Another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.’ Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’
This group of sayings expresses the paradox of Jesus’ ministry: the One who brings people into God’s house has no home. Those who share in Jesus’ ministry must share his radical homelessness, his distance from the homely concerns of sensible people. The rejection of filial duties to the dead is shocking then and now- especially shocking to a church which has allied itself with the “needs” of its society, tending its dead with solicitude and good taste. That’s why the church is respected while Jesus was crucified.
John’s Gospel 14:1-7
Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, I would have told you. I am going to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.’ Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.’
This passage sums up in the language of John’s gospel the whole theme of God’s house. God’s great house has many dwellings: there is room for all, and for all sorts and conditions of people. Jesus is the way to this house. His suffering and death prepares a place for his followers. Here Jesus compares himself to the wife and mother who goes ahead to make a house ready for her family. That is hard work for her, but harder for Jesus for whom it means standing firm in the face of violence out of love for the rest of the family. This picks up a theme we noted in the other three gospels, that the one who leads people to the house of life must himself enter the house of death.
John 14: 23-24
Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, ‘Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?’ Jesus answered him, ‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.
On the one hand there is the great house of God; on the other there is God’s little house, the man, woman or child in whom God comes to dwell. Our confidence to enter God’s house is based on God’s coming to dwell in our house, in us, in our hearts, in our houses, our families.
In Jesus God has come to dwell with us, so that we can dwell with God forever.
How do we know that God has come to dwell in us? If we keep the teachings of Jesus, keep them in spite of our own failures to live them fully, we can believe that the miracle has happened: God is in us.
Surely this truth also suggests a whole spirituality of persons as the dwelling place of God. We should start by applying some of the texts about God’s House to ourselves.
“How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of Hosts!” (Psalm 84)
It also suggests that those rooms in our interior house of which we are ashamed or fearful, we can now open up to God, so that they may be blessed. The religious culture of our times offers many shallow forms of spirituality but the understanding of persons as houses of God is deep and true.
Matthew 6
Jesus said, “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by people. But when you pray enter into your room and pray to your father who is in the secret place. And your father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you.”
Dietrich Bonhoffer, the German theologian killed by the Nazis, spoke of the secret discipline which is the basis of all true discipleship. I would rather say that the habits of God’s household are the same in the soul, the church and the world.
The Strong Man’s House
I quoted Jesus’ use of this phrase above. Oikos is not always a symbol of good in the Bible, just as actual households are not always places of goodness. For Jesus the household of The Satan (lit, “the enemy”) is the condition of oppression. Like other traditional societies Jewish households were patriarchal and their stories document some of abuses which resulted. The long narrative in 2nd Samuel about the household of King David, includes incestuous rape, murder and familial warfare.
It is clear in Scotland, as victims have been encouraged to tell their stories that the unquestioned power of the man in the home frequently led to the violent abuse of the wife and the male children and the sexual abuse of the female children. The church has often been complicit in these household crimes and allowed abusers power within the household of faith.
In poor societies, the household sends out its children to earn for themselves or for the family from a very young age. On behalf of their households, children work in dangerous and degrading conditions, many subject to cruelty and abuse. Others are sold into the sex trade; others again become child soldiers as the only means of survival.
For all these reasons, there are many for whom the word “House”( as well as the words “Father and “Mother”) cannot be a symbol of goodness. It is for all such that Jesus speaks of breaking into the strong man’s house and of the supreme value in God’s eyes of the “little ones”. It is for them that that the writer of The Revelation attacks the power of Babylon. The worldwide dominion of power and wealth is given the name “Babylon” in the apocalyptic writings of the Bible. There in the midst of glittering possessions, pleasures and spectacles, human lives are traded as commodities. The destruction of this perverse house is prophesied, envisioned and celebrated: “Halleujah! For the smoke goes up forever!”
The Oikos of God is the promise that human houses can be exorcised of the demons that afflict them, to become places of trust, nurture, equality and openness.
The Church must be aware of the ambiguity of the symbol of the house, as it is already aware of the ambiguity of the symbol of parents. In its use of symbols it must be careful not to offer comfort to those who engage in any kind of exploitation. This has happened in the past when an uncritical use of masculine terminology supported patriarchal power. Some victims propose that such symbols can no longer be used and I accept that there have to be alternatives. But the best solution is to cleanse terms like “father” and “house” by employing the full range of Biblical uses to demonstrate their bias towards the powerless and the poor.
The “village of spacious dwellings” in which our new house stands is bounded by an industrial estate to the south towards the city, the green slopes of some rural smallholdings to the north, the dual carriageway of the A90 to the east; and a pleasant jumble of former 19th century mills, now reclaimed as nature reserve, to the west.
This removes the “village” from immediate contact with areas of poorer housing, although Council estates lie at 5 minutes walk to the east and south, and only slightly further to the west. There are number of separations here:
Between private and public housing projects
Between owner occupied and rented property
Between the middle class and the lower class
Between those who use public transport often and those who never use it
Between families with one car and families with at least two
Between people under 40 years of age and those over 50 years
Between those who own capital and those who don’t
These determinants are not always what they seem, it’s true. A middle- aged working family in the council estate may have significant savings along with many luxuries and three foreign holidays a year, whereas a young couple in the “village” may be working flat out to fund a mortgage and childcare. The latter are taking greater risks in order to gain greater benefit: that they and their children will be fully part of a property- owning democracy, that is, willing and rewarded slaves of capital in a world where the power of capital may become even greater than in the past, as global living space diminishes due to climate change. The energy profile of our village would show that although the houses are well insulated, heating systems are powered by gas and electricity and pump energy out of the houses through the large and pleasant windows. Almost every house, including ours, has an added conservatory that needs fan-cooled in summer and heated in winter. The nearest shop is almost one mile away, so a car is needed even for corner-shopping.
Our neighbours are decent people, friendly and civil, respecting each other’s property and concerned for the common amenity of the village. There are no special speed limits but residents seem to keep to 20mph or less for the safety of the children. Most of them are employed in service industries or professions and probably have to work quite hard to keep the money coming in. They are energetic people often to be seen and heard working in their gardens, cleaning, polishing and repairing their cars, packing their children into the car to take them to swimming, football, dancing, brownies, tennis, and all the other organised activities that children enjoy in lieu of the freedom of previous generations. We and the other few retired families in the “village” are anomalous but welcome as a sign that there may be life after 50.
How should we live here? How can this house be a house of God, and take its place as one of the dwelling places in God’s great house? The extended analysis of the oikos theology of the Bible should have produced some answers.
ECONOMY: We live in a house, not a market
In the society of Jesus’ Palestine, the poor lacked not only money, but food, health, and social worth. Jesus’ ministry demonstrated how God’s residence in a house meant a rediscovery of abundance. Suddenly it is possible to feast, to tell stories, to restore mental and physical health. This becomes possible because houses are opened to each other-not just the houses of the poor, as many liberation theologies would have it, but also the houses of the rich, the sinful, cheating rich like Zacchaeus. Just as it’s important not to interpret Jesus’ ministry as a proto-Marxist movement, so too it’s vital to avoid characterising it as charismatic religious communalism or spontaneous fellowship. It is a sober attempt to create a “new Israel” as a house of God in which the ancient promise of cancellation of debts and servitude is realised and the overwhelming generosity of the creator shared freely. The earth has more than enough for all if it is recognised as the common house of all.
That is trite unless it is a programme lived by people who believe they can create the micro-economy they desire even under the conditions of global control. The witness of the Biblical book of The Acts, idealised as it is, points to an effective commonality of resources amongst members of the first churches. The issue of the “Collection” by the gentile churches for the poor of Jerusalem, as documented in St. Paul’s letters, is evidence that this revolutionary sharing could take place across cultural and political boundaries. The early church communities trained members in mutual responsibility and readiness for sacrifice, virtues necessary for the tasks of managing the household of believers as a model for the household of the earth.
An Oikos theology suggests that the biblical traditions of God’s house are usable by us today and challenge us to be as bold in our practice of equality, sharing, cancellation of debt, freeing of slaves, healing of the sick, and the rediscovery of abundance, as the first Christians were. We do not need to wait until the dominant economic system changes. Jesus’ parable of the refused feast shows the poor enjoying the “house of abundance” while the rich get on with being rich.
Above all we need to make real the truth that we live in a house and not a market, because it is out of our “oikos” experience that we learn how to tie up the strong man of capitalism and pillage his goods.
ECUMENISM: We live in a house, not a web.
The Greeks recognised that the oekumene, the inhabited world, included nations beyond the Mediterranean world, like India and Persia, which had been conquered in the mad drive eastwards of Alexander the Great and left to his descendants to rule. In large measure their political power had been taken over by the Romans, although their language remained the lingua franca of trade and culture.
The Christian writings which eventually became the New Testament were written in common Greek, because the church had spread throughout the oekumene and wanted to address its message to all its peoples.
It’s clear from the New Testament how Christian faith had to change as it moved from Jewish sect to universal community. On the one hand, its message had to find the linguistic means to become comprehensible across the world, and on the other, its individuals and communities had to open themselves to foreigners.
The evangelical élan of the first Christian churches is their joy in being able to communicate their beliefs to strangers and to share their lives. The conviction that they had something to share, did not rule out receiving from other philosophies and religions. No doubt this giving and receiving caused problems in the church, whose leaders had to judge which new ideas and customs were compatible with faith in Jesus. At times this led to accusations of heresy and fierce controversy. These were the cost of openness.
The ecumenical movement today is bogged down, on the one hand, in the pretensions of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches to universal truth and power (although there are profound teachings of human unity hidden in their arrogance); and on the other, in the laissez faire localism of so many protestant denominations and sects (although there are profound teachings about human difference hidden in their carelessness.) But all mainstream churches are agreed that ecumenism is mainly a matter of mutual understanding and respect amongst Christian churches. Relationships with those of other religions are the province of the “inter-faith” movement; while those who have no faith at all are addressed by “apologetics.”
All of this is foreign to the primitive Christian idea of the church as ecumenical: it believed it should point to the reality of the one liberating God whose dwelling is in all peoples. In the global society of the Roman Empire it took seriously Jesus’ parable of the “house of spirits”: there is no untenanted person, no void, no empty soul-space. Those who think they have a nice clean modern house, free of all irrational commitments, find their lives are ruled by the “spirits of this dark age.”
The post-modern ideological void in which every idea and system of ideas has the same value is precisely an area invaded and ruled by the power of capital. The all-embracing, value-free world-wide web is both product and icon of this capitalism, in which everything is for sale, everything, from the recipe for nuclear fusion to the sexual fantasies of a seamstress in rural India, is available and nothing is forbidden.
The darker side of this permissiveness is that any serious opposition to the dominant power is ruthlessly put down. Liberal interventionism is primarily the doctrine that no serious dissent should be tolerated. Current USA thinking about Iran is a case in point.
In a world dominated by a savage blandness, religions occupy a crucial place, as they foster holy convictions which owe more to their origins than to the modern world. They may respond to globalisation with absolutism of their own: sectarianism and fundamentalism, the two forms of social behaviour most often condemned by the British and American Governments. Christians should be careful not to fall into mere condemnation of these trends in their own or other religions.
Oikos theology can help us understand our persons and our communities as dwelling places of God or evil. It can also show us that we live in the one house, as one family, and therefore must talk about our convictions, must argue ferociously, must listen hungrily, must seek urgently the common resources that help free us from the web that remakes the earth as a supermarket.
In this ecumenism of faiths, agnostics and atheists have a special place. Most of them do not subscribe to “value-free” thought or action any more than religious believers; and they may find in believers the partners they are seeking to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies of post-modernism. If they take this risk they can do religious people the service of submitting their convictions to the disciplines of reason, so that faith may be profound trust in God and God’s creatures, rather than loony tunes.
Marx taught that capitalism could not be defeated until it had developed the material conditions for its overthrow. The existence of the Internet may be this kind of condition. It is a technology which permits people across the earth to communicate as if in the one house, to share their concerns, and build their networks of support. It is in other words, the ecumenical tool par excellence. But it must be seen as such: a tool in the hands of the householders, and not the house itself.
ECOLOGY: We live in a house, not an abattoir.
Nothing exposes the true meaning of global capitalism more than the great powers’ response to global warming: denial coupled with clandestine plans to make sure they have the resources for survival and to hell with anyone else. Global capitalism is careless of life. Sometimes this is almost explicit as in the “rapture theologies” of some Christian Neoconservatives, who predict that we’re all marching towards Armageddon where humanity and its earth will be destroyed and true believers only given an airlift into the arms of Jesus.
Global capitalism is careless but so was state socialism as practiced in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, where carelessness about nature developed into such a surpassing carelessness about people that 30million were killed before people noticed what was going on.
Embedded in the major ideologies of the 20th century is the conviction that the earth is simply raw material for the human project, a conviction which sees the death of creatures and the destruction of habitat as collateral damage in the fight for survival.
At first glance there is not much in the Christian tradition to rebut the criticism of ecologists that it’s part of the problem rather than the solution. There’s no doubt that official Christianity deserves its poor reputation with ecologists but there has been a counter-tradition from the desert fathers and mothers, through the Celtic monks to St Francis and radical protestant communities such as the Amish.
This derives not only from a doctrine of creation (we are all creatures in the father’s house), but also from the doctrine of the resurrection (life has conquered death/ in the father’s house it is always springtime.) This latter motif is clearly seen in the healing of Jairus’ daughter: it’s time to get up.
St.Paul articulates this ecological hope:
Creation stands on tip-toe for the children of God to be revealed; for creation was subjected to futility not of its own will but through the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation will one day be set free from its slavery to decay and share the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now…
(Romans 8: 19-22)
From the perspective of the resurrection (and only from that perspective) the pains of biological existence and human evil are seen as the birth pains of God’s children. In the subtle interplay of “already” and “not yet” in St. Paul’s thinking, we and our fellow creatures are not yet free from death, but in the power of the resurrection we are already committed to life, already able to oppose death, for that is the glorious freedom of God’s children.
Oikos theology teaches that God’s great house is for all creatures; that although we are all still subject to biological compulsions we should oppose all cruelty to and all unnecessary death of living things; so that the house of the earth can be protected, cherished and revered as a symbol of the house to come.
Writing this piece has illuminated for me the nature of theology: theologians write out of a tradition which offers them insights into their contemporary reality, but it soon becomes clear that the limits of their understanding are the limits of their own practice of faith. There is a lot that remains fuzzy for me, especially in the final pages of what I’ve written. The simple truth is that in order to understand better I must do better. Nevertheless I am comforted by the words Jesus gives to the “master of the house”:
“To the one who has (something), more will be given.”((Matthew’s Gospel 25:29)
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