Melkite Greek Catholic Church

Worship in Spirit and Truth

 Faith, Sunday Scriptures
May 022021
 
The story of the Lord’s encounter with the Samaritan woman contains one of the most misunderstood and misused sayings of Christ in the Gospels. The woman raises the question: which is the proper place to worship God, in Jerusalem or on Mount Gerizim?

Jesus responded, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father... The hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him” (John 4:23).

In order to avoid discussing her irregular marital status the woman had dredged up a controversy in which Jews and Samaritans had been engaged for over a thousand years. Since the time of Moses, the focus of Jewish worship was the Tabernacle, a moveable shrine which contained the Ark, the Tablets of the Law and other relic of the Exodus. These relics were eventually placed in the Temple built by King Solomon in Jerusalem in 957 BC. It was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC; the Ark and its contents were lost.

On their return from exile in Babylon the Jews set about rebuilding their civilization, including the temple. The second temple, completed in 516 BC, stood as the focus of worship in Jerusalem for centuries. King Herod restored and enlarged it in at the beginning of the first century AD and it is this temple which Jesus knew. This second temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD during the Jewish revolt and has never been rebuilt.

The Samaritans insisted that worship should be conducted on Mount Gerizim. According to the Torah Moses had prophesied, “Now it shall be, when the Lord your God has brought you into the land which you go to possess, that you shall put the blessing on Mount Gerizim…” (Deuteronomy 11:29). To this day Samaritans see this as the reason why this mountain was the proper place to worship God.

Worship vs. Prayer

While the Jews had only one temple in the Holy Land, they had many synagogues. Any town might have a synagogue for prayer or study of the Torah, led by a rabbi (teacher), but the sacrifices prescribed in the Torah could only be offered in the Temple at Jerusalem by the priests (the kohanim). In some cases grain, meal, wine, or incense might be offered; in other instances bulls, sheep, goats, deer or doves would have to be slaughtered and offered. Sacrifices were generally consumed by fire, at least in part. Portions of some sacrifices were consumed by the priests.

The most solemn sacrifice of the year was that offered on Yom Kippur. Two goats were offered; the high priest slew one and drove the other out of the city, “taking away the sins” of the people. Christ’s response to the Samaritan woman concerned the authorized worship of God’s people, not personal prayer. Moderns, invoking the Lord’s saying concerning “spirit and truth,” think it refers to prayer. They see it as a rebuke of ritual or of formal prayers, versus spontaneous outpourings of the heart. Often this devolves into a focus on how God affects “my life,” what “I get out of the service,” etc. With this mindset, churches design services to be “appealing,” to “meet people’s needs,” and so on. This is no way relates to what the Lord was saying to the Samaritan woman.

The End of Temple Worship

The Lord was saying that the days of temple sacrifices were drawing to a close. He knew that His own sacrifice was at hand. Christ, the One who truly “takes away the sin of the world” would replace the sacrifices of the temple with the sacrifice of Himself - the ultimate offering for the people. Through His Church Christ’s worship of God on the cross would be accessible to all mankind, not be confined to Jerusalem or Mount Gerizim or any other particular geographic location.

The Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of Christ’s offering of Himself to the Father in terms of the temple ritual. After describing the temple and its rites, the apostle continues: “But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption ... For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; not that He should offer Himself often… Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many” (Hebrews 9:11-12; 24-27).

Our Worship in Spirit and Truth

Comparing the temple sacrifices, the sacrifice of Christ and the Divine Liturgy we see both contrast and continuity. Christ offers Himself on the cross for the sin of the world as the priests offered their sacrifices in the temple for sin. But Christ’s offering is the ultimate sacrifice, made once for all and need not be repeated.

Our worship is rather the sacrifice of praise, recalling His sacrifice without further shedding of blood and making its effects present to us as He commanded when “He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me’” (Luke 22:19). This connection is especially evident in the Syriac Churches where the Divine Liturgy is called the Holy Qurbono, the same term used to refer to the Temple sacrifices (in Hebrew, korban). Qurban is also the term used for the prosphora among Melkites.

There are a number of elements in the Liturgy which reveal it as worship in Spirit and Truth. It begins, for example, with the priest invoking the Holy Spirit as Christ spoke of Him: the “Spirit of Truth”: “O heavenly King, Consoler, Spirit of Truth…” Confessing Him as beyond any human restriction (“everywhere present and filling all things”) the priest calls on Him to dwell within us and purify us for the work of worship which we are undertaking.

More importantly, the Liturgy actually is worship in the Spirit. It is here that we truly receive the Holy Spirit in response to the invocation of the priest. The Spirit reaches out to touch us, transforming our oblations – what the Liturgy calls our “spiritual” or “reasonable” sacrifices” – into the body and blood of Christ. In the Holy Mysteries we receive that touch and are healed. Thus we encounter the Spirit, not as a concept or as an emotional “experience,” but as a living sacramental presence striving to make us holy.

The Liturgy is also worship in Truth: in the One who said “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). God-centered and God-focused, our worship both flows from and expresses the heart of Christian faith: that God and man have been reconciled in Jesus Christ.

Christ our God, who receive as a sacrifice of praise and acceptable worship this reasonable sacrifice without shedding of blood from those who call upon you with their whole heart, Lamb and Son of God, who take away the sin of the world, the unblemished calf, who did not bear the yoke of sin and was willingly sacrificed for us; who are broken, yet not divided, eaten, yet never consumed, but who hallow those who eat; who in memory of Your voluntary passion and life-giving Rising on the third day have declared us to be partakers of Your ineffable, heavenly and dread Mysteries, Your holy Body and precious Blood.
Ambon Prayer, Liturgy of St Basil
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“Brethren who are of the Gentiles”

 Faith, Sunday Scriptures
May 142017
 
WHEN THE LORD JESUS was passing through the region of Tyre and Sidon a Canaanite woman begged Him to heal her daughter. “But He answered and said, ‘I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’” (Matthew 15:24). Although He went to areas where non-Jews were numerous, His call was first and foremost to the Jews. The Acts of the Apostles tells us how, after Pentecost, the disciples of Christ took the Gospel beyond the house of Israel as well.

Aramaic/Hebrew-Speaking Jews

The Apostles’ ministry was extended beyond Galilee and Judaea “because of the persecution that arose over Stephen” (Acts 11:19). Outspoken in his profession of faith in the risen Christ as “standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56) before the Sanhedrin, Stephen was stoned to death. The Jewish leaders then tried to exterminate the Jerusalem Christians. “… and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria…” (Acts 8:1)

The disciples traveled even further in preaching that Jesus was the Messiah. In Acts 11:19 we read that they went “as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch” where the Lord Himself had never gone. These regions were not Jewish areas, but they each had Jewish communities, made up chiefly of merchants and dating back hundreds of years before Christ.

When the scattered disciples began preaching Christ in the Jewish communities of Cyprus, Phoenicia and Syria they likely did so in Aramaic. Although Hebrew was the classical language of Israel, it had been replaced as the chief language in everyday speech, especially in Galilee and Samaria, by Aramaic. Hebrew was still spoken in Judea, but in a form influenced by Aramaic.

Who Were the Hellenists?

Since the first disciples of Christ were from Aramaic-speaking Galilee, their ministry consisted in “preaching the word to no one but the Jews only. But some of them [the disciples] were men from Cyprus and Cyrene, who, when they had come to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists, preaching the Lord Jesus” (Acts 11:19, 20).

The Hellenists were those Jews who retained their Jewish religious practices but identified with the Hellenic culture of the Roman Empire. Their everyday language was Greek. It was for Hellenists like these that the Scriptures had been translated into Greek, beginning in the third century bc.

Hellenists were, of course prominent in the Jewish communities throughout the Mediterranean region, but there was also a Hellenist community in Jerusalem, perhaps started by Jews returning home from the cities of Egypt or Syria. By the time of Christ the Jewish elite, the rulers, the high priests and many of the Sanhedrin had long been Hellenized, often adopting Greek names and other practices. In 2 Maccabees 4:9 we read how the high priest Jason had established a gymnasium in Jerusalem for training in Greek-style games. There were followers of Christ among both the Aramaic-speaking Jews (the “Hebrews”) and their Greek-speaking brethren. But there were often bad feelings between the groups. The apostles had instituted the order of deacons precisely because “there arose a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenists, because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution” of alms (Acts 6:1).

Because the Jerusalem community already contained Hellenists, many commentators contend that it was not the Hellenists or Hellenized Jews (Hellenistas), whom the disciples evangelized in Antioch, but the Hellenas, the Greeks, meaning pagan Greeks who were not members of the Jewish community at all. This was the view of Eastern commentators such as Eusebius, John Chrysostom, Theophylact, and Oecumenius. In addition this is the reading of the Syriac, Arabic, Coptic, Ethiopic, and Vulgate Bibles as well.

This reading is confirmed in Acts 15 which tells of the apostolic council at Jerusalem and the conflict which occasioned it. “And certain men came down from Judea [to Antioch] and taught the brethren, ‘Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved’” (Acts 15:1). If the believers at Antioch were Hellenists (Hellenized Jews) they would have been circumcised already. Clearly these were formerly pagan Greeks who had come to believe in Christ.

Who Were the Proselytes?

The Acts of the Apostles tells of another group among the people who had come on pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the feast of Tabernacles: “Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs” (Acts 2:9-11).

Proselytes were Gentiles who had completely accepted Judaism. Once they were circumcised and immersed in a mikvah (ritual bath), they were bound to all the doctrines and precepts of the Jewish religion, and were considered full members of the Jewish people. Their religion was Judaism, but not their ethnicity.

The proselytes’ presence in the city at this time was in response to a precept in the Torah which states: “Three times a year all your males shall appear before the Lord your God in the place which He chooses: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, at the Feast of Weeks, and at the Feast of Tabernacles; and they shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed. Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord your God which He has given you” (Deuteronomy 16:16, 17). One of these feasts is Shavuot, the Feast of Tabernacles, which is observed seven weeks after Passover.

While the Feast of Tabernacles was being celebrated in Jerusalem, the Holy Spirit descended upon the followers of Christ. Filled with the Holy Spirit, they began to speak in other tongues “as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:4).

Who Were the “God-fearing”?

Members of another group found a home in the early Church as well. These were the “God-fearing” Gentiles who lived in Israel and observed some of its customs, but were not considered proselytes because they had not accepted to be circumcised. They were not bound the precepts of the Torah but were held to keep the “Noahide Laws,” which godly people observed before the time of Moses. These laws are: Do not deny God.

Do not blaspheme God. Do not murder. Do not engage in illicit sexual relations. Do not steal. Do not eat from a live animal. Establish courts/a legal system to ensure obedience to these laws. Gentiles who observed these laws were considered righteous and deserving of a place in the world to come. The centurion at Capernaum whose servant was dying was described by the Jewish elders in this way “for he loves our nation, and has built us a synagogue” (Luke 7:5). This practice seems to the basis of how the apostles solved the issue of the formerly pagan Greeks of Antioch. As they wrote to the Antiochians, “The apostles, the elders, and the brethren, to the brethren who are of the Gentiles in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia: Greetings… it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well” (Acts 15:23, 28, 29).
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Worship in Spirit and Truth

 Sunday Scriptures
Apr 242016
 
THE STORY OF THE LORD’S ENCOUNTER with the Samaritan woman contains one of the most misunderstood and misused sayings of Christ in the Gospels. The woman raises the question: which is the proper place to worship God, in Jerusalem or on Mount Gerizim? Jesus responded, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father... The hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him” (John 4:23). In order to avoid discussing her irregular marital status the woman had dredged up a controversy in which Jews and Samaritans had been engaged for over 1000 years. Since the time of Moses, the focus of Jewish worship was the Tabernacle, a moveable shrine which contained the Ark, the Tablets of the Law and other relic of the Exodus. These relics were eventually placed in the Temple built by King Solomon in Jerusalem in 957 BC. It was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC; the Ark and its contents were lost. On their return from exile in Babylon the Jews set about rebuilding their civilization, including the temple. The second temple, completed in 516 BC, stood as the focus of worship in Jerusalem for centuries. King Herod restored and enlarged it in at the beginning of the first century AD and it is this temple which Jesus knew. This second temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD during the Jewish revolt and has never been rebuilt. The Samaritans insisted that worship should be conducted on Mount Gerizim. According to the Torah Moses had prophesied, “Now it shall be, when the Lord your God has brought you into the land which you go to possess, that you shall put the blessing on Mount Gerizim…” (Deuteronomy 11:29). To this day Samaritans see this as the reason why this mountain was the proper place to worship God.

Worship vs. Prayer

While the Jews had only one temple in the Holy Land, they had many synagogues. Any town might have a synagogue for prayer or study of the Torah, led by a rabbi (teacher), but the sacrifices prescribed in the Torah could only be offered in the Temple at Jerusalem by the priests (the kohanim). In some cases grain, meal, wine, or incense might be offered; in other instances bulls, sheep, goats, deer or doves would have to be slaughtered and offered. Sacrifices were generally consumed by fire, at least in part. Portions of some sacrifices were consumed by the priests. The most solemn sacrifice of the year was that offered on Yom Kippur. Two goats were offered; the high priest slew one and drove the other out of the city, “taking away the sins” of the people. Christ’s response to the Samaritan woman concerned the authorized worship of God’s people, not personal prayer. Moderns, invoking the Lord’s saying concerning “spirit and truth,” think it refers to prayer. They see it as a rebuke of ritual or of formal prayers, versus spontaneous outpourings of the heart. Often this degenerates into a focus on how God affects “my life,” what “I get out of the service,” etc. In this mindset, churches design services to be “appealing,” to “meet people’s needs,” and so on. This is no way relates to what the Lord was saying to the Samaritan woman.

The End of Temple Worship

The Lord was saying that the days of temple sacrifices were drawing to a close. He knew that His own sacrifice was at hand. Christ, the One who truly “takes away the sin of the world” would replace the sacrifices of the temple with the sacrifice of Himself - the ultimate offering for the people. Through His Church Christ’s worship of God on the cross would be accessible to all mankind, not be confined to Jerusalem or Mount Gerizim or any other particular geographic location. The Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of Christ’s offering of Himself to the Father in terms of the temple ritual. After describing the temple and its rites, the apostle continues: “But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption ... For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us;  not that He should offer Himself often… Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many” (Hebrews 9:11-12; 24-27).

Our Worship in Spirit and Truth

Comparing the temple sacrifices, the sacrifice of Christ and the Divine Liturgy we see both contrast and continuity. Christ offers Himself on the cross for the sin of the world as the priests offered their sacrifices in the temple for sin. But Christ’s offering is the ultimate sacrifice, made once for all and need not be repeated. Our worship is rather the sacrifice of praise, recalling His sacrifice without further shedding of blood and making its effects present to us as He commanded when “He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me’” (Luke 22:19). This connection is especially evident in the Syriac Churches where the Divine Liturgy is called the Holy Qorbono, the same term used to refer to the Temple sacrifices (in Hebrew, korban). Qurban is also the term used for the prosphora among Melkites. There are a number of elements in the Liturgy which reveal it as worship in Spirit and Truth. It begins, for example, with the priest invoking the Holy Spirit as Christ spoke of Him: the “Spirit of Truth”: “O heavenly King, Consoler, Spirit of Truth…” Confessing Him as beyond any human restriction (“everywhere present and filling all things”) the priest calls on Him to dwell within us and purify us for the work of worship which we are undertaking. More importantly, the Liturgy actually is worship in the Spirit. It is here that we truly receive the Holy Spirit in response to the invocation of the priest. The Spirit reaches out to touch us, transforming our oblations – what the Liturgy calls our “spiritual” or “reasonable” sacrifices” – into the body and blood of Christ. In the Holy Mysteries we receive that touch and are healed. Thus we encounter the Spirit, not as a concept or as an emotional “experience,” but as a living sacramental presence striving to make us holy. The Liturgy is also worship in Truth: in the One who said “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). God-centered and God-focused, our worship both flows from and expresses the heart of Christian faith: that God and man have been reconciled in Jesus Christ.
“Christ our God, who receive as a sacrifice of praise and acceptable worship this reasonable sacrifice without shedding of blood from those who call upon you with their whole heart, Lamb and Son of God, who take away the sin of the world, the unblemished calf, who did not bear the yoke of sin and was willingly sacrificed for us; who are broken, yet not divided, eaten, yet never consumed, but who hallow those who eat; who in memory of Your voluntary passion and life-giving Rising on the third day have declared us to be partakers of Your ineffable, heavenly and dread Mysteries, Your holy Body and precious Blood.”
Ambo Prayer, Liturgy of St. Basil
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Where the Disciples Were First Called “Christians”

 Sunday Scriptures
Apr 282013
 
Beginning with chapter 8, the Acts of the Apostles tells how the message of Christ’s resurrection spread from Jerusalem to surrounding areas. We see the deacon Philip evangelizing and baptizing in Samaria, where he is joined by the apostles Peter and John. Philip then travels westward, as far as Caesarea, the Roman provincial capital. In chapter 9 we learn that there are believers in Damascus whom Saul goes to capture. Peter also travels, healing Aeneas in Lydda (Lod) and raising Dorcas in Joppa, both today suburbs of Tel Aviv. He then goes some 75 miles up the coast to Caesarea where he ministers in the house of Cornelius. As often happens, persecution in one place led to the spread of the Gospel in another, Chapter 11 tells how persecution scattered the disciples even further: “as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch” (Acts 11:19), The Gospel had now gone over 300 miles in its journey around the world.

Antioch the Great

Called “the Great” to distinguish it from cities in other provinces called Antioch, the city was founded in the 4th century bc by Seleucus I Nicator as a “court city” of his Seleucid Empire. In 64 bc Syria became part of the Roman Empire. Antioch eventually rivaled Alexandria as the chief city of the Middle East and played a particularly strong role in the Roman Empire. Syria had a sizeable contingent of Jews who had full status as citizens. It is likely that the believers fleeing Jerusalem established themselves in the midst of this prosperous colony. We are told in Acts that these believers preached the Gospel, “only among Jews. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord” (Acts 11:19-21). These first Gentile converts were called “Christians,” probably not a complement at first. The new community was instructed by Barnabas, himself a Levite, who was one of the first disciples in Jerusalem. He brought Saul – now Paul – with him and they remained there about a year. After that, Barnabas and Paul were sent by the Church of Antioch to spread the Gospel, first in Cyprus, and then in Asia Minor. Towards the end of the third century Rome created a “super-province” called the “diocese of the East,” with Antioch as its capital. Thus, when the principal local Churches were recognized at the First Council of Nicaea (ad 325), “Antioch and all the East” was placed third in rank, after Rome and Alexandria.

1st -3rd Centuries – Martyrs and Ascetics

While St Stephen the Deacon, killed in Jerusalem, is recognized as the Church’s first Martyr, its first woman-martyr was St Takla. Converted by St Paul in Iconium, Asia Minor, she lived for many years in Syria’s Isaurian Mountains. She was killed by pagan sorcerers, jealous of her influence over the local population. The Church of Antioch numbers many martyrs from the official persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. Among them its early bishops, Evodios (who died c. AD 68) and St Ignatius of Antioch, called “Theophoros” (the God-bearer), taken to Rome and martyred c. AD 107. Other much-revered martyrs of the age are Saints Lucian, a second century priest and catechist, Babylas, its third-century bishop, and the martyred soldiers Sergius and Bacchos. Syria was one of the first areas in which asceticism began to thrive. A group of virgins settled near St Takla’s dwelling after her death. It still exists as the Monastery of St Takla, near Maaloula, Syria. Another historic monastery still in existence is the nearby Mar Sarkis (St. Sergios) Monastery. Built in the fourth century on the remains of a pagan temple, it is one of the oldest monasteries in the Christian world. It is thought to have been built prior to the First Council of Nicea (ad 325) because it has a round (originally pagan) altar, a practice prohibited at that Council. Antioch’s most famous ascetics were its fifth-century Stylites, Symeon and his disciples who spent their lives on platforms built on columns in a deserted area near today’s Aleppo. Devotees –even including legates of the Byzantine emperors Theodosius II and Leo I – consulted Symeon from a ladder placed against the column. Ruins of the column and the church built around it remain today.

4th-6th Centuries – Councils and Disputes

Syria was also a center of the theological controversies with the Arians over the divinity of Christ, with the Monophysites, over how He could be both God and man and with the Monotheletes, over how He could be perfect man if He had no human will – all of which led to the early Ecumenical Councils. A lasting division in the Church arose between those who accepted the fifth century Council of Chalcedon and those who did not. This council based its decisions on Greek philosophical expressions which differed from the terminology used previously, notably by St Cyril of Alexandria. This caused the non-Greek communities in the East – Armenians, Copts, and the Syriac-speaking part of the Antiochian Church – to reject this council. The patriarchates of Alexandria and Antioch were divided into Chalcedonian Greek (Melkite) and non-Greek Churches. These non-Chalcedonian Churches are today called “Oriental Orthodox”. Thus by the seventh century Christians of the Middle East were divided into “Roum” (Romans, i.e. Greeks), Jacobites (Copts and non-Chalcedonian Syrians), and Nestorians (the Church of the East).

7th -13th Centuries – Occupation & Exile

The weakened Chalcedonian or Greek patriarchate of Antioch was diminished further in succeeding centuries. The Arab conquerors saw the Greek Christians as allies of their enemies, the Byzantine Empire. They were persecuted more for being Romans that for being Christians. Many fled to places like Cyprus and Sicily. During this time there was often no patriarch or one living outside the area. The Empire recaptured Antioch in 969 and provided the Church with 115 years of security and peace. This was shattered in 1085 when the Seljuk Turks conquered the area, soon followed by western Crusaders. In 1098, Crusaders took the city, and set up a Latin kingdom with a Latin patriarchate. The Greek patriarchate continued in exile in Constantinople. During the nearly two centuries of Crusader rule, the Greek patriarchs of Antioch in exile gradually adopted their hosts’ Byzantine rite in place of their own Antiochian usage. Finally, in 1268, Egyptian Mamelukes seized Antioch from the Latins and the Greek patriarch was able to return to the region. By this point, a series of earthquakes and economic changes had reduced the importance of Antioch and the patriarchs relocated their headquarters to Damascus, the new capital of Syria.
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On the Mountain or in Jerusalem?

 Sunday Scriptures
May 062012
 
ARGUMENTS ABOUT RELIGION are a favorite Middle Eastern pastime. Some are simply talk for talk’s sake: my faith is the oldest, the truest or the best. Sometimes these disagreements have become causes for acrimonious divisions between believers as the number of Jewish, Christian and Muslim factions show. One of the most vehement in the ancient world is mentioned in the Gospel passage about the Woman at the Well (John 4:5-42): the conflict between Jews and Samaritans. The division between Jews and Samaritans can be traced to the division of David’s kingdom into northern and southern realms after the death of King Solomon. The northern kingdom, known as Israel, was overrun by the Assyrians in the 8th century BC. The South was called Judah and its inhabitants ultimately became known as Jews. The southern kingdom would remain until conquered by Babylon almost 200 years later. The Samaritans claimed that they were the true Israel, descendants of the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh who survived the destruction of the Northern kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians in 722 BC. To this day Samaritans prefer to call themselves Istraelites (the word Samaritan means “Keeper of the Law”).There was reputedly one million of them in the 1st century AD. Only c. 750 remain as a distinct community today. Both Jewish and Samaritan religious leaders taught that it was wrong to have any contact with the opposite group, and neither was to enter each other’s territories or even to speak to one another. This is why the Samaritan woman responded to Jesus’ request for a drink by saying, “‘How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?’ For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans” (John 4:9). Given this relationship, Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan was especially forceful. Samaritans only accept as Scripture the first five books of the Old Testament, the Torah (the Law), rejecting the authority of other sections of the Old Testament (the prophetic/historical books) as well as the Talmud, a principal source of Jewish Tradition. Their text of the Torah differs from that used by the Jews as well. The Samaritans claim that their version of the Torah was the original and that the Jews had a falsified text produced by Ezra during the Babylonian exile. Modern Scripture scholars point to considerable editing of the Jewish Scriptures at that time; perhaps the Samaritans have a point.

Question of the Temple

Both Jews and Samaritans believed that God had a unique dwelling place on earth. It was there that the glory of God was manifested just as it had been to Moses on Mount Sinai. They disagreed, however, on the location of this holy place. Jews looked to Jerusalem, where Solomon had built his temple before the division between northern and southern kingdoms. Samaritan worship was focused on Mount Gerizim, near Shechem (modern Nablus), which they asserted was the original sanctuary, in use since the time of Joshua. This was the place, they believe, where Abraham was commanded by God to offer Isaac, his son, as a sacrifice (Genesis 22:2). When the Jewish leadership, which had been deported to Babylon in the 6th century BC, were allowed to return, they rebuilt the Jerusalem temple and codified their Scriptures and ritual practices. While in earlier centuries sacrifices were regularly offered in shrines associated with Abraham and other early figures, the newly emergent Jewish leadership insisted that the Jerusalem temple was only legitimate place of sacrifice. In the first half of the 5th century BC the Samaritans built a temple on Mount Gerizim and offered sacrifices there. This temple was destroyed in 128 BC by the Jewish high priest John Hyrcanus who captured Samaria and enlarged the Jewish kingdom. Samaritans were not associated with the Jewish revolts against the Romans so, while the Romans expelled the Jews from Jerusalem in 135 AD, the Samaritans were allowed to remain. The Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim was rebuilt at that time and remained until the 5th century AD when the Samaritans revolted against Rome. They were defeated and barred from Mount Gerizim. Samaritans continued to oppose Rome; they were recognized as a legitimate community under Islam. While they never rebuilt their temple, they still celebrate Passover every year at the “altar of Abraham,” at their ancient temple site.

Christ and the Temple Question

In Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman He touched on the issue of the temple. The woman said, “‘Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father… But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth…’” (John 4:19-23). Jesus dismissed the importance of a physical temple as necessary to worship God. God’s relationship with mankind was changing. When Jesus was in the Jerusalem temple He made this cryptic announcement: “‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ Then the Jews said, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?’ 21 But He was speaking of the temple of His body” (John 2:19-21). The place of sacrifice would not be in a shrine or a temple; it would be the very body of Christ Himself. Here the one definitive sacrifice would be offered for the forgiveness of the sins of all mankind. While Christ’s earthly body would be the temple of His sacrifice on the cross, His spiritual body, the Church would also share in His role as the new temple of God. Since the Church is the Body of Christ, in which the Holy Spirit dwells, it is a temple made up of living stones, the first of whom is Christ, the Head of the Body. And so it is as the temple of the Living God that we are reminded, “Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:4-5). Those who are united to Christ in baptism become this holy priesthood whose sacrifice of praise, the Divine Liturgy, whose alms, whose gifts of fasting and other offerings are united to Christ’s own sacrifice. The community of Christians throughout the world is the spiritual house built of living stones and joined to the Precious Stone chosen by God.
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