The Creature
19 July 2008 - 17 תמוז 5768 by Huw
was watching an episode from the second season of HBO’s Rome last night. The two main characters say their emotional goodbyes as one leaves for Alexandria with Marc Anthony. The departing man walks away and - quite literally - melts into a crowd of people on the streets of Rome. And I was stuck by how urban Rome actually was. For the rest of the episode, I paid rather a lot of attention.
In that city of about 1,000,000 people, there was no nature. The roads merged with the foundations of houses which opened on paved courtyards. There were stairs cut in the sides of hills rather than allowing the roads to roll on hillsides. To get to nature, one had to walk out, past the graveyards. Even the Tiber river, which today runs through the middle of the city, was in Ancient Times beyond the wall. It comes closest to the city at the Aventine Hill, making that liminal area along the docks a centre for crime.
Modern pagans have terribly romantic ideas of nature. I remember, one night, back when I was a pagan: that I had set up a stone circle in the woods behind my house. A small brook runs through the woods there and I marked the circle with stones from it. I often when there during the daylight to do my wiccan things - but it seemed like the Full Moon should be celebrated at night. No?
So, one night, out there I went with my cousin Faith and my best friend, Marc. Neither of them were religious, but both were intrigued by this “paganism” I’d picked up at college.
Out there, in the woods, in the dark… Candles lit and incense burning, faith freaked out first - returning to her car. Then Marc… finally I remember running though the woods to the road, jumping from a tiny hillock right into the middle of the pavement just as Faith revved up the car to speed away.
Romantic ideas of nature aside, being in the woods alone at night is terrifying.
Romans had every reason to fear nature. Jews too: indeed almost all the ancient world. Nature was the realm of bandits and spirits. One left the city, or the village, only in a great company. If one was rich, ones “country villa” was, in fact, a tiny bit of urban life.
And so, I wonder what those ancient Romans heard Paul say, as he does in tomorrow’s RCL (Proper 11, Year A),
… the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God (Rom 18b-19) … we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. (Rom 8:23)
What was “the creation” to them? The King James renders that word as “the Creature”. Shades of Frankenstein! What does it mean?
Paul’s using a very specific term there: κτσις can mean “creation” or, rather, that which is made… it also has a specifically Jewish meaning: the Gentile which converts to Judaism - away from Idolatry - becomes a Creation (of God): he comes into himself and his rightful place before God. Paul is using a term for “creation” that these Roman Jews would see as referring also to the Gentiles that are worshipping with them.
So like the whole of creation mourns waiting redemption - so do these Gentiles right here in the agape with you!
And I think that’s appropriate: Paul was talking about something out and beyond his Jewish audience’s experience. They went walking through “nature” in fear, when they were in Exile. They may have done it with God, sure, but it was only because he was with them. Nature, by itself, was scary. So were Gentiles!
That urban world, theoretically talked about in Rome, is where the Jews felt safe. It’s also where Christians felt safe: later the word “paganus” - meaning “hick” or “Dweller in the sticks” - will come to mean “non-Christian.” The same thing carries over into Anglo-Germanic languages where “heathen” means “dweller on the heath” - out away from the city.
We’ve romanticised the pagans though. That’s why we have the modern “neopagan” movement. And that’s why many modern pagans get terribly romantic about nature. In reality most of the ancient polytheists were urban dwellers who wouldn’t have known what to do with a stone circle in the woods if they had been there with me that night in the woods. To be in the woods, at night, in the dark… that would have been terrifying.
Paul invites us to feel a sense of comfort: the final revelation of our salvation will include even those scary things out there on the other side of the wall, and even those scary Gentile converts right over there on the other side of the table - whom we wish wasn’t there with us at all.
A surprising idea dawns on me - more of a seed for a second meditation. Throughout this passage, the word used for “spirit” is “pneuma” or “breath”. It’s not some Ghostly Presence, but rather just “breath”. God’s breath, our breath. It means, really, life. This is Paul explaining that Jesus breath - Jesus life - has passed into ours.
We’re used to reading this passage talking about “the Spirit” and “the Body”. But what does it mean if we read “spirit” with a lower-case s? The spirit (Jesus life in us) is the first fruits of salvation but later the body?
