Daily Old Testament: Zechariah 6-8 and My Own Article on "What DId I Say?" (Part 5)

Zechariah 6 – The eighth vision is four chariots emerging from between two mountains of bronze. The first chariot has red horses, the second has black horses, the third has white horses and the fourth has dappled-gray horses (6:1). The angel says they “are the four spirits of heaven who stand before the Lord of all the earth. They are going out to do his work” (6:5). The red ones are going to the East; the black ones to the North; the white ones to the West and the dappled to the South. They will patrol the world (6:7).

Zephaniah is to take a crown of silver and gold, place it on Joshua’s head and tell him that “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: Here is the man called the Branch. He will branch out from where he is and build the Temple of the Lord . . . Then he will receive royal honor and will rule as king from his throne. He will also serve as priest from his throne, and there will be perfect harmony between his two roles” (6:12-13).

People will come from lands far away to rebuild the Temple, and when it is rebuilt, everyone will know that these visions and messages have come from the Lord.

Zechariah 7 – November 518 – since the destruction of the Temple in June-July 587, there had been a fast to commemorate it. Zechariah wants to know if this tradition should continue. The important thing is God wants the people to practice kindness and compassion towards each other, but the people never obey these simple commandments, so he scattered them. “They turned a land of delights into a desert” (7:14).

Zechariah 8 – Yahweh promises to return to Zion and “shall dwell in the middle of Jerusalem” (8:3). “Now with the remnant of this people, I am not as I was in the past. It is Yahweh . . .who speaks. For I mean to spread peace everywhere. . .Just as one you were a curse among the nations, you House of Judah (and House of Israel), so I mean to save you for you to become a blessing” (8:12-13). The prophet also tells us that someday people from many nations will come to Jerusalem to learn of Yahweh.

From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through Quakerism -

“What Did I Say?”

Part 5

The story goes on to say that Jesus leaves his disciples, telling them to baptize all people. The Holy Spirit comes and Christ’s church is born. The church believes that Christ will return soon to end human history and gather his faithful to himself. But he does not return. We learn a little about the first decades of the church, but then the narrative ends, at least as history. The real end of the biblical narrative comes in the Revelation of John, which portrays in symbolic or imaginative terms what the end of history will be like.

History, insofar as it has to do with the past, ends in the first century, biblically speaking. Quakers incorporated the Revelation part of the narrative by saying that events prefigured there could be experienced on a spiritual plane even though they had not yet come to pass, just as all the events of the narrative could be inwardly experience. We could come into the full presence of God and sup at the great banquet in a spiritual way in this life. But Quakers did not see the historic events that unfolded after the establishment of the church, after Christ’s ascension, as having much weight or spiritual significance. Like the New Testament writer of Hebrews, they saw Christ’s coming as the end of all outward types and shadows, the culmination and end of God’s redemptive work in the world.

They used the image of the sun and compared Christ’s coming historically to the rising of the sun (Son) to its zenith over the earth. As the sun (Son) rises to its fullness—to its zenith—it casts “shadow” in the world (the “types” or outward forms), but once it is “come” (or risen to its fullness), the shadows disappear and what you have is perfect fullness (what Friends called Substance), the fullness of God’s Spirit and Light.

        

This image spoke to me. It explained why Friends did not feel the need to see God’s redemptive truths embodied in outward things like sacraments; but over time, it also led my mind to see that it was Quakerism did not address. The sun did not stop at noontide; it had a downward course to take as well to complete its story, and during this part of its course through our world, it would inevitably cast “shadows” again because the world it illuminated was just that way. It contained things that both obstructed and made real the sun’s presence. This image, the sense of what it implied, the sense that it revealed something true to me about the course of the redemption story and the way God was working in the world today, opened a way out of the labyrinth I felt Quaker theology had placed me in. It helped me see a way of resolving issues about the place of outward things in religion, the legitimacy of the historic church, and the matter of apostasy as well. I began to see another way the narrative could be viewed and other truths it might open.

        

I know this sounds strange. It is very hard to communicate how a vision of something comes to one, how a different way of orienting oneself to a story like the biblical story can open things, solve issues, or lead one in a direction not yet taken. It is very mysterious, but these insights brought me to some important conclusions and insights.

Rex Ambler's Light to Live By

There has been an amazing level of interest expressed in Quaker circles here in the US and abroad in the work of Rex Ambler to explore the experience of early Quakers in arriving at a spiritual state of incredible peace and fulfillment, a state that permitted them to form vibrant communities that felt in some way corporately that they had overcome sin. He spent a lot of time exploring early Friends writings and over a period of time managed to reduce the inner experiences they described to a relatively simple meditative formula that helped him to overcome inner turmoil and unhappiness, and then help others to overcome their deepest problems as well. The process - or "practice" - as he calls it is pretty simple and is laid out on pages 46-47 of his book, Light to Live By: An Exploration of Quaker Spirituality:

• Relax body and mind - Feel weight of your body on chair, release tension in your body. Let worries go and preoccupations. Relax mind and be wholly receptive.
• Let the real concerns of your life emerge – what is really going on in my life? Do not answer from the head. Silence.
• Focus on one issue – one thing that makes you uneasy – try to get a sense of the thing as a whole.
• Ask why it is like that – wait in the light, and let the answer come. Pursue to deepest place
• Welcome whatever answer comes – trust the light. Submit to it and it will show you the way through.
• A different feeling will arise in you about it. Accept it.

He says in the book that when he went around to different Meetings in England and Europe he found that people mostly responded to the practice with great enthusiasm but some few did not take to it. They either were not open to some new way of approaching their worship routine, or they felt it was maybe even a little dangerous to plumb so deep into one's psyche, or that it seemed a little too self-centered. But he no where apparently ran into the objection that the practice totally abandons the biblical language in which early Friends insights were articulated. He starts from the words they used but he soon departs from these words and frames his experience in general meditative language or psychological language that no doubt modern people, even Friends are more comfortable with.

I am not saying here that the practice Ambler has developed is ineffective. It may indeed be helpful and fruitful for many Friends. But my own experience has led me to see the issue of biblical words and the biblical narrative as very important in my spiritual life and I feel that is what I should give testimony to. I have written about this before in my book Leadings: A Catholic's Journey Through Quakerism and I feel it is relevant here. I understand that most people today, at least most people among Friends, are pretty educated and secularized. While they might see the importance of the biblical narrative to early Friends, they feel that the language they used really doesn't resonate with modern people. People in the 17th century, when Fox lived, did not talk in psychological terms about their inner lives. They, like everyone in their society, saw things largely in biblical terms. The world was full of disputes, anger, unfaithfulness, violence - the fruits of man's sin, man's fallen nature. There was no Freud, no Buddhist Meditation around to dabble in. You talked about problems in religious terms. You conquered problems or felt you conquered them by coming to see them conquered through religious commitment. Here are the words George Fox used:

“And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, the, Oh then, I heard a voice which said, ‘There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition’, and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord did let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my condition, namely, that I might give him all the glory; for all are concluded under sin, and shut up in unbelief as I had been, that Jesus Christ might have the pre-eminence, who enlightens, and gives grace, and faith, and power. Thus, when God doth work who shall let [prevent] it? And this I knew experimentally” (Fox's Journal, 11).

Ambler knows from reading all of Fox that what he experienced transformed his life and eventually the lives of many. So he tries to translate that experience out of the Christian, biblical context. But my experience was different. I grew up in 20th century secular America. I had little exposure to religion in my early years. My parents were atheists but I lived with a lapsed Catholic grandfather. I went to church from time to time but it wasn't part of my life in a deep and consistent way. I did hear all the stories of Adam and Eve, of Jacob and Joseph, Moses and Egypt, Jesus in Bethlehem, the cross, the resurrection. You can't grow up anywhere without getting them somehow, however shallow-ly [new word]. When later in my life I came to see the biblical story as very real and important to me, I compared my experience with a scene from the movie, Miracle Worker, about the life of Helen Keller. She had lost her vision and hearing at a very early age - somewhere around 14 months, I think. And as she grew up she learned no way of communicating at all until the teacher Annie Sullivan is hired by her parents to try to tame her. Over the next months, the teacher tries to teach her sign language, felt through symbols impressed on her hands. Helen doesn't really get it. She learns the signs. She accumulates a whole vocabulary but she really doesn't have a clue what the signs and symbols mean. Then in a revelatory moment in the turmoil caused by her behavior, her teacher desperately tries to show her that the signs that spell the word W-A-T-E-R actually do relate to something real - the water she pumps out onto Helen's hands. Somewhere deep in Helen, a link is established between the hand sign and the reality of the water. This revelation opens ALL reality to her because she SEES the link between the game and the world around her and in her. My experience was the same. A moment came in my life when I saw that the biblical narrative and the language used to communicate it were deeply wrapped around my inner spiritual reality, and that Christ was in me to redeem me, guide me and help me live my life. The truth is it doesn't really matter to me if every detail in the narrative is historically or scientifically "true" - it's truth on a deep spiritual plane is very real and completely relevant to me today.

Is the experience one has through that medium the same as you would get through the more detached meditative language? The German title he used to describe his method tells me he thinks it does - Wo Worte Enden. Ambler obviously thinks so, but I doubt it. And the words of scripture are the words the whole cloud of witnesses before have used - even those Quakers we love. If we want the historic community of Quakers to continue with the vibrant spiritual message they gave us, I worry about abandonning the words of God we encounter in the Bible.