Deep calls to deep

I’m thinking of three women in the Gospels, and a fourth: The woman with the flow of blood who touched the garment of Jesus and was healed, the Canaanite woman who pleaded with Jesus to heal her daughter, and the woman who anointed Jesus and was attacked for “wasting” money. Jesus replied that she had done a beautiful thing for him. Do we see the beauty of the Lord in His death and resurrection? Do we see the beauty of the Lord when we gather to worship and to receive his Body and Blood? Do we see the beauty in each other?

The Canaanite woman pleaded with Jesus to heal her daughter. And Jesus provoked her with words that made her a dog. And what did the woman say in response? Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table. Wow, Jesus responded, great is your faith woman. Let it be as you have asked, and her daughter was healed. A tremendous contrast between a very vocal woman who pleaded for her daughter and the very silent woman who tried to hide by just touching the garment of Jesus. And yet both showed great faith.

Jesus is the incarnate Word of God. Which means God loves words. Yes, all who are lovers of A.I., don’t surrender your words to artificial intelligence! The woman who anointed Jesus said nothing. But she did what she did in the sight of the people present. Her action of anointing Jesus was her word. She did not need to speak. And Jesus spoke for her and gave an interpretation – an exegesis – of her action as only God can interpret. Do you know what the Gospel of John calls Jesus? The exegete of God! 

In John 1, after the momentous statement that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, a few lines later we read: No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known. The verb translated as “he has made him known” is ἐξηγήσατο. The verb is ἐξηγέομαι, from which we get ἐξήγησις – which means narration, complete description, interpretation. In English we have borrowed the word as exegesis – a word we use for interpretation of a text. A person who does exegesis is called an exegete.

So when John wrote: No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known (exegesato), he was saying that Jesus is the exegete of God the Father. Which tells us that Jesus gave us as complete an interpretation and as complete a description of God as we are capable of understanding. Because that’s the other part of good exegesis: You speak to your audience so they can understand. A good exegete speaks so his listeners can understand. And if you’re a Christian, and you believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God who exegeted the Father for us, you can’t take the language Jesus used and turn it into something else. When Jesus tells us to pray Our Father, you can’t change that to Our Mother, or something else.

Jesus had no room for political correctness. He was definitely not politically correct. But because he was the Word of God incarnate, he also had no room for silent or superstitious approach to God. He brought the woman who touched his garment out of silence and the cover of anonymity in order for her to understand who she was and who Jesus was. The same with the Canaanite woman. He provoked her with words so she could reply to him in words that revealed her boldness. And as for the woman who anointed him, her action spoke louder than words and Jesus provided the words. And just think of the profound, theological discussion he had with the Samaritan woman at the well. In all four encounters with women we see Jesus the master of communication with women who lived under strict rules about who they could speak to. Jesus had the most extraordinary encounters with women. He spoke with women as equals. He respected women beyond anything feminists can imagine. He spoke from deep knowledge to deep knowledge. 

Psalm 42 says this to God: Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts; all your waves and your billowshave gone over me. Deep calls to deep – a perfect description of prayer and conversation with God. There is a deep part of you that reaches out for the deep parts of God. As one Known to One Known. The ancient Greek version (Septuagint) of this Psalm is even better: Ἄβυσσος ἄβυσσον ἐπικαλεῖται εἰς φωνὴν τῶν καταῤῥακτῶν σου· πάντες οἱ μετεωρισμοί σου, καὶ τὰ κύματά σου ἐπʼ ἐμὲ διῆλθον. Abyss calls to abyss at the voice of your cataracts. This is a throwback to the beginning of creation. Because behind Ἄβυσσος (abyssos) in Greek and ‘deep’ in English is t^ehôm in the original Hebrew. A fantastic word, really. It’s the word that describes the beginning of creation in Genesis: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. I can never get enough of the image painted for us in Genesis.

So Psalm 42 tells me that prayer is a return to creation. Prayer is the sign of the new creation that is happening in you right now. The Spirit of God was moving over the original t^ehôm, abyss. And the Spirit is moving right now, leading us, leading the church, prompting us, preparing us to be God’s new creation. As a Jew who had come to Christ, Paul had to deal with all the Jewish hangups about circumcision and the laws of Moses. “But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. Peace and mercy be upon all who walk by this rule, upon the Israel of God. Henceforth let no man trouble me; for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brethren. Amen.”