Christ Church

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Vincent of Saragossa (d. 304), Deacon and Martyr (source):

Almighty God, whose deacon Vincent, upheld by thee, was not terrified by threats nor overcome by torments: Strengthen us, we beseech thee, to endure all adversity with invincible and steadfast faith; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Lesson: Revelation 7:13-17
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:4-12

Vincent is the proto-Martyr (first known martyr) of Spain and the patron saint of Lisbon. He was deacon of Saragossa, Aragon, under Bishop Valerius. Both were arrested during the persecution instigated by edicts of Diocletian and Maximian. Because Valerius had a speech impediment, Vincent testified to their faith in Christ, boldly and without fear.

Dacian, Roman governor of Spain, subjected Vincent to horrible tortures. The saint was thrown into prison and weakened by semi-starvation. After refusing to sacrifice to pagan gods, he was racked, burned, and kept in stocks. He died as a result of his sufferings.

St. Augustine of Hippo preached a sermon on Vincent’s martyrdom. Here is an excerpt:

“To you has been granted in Christ’s behalf not only that you should believe in him but also that you should suffer for him.” Vincent had received both these gifts and held them as his own. For how could he have them if he had not received them? And he displayed his faith in what he said, his endurance in what he suffered. No one ought to be confident in his own strength when he undergoes temptation. For whenever we endure evils courageously, our long-suffering comes from him Christ. He once said to his disciples: “In this world you will suffer persecution,” and then, to allay their fears, he added, “but rest assured, I have conquered the world.” There is no need to wonder then, my dearly beloved brothers, that Vincent conquered in him who conquered the world. It offers temptation to lead us astray; it strikes terror into us to break out spirit. Hence if our personal pleasures do not hold us captive, and if we are not frightened by brutality, then the world is overcome. At both of these approaches Christ rushes to our aid, and the Christian is not conquered.

Artwork: Tomás Giner, Saint Vincent, Deacon and Martyr, with a Donor, 1462-66. Mixed method on panel, Prado, Madrid.

“Wist ye not?”

“Did you not know?” Jesus asks Mary, his anxious mother, in what is the only story in the Christian New Testament about the childhood of Jesus. He is twelve years old. He is found in the Temple at Jerusalem among the doctors of the Law “listening and asking questions”, and “all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers”.

It is an epiphany, a making known of the idea that there are things that are wanted to be known. It is captured wonderfully in this somewhat rhetorical question by Jesus. “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” or as the King James version wonderfully puts it, following Tyndale, “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” The Old English word, “wist” echoes the Germanic influences on English (gewissen) and remains with us in such words as wit, wise, and wisdom. In the Christian understanding, the story reveals Jesus as the Divine Teacher and the Human Student. In other words, this story is an essential feature of the epiphany and shows us the radical idea of epiphany as education. It is about our response to what is presented to us to be known.

We are in this story as teachers and students, as learners all really. Teachers are not teachers if they are not also learners. Something profound is being shown to us about our humanity and in intriguing ways and which ultimately pertains to education. Education is about the making known of certain ideas which we only grasp by the activity of knowing in us. “Knowledge is intermediate between the knower and the known, because it is the activity of the knowner concerning the known”, as was anciently understood. I want to emphasize the idea of learning as activity and I want to focus on the necessity of education.

For thousands of years of human civilisation, once you learned to speak you entered into the adult world as a little adult. No longer an infant, one who is unable to speak, you were part of the adult world through speech. What this story reminds us of is another development at once ancient and also modern. It is the idea of another intermediary stage of human development through learning, specifically through learning how to read. In this case, reading is about reading the Law, the Torah. This story is about the transition from childhood to adulthood in the spiritual culture of Israel. In Jewish terms it correlates with the traditions of bar mitzvah signalling that transition to adult duties and responsibilities as grounded in an understanding of the Law given to Israel by God through Moses. It marks maturity, a growing up through learning and accepting responsibility with respect to what you know.

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The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Agnes (c. 291-304), Virgin, Martyr at Rome (source):

Eternal God, Shepherd of thy sheep,
by whose grace thy child Agnes was strengthened to bear witness,
in her life and in her death,
to the true love of her redeemer:
grant us the power to understand, with all thy saints,
what is the breadth and length and height and depth
and to know the love that passeth all knowledge,
even Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Song of Solomon 2:10-13
The Gospel: St. Matthew 18:1-6

One of the most celebrated of the early Roman martyrs, Agnes was only twelve or thirteen when she was executed in the Piazza Navona for refusing to sacrifice to pagan gods. Several early Christian leaders praised her courage and exemplary faith, including Ambrose, Pope Damasus, Jerome, and Prudentius. Although her story was embellished during the Middle Ages, it is certain that Agnes was very young and died as a Christian virgin.

St. Ambrose extolled her in his De Virginibus, written in 377:

[St. Agnes’ death was] A new kind of martyrdom! Not yet of fit age for punishment but already ripe for victory, difficult to contend with but easy to be crowned, she filled the office of teaching valour while having the disadvantage of youth. She would not as a bride so hasten to the couch, as being a virgin she joyfully went to the place of punishment with hurrying step, her head not adorned with plaited hair, but with Christ.

Because her name resembles agnus (‘lamb’), she is generally depicted in art with a lamb in her arms or by her feet. On her feast at Rome, the wool of two lambs is blessed and then woven into pallia (stoles of white wool) for the pope and archbishops.

Two notable Roman churches have been erected at locations associated with St. Agnes. The church of Sant’Agnese in Agone now stands in the Piazza Navona, the place of her martyrdom. The Basilica of Sant’Agnesi fuori le Mura (St. Agnes Outside the Walls) was built at her tomb in a family burial plot along the Via Nomentana, about two miles outside Rome.

Saint Agnes is the patron saint of young girls.

Artwork: Ercole Ferrata, The Martyrdom of St Agnes, 1664. Marble, Chiesa di Sant’Agnese in Agone (Church of Saint Agnes in Agony), Piazza Navone, Rome.

The collect for a missionary, on the Feast of St. Henry of Finland (d. 1150), Bishop, Missionary, Patron Saint of Finland, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD, our heavenly Father, who by thy Son Jesus Christ didst call thy blessed Apostles and send them forth to preach thy Gospel of salvation unto all the nations: We bless thy holy Name for thy servant Henry, whose labours we commemorate this day, and we pray thee, according to thy holy Word, to send forth many labourers into thy harvest; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Epistle: Acts 12:24-13:5
The Gospel: St. Matthew 4:13-24a

Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Second Sunday after Epiphany.

“Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it”

This too is epiphany, “this beginning of signs,” as John tells us. It is a wonderful encounter again between Mary and Jesus, a most intriguing exchange. But what is the epiphany? What is being made known in the encounter between Mary and Jesus and between us and Jesus? How is this encounter philosophical? I want to try to redeem the idea of this encounter from what is simply existential or personal but only so as to give a proper place for the personal and the existential. It has really altogether to do with the universal which is made known through the particularities of this encounter.

Epiphany complements Advent in terms of the importance of the give-and-take of questions. Questions are about our active engagement with the idea, the quintessential philosophical idea, that there is a principle of intellection. This is the idea of knowledge itself, that things in principle are knowable. All our claims to knowledge hang on the idea of a prior principle of knowledge. How we know that we know and what we claim to know presupposes that there is knowledge, something to be known in some sense or another. I say in some sense or another because that principle is known only as the principle upon which our knowing, being, and doing depend. That, I think, is what this remarkable story shows. The encounter between Mary and Jesus is about our encounter with truth, the truth of God which is always there, always present. This story is about our awakening to that truth and its meaning for us in our lives.

Thus, the encounter is in this sense philosophical. It has to do with our coming to know what is wanted for us to know, indeed, what God wants us to know. Such is the radical meaning of the entire Epiphany season. The questions are paramount and necessary because nothing can be known except through the activity of knowing. “Knowledge is intermediate between the knower and the known because it is the activity of the knower concerning the known” (Ammonius, 6th c. AD.). This ancient insight, itself a kind of summary of Hellenic and Greek thought, challenges us. The burden of the teaching church is that it counters the dreary passivity of the consumer culture, the victim culture, and the entitlement culture, all of which are a denial of an essential feature of our humanity.

Mary’s anxious questions to Jesus on Sunday last lead us logically to this exchange. Both Gospels are read every year regardless of the length of the Epiphany season which like the Trinity season varies in length according to the movable date of Easter. Thus, these Gospel stories taken together are significant for our understanding of the radical meaning of Epiphany. This story suggests that Mary has learned what we too are meant to learn about the essential divinity of Christ, namely, what it means for him to be “about [his] Father’s business”. Here is “the beginning of signs”. Here is Mary’s response to Jesus, her openness to the divine will by way of what belongs to the radical truth of our humanity symbolised and realised in her. It is captured in our text. “Whatever he tells you, do it.”

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Tuesday, January 19th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Andrew Steane’s Science and Humanity: A Humane Philosophy of Science and Religion (2018) and The Penultimate Curiosity: How Science Swims in the Slipstream of Ultimate Questions (2016) by Roger Wagner and Andrew Briggs.

Sunday, January 24th, Third Sunday after Epiphany
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Event:

Sunday, February 7th
Annual Parish Meeting, following the 10:30am service

Services to be held in the Parish Hall, January through March.

The collect for today, The Second Sunday after the Epiphany, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who dost govern all things in heaven and earth: Mercifully hear the supplications of thy people, and grant us thy peace all the days of our life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 12:6-16
The Gospel: St. John 2:1-11

Artwork: Juan de Flandes, The Marriage Feast at Cana, c. 1500-04. Oil on wood, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

Rachel weeping for her children

The aggressive atheist and neo-Darwinist, Richard Dawkins, claims that the God of the Old Testament is “the most unpleasant character in all fiction” and goes on to list a whole raft of vituperative adjectives that are most unpleasant. The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks replied, much to Dawkins discomfort, “Ah, I see you are a Christian atheist.” The Old Testament, in reference to the Hebrew or Jewish Scriptures, is a Christian term.

Dawkins’ view is not new and belongs to a common misconception of the relation between the Old and New Testament which overstates the contrast. This is seen, for instance, in the idea of Law versus Grace, forgetting that the Law as given by God is therefore also grace; or the similar idea of justice versus mercy or love, forgetting that mercy is just as intrinsic to the Hebrew Scriptures as it is to the New Testament. Overstating the contrasts between the two testaments belongs to a conflict narrative which pits Jew against Christian. In turn, the aggressive and naive atheism of Dawkins assumes the same conflict narrative between modern science and religion. Such is a profound distortion and misconception.

Dawkins has his precursors, ranging from Marcion in the 2nd century to Thomas Jefferson in the late 18th century. Marcion could not reconcile the God of the Old Testament with the God of the New Testament and so conveniently edited out large swaths of the Old Testament and as well great chunks of the New Testament. For him the contrast was between love and judgement. In the case of the third President of America, Thomas Jefferson, the concern was about reason versus revelation, particularly the miracle stories of the Christian Gospels. Jefferson took his scissors to the New Testament to excise all such things leaving merely the husk of a kind of moralizing Jesus accommodated to the precepts (and presumptions) of human reason.

Such things reveal an attitude and a set of assumptions about God and human good. But surely, Dawkins could just have easily found the ‘Christian’ God of the New Testament equally “unpleasant” simply in terms of this disturbing and disquieting story that belongs to the mystery of Christmas. It is the shocking story of the slaughter of the little ones of Bethlehem. It challenges our sentimental views of Christmas.

It is shocking and while there are many shocking stories in the Scriptures, the real question is what are these stories doing? Why are they part of these Scriptures? In other words, what do they teach? It is easy to piece together a packet of awful stories in both Scriptures that contribute to the idea of a vengeful, hateful God who arbitrarily chooses some and rejects others. This ignores the interpretative traditions which have wrestled with these passages for centuries and the simple point that these stories are always an indictment of some aspect or other of the human condition in its fallenness and evil.

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The collect for today, the Feast of St. Hilary (c. 315-368), Bishop of Poitiers, Doctor of the Church (source):

Everlasting God,
whose servant Hilary
steadfastly confessed thy Son Jesus Christ
to be both human and divine:
grant us his gentle courtesy
to bring to all the message of redemption
in the incarnate Christ,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: 1 St. John 2:18-25
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:8-12

Hilary was born in Poitiers, Gaul, of wealthy pagan parents. After receiving a thorough education in Latin classics, he became an orator. He also married and had a daughter. At the age of about 35, he rejected his former paganism and became a Christian through a long process of study and thought. Robert Louis Wilken describes his path to conversion in The Spirit of Early Christian Thought (p. 86):

[Hilary] found himself turning to more spiritual pursuits. In his words he wished to pursue a life that was “worthy of the understanding that had been given us by God.” Like Justin [Martyr] he began to read the Bible, and one passage that touched his soul was Exodus 3:14, where God the creator, “testifying about himself,” said, “I am who I am.” For Hilary this brief utterance penetrated more deeply into the mystery of the divine nature than anything he had heard or read from the philosophers. Shortly thereafter he was baptized and received into the church.

Around 353 he was chosen bishop of Poitiers and became an outspoken champion of orthodoxy against the Arians. St. Augustine praised him as “the illustrious teacher of the churches”. St. Jerome wrote that Hilary was “a most eloquent man, and the trumpet of the Latins against the Arians”. Hilary became known as “Athanasius of the West”.

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