Christ Church

Everyone is seeking for you

This text from St. Mark complements the story of Christ’s going up to Jerusalem and his encounter with the blind man which we read last week. Such things belong to the nature of the educational journey. It is, in the proper sense, counter-culture because it challenges the assumptions of our age. Education is actually subversive in the sense that it questions the dominant assumptions of those in authority. It confronts them with the idea of the author, the root of the word authority. It calls us to account, in short, to  God, the author and ultimate good.

This has very much to do with the love of learning. Here the disciples seek out Jesus who has retreated into a solitary place to pray. So often we think of religion and prayer as simply individual and private matters. We forget the ethical demands that compel us into relation with one another. The retreat into solitude is about communion with God through which we have communion with one another.

As the poet, T.S. Eliot puts it:

What life have you if you have not life together?
There is no life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of God.
Even the anchorite who meditates alone,
For whom the days and nights repeat the praise of God,
Prays for the Church, the Body of Christ incarnate.  (Choruses from the Rock)

The story shows Jesus as the healer of “all that were diseased” but also as the healer of “them that were possessed with devils.” This speaks to the idea of the healing of the whole of our being, body and soul, but also to the desire to be healed. The statement of the disciples speaks to a universal desire. “Everyone is seeking for thee.” Such is the desire to know which, like the blind man, implies that something is already known, namely, that we don’t know, we don’t see, yet in seeking we know that we lack something which we need. We confront our lack, an insufficiency in and of ourselves.

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The Penitential Psalms in the Pilgrimage of Lent
Christ Church, Lent 2021

Lenten Meditation # 1: “Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness.”

Introduction:

There are seven Psalms that have come to be grouped together as the Penitential Psalms, a designation attributed to Cassiodorus in the sixth century but perhaps as derived from Augustine in the fifth or even Ambrose in the late fourth century AD. They became an integral feature of the medieval Lenten liturgies. Gratian in the 12th century explicitly mentions the recitation of the seven Penitential Psalms on Ash Wednesday. Both the patristic and medieval traditions have carried over into the reformed liturgies such as in the books of the Anglican Common Prayer tradition illustrated, for example, in praying Psalm 51 on Ash Wednesday as part of the Penitential Service. The Penitential Psalms figure prominently in the liturgies of Lent.

Following the numbering of the Psalms in the Hebrew Masoretic text which carried over into the English translations of both the Coverdale and the King James Versions, the seven Penitential Psalms are Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130 and 143. As such they belong to the whole range of the Psalter with its one hundred and fifty Psalms. But as one scholar suggests, they seem to have a certain symmetry rather than an arbitrary quality to them that is captured in the Latin titles which are attached to them in the classical Book(s) of Common Prayer.

The Latin titles derive from the first lines of each Psalm. That the Latin titles have been retained in the liturgical psalter of the Prayer Book reveals an important sense of the continuity of prayer and of the Church universal. The idea of a certain symmetry or structure belongs not only to the strong medieval sense of order but to the unity of Scripture itself within which the Psalms play a crucial role.

The Latin titles are:

Psalm 6 – Domine, ne in furore (O Lord, rebuke me not in thine indignation)
Psalm 32 – Beati, quorum (Blessed is he (those) whose unrighteousness is forgiven)
Psalm 38 – Domine, ne in furore (O Lord, rebuke me not in thine indignation)
Psalm 51 – Miserere mei, Deus (Have mercy upon me, O God)
Psalm 102 – Domine, exaudi (Hear my prayer, O Lord)
Psalm 130 – De profundis (Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord)
Psalm 143 – Domine, exaudi (Hear my prayer, O Lord)

Psalms 6 and 38 bracket Psalm 32 while Psalms 102 and 143 bracket Psalm 130. Psalm 51 at the center of the sequence stands alone as expressing the heart-note of all penitence. It shall be our Lenten devotion to consider the seven Penitential Psalms and I commend them to your study and to the discipline of committing them to memory so that they become part of you. But first, a few words about the Psalter and its place in the Scriptures.

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The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Matthias the Apostle, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God, who into the place of the traitor Judas didst choose thy faithful servant Matthias to be of the number of the twelve Apostles: Grant that thy Church, being alway preserved from false Apostles, may be ordered and guided by faithful and true pastors; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 1:15-26
The Gospel: St. John 15:1-11

The name of this saint is probably an abbreviation of Mattathias, meaning “gift of Yahweh”.

Matthias was chosen to replace Judas Iscariot after Judas had betrayed Jesus and then committed suicide. In the time between Christ’s Ascension and Pentecost, the small band of disciples, numbering about 120, gathered together and Peter spoke of the necessity of selecting a twelfth apostle to replace Judas. Peter enunciated two criteria for the office of apostle: He must have been a follower of Jesus from the Baptism to the Ascension, and he must be a witness to the resurrected Lord. This meant that he had to be able to proclaim Jesus as Lord from first-hand personal experience. Two of the brothers were found to fulfill these qualifications: Matthias and Joseph called Barsabbas also called the Just. Matthias was chosen by lot. Neither of these two men is referred to by name in the four Gospels, although several early church witnesses, including Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius of Caesarea, report that Matthias was one of the seventy-two disciples.

Like the other apostles and disciples, St. Matthias received the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Since he is not mentioned later in the New Testament, nothing else is known for certain about his activities. He is said to have preached in Judaea for some time and then traveled elsewhere. Various contradictory stories about his apostolate have existed since early in church history. The tradition held by the Greek Church is that he went to Cappadocia and the area near the Caspian Sea where he was crucified at Colchis. Some also say he went to Ethiopia before Cappadocia. Another tradition holds that he was stoned to death and then beheaded at Jerusalem.

The Empress St Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, is said to have brought St Matthias’s relics to Rome c. 324, some of which were moved to the Benedictine Abbey of St Matthias, Trier, Germany, in the 11th century.

Artwork: Duccio di Buoninsegna, Apostle Matthias (detail from Maestà), 1308-11. Tempera on wood, Museo dell’Opera Metropolitana del Duomo, Siena.

The collect for today, the commemoration of Lindel Tsen (1885-1946), Bishop in China, consecrated 1929, and Paul Sasaki (1885-1954), Bishop in Japan, consecrated 1935 (source):

Almighty God, we offer thanks for the faith and witness of Paul Sasaki, bishop in the Nippon Sei Ko Kai [Anglican Church in Japan], tortured and imprisoned by his government, and Philip [Lindel] Tsen, leader of the Chinese Anglican Church, arrested for his faith. We pray that all Church leaders oppressed by hostile governments may be delivered by thy mercy, and that by the power of the Holy Spirit we may be faithful to the Gospel of our Savior Jesus Christ; who livest and reignest with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
The Gospel: St. Mark 4:26-32

Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the First Sunday in Lent.

“Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered”

Learning through suffering is hardly new. It is a central feature of Homer’s Odyssey, for example. Many people at different times have been graduates of the proverbial school of hard knocks. Necessity is one mother of a teacher. Perhaps, too, this is one of the lessons of the current pandemic in the various forms of suffering that it occasions.

But what is it that is learned through suffering? What is the lesson? For the ancient Greeks, it was to know the order of the cosmos and our place within that order. For modernity, the lessons are more ambiguous, mostly because of the abstract individualism of our age in the forms of autonomy, isolation, and separation from one another, like so many cosmic orphans cast adrift in an empty and indifferent universe. At best, there is the ambiguous quest for meaning but as bound up in the modern sophistic of our solipsistic selves – the idea that the self is the only knowable or existent thing (OED). Perhaps, just perhaps, COVID-19 may serve to awaken us to our care and concern for others and not just our fears for ourselves. Perhaps, just perhaps, it may serve to awaken us to our lives in community and to the limitations of our technocratic world and its assumptions. We make the machines that make or unmake us, after all.

The lessons of Lent go beyond knowing the order of the cosmos and the ambiguities of our contemporary confusions, self-obsessions, and assertions. The Letter to the Hebrews spells out the lesson which Lent illustrates. The lesson is mindful obedience. The illustration is the life of Jesus Christ concentrated into the intensity of forty days. Mindful obedience means obedience to an authority, in this case God as the ultimate author, the root meaning of authority. Somehow suffering belongs to this relation to authority. Not an easy lesson for our contemporary culture where authorities in every sphere, it seems, betray trust often in blatant forms of hypocrisy and arrogance.

“Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered, “ Hebrews (5.8) tells us in what is one of the lessons for Morning Prayer on Lent I (Year 2). “Although he was a Son” – this is who Jesus is, the Son of the Father. The Son is defined by his relation to the Father. He is the eternal Son of the everlasting Father – “there was not when he was not.” He is, therefore, always the Son of the father. His whole being is defined by his love of the Father’s will. Such is obedience. The obedience is not just doing what one is told, blindly and ignorantly. It means doing what he is in his love for the Father. A knowing and loving obedience is the nature of the eternally and only-begotten Son of the Father. As such, this obedience is not learned; it is simply who he is. It is not something acquired. He is what he is; he does what he is; his act is his being. A knowing and loving ‘obedience’ belongs to the act of his essential being.

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Tuesday, February 23rd, Eve of St. Matthias / Eve of Ember Wednesday
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme I

Sunday, February 28th, Second Sunday in Lent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Event:

Tuesday, March 2nd
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme II

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

The collect for today, the First Sunday in Lent, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O LORD, who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights: Give us grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit, we may ever obey thy godly motions in righteousness and true holiness, to thy honour and glory; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 6:1-10
The Gospel: St Matthew 4:1-11

Artwork: Ilya Repin, Follow Me, Satan (Temptation of Jesus Christ), 1901-1903. Oil on canvas, Kovalenko Regional Art Museum, Krasnodar, Russia.

That I may receive my sight

It is an intriguing story and one which speaks to the nature of education, especially in conjunction with Paul’s great hymn of praise to love which was read last week in Chapel. We see “in a glass darkly,” yet we see, albeit imperfectly and unclearly. “We go up to Jerusalem,” Jesus says, expressing in a metaphor what belongs to the universal journey of our souls into an understanding of reality. Going up to Jerusalem is at once about the spiritual practices of ancient Israel but also extends to the concentration of that journey into the span of the  forty days of Lent in the Christian understanding.

The story concentrates for us some of the essential features of our lives in terms of desire. What do we seek? To seek is to want, to desire. But what? Somehow something of what we seek has to be known in some way or another. To desire is to have some sense of what we want. And there is the greater question about wanting what is right and good without which “all loving [is] mere folly,” as Shakespeare puts it (‘As You Like It’). There is a necessary and crucial interplay between our willing and our knowing present in this story.

Jesus tells the disciples about what going up to Jerusalem will mean. It will mean all of the terrors of his passion and death; in short, the sufferings of Christ which reveal the sin and evil of our humanity. Such things show us the radical disorders of our humanity; not just the incompleteness of our loves, but their destructive capacity as well. Jesus tells us these things but, as Luke says about the disciples (and us), “they understood none of these things … neither knew they the things which were spoken.” Such is the reality of the educational experience. Things are spoken and taught but are they learned? What does it take to learn? It requires the journey of education in which we confront over and over again our ignorance and not-knowing. Education never ends. It is not a finite product, a thing to be possessed. It is life-long.

What it takes to learn is seen in the figure of the blind man in this story sitting as a beggar by the way-side near Jericho, the image biblically speaking of the earthly city in contrast to Jerusalem, the symbol of the heavenly city. “Hearing the multitude pass by, he asked what it meant.” That is significant. It shows that he wants to know what is going on. In discovering “that Jesus of Nazareth passeth by,” he cries out incessantly and will not be silenced even by the disciples who rebuke him. “Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me,” he cries.

We are like the blind man on the road in this story which is the reason why it is read on the Sunday just before the Ash Wednesday beginning of Lent. He is blind and yet he sees; like us, perhaps, “in a glass darkly.” That is to say, he knows something. He knows three things which we, in turn, need to know, paradoxically in order to come to know more fully; in short, to know even as we are known, as Paul puts it in his great hymn to love which accompanies this Gospel story. He knows, first, that he is blind; secondly, he knows that he wants to see, to know more fully; and, thirdly, he knows that the power of healing and sight belong to God which he ‘knows’ is in Jesus.

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“Make me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me”

Psalm 51 is the quintessential penitential psalm. One of the seven penitential psalms, as they came to be known (psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143), it captures wonderfully the longing of the soul for God’s goodness out of the profound awareness of sin. “Against thee only have I sinned.” However exaggerated this may seem, it states the truth about all sin. All sin is against God. When we sin against one another and against ourselves, we sin against God and the goodness of his creation. It is in this sense that “against thee only have I sinned” is to be understood, much in the same way as we pray, “Almighty God of whose only gift cometh wisdom and understanding”. All sin is against God in the same way that all wisdom is of God. Every sin opposes the good that is God himself.

Such is the great insight of this penitential psalm which is front and centre on Ash Wednesday. Dust and ashes symbolise creation and redemption. Ashes are imposed on our foreheads, the seat of the rational will, as a sign of repentance. Repentance is our turning back to the one from whom we have turned away. The ashes are imposed with the words from Genesis: “Remember, O man, that dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return.” We are recalled to the humble ground of our creation. We are the dust into whom God has breathed his spirit but whom we have spurned in the arrogance and presumption of all our sins. We are recalled to creation in the awareness of our separation from creation.

But as sinners who know that we are sinners means to embrace the disciplines of repentance, literally “to decline from sin and incline to virtue” (BCP, p. 614). That means the heartfelt turning back to God “by self-examination and repentance, by prayer, fasting, and self-denial, and by reading and meditation upon God’s holy Word” (BCP, p. 612). This is not a list from which we may pick and choose. It means all those things.  Together they signify the deep desire of our souls for the truth of our being in the rejection of all the things which stand in the way of ourselves in union with God and in the acquisition of what properly belongs to our life with God. Lent concentrates wonderfully the three-fold nature of the pilgrimage of the soul: purgation, illumination, and union or perfection. These are all present to us in the programme of Lent and in its beginning on Ash Wednesday.

We begin in ashes but not so as to end in ashes. Our beginning is with God even as our end is in God. We seek his will and power and truth to make us new. We only live in this divine activity of being renewed. But to be renewed is to know that we are broken, not whole. “The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit.” Nothing could be more counter-culture; no greater contrast possible between this and the therapy culture of emotional well-being. We are meant to feel troubled and to know our brokenness; “a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou shalt not despise.” Contrition, confession, and satisfaction form the underlying spiritual patterns of our liturgy in relation to the three-fold pilgrimage of our souls to God.

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