KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 5 December
admin | 5 December 2018Behold the Lamb of God
The philosopher, Josef Pieper, reminds us of a deep truth which our world has largely forgotten, namely, the proper meaning of leisure. In our culture, we live to work. This is one of our problems which stands in stark contrast to the wisdom of the Hebrews and the Greeks where we work to live. The Greek and Latin words for leisure are skole and scola from which we get the word, school. School, properly understood is leisure, our freedom from the pressing necessities of everyday life. Aristotle literally says “we are un-leisurely in order to have leisure” (Nicomachean Ethics 10. vii). Work is un-leisure, literally, a-scolia. Similarly in the Latin, busyness is neg-otium, literally, the negating of leisure. Thus, leisure is the freedom to contemplate, to wonder at the mysteries of life, and, ultimately, to take delight in the things of God. A profoundly counter-culture idea and yet how necessary and how freeing! Once again, we are freed to God and to the truth of ourselves in God, to our good as found in Him. Without it we are lost in all of the distractions of ourselves, unable to focus; literally, uncollected.
The Advent and Christmas Services of Nine Lessons and Carols simply but profoundly amplifies our regular Chapel services. Sitting and listening, standing and singing, kneeling and praying is what we do, to be sure. At the Carol services there was rather a lot of sitting and listening, standing and singing! Up and down and all around! Yet that pattern speaks to the nature and life of the School as a place of purposeful leisure, a place of contemplation and learning. The Advent pageant of Word and Song is all about ethical, intellectual, and spiritual ideas and principles coming towards us and engaging us, but only if we will sit and listen, stand and sing, kneel and pray. A whole person experience, we might say, and certainly activities which connect to the four pillars of the School: to Academics for we, like Mary, must sit and listen in order to learn and take delight in truth and knowledge; to Athletics for we are embodied beings and our bodies matter whether in sitting to listen or standing to praise; to the Arts through our singing and being in the ambience of the Holy expressed in the architecture of Church and Chapel; and to Service because like Martha we are reminded of our service to one another through our service and commitment to truths held sacred without which all our labours are nothing worth.
The beautiful Advent Bidding Prayer composed by Dean Eric Milner White emphasizes the point of the Advent in relation to the healing and the wholeness of our humanity. One can only imagine the impact of these words in the face of the devastations of the First World War. They are words which draw upon one of the Gospel readings for Advent: “the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them”(Matthew 11.5). Words which awaken us to hope and even to joy. We are more than the evils of war.
The nine lessons are powerful passages from the Hebrew Scriptures which Christians call the Old Testament and from the Christian Scriptures, the New Testament. Advent is the season of questions that open us out to the pursuit of truth and understanding. The first reading from Genesis and the first of the New Testament readings from Luke offer profound questions. “What is this that you have done?” God asks. “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” asks Mary. We are reminded of our separation from God and of dynamics of our redemption. It is all about ideas coming to us.
The images in the readings are powerful and suggestive: images of paradise and harmony, of purpose and salvation, of delight. They enlarge our hearts and minds and challenge our listening and our thinking. Perhaps we might prefer shorter stories like Ernest Hemingway’s famous six word novel: “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn” which immediately sets our minds upon the trajectories of the imagination. Or perhaps we would like something more contemporary like Eileen Gunn’s “Computer, did we bring batteries? … Computer ….”! Yet the Advent pageant of readings equally and profoundly speaks to our imaginations and challenges our thinking. The readings require that we un-busy ourselves in order to contemplate, to sit and listen and to take delight in the motions of God’s Word coming to us. They are inexhaustible which is why we need to hear them year in and year out and in an intentional and purposeful way.
The Scripture reading at the last two Chapel services of the term was from the first chapter of John’s Gospel. It follows immediately upon the last reading sung at the Advent Services of Nine Lessons and Carols, the Prologue of John’s Gospel. The Prologue is one of the most philosophical and affective passages in all of the traditions of literature, philosophy, and religion. “In the beginning was the Word … and the Word was made flesh”. What follows is sometimes known as “the record of John”. The questions of Advent reach a kind of crescendo in the questions that are put to John the Baptist. Traditionally read on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, the questions “who art thou?” asked about John the Baptist are answered by John’s witness to Christ. “What do you say about yourself?” he is asked to which he says “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord.” In other words, he points away from himself and points us to Christ. “Behold,” he says, “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”
It is a powerful image that signifies the hope of redemption, of healing and salvation through sacrifice and commitment especially in times of darkness and uncertainty. At every Chapel service, we are led in and out of the Chapel by the crucifer who carries the Cross on which is the symbol of Christ the Lamb of God. A visible word that arrests our attention, perhaps, and counters all the distractions of ourselves. Like the words of the Advent Service of Nine Lessons and Carols, and like “the record of John”, it serves to collect our thoughts and to signal something of the true nature of a school as a place of purposeful leisure. At the very least, we can begin to think again what belongs to a proper understanding of leisure, and to reclaim what it means to be a school.
As always, my prayer is that you will all have a restful and holy Christmas ‘reading’ break, and, as such, a time of leisure, a time to contemplate the wonders and the mysteries of life and love.
(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy