Christ Church

“God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ”

Today’s Epistle from Galatians complements Holy Cross Day which is tomorrow, September 14th. The Major Feast days in the Church Calendar are known as “Red Letter Days” because in the manuscript tradition they were highlighted in red, rubro in Latin, from which we also get the idea of rubrics or directions in the Prayer Book. Ironically they are printed in the Prayer Book Calendar in bold black letters! The Major Holy Days highlight important moments in the life of Christ and the Apostles and others named in the New Testament Scriptures.

There are also a number of Minor Feast days or “Black Letter Days” that commemorate events or people in the history of the Church. Holy Cross is a Minor feast day, associated with an historic event, the so-called “discovery of the Cross” of Christ’s crucifixion by the Empress Helena in the fourth century, originally commemorated on May 3rd as The Invention of the Holy Cross, meaning discovery, and then as The Exaltation of the Holy Cross on September 14th in the basilica in Jerusalem. Both feasts were known in Saxon times as Roodmas-day; Rood means cross in Old English. Both feasts were restored in the calendar of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the mother-prayer book of what has come to be known as the Anglican Communion.

These titles belong to Holy Cross Day, September 14th. It also serves as a marker for an ancient sensibility about the natural seasons of the year in relation to the Sanctorale, the cycle of Saints’ days within the structure of the Church Year. The Autumn Ember Days occur on the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after Holy Cross Day. In the Canadian BCP, a Collect for Holy Cross Day (BCP, p. 321) is appointed along with a permissive rubric about using the Epistle and Gospel of Passion Sunday. A nice provision, it underscores the interrelationship of justification, sanctification, and glorification through the centrality of the Cross. All these considerations speak to the theological significance of the Cross in the life of the Christian Church as today’s Epistle indicates. Along with the awareness of the patterns of the seasons of nature, the Ember Days highlight the ordained ministry of the Church, directing that the Pentecost Ember Day propers about the divers Orders in the Church be always used first in the other Ember seasons.

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“There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger”

Ten lepers, standing afar off on the outskirts of a certain unnamed village in the lands of Samaria and Galilee, cry out to Jesus for mercy. All ten were healed. Yet one turned back, Luke tells us, “glorifying God, giving him thanks,” and, indeed, in an extravagant manner, crying “with a loud voice and falling down on his face at his feet.” As Luke simply says, “he was a Samaritan.”

Jesus calls attention to the paradox of the one and the many. Ten were healed. But “where are the nine? There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger.” The Samaritan here as in last Sunday’s Gospel in the parable of the Good Samaritan is the stranger, the other, yet the one who shows us what it means to be human. In both cases, the Samaritan, the stranger, the other, really symbolizes what belongs to the truth of our common humanity, and in two ways: first, our being healed and restored by divine compassion in the care of one another, (such is “music at midnight” as we considered last week), and, secondly, in turning back, giving glory and thanks to God in whom all our good and the good of one another is found.

Giving thanks for healing and care and giving glory to God go together. The act of receiving and giving reveals the nature of salvation. If the “certain lawyer” learns in spite of himself who is the neighbour in the parable, so here in today’s Gospel, we learn that the love of God and the love of neighbour not only belong together as the fulfilling of the law in love, but as the very meaning of our being made whole and restored; in short, salvation. Jesus says directly to the stranger, “Arise, go thy way, thy faith hath made thee whole.” He is not simply healed of the contagion of leprosy, a bodily condition, which separates him from the human community, he is made whole or saved in terms of his whole person, his essential humanity. The terms are synonymous: Salvation is our wholeness both in body and soul as restored to the community of God in faith, hope, and love.

In returning and giving thanks we are made whole. Yet returning and giving thanks to God in Christ was not actually commanded by Jesus. All he said to the ten was “Go, and show yourselves unto the priests.” This references the customs and practices of Israel in the Jewish religion. Implicit in his directive is that they could only show themselves to the priests of Israel if they were no longer outcasts and defiled by their contagion of leprosy; in short, only if they were healed. In Luke’s wonderful economy of expression, “it came to pass, that as they went, they were healed.” All ten were healed.

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