Month: January 2011

“Why are ye so fearful?”

“From lightning and tempest; from earthquake, fire and flood; from plaque, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death, Good Lord, deliver us”. Thus prays the ancient Litany in The Book of Common Prayer. It offers a wonderful and ordered way of praying all the things that belong to prayer and that belong to our creedal identity in Christ. But do we pray it? Such petitions teach a doctrine that, I fear, we have forgotten.

In our technocratic exuberance, we sometimes think that we can control the elements. We forget that we are creatures, too, and are often subject to the brute forces of nature; we forget that nature does not simply exist for us, for our pleasures and interests. We forget that nature is affected by our disorder; in other words we find ourselves in a world of earthquake, tempest and fire, a world of woes and suffering, a world where nature, if not always “red in tooth and claw”, can be pretty foreboding and pretty threatening.

This used to be a staple of our Canadian identity, namely, the recognition of the awesome and ominous power of nature. Our literary stories are most often the stories of survival and not of conquest. The point is nicely captured in a poem by Alden Nowlan, a celebrated Canadian poet from Stanley, NS, entitled Canadian January Night, written in 1971. He was, by the way, the son of Grace Reese, a parishioner here who passed away last winter and whom I buried in Stanley.

… I, walking backwards in obedience
to the wind, am possessed
of the fearful knowledge
my compatriots share
but almost never utter:
this is a country
where a man can die
simply from being
caught outside.

(more…)

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“They have no wine”

Mary’s statement describes in a simple phrase our human predicament. We lack the means for our true joy, for our true blessedness. In the background to her remark there is an ancient Jewish saying: “without wine there is no joy”. “They have no wine” means, we may say, they have no joy. But ‘they’ are ‘us’. We have no wine, no joy.

The deeper point is that we have no joy in ourselves. We lack, we might say, the wine of divinity, the source and the occasion of all joy, the wine that truly gladdens and rejoices the heart and soul. To know our lack, however, is saving knowledge. To know our limitations is to be alert to the possibilities of their being overcome – not by us but by the grace of God for us and in us. To know our lack is to be alert to the real presence of divine grace in our midst.

In the Gospel, Mary’s simple statement is made to Christ. Her next, equally simple statement is made to the servants. Yet it extends, really, to all of us: “whatever he tells you, do it.” In between her two simple statements, there is Christ’s rather curious and seemingly dismissive remark: “O woman what is that to thee and to me? mine hour has not yet come.”

What can it mean except that the fulfilling of our needs cannot just be at the dictate of our demands? As if God were some sort of Genie let out of the bottle to do our bidding! As if everything must be done according to our will. To the contrary, it has to be according to the word and will of God, according to the purpose of his coming. In him we find the true measure of our desires. In him we find what is most to be wanted, namely, “thy will be done.” The cost of that is to be found in the meaning of his hour. His hour refers to his death and resurrection, to the miracle of all miracles, of which this miracle at Cana of Galilee is but the “beginning of signs.” The fullness of its meaning is to be found in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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“Speak the word only”

The Collect, Epistle and Gospel for each Sunday provide the interpretative framework for our understanding of the lessons at Morning and Evening Prayer. Indeed, they are at the heart of the Common Prayer tradition as embodying a creedal or doctrinal reading of Scripture. It is a good devotional practice before each service to pray and study the Collect, Epistle and Gospel for the day, regardless of whether the service is Morning Prayer or Holy Communion. They are at the heart of The Book of Common Prayer, itself the heart of Anglican Spirituality.

I want to make some remarks about the Gospel and to consider briefly this morning’s lessons in its light. The Gospel which orders our thoughts on the Third Sunday after Epiphany is the double healing of the leper and the Centurion’s servant by Jesus Christ. Epiphany season abounds in miracles. They belong to the making visible of the glory of God. A miracle, after all, is a sign of wonder. The healing miracles are a wonder. But what exactly do we see? Only the signs of the glory in the effects of what is said and done. The wonder, really, is the wonder of Christ.

Christ heals a leper and he heals the paralysed servant of the Centurion. He speaks and he acts. There is healing. The healings are within Israel and beyond Israel. “He came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near”, as Paul reminds us. Through the history and meaning of Israel, the glory of God is not only made known to the world but for the whole world, which is Paul’s point later in The Epistle to the Ephesians, namely, that “all might see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God” (Eph. 3.9). The leper is healed within the context of Israel and is held to the requirements of the Law in Israel. With the Centurion’s request, Jesus acknowledges something more: there is the wonder of faith which coming out of Israel transcends Israel. “I have not found so great faith, no not in Israel”. For both the leper and the Centurion, Christ is the wonder. There is an epiphany. In a way, too, it complements the extraordinary chapter from Isaiah which actually speaks about Cyrus, the Persian king, who though he did not “know God”, was, nonetheless, the agent and instrument of God’s restoration of Israel from captivity in Babylon to Jerusalem.

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“Speak the word only”

The Collect, Epistle and Gospel for each Sunday are at the heart of the Common Prayer tradition as embodying a creedal or doctrinal reading of Scripture. It is a good devotional practice before each service to pray and study the Collect, Epistle and Gospel for the day regardless of whether the service is Morning Prayer or Holy Communion. They are at the heart of The Book of Common Prayer, itself the heart of Anglican Spirituality.

The Gospel for today presents us with a double healing, the healing of the leper and the Centurion’s servant by Jesus Christ. Epiphany season abounds in miracles. They belong to the making visible of the glory of God. A miracle, after all, is a sign of wonder. The healing miracles are a wonder. But what exactly do we see? Only the signs of the glory in the effects of what is said and done. The wonder, really, is the wonder of Christ.

Christ heals a leper and he heals the paralysed servant of the Centurion. He speaks and he acts. There is healing. The healings are within Israel and beyond Israel. Through the history and meaning of Israel, the glory of God is not only made known to the world but for the whole world. The leper is healed within the context of Israel and is held to the requirements of the Law in Israel. With the Centurion’s request, Jesus acknowledges something more: there is the wonder of faith which coming out of Israel transcends Israel. “I have not found so great faith, no not in Israel”. For both the leper and the Centurion, Christ is the wonder. There is an epiphany.

(more…)

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