Month: November 2011

“Their sound went out into all the earth,
and their words unto the end of the world.”

Andrew is the Advent saint. Sometimes his feast day anticipates Advent and at other times, it falls within the first week of Advent, as it does this year. In either case, he begins the cycle of the Church’s commemoration of the Saints throughout the course of the year. And, as always, there is something rich and significant about beginnings.

Andrew is recognized as the patron saint of Scotland and, therefore, of New Scotland, Nova Scotia, as well. Scotland, not to mention Nova Scotia, is a long ways from the land of the New Testament, a long ways from the setting of the story of the calling of the brothers Simon Peter and Andrew, and the brothers Zebedee, James and John, a long ways from the sea of Galilee. It reminds us of the missionary impulse of the Christian faith. Which is not to say that Andrew ever laid eyes on either!

Yet, the spiritual point is clear. Those who follow Jesus become the ones who proclaim Jesus and make him known even “unto the ends of the world.” For much of the first millennium or more, Scotland must often to have seemed to be the very end of the world. Perhaps, too, the same might be said of Nova Scotia. And yet, the word has gone forth on the wings of the saints and carried forward by their witness to Jesus Christ. Critical to that witness, as the readings on this feast day reminds us, is the Scripture. The Feast of Andrew belongs to that pageant of Word and Song which is part and parcel of the Advent of Christ.

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“This man came to Jesus by night”

It is a most intriguing scene. Nicodemus, a learned Pharisee, “a teacher of Israel,” comes to Jesus by night. He is perplexed about who Jesus is. He calls him “Rabbi,” and says that Jesus is “a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do, unless God is with him.” There is something compelling about Jesus, about what he does and what he says. And yet, there is something mysterious and perplexing.

At this point in John’s Gospel, there has been really only “the first of the signs which Jesus did,” namely, the miracle at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee, the turning of the water into wine. That story is followed by John’s account of the cleansing of the temple which we also heard this morning from Matthew’s Gospel. In John’s Gospel, the story of the cleansing of the temple leads to a discourse about the temple, about its “being destroyed and raised in three days,” meaning, as John says, “the temple of his body,” a reference to the death and resurrection of Christ. John tells us that “many believed in his name when they saw the signs which he did.” It is in that context that Nicodemus then comes to him by night.

The dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus is all about the light in the darkness, the light of God’s truth and the darkness of human hearts. The light, as John makes clear, is judgment, too. “The light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” Yet in the darkness Jesus confronts Nicodemus with the idea of being “born anew,” being born from above, being born upwards into the light of God coming towards us in Jesus. What he is talking about are “heavenly things.” They belong to the challenge of Revelation. Spiritual and heavenly things are made known to us in the pageant of God’s Word and Son. The light of God comes down to lift us up into the light of divine understanding.

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“Then Jesus turned”

Advent Sunday marks a time of renewal, a time of endings and beginnings. There is the Christian tradition of reflecting in the season of Advent on the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Hell and Heaven. And there is the idea of God’s coming to us in Jesus Christ, which marks the beginning of a new year of grace. The great Advent Collect or prayer captures both these sensibilities: Jesus’ coming , ”visit[ing] us in [the] great humility” of his humble birth in Bethlehem; and Jesus’ “com[ing] again in his glorious Majesty” as Judge and Redeemer.

These endings and beginnings all turn upon one thing: our life in Christ. “Come and see,” Jesus says in the first chapter of John’s Gospel, as part of the dialogue of question and answer with two of the disciples of John the Baptist who, as it turns out, are about to make a transition and become the disciples of Jesus. “What do you seek?” Jesus has asked them, having turned to them as they were following him after hearing John the Baptist’s remarkable pronouncement about Jesus as “the Lamb of God.” They had replied, oddly it may seem with another question, “Rabbi – Master, where dwellest thou?”

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“The night is far spent”

For centuries upon centuries upon centuries the Gospel story read on the First Sunday in Advent was from the 21^st chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel ending with “this is Jesus the Prophet of Nazareth of Galilee.” In the 16^th century, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the principle architect of The Book of Common Prayer, added to the reading the scene that follows in Matthew’s Gospel, the scene of Christ’s cleansing of the Temple. It makes for a most compelling beginning to the Advent season.

We are presented with a wonderful contrast between the joy and delight of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem and the disturbing encounter with what he finds in the heart of the holy city, in the Temple. The spiritual lesson is very clear. It is about light and darkness, the light of Christ’s coming, on the one hand, the darkness of our hearts and souls, on the other hand. We are called to be the temples of the God’s Holy Spirit; instead, we are the thieves of his grace and mercy, preoccupied with our own affairs and neglectful of the things and places of God. Christ comes as the light that shines in the darkness and “the darkness overcame it not.” In other words, the light is greater than the darkness, the power of the good greater than the folly of evil.

This does not lessen the reality of sin and evil. Christ’s advent is divine judgment. His coming is the grace that restores us to what we are called to be. It means that the darkness within each of us, the darkness of sin and evil, has to be named and overcome, just like the “over[throwing] of the tables of the money-changers and the seats of them that sold doves.”

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“The night is far spent”

For a millennium or more the Gospel story on the First Sunday in Advent was a reading from the 21^st chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel ending with “this is Jesus the Prophet of Nazareth of Galilee.” In the 16^th century, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the principle architect of The Book of Common Prayer, added to the reading the scene that follows in Matthew’s Gospel, Christ’s cleansing of the Temple. It makes for a most compelling beginning to the Advent season.

We are presented with a wonderful contrast between the joy and delight of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem and the disturbing encounter with what he finds in the heart of the holy city, in the Temple. The spiritual lesson is very clear. It is about light and darkness, the light of Christ’s coming, on the one hand, the darkness of our hearts and souls, on the other hand. We are called to be the temples of the God’s Holy Spirit; instead we are the thieves of his grace and mercy, preoccupied in our own affairs and neglectful of the things and places of God. Christ comes as the light that shines in the darkness and the darkness overcame it not. In other words, the light is greater than the darkness, the power of the good greater than the folly of evil.

(more…)

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