by CCW | 18 November 2012 15:35
The Christian year runs out in wisdom and repentance. Both are the occasions of joy, joy tinged no doubt with sorrow, and yet a joy that is greater because of the knowledge of sorrow and pain, of sin and folly.
Ecclesiasticus[1] or The Book of the Wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach belongs to the Apocrypha, to a collection of books written between the time of the Hebrew Scriptures, what Christians call the Old Testament, and the explicitly Christian Scriptures, the New Testament. In many of your bibles – at home and in the market place – you will not find these books. There is a story to that, to be sure. For some protestant Christians these books are anathema – forbidden and denied a voice in the life of the church. So why are you hearing from one of these books this morning?
Because of an ancient understanding that is part and parcel of a clearly defined Anglican approach to the Scriptures. Let me repeat that. A clearly defined Anglican understanding of the Scriptures. We read these books as having a special but distinct place within the overall approach to the understanding of the Christian Faith. Article Six of The Thirty-nine Articles[2] – one of the major expressions of doctrinal authority for Anglicans (along with The Book of Common Prayer and The Ordinal, meaning the liturgy for the ordination of priests, deacons and bishops) – states clearly, unambiguously, and in a wonderfully Anglican way, minimally, that is to say, saying only as much as needs to be said and not a jot more, that “following Ierome,” meaning Jerome, the great translator of the Hebrew and the Greek Bibles into Latin, thus shaping the culture of medieval and early modern Europe more than anyone else, these books are to be read “for example of life and instruction of manners: but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine.”
They are not independent sources of doctrine, that is to say, the basis for the essentials of the Faith, and, yet, they clearly relate to the living out of our Faith and to the deepening of our knowledge and understanding of what the Faith is which Christians profess and believe. Indeed, without the books of the Apocrypha we would be hard pressed to be able to give a coherent account of a number of things which Jesus says and be able to understand almost nothing of the context in which he says them. Here are books which contribute precisely to the context, explicitly named in Luke’s Gospel[3], of the parable of the lost sheep and the lost coin, themselves the prelude to the greatest parable of human redemption imaginable, the parable of the so-called prodigal son. The context is the animosity of the Pharisees and the Scribes who murmured against Jesus saying, “this man receiveth sinners and eateth with them.”
The Pharisees and the Scribes arise out of the culture of the books of wisdom contained in the Apocrypha which are loosely based on The Book of Proverbs. Somehow collections of wise, paradoxical, and often provocative sayings have become the preserve and the field of contrast between two conflicting groups within late Judaism, the very groups against whose teaching Jesus contends, counters, and completes. This is the setting for a series of three powerful parables about human redemption; the first two of which comprise our second lesson this morning.
The parable is not about a simple repudiation – a rejection – as if to say, you are wrong and I am right. This is not the American presidential election, now blessedly over with! No. This is about wisdom, about repentance and about the rejoicing that arises from both.
Ecclesiasticus belongs to a genre of literature known as wisdom literature. It echoes Proverbs, a book in the Hebrew Scriptures which appears to be a collection of wise, though at times perplexing and confusing statements. Ecclesiasticus, alone of the Apocryphal books, has a named author, Jesus ben Sirach. It has a prologue written by his grandson who translated it into Greek from the original Hebrew which has been largely lost to us, though there are medieval remnants more recently confirmed by the finds of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1950s. The threads and strands of ancient wisdom weave and interweave their way into our minds with great finesse and subtlety, it seems to me.
“Remember” is the key word in this passage[4]. At once a reminder of the sobering realities of human experience, it nonetheless calls forth in us a certain attitude which can only be accounted for upon the basis of a deep and profound insight into the nature and will of God. In this sense it complements the Gospel story. “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost … the coin which I lost.” And after those two parables comes the third and greatest of the three, the parable of the lost son or sons, the so-called parable of the prodigal son. The sense of rejoicing in the finding or the return of what was lost is heightened and intensified by the realization of human sin and folly. It does not seem too much to say that “we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep” and all because “we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.”
Here in Ecclesiasticus, the moral wisdom that is set before us concerns those inward attitudes and dispositions of mind that beset us, perhaps some more than others. What are they? Anger and wrath, not being merciful, holding grudges and being at enmity with others, being angry with your neighbour. Against these there is the greater wisdom of the eternal truth of God expressed in the law and the commandments. “Remember the end of your life,” Jesu ben Sirach advises, echoing the ancient teaching, “respice ad finem,” look to the end. But what kind of an end? Destruction and death? The lesson reminds us of those realities but they are precisely the result of anger and wrath. In the later moral traditions, what is identified here as anger and wrath will be numbered among the seven deadly sins; death and destruction indeed. Against these stand the commandments as rooted in the Covenant of the Most High.
Covenant. The year runs out in the remembrance of God’s redeeming love expressed wonderfully in the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin. For they show us the meaning of the Covenant of the Most High. It is about God’s commitment to his creation and especially to our humanity even in our waywardness. God is likened to the shepherd who seeks out the lost sheep until he finds it and carries it home on his shoulders. God is likened to the woman diligently sweeping her house until she finds the one lost coin. These are powerful images about the God who cares. Such care not only comforts us but strengthens us in our commitments and care for one another. All in the remembrance of the Covenant of the Most High, in the wisdom of the God who redeems our humanity.
Fr. David Curry
Trinity XXIV
Morning Prayer
November 18th, 2012
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2012/11/18/sermon-for-the-twenty-fourth-sunday-after-trinity-1030am-service/
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