Month: November 2013

“But Jesus turned him about”
A Meditation on the Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity

This year the Trinity Season runs to twenty-five Sundays, just one shy of the longest it can be. Its length depends on the date of Easter. Trinity Season and the Epiphany Season push and pull one another accordingly with a variable number of Sundays for each season. If the one is short, the other is long. This year, November 10^th, is the Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity. All this is but preamble to the readings which we have on these last Sundays of Trinity because we don’t always have them every year for the reason just stated.

That brings us to an important consideration, however: the idea of an established pattern of Scripture readings. For some Christian traditions, this is anathema as being too formal and too restrictive. The irony is that if left to ministers or even parochial spiritual committees the range and choice of Scripture readings is often quite constrained and limited. At issue, too, is who chooses and upon what basis? What are the principles that determine the pattern of scripture readings called a lectionary?

One feature of the contemporary church and its confusions is the jettisoning of a very ancient tradition of reading the Scriptures embodied in the Eucharistic lectionary, the readings at Holy Communion. Not only ancient, it was also the most ecumenical lectionary, historically speaking. Developed from the fifth century onwards, it was the pattern of reading common to the Western Church throughout the medieval period and into the modern; post-reformation, mutatis mutandi, it remained the common property of Roman Catholics, Lutherans and Anglicans, for instance. This alone is suggestive and compelling. In jettisoning it, we have been left with a rather confusing array of lectionaries which all bear a common shape – three readings rather than two at Holy Communion, for instance – and which claim a kind of ecumenicity.

Despite the attempt at achieving a Common Lectionary, it hasn’t happened. But there is a further problem, the question of what are the principles that inform the pattern of readings. What are the themes and ideas that determine the choice of passages? For the older ecumenical lectionary (wonderfully present in our 1962 Canadian Book of Common Prayer, albeit with some changes to be sure), the principles are inescapably creedal. In other words, the pattern of reading relates to the Creeds, to the foundational and formative principles of the Christian Faith.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Whose is this image and superscription?”

Autumn leaves lie scattered on the wind. The glory of the Fall fades into the somber grey of November. At the risk of indulging too much in the pathetic fallacy, not to mention privileging the seasons of the northern hemisphere, there is, it seems to me, a contemplative feel to nature at this time of year. Certainly, the Scripture readings in the Offices and at the Eucharist reflect an emphasis upon wisdom. They recall us to contemplation and reflection.

I love the contrast between the fading of nature’s glory and the opening out to us of the glory of God in the Communion of Saints, the vision of our redeemed humanity. We meet within the Octave of the Feast of All Saints’ and this morning’s Epistle reading reminds us of the spiritual reality of that communion. “Our citizenship is in heaven,” Paul tells the Philippians, and bids them and us “look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change this lowly body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body”, words which are echoed in the Service of Committal in the Burial Office. Death and glory.

The Feast of All Saints’ embraces The Solemnity of All Souls’. All Souls’ reminds us of the somber reality of our common mortality but it does so within the vision of the hope of heaven, the vision of our humanity transformed. These celebrations challenge us about how we think about our humanity, about what it means to be human and about our lives in the human community, politically, economically, socially, and religiously. They challenge us about the necessity of making certain distinctions and about understanding the forms of interaction within the varied areas and aspects of our lives. “Our citizenship is in heaven” but we have certain obligations in the political and social communities of which we are inescapably a part as well. The Gospel speaks directly to the questions about their interaction.

(more…)

Print this entry