by CCW | 18 March 2015 10:00
This first of four Lenten reflections on Poets, Preachers and the Passion of Christ was originally delivered on the Feast of St. Matthias, 2015. The second reflection is posted here[1], the third here[2], and the fourth here[3].
The conjunction of The Feast of St. Matthias and the first week of Lent complements our Lenten programme. Matthias is chosen to take the place of Judas in the company of the Apostles. His feast day frequently falls within the Lenten orbit and reminds us of the interplay of the theological themes of justification and sanctification that belong to the classical Eucharistic lectionary including the propers for the Saints that expand the range of our incorporation into the life of glory.
The Epistle from Acts (Acts 1. 15-26) tells the story of his being chosen by lot and situates his election within the context of Judas’ betrayal. Lent bids us confront all our betrayals for such is the deep reality of sin but in the choosing of Matthias we also see the theme of restoration and redemption; the conquest of sin, we might say, by divine love.
Sin and love are the grand and great themes that belong to Christian meditation especially in the season of Lent. Some of the poets and preachers of our Anglican tradition help us to think about the themes of sin and love as concentrated in the Passion of Christ.
What I purpose is to consider certain poems by George Herbert and John Donne, especially, as well as some of the Lenten and Passion Sermons by Lancelot Andrewes and John Donne; all figures from the later 16th and early 17th century who contribute greatly to the praying imagination about the centrality of the Passion of Christ and its meaning for us in the pilgrimage of our souls to God and with God.
These poets and preachers all recognize the centrality of the Passion of Christ. It is not too much to say that it is a consistent and common emphasis for all of them. Donne and Andrewes are emphatic that the whole life of Christ is concentrated in the Passion.
As Donne puts it:
The whole life of Christ was a continuall Passion, his birth and his death were but a continuall Act and his Christmas-day and his Good Friday are but the evening and the morning of one and the same day.
He is echoing what Lancelot Andrewes notes in a Passion Sermon preached on March 29th, 1605.
It is well known that Christ and His cross were never parted, but that all His life long was a continuous cross. At the very cratch, His cross first began. There Herod sought to do that which Pilate did, even to end His life before it began. All His life after, saith the Apostle in the next verse was nothing but a perpetual “gainsaying of sinners,” (Heb. 12.3) which we call crossing.
Andrewes text is Hebrews 12.2. “Looking unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our faith; Who for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, and despised the shame; and is set at the right-hand of the throne of God.” He examines Luke’s word for the passion, namely, theory or sight, θεωριαν (Luke 23.48), calling attention to the spectacle of the Passion as concentrated on the Cross. The point is that Christ’s life as a continuous cross is ultimately concentrated for us in the crucifixion.
That emphasis on looking and seeing is further extended to reading in another Passion Sermon preached before the court of Queen Elizabeth on March 29th, 1597 on the text from Zechariah: “And they shall look upon Me, Whom they have pierced.” Andrewes works on the different senses of looking and piercing and applies the text imaginatively and spiritually to our looking upon the crucified and reading there the love of God for our humanity pierced by sin even as we have pierced the Son of God. “For Christ pierced on the cross is liber charitatis, ‘the very book of love’ laid open before us.”
It is a poem by George Herbert which concentrates the themes of sin and love most profoundly and connects them to our looking and knowing, locating the patterns of devotion within an intellectual and spiritual tradition of theology. The poem is entitled The Agonie and we will have more than one occasion to consider what it presents in its three stanzas.
Philosophers have measur’d mountains,
Fathom’d the depths of seas, of states, and kings,
Walk’d with a staffe to heav’n, and traced fountains:
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behove;
Yet few there are that sound them; Sinne and Love.
Sin and love are precisely the themes of Lent as concentrated in the Passion of Christ. In a way, the whole point of the Lenten Sundays and the feast days that occasionally occur within Lent is to anticipate the events of Holy Week itself, the events of the Passion. Following the insight of Andrewes and Donne, Herbert too emphasizes the Passion as present in the whole life of Christ; the Incarnation means nothing apart from its fuller meaning in the Passion. But in The Agonie he signals a contrast between the teaching of the Passion and other forms of knowing.
“Philosophers have measur’d mountains,/Fathom’d the depths of seas” he begins, describing poetically natural philosophy in its inquiries into the operations of the natural world. The verbs “measur’d” and “fathom’d” then extend beyond the study of nature to human affairs. “Philosophers have measur’d and fathom’d the depths … of states, and kings,” political philosophy, we might say. Philosophers then have “walk’d with a staff to heav’n, and traced fountains,” he says, meaning metaphysical philosophy or natural theology, the inquiry into first principles, the end and source of all reality, we might say. None of these forms of enterprise are to be derided or denied, but Herbert goes on to argue for the need of another science – not unlike Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae. A divine science, we might say, because “there are two vast, spacious things,” he says, that takes more to measure but which are required to be investigated, “the which to measure it doth more behove.” “Yet,” as he notes “few there are that sound them,” working through measuring and fathoming to sounding, all verbs of knowing. But what are those “two vast, spacious things”? “Sinne and love,” he says.
The poem goes on to argue that to sound or know “sinne and love” means to ponder the Passion. “Who would know Sinne,” the second stanza says, must “repair/ Unto Mount Olivet,” to the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night in which Christ was betrayed and to his agony of prayer in the garden. We cannot help but recall, too, the kiss of Judas, the moment of betrayal, in that garden. But what about Love? How is love to be known? The third stanza takes us to the Cross and, like Andrewes, to Christ pierced on the Cross. Following the fathers as noted by Hooker, another Anglican Divine of the late 16th century, the sacraments are symbolically signified as flowing out of the pierced side of Christ on the Cross. And so, Herbert, in taking us to the crucifixion, also signals the triumph of love that continues to feed us eucharistically. “Love,” he says, “is that liquor sweet and most divine, / Which my God feels as bloud; but I, as wine.”
Not only is the life of Christ “a continuall passion” but we participate in that passion continually through the sacramental life of the Apostolic Church as the Gospel for St. Matthias’ day reminds us. It is the last and perhaps the greatest of the seven “I am” sayings of Jesus in John’s Gospel. It presents us with the powerful image of the vine and the branches and the idea of our dwelling in the love of God. “I am the vine, and ye are the branches,” Jesus says, “abide in me”; “for without me ye can do nothing.” Such passages have an intensity and a poignancy to them that is heightened all the more by looking and measuring, and fathoming, and sounding the depths of divine love in the Passion of Christ.
The poet, George Herbert, and the preacher, Lancelot Andrewes along with John Donne, argue for our knowing the Passion through what is revealed in the witness of the Scriptures, to what is known by another science, the science of theology in which we participate in that which we behold.
The Feast of St. Matthias complements their Lenten reflections on the Passion of Christ. Andrewes’ sermon on St. Matthias’ day in Lent, preached before Queen Elizabeth at Greenwich in 1590, takes as its text the psalmist’s phrase, “Thou didst lead Thy people like sheep, by the hand of Moses and Aaron” (Ps. 77. 20), locating the choosing of Matthias within the larger Scriptural context of the Old Testament. The sermon expands upon the different qualities of leadership under the hand of divine Providence, seeing in the two hands of Moses and Aaron different but complementary powers: debita legalia, “the duties of Parliament and common law” with Moses; debita moralia, “the duties of conscience and divinity” with Aaron. While emphasizing the theological foundations of political life and the need for good order through firm and gentle leadership by Kings and Queens, Andrewes is clear that all such leadings have a spiritual end and participate in the leading of the good Shepherd.
The leading is not in infinitum – endless and indeterminate but to an end, our end in God.
It must be sicut oves (like sheep), whom the good Shepherd, in the three and twentieth Psalm, leadeth to a place, and to a place meet for them, “where there is green pasture by the waters of comfort.” So was it in this people here. They were led out of Egypt to sacrifice to God, and to learn His law in the Mount of God, Sinai; and from thence also to Sion itself, His own rest, and holy habitation. And even so our people are led from the wanderings of this world unto the folds of God’s Church, where, as the Prophet saith in the seventy-third Psalm, first God “will a while guide them with His counsel, and after will receive them into His glory.” And this is the end of all leading. To bring us all from the vain proffers of the world, which we shall all find, as Solomon found it, vanitas vanitatem et omnia vanitas (“vanity of vanities and all is vanity,” Ecclesiastes 1.2), to the sound comfort of His word in this book, which is indeed veritas veritatem et omnia veritas (truth of truth and all is truth); in the knowledge and practice whereof, when they shall have fulfilled their course here, God will bring them to His own rest, to His Heavenly Jerusalem, where is and ever shall be felicitas felicitatem et omnia felicitas (joy of joy and all is joy or happiness of happiness and all is happiness).
This last phrase echoes the end of the Gospel reading for The Feast of St. Matthias. “These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.” There is an end and a purpose to the forms of abiding in the word and love of God. It is found in and through the Passion of Christ for us and in our looking upon Christ crucified, measuring, fathoming, and sounding the depths of God’s love and the depths of human sin, those “two vast, spacious things … Sinne and Love”. “Few there are that sound them,” to be sure, but the poets and the preachers help us to read the book of love in the image of Christ crucified.
Fr. David Curry
Feast of St. Matthias (transf.)
February 25th, 2015
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