Month: November 2016

What saith the Scripture?

St. Andrew is the first saint of the Church year, the Advent saint, really, since his feast day almost invariably falls within or near the season of Advent. The readings for The Feast of St. Andrew complement the advent theme of the coming of God towards us in Word and, ultimately, in the Word made flesh. The theme of revelation is a critical aspect of Advent. Scripture is the crucial vehicle of the revelation of God towards us as Paul’s vibrant passage from Romans makes so abundantly clear.

What do the Scriptures say? The question is in part rhetorical. Paul has in mind the grand pageant of the Torah, the Jewish Scriptures, at once in their limited sense and in a more expanded sense. In other words, the Torah refers both to the first five books of Moses, the Pentateuch or five scrolls, but extends as well to the whole of the Hebrew writings, just as the word Gospel refers immediately to the writings of the four evangelists but extends its range of meaning to the New Testament and even to the whole of the Bible which for Christians means the Old and the New Testament, not to mention a host of other writings in between, as it were. But Paul’s question is more pertinent. What do the Scriptures say?

They reveal God to us and in turn they reveal things about the truth and untruth of our humanity. The concept of revelation especially in and through the witness of the things written about God and Jesus Christ is the critical theme and idea. It is altogether about what comes from God to us and not about the imaginations of our hearts. Revelation is mediation. God’s reveals his word and truth through human agency, of course, but the point of revelation is that the content is divine. We are made only too aware of concepts which require our thinking but which are not of our own making. That is the challenge to faith and to anti-faith; in short, to atheism in almost equal regard. The very idea of revelation is about what is mediated to us and this challenges our thinking and our living. Things long ago and far away and in vastly different contexts and circumstances somehow speak to our present; our experiences and those who have gone before us are gathered up into the eternity of God. We are bidden to attend to what is universal however much it is made known through what is particular and limited.

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“Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness”

Adventus Christi. The Advent of Christ. What does it mean? It means the coming of Christ. Advent celebrates the coming of God towards us in Jesus Christ. One of the Advent questions asks “who is this?” who comes. In the coming of Christ we learn the meaning of the coming of God towards us.

The mystery of Advent is wonderfully captured in today’s readings. Paul talks about the law, explicitly referencing the Ten Commandments understood as fulfilled in love, a love which has to do with our “cast[ing] off the works of darkness” and “put[ting] on the armour of light”, even more “put[ting] on the Lord Jesus Christ”. It marks a transition, a turning from darkness to light, to our lives as lived in the light of God’s Word and Truth. The Gradual Psalm prays that God will turn us as well as “turn[ing] again and quicken[ing] us” and for what end? “That thy people may rejoice in thee.” Advent is about the turning of God towards us in Jesus Christ.

What does that mean? It means that there is at once joy and judgment, even the wrath of the angry Christ! There is joy in the triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem but, in the wisdom of Thomas Cranmer in the sixteenth century, instead of ending the passage with the response of the multitude who answer the question “Who is this?” by saying “This is Jesus the Prophet of Nazareth of Galilee,” the reading continues with the story of Christ’s “cast[ing] out all them that sold and bought in the temple”, “overthrow[ing] the tables of the money changers”, and berating all who heard him with the words: “It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.” The contrast could not be greater between the joyous cries of “Hosanna to the Son of David” and Christ’s words of anger and rebuke at the betrayal and misuse of the temple, the house of God, and the things of God. Yet that is exactly the point of the Advent.

There is joy and there is judgment. The joy is in the judgment. God cares enough to turn to us! Why? Because he seeks our turning to him. It means that we have to confront the works of darkness which stand in such stark opposition to the light of Christ. How do we begin to turn and be found in the turning of God to us?

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“Come and see”

“Compassion without holiness is moral softness”, Aelred of Rievaulx reminds us, a voice from 12^th century northern England. The church year runs out as much in compassion as in judgment. It is really the compassion of Christ that allows us to look upon our follies and our failures and not be destroyed by what we see about ourselves. The compassion of Christ encourages us to renew our love and to seek his holiness. “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people” is our prayer on this day which marks the transition from the end of one church year to the beginning of the next, from the end of the Trinity season to the beginning of Advent.

It doesn’t mean that there is no judgment, rather it qualifies what the judgment is about. Judgment belongs to the love of God – to the love which is God and the love which comes from God. Judgment is God’s love of his own righteousness for the sake of which he seeks our good. Our good – what is good and meaningful for us – can only be found in his will. God’s will for us is what is right for us. What is right for us belongs to what God wants for us. The theme of judgment is ever before us because our lives always stand under what God wants for us. Ultimately that is the greatest compassion.

What God wants for us always contrasts with where we are and what we do. There is the judgment that we are sinners precisely because we do not measure up to God’s will and purpose for us. To be sure. We do not, if we are honest, measure up to what we would like to be about ourselves. We are not right with ourselves because we are not right with God. The problem is not with what God wants for us but with our failure to be faithful and obedient to his Word. What God wants for us, after all, is not a mystery hidden from view; it is revealed. In other words, if judgment is the sole principle of reality, then we all stand condemned, hopelessly and utterly unable to be right with God.

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