Sermon for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Trinity
“They shall gather together his elect from the four winds,
from one end of heaven to the other”
It is called the Matthean Apocalypse. To some it might seem a fitting commentary on the whole spectacle of the American presidential election! Yet today’s readings belong to a deeper and more profound reflection on the end-times than what is part of our current uncertainties. It speaks of realities which go beyond the social and the political at the same time as they serve as a kind of commentary upon them.
We don’t often hear these readings. You will note that this is The Twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity and yet the readings are those of The Sixth Sunday after Epiphany. Why is that? Because the Trinity season and the Epiphany season in the order of the Church year are both variable in the number of Sundays, varying in length according to the date of Easter which is later or earlier in any given year. The Trinity season can be as long as twenty-six Sundays; Epiphany can be as short as two Sundays. Each offsets the other. But for centuries there were no readings specifically appointed for the Fifth and Sixth Sundays after Epiphany since they don’t happen every year or for the Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth Sundays after Trinity which equally occur relatively infrequently. But in the 17th century, in an important post-Cranmerian development, Bishop John Cosin of Durham, wrote two collects, following Cranmer and the older Eucharistic tradition of prayers based upon the scripture readings at Communion, and appointed epistles and gospels for the fifth and sixth Sundays after Epiphany. Intriguingly, and with great insight, these were appointed as well for the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth Sundays after Trinity. In other words, they are intentionally designed to do double duty, serving at once within the sequence of ideas in the late Epiphany season and in the late Trinity season when needed.
Well, this may seem merely academic stuff, mildly interesting, but of no real importance to your life and to the life of faith. So there has been a development and an evolution to the way the Scriptures are read in the Church. Fine. So things can change. True. And they have but in what way and upon what principles? There is a huge difference between modest, incremental developments and revolutionary developments: the one demands attention to underlying and essential principles; the other is its own principle to which everything else must submit. There is something of radical importance about these developments that challenge the revolutionary changes that have beset the Church and the culture. It is twofold. First, the whole business of the Scripture readings at the Holy Eucharist in the course of the Church year is of the greatest significance because it has entirely to do with our living in the Word of God revealed in the witness of the Scriptures; and, secondly, it recalls us to the question about what are the Scriptures. In other words, how we read and what we read are inescapably intertwined and interconnected. These are questions which have sadly been ignored.
