by CCW | 13 November 2016 15:00
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.
“How readest thou?” This is Jesus’ question to us. It arises in the context of a discussion with “a certain lawyer” that ultimately leads to the parable of the Good Samaritan as the illustration of the Christian understanding about the interrelation of the love of God and the love of neighbour fulfilled in the actions of “a certain Samaritan”. Symbolically and theologically, Christ is the Good Samaritan in whom those loves are only and properly realised. How do you read and how do you act are inextricably connected. A powerful viewpoint belonging to the very nature of the Christian faith.
Our actions are drawn from and reveal our understanding of Christ. Our actions and our lives stand inescapably under the judgement and mercy of God in Jesus Christ revealed in the witness of the Scriptures. In other words, everything is seen in apocalyptic terms! What?! Apocalypse now! Yes and always. This is the complementary teaching that belongs to the end of the Trinity season in the near approach to Advent and to the end of the Epiphany season in the unfolding of the fullness of God’s glory. Advent is altogether about the coming of God to us and in a variety of ways, one of which is judgment then, now, and yet to come, all of which are centered on the figure of Christ. God comes, yes, as the babe of Bethlehem, but he is the Christ of Calvary. He comes in love, to be sure. “In this was manifested” – a key Epiphany theme belonging to the mystery of Christmas – “the love of God towards us in that God sent his only begotten son into the world that we might live through him.” Indeed. But from that same First Epistle of St. John we are reminded of another feature of that coming, namely, “for this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.” The overcoming of evil.
Apocalypse actually means revelation. The whole point of the ordered pattern of the reading of the Scripture in the life of the Church is that we are enfolded and gathered into the revelation of God towards us. We live in the mystery of his coming. These readings are the beginnings of a series of wake-up calls to the radical meaning of God’s coming in Jesus Christ and to the sombre reality of judgment, ever present because God’s truth is ever present. Our challenge is to find our truth in his truth. “If it be your will”, as Leonard Cohen’s beautiful song of reflection puts it. Tentative and conditional as it is, the song captures at once the longing and the hesitancy of our contemporary world. It seems we want something but are afraid to commit, uncertain in our certainties about the world which we have made. Perhaps we are beginning to long for that will of God for us.
“If it be your will/ That I speak no more/ And my voice be still/ As it was before/ I will speak no more/ I shall abide until/ I am spoken for/ If it be your will.” But even more than this hesitancy to speak, there is the idea of a voice that is true and one which sings “from this broken hill”. “If it be your will/ That a voice be true/ From this broken hill/ I will sing to you/ From this broken hill/ All your praises they shall ring.” Forgive me for sensing in this something of the voice of the psalms, something of Mary’s response at the Annunciation, and something, too, of the story of Christ on the broken hill of Calvary. And something of what it means to be the Church. “If it be your will”.
We live in the apocalypse. That is the strong and necessary meaning of these readings. We are reminded of the themes of evil and of God’s triumph over the devil, over all evil. Our secular world may be uncomfortable about the idea of evil, intent on reducing all reality to the social, the economic, and the political, almost unaware of how our technocratic exuberance destroys nature and ourselves because that has become our god. The consequence is confusion and contradiction in myriad ways. Our Churches have become in Shakespeare’s lovely elegiac phrase, “bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.” The Scriptures themselves have become but “a heap of broken images”, to borrow a phrase from Ezekiel. We live on “a broken hill”, as Cohen puts it, but to know that is the beginning of wisdom, the beginning of redemption signalling the possibility of our “com[ing] in under the shadow of this red rock” as T. S. Eliot puts it, drawing upon Isaiah, finding in the Scriptures “a hiding place from the wind, a covert from the tempest”, “as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land” (32.1-2).
“If it be your will/ To let me sing/ If it be your will/ If there is a choice/ Let the rivers fill/ Let the hills rejoice/ Let your mercy spill/ on all…” It is a prayer and like all prayer signals something of the hopes of our humanity. Revelation is about our being gathered together under the purpose of God’s will for us. “What shall we be?” John asks in the Epistle reading and points us to a strong and powerful answer. All that we can say and all that we ever need to know is that “we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” Apocalypse – revelation – is about our being found in the living word of Christ, in his coming to us and our being gathered to him in his truth and victory over all and every evil. This is the glory of our faith. It is found in the ever-judgment and ever-mercy of God in Jesus Christ. We begin and end in him, our Alpha and our Omega, as this building itself in the beauty of its architecture constantly reminds us. We are gathered into the apocalypse, the revelation of God to us in Christ Jesus.
Fr. David Curry
Trinity XXV, 2016
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