Year: 2018

This year’s Lenten Quiet Day was cancelled due to poor weather conditions, but Fr. David Curry has compiled the addresses he was to deliver into a pdf document, which can be downloaded by clicking on the cover posted below.

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`“Ye know not what ye ask.”

The Litany is quite a work-out, a spiritual work-out, we might say. In a way, it is about learning what to ask for and about what prayer itself means and looks like. It belongs to our life with God in Christ. “Prayer signals all the service that ever we do unto God”, as Richard Hooker notes. “Teaching bringeth us to know that God is our supreme truth; so prayer testifieth that we acknowledge him our sovereign good.”

This brings out an important point. Our good – our blessedness – does not lie simply or primarily in our knowing that we know God, a kind of self-consciousness, as it were, but rather in God himself. Prayer then is more than a self-reflective exercise; it is about “acknowledg[ing] him [as] our sovereign good.” That is the point of the Litany. It is grounded in God and grounds the whole of our life in God and with God. It is, to be sure, a kind of intellection, an activity of the understanding in which all the various aspects of human life are gathered to God in prayer. There is in the Litany a going out from God, revealed as Trinity scripturally and credally, and a return to God in and through the sequence of intercessions “for all sorts and conditions” of our humanity.

Our praying the Litany this morning complements the Epistle and Gospel readings. The Epistle from Hebrews is a tour-de-force of theological thinking about the mediatorial role of Christ. He is, to use the later and necessary theological language, both God and man, who in his pure and true humanity effects human redemption from sin and death. “By his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.” Such is the nature of his being “the Mediator of the new covenant.” What is that new covenant? Our life in God and with God in Christ as no longer defined by sin and sorrow, by death and despair. How is it accomplished? “By means of death,” by means of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.

And yet this is something which we see “but in a glass darkly.” Its full meaning and truth are veiled and hid from our eyes. We know it, of course, at least partially. The cross is veiled before us, but we know it is there. The point is that we don’t really feel its meaning deeply enough. And that has to do with us, with the state of our souls, with the nature of our self-awareness or lack thereof. We both know and do not know ourselves.

But we think we do. We think we know what we want. We think we know what is best for our children and for one another. That is what makes today’s Gospel so challenging and so compelling. It simply points out that we really don’t know completely and fully what is good for ourselves and for one another. In a way, the Gospel challenges and counters our ambitions, our desires for what we think is the good for us and for one another. We are very much like “the mother of Zebedee’s children,” who seeks prestige and prominence for her two sons, James and John; in short, power and position “in thy kingdom.” In such a request we understand a very common desire and one which drives so much of our world. ‘Look at me, looking at you, looking at me’ is one way of capturing the narcissism of the contemporary world and a feature of the selfie culture. We want power and prestige; ‘like me on Facebook! On Snapchat! On Instagram!’

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“For he himself knew what he would do.”

This powerful Gospel story speaks profoundly to the nature of the Christian pilgrimage of faith. We are, to be sure, in the wilderness of modernity, but wilderness itself is such a significant image about sin and alienation. It is in the wilderness of our lives and experiences that we may learn the greater goodness of God. In the wilderness of our own insufficiency and incompleteness, we learn about God’s Providence and his provision for us.

God, and God alone, makes something out of nothing. God, and God alone, makes something great and wonderful out of such meagre provisions as “five barley-loaves, and two small fishes.” As Andrew says to Jesus, “what are they among so many?” We confront the radical insufficiency of our humanity considered in itself. On the one hand, this challenges the hubris and presumption of our technocratic culture in the idea that we can endlessly manipulate and dominate nature for ourselves without consequences for either ourselves or nature; on the other hand, this confirms our deepest uncertainties and fears precisely about our humanity and our domination of the world and ourselves which leads to a kind of paralyzing pessimism, to our dread and despair. This powerful story counters both our presumption and our despair.

In a way, this is the point of the story in John’s account of the miraculous feeding of the multitude in the wilderness, a Gospel story which along with the Epistle gives rise to the wonderful ways in which this Sunday is known as Mothering Sunday, Refreshment Sunday, and Laetare Sunday, the latter indicating the idea of rejoicing drawn from the introit anthem marking the mid-point of Lent which was Thursday past. None of these designations make much sense apart from these readings. It is also underscores the important point about rejoicing even in the midst of suffering which has been an emphasis in our Lenten Programme on The Comfortable Words and the Literature of Consolation.

Jesus asks Philip about the great company “whence shall we buy bread that these may eat? (And this he said to prove him”, John suggests, adding “for he himself knew what he would do.)” John’s parenthetical remark opens us out to the radical meaning of God in Christ and Christ in us. It is about what he wants for us.

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