Advent Programme 1: “Their sound went out into all the earth, and their words unto the end of the world.”
admin | 30 November 2021“Their sound went out into all the earth,
and their words unto the end of the world.”
What are we to make of the saints? Where do they fit into the picture of Christian life? And how are we to understand the various commemorations of the saints in relation to the liturgical pattern of the Christian year? These are important questions which turn upon a number of different theological and ecclesiological concerns. At issue is the relationship between justification, sanctification, and glorification. The saints belong to that sense of our humanity as having an end in glory. “The glory of God is man fully alive,” as Irenaeus puts it, a powerful and arresting thought. The saints somehow speak to that idea of being “fully alive” which is nothing more than being alive to God, the fullness of life and glory. But the saints are by definition “the holy ones”. This connects to sanctification and thus to justification since their holiness and end in glory cannot be understood apart from God in Christ and Christ in them.
In the reformed traditions, illustrated, for example, in the calendar of the Anglican Canadian Prayer Book, and in the provisions for Saints’ Days, it is the figures from the New Testament who bear the sobriquet ‘Saint’. The only exceptions are St. David of Wales, St. Patrick of Ireland, St. George of England, St. Denys of France, and in brackets, signifying its historical obscurity, St. Anne the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The exceptions bear witness to the emergence of the national states and churches in the post-medieval period and to the popular devotion to St. Anne, looking back to the Patristic period and subsequent medieval developments associated with Mary. The calendar distinguishes between what are known as “red letter days” and “black letter days”, the former commemorating New Testament figures and certain festivals of Christ such as the Transfiguration or Candlemas, at once The Presentation of Christ in the Temple and The Purification of Saint Mary the Virgin. Red letter refers to their being written in red in both manuscript and early print books.
The reformed churches draw upon two things, the general New Testament view which sees the saints as belonging to the faithful community of believers, and the idea that holiness is our Christian vocation. They accept the idea of the New Testament saints as well as the common use of the term ‘saints’ for a great number of figures that belong to the pageant of the faith down to the reformed period and beyond but without an ecclesiastical process for the canonization of later figures in the life of the Church such as was developed in Roman Catholicism. There is in this a certain reticence about the application of the sobriquet ‘saint’. In English, for instance, one never speaks of Jesus as ‘Saint Jesus’ apart from some hymns and devotions which call upon “Holy Jesus”. Instead the term ‘saint’ refers to those who in some way or another embody certain aspects of our life in Christ.
The Communion of Saints is the company of prayer and praise in which we participate and to which we belong in our prayer and praise to God, with God, and in God. In short, we are never alone in our prayers. The saints are integral to our life in the body of Christ which they embody in an exemplary manner such that we remember them as one with us in Christ. They embody the different qualities of spiritual perfection which have their fullness and unity in Christ.
But what about their days of commemoration? Is there any logic and connection between their commemorations and the pattern of justification and sanctification that belongs to the structure of the classical Eucharistic lectionary which informs the Church Year? Or are the Saints’ Days commemorations simply scattered about in some random fashion? To be sure, there is a history to the development of doctrine and devotion and thus to the appointment of certain days for the commemoration of the Saints. There have been different calendars devised by different Christian communities from time to time. But apart from local customs and practices, it seems that there is at least a certain appropriateness and an association between the red letter saints of our reformed tradition and the doctrinal themes and patterns of the seasons. I want to suggest that this is the case with St. Andrew and St. Thomas in Advent.
Andrew is the Advent saint. His feast day either immediately anticipates Advent or falls within the first week of Advent. In either case, this feast inaugurates the cycle of the Church’s commemoration of the Saints throughout the course of the year.
Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland and, therefore, of New Scotland, Nova Scotia, perhaps, in both cases because of the connection to the sea. Yet Scotland is a long way from the land of the New Testament, a long way from the setting of the story of the calling of the brothers, Andrew and Simon Peter, and James and John, a long way from the sea of Galilee. How much further away is Nova Scotia! This reminds us of the missionary impulse of the Christian faith. It doesn’t mean that Andrew ever laid eyes on either Scotland or New Scotland!
Yet, the spiritual point is clear. Those who follow Jesus become the ones who proclaim Jesus and make him known even “unto the ends of the world”, as St. Paul puts it in Romans 10.18, the Epistle for the Feast of St. Andrew, quoting Psalm 19. 4. For much of the first millennium or more, Scotland must often have seemed to be the very end of the world, a kind of ultima Thule. Perhaps, too, the same might be said of Nova Scotia! And yet, the word has gone forth on the wings of the saints and has been carried forward to us by their witness to Jesus Christ. Critical to that witness, as the readings on this feast day reminds us, is Scripture. The Feast of Andrew belongs to that pageant of Word and Song which is part and parcel of the Advent of Christ.
The Epistle reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans is a kind of mini-treatise on what we might call ‘the theology of revelation’ which complements both the Gospel reading for the Sunday Next Before Advent which in our Canadian BCP is from John 1 and focuses in part on the call of Andrew who then brings others to Christ, and on the Epistle reading, again from Romans, on the First Sunday in Advent. They both highlight the significance of the Scriptures and of preaching. The primary form of preaching is the proclamation of the Scriptures. Those that follow become those that are sent, hence, Apostles, and those who are sent preach the good news of our salvation in Jesus Christ. There is an important emphasis upon the hearing of the Word of God through the preaching, meaning the proclamation, of God’s word. Andrew proclaims what he embodies in his own life, his life as the mission of Christ through him.
Something of the majesty and the wonder of God is set before us. The word proclaimed is heard and faith comes to birth in the hearers. We encounter the mystery of God coming towards us, his Advent, precisely in and through the lives and witness of the Saints who are simply those who have gone before us with the mind of Christ. Andrew shows us the story of one, who having heard, immediately followed, “readily obeying the calling of thy Son Jesus Christ, and following him without delay” as the Collect so simply puts it. It is almost as if Andrew knows that “the night is far spent” and that “the day is at hand” as we heard on Sunday. There is a kind of directness and immediacy to his response to the Word of Christ.
Faith can only come by the hearing of the Word and by that Word taking root whether quickly or slowly in our hearts. That can only happen if the Word is proclaimed. And for that there always needs to be those who are called to preach. In a way, preaching is an image of Advent. It is entirely about what comes to us through the Word which sets us in motion and makes us “fully alive” to God. And it is entirely about hope. The hope is that others will hear and proclaim the truth and power of the God who is Lord of all and who seeks our salvation. It can only happen in our own way, to be sure, and not least by the quality of our lives.
The poet George Herbert comments profoundly on the power and the limitations of our preaching. “Lord,” he asks, in ways that capture the rhetorical force of Romans, “how can man preach thy eternall word?” To raise the question, itself a Pauline question, highlights the mystery and the wonder. For he rightly notes that man “is but a brittle crazie glasse.” And “yet in thy temple”- the Church – “thou dost him afford … To be a window, through thy grace.” To be window elides wonderfully word and image in the pursuit of understanding and mystery. The saints are the windows through which we glimpse the grace and glory of God without whom we are not “fully alive”.
What are our churches except “glorious and transcendent place[s]” (as long as they are true to their principles)? Is that not part of the mission, the purpose? Stories of the Gospel, “anneal[ed] in glasse”, the stained glass windows which are the bible for the illiterate of every age, no less for ours than for the centuries before, “mak[e] thy life to shine within/The holy preachers.” What is proclaimed has also to be lived and yet that cannot happen unless the Word is preached and heard. The true power of preaching, read proclaiming the Scriptures in the ordered life of the Church, consists in how it rings in the conscience, “For speech alone/Doth vanish like a flaring thing.” Life and doctrine, doctrine and devotion, belong together.
We give thanks tonight for the witness of St. Andrew who belongs in the company of those whose “sound went out into all the earth,/and their words unto the end of the world.” His witness is to the Advent of God’s Word and Son constantly coming to us in the proclamation of the Scriptures in the life of the Church. May we be ready and willing to follow, letting the word of Christ ring in our hearts and minds.
“Their sound went out into all the earth,
and their words unto the end of the world.”
Fr. David Curry
Feast of St. Andrew, 2021
Advent Programme I