Christ Church

This is the third of four Lenten meditations on Leviticus. The first is posted here and the second is posted here.

“You shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy”

The Holiness Code of Leviticus (ch. 17-26) is particularly significant since it sets before us the conditions of holiness – not just of being set apart but of wholeness – which is to be found in terms of our relation to God and his grace moving in us. The Holiness Code is repeatedly punctuated by recurring refrains about God as the I AM, the principle of our liberation and sanctification. That important spiritual idea is complemented by the ethical demands which belong to that sense of our identity with God.

In other words, holiness is necessarily connected to our identity with God which, in the Christian understanding, is about our identity and life together in the body of Christ. It is not accidental, then, that the second half of the Summary of the Law is based on Leviticus where the principle of loving your neighbour as yourself is first expressed (Lev. 19.18) and then later joined to the Deuteronomic principle of loving God. Love of God and love of neighbour belong together. If nothing else, the Christian understanding simply intensifies that way of thinking and acting.

As such, the ethical demands in Leviticus are grounded in the identity of God who identifies himself to us as the fruition and perfection of our humanity. In these chapters which seem to be forbiddingly particular and restricted to the limits of a tribal culture, we see the aspects of something more universal: an ethical understanding about the stranger in our midst, about the sabbath of the land, about the concept of jubilee, and about how one deals with the inequalities of wealth. Though Leviticus seems to point to older tribal forms of identity, the text makes clear that it also points forward to ‘the gestalt of the spirit,’ to our openness to the grandeur and grace of God; in short, to our wholeness as holiness in Christ.

This does not take away from some of the troubling forms of worship in its injunctions and prohibitions that we find in Leviticus. There is a rigour to the Holiness Code precisely about the holiness of God and thus about any disdain and dismissal of God’s holiness. The latter constitutes a form of blasphemy not just from within Israel but for all of humanity. The penalty is severe – being put to death for blasphemy whether one is of Israel or not! This challenges our contemporary viewpoint which, since it sees all religious conviction as essentially a personal matter, cannot help but regard the idea of blasphemy resulting in death as something utterly abhorrent and inhuman, primitive and barbaric. Yet the point in Leviticus is, I think, fairly clear. We only live when we are alive to God and his word. Those who do not are ‘the already dead,’ we might say, dead to God and to his word as Law. Like the deaths of Aaron’s own sons in Leviticus because of their presumption about ritual – namely, acting independently of the order, as it were – the stoning of the blasphemers, both Jew and non-Jew, is about their presumption in the denial of God, effectively making themselves God, but violating the conditions of life itself.

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The collect for today, the commemoration of John Keble (1792-1866), Priest, Tractarian, Poet (source):

Father of the eternal Word,
in whose encompassing love
all things in peace and order move:
grant that, as thy servant John Keble
adored thee in all creation,
so we may have a humble heart of love
for the mysteries of thy Church
and know thy love to be new every morning,
in Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: Romans 12:9-21
The Gospel: St Matthew 5:1-12

John Keble’s Assize Sermon entitled “National Apostasy“, delivered at Oxford on 14 July 1833, is regarded as the beginning of the renewal movement known as the Oxford Movement or Tractarian Movement. In that sermon, preached at the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Rev. Keble condemned the growth of liberalism in the Church of England and took the nation to task for turning away from God and ignoring the prophetic calling of the church. The sermon caused a sensation across Britain.

Between 1833 and 1841, Rev. Keble, John Henry Newman, Edward Bouverie Pusey, and others issued a series of 90 pamphlets called Tracts For The Times (hence Tractarian Movement), in which they presented their views on ecclesiology and theology. Tractarianism emphasised the importance of the ministry and the sacraments as God-given ordinances and ultimately developed into Anglo-Catholicism, which has been highly influential in the Anglican Communion as well as other Christian traditions.

Keble College, Oxford, was founded in his memory in 1870. The College was designed by William Butterfield, a leading exponent of Victorian Gothic who had been raised in a Nonconformist family but later became a convinced High-Church Anglican. He and other architects influenced by the Oxford Movement looked to medieval cathedrals for inspiration and designed churches full of colour as a celebration of God’s creation. The walls of Keble College Chapel are lined with brilliant mosaics showing scenes from the Old Testament and the life of Christ, and patristic and medieval saints. Some see Keble College and Chapel as the high point of Butterfield’s architectural achievements.

John Keble’s page at Hymnary.org lists dozens of hymns. Some of Rev. Keble’s writings, including “National Apostasy” and seven Tracts For The Times, are posted here. All of the tracts are posted here.

Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Fourth Sunday in Lent.

“Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost”

It should be the mantra for our divided and fragmented world in the attempt to reclaim the spiritual and intellectual principles that give meaning to human life. We are in the wilderness in a flight from the world, a flight from reality; the very opposite of the wilderness of Exodus and of Lent. For we are scattered in the confusions of our minds, scattered in the pride of the imaginations of our hearts, as Mary’s Magnificat suggests.

This Sunday looks back to the Exodus and to the other Sundays in Lent and looks ahead to Holy Week and Easter. It is simply about what is learned in the wilderness journey, our journey to God and with God as the principle of all reality. The Exodus was about a journey from slavery into freedom. What enslaves us is more than something external, more than the restraints and limits that belong to the natural world and to human life. The deeper forms of enslavement have to do with the realities of sin which are about a denial of God and of the goodness of creation. The modern gnostic flight from reality sees the world as something fearful and evil yet assumes a human freedom from the world through the fantasies and illusions of our control over nature; a flight into a technological future away from the limits of the world. It is no longer God’s world to be engaged respectfully and with care. It is an evil from which we assume we can escape. The movie ‘Interstellar’ is, perhaps, one illustration of this theme – a flight from an earth which we have made inhabitable to other planets but with the realization, perhaps, that the one thing we cannot escape is ourselves.

Lent is about facing the reality of ourselves. The good news, paradoxical as it may seem, is the knowledge that we are all sinners. Good news?! Indeed, because we can only know ourselves as sinners through the realization of what is prior to our sins and follies, namely, our own created being and our place within the created order.

Lent began on Ash Wednesday with the imposition of ashes signaling the acknowledgement of ourselves as sinners. Turning to God in repentance, however, is not an act of human pride and ascetic accomplishment; in other words, a work of man. It is our response to the grace of God moving in us in the deepening awareness of ourselves as sinners. It belongs, in other words, to that twofold sense of freedom from what enslaves us and our freedom to God; “to decline from sin, and incline to virtue,” as The Penitential Service rather beautifully puts it, “that we may walk with a perfect heart before thee, now and evermore” (BCP, p, 614). Such a movement is about our being gathered to God.

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Tuesday, March 29th, Commemoration of John Keble
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme III

Sunday, April 3rd, Fifth Sunday in Lent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Event:

Tuesday, April 5th
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme IV

Services to be held in the Parish Hall, January through April 5th. Return to the Church for Holy Week & Easter.

The collect for today, the Fourth Sunday in Lent, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

GRANT, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that we, who for our evil deeds do worthily deserve to be punished, by the comfort of thy grace may mercifully be relieved; through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Epistle: Galatians 4:26-5:1
The Gospel: St. John 6:5-14

Artwork: Jacob de Wet the Elder, Multiplication of the Loaves and Fish, c. 1650. Oil on canvas, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

The collect for today, The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canada, 1962):

WE beseech thee, O Lord, pour thy grace into our hearts; that, as we have known the incarnation of thy Son Jesus Christ by the message of an angel, so by his cross and passion we may be brought unto the glory of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Isaiah 7:10-15
The Gospel: St. Luke 1:26-38

Artwork: Domenico Bruschi, The Annunciation, 1886. Oil on canvas, Metropolitan Cathedral of St. Paul, Mdina, Malta.

This is the second of four Lenten meditations on Leviticus. The first is posted here.

“Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee”

This year the Annunciation falls near mid-Lent. In other years it may fall later in Lent or early in Eastertide. The conjunction between this Feast and the cycle of Lent and Easter, of the Passion and the Resurrection of Christ, however, is most significant. All of the Marian festivals are tagged to the Feasts of Christ; there is an inescapable and profound connection between Mary and Jesus. Her Annunciation marks the beginning in time of Christ’s Incarnation; the Angel’s announcement and her ‘yes’ to God mark the moment of Christ’s conception in her womb; the union of God and Man accomplished through her comes to fruition nine months hence, at Christmas in the Christian imaginary.

The story is intriguing. The Angel’s words, at once wonderful, are also troubling. The communication between God and our humanity is not one of equals. There is the profound sense of the difference, of the incomparable otherness of God, yet, at the same time as an awareness of utter dependence, there is an amazing reciprocity. Mary turns both into the highest expression of human dignity. There is a reasoning engagement, a form of holy questioning, that arises from her immediate response to Gabriel’s words. “She was troubled at this saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.” This leads to an angelic interpretation. “Fear not, Mary;” Gabriel says, “for thou hast found favour with God. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a Son, and shalt call his name JESUS” (the capitalization is crucial), and, in an allusion to Isaiah 9.6 and other prophetic passages that hint at the reign of a Messiah, “he shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest … and of his kingdom there shall be no end.”

Mary’s response is to ask Gabriel, “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” He explains that this is not simply a human matter but of God’s doings through her. “The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and power of the Highest shall overshadow thee,” images that recall the opening verses about creation in Genesis, and thus to the theme of redemption, a new creation, and a renewed relation to God. “Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” The words are suggestive; “that holy thing” is Jesus, born of Mary, who has “found favour with God,” literally, grace. The neuter gender term – holy thing (αγιον) – belongs to the sense of difference, the idea of an action which cannot be simply reduced to human processes, further explicated by the example of Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth, conceiving a son in her old age when she was already considered barren, hence, beyond the age of child-bearing. The account echoes the story of the promised son, Isaac, born to Abraham and Sarah in her old age; “for,” as Gabriel says “with God nothing shall be impossible.”

This back and forth between Mary and Gabriel highlights the idea of an active engagement between God and our humanity wonderfully expressed in Mary’s fiat mihi: “behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy Word,” words which define Christian faith precisely in terms of an active openness to God. Mary embodies the truth of our humanity considered in and of itself as pure and whole. Why? How?

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The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Benedict of Nursia (c. 480-550), Abbot of Monte Cassino, Father of Western Monasticism (source):

O eternal God,
who made Benedict a wise master
in the school of thy service,
and a guide to many called into the common life
to follow the rule of Christ:
grant that we may put thy love above all things,
and seek with joy the way of thy commandments;
through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Proverbs 2:1-9
The Gospel: St. Luke 14:27-33

Artwork: Jean Baptiste de Champaigne (attrib.), St. Benedict and St. Scholastica and Two Companions in a Landscape, between 1651 and 1681. Oil on canvas, Calke Abbey, Derbyshire, UK.

The collect for today, the commemoration of Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), Archbishop of Canterbury, Reformation Martyr (source):

Father of all mercies,
who through the work of thy servant Thomas Cranmer
didst renew the worship of thy Church
and through his death
didst reveal thy strength in human weakness:
strengthen us by thy grace so to worship thee in spirit and in truth
that we may come to the joys of thine everlasting kingdom;
through Jesus Christ, our Mediator and Advocate,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 3:9-14
The Gospel: St. John 15:20-16:1

Artwork: Thomas Cranmer, stained glass, Hensley Memorial Chapel, King’s-Edgehill School, Windsor, N.S.