Year: 2022

“Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God”

Perhaps you recognise this text, or perhaps not! Most of you enter Christ Church through the ramp entrance at the back though all of you, at some time or another, have entered through the main door into the narthex of the Church. And just perhaps (and not without a wee bit of irony), you may have looked up and noted the inscription above the second doors leading into Church itself. “ Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God.” You may not have noticed them, of course, because you may have been looking down rather than up!

But here we have yet another example of the dangers of being too literal. The text is taken from the most philosophical of all of the books of the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament, Ecclesiastes (5.1). What it means, I think, is fairly clear, especially because of the continuation of the passage: “be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools.” What it means is to enter into this holy place and this holy service intentionally and thoughtfully; in short, being attentive to the purpose of place and event. Okay, you might think. That’s interesting but what does it have to do with today’s readings, particularly this rather challenging Gospel story about the unrighteous steward? Or is this just a way of avoiding these readings?!

Well, no. The text complements, I think, these readings. Paul would not “that ye should be ignorant” and goes on to speak about what we should know and do, themes captured in the Collect. It is very much akin to what we have in the Gospel where the unrighteous steward having been called to account by his master and who is being fired, undertakes certain actions which are certainly unjust with respect to his master’s property, essentially defrauding him after having dissipated or wasted his master’s goods; and yet, he is praised by his master. Why? Not because of his unrighteousness but “because he acted with prudence.”

This is the key insight of the parable. Jesus uses the example of the unrighteous steward to point out a lack of wisdom or prudence in us; “for the children of this age are in their generation more prudent than the children of light.” Prudence is what matters. Prudence is practical wisdom, “deliberating rightly about what is good and advantageous for himself,” Aristotle says, though not in particular or merely physical respects such as “health and strength,” but in relation to “what is conducive to the good life generally”.

Jesus is telling us that we need to be more attentive and prudent with respect to the ultimate end or purpose of our lives, which is our life as ordered to God which means using the things of the world in relation to our end with God. Thus the Epistle reading ends on an explicitly sacramental note: “the cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?” This sacramental understanding is about how the things of the world are transformed into the vehicles of grace. We are meant to be prudent with respect to our life in Christ.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds” (Rom. 12.2)

“How came we ashore,” Miranda asks her father, Prospero, in Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest. Prospero replies, “by Providence divine.” It is a wonderful insight into the nature of our lives under the grace of God. He has just been explaining to Miranda how he was once the Duke of Milan and is about to tell her how they ended up on the far off “Bermoothes,” Bermuda. “What foul play had we that we came from thence? Or blessèd was’t we did?” she asks. “Both, both” he says, “by foul play … but blessedly [helped] hither.” And while he goes on to tell her about how he was betrayed by his brother, Antonio, who conspired with Alonzo the King of Naples to overthrow Prospero and seize his dukedom, he confesses his own failings, “having neglected worldly ends,” the duties of his office, which, he admits, “awakened an evil nature” in his brother.

Yesterday was the great summer feast of the Transfiguration of Christ. It is at once a divine vision and testimony to who Christ is in his essential divinity and who he is for us. There is something seen and something heard. A kind of epiphany of the Trinity in the voice of the Father, in the Son transfigured, and in the cloud of God’s spirit, it also points to our transformation, to the nature of our participation in the things of God, “that we being purified and strengthened by thy grace may be transformed into his likeness from glory to glory” (BCP, p. 289). How? By the words of the Father speaking out of the cloud about the Son transfigured before the inner circle of the disciples: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: Hear ye him.” Will we have the ears to hear, the eyes to see, the hearts and minds to know and love and to act upon what we are given to see and hear, to know and love? This is the challenge and question of today’s readings.

The Tempest, too, explores the theme of our humanity transformed by grace, as Ariel’s song puts it, “a sea change into something rich and strange.” How? In part through suffering and by being called to account but all under the theme of Providence which, as Lady Philosophy notes in Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, “produces … a remarkable wonder, that evil men make evil men good.” God alone, Augustine notes, makes good out of our evil.

The play begins with a tempest conjured up by the magic of Prospero, itself a form of natural philosophy with the idea of our having a power over nature. By a kind of coincidence, the conjunction of various causes, all of Prospero’s enemies have now come within his reach. They had cast him out of Milan with Miranda and put them on a raft which somehow – such is the wonder of fiction, never mind that Milan is inland and not a port city – traversed the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. But what do we do with our enemies when they are in our hands? It was Abraham Lincoln, I think, who said that to test a man’s character, don’t make him suffer, give him power. What do we do when we have power over those who have injured us?

(more…)

Print this entry