Day: November 30, 2023

KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 30 November

They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain

Isaiah is the great prophet of Advent. Advent, from the Latin, adventus, which means coming, is about the motions of God’s Word coming to us as light in the darkness of the wilderness of our hearts and world. This is concentrated for us in the great pageant of the Advent and Christmas Services of Nine Lessons and Carols. An important feature of that pageant are readings from Isaiah. This week in Chapel, one of those readings was highlighted and commented upon, Isaiah 11.1-3a, 4a, 6-9.

It provides a twofold reflection upon the Messianic King and the idea of Paradise Restored. The passage has had an enormous influence upon the theological understanding of our humanity and upon the idea of Creation as Paradise as well as contributing to the Christian understanding of the person of Jesus Christ. The idea of the Messianic King is associated with King David. “And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse,” it begins, recalling us to the family tree or lineage of King David, the King who united the unruly tribes of Israel in the worship of God centered in Jerusalem, Zion.

In Isaiah’s vision, “the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him.” The Holy Spirit of God conveys the sevenfold gifts of the Spirit upon the Messiah, the anointed one who is thought of as the saviour of the world. The gifts are spiritual principles which speak to the integrity of our humanity, to the unity of heart and mind and which are properties or qualities of the Messiah in us. The Hebrew text as we have it from a much later period than the Greek translation of it, called the Septuagint, names six gifts but the Septuagint itself speaks of the seven gifts of the Spirit.

But what are these so-called gifts, these qualities of soul that participate or share in the divine nature itself? “The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.” The Septuagint, probably out of sense of the rhetorical patterns of the Greek language, couples “piety” or devotion with knowledge and makes “the fear of the Lord” a kind of concluding principle. The fear of the Lord refers to honouring or worshipping God.

They are all intellectual and spiritual gifts which come from God and speak to heart and mind. That is significant with respect to theological anthropology, namely, how we understand our humanity in the sight of God. Critical to that theological understanding is the idea of the integration of heart and mind, suggested in the sevenfold gifts of the Spirit. That these gifts are directly associated with the Messiah signify that these gifts ultimately derive from the Word and the Spirit of God and unite us with God. In other words, these spiritual gifts are principles that come from God to us and that speak to the greater dignity and truth of our humanity as seen in the sight of God.

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint Andrew the Apostle

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Andrew, Apostle and Martyr, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY God, who didst give such grace unto thy holy Apostle Saint Andrew, that he readily obeyed the calling of thy Son Jesus Christ, and followed him without delay: Grant unto us all, that we, being called by thy holy word, may forthwith give up ourselves obediently to fulfil thy holy commandments; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 10:8-18
The Gospel: St. Matthew 4:18-22

Paul Troger, Apostle AndrewA native of Bethsaida on the Sea of Galilee, Andrew was a fisherman, the son of the fisherman John, and the brother of the fisherman Simon Peter. He was at first, along with John the Evangelist, a disciple of John the Baptist. John the Baptist’s testimony that Jesus was the Christ led the two to follow Jesus. Andrew then took his brother Simon Peter to meet Jesus. In Eastern Orthodox tradition, St. Andrew is called the Protokletos (the First Called) because he is named as the first disciple summoned by Jesus into his service.

At first Andrew and Simon Peter continued to carry on their fishing trade, but the Lord later called them to stay with him all the time. He promised to make them fishers of men and, this time, they left their nets for good.

The only other specific reference to Andrew in the New Testament is at St. Mark 13:3, where he is one of those asking the questions that lead our Lord into his great eschatological discourse.

In the lists of the apostles that appear in the gospels, Andrew is always numbered among the first four. He is named individually three times in the Gospel of St. John. In addition to the story of his calling (John 1:35-42), he, together with Philip, presented the Gentiles to Christ (John 12:20-22), and he pointed out the boy with the loaves and fishes (John 6:8).

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