An Advent Meditation – 2025
“My words shall not pass away”
Luke’s apocalyptic warnings which we hear on Advent II are strong and disturbing words. “There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring” (Luke 21. 25-33). There is nothing really new about that: “same old, same old,” we might even say, other than being far more eloquent than, perhaps, either the news or the weather report!
Yet, it must surely give us pause, “men’s hearts failing them for fear,” anxious and worried on account of “looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.” There is a profoundly cosmic quality to these Scriptural warning notes which signal the Advent theme of judgment at once coming to us and ever present.
But exactly how, to use Cranmer’s words in his marvellous Collect for Advent II, do such disturbing warnings about judgment provide us with “patience and comfort of thy holy Word”, let alone give us “hope”? And yet that is precisely Jesus’ claim here. “My words shall not pass away.”
Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all religions of the Word. They are all logo-centric, we might say. Even though the meaning of Logos or Word is different for each, they are all nonetheless quite explicit about the primacy of the Word of God as revealed to our humanity. They are all revealed religions as distinct from the various nature religions and the religions of the political that surround them and out of which they emerge in one way or another. And they are all religions which place a high value on that Word of God as mediated to us through written texts, through Scripture, whether the Scriptures are the Hebrew or Jewish Scriptures, comprising the Torah or Law, the Prophets and the Writings for Jews, in short, the TANAKH, or the Arabic Qu’ran for Muslims, the recitation of Allah’s will by the Angel Gabriel (Jibril) to Mohammed, or the Scriptures for Christians which embrace the Old Testament (largely written in Hebrew) and the New Testament written in Greek. Scripture is simply that which is written.
“Whatsoever things were written aforetime,” St. Paul writes, “were written for our learning.” Paradoxically, he is talking about the Hebrew or Jewish Scriptures and not what will come to be called the New Testament which contains the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles and ends with St. John’s Revelation and, in between Acts and Revelation, a considerable number of Epistles, the greatest number of which are Paul’s. Here he is stating an important principle about revealed religion. It is inescapably something written down. “And whatsoever things were written aforetime, were written for our learning.”
This phrase caught the imagination of Thomas Cranmer and has been incorporated into one of the loveliest and profoundest Collects belonging to our Anglican heritage. “Blessed Lord, who has caused all holy Scriptures to be written for learning”. “All holy Scriptures”. Cranmer has in mind how St. Paul’s own words have now become part of the Scriptures of the New Testament, part of the Bible, that library, bibliotheca, of books, biblia, that constitute “God’s Word written” for Anglicans. There is something here to be learned that is, inescapably, book-centred, and as such belongs to the book culture of early modernity. Revealed religion has to be learned through books and teachers, through the public proclamation of God’s Word.
That is, of course, the hard part. “How readest thou?” Jesus asks. “What saith the Scripture?” St. Paul asks. The answer to those questions is captured by Cranmer in words which encapsulate an entire biblical approach to the matter of reading. “Read, mark, learn and inwardly digest,” as the Collect puts it. Not skim, scan, surf, or browse (the metaphors for our digital age); not even just listen, but “read, mark” – meaning take note seriously, “learn” – meaning what? To make what you have read your own, and in the most direct and intimate way imaginable, namely, “inwardly digest”. Then, and only then, will we be shaped by the Word. It will no longer remain outside of us, external to us. “Inwardly digest.” We become in-worded, if I may say, even as we await the holy birth of the Word Incarnate.
This approach speaks to the crisis of our age about reading and learning. The digital world makes so much and so many things accessible to us, if we know how to find them. A great boon, to be sure, and yet, in many ways, it also hides great dangers. The greatest danger is the loss of understanding, a flattening of the intellect rather than a deepening of our souls. There is an analogy between the tactility of the book, the Bible, and the embodiment of the Word and Son of God, the Word made flesh. The illusions, images and ephemerality of cyberspace do not capture any of this reality. The digital world is now part of the transmission of knowledge, or to be more precise, information, but not capable of superseding the book culture without a great loss to ourselves. Dependent upon the book culture, it would be a tragic irony if it were to succeed in destroying it.
The metaphors for reading in the digital culture stand in stark contrast to the metaphors belonging to the culture of the written word, whether in manuscript or print. To my mind, it is not a question of opposing these two cultures so much as it is about appreciating the differences. No greater challenge lies before us than being able to negotiate between the culture of the written word, be it hand-scribed scroll, codex or printed book and the digital culture with its constant barrage of images, constantly in flux, unstable, elusive and transient. Where is the Word when the power goes out? What is at issue is the quality of our reading. What is at stake is our understanding and our being.
Consider the Law encapsulated in The Ten Commandments. They are engraved on tablets of stone signifying something objective and tangible, solid and real. And yet, the strong objectivity of the Law is meant to realized in us, inscribed upon our hearts of flesh, as Ezekiel suggests. Consider, too, the wonderful image of Ezekiel being bidden to eat the scroll of the Torah; literally inwardly digesting the Law, we might say. Such images recall us to the biblical traditions of a deep and thoughtful reading of the Word that prepare us for the Christmas wonder of “the Word made flesh.”
It is or it should be the express purpose of our churches to be the places where the Word of God is not only proclaimed and celebrated but where it is pondered and meditated upon in prayer.
In short, where it is considered carefully and profoundly, both in the liturgy and in prayerful study. These readings challenge everything in our age, including our penchant for wanting to use God’s Word for political and social ends and purposes.
Scripture in its fullness bids us live what it teaches; it is “a living word” but the measure of that Word and its living force is not found in this or that social or human construct, agenda and plan. Those are exactly the things which pass away while “my words,” as Jesus says, “shall not pass away”. They have in them that quality of what a Canadian poet, the late Margaret Avison, calls “foreverness” (“Pilgrim”).
We forget that the Word which comes to us comes from God and is eternal. It stands in stark contrast to the passing away of all the projects of our hearts and minds; all our projects, that is to say, that are not rooted and grounded in the eternal Word. It remains our lifelong project to think deeply and carefully about ourselves in relation to that Word. It means to be able to discern the things of eternal worth and meaning in and through things that are constantly passing away.
To be looking for those things that the Scripture encourages us to seek and find is the antidote to all our fears and anxieties. It requires that we “read, mark, learn and inwardly digest”. Only so can we find an inner peace, a deeper joy and an everlasting hope precisely in the midst of the ups and downs, the chaos and confusion, the disorders and disarray of our world and day. For here in the reading of the Scriptures we may discover “meanings soundlessly deep forever” (Avison, “Listening for Grandma”). These are the meanings that have been read, marked, learned and inwardly digested in the Words of Christ whose “words shall not pass away.”
Fr. David Curry
Advent 2025 (revised 2012)