Author: CCW

“Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning”

‘Why we need hell?’ might be an apt title for this sermon. The answer is not to have a place to put our enemies and those who trouble us nor to make us appreciate heaven as the desperate alternative to the usual parade of human miseries. No. The reason, paradoxically, has more to do with the reality of hope itself and the redemption of our desires. As the poet/theologian Dante so clearly teaches, Hell is about getting exactly what you want, only as it truly is, which is not the same thing as what we think we want. Hell is for those who have lost, as he puts it, “the good of intellect”, for those who have not remembered or better yet, have not wanted to remember that “whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning” and have not repented.

But the Word which comes to us is, inescapably and necessarily, a word of judgment, a word calling us to account, a word convicting and convincing our hearts of the reality of God and his kingdom by which our lives are measured and, invariably, found wanting. “There is none that doeth good, no, not one.” All our motives are tainted by self-love. Hope comes into play precisely at this point. In the awareness of an objective measure and standard to which we are accountable, we are brought before the absolute goodness of God. At the point where human desires discover their limitation, something more is opened out to us. We seek something more. And so does God.

That something more is conveyed wondrously in the pageant of Scripture. Advent reminds us of the coming of God’s Word to us. That coming is threefold: a coming historically, in the ‘then’ of Christ’s coming in carne, in the flesh; a coming ab judicio, in the judgment which is past, future and yet ever present, because it is now and always; and, a coming in mente, in our minds to shape and order our desires. And these three ‘comings’ are all comings of God in and through his Word.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Their sound went out into all the earth,/and their words unto
the end of the world.”

Andrew is the Advent saint. His feast day either immediately anticipates Advent or it falls within the first week of Advent, indeed immediately after the First Sunday in Advent. In either case,this feast inaugurates the cycle of the Church’s commemoration of the Saints throughout the course of the year. There is always, it seems to me, something rich and significant about beginnings.

Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland and, therefore, of New Scotland, Nova Scotia, as well, perhaps in both cases because of the connection to the sea. Yet, Scotland is a long ways from the land of the New Testament, a long ways from the setting of the story of the calling of the brothers Simon Peter and Andrew, and the brothers Zebedee, James and John, a long ways from the sea of Galilee. How much further away is Nova Scotia. This reminds us of the missionary impulse of the Christian faith. This 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.” For much of the first millennium or more, Scotland must often to have seemed to be the very end of the world. Perhaps, too, the same might be said even now of Nova Scotia. And yet, the word has gone forth on the wings of the saints and has been carried forward by their witness to Jesus Christ. Critical to that witness, as the readings on this feast day reminds us, is the 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’. It focuses on the significance of the Scriptures and upon preaching. The primary form of preaching is simply the proclamation of the Scriptures. Those that follow become those that are sent 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.

(more…)

Print this entry

“We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father,
full of grace and truth.”

We beheld. Yet we can only behold what we are given to see. What we are given to see is something made. It is not the Word, but “the Word made flesh”. The shepherds say “Let us now go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing which is come to pass,” literally, this saying that has happened, this Word that is made. God is the poet of Christmas. In Greek, poet means maker.

But the poet not only makes, he also makes known. We can only see “this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us”. We can only see in the light of God himself. Where God is, there his light is also.

By the light of God we are caught up into a greater understanding. We are born anew “not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”; born from above into the company of the one whom we behold from above. His light perfects our light.

For by our own lights, we see but do not see. Our light is darkness. “He came unto his own and his own received him not.” Our seeing is without a beholding, without an embracing in faith and understanding what we are given to see. There is no receiving. But by this greater light – the light which accompanies the Word, the light of God as illuminating grace – our light is taken up into something more. We are received into what we receive. “We beheld his glory.” The greater light is the light of grace, the grace to behold what “the lord hath made known unto us”, “the Word made flesh”. The Word who wills to be made also wills to be made known.

(more…)

Print this entry