Author: CCW

“Then Jesus turned”

As images go this one is particularly significant. The idea of turning is provocatively before us in the Lesson from Jeremiah and in the Gospel reading from John. The turning is twofold: there is God’s turning to us and there is our turning to God, the turning of our hearts and minds to God. “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people,” as Collect prays.

Today marks a turning point in the Church Year, a time of transition from one year to the next, a time at once of endings and beginnings. It is captured in the way this Sunday is designated, The Sunday Next Before Advent. Times of transition provide the opportunities and the occasions for renewal; they recall us to the radical nature of our spiritual beginnings, to the radical idea of God’s turning to us. “Turn thou us, O Lord, and so shall we be turned” is our prayer. In a way the whole pattern of the Church Year signaled in the readings of Scripture recall us to the idea of Revelation. God makes something known about himself and about us. Because of that we can begin again.

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“For Thou, O Lord, art the God of those who repent, and in me
thou wilt manifest thy goodness”

Beautiful words from a beautiful prayer. Called The Prayer of Manasseh, it is a classic of penitential adoration. Tucked away in the Apocrypha, texts belonging to the inter-testamental period, between the collecting together of the Jewish Scriptures known to Christians as the Old Testament and the collecting together of the writings known as the New Testament, there is this beautiful literary and theological gem.

A kind of literary masterpiece in its own right, The Prayer of Manasseh is also a puzzle. We are not even sure in what language it was originally composed: Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek? It has survived in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Armenian and Ethiopic. There are varying Latin translations; the one in the Latin Vulgate differs from an older Latin translation. For Anglicans, it is listed among those works read not “to establish any doctrine” but “for example of life and instruction of manners,” following Jerome, as Article 6 of The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion puts it.

Chances are pretty good that you have never heard or read it. It is part of the Church’s public reading of Scripture, though rarely; in this case, at Morning Prayer on The Twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity but only in a year in which there is a Twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity and then only when the Advent Sunday of that year was an even year! Advent Sunday of this Church Year was in 2012. We come to the end of one Church Year, which is not the same as the civil or secular year, and so to the beginning of a new Church Year. Endings and beginnings.

I love the readings in these times of endings and beginnings. They call us to a kind of contemplation and reflection. They challenge and disturb us. You have just heard the entire Prayer of Manasseh. I wonder what you make of it.

What happens to a culture and a people when we are no longer capable of being moved by beautiful words, beautiful music, beautiful spaces? Here are some very beautiful words, it seems to me. Words which I hope can literally move our souls.

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“And every one that hath this hope in him purifieth himself”

In the November grey of desolation and decay, the church year runs out in the greater themes of judgment and mercy, of hope and glory. The church year does not take its measure from the civil or secular calendar but from our relation to the substantial moments in the life of Christ. Advent, so soon upon us, marks the beginning of a new year, a new year of grace. We take our beginning from the motion of God’s love towards us, his Advent. We take our beginning from our looking towards his coming.

His coming is twofold: there is judgment and mercy; there is hope and glory. Now, in this time of endings, there is the gathering up or the summing up of our lives in the light of God’s grace and in the hope of his glory. Then, in the time of Advent’s beginnings, there is the sense of starting out anew in faith and hope, a new beginning in the remembrance of the motion of God’s love towards us in the coming of Christ, our Judge and Saviour. There is the sense of ending and beginning in hope.

There is the sense of apocalypse. We read today, for instance, from what is sometimes called the “Matthaean Apocalypse”. That section of his gospel deals with the end-time and the theme of judgment, with eschatology. We have also been reading at Morning and Evening Prayer from those books which are found between the Old Testament and the New Testament called collectively, The Apocrypha. These writings contain various forms of apocalyptic literature. The term “apocrypha” literally means “things hidden away;” the words “apocalyptic” and “apocalypse,” on the other hand, refer to what is revealed or uncovered.

In general, we confront the uncovering of all things from the standpoint of God, a consideration of how things stand in the sight of God’s all-knowing, absolute and total judgment. In particular, we confront the unveiling of our souls and lives in the light of God’s truth revealed in Jesus Christ.

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