Category: Sermons

“Go and tell John again those things which ye so hear and see.”

A sermon, snowstorm notwithstanding! Hearing and seeing are the two most intellectual of the physical senses. We use the sense of sight and hearing as metaphors for understanding. “I see what you mean,” we may say to someone in conversation, meaning we understand what they are saying. “I hear you,” we might assert, suggesting much the same thing, an agreement or at least an acknowledgement about the meaning of what is being said.

In a way, such use of language is commonplace and every day. We forget perhaps how profound it is and how it speaks to the very features of our humanity that make us who we are. In the quiet darkness of Advent, we can learn again about the power of words that illumine our minds and encourage our hearts. It is the point of today’s Scriptures and signals the ministry of the Church. It is about preparing and making ready the way of the Lord in human hearts “by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just” that we may be found “an acceptable people in [God’s] sight.”

Our darkness brought into the light of God is part of the process of learning. Advent is the season of teaching. God as Word and Light “brings to light the hidden things of darkness” and “makes manifest the counsels of the hearts,” as Paul puts it. To what end? That “every one shall have praise of God.” It is not simply judgment but joy and salvation.

The light of Advent teaches us what God seeks for our humanity. That is part and parcel of the power of this Gospel reading and, by extension, part and parcel of the faithful ministry of “the ministers and stewards of [the] mysteries” of God. John the Baptist belongs to that pattern of prophetic preparation for the coming of Christ. He is in prison, the victim of the power politics of his day, a victim of speaking truth to power but, as such, a martyr and a witness to the power and truth of God. His questions illuminate the dark landscape of Advent. His questions point us to Jesus. “Art thou he that should come, or do we seek for another?”

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“The night is far spent”

There are degrees of darkness. There is the literal darkness of the night in the twilight of the year. There is the metaphorical darkness of civilisations and cultures in their decay and disarray. There is the social and economic darkness of communities and families in their distress and dismay. There is the darkness of institutions when they betray their foundational and governing principles. There is the darkness of souls in psychological confusion – distraught, anxious, angry and fearful. There is the darkness of the fear of death. The “far spent night” is the hour of deepest darkness.

In one way or another, these darknesses are all forms of spiritual darkness. They all belong to the darkness of sin and doubt, the darkness of death and dying, the darkness of despair. The darkness of despair is the deepest darkness, the darkness of the “far spent night” of the soul, the darkness of darkness itself, as it were. Why? Because it is the darkness of denial. Despair is the denial of desire. It signals the rejection of the possibilities of light, of faith; the rejection of the possibilities of hope, of what is looked for; and the rejection of the possibilities of love, of what is embraced in the knowing delight of what is good and true, of what is holy and beautiful.

In the oldest literary work known to our humanity, The Epic of Gilgamesh, the hero, Gilgamesh, is changed in his soul and outward aspect by the loss of his friend, Enkidu. He sets out on a search for everlasting life; it is really a quest for wisdom, for he knows, and we know, that is his destiny is not everlasting life but kingship. He is mortal and has to come to terms with his mortality. Wisdom is found in the embrace of the limits of our knowing.

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“Then Jesus turned”

As images go this one is particularly significant. The idea of turning is provocatively before us in the Lesson from Jeremiah, in the gradual psalm, in the Gospel reading from John, and most poignantly in the baptism of Kaitlyn Jacoba Marilyn this morning. 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. “I will hearken what the Lord God will say:/ for he shall speak peace unto his people and to his saints, and unto them that turn their heart to him,” as the Psalmist puts it.

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.

The lesson from the prophet Jeremiah recalls God’s turning to Israel in exile in Egypt and in Babylon, to the idea of God delivering Israel from bondage and captivity. “The Lord liveth, which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt” prompts the idea of a greater marvel in the eyes of the prophet, the idea of God delivering “the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all the countries whither I had driven them.” The prophet looks to God to redeem and restore Israel and “they shall dwell in their own land” rather than living as exiles. More than the obvious political overtones that have become such a troubling part of the long twentieth century, there is a profoundly spiritual principle at work here, namely the theme of God’s righteousness as providing the true basis for our dwelling safely as a community. The passage looks to God raising unto David, meaning the house of David, “a righteous Branch,” a King who shall reign and prosper. It is a prophecy about the Messiah, the coming of the anointed one, a prophecy which Christians interpret as fulfilled in Christ and in the inauguration of a new kingdom that is first and foremost spiritual, not political, the idea of dwelling with God in Christ.

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“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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“If I may but touch his garment”

It is a very touching scene, if you will pardon the pun! The mise-en-scene or context is actually a scene within a scene. It opens us out to the drama of salvation. But it is a kind of interlude, something which happens in between something else. In this case, a healing happens while Jesus is on his way to raise the daughter of “a certain ruler” who is presumed dead. It happens in a crowd; an event which is at once public and private.

An unnamed woman, desperate and ill, afflicted with a debilitating sickness, an issue of blood twelve years, “came behind him, and touched the hem of his garment.” It is a touching act, quite literally of course, but there is such a gentleness of wisdom in this scene which is quite revealing. We are allowed to know the inner thoughts of the woman in her reaching out to touch Jesus. “For she said within herself, If I may touch his garment, I shall be whole.” And we see his marvelously gentle yet revealing response, “Daughter, be of good comfort, thy faith hath made thee whole.” Her desire for healing is more than the physical healing of her affliction; it is about wholeness. She seeks to be made whole by reaching out and touching Jesus as if there were something mystical and magical even about his robes, like Prospero’s “magic garment” (The Tempest). A kind of superstition, we might think; certainly an attempt to steal surreptiously a cure from Jesus unawares.

The attribution of special properties to the clothing of special persons is an interesting concept. At the very least, it suggests that she sees something special in Jesus and by extension to anything and everything associated with him such as his clothing. But it is an inaccurate and incomplete, and even dangerous view of God’s dealings with our humanity. It confuses the person with the things. It mistakes the real nature of God’s redemption of our humanity. The touch is real and yet unnecessary. Whether we touch him or not, Jesus can touch and heal us either close at hand or from afar, as we have seen in other Gospel stories.

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