Category: Sermons

“Brother Saul, receive thy sight”

There is something providentially wonderful about the celebration of the Conversion of Saint Paul in the last week of the Epiphany Season this year. For his conversion can be seen as a kind of epiphany, a making known to us about what God seeks for our humanity. It is all about light and life. His so-called conversion, so-called because there are a number of ambiguities about what is to be understood here about the word conversion, is nonetheless about a breakthrough of the understanding.

His conversion is not about a change of allegiance from Judaism to Christianity because the latter does not yet exist either notionally or institutionally. Paul, after all, is a critical figure in the ultimate development of what will come to be called Christianity. As the accounts make clear, his story is entirely within the context of late Judaism in its encounter with Greek language and thought and its domination by Roman law and order. Such is the real richness of The Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. It reminds us that Christianity cannot be understood apart from the collision of those principles: Jewish religion, Greek philosophy and culture, as well as Roman order.

Luke tells us about the story of Saul on “the road to Damascus.” The phrase has entered into world culture as the image of conversion, a kind of breakthrough moment. In Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, Paul tells his story three times. The epistle reading for his feast day provides us with the third and, perhaps most moving account, especially when one considers the setting. It is one of hostility, the hostility of the Jews towards Paul who has to be rescued by the soldiers of the Roman legion and who is allowed to address his own people “speaking unto them in the Hebrew tongue” after having spoken in Greek to the tribune, Claudius Lysias, a Roman officer. We see the interplay of Hebrew, Greek and Latin in the story of Saul who by virtue of his experience will be renamed Paul.

What is his story? It is his conversion, and here the word must be used literally, from being the persecutor of Christ to becoming an Apostle of Christ. It is, also literally, about seeing former things in a new light. He is blinded into sight, into a new way of thinking about the Messiah, a new way of thinking about God’s engagement with our humanity in terms that without destroying the law transcend the law, especially in its narrow Pharisaic sense. His story is about his mystical encounter with the risen Christ. In a way, the critical moment lies in the exchange between Christ and Saul.

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“Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it”

The story of the miracle at the wedding in Cana of Galilee where Jesus changes water into wine, indeed, the very best wine, has been read in the liturgical traditions as an Epiphany story. Something is made manifest, made known, about who Jesus is, about who he is for us and about what he seeks for us. In “this beginning of signs … he manifested forth his glory, and his disciples believed on him.” It is a most powerful, a most intriguing, and a most instructive story. Like so many of the Gospel stories it arrests our attention and demands our thoughtful consideration.

Most intriguing, perhaps, even beyond the questions about miracles which are an important feature of Epiphany, is the dialogue between Jesus and Mary. It sets the context for the miracle and provides the key to its interpretation. More than that, though, it alerts us to the sacramental nature of the Christian faith with respect to the making known of the essential divinity of Christ and to the work of human redemption. Just as his divinity is made known through his humanity, so too the work of human redemption happens through the things of the world. The Christian religion is not about fleeing the world; it is about the redemption of the world. Word and Sacrament are intimately and inseparably entwined as essential aspects of Christian faith and life.

Christ’s Incarnation is God’s intimate engagement with our humanity. God enters into the conditions of our world and day. But why? The great 14th century German mystic theologian, Meister Eckhart, astutely observes that “the greatest good God gave to man was in becoming man.” It is in these stories that we see the goodness of God towards our humanity. Christ’s essential divinity, as one of our hymns highlights, is made “manifest in Jordan’s stream,” referring to his baptism by John. As we saw last week, huddled in the cold of the Hall, that does not mean that Jesus recognises himself as a sinner which is all that John’s baptism really means – a kind of metanoia, a recognition in us about ourselves that expresses a desire to be freed from sin.

Christ’s baptism is about his entering into the conditions of our sinful world. It signals the idea of the divine purpose of the redemption of our humanity. Christian baptism builds on the baptism of John but imputes Christ’s righteousness to us so that we are freed from original sin because we are in Christ. But only through his hour, the hour of his passion and resurrection. It is not just about the recognition of sin but redemption from sin through our incorporation into Christ’s death and resurrection.

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“Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”

Throughout the Advent and Christmas season, we have largely been in the company of Luke and Matthew and John with respect to the Gospel readings. So, too, with the Epiphany. Christmas reaches a kind of climax with Matthew’s evocative account of the coming of the Magoi from Anatolia, the wise men/kings from the east who come to Bethlehem, at last, it seems, to complete the rich tableaux that belongs to all our Christmas imaginings. With the coming of the Magi, the Christmas mystery is complete.

Epiphany marks the making known to all of the Christmas mystery which is why for one half or more of the Christian world, Epiphany is the Christmas celebration. For the Churches of Eastern Orthodoxy – Russia, the Ukraine, Greece, Georgia, Egypt, Armenia, and so on, Epiphany is Christmas. Why? Because it marks the making known, the manifestation of Christ’s nativity to all the world. With Epiphany, Christmas is omni populo, for all people. What is proclaimed to the Shepherds in the fields surrounding Bethlehem by the Christmas Angel about “good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people” comes to pass with the journey of the proverbial “Come-From-Aways” and “Johnny-Come-Latelies” to worship the child Christ. They come bearing gifts, “sacred gifts of mystic meaning,” gifts which teach us about the meaning of Christmas.

There is a certain logic to these differences of celebration between East and West as well as some common concerns. For the Churches of the Western world, both Catholic and Protestant, Epiphany recognizes and celebrates the universal aspect of Christ’s nativity but also focuses on a new theme. There is a shift of emphasis from the Word made Flesh, a focus on the humanity of Christ in the Incarnation, to the divinity of the One who becomes human. Epiphany is all about the making known of the essential divinity of Christ revealed in and through his humanity in its engagement with us. Thus, for East and West, Epiphany is really Theophany, a manifestation of God.

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“But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart”

Today we ponder with Mary the things that were said about “this child” by the Shepherds who have now come to Bethlehem to “see this thing which is come to pass”. Yesterday, we were with Joseph thinking “on these things”, namely the difficult mystery of Mary’s being with child of the Holy Ghost. There is an inescapable intellectual quality to Christmas.

So much so that the ideas about its meaning go before us in our coming to Bethlehem. In the linear narrative, it is only in the Gospel for the Octave Day that we have the shepherds going now “even unto Bethlehem”. Like the Easter mystery, so too with Christmas, we witness to the way in which the mystery comes to light and takes birth in our souls. We witness to the ways of pondering and thinking upon these things in the discovery of their truth and meaning.

Truth and meaning. These are inseparable. Meaning by itself might simply mean what is true for me which is not necessarily truth at all. But put truth and meaning together and then you have something powerful and wonderful, something worth pondering about our commitment to truth without which it has no meaning in us. Truth and meaning together have entirely to do with our participation in the mystery of Christ and his holy nativity.

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“He thought on these things”

In terms of the infancy narratives in Christmastide, should we be so wedded to such a linear way of thinking, we have yet to get to Bethlehem! Apart from Joseph and Mary and her first-born son, the only other visitors to Bethlehem in the readings for this past week have been those whom Herod sent forth who “slew all the children that were in Bethlehem,” a gruesome, yet significant and important Christmas story, and one that is largely overlooked and ignored in our contemporary celebrations of Christmas. It is, perhaps, somewhat remembered by way of the carol, Puer Nobis Nascitur, “Unto us a Child is Born”, in the verse “Herod then with fear was filled:/ ‘A prince’, he said, ‘in Jewry!’/ All the little boys he killed /At Bethlem in his fury.” Not exactly the most familiar and comfortable of carols yet profoundly concise about this aspect of the Christmas mystery.

No, in the narrative sequence of the Christmastide Gospel readings, it will actually only be tomorrow on The Octave Day of Christmas that the Shepherds, the representatives of our common humanity, will actually “now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass.” Even the Christmas angels, it seems, were only in the countryside round about Jerusalem, the one announcing to the Shepherds about the sign of “good tidings of great joy” in the birth of a Saviour in the city of David, “who is Christ the Lord”, only to be joined by “a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, good will toward men.”All rich and wonderful words and saying, events and thoughts, which illumine for us something of the mystery of Bethlehem, the mystery of Christ’s nativity. All about its meaning and significance, and less about a linear account. All about the radical and disturbing meaning of the Incarnation and its deep joy for us in the redemption of our humanity which it reveals and makes known.

But only through the compelling way in which we are drawn into the mystery – through its significance and meaning first and then in terms of the narrative sequence. Today we have Matthew’s account of the infancy narrative and yet, even with Matthew we do not get to Bethlehem. We – meaning aspects of our humanity who witness to the birth in some way or another – don’t get to Bethlehem until the coming of the Magi/Kings. And they are, to be sure, both the proverbial “Come-From-Aways” as well as the “Johnny-Come-Latelies”. But with Matthew’s account today, we confront what appears to be a scandal. It is not too much to say that his account presents us with more than one scandal, humanly speaking. With Matthew we see a certain intellectual wrestling with extraordinary matters all of which belong to the theological mystery of the Incarnation.

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“Herod … slew all the children that were in Bethlehem”

Christmas is for children, it is frequently said and rightly so bearing in mind that we are all the children of God and especially at this holy time when God became a little child. And yet, so much for children in our violent and brutal world where the innocent little ones are all too frequently the casualties and victims of horrendous acts of violence. And so, too, in the Christmas story.

The most troubling scene in the Old Testament, it seems to me, is the story of the Levite’s concubine. Abused and ravaged, she dies with her hands outstretched on the threshold of her master’s house; her body then cut up and circulated to all of the tribes of Israel as witness to the collective betrayal of the Law and of the universal laws of hospitality, the like of which had never before been seen in Israel. But the most troubling scene in the New Testament, it seems to me, is the story of the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem, killed because of Herod’s envy and fear about a rival King, on the one hand, and out of unbridled power without truth, without justice, without compassion, without restraint, on the other hand. Just so it speaks to our disordered world.

That this story belongs to the Christmas mystery is itself most telling and most moving. If it is the most troubling scene, it is also one of the most moving. It shatters all of our sentimental nonsense about Christmas. In this story we confront the deeper meaning of Christ’s Incarnation and face the realities of human wickedness, then and now. We don’t want to hear it and many are utterly unaware of it. And yet it marks the last of the three special Holy Days of Christmas, all of which comment upon the deeper meaning of Christ’s holy birth.

At issue, I suppose, is whether we are up to pondering this mystery. Almost universally overlooked, this story more than any other speaks directly and powerfully to the worst of the worst in our sad and troubled world, fractured and broken, violent and destructive. Christmas by virtue of this Christmas story is not a distraction but a condemnation of human folly and its violence. None of us escape this story. It belongs to the sad and sorry pageant of human violence, to the continuing spectacles of genocide and destruction that more than any other age belong to the story of the last one hundred years. It speaks as well to all of the deaths of the little ones in the name of convenience and expediency however complicated and complex the context. To ponder this story is to enter more fully into the Christmas mystery such that joys tinged by sorrow are deepened into faith and worship.

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“Even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written”

John is the great Evangelist of the mystery of Christmas at once soaring into the heights of divinity on eagle’s wings and with an eagle’s sight and witnessing to the reality of the Incarnation. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life … declare we unto you.” His Gospel and Epistles testify to the nature of the Incarnation and counter the earliest debate and heresy known as docetism which argues that God could not be God and engage our humanity by becoming human. Spirit and matter are utterly opposed; there is a fundamental dualism to reality in such a view.

John the Evangelist argues to the contrary that the mystery of the Incarnation of God’s Word and Son reveals the greater mystery of God himself. God does not cease to be God in becoming man. In the life of Christ as the Gospel reading makes clear “there are also many other things which Jesus did” and, no doubt, said, that have not been written; indeed so many “that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.” The mystery of Christmas is about the inexhaustible mystery of God in the wonder of his intimate engagement with us in the humanity of Christ. The Word made flesh, that Word “which was from the beginning,” from the principle of all life and thought, “was with the Father, and was manifested unto us.”

Things have been written in witness of these things “and we know that his witness is true,” John says about himself it seems. We may think that is a kind of special pleading but it is in the context of Peter following Jesus and asking about “the disciple whom Jesus loved following,” the disciple “which also leaned on his breast at supper” and as John tells us, the disciple who said at the last supper “Lord, which is he that betrayeth thee?” They are all strong arguments about the person of the Evangelist and about what he has heard and seen, and even more, what he has come to understand and believe. The Gospel reading belongs to the resurrection appearances of Christ and reflects on the theme of betrayal and crucifixion – all testament to the reality of the body of Christ at the same time to the divinity of Christ. All things which belong to the witness of John the Evangelist, he who wrote these things.

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“Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord”

Today is The Feast of Stephen, “when the snow lay round about, Deep and crisp and even,” as the old carol puts it. Many of our Christmas memories and associations are shaped by the hymns and carols of the season, some of which have little or no relation to anything directly in the Scriptural story. No snow after all in little Bethlehem long ago, no feast of Stephen for that matter, historically speaking; that only comes later. But why then, The Feast of Stephen on the day after Christmas? Because it illumines the whole meaning and purpose of Christ’s Incarnation. It is entirely about sacrifice and service. It opens us out to the real meaning and vocation of our humanity but only through God’s condescension.

The great carol, Good King Wenceslas (Tempus Adest Floridum) is, however, a kind of critical commentary on the Christmas mystery. It speaks in provocative images of the idea of the rich and great ones reaching out to seek the good of the poor and lowly in contrast to exploiting them. Thus it is about treading in the steps of the master, and, in a lovely image, “heat was in the very sod / Which the saint had printed.” But who is that master and saint? In the carol it is King Wenceslas, the tenth century Duke of Bohemia seen as rex justus, a just ruler, but the model and archetype of all justice and compassion is the figure whom Stephen serves even unto death; it is the Lord Jesus. He is the model and the meaning of the spirit of divine humility. The hymn and story are a powerful counter to the pretensions and posturings of the proud and mighty of our world and day; a powerful illustration of what true justice and compassion means.

The Feast of Stephen is the necessary counter as well to the overblown sentimentalities of Christmas. It reminds us of the brutal violence in human hearts and in our world and day. An uncomfortable thought. It is really a kind of critical corrective to the affairs of the Church and all other powers and authorities everywhere when they forget that they live for a purpose and not simply for themselves. In a way, it is as simple as that.

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“For unto you is born this day in the city of David,
a Saviour which is Christ the Lord.”

It is an intellectual challenge that I sometimes like to set for myself, namely, to take a phrase from Scripture and see if one could tease out from that one phrase the essential teachings of the Christian Faith. Crazy, I know, but it means giving serious consideration to the words of Scripture and to what can be found in them, realizing just how much is revealed or at least suggested in them. There is, of course, the obvious problem that such an exercise probably means reading a whole lot more into things than what is there; the problem of isogesis rather than exegesis.

But in the ‘alt fact’ or ‘post-fact world,’ there is the need to pay close attention to interpretation. There are no facts independent of interpretation, even to say what the facts are involves interpretation as to why something is a fact that matters and to what extent. There are lots of ‘facts’ that are merely incidental and in a way meaningless. Despite the claims that are sometimes made by some physicists and some atheist philosophers, we don’t and can’t live in a purely random world of contingency. If everything is contingent, meaning that everything could be other than what it is, then logically there could be nothing. “Nothing is but what is not,” after all, as Shakespeare intuited! Interestingly, he was talking about the nature of evil.

Yet, as Averroes and Aquinas knew, the very idea of contingency requires the existence of the necessary, a necessary principle of being. Aquinas puts the argument in the most extreme case: if all is contingent, then everything potentially could not be therefore there would be nothing at all and if so, then no way for anything to come to be unless there was a principle which necessarily exists and cannot not exist. In short, there can be no contingency without necessity. Contingency in the finite world depends utterly upon a necessarily existent first principle which we call God.

What has any of this curious speculation have to do with Christmas? “For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Saviour which is Christ the Lord.” A powerful phrase that illumines the great mystery of Christmas, it captures the sense of wonder and excitement of the infancy narrative of Luke, the quintessential Christmas story, full of details and apparent facts. It is a familiar story and scene which has moved the imaginations of poets and artists throughout the centuries. Its images are still deeply embedded in the psyche of our contemporary culture.

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