Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service
Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Second Sunday after Christmas.
Sermon for the Second Sunday after Christmas
“Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass”
Christmas is more than a three-day wonder or even a nine-day wonder. The festival of Christmas extends to twelve days, an octave and a half, as it were. The readings from the Octave Day of Christmas are appointed to be used until the Epiphany. The Gospel reading from St. Luke continues directly from the Christmas morning Gospel. The shepherds, having heard the angelic Gloria, make their way to Bethlehem.
Along with the poetic, prophetic and philosophical reading from Isaiah, these readings bid us ponder more carefully and more thoughtfully the wonder of Christ’s holy birth. The shepherds say one to another, quite literally, “let us now go even unto Bethlehem and see this saying which has happened”, capturing something of the very idea of the Word made flesh, the very wonder of Emmanuel, the great Christmas name of Jesus, we might say. The emphasis of these readings is on that which is heard and seen and which occasions two things: the “mak[ing] known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child”; and the sense of wonder “at those things which were told” by the shepherds.
The quiet focus of this Gospel reading is on the activity of Mary in relation to the making known and to the sense of wonder. Her activity is the profoundly spiritual activity of the Church. It is, first and foremost, about contemplation, the highest activity of the human spirit, as Aristotle teaches. Mary is the theotokos, the God-bearer, the one who bears God into the world, the mother of God, as the orthodox faith confesses. Not the source of divinity which she cannot be but the human source of God becoming man in Jesus Christ. What that means concerns the more radical meaning of what it means to be human and in ways that challenge and counter our contemporary assumptions about the autonomous self. That more radical meaning is captured wonderfully in Mary’s fiat mihi at the Annunciation, “be it unto me according to thy Word”, her willing acquiescence, her ‘yes’ to God so central to the mystery of God with us. But it is equally captured in this Gospel reading: “Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart”. That is to attend to God in his Word and in his Word with us.
Pondus meum, amor meus. “My love is my weight”, Augustine famously says in his Confessions (Bk. 13). The entirety of his being, he has come to recognise, is defined by the love of God, just like Mary. Her activity here is the activity and mission of the Church. It is about our constant and steadfast attention to the Word of God and to the motions of his grace in our lives. To keep all these things and to ponder them in our hearts is to pay serious attention to all that is said concerning this child.
Week at a Glance, 4 – 10 January
Tuesday, January 5th, Eve of the Epiphany
7:00pm Holy Communion
Sunday, January 10th, First Sunday after Epiphany
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Upcoming Event:
Tuesday, January 19th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Andrew Steane’s Science and Humanity: A Humane Philosophy of Science and Religion (2018) and The Penultimate Curiosity: How Science Swims in the Slipstream of Ultimate Questions (2016) by Roger Wagner and Andrew Briggs.
Services to be held in the Parish Hall, January through March.
The Second Sunday After Christmas
The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962) does not provide a collect for the Second Sunday after Christmas, but specifies that the service for the Octave Day of Christmas “shall be used until the Epiphany.”
ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin: Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
The Lesson: Isaiah 9:2-7
The Gospel: St. Luke 2:15-21
Artwork: El Greco, Adoration of the Shepherds, 1596-1600. Oil on canvas, Muzeul National de Arta, Bucharest.
Meditation for the Octave Day of Christmas
“His name was called JESUS”
Christmas is more than a three-day or even a nine-day wonder. There are the proverbial twelve days of Christmas, an octave and a half, as it were. Only so, it seems, can we begin to unpack the mystery of the Incarnation and its radical meaning of human redemption. The blood of the Holy Innocents on Monday past anticipates and participates in the blood of this day. The Octave Day of Christmas locates the story of Jesus and his sacred humanity concretely within the cultic and cultural realities of ancient Judaism. The Octave marks the Circumcision of Christ, the first blood-letting of Christ in the Christian understanding, circumcision is the Old Testament ritual that has its Christian counterpart in baptism.
We are apt to be squeamish about such a direct and emphatic insistence on the physical reality of the body and that of a male, to boot. But it belongs to the logic of the Incarnation itself that Christ is “made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law” as Paul in Galatians puts it. Only so might we receive the adoption of sons, our being made partakers of God through God’s Word and Son made man. Circumcision was the ritual of Jewish identity signifying a bond with the God who is beyond all nature as its principle and signifying that in the most particular aspects of the human male. Yet such is the logic of redemption. “Christ was man born of woman to redeem both sexes,” as John Hackett (17th c.) wonderfully notes.
The readings for the Octave focus on a further signifier in this ritual, the idea of naming. In Christian contexts, baptism is sometimes called Christening. It has entirely to do with our being incorporated individually into the body of Christ. More significantly, Christian baptism has to do with our being named individually in the giving of God’s own name as Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Here on the Octave Day of Christmas, the theme of naming is emphasized by way of Isaiah and Luke. Isaiah in a lovely passage which highlights the various titles or names of the expected one who comes as child and son and whose “name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, the everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” All of these connect to Luke’s Gospel reading where Jesus at his circumcision “was called JESUS”. The name Jesus is all in capital letters, thus screaming out to us the meaning of Jesus as saviour, on the one hand, and then reminding us, on the other hand, that he was “so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb.” He is JESUS from eternity. This name conveyed by God to the Angels is conveyed in turn to Joseph who “called his name JESUS,” as Matthew notes.
The Octave Day of Christmas and the Circumcision of Christ
The collects for today, The Octave Day of Christmas and the Circumcision of Christ, being New Year’s Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin: Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
Of the Circumcision:
ALMIGHTY God, who madest thy blessed Son to be circumcised, and obedient to the law for man: Grant us the true circumcision of the Spirit; that, our hearts, and all our members, being mortified from all worldly and carnal lusts, we may in all things obey thy blessed will; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
For the New Year:
O IMMORTAL Lord God, who inhabitest eternity, and hast brought thy servants to the beginning of another year: Pardon, we humbly beseech thee, our transgressions in the past, bless to us this New Year, and graciously abide with us all the days of our life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Lesson: Isaiah 9:2-7
The Gospel: St. Luke 2:15-21
Artwork: Guido Reni, The Circumcision of the Child Jesus, 1640. Oil on canvas, Chiesa di San Martino, Siena, Italy.
John West, Missionary
The collect for a missionary, in commemoration of The Rev’d John West (1778-1845), Priest, first Protestant missionary to the Red River Valley, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O GOD, our heavenly Father, who by thy Son Jesus Christ didst call thy blessed Apostles and send them forth to preach thy Gospel of salvation unto all the nations: We bless thy holy Name for thy servant John West, whose labours we commemorate this day, and we pray thee, according to thy holy Word, to send forth many labourers into thy harvest; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The Lesson: Acts 12:24-13:5
The Gospel: St. Matthew 4:13-24a
John Wycliffe, Scholar and Translator
The collect for today, the commemoration of John Wycliffe, (c 1320-84), Scholar, Translator of the Scriptures into English (source):
O Lord, thou God of truth, whose Word is a lantern to our feet and a light upon our path: We give thee thanks for thy servant John Wyclif, and those who, following in his steps, have labored to render the Holy Scriptures in the language of the people; and we beseech thee that thy Holy Spirit may overshadow us as we read the written Word, and that Christ, the living Word, may transform us according to thy righteous will; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
The Lesson: Daniel 2:17-24
The Gospel: St. Matthew 13:9-16
Artwork: Thomas Kirkby, John Wycliffe, c. 1828. Oil on canvas, Balliol College, University of Oxford.
Thomas Becket, Archbishop
The collect for today, the Feast of St. Thomas Becket (1117-1170), Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr (source):
O Lord God,
who gavest to thy servant Thomas Becket
grace to put aside all earthly fear and be faithful even unto death:
grant that we, caring not for worldly esteem,
may fight against evil,
uphold thy rule,
and serve thee to our life’s end;
through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Epistle: 1 Timothy 6:11-16
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:37-43
Thomas Becket was a close personal friend of King Henry II of England and served as his chancellor from 1155. When the Archbishop of Canterbury died in 1162, Henry, seeing an opportunity to exercise control over the church, decided to have his chancellor elected to the post. Thomas saw the dangers of the king’s plan and warned Henry that, if he became archbishop, his first loyalty would be to God and not the king. He told Henry, “Several things you do in prejudice of the rights of the church make me fear that you would require of me what I could not agree to.” What Thomas feared soon came to pass.
After becoming archbishop, Thomas changed radically from defender of the king’s privileges and policies into an ardent champion of the church. Unexpectedly adopting an austere way of life in near-monastic simplicity, he celebrated or attended Mass daily, studied Scripture, distributed alms to the needy, and visited the sick. He became just as obstinate in asserting the church’s interests as he had formerly been in asserting the king’s.
Thomas rejected Henry’s claim to authority over the English Church. Relations with the king deteriorated so seriously that Thomas left England and spent six years in exile in France. He realised that he had to return when the Archbishop of York and six other bishops crowned the heir to the throne, Prince Henry, in contravention of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s rights and authority.
He returned to England with letters of papal support and immediately excommunicated the Archbishop of York and the six other bishops. On Christmas Day 1170 he publicly denounced them from the pulpit of Canterbury Cathedral. It was these actions that prompted Henry’s infamous angry words, “Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?”
Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Innocents
“Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not”
The aggressive atheist and neo-Darwinist, Richard Dawkins, argues that the God of the Old Testament is a most horrible character, to which the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks replied, much to Dawkins’ discomfort, “Ah, I see you are a Christian atheist.” The use of the term Old Testament for the Hebrew or Jewish Scriptures is characteristic of the Christian understanding because of the New Testament writings.
Dawkins’ view of the Old Testament is not new and belongs to a common misconception of the relation between the Old and New Testament which overstates the differences and overplays the contrast. This is seen, for instance, in the idea of the Law versus Grace, forgetting that the Law as given by God is therefore also grace; or the similar idea of justice versus mercy or love, forgetting that mercy is just as intrinsic to the Hebrew Scriptures as it is to the New Testament. Overstating the contrasts between the two testaments belongs to a conflict narrative which pits Jew against Christian. In turn, the aggressive and naive atheism of Dawkins assumes the same conflict narrative between modern science and religion. Such is a profound distortion and misconception.
Dawkins has his precursors, ranging from Marcion in the 2nd century to Thomas Jefferson in the late 18th century. Marcion could not reconcile the God of the Old Testament with the God of the New Testament and so conveniently edited out large swaths of the Old Testament and as well great chunks of the New Testament. For him the contrast was between love and judgement. It is a tendency that has infected many over the centuries. In the case of the 3rd President of America, Thomas Jefferson, the concern was about reason versus revelation, particularly the miracle stories of the Christian Gospels. Jefferson took his scissors to the New Testament to excise all such things leaving merely the husk of a kind of moralizing Jesus in accommodation to the precepts of human reason.
All such things reveal an attitude and a set of assumptions about God and human good. But surely, Dawkins could just have easily found the ‘Christian’ God of the New Testament equally repulsive simply in terms of this disturbing and disquieting story that is an essential part of the mystery of Christmas. If the martyrdom of St. Stephen was not enough of a wake-up call and shock to our thinking about the wondrous birth of Christ, we have the very shocking story of the slaughter to the little ones of Bethlehem, whom Herod slew in his fury, as the carol, puer nobis nascitur puts it.