Christ Church

Audio file of Matins & Ante-Communion for Trinity 4 in Petertide

Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam that is in thine own eye,
and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother’s eye

The blind leading the blind is a common image mostly familiar to us from Luke’s ‘Gospel of Mercy’ in the parable where Jesus speaks about leaders leading others astray. It has its antecedents in the prophetic criticisms of the leadership of Israel such as “You have turned aside from the way; you have caused many to stumble by your instruction”(Malachi 2.8), or “Those who guide these people have been leading them astray” (Is. 9.16) and, “His watchmen are blind; they are all without knowledge”(Is. 56.10). The image has very much to do with a critique of our claims to know. “Eyes have they and see not” extends the image to all of us in our blindness about what we think we know when in fact we are ignorant, and, yet, judgemental about others, hence the moral point about hypocrisy; judging others while exempting ourselves from the same judgment, unable to see ourselves in the other.

The image of the blind leading the blind is not unique to Christianity. It belongs as well to Siddhartha Gautama’s strong critique of Hindu religion out of which arises classical Buddhism. For him the Brahmin caste, the gurus of the Upanishads, are the blind leading the blind. He rejects the Brahmins even as he rejects the caste system altogether in favour of a more inclusive ‘enlightenment’ available for all.

The image of the blind leading the blind belongs to a self-critique of reason and knowing. Perhaps nowhere is it better illustrated than in Sophocles’ great tragedy, Oedipus Rex (Wayne Hankey, Wisdom belongs to God), and in ways that speak to our current confusions about the self and the modern managerial technocratic culture which consumes us. Oedipus thought that he knew who he was both in terms of his parents and in his confidence about his form of knowing when in fact he was blind to both. The play is about how he comes to know that he didn’t know. He comes into collision with himself in thinking that his form of knowing, a kind of discursive reasoning, is absolute, only to discover that it is at best limited and partial. His discovery happens through the encounter with prophecy, in his case, the blind prophet of Apollo, Teiresias, who, though blind, nonetheless knows the truth about Oedipus. The play explores how Oedipus comes to know this truth and in so doing discovers that his form of knowing belongs to a higher form of knowing; it is incomplete and partial in itself. To use a later language (Boethius), he comes to know how ratio participates in intellectus.

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Rejoice with me

“The deepest impulse of the human soul is for that which is greater than herself,” the great 3rd century (AD) pagan philosopher, Plotinus observes. His statement looks back to the teachings of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and has its resonances in Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, and a host of others in the spiritual imaginary of the philosophical traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It counters the narcissisms and obsessions with the self that are part of contemporary culture: ‘look at me looking at you looking at me,’ as it were. The point is that everything is not about you, about the sovereign self in its splendid isolation. You are not the centre.

What Plotinus highlights is intellectual humility signaled in the Epistle and illustrated in the Gospel. Humility is the condition of grace, our openness to what is greater than ourselves, the condition of being exalted in due time, “after that ye have suffered a while.”

Without this insight, we misunderstand the Gospel. The 15th chapter of Luke’s Gospel presents us with three parables, two of which we heard today: the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and then there is the concluding parable of the prodigal or lost son. All three are about repentance, metanoia, a thinking after the things of God, the things that are greater than ourselves. The word metanoia is used several times here. It has very much to do with our being lost and found, being lost from God and the company of our humanity with God and then being found and restored to that company. The parables are told to convict the judgmentalism of “the Pharisees and Scribes” who murmur against Jesus because of the company he keeps with “the publicans and sinners.” Yet they are those who “drew near for to hear him.” They are seeking what is greater than themselves as opposed to the smug self-righteousness and conceit of the Pharisees and Scribes. What is a common complaint and failing of religion is now a defining feature of our culture in its obsessions with its “assurance of certain certainties” (T.S. Eliot, The Preludes IV) about self-identity which create endless division and enmity.

Metanoia or repentance is about our being turned back to what is greater than ourselves in which we find the deeper truth about ourselves. It is found in communion. The Church is not simply a human construct; it is, divinely speaking, an article of Faith, “the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church,” as we profess in the Creed. The lost sheep and the lost coin are returned to the company of others. The most profound image for the Church is that of the body of Christ. Rejoice with me means to rejoice in “the blessed company of all faithful people” as our liturgy puts it (BCP, p.85), reminding us that salvation or being whole is not simply about the individual self but about our incorporation into the mystical body of Christ.

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What manner of child shall this be?

The birth and death of John the Baptist frame our summer sojournings. His nativity is celebrated just after the summer solstice; his death in late August, in the days of the closing down of summer, we might say, at least here in the Maritimes! Both celebrations are grounded in the witness of the Scriptures. Moreover, his nativity has a special cultural relevance for Canadians as marking the anniversary of the landing of John Cabot in Newfoundland in 1497 and carrying over into Dominion Day or Canada’s birthday celebrated on July 1st. He is the patron saint not only of Quebec but of Canada.

Such are some of the spiritual resonances of a very unusual and yet a most significant figure in the Christian understanding. What exactly do we celebrate in the nativity of John the Baptist? The Collect shows us: his “wonderful birth” which points to the greater wonder of Christ’s birth; his “preaching of repentance”; his “doctrine and holy life” concentrated on the themes of “constantly speak[ing] the truth, boldly rebuk[ing] vice, and patiently suffer[ing] for the truth’s sake”. It sums up eloquently and economically the whole of the scriptural story of John the Baptist.

Such themes belong to the life of the Christian Church and Faith. John the Baptist is the forerunner of Christ, vox clamantis in deserto, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, “prepare ye the way of the Lord.” whose unusual birth, itself a kind of miracle, points to the purpose of his very being. He is “the Prophet of the Highest” (Lk.1.76), a prophet and yet “more than a prophet,” as Jesus says (Mt. 11.9), pointing to John who is pointing us to Jesus. His ministry is summed up in the preaching of repentance. What is that except our turning back to God from whom we have turned away?

The feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist awakens us to the deep and true desire of our humanity for something beyond ourselves without which our lives are empty and meaningless. Plotinus, the great 3rd century pagan philosopher, observes that “the deepest impulse of the soul is for that which is greater than herself.” Such ancient wisdom looks back to the teachings of Plato and Aristotle yet resonates profoundly in the philosophical traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It speaks to the dilemmas of our day wherein we are engrossed and wrapped up in ourselves, in our own sense of self and personal rights, privileges and sensual enjoyments. Such things betray this deeper wisdom and leave us in despair and sorrow.

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