Christ Church

“What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you”

Paul’s speech on the Areopagus in Athens shows something of the meaning of his so-called conversion. Saul, the persecutor of the followers of the Way, the followers of Jesus, becomes Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles. It is not a conversion from Judaism to Christianity because the latter does not yet really exist. It marks instead a conversion in thought and understanding and therein lies the real importance and significance of Paul’s conversion and indeed, the meaning of all conversion.

The Book of the Acts of the Apostles deals with the emergence of the early Church focusing largely on the apostolic characters of Peter and Paul. The story of Paul’s conversion, of which the change in name from Saul to Paul is a part, is told in Acts three separate times. The accounts are all interesting and informative and reveal the tensions and the dynamic of the time. In a way, the stories and the accounts of the missionary travels of Paul provide the foundations for the apostolic and catholic nature of the Christian church as it begins to emerge out of the cauldron of Jewish religion, Greek philosophy and Roman political order.

Paul’s speech to the men of Athens is a kind of highlight moment. It marks an essential feature of Christian witness, namely, the engagement with other cultures and religious philosophies and allows us to see what is distinct about Christianity. Paul is a major theological voice who sets the stage for the development of Christian doctrine about Jesus Christ as the Son of God. Hans Urs Von Balthasar notes, as a kind of thought experiment, however, that Paul’s speech would never get off the ground today simply because it assumes that God is a concept and a topic which while widely shared then cannot be assumed as such now. The idea of God was the starting point from which to talk about judgment and resurrection; in short, Christ as the God “in whom we live and move and have our being”, referencing the poets of ancient Greece, specifically, Aratus, whose invocation to Zeus has been appropriated by Paul.

That is itself significant and shows the nature of the cultural and intellectual interplay that belongs to the emergence of Christianity and, especially, as grasped by Paul whose learning and grasp of languages as well as his deep study of the Torah make him such a significant figure.

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“Ephphatha, that is, Be opened”

On behalf of The Prayer Book Society of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, let me thank the Parish of St. George’s for the great privilege and pleasure of being here this evening for this service of choral evensong and for the wonderful music provided by Garth McPhee and the choir. Boyd and Buxtehude, words of Sedulius and a tune named St. Venantius – it doesn’t get any better! Thank you.

Epiphany is the most theological of the seasons of the Church year. It is God in your face, as it were, and yet speaks profoundly about who we are, who we are in God’s sight. The whole focus and emphasis is upon what are sometimes known as the divine attributes, the attributes of God. Three of the essential attributes of God that are made known in the season of the Epiphany are “the infinite wisdom, power and goodness” of God, concisely named in the first of The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion as found in our Canadian Prayer Book. They are attributes that belong to the theological reflections of Jewish, Christian and Islamic thought. For Christians these are all made manifest through the humanity of Jesus Christ.

Epiphany is pre-eminently the season of teaching and therein lies the modern dilemma and challenge for our divided, confused, and despairing world. The Magi-Kings from Anatolia came to Bethlehem bearing gifts to the one to whom the star brought them. Unlike the Caesars of the world whose veni, vidi, vici, “I came, I saw, I conquered”, captures the dominance meme of the regimes of power, the Magi-Kings viderant, venerunt, et adoraverunt, “they saw, they came and they adored”; in short, they worshipped. The gifts they present are gifts which honour and teach, “sacred gifts of mystic meaning”. Epiphany is the pageant of mystical theology. We participate in what we behold. We are in the midst of great mysteries. Gold signifies that Christ is King; frankincense that he is God; and myrrh that he is sacrifice.

Such things are both revelation and redemption; the revelation of God and the redemption of humanity. But only through something taught and learned. That makes all the difference – then and now. “They departed into their own land another way”, having been warned in a dream, Matthew tells us, “not to return to Herod”. There is a sense of ominous danger that foreshadows the richly allusive but disturbing story of the slaughter of the Holy Innocents; the theme of myrrh and sacrifice, the theme of redemptive suffering. “How vain the cruelty of Herod’s fear”, as we sang. But they return, as T.S. Eliot famously intuits, “no longer at ease”, no longer comfortable and secure in their former assumptions and outlooks. The suggestion is that they are changed by what they have been given to see. Such is the purpose of Epiphany. It opens us out to the presence of God and to the purpose of God for our lives. The intent is to change how we see, how we think and feel about God and about the suffering realities of our humanity. But what kind of change?

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“Speak the word only”

The Gospel which orders our thoughts on this The Third Sunday after Epiphany is the double healing of the leper and the Centurion’s servant by Jesus Christ. Epiphany season abounds in miracles. They belong to the making visible of the glory of God. A miracle, after all, is a sign of wonder. The healing miracles are a wonder. But what exactly do we see? Only the signs of the glory in the effects of what is said and done. The wonder, really, is the wonder of Christ.

Christ heals a leper and he heals the paralysed servant of the Centurion. He speaks and he acts. There is healing. The healings are within Israel and also beyond Israel. “He came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.” It is at once universal and particular. Such are the properties of God. Through the history and meaning of Israel the glory of God is not only made known to the world but for the world. The leper is healed within the context of the particular customs and practices of Israel and is held to the requirements of the Law in Israel. But with the Centurion’s request, Jesus acknowledges something more: there is the wonder of faith which coming out of Israel transcends Israel. “I have not found so great faith, no not in Israel,” Jesus says about the Centurion. For both the leper and the Centurion, Christ is the wonder. There is an epiphany. Something is make known about who God is for us in Jesus Christ.

He is the wonder before he puts forth his hand and before he speaks. The healing miracles are surprisingly not the glory. They are only the making visible of the glory which is present in Christ Jesus. He is the glory. And he is the glory which is somehow known and known not just in his effects but in his person.

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“Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it”

Saying and doing. Acting upon what has been said. Does it mean just simply doing what you are told – mindlessly and without thinking? By no means. Epiphany presents us with the great wonder and mystery of God revealed to us through the words and deeds and person of Jesus Christ. The Feast of the Epiphany itself marks the break-out from Bethlehem in the sense of the making known of Christ’s birth to all people. The Magi-Kings present gifts to the Child Christ. They are gifts which teach. Christ is King, and God and Sacrifice. And then The First Sunday after Epiphany presents to us the story of the boy Jesus at the age of twelve being found in the Temple in Jerusalem in the midst of the doctors of the Law. The scene is all about teaching and learning, things which have very much to do with our humanity in concert with divinity. God and Man. Jesus the Divine Teacher; Jesus the human student. What is signaled ever so profoundly, too, is the mission and purpose of Christ’s Incarnation.

“Wist ye not”, he says to Mary. “Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business”, or as another possible way of translating puts it, “in my Father’s house”. Epiphany is all about the things of God revealed to us through the humanity of Jesus. Central to the teaching or doctrine of Epiphany is the relationship between power and wisdom. The first article of the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, for instance, identifies three essential attributes of God: his infinite wisdom, power and goodness. When wisdom and power fall apart then we have abuse and destruction, bullying and domination – all at the expense of wisdom and truth. It is the story of the 20^th century and continuing into the 21^st. Epiphany, to the contrary, points out the essential and necessary connection between wisdom and power. Such things belong to God and only then by extension to the shaping and ordering of our lives in community.

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