PROPER 18, YEAR A

Sunday 6 September 2020

St. John’s, Newport

 

Romans 13:8-14

Matthew 18:15-20

 

From our Epistle reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “The night is far spent. The day is at hand …” What a wonderful affirmation! For many of us, the balance of the year 2020 has indeed seemed like a prolonged night. Yet even in the midst of the darkest night, we always have God’s promise of an approaching dawn. I could be wrong, but I think that we can legitimately entertain the hope that if not by the end of this year, then certainly in the coming year, our current situation in this country and the world—with respect to the coronavirus pandemic and all its attendant economic and political woes—will brighten considerably. “The night is far spent. The day is at hand …” Good news indeed.

 

Of course, St. Paul is writing not of any particular historical crisis, but rather of the dawning of God’s eschatological kingdom. For Christians, that is the ultimate hope that illuminates all our temporal hopes in this world. Whatever disappointments and frustrations we may experience in this life, God’s promise of eternal life in Christ remains valid and trustworthy.

 

St. Paul combines the promise with the exhortation to make ourselves ready for the dawning day. “The night is far spent. The day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness; and let us put on the armor of light.” In several places in his letters, Paul repeats the theme that under cover of darkness, when we think no-one can see us, we may be tempted to engage in activities that we’d be ashamed to have brought into the light of day.

 

In his classic autobiographical work The Confessions, St. Augustine of Hippo tells of his conversion to full Christian faith and practice upon reading the following verses in today's Epistle. Unsure of what he believed or what he should do with his life, he was meditating in his garden one day, seeking guidance. From a nearby garden he heard a child’s voice playfully singing the Latin words, Tolle, lege! Tolle, lege! “Take and read! Take and read!” So he picked up a copy of the Scriptures, opened it at random, and the first words his eyes fell upon were those that follow in today’s Epistle: “Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness; not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof.” On reading those words, Augustine’s life was transformed; and the former profligate sinner started down the road to becoming one of the Western Church's foremost bishops and saints.

 

A key component of the attitudes and behaviors that St. Paul calls us to forsake in preparation for the dawn are “strife and envying,” translated in the Revised Standard Version as “quarreling and jealousy.” Here Paul is picking up on his earlier exhortation in the same passage to “love one another,” for “love is the fulfilling of the Law.”

 

Our Gospel reading from St. Matthew addresses this same theme of loving one another, and avoiding quarreling and jealousy, in the set of instructions beginning, “if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone …” Our Lord commends to his disciples a threefold procedure for conflict resolution in the Church’s life: First, try to resolve the problem one-to-one; if that doesn’t work, take along two or three witnesses who can perhaps assist as mediators; if that doesn’t work, bring the matter to the full Christian assembly; and if that doesn’t work, cast out the offending party as if a heathen or tax collector.

 

That specific procedure may have worked well in the first and second centuries but has since become impractical, and the Church has evolved other methods of dealing with such problems. The procedural details are far less important, however, than the underlying principle, which remains valid for all time: namely, when conflict threatens to divide a Christian community, the Gospel imperative is to do everything we conscientiously can to be reconciled. We’re not to acquiesce in the breaking of relationships in the Church until we’re clear that every reasonable effort at reconciliation has been tried.

 

Our Lord goes on to explain that disagreement, division, and disunity hold the Church back from being all that it can be and achieving all that it can achieve. By contrast, the costly work of reconciliation opens the way for God to do amazing things in a Christian community whose members are united in love and prayer: “if two of you agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

 

Having been a clergy friend of this parish of St. John’s, Newport, for almost twenty years now, I can testify that God is doing great things in your midst. The work of capital fund-raising, restoration, and rebuilding that you’ve undertaken bespeaks a wonderful vision of hope for the future. The results so far are marvelous. You’ve had your ups and downs, with times of conflict and division in the past, but at the moment you appear to be united in spirit and purpose. It’s a joy to watch, even from a distance. Although he'll probably be upset with me for saying so, a great deal of the credit goes to your rector, Fr. Humphrey, clearly a man of deep prayer, who models the way of Christian reconciliation and forgiveness.

 

My message to you today is that you can count on God to keep on doing great things in your midst so long as you remain united in faith, hope, and love—praying together for the same things, forgiving one another, and maintaining the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Easier said than done! In fact, what I’m describing is humanly impossible. The good news, however, is that we're not in this alone; God doesn’t leave us to our own devices. The Collect of the Day invites us to trust with all our hearts in the God who always resists the proud who confide in their own strength, but does not forsake those who make their boast of his mercy. With that reassurance, although the night is far spent, we joyfully await the approaching day.

 

PROPER 12, YEAR A

July 26, 2020

St. Andrew’s by-the-Sea, Little Compton, RI

Genesis 29:15-28

Psalm 105:1-11, 45b

Romans 8:26-39

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

As today is my final Sunday with you this summer, I want to take the opportunity to say how much I’ve enjoyed our worship together. Officiating virtually by Zoom has been a new experience for me; and while it’s not the same as being there in person, it’s certainly the next best thing—a great way to stay connected in a time of physical separation and relative isolation. I know you’re looking forward to having Lynn back with you next Sunday; in the meantime we keep her continued recovery and progress in our prayers.

Today is also my first time of having the occasion to preach on this Sunday’s reading from Genesis on Jacob and Laban. In my previous parishes, we used a slightly different form of the Sunday lectionary in which I don’t recall this story ever coming up. And it’s a good thing to reflect on passages of Scripture that one may have read many times but never had the occasion to explore in depth.

To be honest, however, my first reaction to this reading was to wonder what I could possibly find that would be edifying for us. Some aspects of the story are charming, such as Jacob’s deep love for Rachel. Other aspects are entertaining and amusing, such as Laban’s duping Jacob into marrying his older daughter Leah so that he has to work another seven years to marry his true love Rachel. This part of Genesis seems to be full of stories of tricksters pulling one over on each other! And, from the perspective of contemporary sensibilities, the context of the story is frankly appalling, with a patriarchal society treating women as property to be exchanged between fathers and husbands, not to mention polygamy.

But for the preacher, the question of overarching importance must always be: Where is God in this story? What was God doing here? As I puzzled over this question, I must confess that I was initially stumped. But then it hit me! Even through the dubious means of Laban’s deception, God was fulfilling his promise to Jacob—namely, that his descendants would multiply and spread abroad to fill the earth and become a blessing to all its families.

As we read on in the subsequent chapters of Genesis, we discover that between Leah and Rachel, and their two maidservants Bilhah and Zilpah, Jacob becomes the father of twelve sons—the ancestors of the Twelve Tribes of Israel—who are absolutely critical to God’s plan not just for the offspring of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but indeed for the salvation of the entire world. I could be wrong, but I think we’re meant to understand that none of this would ever have happened if Jacob had simply married Rachel at the outset, as was his wish. For, as it turned out, Rachel ended up bearing only two of Jacob’s twelve sons. (Of the other ten, Leah bore six, and Bilhah and Zilpah each bore two.)

So, even though Jacob didn’t realize it at the time, God was already at work, turning Laban’s deceit and exploitation to his own purposes, to bring about the fulfillment of his promises. As the psalmist sings in celebration: “God has always been mindful of his covenant, the promise he made for a thousand generations: the covenant he made with Abraham, the oath that he swore to Isaac; which he established as a statue for Jacob, an everlasting covenant for Israel …”

Read this way, the story illustrates the principle that Saint Paul enunciates in this morning’s reading from the Epistle to the Romans: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”

A similar theme stands out in the series of somewhat mysterious and enigmatic parables told by our Lord in today’s Gospel reading from Matthew. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed … yeast … treasure hidden in a field … a pearl of great value. One common feature in these images is great things arising from small beginnings that are either hidden, imperceptible, or easy to overlook. Another is that God’s kingdom is of such enormous importance as to be worth the sacrifice of all else. One sells everything one has to buy the field containing that treasure, or to obtain that pearl in the marketplace …

Taken together, then, one question that today’s readings invite us to consider is this: As we look back on our own lives in this world so far, are we able to identify situations or events in which God was present and working to fulfill his purposes for us in ways that we didn’t recognize or understand at the time, but which may have become clearer after the fact—perhaps years or even decades later? We might take some time this coming week to reflect on that question, and then thank God for his loving presence and involvement in our lives, and rededicate ourselves to his service in gratitude for all his blessings.

The Collect of the Day wonderfully sums up these themes and perhaps also furnishes a useful pattern for our own daily prayers: “O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal …”

Notice how that Collect ties in with today’s readings. God was indeed Jacob’s protector, ruler, and guide, increasing and multiplying his mercy upon him. And in the Epistle, Saint Paul promises that in Christ we will indeed not lose the things eternal: “Who,” Paul asks, “will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. Or I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, or rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

These words furnished a powerful reassurance to the first-century Christians in Rome who were vulnerable to persecution and death for their faith. For us, they offer the similar reassurance that God is for us, working in often hidden ways to bring us through the midst of present troubles to the glorious fulfillment of his purposes not only for us but for all creation. So, by God’s grace, we gain the courage to follow and serve Christ in this world, confident that as our protector, ruler, and guide, he will bring us through things temporal so that we lose not the things eternal.

PROPER 11, YEAR A

July 19, 2020

St. Andrew’s-by-the-Sea, Little Compton, RI

Genesis 28:10-19a

Psalm 139:1-11, 22-23

Romans 8:12-25

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

A theme running through today’s readings is the vast gulf separating human perception from divine knowledge. In his omniscience—that is, his all-knowingness—God sees everything, including all that remains hidden from within the limitations of our finite human perspective. As the psalmist says, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain to it.”

But then, occasionally, and in accordance with God’s own saving purposes, we’re granted glimpses of divine truth—not by means of any innate human cleverness of our own, but rather by means of God’s revelation to us. Today’s readings afford multiple instances of this wonderful process of God’s Word illuminating our minds with the brightness of divine wisdom.

In the reading from Genesis, Jacob is fleeing from his elder twin brother Esau. We may recall in last Sunday’s reading how Jacob extorted Esau’s rights to his inheritance in return for a bowl of lentil stew. In the intervening chapters, moreover, Jacob has impersonated Esau and stolen his blessing from their dying father Isaac. Understandably enraged, Esau wants to kill Jacob, who in turn escapes to take refuge with his uncle Laban in a place called Haran.

On the first night of his journey, sleeping out under the stars with a stone for his pillow, Jacob dreams of a ladder set up between earth and heaven, on which the angels of God are ascending and descending. Then the Lord draws alongside Jacob and speaks to him, making a series of amazing promises: he and his descendants will inherit the land on which he lies; his offspring will spread abroad in all directions as numerous as the dust of the earth, and they will become a blessing to all the families in the world. The Lord will be with Jacob wherever he goes, and will ultimately bring him back to this land from which he’s now fleeing in fear for his life.

The transformation is almost total. Jacob went to sleep a fugitive and refugee; he wakes up the inheritor of God’s promises to his fathers Abraham and Isaac. Such was the gap between human perception and divine wisdom that Jacob exclaims in wonder, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it! … How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”

A similar gulf between human perception and divine wisdom is evident in the Gospel parable of the wheat and the weeds. When an enemy sows noxious weeds in a farmer’s wheatfield, the servants offer to go and pull up the weeds. But the householder says, “No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat as well.” Let both grow together until the harvest. Only after they’ve both been cut and reaped in the harvest can they be safely sorted and separated.

Saint Augustine of Hippo gave the classical interpretation of this parable around the turn of the fifth century when he likened the Church in this world to a mixed field of wheat and weeds growing together. Against rigorists and purists who wanted to excommunicate evil-doers from the Church’s fellowship for life, Augustine said no, the Church is as much a hospital for sinners as a showcase for saints. Moreover, we’re unlikely to know with any certainty who are which before the Last Judgment. Many who appeared in this life to be the worst sinners could then turn out to have been the greatest saints, and vice versa.

The contrast for Augustine, then, was between the sorry state of the Church in this world and the final revelation of its goodness, truth, and beauty in the next, when “the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” In the meantime, God alone knows the inmost secrets of each person’s heart. In the words of the psalmist: “Lord you have searched me out and known me … you discern my thoughts from afar.”

Again, Saint Paul draws a contrast between present appearances and future reality in the Epistle reading from Romans: “I consider,” he writes, “that the sufferings of the present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” A bit further on, Paul describes a creation in bondage to decay groaning as if in labor, and not only creation but we ourselves, groaning inwardly, as we wait for redemption.

The problem is that from our finite human perspective we’re apt to focus our attention more on our present bondage and groaning than on the glory waiting to be revealed. So Paul exhorts us to wait patiently in hope: “Now hope that is seen is not hope … But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

Taken together, these Scripture readings invite us to renew our trust in the God who sees infinitely more than we do. In the midst of a global pandemic, a faltering economy, and an ideologically polarized body politic, the temptation is to give in to despair. In the past weeks, I’ve occasionally found myself wondering: How are we ever going to get through all this?

At such moments, however, we need to remind ourselves that God desires only our good, and is working through our present troubles to bring us to a future beyond anything that we can presently imagine or visualize. Even when God seems absent or hidden, he’s always in our midst, bringing good out of evil, hope out of despair. So at length we shall be able to say along with Jacob, “Surely the Lord was in this place—and we did not know it!”

This hope, I hasten to add, presupposes no merit or worthiness of our own. Notice that in the Genesis reading, Jacob has done nothing to earn or deserve the promises that God makes to him. On the contrary, he’s a despicable character, a scoundrel (albeit maybe a likable scoundrel). But God favors him and blesses him anyway—as a sheer gift of unmerited grace and divine mercy. And if God did so for Jacob, he can certainly do so for each of us, without exception.

So, the foundation of our hope is the worthiness of Christ, in whom, as Saint Paul says in today’s Epistle, we’ve received the Spirit of adoption as God’s children. “When we cry ‘Abba, Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.”

In the days of the coming week, we might spend some time reflecting on our Christian hope and renewing our trust in God’s promises—especially in view of the vast gulf between the divine omniscience and our limited human vision. For the good news is that God sees, clearly and eternally, even what at present we cannot.

PROPER 10, YEAR A

July 12, 2020

St. Andrew’s-by-the-Sea, Little Compton, RI

Genesis 25:19-34

Psalm 119:105-112

Romans 8:1-11

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

In the past year or so, I’ve discovered that a good starting point for reflections on the readings appointed for any given Sunday is the Collect of the Day, which in Morning Prayer comes right after the Lord’s Prayer and the Suffrages—two pages on from where we are now.

So, let’s look at today’s Collect. “O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you …” That opening phrase describes all of us gathered virtually in this Zoom videoconference, and all Christians throughout the world, worshiping on the Lord’s Day. It immediately reminds us of who we are and what we’re about: God’s people, calling upon him, and asking him to receive our prayers.

The Collect continues: “Grant that we may know and understand what things we ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them …” Wow. Those words suggest what we need to be asking of God this time in our history—as individuals, as communities, as a nation, as a world—knowledge, understanding, grace, and power.

So, right off the bat, the Collect of the Day offers us substantial material for reflection and prayer. In the days of the coming week, we might periodically return to this question: In what areas of our lives do we need knowledge and understanding of what we ought to do, and grace and power to do it?

The opening verse of today’s Psalm, suggests a good place to begin seeking the answer to this question: “Your word is a lantern to my feet, and a light upon my path”—a wonderful image of God’s Word illuminating the right way before us even in the darkest night. So, we can look at today’s readings with this question in mind.

The story of Jacob and Esau in Genesis highlights the consequences of failing to do the things we ought to do. The point not to miss is that neither Jacob nor Esau are particularly admirable characters. Jacob extorts from Esau his inheritance in return for some bread and lentil stew. And Esau is foolish enough to agree to the deal. The failure on Esau’s part is a lapse in knowledge and understanding: going against his true interests, he yields his birthright in return for the momentary relief of his hunger. But the failure on Jacob’s part is a moral lapse: even though he knows and understands that what he’s doing is wrong, he does it anyway.

The challenges facing us in our country and the world today afford multiple instances of our need for knowledge and understanding of what we ought to do, and for the grace and power to do it. With respect to race relations, I believe that we’re entering a period of national conversation in which all voices must be heard and listened to, precisely so that we can gain the deeper knowledge and understanding necessary to achieve a more just and equitable society. In the matter of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, I suspect that the problem is more that while we largely do know what needs to be done, in too many places too many of us have been unwilling or unable to do it. My aim in saying this is not to be judgmental but simply to reiterate the point that our need is not only for the knowledge and understanding of what we ought to do, but also for the grace and power faithfully to accomplish it.

The good news in this picture comes, appropriately enough, in the Gospel reading: “And [Jesus] told them many things in parables, saying, ‘Listen! A sower went out to sow …’” In the interpretation that our Lord himself supplies, the seed represents the Good News of the Kingdom, and the different types of ground—the path where the birds eat up the seed, the rocky ground where the seed can’t gain deep roots, the thorns that choke, and the good soil where the seed flourishes—all represent different types of responses to God’s Word. But these allegorical features can all too easily distract us from the most remarkable character of all: namely the Sower himself. I think it’s fair to identify the Sower as a figure of God. And the sower’s wildly indiscriminate scattering of the seed is a vivid image of God’s extravagant generosity in distributing his gifts of knowledge, understanding, grace, and power to his people.

Despite the seemingly wasted effort of scattering seed in places where it cannot grow, enough still falls on good soil to yield a harvest of amazing abundance. And notice how the final verse of today’s Gospel ties in with the Collect of the Day: “But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”

To play with this imagery just a little bit more, one remaining question is how we can know what kind of ground we’re supplying to receive God’s Word and God’s gifts in our own lives. How can we make ourselves into good soil that brings forth an abundant harvest of good works?

Well, it’s a trick question. The answer is that we cannot. Only God can do that. But God is the creator of both the seed and the soil. The good news, again, is that God can and will make us into such good soil, if only we ask him to do so, by the power of his Holy Spirit.

Here today’s Epistle from Romans comes to our aid. The distinction that Saint Paul makes between “Spirit” and “flesh” can be a bit misleading. It’s not a dualistic distinction between the spiritual and material realms, but rather between a life oriented towards God in the world, and a life oriented towards the world apart from God. What Paul calls life “in the flesh” is the attempt to live relying on our unaided human resources and abilities. And what he calls life “in the Spirit” is life lived relying on God to do in us what we could never do for ourselves.

So Paul writes, “you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you.” And then, for good measure, he adds this amazing promise: “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.”

In other words, all this imagery of Sower, seed, sowing, and harvest refer not only to this life but even more to the life of the world to come. Eternal life in Christ is the hope we proclaim and the gift we pray for. We ask God, then, to send his Holy Spirit to make us into fertile soil capable of hearing and receiving his Word, so that we in turn may bring forth an abundant harvest to the glory of his Name.

TRINITY SUNDAY

June 7, 2020

St. John’s, Newport, Rhode Island

On the occasion of this wonderful celebration, it seems well to begin by saying what the Holy Trinity is not. It’s not an intellectual puzzle to be solved, but a mystery to be adored. So my goal this morning is not to “explain the Trinity” as if that were possible.

Nor is the Holy Trinity what some of us clergy so often seem to want to make it: a doctrinal tightrope to be trod gingerly, carefully maintaining our balance so as not to plunge headlong into the abyss of this heresy on one side, or that heresy on the other. The study of the classical trinitarian heresies has a legitimate and necessary place in theology, but it’s not our primary concern in the celebration of today’s feast.

A good clue as to what we’re really about comes in the Collect of the Day. If we listen carefully, we’ll hear four words repeated, each being said not once but twice: faith, worship, eternal, and glory …

“Almighty and everlasting God, who hast given unto us thy servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of the divine Majesty to worship the unity: we beseech thee that thou wouldest keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see thee in thy one and eternal glory …”

So, today’s feast calls us to faith, worship, and eternal glory! We praise God for having revealed himself as one God in three Persons, and we ask him to keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, so that we may be brought to share in his eternal glory.

Looking to the past, today’s Scripture readings highlight the Holy Trinity’s presence and activity in our beginnings. In the reading from Genesis, God brings creation into being by speaking. The Christian tradition understands the speaker to be the Father, the Word spoken to be the Son, and the truth of that Word to be the Holy Spirit.

Saint Athanasius writes in today’s selection from the Office of Readings:

‘The Father makes all things through the Word and in the Holy Spirit … Accordingly, in the Church, one God is preached who is above all things and through all things and in all things. God is above all things as Father, for he is principle and source; he is through all things through the Word; and he is in all things in the Spirit.”

The Genesis reading affirms that as human beings we’ve been created in the trinitarian image and likeness. “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness … So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

Notice how the text shifts back and forth between the singular and the plural in describing both God and humanity. God does not say, “Let me make man in my image,” but “Let us make man in our image.” Here Christian tradition understands the “us” and the “our” to refer to the three divine Persons. And the human race created in God’s image is likewise both singular and plural: In the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. We human beings are simultaneously one and many. We’re many separate persons; and yet we’re one in our shared humanity, our shared human nature.

This teaching has radical implications. C. S. Lewis once wrote, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else.”

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity teaches us not only who God is, but also who we are as human beings created in God’s image. The three Persons of the Holy Trinity are traditionally described as having three attributes: co-equal, co-eternal, and consubstantial. (Consubstantial simply means that they share the same divine essence or nature.)

In an analogous way, we human beings are likewise co-equal, co-eternal, and consubstantial. We’re consubstantial in our shared human nature. We’re co-eternal in the sense that we’re all called to eternal life (even though unlike the three divine Persons we each have a beginning in time). And we’re co-equal in our shared human dignity as bearers of the divine image.

It follows that racism and all other ideologies promoting human inequality and domination are not merely sinful but blasphemous. For Christians, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is a uniquely powerful weapon in the struggle against injustice and oppression. And this vision of human dignity and equality in the divine image may be one unique contribution we have to make as Christians at this difficult time in our history.

Today’s Gospel reading reminds us that having been created in the image of the Trinity, in Holy Baptism we’ve also be re‑created in the name of the Trinity. The risen Lord appears to the eleven in Galilee and commissions them: “Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

And so we live confidently in the present and look with hope to the future. As baptized members of Christ’s Body the Church, we have his promise that he will be with us “always, even unto the end of the world.” In today’s Epistle from Second Corinthians, Saint Paul bids us, “agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.”

A basic tenet of Christian faith is that God is the God of love and peace, or more simply, God is love, precisely as the Holy Trinity. The love that the three divine Persons eternally exchange among themselves, in total mutuality and total self‑giving, is the very same love with which God loves us, and which he invites us to share, with him and with one another, now and for ever.

The Holy Trinity is both our beginning and our end. Created in the trinitarian image, re-created and regenerated in the trinitarian Name, we look forward to our fulfillment in all joy and happiness by sharing eternally in the trinitarian life.

And so, to end where we began, we pray God to keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, that in the end we may see him face-to-face in the fullness of his glory as one God in three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, to whom be all worship, praise, dominion, and power, now and to the ages of ages. Amen.

THE FEAST OF THE VISITATION

Monday 1 June 2019

St. John’s, Newport, Rhode Island

From the Collect for today’s Feast: “Father in heaven, by whose grace the virgin mother of thine incarnate Son was blessed in bearing him, but still more blessed in keeping thy word…”

This Collect gives us two reasons why the Virgin Mary is called the Blessed Virgin Mary. She was blessed in bearing the incarnate Son of God the Father. But she was still more blessed in keeping God’s Word. And both blessings, the Collect reminds us, came by the grace or gift of our Father in heaven.

The Collect mirrors the double blessing that Elisabeth pronounces in the Gospel that we’ve just heard. When Mary enters the house, Elisabeth cries out, “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” That’s Mary’s first blessing: to be the Mother of the incarnate Lord. But then Elisabeth adds a second blessing: “And blessed is she that believed, for there shall be a performance of those things that were told her from the Lord.”

Saint Luke records Jesus himself repeating a similar double blessing later in his Gospel. In Chapter 11, verses 27 and 28, we read: “And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked.” The language is a bit more anatomically graphic that we might feel comfortable with today; but it’s clearly a blessing on the Lord’s mother. In response, he does not deny what she has said, but adds the second part, “Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it.”

Part of the genius of the Collects and other liturgical texts in our Prayer Book tradition is that they’re able to weave such a rich web of biblical allusions in so few words: “Father in heaven, by whose grace the mother of thine incarnate Son was blessed in bearing him but still more blessed in keeping thy word …”

Then comes the second part of the Collect, where we ask God for some specific gift or grace related to the day’s liturgical theme: “Grant us who honor the exaltation of her lowliness to follow the example of her devotion to thy will …”

So the question that the Collect places before us is how we can become more attentive to God’s Word and deepen our devotion to following God’s will. Let’s think about that question.

Many of us, I know, are deeply distressed by what’s happening in our country and the world. What is the safest and most responsible way out of the pandemic? How do we come out of the lockdown and restart the economy so that people have the opportunity to regain their livelihoods while at the same time minimizing new outbreaks of the disease? How do we begin dismantling systemically racist structures that result in people of color fearing death at the hands of the very forces we employ to protect and serve all citizens? And how do we respond to the rage that we’ve seen boiling over into rioting, looting, and arson across our country?

I don’t pretend to have any new or original answers to these difficult and painful questions. But I will say that as Christians the one unique contribution we can make is to attend to God’s Word. We can listen to what God is saying to his people in the Scriptures. In reading, meditation, and prayer we can begin to seek God’s will—for us, for our nation, and for the world.

The Church commends many kinds of practices to help us read and meditate on Scripture, from the Divine Office, to lectio divina, to spiritual exercises in the Ignatian tradition, to daily devotional commentaries like Forward Day-by-Day. Different methods suit different individuals; there’s no one-size-fits-all plan. But today’s Feast invites us to consider what practical steps we might take to strengthen our engagement with God’s Word and deepen our devotion to doing God’s will.

By following Mary’s example, we not only receive God’s blessing, but we also become a blessing to others. The beauty of the Visitation story is this quality of mutual blessing. Mary’s arrival bearing the unborn Jesus is a blessing to both Elisabeth and the unborn John the Baptist who leaps for joy in his mother’s womb; Elisabeth in turn blesses Mary and the fruit of her womb. All these blessings originate in Mary’s simple attentiveness and obedience to God’s Word announced by the angel: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it unto me according to thy word.”

But they don’t end there. In the song we know as the Magnificat, Mary sings the radical vision of a world transformed: “He hath showed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away.”

So, when I suggest that our first response to the challenges of our time needs to be hearing and keeping God’s Word, I’m not proposing anything safe, timid, or escapist. On the contrary, Mary points us in a way that is full of excitement, creativity, risk, and promise.

The Blessed Virgin Mary alone is the bearer of the Word-made-flesh, the Mother of God. That is her unique vocation, her unique place in the economy of salvation.

But as baptized Christians we all have the vocation to be bearers of God’s Word: to one another and to the world. That mission begins when we who honor the exaltation of Mary’s lowliness learn to follow her example of devotion to God’s will. Then we shall be blessed as those who hear the Word of God and keep it.

Mary Ark of the Covenant

4TH SUNDAY OF ADVENT, YEAR C 

December 23, 2018

Luke 1:39-45, 56

One of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s traditional titles in such devotional texts as the Litany of Loreto is “Ark of the Covenant.” At first glance, it may seem a strange title. But in today’s Gospel of the Visitation, Saint Luke makes a number of subtle allusions likening Mary to this sacred object from the Old Testament.

A bit of background may be helpful. The Ark of the Covenant was a gold-covered wooden chest constructed according to God’s instructions to hold the two stone tablets of the Law that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. Also placed in the Ark was a jar of manna, the bread from heaven that fed the Israelites in the wilderness, and Aaron’s rod, the staff that miraculously bloomed to prove God’s choice of Moses’ brother Aaron to be Israel’s first high priest. The Ark was about four feet long, three feet wide, and three feet high. Attached to its corners were four gold rings through which two poles were inserted to carry it about. On its lid, known as the Mercy Seat, were the golden figures of two Cherubim.

During the forty years wandering in the wilderness, the Ark went ahead of the people. Wherever the Israelites camped, they placed the Ark in a special tent known as the Tabernacle or the Tent of Meeting. The Ark was, in effect, God’s throne upon earth. Whenever Moses wanted to consult the Lord, he entered the Tent of Meeting, and the Lord came down upon the Mercy Seat. A luminous cloud known as the Shekinah would overshadow the Tent of Meeting signifying the divine presence within; when Moses emerged out of the Tent his face glowed with supernatural light, so that he had to veil himself to avoid terrifying the people.

After the Israelites entered the Promised Land, the Ark resided for two hundred years at a place called Shiloh. Eventually, King David brought it to Jerusalem (about which I will say more in a moment). Later, David’s son King Solomon constructed the Jerusalem Temple to house the Ark in its inner sanctum, the Holy of Holies. After the Babylonian Conquest of Jerusalem in 586 BC, the Ark disappeared from history – although all sorts of weird and wonderful theories abound as to where it ended up. In the time of Jesus and the apostles, however, the Holy of Holies remained empty, although even without the Ark, it was still most sacred space, God’s dwelling on earth.

Now, the original readers of Luke’s account of Mary’s Visitation to Elizabeth would immediately have recognized its parallels with the story of David bringing the Ark up to Jerusalem. When David made Jerusalem his capital, the Ark was in a place called Kiriath-Jearim, about nine miles away, in the hill-country of Judah. Returning victorious from a battle with the Philistines, David went with thirty-thousand men to retrieve the Ark. When the oxen pulling the cart stumbled, however, a man named Uzzah put forth his hand to steady the Ark and was immediately struck dead for daring to touch it. In great fear, David exclaimed, “How can the Ark of the Lord come to me?” So, David took the Ark aside to the house of a man called Obed-Edom; and there it remained three months.

When David learned that, contrary to all expectations, Obed-Edom’s household was greatly blessed by the Ark’s presence, he went again and brought the Ark up to Jerusalem with great rejoicing, shouting, merrymaking, singing, and dancing. And, bringing the Ark into the city, David leaped and danced before the Lord with all his might.

Now, fast-forward about a thousand years to the beginning of the New Testament. When the angel Gabriel appears to Mary in Nazareth and announces that she will give birth to the Messiah, her natural question is, “How shall this be, since I have no husband?” The angel answers: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most-High will overshadow you; therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.” “Overshadow” is exactly the same verb used to describe the cloud of the divine presence covering the Tent of Meeting when the Lord came down from heaven.

Then, in the Visitation story, the parallels multiply. The setting is once again the hill-country of Judah, where the Ark once resided. At Mary’s greeting, Elizabeth exclaims with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women! And blessed is the fruit of your womb!” This is the sole occurrence in the New Testament of the Greek verb here translated as “exclaim” (anaphoneo) – but in the Greek version of the Old Testament, this same verb is used of David’s shouting out in joy before the Ark on the way up to Jerusalem. Elizabeth’s question, “And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” is almost a direct quote of David’s “How can the Ark of the Lord come to me?”

The unborn John the Baptist leaping in his mother’s womb replays David leaping and dancing before the Lord with all his might. Mary’s three-month sojourn at the house of Elizabeth recalls the Ark’s three-month stay at the house of Obed-Edom. Finally, just as the Ark goes up to Jerusalem, and ends up in Solomon’s Temple, so, forty days after the Nativity, Mary goes with Joseph up to Jerusalem to present Jesus in the Temple of the Lord.

In all these ways, Luke indicates that the Blessed Virgin Mary is the Ark of a New Covenant. Just as the Ark carried within it the tablets of the Law, the Word of God inscribed on stone, so Mary carries in her womb the Word-made-flesh. Just as the Ark carried a jar of manna, the miraculous bread from heaven, which fed the Israelites in the wilderness, so Mary carries within her womb the true Bread from heaven, who feeds us in the Holy Eucharist with his own Body and Blood. And just as the Ark held the rod, which confirmed Aaron’s high priesthood, so Mary carries in her womb the true high priest, the final mediator between God and humanity.

The point is not that Mary “is like” the Ark of the Covenant. That is to get things the wrong way ’round. Rather, the Ark was like Mary. That’s how biblical typology works. Although it had its own meaning and significance in its own time, the Ark nonetheless pointed beyond itself to the Mother of God, and the One she brought into the world. Like so many other features of Old Testament religion, the Ark was a type and shadow of the infinitely greater things to come.

The message for us today is, I think, very simple. God’s coming among us is cause for great rejoicing. Who are we that the Son of God should come to us? At the presence of the Lord, David leaped and danced before the Lord with all his might. John the Baptist leaped for joy in his mother’s womb. At our Christmas services beginning tomorrow evening, the Church invites us to join the celebration. Let us go out to greet Him.

Carl Heinrich Bloch, The Shepherds and the Angel, 1879
Frederiksborg Castle, Denmark

CHRISTMAS 2018

At the Solemn Mass of the Nativity
Monday 24 December, 10:30 pm

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased! (Luke 2:14)

This year, it's occurred to me that for the shepherds in the Christmas story, the most memorable event in the night’s proceedings was most likely not their visit to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in Bethlehem, but rather the prior appearance of the angel announcing the birth of the Savior, and then the sky filled with the multitude of the heavenly host praising God. The swaddled newborn in the manger was the sign confirming the truth of the angelic announcement. The gift of new life is always beautiful, to be sure. But an infant in the company of his parents was something the shepherds had probably all seen before, in a variety of times, places, and circumstances.

The angelic appearance was, however, awesome and even terrifying: as Luke tells us, the shepherds were “filled with fear.” It’s not for nothing that the first words an angel usually speaks after appearing to human beings are “Fear not!” or “Do not be afraid!”

The Bible depicts angels as fulfilling three principal functions: they serve as messengers from God to human beings; they protect and defend God’s people on earth, and they worship and praise God in heaven. In the Nativity story the angels play the first and third of these roles. First, the lone angel delivers to the shepherds the good news of the Messiah’s birth. Then, the shepherds are granted a glimpse into heaven itself where the angelic host worships God with the song of praise: “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth among men with whom he is pleased.”

Glory to God in the highest. The phrase “in the highest” signifies heaven, the place of God’s dwelling. And peace on earth among men. The angels proclaim that just as Christ’s birth brings God glory in heaven, so it brings peace to human beings on earth. Specifically: peace among men with whom he is pleased. This last phrase presents a bit of a translation problem. Sometimes it’s rendered as “goodwill towards men,” or “to men of goodwill.” Each of these translations is defensible. Nonetheless the basic parallelism of the angelic proclamation is clear: The birth of Christ brings glory to God in heaven, and peace to human beings on earth.

But what does “peace on earth” mean? Some commentators suggest that having mentioned Caesar Augustus, the Gospel-writer Luke is taking a subtle dig at the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome. Augustus was often praised for having brought peace on earth; and, indeed, his reign was marked by unprecedented political tranquility maintained by force of Roman arms. So, perhaps the suggestion here is that it’s Christ, not Caesar nor any other earthly ruler, who brings true peace on earth.

But then the question presents itself all the more insistently: What kind of peace does Christ bring? For clearly, the world’s history in the two millennia since Christ’s birth has not been marked by what we usually think of as peace. On the contrary, it’s been a sad chronicle of conflict, war, revolution, massacre, and genocide. If God’s reign of justice, love, and peace is real - and the Church teaches that it is - its time is not yet but still in the future.

Nevertheless, the New Testament uses the word “peace” 92 times: most often to describe a reality and gift of God that’s available to us here and now. When the risen Jesus appears to his disciples, he says, “Peace be with you.” The authors of the New Testament epistles often begin and end their letters to the churches with such greetings as “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” From the earliest days, the Church’s liturgy has included the ritual greeting “The peace of the Lord be always with you.” Then the response: “And with your spirit.”

The English word “peace” translates the Latin pax, and the Greek eirene, all of which hark back to the Hebrew shalom. It’s often pointed out that shalom signifies far more than just the absence of active hostilities or a state of armed truce – which is what usually passes for peace in our world. Instead, shalom implies wholeness, well-being, flourishing, reconciliation, forgiveness, unity, and harmony. All this is signified when the angels proclaim peace on earth, or when in church we greet one another with a sign of peace.

It seems to me that the peace that Christ brings has three dimensions: peace with God; peace with one another; and peace within ourselves. Peace with God comes first. In the biblical understanding, the basic human predicament is that we’re not at peace with God. Collectively, humanity has rebelled against God; we’ve attempted to put ourselves in God’s place. Our first and greatest need, therefore, is the forgiveness and reconciliation with God that Christ came into the world to bring us. That peace can be ours when we repent of our sins and ask God to forgive us by the merits of his Son’s death and resurrection.

Then comes peace with one another. As our Lord says in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” Just as Christ has reconciled us with God, so we’re under a positive obligation to seek reconciliation with one another. Nothing is more soul-destroying to any of us than harboring resentments and bearing grudges for wrongs, injuries, and injustices received. So, if we have anything against anyone, or if anyone has anything against us, we need to pray for that person, and pray for the grace to forgive. It may be humanly impossible, but all things are possible with God. An indispensable component of the peace for which Christ was born in Bethlehem is the presence on earth of a Church whose members are called to work tirelessly for reconciliation and peace among human beings.

Last but not least is peace within ourselves: “the peace of God, which passes all understanding.” In what seems a curious contradiction of the angels’ proclamation, later in Saint Luke’s Gospel Jesus says: “Do you think that I have come to bring peace on earth? No I tell you, but rather division …” He goes on to foretell the sufferings that his disciples will undergo on his account, including persecution even from their closest family members. Still, it’s the peace within, the peace that Christ gives in our hearts, that enables us to withstand all turmoil, conflict, and persecution without.

“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased.’” The peace on earth that Christ’s birth in Bethlehem brings us consists of peace with God, peace with one another, and peace within ourselves—even while peace remains conspicuously lacking in the world around us. As one of my favorite hymns puts it: “The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod; Yet let us pray for but one thing: the marvelous peace of God.”