EPIPHANY II 2019

• Isaiah 62:1-5  • 
• Psalm 36:5-10  • 
• 1 Corinthians 12:1-11  • 



Wedding at Cana -(1496, detail)

• John 2:1-11

Traditionally, three events in the life of Christ have been taken to be interconnected elements in his 'Epiphany' or 'Manifestation'  -- the visit of the Magi to Bethlehem, the Baptism of Jesus by John, and the Wedding at Cana. In this year of the 3-year lectionary cycle (Year C) they are recounted consecutively. Accordingly, following the Feast of Epiphany itself, and the Baptism of the Lord, the Gospel for the second Sunday after the Epiphany is John's account of the wedding at Cana. He identifies it as the first sign that Jesus did, and ends his account of what happened by making it the 'sign' that confirmed the disciples in their belief that Jesus was indeed the Messiah long awaited by the Jews.

On the surface it is a rather puzzling episode, and one that appears only in the fourth Gospel. As is characteristic of that Gospel, it is replete with allusions and symbolic references. In fact, it would be hard to find another eleven Bible verses that are as densely symbolic as these. Understanding them, and thus the episode itself, requires us to hear resonances beyond John's Gospel, not only with the other three Gospels, but with the books of the Old Testament that provide an indispensable backdrop. One critically important allusion is the concept of marriage itself, because this is used in several other places -- including this week's Old Testament lesson -- with the aim of capturing something deep and important about the intimate relationship of God to Israel; God is the bridegroom and Israel the bride.

Wedding at Cana - He Qi

In this ordinary village wedding at Cana, however, appearances are deceptive. Jesus is not the bridegroom, just a guest. But he becomes the central figure at the wedding, because it is his action that wholly transforms the occasion. This transformation is symbolically depicted. The celebration is not at an end, yet the wine runs out. The only drinkable thing left is the water, partially used , that the host has provided for guests so that they can ritually 'purify' themselves before the celebration begins. It is this water that Jesus transforms. And not only does it become the best wine, it flows in what John's readers would have recognized to be vast quantities.

The disciples came to recognize Jesus as Messiah, not because he salvaged a faltering wedding celebration, but because they could read this 'sign' -- the changing of water into wine -- for what it said about him. Early readers of John could interpret this curious episode more easily than we modern readers can. But the truth that the evangelist means to convey remains the same.

BAPTISM OF THE LORD: Epiphany 2019

Baptism of Christ -- El Greco

• Isaiah 43:1-7  • 
• Psalm 29  • 
• Acts 8:14-17  • 
• Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

The first Sunday after the Feast of the Epiphany is now widely observed as The Baptism of the Lord. It commemorates one of the relatively few events that  are recorded in all four Gospels. The Gospel for this year is Luke, the shortest of the four accounts – ‘when Jesus had also been baptized’ is all it says about the event itself – and it combines two seemingly very different ideas, a ferocious warning about ‘unquenchable fire’ with the appearance of a dove, traditionally the symbol of peace. 

T S Eliot powerfully connects the two images, and the ideas they represent, in his justly celebrated set of poems, the Four Quartets.

   

The dove descending breaks the air 
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare

Baptism Jean-Michel Basquiat

The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
 Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
 To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
 We only live, only suspire

Consumed by either fire or fire.


Eliot here gives expression to the choice with which Christianity confronts us. We can live by our own lights and struggle with the existential problems that confront human beings, that ‘human power cannot remove’. Or paradoxically, we can fulfill our humanity by letting the love of God in Christ consume us. In line with an ancient practice, baptisms are commonly celebrated on this Sunday. This is not just a matter of happily fitting the Gospel of the day. If Jesus is the perfect unity of humanity and holiness, our own lives become holy to the degree that they are lived in him. Baptism is the sacrament by which we are initiated into that life.

Jean-Michel Basquiat began as an obscure graffiti artist in New York City in the late 1970s and evolved into an acclaimed painter by the 1980s. He died of a drug overdose at the age of 27.

ADVENT IV 2018

• Micah 5:2-5a •
• Luke 1:46b-55 or Psalm 80:1-7 •
• Hebrews 10:5-10 •



The Visitation -- Jacopo da Pontormo (1494-1556)

• Luke 1:39-45, (46-55)

Rather unusually, on this Sunday one of the lectionary readings can be repeated. ‘The Magnificat’ is a rapturous song of praise that Mary offers to God when she realizes she is to be the Mother of Jesus – ‘My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord’. It can be used in place of the Psalm, and then heard for a second time as the centerpiece of the Gospel reading.

Mary has walked to a distant village to visit to her cousin Elizabeth. It is from Elizabeth that she receives final confirmation of how remarkable her position is: ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb’. Like the Magnificat itself, these words have also become a widely used and long established prayer in the worship of the Church. The Magnificat, which is unique to Luke’s Gospel, has been said and sung innumerably many times over many centuries. This is powerful testimony to its deep spiritual significance for Christian believers in every time and place.

Roman ruins at Helopolis

Oddly, though, sheer familiarity can actually deafen us to the truly mysterious story it reflects. God’s mighty work of redemption, the point and purpose of the whole created cosmos -- Luke's Gospel proclaims -- begins in a remote part of the Roman Empire with the unexpected pregnancy of a teenage girl from a tiny village. The Magnificat signals Mary’s acceptance of what might well bring her shame and degradation, and this village girl's acceptance  inaugurates a spiritual transformation of human kind.

Such an unlikely scenario makes Mary’s words -- ‘From now on all generations will call me blessed’ -- seem absurd. The world in which she lived was a man's world, dominated by one of the greatest, harshest, and most enduring empires in human history. And yet, she was right. The Roman Empire has vanished so completely that only a few archeological traces remain. In sharp contrast,  at Christmas billions of people, will give thanks for Mary’s role in their redemption. While Caesar and Herod are literally ancient history, in every part of the world, people can be found calling Mary  f ‘blessed’. What greater evidence could there be that God has indeed ‘brought down the mighty from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly’?

ADVENT III 2018

'Even now, the ax is lying at the root of the trees'

• Zephaniah 3:14-20 •
• Isaiah 12:2-6 •
• Philippians 4:4-7 •
• Luke 3:7-18

In this week’s readings the Advent theme of judgment rises to a crescendo. In the Old Testament lesson, the prophet Zephaniah tells Israel to rejoice because God has ended the terrible catalogue of acts of judgment that have befallen his Chosen People. The defeat of their enemies is at hand because God Himself will come amongst them. A Canticle from Isaiah (in the place of the usual Psalm) repeats the theme and tells the inhabitants of Zion to ‘Cry aloud, ring out your joy, for the great one in the midst of you is the Holy One of Israel’. The brief lesson from Philippians provides a New Testament echo – rejoice because ‘the Lord is near’.

The Gospel, however, has a rather different tone. This is John the Baptist at his sternest. No mention of rejoicing, just a dreadful warning. John addresses those same inhabitants of Zion, as ‘You brood of vipers’ – no better than snakes squirming across the sand to avoid the flames that will destroy them. No good saying, ‘But we are the Chosen People!’ This gives neither right nor privilege, because God could just as easily choose stones to be his servants. True repentance, John declares, will indeed make a difference, but only if it includes giving up all the little conventional sins that everyone expects householders, soldiers and tax collectors to commit.

The Mystical Nativity - Botticelli (1500)

Will they then see the Messiah, the mighty warrior whose coming Zephaniah and Isaiah herald? Could the ferocious John be Him? No, someone even more powerful is coming. This true Messiah will come amongst us in order to separate the wheat and burn the chaff ‘with unquenchable fire’.

Somewhat strangely, the passage ends by saying that John proclaimed ‘good news’ to the people. How could exhortations of such ferocity be good news?  Here we get the first inkling that true ‘salvation’ will be quite different to what the Israelites supposed would happen, and to the things that we in our time might long for.  The ‘warrior in your midst who gives victory’ will be born in a stable, not a palace, and die on a Cross. That revelation truly was, and is, a mystery, the mystery of the Incarnation that millions of Christians across the world are about to celebrate.

ADVENT II 2018

John the Baptist Hans Holbein

• Baruch 5:1-9 or Malachi 3:1-4 •
• Luke 1:68-79 •
• Philippians 1:3-11 •
• Luke 3:1-6

Advent II this year is one of those relatively rare Sundays when the Psalm is replaced by a Canticle – a Bible passage whose beauty and power makes it the equivalent of poetry. The three most famous and widely used canticles all come from Luke’s Gospel, and they occur in the first two chapters, just before and after the birth of Jesus. The Magnificat -- the song of the Virgin Mary as she realizes the significance of the burden that God has given her – is the most famous, but the Benedictus -- assigned for this Sunday -- is no less powerful.

     The context is dramatic. Zechariah is taking his turn as a priest in the temple when he is struck dumb by a powerful vision. It tells him that the son about to be born to him should have a name – John. This unusual choice of name marks him out from the family into which he will be born. When the child arrives, Zechariah’s regains his speech, and he breaks into this wonderful hymn of praise – a canticle that Christ Church uses at morning prayer every weekday.

John the Baptist -- Alexander Ivanov

Zechariah’s insight is that he is living at a time when the historic promises God has made to Israel are about to be fulfilled, and he sees that the child born to him in old age will have a key role in this fulfillment. The third of Luke’s canticles, however, –– the Nunc Dimittis, Simeon’s acclamation when Mary presents Jesus in the temple -- corrects a possible misunderstanding. Though Zechariah's hymn of praise predicts that "the dawn from on high will break upon us", it is not his son John, but Jesus, yet to be born, who will "give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death".

     Nevertheless, both the lesson from Malachi and the accompanying Gospel make it clear that Zechariah is right to think of his son as having a very special place in God's plan of salvation. John is Malachi's "messenger who will prepare the way". He truly is a "prophet of the Most High", and his appointed task is to proclaim, in his fiery way, that an essential first step is repentance. We cannot be rescued from "darkness and the shadow of death", in other words, unless first we recognize our need to be rescued, and deeply long for light instead.

Advent I 2018

The Last Judgement Marc Chagall

• Jeremiah 33:14-16  • 
• Psalm 25:1-10  • 
• 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13  • 
• Luke 21:25-36

Advent I is the start of a new Christian year. The readings are always powerfully apocalyptic. "People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world" this year's Gospel from Luke tells us, revealing the preconditions of Jeremiah's prediction -- "The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel".

The focus of these readings, as in other years, is the end of time. By implication this means the Second Coming of Christ. Why do we begin the year by thinking about the Second Coming, and not the First – the birth of Jesus? The answer is that the Incarnation is NOT the beginning of the story of humanity's salvation, but rather a crucial moment within it. As a new spiritual year opens, it is essential that we go beyond the confines of our day-to-day affairs, and think about the great cosmic sweep of time within which God acts, from the Creation of the world to its Redemption. By doing so, we are able to renew our sense of the immeasurable ‘power, might and majesty’ of the God we worship -- a sense that is so easily, and comfortably, lost in the more homely images of Bethlehem.

At the same time, this is not simply a matter of cosmic theology. The task is to shape our own lives around the very same story, and to grasp this truth -- that for each one of us Birth is the moment of creation and Death the end of time, and that at some point in our journey from the cradle to the grave, God comes to us in Christ as our salvation.

 

Bilibin, Last Judgment Mural

Advent I is also the Sunday on which Anglicans throughout the world use Thomas Cranmer’s most enduring Collect, a prayer he specially composed for the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549. It is powerful testimony to Crammer’s remarkable gifts that this prayer should have served its purpose for more than 460 years,. Even now, it has been retained in all the newest versions of the Prayerbook. This is because of the incomparable way in which Cranmer uses Biblical phrases to weave together the cosmic and the personal aspects of Advent. Arguably the most beautiful of all his Collects, its words give us the means to articulate a deep understanding of the human condition within which we must pursue our lives.

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal.