24 august: st. bartholomew

it is almost 7:00 a.m. and the sun is barely climbing the trees. st. bartholomew's day should remind me, if the bronze-tinged oak leaves in the rising sunlight do not, that holy cross day is coming.

the readings for morning prayer are psalm 86, genesis 28:10-22 and the gospel according to john 1:43-51.

so: when did nathaniel bartholomew apostle, "a true israelite in whom there is no deceipt," come to see "heaven open and the angels of god ascending and descending upon the son of man?" did this only occur as he was being flayed, as stephen saw the temple of the new jerusalem as he was being stoned? or did it happen sooner? the key to an answer is in the phrase, "son of man." nathaniel has just called jesus "the son of god," but jesus calls himself "the son of man.."

this insistence on the incarnation in the story of the call of nathaniel comes in john's gospel just before jesus' conversation with nicodemus, which contains the striking claim "no one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the son of man. and just as moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up." (3:13-14) we often read this passage hurrying towards what we usually consider the punch line in the sentence we pull out as verse sixteen. but john was not writing verses, he was writing a gospel, and these early passages will be the background for jesus' enigmatic statement to mary magdalene on the morning of the resurrection, "i have not yet ascended to the father" (20:17), and they are a clue to what we are to become after jesus or one of his apostles breathes on us and says, "receive the holy spirit."

here in the beginning of john's gospel is already a prophecy and an interpretation of the ascension and its importance. the word of god, the son of god, becomes flesh and dwells among us, no longer only the son of god, god the son, who he has been eternally, but now also the son of man, with a body in which he will be glorified and in which he will ascend to heaven.

jacob dreamed of a ladder on which he saw "angels of god . . . ascending and descending." he recognized the place as "none other than the house of god . . . the gate of heaven." this same jacob, in whom there was plenty of deceipt, must wrestle with god in order to become israel.

jesus had called nathaniel "truly an israelite in whom there is no deceipt, but nathaniel too will be involved in a struggle, a struggle greater than jacob's, as he comes to the time when he can see above the son of man the angels of god going up and coming down. for the true jacob's ladder is the cross, which jesus invites us to take up daily.

nathaniel bartholomew, apostle, gift of god, son of the furrows, sent forth, would pick up his cross and carry it and the gospel as far as ethiopia and egypt and then north to armenia where he would be martyred by flaying. it is a dangerous prayer we pray this day as we remember bartholomew:

almighty and everlasting god, you gave to your aostle bartholomew grace truly to believe and preach your word: grant that your church may love what he believed and preach what he taught; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the holy spirt, one god, for ever and ever. amen

bartholomew believed firmly enough to lose his life in order to gain. he allowed himself to become a stone in the building which is the church, the body of christ, in which dwells the holy spirit.

a circle of prayer 17. contrasts and correspondences

as i have lived and prayed with these festivals over the years, i have come to notice significant correspondences between the pairs of celebrations that fall six months apart from each other. the pairs present the same themes, the same elements, in ways that show potential and fulfillment.

at candlemass, the feast of the presentation, for instance, we hear simeon call jesus "a light to enlighten the gentiles," (luke (luke 2:21) and six months later at the transfiguration we find jesus to be the uncreated light, "light from light, very god from very god." the potential seen by simeon is fulfilled in the sight of peter, james, and john.

the other corresponding pairs are similarly related:

holy cross day and the pascha, easter.
all saints' day and pentecost
the nativity of john the forerunner and the nativity of jesus the christ.

they will be discussed, therefore, in these pairings.

circle of prayer 16. the year: sunday bursts its spiced tomb

in the fifth century augustine of hippo wrote in one of his sermons words that could be the source of the words in the english prayer book i quoted in the previous chapter:

"we firmly believe, brethren, that the lord has died for our sins, the just for the unjust, the master for the slaves, the shepherd for the sheep and, still more astonishingly, the creator for the creatures. . . .

"all of that happened once and for all, as you know well enough. and yet we have the liturgical solemnities which we celebrate as, during the course of the year, we come to the date of particular events. . . .

"the historical truth is what happened once and for all, but the liturgy makes these events always new for the hearts that celebrate them with faith." (sermons, 220)

the problem with the resurrection, you see, is that it expresses itself at all times and in all places. as simeon the new theologian wrote, "faith means being willing to die for christ." there were almost immediately after the feast of pentecost "witnesses," for that is what "martyrs" means, followers of our lord ready to die for him. the seventh chapter of acts tells the story of stephen, the first martyr-witness, significantly not an apostle but a deacon, one chosen to serve, and therefore a prime illustration of what it might mean to serve christ the servant king.

very early the anniversary of the death, the falling to sleep, of the martyrs came to be remembered and celebrated, if possible with a eucharist at the place of martyrdom or at the tomb. soon there had been so many martyrs that in rome the church began to celebrate them all one day, all saints' day. this custom gradually came to be adopted throughout the western church.

although the death and resurrection events were central to the christian faith, other events in jesus' life were also considered important enough for annual remembrance. his birth obviously was one of those events.

often these were events which the disciples had not understood as they were happening. how often it must have been true, as the gospel according to john relates about the cleansing of the temple, that ". . . when jesus rose from the dead, his disciples remembered he had said this, and they believed the scriptures and the words he had said." (john 2:22) among the most important of this category of remembrances were the the presentation, forty days after jesus' birth, and the transfiguration, in early august.

a third source of annual remembrances were the jewish festivals, the festivals of torah, which the church began to understand as messianic prophecies. some of them were intimately related to the life of our lord and his church. pesach, the passover, was the time of his death and resurrection, and shavuot, the feast of weeks, pentecost, was the time of the giving of the holy spirit. hannakah occured at the time of his birth.

over time other great jewish feasts, too, would be "baptised." the great fall holy days of rosh ha-shonah, yom kippur, sukkot and simchat torah yielded the new year of the eastern church, holy cross day, and the beginning of the new lectionary cycle. (although in the western church the new lectionary cycle is now seen as beginning with advent.)

besides jesus, only two people are remembered on the days of their birth: mary his virgin mother, on december eighth, and john the baptiser, the foreruner, on june twenty-fourth. the date of john's nativity would become a major feast of the church, occuring as it does just six months before the nativity of christ. the celebration of john's birth at the height of the solar year, marks the culmination of the old testament.

slowly there emerged a procession of eight great feasts at the major turning points of the year, proclaiming that all of time was both prophetic of the life and work of jesus christ, and fulfilled by that same life and work:

1. near the autumanal equinox, holy cross day, the fourteenth of september.
2. on the first of november, all saints' day.
3. on december twenty-fifth, the nativity of our lord jesus christ.
4. forty days after the nativity, the second of february, the presentation.
5. approximately six months after holy cross day, on the first sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox, is pascha, the feast of the resurrection.
6. fifty days later (and approximately six months after all saints' day), the day of pentecost is "fully come."
7. at midsummer, six months after christmas, the church remembers the birth of john, the forerunner.
8. finally, on the sixth of august, six months after the presentation, comes the feast of the transfiguration of our lord.

these eight great festivals comprise a circle of prayer that not only proclaims and explains the life of our lord but, if understood correctly, is a key to understanding our own lives, day by day, year by year, lifespan by lifespan.

a circle of prayer: preface: beginning

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time." (t. s. eliot, "little gidding")

the problem and advantage of a circle is that it has no begining, and everywhere is a beginning. this essay on time as revelation and formation has been been begun three times. i began to be reworked, reformed, recreated by observing what is uaually called "the church year" after reading thomas merton's journal the sign of jonas. then i was in william tyndale's words "a lucky fellow" and wandered into an episcopal church and took up the daily office.

like so many new and true believers, i was anxious to share my discoveries. i read everything i could find on the "church year" (some of which are included in the selected bibliography), and soon i was teaching introductions to the year and even presenting a book called a circle of prayer to a publisher, who accepted it. but i was not quite happy with it, and only circulated it in xerox to a number of friends. (ironically, if it had been rejected i might have been defensive and tried harder to publish it.)

years passed, and i read more and taught more, sometimes about the history of the church year, sometimes about its meaning. i proudly had another work ready to publish about 1995, and the floppy discs holding it were stolen. so! more reading, more teaching, more recreation. and now, as the psalmist says, "i am old and greyheaded." if i am ever going to publish anything, it should be soon.

the delay has, i think, been very good. i am no longer interested in writing another history of the church year. i do not know of any that are actually adequate, even though some are very insightful. nor do i think justice can be done to the "meaning" of either individual feasts or of the whole cycle. what is the "meaning" of the holy one's self-revelation, beyond profound, enduring, tenacious love?

so what i present here is episodic and experiential, offered knowing that my understanding is inadequate, partial, seen "through a glass darkly." but it is also my testimony to the holy one's continual seeking of me and all his creatures in ways as ordinary as the sunrise, as spectacular as the sunset.

when did i begin my inadequate, partial look through the dark glass? in some ways as an eight-year old boy who walked down the aisle of walnut street baptist church in a small arkansas town to the singing of
"footsteps of jesus, that make the pathways glow;
i will follow the steps of jesus where'er they go."

but i was not always aware of following them in the years that followed, years that included taking a "year off" from my accustomed more-or-less orthodox christian practice to explore "natural religion/celtic christianity."

ultimately i have come to understand these "natural" events as revelations of god's christ, "because he wanted all perfection / to be found in him / and all things to be reconciled through him and for him, / everything in heaven and everything on earth, / when he made peace / by his death on the cross." (colossians 1:19-20)

i present this very imperfect essay because our common understanding of the christ tends to be so divided. some of us find "the cosmic christ," often described in sanscrit and usually separated from the cross. some of us find "a personal saviour," who may be the "first-born of all creation," (colossians 1:19) but who no longer has anything to do with the physical world. i believe neither of these views is adequate, and that a re-spect, literally a looking again, at how the holy one is revealed in time created, not as we have reinvented it in minutes and seconds, will help to broaden and unify our vision of the one who "is the image of the unseen god."

circle of prayer 15. the week two: a christian remembering

for christians, the redemption of the world in jesus' death, descent among the dead, resurrection and ascension is irrepeatable, described in the words of the anglican book of common prayer as "his one oblation of himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficiant sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world." one might expect the weekly, sunday, celebration of the eucharist, of the lord's supper, to suffice as the ". . . perpetual memory of that his precious death and sacrifice, until his coming again." but the human mind does not easily take in every meaning of this "one once" event, so the liturgy soon began to expand on the sunday's celebration.

easter gave meaning to every sunday. "holy week," the last week jesus spent in jerusalem before his resurrection, gave meaning to every week. by the second century the "station"days of wednesday and friday were related to our lord's betrayal and crucifixion, often as fast days. somewhat later thursdays came to be understood as recalling the last supper and institution of the holy eucharist. although the observance of the days of the week throughout the year has seldom been a major part of christian devotion, except for friday fasting, in many parts of the church the celebration of holy week overshadows, if not easter sunday, than certainly the great fifty days.