angels, peace, and yoko ono

four days ago, as friday night turned into saturday morning, more people were gathered in churches around the world than any other time, except, perhaps, pascha.  and most of us heard the reading from the gospel according to luke, about shepherds "abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.  and, lo, the angel of the lord came upon them, and the glory of the lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid.  and the angel said unto them, fear not, for i bring you tidings of good news which shall be to all people.   and suddenly there was with the angels a multitude of the heavenly hosts praising god and singing, glory to god in the highest, and peace on earth to  . . ."

and then we heard a sermon which probably pitched us the hope of peace, or the need to work for peace, or some such thing that is several notches below peace.  and now it's the following monday, and we go back to watching our sheep.

and we do not have peace.  more often than not, we are sore afraid.  we do not really believe the tidings of good news brought by the angel.  we rather look at peace as a promise, as a hope, something that perhaps will be helped along by a new arms treaty with russia, or killing pakistanis with bombs from drones rather than bullets from soldiers.

we do not take seriously the message of the angels:  "fear not . . . peace on earth . . . ."   bernard of clairveaux said as much in one of his sermons:  "notice that peace is not promised  but sent to us; it is no longer deferred, it is given; peace is not prophesied but achieved."  bernard goes on to say "it is as if god the father sent upon the earth a purse of his mercy . . . .  it was quite a small purse, but ti was very full.  as the scripture tells us, 'a little child has been given to us, but in him dwells all the fulness of [the holy one].'"

but we are sore afraid.  we do not open the purse.  rather than grow the fullness of the holy one in each of us, we teach one another the things of which we should be afraid.  when people ask us to join their war, we are more afraid of being called a coward than we are to follow the angels to the manger.

do you remember a famous photograph from a few decades ago now, with john lennon and yoko ono holding a sign that says, "war is over?"

it is easy to make fun of it, but it is the same message the angels brought.  we who would not want to listen to music that is "over," or watch a television show that is "over," or wear a coat that is "over," nevertheless continue to live in war rather than in peace.

how does one do that? one may ask.  the answer was the first thing the angels said, a thing that is said 366 times in the christian bible:  fear not.

old dudes: zachary and elizabeth

if one looks at modern "culture," it seems the only people who have anything to teach are teen-agers wearing their underwear and not much else, and going into or coming out of drug rehab, on the way to the premier of their new movie.

the bible has different role models for our consideration, old dudes, often, beginning with abraham and sarah, if we wish to jump over the long-lived folks before noah.  again and again very important events happen because of the constancy of the aged.  the church makes much  of peter's declaration that jesus is the messiah, but s. luke records that thirty years before peter, simeon and anna recognize that the infant brought to the temple, the son of mary, is the messiah, without seeing any miracles or hearing any parables.

today the church remembers zachary (zacharias) and elizabeth, the parents of john the forerunner.  their story reminds us that mary, the maid of galillee, and jesus, her son, are like david, unusual in their youth.  as someone who is entering the evening of life , i find this remembrance very encouraging.  i am not ready to be thrown away, even if the songs of zachary and simeon take on more poignant meanings for me every day (especially for me personally the nunc dimittis, the song of simeon).  in my old age i might yet do something useful.  but it is also wonderful to hear zachary, each morning, saying that, "though, child, shall be called the prophet of the highest."

together these songs remind me of the wisdom of the blessing s. paul sent to the church at ephesus:

Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely
more than we can ask or imagine: Glory to him from
generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus
for ever and ever.     Amen.     Ephesians 3:20,21

s. frumentius

the church in ethiopia is very ancient, and has remained true to the faith as she understands she has received it for at least 1600 years--longer if the ethiopian eunuch who was baptized by philipp is counted.  but the official religion of the country has been christianity since s. frumentius was tutor to the king aeizanas and baptized him.  it has been a difficult position for the ethiopian church, caught as shirley hughson describes it, between islam and paganism.

one of the really unfortunate results of western colonialism is that the church is probably under more pressure now than it has ever been, largely as a result of european (and now chinese) efforts to control the oil and other resources of the region.   this is a good day to consider how our actions, which are seldom so gentle as the fluttering of a butterfly's wings, have effects all around the world.

authority in the church

many years ago now, i started my formal theological education with education for ministry, a program of the dubose center of the university of the south.  it consisted of three parts:  (1) a liturgical component, which combined praying together with study of the liturgy as part of (2) an academic component, which began with studying the old testament and continued through contemporary church history; and most importantly, theological reflection.  theological reflection, as taught by efm, was a method of looking at the thoughts, acts, or beliefs that we use in ministry within a quadralateral of "authorities:"  hooker's "three-legged stool of scripture, reason (by which he meant a concept more closely related to nature than to what we might consider scientific reason), and tradition, to which was added wesley's experience.

a few years ago, i recommended efm to a friend, and was surprised and disappointed (why does disappointment with what is happening within the church continue to surprise me?) to find that these four sources of authority had been replaced by some things much more loosey-goosey, which i don't quite remember, but which translated fairly closely to the winds of current pop culture.  the notion of revelation being any sort of authority seemed to have dropped out entirely.  of course within the orthodox tradition, revelation is the beginning, and it takes three primary forms:  creation (similar to hooker's reason), scripture, and the incarnation (about which the church's most important tradition is concerned).  and of course all of these we experience in various ways.

i find i fascinating that for the most part the authorities which seem to operate in the "american church" today are none of the above, but two:  vatican ii, and the academic establishment i tend to call princeton.

almost every part of the american church is following in some way or another the pronouncements of the second vatican council.  some of these ways are obvious:  the liturgican revisions of the episcopal, united methodist, presbyterian, lutheran, united church of christ, american baptists even, are fundamentally in accord with the revisions of vatican ii.  i am not suggesting that this is always a "bad thing."  it seems, in my opinion,  perhaps an improvement for presbyterians, but an impovershment for episcopalians.  but it is the acceptance of vatican ii as an "ecumenical council" which i find so fascinating.  i visited last summer several friends of mine who are pastors in evangelican fringes of the church that would never consider themselves "catholic," and always on their book shelves were the volumes of decrees of the second vatican council.

now, almost none of these groups have considered the findings of the first vatican council attractive.  the actual authority of both of these councils is, however, the same.

the second source of authority seems to be the academic establishment exemplified by princeton:  the pharisees of the day.  i pick princeton because it is not only home to some of the most influential folks in the new non-orthodoxy, such as elaine pagels, but also because it is the same school from which came, a century ago, the fundamentals.  again, the authority of the princeton that gave us fundamentalism and the princeton which is giving us the da vinci code is the same.

i am forced to conclude, therefore, that it is the winds of current popularity which seems to be driving the church.  i will only mention the influence george barna has had.  but i will conclude this post with two questions:  would jesus have conducted a poll to see if he should go up to jerusalem?  or am i significantly wrong in my conclusion.

emerging church part three: the emerging jesus; the great shepherd of the sheep and bishops

on my trip this summer i visited many cathedrals and met many bishops.  i was struck by the variety of  splendour and pomposity, or lack thereof, that attended these various pastors and their thrones.

(actually, the first "bishop" i met was just a cardboard cutout of the real thing, at a party for a new seminarian; the actual bishop was off doing something more important, i suppose.  i was fascinated by the bemused hostility which it seemed to me the flock showed to the office, if not the person, iconized there.  perhaps i inferred more than was implied.)

i should first confess that it has taken me a long time to wrap my mind around the existance of  more than one bishop in any one locale.  in seattle, for instance, there are at least five cathedrals with their bishops of which i know.  as my understanding of the nature of the episcopacy has, i hope, matured, that has come not to bother me.  but it is the prominence of the idea of the imperial bishop, illustrated in seattle by st. james' roman catholic cathedral, or by st. mark's episcopal cathedral, which has muddied my understanding for a long time.  despite pious denials to the contrary, the episcopacy in the roman church has long ceased to be a servant role, and if one thinks the pope is nowadays the servant of the servants of god, one should look at how the pope dines.  the imperial episcopacy is reflected in the imperial cathedrals.

st. mark's episcopal cathedral in seattle is a fascinating study in the history of that idea, and how it must sometimes be modified.  the present building, which i admire very much, is just a fragment of the original proposal.  the stock market crash of 1929 meant not only that a smaller edifice would be necessary, it even resulted in a foreclosure; for many years the building did not belong to the diocese.

on the poorer side of capital hill, st. nicholas russian orthodox cathedral is no larger than the houses around it.  the bishop of that cathedral seems to be quite beloved by the congregation, for whom he is very clearly a pastor.

at an even smaller "level of episcopacy" were the bishops with whom i met at the end of the summer in gig harbor.  we met at a tiny chapel.

none of the bishops there had any expectations of building a great cathedral.  rather they were wondering how in this insane time in which we live the sacramental, pastoral ministries of the church, for which bishops are responsible, could be made not only available but known to a nation of people for whom macdonald's seems a restaurant and a mortage home ownership.

now, i am not suggesting that say, the episcopal bishop of olympia is not concerned with the same thing.  but i am suggesting that one of the hopeful things i saw this summer wandering through the emerging church is a growing understanding that the edification of the church is not about monumental edifices.  in victoria, for instance, i met the russian orthodox bishop of all canada in a little chapel in a storage unit in the most unfashionable part of downtown, an area inhabited mostly by homeless people.  from victoria to gig harbor to santa fe, i met church men and women who were seeking to find what we need to be that is acceptable to the holy one, to find the things that make for peace, to be the body of christ broken in this broken world.  i am assuming that you, dear reader of this rather scattered blog, are one of those men and women, and so for you i repeat the prayer that concludes the epistle to the hebrews:

i pray that the god of peace, who brought our lord jesus back from the dead to become the great shepherd of the sheep by the blood that sealed an eternal covenant, may make you ready to do his will in any kind of good action; and turn us all into whatever is acceptable to himself through jesus christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever, amen.

emerging church part two: seminaries

during the past three months, i visited several seminaries and talked to many seminarians or would-be seminarians.  one of the major things the seminaries and asperants had in common was that by far the majority of them were "converts" to the big church from some protestant group.

this makes me wonder:  does no one who has grown up in the catholic, orthodox, church want to become a priest?  (or almost no one:  i did meet a few seminarians who had grown up orthodox.)  there are, oddly enough, many roman catholic women seminarians, who will not become priests.  this situation i will have to ponder more before i can convince myself i understand it.

i also am struck by what the converts find at seminaries.  again and again i heard discussions of what they bring to the schools, and from a casual and unscientific review of the church history/doctrine courses at most seminaries these days, there doesn't seem to be very much emphasis on what they will receive from the church that is older than the latest edition of the paperback textbooks.  as one who thinks that the way to do theology is prayer, i'm not too concerned about the current texts when they are read in the context of a solid spiritual practice, and that does often seem to be supported in the seminaries.

but i also wonder how all  these emerging students will change the understanding of the church.  it seems that nearly all of today's seminaries, except for the few that remain very traditional, have become emergant seminaries.  there was a time when those coming to mother church for baptism were asked the question, "what dost thou ask of the church of god?"  the answer was expected to be, "faith."  it seems that the same question might be asked of in-coming seminary students.  i hope the church still has enough faith to share it.

emerging church part one: a patron saint

it has been a summer of post-modernism and emerging church for me.  duh.  it's in the water.  no one will actually claim to know what either of those phrases means, but everyone uses them anyway. 

i'm going to ignore defining "post-modernism" for the moment, but i will suggest a take on the emerging church.  it seems that the emerging church most importantly is protestants realizing that protestantism was a mistake.  again and again i have heard stories from people who have grown up in some splinter of protesantism who have come to reject "christianity" as it had been presented to them, but who have come back to the "big church" whether they had thought out the theological nuances of that move or not.  (sometimes who have come back are lapsed roman catholics, but perhaps the orthodox understanding of roman catholicism as profoundly similar to protestantism is correct.)

if that's true, then  i would like to suggest that the patron saint (a patron saint) of the emerging church might well be john henry newman.  it is interesting to me that of the oxford movement tractarians, it was usually the ones who had started in some dissenting sect, as had newman, who "went over" to rome.  those who had been baptized in the anglican church tended to remain in the anglican church.  to make newman the patron saint of the emerging church muddies what i said above about roman catholics, and makes my own broad acceptance of the "big church" as encompassing eastern churches "orthodox" or "nestorian," western churches "roman" or "merely" catholic.  but then consistency is still something i haven't received.

but newman's journey remains as that of a bright-shining (that's what brilliant means, isn't it?) pioneer on a path towards recovery of the great tradition paul speaks of ("what i have received from the lord jesus christ, i pass on to you") that many seem to be taking.

the legacy of john of shanghai and san francisco: what words may we use at the altar

saturday was the feast day of st. john the wonderworker of shanghai and san francisco. much beloved for many reasons, and villified by some for many of the same reasons, father john has long been one of my most important companions among the saints. it has only been recently that i have read of his and his predecessor st. tikhon's work to reclaim and restore the orthodoxy of the early church in the west.

part of that work is to encourage ancient liturgies which were used before the schism. this is of course not always easy. in that context i found this blog posting fascinating. it contains some cogent considerations, i think, but it also assumes a continuity of the "eastern" church, even at its most "orthodox," which unfortunately is not supported by the events of history. alas, there was a time when many of the eastern bishops were arian heretics. there was a time when many if not most of the russian bishops were lutherans. the old believers find the current russian liturgy unacceptable.

it is in this context that the love and patience of blessed john seems most important. the words of the liturgy, just as the words of scripture, are human words: inspired, but not beyond our comprehension. alas, again and again schisms surround our trying to say the same things with different words.

this morning i read psalm 18 (ev 19) from the new jerusalem bible of some friends for whom i am house-sitting. the line i am accustomed to hearing as "preserve thy servant from presumptious sins" it translates "from pride preserve your servant, never let it be my master." this is certainly a sentiment father john would be quick to second.

"i will go unto the altar of god

even unto the god of my hope and of my salvation."

i have been reading catherine pickstock's after writing over the past few weeks. i intend to reread it again this fall when i'm back home and i can sit with it in the bathtub and soak it up by candlelight. it's an important, even if obviously horrenedously-written book. it might be much clearer, and one hopes in better style, if she wrote in latin. and my old latin vocabulary would probably be more up to the task.

the main thrust, if such a rounded book may be accused of having a thrust, is that the liturgical revisions of vatican ii, and therewith all the little vatican ii tag-alongs such as the american book of common prayer 1979, were scarcely better informed than the reformers of the time around the council of trent, whom they were so quick to criticize. moreover, she suggests that the western church has cast off what was left of a liturgy that would be accessible in a "post-modern" age to replace it with something that is so 1976.

as one who came to the "big church" only around 1980, and who has only gradually come to explore the much richer fare of the pre-vatican ii west and of the non-vatical east, i am delighted that she supports my inclinations with such carefully nuanced research. unfortunately, it seems that for the most part the post-vat church is fairly reluctant to say, "oops, we goofed." (benedict may be an exception, but unfortunately his plate has so many rotten potatoes on it it makes it difficult to hear him when he speaks of strong meat.)

meanwhile, i am happy to continue with using the book of common prayer 2009. perhaps black is the new black.

st. basil's feast

basil was, of course, one of the paleocappadocians, as it were. as one of the doctors of the eastern church, he spoke and wrote much. but perhaps nothing he is credited with is so basic as this:

"the shoes in your closet are stolen from the barefooted man;
the clothes hanging there are stolen from the one who is naked."

more thoughts on same-sex marriage

let me say up front that i have presided at the celebration of same-sex "unions," and i do not regret that. at the same time i should say that i have always used the united methodist rite for such events, and the methodists don't really look upon marriage as a sacrament.

but i need also to say that i scandalized some of my younger friends about a year ago by mentioning at a pre-nuptial dinner that i did not really think that same-sex unions were "sacramental christian marriage." they are young and hip and accepted such a thing as an "of course." i'm old and a fogey and think too much, so my hangup was on the vocabulary and the nature of sacraments.

the argument is often made that the church blesses battleships and the queen's carriages, so why not two people living together in a committed relationship. of course the church can bless such people, but just as the blessing of the queen's carriage is not a sacrament, i have wondered whether such a relationship is a marriage as a sacrament. in one of the most important books on the subject of same-sex marriage in the church, the late yale scholar john boswell took some length to discuss how marriage and the church's attitude towards it had changed over the years.

in most discussions of sacraments, at least in the west, we've more or less agreed with augustine that a sacrament is an "outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." in the west the "celebrants" of the "sacrament of marriage" have been the couple themselves, and the "outward and visible sign" has been what we have euphemistically called "consumation." the east has taken a somewhat different view of marriage. indeed in the eastern church has not felt the necessity to list and number the sacraments as has the western, and "sacraments" and "sacramentals" have been viewed in a somewhat wider context of possibilities. and marriage in the eastern church has not been so often about sex. marriage as a spiritual path to union with god has been given much more attention. in the west the tendency has been more to focus on the union within a marriage as a sign of the union of god with the church: it is a pointer towards something rather than a road towards something.

now, if find myself somewhat hoist by my own petard. when i officiate at weddings, i usually talk about the "matter" of the "sacrament" as being the taking of each other's hands. this is a "sign" that has a multiplicity of significations. but i have usually thought about "operation" of marriage as the union of opposites: a man and a woman. therefore the union the union of people who are not opposites has not seemed quite marriage. but i'm seeing that this poses problems for one who thinks too much. men and women are not opposites, but complements. nor are god and mankind opposites. very different, but not opposites. if i see marriage as a spiritual path in which two people join hands to walk together, then they do not need to be opposites; they need only to be helps meet for each other.

now, i know that this could bring up all of the "not adam and steve" or "traditional family" objections. but the description of the creation of adam and eve is about its revealing the image of the holy one, not about suburban denver families. and if we look to the "judeo-christian tradition" for our family values, then the closet is full of all sorts of oddities. should we all arrange to kill the husband of the next desirable sex-object we see in order to marry her and make the offspring of that union our heir? are we to think that would be all right if of course we said psalm 51 afterwards?

it seems to me that the description of same-sex marriage from "the right" has been almost entirely hateful, and therefore not useful to a real discussion. i watched, with a group of gay friends, the free video jerry falwell sent us about the gay agenda. we were horrified to realize that we had never known about such an agenda at all, and were of course thankful to mr. falwell for his gay 101 course.

but it seems to me that much of the discussion of same-sex marriage from "the left" has been almost entirely informed by the level of thinking explored by people magazine, and therefore not very useful to a theological discussion.

this little essay is already becoming something of a rant. i suspect it might be one on which i will have some response, which i welcome. and it is one i will follow up on as i prepare to facilitate a discussion of "homosexuality and the church" in a parish.

pentecost ember days

we have just come through the great fifty days, the church's annual reliving of what michael carroccino calls "mind-boggling" events. now we come to the pentecost ember days, three days to consider, once again, who are we, where are we, what are we doing here? we consider these questions once again in a context that exists both in time and in eternity, both on earth, and in the kingdom of heaven.

once again the great circle of time as the church observes it has come around to a place from which we can, perhaps, know

"when the tongues of flame are in-folded
in the crowned knot of fire
and the fire and the rose are one."

we are invited, by the one who became flesh, died in flesh, rose in flesh, ascended in flesh that the holy spirit might come to dwell in our flesh, to eternal life. at its simplest, most literal meaning, eternal life simply means life outside of time. but to participate in that life outisde of time we must allow our life in time to be sanctified as well. that is how the circle in time becomes the ascending spiral into eternity. we must comprehend time before we can live in eternity. i always find t. s. eliot's four quartets helpful at the ember days. eliot ceaselessly sought to understand time, and knew, as he wrote in what must be the most oft-quoted english words of the past century,

"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."

nor will we be ready for the kingdom of heaven until we welcome god's will on earth. eliot said "history is now and england." until we understand life here on earth, we will continue to be the children in the apple tree, eating the pre-mature fruit.

how slow we human-kind, who cannot bear very much reality, are to admit that

"time present and time past
are both perhaps present in time future."

we eat now the forbidden fruit, and the thrush and all creation groan. we bore now holes in the floor of the sea and the fishes and all creation groan.

"we die with the dying:
see, they depart, and we go with them.
we are born with the dead:
see, they return and bring us with them.

. . . a people without history
is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
of timeless moments. . . .
history is now and england."


history is now and the gulf of mexico. time present will remain far into time future, as we continue to be born with the dead.

the matins readings this week have been from john's gospel. on monday, "jesus said to nicodemus, 'god so loved the world . . . god sent not his son to condemn the world.'" on wednesday, "jesus said to the multitudes . . . : 'no man can come to me, unless the fther which hath sent me draw him.'"

what shall we seek? for what shall we explore?

"with the drawing of this love and the voice of this calling

we shall not cease from exploration
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and to know the place for the first time."

(quotes from four quartets ("burnt norton" i, "little giddding, "v", copyright 1937, t. s. eliot.)

cur deus homo: ascension and pentecost

ascension day has been down-graded in the western church since vatican ii. caught up in the great-history-of-religion-only understanding of christianity that seems to prevail in so many seminaries and popular "theologians," the gargamel of the "early church's" celebration of the great fifty days has taken all. i first noticed this when i first began to enter the great church, but i didn't know it. the rector at my parish was old-school, and blew out the paschal candle on ascension day. i, having read all the lastest stuff, was of course horrified. (and of course octaves have been "suppressed," so not much mention was made of ascension in the days following, a situation that has become more true with the new common lectionary.)

but there is, i have found, wisdom in the older understanding of the importantce of the ascension, which was brought home to me yesterday in a wonderfully non-western-arrogant way. a friend, who is vicar of a near-by episcopal church, was having tea with me, and said that in that church she held an ascension day service, to which only two other people came. one was an elderly chinese woman, whose father had been a priest in china. indeed he seems to have been a priest in the old nestorian succession, which still exists in china and which has continued to maintain its lineage even though the government denies its existence. he had taught her that the feast of the ascension is the most important feast of the year, even more important than christmas.

if god became man so that man might become god, as anselm of canterbury and many other theologians have suggested, then then ascension of christ is the moment, if there is only one moment, when our humanity is taken into the kingdom of heaven. god the son takes on our humanity, and takes it to the right hand of the father.

this is not the only moment this happens, of course. it happens each time we celebrate the liturgy. we who represent the cherubim, leave beside all earthly cares. only after our nature has been purified by the "life creating trinity" can we receive the gift of the holy spririt.

the wedding feast that is the pascha

one of the many haunting texts of the great three days through which we have just passed (over which we have just passed?) is the question that mary the mother of jesus asks her son as he stumbles with his cross towards golgatha. unfortunately, i did not bring my prayer book with me to the library, so i'll have to paraphrase:

where dost thou hasten, o my son? is there another wedding in cana where once more thou wilt turn water to wine? should i accompany thee, o my son? though thou art crucified, still thou art my son.

oddly one of the other texts which seems to embrace some of the richness of the wedding feast is, i think, a song from 1993 by kate bush called appropriately "the song of solomon." it makes very clear in a way that christians sometimes find uncomfortable the demands of the risen lord, of whom the church is the bride. if indeed, he can demand our sexuality, what else might he demand?

holy week: give me this stranger

as we enter holy week, i find the hymn attributed to joseph of arimathea, which the eastern church sings at vespers on good friday, haunts me:

"give me this stranger, who has no place to lay his head.
give me this stranger, whom his evil disciple delivered to death.
give me this stranger, whom his mother saw hanging on the cross,
and with a mother's sorrow she cried weeping:
'woe is me, my child! woe is me,
light of mine eyes and beloved fruit of my womb!
for what simeon foretold in the temple is come to pass today:
a sword pierce my heart,
but do thou change my grief to gladness by thy ressurrection.' "

may the light of christ shine in even the darkest places of our sinful souls and our sinful world

please listen to the beautiful chant, and pray for all the sons of all the mothers who go each day to calvary, whether as the crucified or the crucifiers. we still seem to know not what we do.

24 march: gabriel archangel

tomorrow is the feast of the annunciation, one of the most important events in the church year, and one which is sadly ignored by many. it is the commemoration of the incarnation. it is the day on which the archangel gabriel first said to the virgin, "hail mary, full of grace: the lord is with thee." in the west gabriel is commemorated the day before the feast; in the east the day after. since angels are immortal, there is of course no day of their repose; they are instead commemorated in connection with their messages.

i have not read angels and demons, so i do not know if there is a lot of nonsense going around about angels which dan brown has popularized as he did with the nonsense about mary magdalene in the da vinci code. i will not therefore try to enter into any big discussion of angels, but rather focus on the message.

the message, of course, is that mary was to bear a child who would be the son of the most high, who would save the people from all their sin. this child, whom the angel gabriel said would be called jesus, was a wonder to mary: "how can this be, since i have known not a man?" he continues to be a wonder, even to us today.

in that child god took on flesh, as the church believes is described in one of the psalms for lauds of gabriel's feast: "the lord is king, and hath put on glorious apparel; the lord hath put on his apparel, and girded himself with strength." the apparel which the high king of heaven put on was flesh, and in that apparel he showed the true glory of man.

the writer of the hebrews would describe the role of the virgin by quoting psalm 39 (ev40):8: "a body thou hast prepared for me."

in the fourth century when the church struggled mightily with the wonder who was this child, she produced the nicene creed, expanding on gabriel's claim that "that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the son of god," with the words "the only begotten son of the father, god from god, light from light, very god of very god." in the fifth century at the council of ephesus the church would insist that the child born to mary was truly all that the creed claimed, from his conception. mary would henceforth be called the "theotokos," the one who bore god.

it is easy to lose the humanity of jesus in these words, especially when the creed is separated from the liturgy. in the liturgy, you see, we say that not only do we receive at the communion "the only begotten son of the father," who sounds to be very spiritual, but we receive the body and the blood: body from body, blood from blood, born of the virgin.

now sadly enough, we sometimes disdain the very flesh which god took on. (see te deum: "thou, having taken it upon thyself to deliver man, didst not disdain the virgin's womb.") we have bumper stickers claiming that "we are spiritual creatures trapped in a physical body," or "spiritual creature having a physical experience." we become jealous of angels. this has especially been true in the time we call "the enlightenment," when milton would make satan the real hero of his epic poem. it is helpful to recall what jung said about heroes: that they are boys, not real men.

but real men (including women) are made in the image of god. when that image became tarnished, god took on flesh to show us once again what our true glory could be.

next week we will observe the great three days, when more than any other time that glory was revealed. looking forward to that time, enjoy this basque carol.

shrove tuesday

shrove tuesday is fascinating because it is celebrated by many activities by many people who don't necessarily know why they do the things they do except that they have always done them. in northumberland, for instance, as in many parts of britain, the day includes a football match. as carnival it is "celebrated by many people who seem mostly to be looking for an excuse to enjoy drunken excess. in the united states even, it is still celebrated with pancakes by many who will not participate in any real lenten fasting.

the name of the day, shrove tuesday, comes from the old english word "shrive" meaning to confess one's sins and have them forgiven. that was of course when we still thought there were sins, and found the burden of them intolerable. now what makes us miserable is most often not our sins, which we quite enjoy, thank you very much, but the downturns of the new leige lord of our lives, the economy. if there is anything we recognize as sin, it tends to be part of the society, for which we are not responsible.

it is against this background that i find these words of oscar romero insightful:

"how easy it is to denounce structural injustice, institutionalized violence, social sin. and it is true, this sin is everywhere, but where are the roots of this social sin? in the heart of every human being. present-day society is a sort of anonymous world in which no one is willing to admit guilt and everyone is responsible.

"because of this, salvation begins with the human person, with human dignity, with saving every person from sin. individually there are among us here no two sinners alike. each one has committed his or her own shameful deeds, and yet we want to cast our guilt on the other and hide our own sin. i must take off my mask; i, too, am one of them, and i need to beg god's pardon because i have offended god and society. this is the call of christ.

"how beautiful the expression of that woman upon finding herself pardoned and understood: 'no one, sir. no one has condemned me.' then neither do i, i who could give tht truly condemning word, neither do i condemn; but be careful, brothers and sisters, since god has forgiven us so many times, let us take advantage of that friendship with the lord which we have recovered and let us live it with gratitude."

candlemass eve: a hinge of the year

in a room filled with the smoke of incense, i leave the candles burning on the altar for a long time. there is a lot going on this night, and i want to savour it. we have celebrated the consolation of israel, the coming of the messiah, recognized by the prophet simeon and the prophetess anna, proof that there were those in israel who recognized their glory. this feast is the hinge between the completion of the old testament and the beginning of the new.

the presentation of our lord in the temple is also the hinge feast between christmas and easter. it is a bittersweet time. amidst the joy of the meeting of mary, carrying the infant lord, and joseph with simeon and anna, after simeon sings of the light to the gentiles, the glory of israel, represented in our procession around the chapel with blessed candles, comes the chilling line in the gospel, spoken by simeon to mary, "yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also."

"also."

the mass of candles: the light of the world will truly be extinguished. john will mention tht darkness in his gospel, saying simply, "it was night." (13:30) we will represent that darkness again with candles, during holy week at tenebrae. what we remember in this candlemass in what we remember in all our eucharists: "as oft as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the lord's death till he come."

"even so, come, lord jesus."

benedict biscop

benedict biscop sought to romanize the church in britain, and therefore one might expect me to find him to be "the enemy." however, it is important to realize that the roman church in the seventh century was certainly not the roman church of novels such as the da vinci code, nor even the roman church of the nineteenth century. in the seventh century it was more orthodox than constantinople, which was nearly taken over by the current new thing, monotheletism.

what benedict seemed most taken with about roman christianity was the rule of st. benedict, which he encountered at lerins, where he was tonsured. his understanding of the rule included perhaps most importantly the chants used at rome, and books. so wonderful did the british church find the gregorian chants that when benedict's prior at wearmouth, ceofrith, was the only person at the monastery not sick with the plague except for one young boy--whom we know as bede of jarrow--he could not bring himself to leave off the chants. and of course it would be the british church's love of books and learning which would start the educational centers that would end "the dark ages" in europe.

he also, for better or for worse, brought stone building techniques to britain. the remains of st. peter's at wearmouth are still standing today, a much different sort of structure than the mud and waddle buildings that had preceeded it.

and, benedict brought icons. we hardly think of british christianity as being iconographic today, because of the thoroughness of the roundheads' destructiveness. but at one time, following the lead of benedict biscop, monasteries and parish churches and cathedrals were all as frescoed and full of icons as the churches of the east. whenever benedict started a new building project, he undertook another trip to rome to bring back books and icons and vestments, bringing the british church into the cultural world of the one holy catholic and apostolic church. when the light of christianity culture was nearly extinguished by the invasions that would follow, that culture would be taken back to europe by misssionaries from britain. but that is the story of later saints.

christmas in the old testament

i suspect many of us think of christmas as a "new testament" event, and of course it is insofar as it inaugurates the new testament. but much if not most of our understanding of the event comes from the old testament. the ox and the ass are from isaiah; the answer to the question of the wise men to herod's advisors comes from micah. but i think my favourite prophecy that has shaped our understanding of the nativity is the passage from wisdom that is the introit for the second sunday of christmas (wisdom 18:14-15):

"while all things were in quiet silence
and that night was in the midst of her swift course,
thine almighty word leaped down from heaven out of thy royal throne."

it is the image that informs my favourite german, perhaps favourite of all, christmas carol, "lo, how a rose e'er blooming."