We continue our preparation for the celebration of Christ’s birth this week.  Though consumer and familial pressures may try to push the Christmas season into a time of materialist consumption, we Christians know it is a season to make room and make time for Christ in our hearts and homes.  Quiet time, prayer time, fasting, reading scripture, singing hymns are all part of the season for us.  In Orthodoxy, the weeks before Christmas are not just connected to shopping, but are within the Nativity Lenten period.    One of the many lists we might make and use this season is the list of what we need to say in confession to help us be true disciples of Christ.   We must ask ourselves: Does it make a difference that Christ has come into the world?  It should in our hearts, if we are in fact are Christians.  If any atheist or non-believer could be doing exactly what we are doing in these weeks before Chirstmas, then perhaps we have not given Christ the place in our hearts and homes that He should have as our Lord and King. 

Being a disciple of Christ requires conscious choice, discipline and hard work.

It does not come to pass so spontaneously as the development of the human personality of the innocent Adam on the fresh soil of human nature, but first of all through a conscious assimilation of Christ’s life or of Christianity; and then also through a mysterious penetration of the newly grace-filled nature of the Church into our personality. (Anthony Khrapovitsky, The Moral Idea of the Main Dogmas of the Faith).

Discipline and self-control, which we learn through fasting and abstinence, train us to be disciples of Christ.  Our goal in practicing self denial and discipline is to train ourselves to follow the Gospel teachings of our Lord rather than to follow our own selfish desires.

The aim of the Christian life is not to free the soul from the body, but to free the whole person—body and soul—from sin.    (Richard B. Steele, St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 52:3-4, pg. 418)

Being a disciple, following a discipline, are not easy tasks, but rather reflect the fact that we engage in spiritual warfare as disciples of Christ.

We need, then, to observe that the Christian life, according to Jesus, is not all joy and laughter…The truth is that there are such things as Christian tears, and too few of us ever weep them. Jesus wept over the sins of others, over their bitter consequences in judgment and death, and over the impenitent city which would not receive him.   (John R. W. Stott, The Message of The Sermon on the Mount)

There is a deep joy at Christmas which we experience and live through God’s gift to the world:  the incarnation of His Son.  Christmas places responsibility for our response to God on ourselves.   Either we believe in the miracle of God’s Word become flesh and live accordingly, or we allow the Nativity of Chirst to be emptied of meaning  by reducing the time of salvation to how much we spend or get during the winter festival. 

Advent is upon us, formally beginning tomorrow, Sunday, November 29.  I wanted to post here links to my collection from last year of past observations on the incarnation.

Irenaeus ( – c. 202) on the Incarnation

Tertullian (c. 160 – c. 220) on the Incarnation

Cyprian ( -258) on the Incarnation

Methodius ( -311) on the Incarnation

Athanasius (293-373) on the Incarnation

Ambrose (c. 340-397) on the Incarnation

Chalcedon (451) on the Incarnation

Martin Luther (1483-1546) on the Incarnation

John Calvin (1509-1564) on the Incarnation (1)

John Calvin (1509-1564) on the Incarnation (2)

John Donne (1572-1631) on the Incarnation

John Gill (1697-1771) on the Incarnation

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) on the Incarnation (1)

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) on the Incarnation (2)

Charles Wesley (1707-1788) on the Incarnation

Louis Berkhof (1873-1957) on the Incarnation

C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) on the Incarnation

David Wells (1939- ) on the Incarnation

Robert Reymond on the Incarnation

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the Advent Season.  Advent is comprised of the four Sundays preceding the Christmas holiday.  Historically, Advent is the beginning of the church calendar for the Western church. It is both a remembrance of Christ’s arrival, as well as embracing the expectation of His imminent return. 

Advent is accompanied by many traditions, including the use of an Advent wreath to mark the occasion.  Each Sunday before Christmas, a new candle is lit: the first candle the first Sunday, then the first two candles the following Sunday, etc.

In some traditions, each candle has its own specific meaning.  The first candle is the “prophet’s candle,” followed by the “Bethlehem candle,” then the “shepherd’s candle” and then the “angel’s candle.”  Some traditions even light a fifth and final “Christ candle” on Christmas Sunday. 

The prophet’s candle was meant to symbolize the hopeful expectation of Christ’s arrival.  The post that follows shall be the first in an intermittent series celebrating the incarnation.

The Voyager spacecraft traveled through space at 40,000 miles per hour.  It was designed to take photographs at the farthest reaches of our solar system.  And in 1990, the craft was instructed to turn and take one final image of the earth.  There, across a distance of nearly 4 billion miles, the earth appeared as little more than a pale blue dot surrounded by a vast and incomprehensible cosmic ocean.  Carl Sagan, one of the scientists associated with the project, would later comment:

 “We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you know, everyone you love, everyone you’ve ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines. Every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.  The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.  Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves…” (Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, p. 6-7)    

God, speaking through His prophet Isaiah said that “…my thoughts are not your thoughts, Neither are your ways My ways…For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)  The cosmological distance between earth and the farthest reaches of space is equal to the ontological distance between man and Creator. 

Science now tells us that the universe is something like 156 billion light years in diameter.  And in that incomprehensible void, the earth hovers in solitary stillness. 

If we are to listen to Sagan, we are to believe that man is at the mercy of his own insignificance, possessing no hope, or “hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.” 

But it is across this impossible distance that God steps into the breach of time and space.  The prophet Isaiah said,

“A voice cries: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’” (Isaiah 40:3-5)

We know that “in the fullness of time God sent forth His Son…that we might receive the adoption of sons (Gal 4:4-5).”  Those “who walked in darkness have seen a great light (Isaiah 9:2).” 

Theology draws from these and other texts to breathe the word incarnation – a word used to describe the act of God putting on human skin, an event we celebrate each year at Christmas. 

And so the first and greatest mystery of the incarnation is that a God of such magnitude would see fit to step across this cosmic void, to be humbly found lying in a feeding trough of a lowly town of Bethlehem. 

In his book Life After God, author Douglas Coupland remarks, “Sometimes I think the people to feel saddest for are people who once knew what profoundness was, but became lost or numb to the sensation of wonder.” 

The incarnation sensitizes us to wonder, for within this doctrine we find the answer to all the deepest mysteries of the human heart, wrapped in “swaddling clothes” in a lowly manger. 

Isaiah would speak of the titles that would ultimately come to be associated with the person of Jesus: “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6-7)  These were all names that, in the ancient world, carried royal, even military connotation.  The arrival of Jesus came as a shocking blow to the darkness of the present world, and offers us a glimpse of the sonship offered us in the next. 

And so this Holiday, we are reminded of the great mystery of the incarnation, a secret whispered by the prophets of old, and shouted from the rooftops at the Savior’s arrival. 

Across this great distance, He has found us. 

This post features content originally delivered to the Real Life college group at Trinity Bible Church of Richardson, TX.

Voix de renaissances
, voies renaissantes
 ! Telle pourrait se définir la période de l’Avent dans laquelle nous entrons aujourd’hui.
 Quatre semaines avant Noël, 
La fête de l’Incarnation. Féérie et contes
, besoin effréné de retrouver notre enfance, du moins une enfance épurée par les filtres de la mémoire et du temps
, besoin de “fêtes” à une saison et une époque qui ne s’y prête pas !

Le besoin d’oublier les contingences humaines
 …

Tout cela a fait de Noël la plus fausse des fêtes 
où cucuteries et paillettes essayent de nous distraire, 
grandes bouffes et frénésies d’achat nous combler, 
 sans pouvoir nous apporter la Joie, la Vraie, Celle de la Vérité et de la lucidité !

L’Avent est en effet une sorte de Carême, (un petit carême disait-on autrefois) nécessaire à la prise de conscience de l’incarnation du Christ.

Car Dieu s’est fait homme un jour en Palestine
 en la personne de Jésus … Mais Dieu habite aussi en nous.

Le fils de Dieu c’est nous
 ; Fils de Roi, nous le sommes ! Non pas la petite idole que nous nous en faisons et au travers de laquelle nous nous percevons
. Mais l’être véritable que nous sommes … et que souvent nous ne connaissons point, 
que nous devons découvrir en nous
 ou si cela est déjà fait, avec lequel nous devons renouer le contact … ou rester en contact.

Que nous devons surtout découvrir en l’Autre
 dans tous les êtres, mêmes les plus horribles à nos yeux ou les plus faibles
, les plus exclus, les moins aimables
 qui doivent nous apparaître dans leur beauté intrinsèque
, leur beauté unique, singulière et respectable et bien sûr dans tout le vivant : Nos frères animaux, nos soeurs plantes …

Tel est le sens de Noël,
 tel est le sens de l’Avent,
 tel est le sens de la prière …

Serge has a great thought (entitled “I Love Christmas. How Uncool”) about Christmas (recognizing, as we do here, that we are not even yet in Advent as far as the Church Year goes):

Now that Holiday (remotely related to and roughly contiguous with Advent) is upon us I’ll be looking for a Hallmark TV special, ‘The Armadillo That Saved Festivus’. No, seriously, I love Christmas including in its current form. (But I know that this, right now, isn’t Christmas.) So to those who grandstand about commercialism, neener. It’s when mainstream society forgets its anti-Catholicism for a while; even hard-shell Protestants put up statues of Jesus and Mary. The Incarnation wins out. God became man (actually at the Annunciation but anyway… we need a winter festival to cheer up), life’s long celebration’s here and you and I are in the way of eternal life. Deo gratias.

Dear ones,

It has come to my attention that some of you like to worship me as it relates to the fact of my incarnation during the month of December.  Please stop. I never told you it was okay.

Feel free to focus on that important point in our story of redemption other times of the year, just not around the end of the year.

Even though it was an amazing,  miraculous act of love.  Even though it represents what I gave up for you.  Even though it is so wonderfully complex and important.  Don’t worship me pertaining to that for a few weeks in December, okay?

When others are talking about it, emphasizing it, and getting excited about Me, please restrain yourself.  Practice some self-control and wait until spring.

Even if joy, wonder, and amazement well up inside of you, don’t give in.  Just continue on like normal, as if nothing happened.

This might require turning off the radio at certain times and avoiding certan hymns in your books and certain people who won’t obey this command.  Whatever happens, resist the temptation.

I hope you understand,

your Lord and Savior

—————————–

I was wondering if that argument made anymore sense if put explicitly in Jesus’ words.

Nope, it doesn’t.

Many do not realize that Micah further prophesied that kingship would come to the “Daughter of Jerusalem” at Migdal Eder: Micah 4:8 “As for you, O watchtower of the flock [Hebrew Migdal Eder], O stronghold of the Daughter of Zion, the former dominion will be restored to you; kingship will come to the Daughter of Jerusalem.” Migdal Eder was a watchtower located in the northern part of Bethlehem built to protect the Temple flocks.1 “During lambing season the sheep were brought there from the fields, as the lower level functioned as the birthing room for sacrificial lambs.” Priestly shepherds “would wrap the newborn lambs in swaddling clothes” and place them in a manger “until they calmed down” to keep them “without defect”, suitable to be sacrificial lambs for the sin of the Israelites. Bethlehem was special because the shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem raised lambs for the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. The shepherds who heard the angelic choir and came to see the baby Jesus were certainly familiar with the technique to birth a sacrificial lamb, and were likely puzzled by why a baby was birthed in the manner and location of a sacrificial lamb. In fact the angels did not have to tell the shepherds precisely where to go in Bethlehem to find Jesus, because there was only one manger where sacrificial lambs were birthed, the cave under the watch tower of Migdal Edar.

Before Jesus had taken his first breath God had decided that his life was to be given as a sacrifice to pay the penalty for our sins. God testified to his intent by having Jesus be born in the manner and location of the sacrificial lambs of the temple just as the prophet Micah proclaimed.

I like this version. Is it true to the advent? Who knows? Scripture confirms some of its historic facts of the birth. One of the things this version does is to remove the traditional blinders so that we might see that the fulfillment of OT prophecy is elemental in Christ’s advent as all things that he historically did fulfilled the Law and the Prophets.

Some try to explain the birth place by a focus upon the inhospitable owner of the inn. The problem there is that there no indication in Scripture of such any more than there is for the fullness of the tradition above. There is no coversation that takes place between the innkeeper and the pair. In all likelihood the owner was a relative. And perhaps he kindly directed them to the manger scene described above. It may well be that the innkeeper offered his own birthing stall. If so, as a man of wealth and having set aside the stall for the paschal’s birth, this was quite a gift to give the pair. In any case, most things said about the innkeeper are traditional trappings of the holiday and not the revealed word of God.

The obvious fact is that the census was well under way accounting for the crowded conditions. The time of year was most likely in the spring as is indicated in the article above. Why? If we stick with the idea of complimenting the prophetic picture, it is the time of lambing. This would also place the birth around the time of the early barley harvest, the primary bread grain, a time known as the season of firstfruit, a name for Christ. Also, in Ruth we have the statement that after a long famine the Lord visited Bethlehem with bread. We see the kinsman redeemer take into his house Naomi and Ruth, Jew and Gentile. Bread we commonly know as the Word of Life. Bethlehem is the city of the house of bread. After so long a time without the word of the Lord, he speaks to his people much in the same way as when Moses was sent to be a deliverer. In the advent, the deliverer is bread which comes down out of heaven. It would make sense that it was in the spring, after the cold winter’s silence is broken by the cry of the new born lamb. The time would fit for several reasons. The main reason, of course, the prophetic word revealed demonstrates a sovereign Lord over against a tradition unfounded that depicts the haphazardness of a lowly stall being hastily made ready for the lamb of God in mid-winter.

God anticipates all things necessary. We can reflect upon the circumstances of the Last Supper and how it is that a place for it was prepared before hand. Like other things that Christ does, there is every sense of prophetic expectation and fulfillment and a precission that boggles the mind in his birth.

We find certain facts left unspoken such as there are no animals mentioned. Which makes sense for the reasons stated above: the lamb without spot or blemish was to be born. The scrupulous Jews would have spared no expense so as to have nothing corrupt the purity of the birth of the paschal lamb. They would have taken no chances to risk contamination or injury. This was a special time, a special birth, to be heralded by angels and published by men, accommodations fit for the paschal lamb who was born to be king and presented before His Father’s throne in the manner of the absolute predestining sovereignty of God. Only the most pure sacrifice was to be groomed, for only the most perfect was acceptable. For the next year perhaps, but less than two according to the Law of Moses, this lamb would be under the watchful, meticulous, caring eye of those who hoped that the perfect redeeming sacrifice of the atoning paschal would be accepted by the Temple Priests to whom it was presented in the first month of the year as an offering to the Lord.

By the time of the wisemen Christ had moved from stable to a house. He had already been presented at the Temple, if we accept the timeline given as unbroken. Now one must consider just how a poor craftsman and his young bride moved into a house. The turtle doves that were offered were indeed the symbol of poverty, however, sojourners who did not have the right sacrifice with them, regardless of their finances, could purchase the substitute. Whatever their financial state, they offer Christ and then move into a house and that before the gifts are given by the wisemen.

We are forced to think of the fact that this is the family city in a family province. Though Joseph may have worked to provide for a house, one must guess as to what accommodations he found in the interim. The reality is, he may have simply moved into a house that was part of the family’s holdings, was gifted one by someone, or had sufficient finances to afford one of his own. And why stay in Behtlehem? Perhaps they knew of the coming events and were told to remain there? We should think back to the pronouncements of the angels as to just who this one conceived of the Holy Spirit was, the fact that Mary and Joseph knew, that Elizebeth knew, that there was likely great expectation among their relatives considering the events surrounding the birth of John and the prophecies made about the child of Mary by Mary and Zechariah, that prophecies concerning Bethlehem would be fulfilled, and understand the providencial, unfailing hand of almighty God controlling every event and every motion of man. This was no secret birth. But one much expected, at least among his own clansmen, and one foretold by God.

The sense is that soon after the birth they moved into a house. Perhaps after they came back from the sacrifice of purification and the presentation at the Temple, they rented or purchased one. But how does that fit with the picture of a destitute couple? Even if it were a realtive’s house or a gift, it doesn’t. The presentation at the Temple had to have happened during the passover month. Again, unless the pair waited for months, (we have only the indication that they went up immediately) this birth happened in the spring. They may have assumed a residence gifted them soon afterward. But, where and from whom? If they rented or bought, from where do the finances come? Weren’t all the houses filled with census signers? Perhaps that same innkeeper granted them a house he owned that came open, or rented it to them. Who knows? But the facts don’t line up with the traditions we hold so dear that these were two destitute people. What is known about the census historically is that they could take up to two years or more to complete. So Joseph may have worked and earned after the birth, but the town probably remained quite crowded during at least part of two years and we do not know just when during the census Jesus was born. We have no idea just how long they were there before Jesus was born, either. The Scripture is silent upon these issues and leaves many questions unanswered.

One thing that we can take from this is that Mary and Joseph were welcomed to Bethlehem, not shunned. Though not rich, Joseph was a craftsman in a time of widespread Roman public works. Typically, he was what we today might think of as middle-class. Though unorthodox, the marriage arrangement is completed soon after the pregnancy is made known, and accepted, and as we know from the later texts, Mary’s and Joseph’s relatives offer no complaint in welcoming Jesus and Mary into their households as members of an extended family. There is every indication that many of those who were Jesus’ acquaintances during his ministry were family. He was known as the craftsman’s son and not an obscure figure who suddenly appears when he assumed his ministry. So it is highly likely that the innkeeper was family, or at least a family friend, also. That would account for much that is unsaid.

There are a lot of speculations and little that we know. However, we can glean some things and by that eliminate much of the error that is found in traditions. Some traditions are blind and when they are used to teach doctrine the doctrines tend often to fall into error. Traditions that are speculations are never the right way to teach doctrine because they are not known to be the truth. Our stories, no matter how emotionally appealing, are after all is said, only our stories.

Currently in Orthodoxy, we have churches divided over which hierarch has jurisdiction over which country. We have issues of whether a calendar devised or approved of by a Roman Pope could be acceptable or adjusted for calculating feasts and fasts. The issues which divide jurisdictions and arguments between so-called Traditionalists and so-called Modernists are matters of straining at gnats and swallowing camels.

The Orthodox Church as well as all Christians worldwide have been brought face-to-face with challenges to the fundamental concepts of life and the very nature of the family. I would suggest that these challenges are at least as significant and perhaps of farther reaching implications than the doctrinal challenges facing the Church of the first eight centuries.

Both of these go straight to the heart of who we are as humans. Both of these are at the foundation of the created order.

The Councils of the Church debated much finer details than these. That the matters facing the Church today even raise questions would have been unthinkable to the Church Fathers. Neither the Arians, nor the Monothelites, nor the Monophysites, nor the Nestorians, nor the Docetists, nor the Donatists, nor the Pelagians, et al., ad nauseum, would have considered, not to mention condoned, abortion or same-sex “marriage”.

This can be put into Christological terms. If we condone abortion because we say the unborn child is not human, we deny the humanity of Christ in the womb of Mary.  To condone abortion is to deny the Incarnation.  That is heresy.

If we say affirm the humanity of the unborn, but say it is permissible to wilfully take the life of an innocent human – neither a military combatant nor a criminal – we condone murder. To say that murder is not a sin is heresy.

Any Christian who says that either the unborn child is not human or that it is okay to willfully take the life of an unborn human is heretic. Any priest, bishop, archbishop, metropolitan, or patriarch who says that either the unborn child is not human or that it is okay to wilfully take the life of an unborn human is heretic.

So if a hierarch says that Orthodox church believes the soul enters the body at conception and, “generally speaking, respects human life and the continuation of pregnancy,”but that the church also “respects the liberty and freedom of all human persons and all Christian couples,” and further that “We are not allowed to enter the bedrooms of the Christian couples. We cannot generalize. There are many reasons for a couple to go toward abortion,” is this heresy?

Any layman or deacon or priest who is under the omophorion of a bishop and any bishop who is under obedience to a hierarch that is a heretic should take appropriate action. Any bishop who is in communion with a heretical bishop should take appropriate action. It could be argued that any heretical bishop is not in the Church. It could be argued that any priest who is obedience to any bishop not in the Church is also not in the Church.

I leave this for you to ponder and/or comment.

With regard to purported same-sex marriage, there is also a Christological issue. “For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body.” Marriage is based in the relationship of Christ to the Church. Just as the Church cannot have two heads, neither can the marriage. To allege that a marriage can have two husbands or two wives is to deny that Christ alone is the head of the Church. It is to deny the very nature of the Church. It is heresy.

It is also a denial of the image of God. “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.  Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply…’ ” God’s blessing of His image is based in His command to be fruitful and multiply. It is not based in heterosexuality – rather is it impossible without heterosexuality. The sexual aspect is such a given that it need not even be mentioned. To deny it is to deny man as the image of God.

So if a bishop is asked if same-sex unions are a threat to the traditional family, and he says, “Absolutely not. I don’t see that at all…. I would say God bless you,” is this heresy?

I also leave this for you to ponder and/or comment.

Macarius the Egyptian

When God was displeased with the Jews, he delivered Jerusalem to the enemy, and they were conquered by those who hated them; there were no more sacrifices or feasts.

Likewise angered at a soul who had broken his commands, God handed it over to its enemies, who corrupted and totally dishonoured it.

When a house has no master living in it, it becomes dark, vile and contemptible, choked with filth and disgusting refuse.

So too is a soul which has lost its master, who once rejoiced there with his angels. This soul is darkened with sin, its desires are degraded, and it knows nothing but shame.

Woe to the path that is not walked on, or along which the voices of men are not heard, for then it becomes the haunt of wild animals. Woe to the soul if the Lord does not walk within it to banish with his voice the spiritual beasts of sin.

Woe to the house where no master dwells, to the field where no farmer works, to the pilotless ship, storm-tossed and sinking. Woe to the soul without Christ as its true pilot; drifting in the darkness, buffeted by the waves of passion, storm-tossed at the mercy of evil spirits, its end is destruction.

Woe to the soul that does not have Christ to cultivate it with care to produce the good fruit of the Holy Spirit. Left to itself, it is choked with thorns and thistles; instead of fruit it produces only what is fit for burning.

Woe to the soul that does not have Christ dwelling in it; deserted and foul with the filth of the passions, it becomes a haven for all the vices. When a farmer prepares to till the soil he must put on clothing and use tools that are suitable. So Christ, our heavenly king, came to till the soil of mankind devastated by sin.

He assumed a body and, using the cross as his ploughshare, cultivated the barren soul of man. He removed the thorns and thistles which are the evil spirits and pulled up the weeds of sin. Into the fire he cast the straw of wickedness.

And when he had ploughed the soul with the wood of the cross, he planted in it a most lovely garden of the Spirit, that could produce for its Lord and God the sweetest and most pleasant fruit of every kind.

Attributed to Macarius the Egyptian (c. 300 -391); from the Office of Readings, Wednesday in the 34^th week of Ordinary Time.

“In the Incarnation God the Son takes the body and human soul of Jesus, and, through that, the whole environment of Nature, all the creaturely predicament, into His own being.

So that ‘He came down from Heaven’ can almost be transposed into ‘Heaven drew earth up into it,’ and locality, limitation, sleep, sweat, footsore weariness, frustration, pain, doubt, and death, are, from before all worlds, known by God from within.

The pure light walks the earth; the darkness, received into the heart of Deity, is there swallowed up. Where, except in uncreated light, can the darkness be drowned?”

–C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (San Diego: Harvest, 1964), 70-71.

“There is this Philippian church torn by strife and discord. What is the whole problem? Each of them is insisting upon his rights, insisting upon the fact of his own dignity, insisting upon his gifts, his ability, insisting upon recognition. And what Paul does is almost savage. He takes the pettiness of these antagonists, these futile inter-congregational confrontations, places them in the appallingly cruel night of the incarnation and says, “How can you?” It’s a problem that we are bound to meet time and again as pastors. We shall observe it in the conduct of our own people, individual members saying, “I want my rights.” What is more, we’ll detect it in ourselves. And Paul is saying, “Live your life in the light of this: ouch harpagmon hegesato [He did not consider equality with God something to be grasped], He did not stand upon His dignity. He did not insist upon His rights. He did not parade His equality.” Paul is taking again the glory of the pre-incarnate decision, and relating it to the most mundane problems of the Christian church.”

(from The Humiliated and Exalted Lord, Donald Macleod)

SDG, Ezra

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my discovery of the Incarnation Figure as an archetype in storytelling. There are obvious connections between this and the Christ Figure that w are so familiar with given that the Christ that the figures tend to emulate began being Christ through incarnation, the embodiment of something greater in than our world in our world. But the difference that I pointed out is that Christ Figures tend to have death and resurrection or sacrificial element to them and Incarnation Figures don’t always express that.
As intriguing and powerful as Christ Figures can be, I find them troublesome at times. I have seen too many Christians try to grade a story’s value on the presence or lack of Christ Figure. If it has one, it’s a good story, if not it fails. And this is whether the story is told well or the characters are believable or if there is any suspense to make us care what happens.
The other problem I frequently see is when a Christ figure is imposed in attempts to co-opt a story and make it a Christian tale. Take “The Matrix” for example. Certainly there is the element of sacrifice on Neo’s part as he stays behind to let the others escape. And there is something of death and resurrection. But did he really die? OR did he simply, finally understand the Matrix well enough to know that he didn’t have to die there? To me this story is more about faith and finding out what can happen when you truly believe more than it is about a Christ figure and the redemption that follows.
People often describe Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings as a Christ figure. Again there is a certain validity to that in terms of his death and resurrection. But as much as he is a Christ Figure, he is also an Odin Figure, at least up until the resurrection point. It’s almost as if Gandalf starts as Odin and finishes as Christ. And that’s not much a of a stretch given that Odin is a bit of Christ Figure himself, sacrificing himself unto himself.
But my favorite example of the failings of the overstressed Christ Figure is Hell Boy. In the second Hell Boy movie, the story follows the typical Christ Figure arch, as he sacrifices himself to save another, descends into the pits to eradicate the forces of evil and save all the Earth. Powerful stuff. But how many Christians stumble on this because he is a demon – and not just any demon, Satan’s son who’s true destiny is to bring ultimate destruction on the Earth? Is such a character an acceptable Christ Figure?
I think this is one of those examples that parallels the story of the Bronze Snake from scripture. God commanded Moses to make a bonze statue of a snake. This statue heals anyone that looks at it. The odd part is that most times that snakes appear in scripture, they are symbols of evil, demons or Satan himself. Jesus later tells us that the snake was an image of him. The image of evil expresses the ultimate good. Perhaps Hell Boy falls in this same category.

Today, in our 7th grade Pre-Confirmation class, parents were invited to come to class for orientation of the upcoming year and review of the last 9 classes.  We opened with a review of “incarnation” and the “Angelus” for an opening prayer.  Then I reviewed the different prayer types with B.A.P.T.i.S.M..  Then we played Jeopardy!

“Angelus” Prayer
(The Angel of the Lord)

[Lead:]  The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary,
[ALL:]  And she conceived of the Holy Spirit.
HAIL MARY, full of grace …

[Lead:]  Behold the handmaid of the Lord,
[ALL:]  Be it done unto me according to Thy word.
HAIL MARY, full of grace …

[Lead:]  And the Word was made flesh,   [bow during]
[ALL:]  And dwelt among us.
HAIL MARY, full of grace …

[Lead:]  Pray for us, O holy Mother of God,
[ALL:]  That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

[Lead:]  Let us pray.
[ALL:]  Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord,
Thy grace into our hearts;  that we,
to whom the incarnation of Christ, Thy Son,
was made known by the message of an angel,
may by His Passion and Cross
be brought to the glory of His Resurrection,
through the same Christ Our Lord.
AMEN.

Types of prayers … B.A.P.T.i.S.M.

• BLESSING – invoke God’s power for a person, place or activity
• ADORATION – the “created” before the Creator
• PRAISE – glory God (for who He is)
• THANKSGIVING – gratitude (for what He does)
• i ASK for ME (petition) + OTHERS (intercession)
• SORRY – ask of forgiveness
• MEDITATION – tuning into God, reflection (through quiet prayer, Sacred Scripture, lectio divina, liturgy of the hours, Rosary, holy icons, imagery, books of daily devotion, lives of saints, works of spirituality, etc.)

The MASS includes ALL these types of prayer

We played Classroom Jeopardy! with teams of parents & kids.  With almost perfect attendance, only 5 kids came without parents and everyone seemed to have a great time playing.  Most categories were facts we’ve covered in class like “Jewish Roots,” “Gotta Have Faith,” “Facebook Jesus,” “Catholic Pop Quiz,” “Catholic Prayers,” “Angels & Demons,” and “A.R.R.R. You Listening?” Then there was the more entertaining categories like “Chronicles of Narnia,” “Anything Goes,” and the favorite “Candy Bars.” A great time for all.  I can’t wait to bring the parents back soon!

As one who loves liturgy, I am excited that tomorrow is Christ the King Sunday.  It is a time to celebrate God’s reign, the incarnation and lordship of Jesus.  It is so holy, I can’t help but to sing: “All hail the power of Jesus’ name…bring forth the royal diadem, and crown him Lord of all!”

One of the texts for Christ the King Sunday is Revelation 1:4-8, in which John, the exiled author, envisioned “the ruler of the kings of the earth.”  This expresses the simple, eternal truth that God is God and humanity is not.  There is only one ruler of all the earth; humans are mere characters in the larger drama of God’s unfolding history.  The irony is that in this history the powerful are made weak and the weak are made strong.

Consider the Exodus story.  Murderous and cowardly Moses told the mighty Pharaoh to let God’s people—those powerless slave people—go.  Predictably, Pharaoh asked which god Moses represented, for Pharaoh’s universe was one in which many gods existed.  Even Pharaoh was a god!  Moses simply spoke the truth: Pharaoh was not in charge; he was a no-god.

In the gospels, a peasant from Nazareth confronted the most powerful empire in his day.  By parable and miracle, Jesus humbled both the Jewish and Roman aristocracy by reminding them that, in spite of all of their authority, God was still in charge.  Jesus’ treasonous kingdom message was what ultimately got him killed, but Jesus’ resurrection only proved that God was God and Rome was not.

Our nation has a predisposition towards liberty.  When King George III fastened his grip on thirteen colonies so long ago, a band of brave patriots cried, “Give me liberty or give me death.” We are still skeptical of kings and kingdoms, and we do not like lords telling us what to do.

We have been without a king for so long, we forget what it’s like to have one.   A lord is antithetical to liberty, so trying to celebrate Christ the King Sunday is like trying to speak a foreign language—we call Christ lord but we can’t remember precisely what that means.

We fail to understand that when we call Christ King, it means that he is lord over every aspect of who we are and what we do.  In Christ Jesus we gain true liberty because he frees us from our lust for power and our endless selfish wants.

Calling Christ Lord also gives us a divine responsibility.  In Revelation John wrote that Jesus “made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father.”  We are royal priests who have a unique role and who are attentive to the will of the King.  Priests also remind those who try to usurp the King that they are not in charge.  It takes courage to speak truth to power, even if it rubs against popular politics.

We are also heralds who declare that Jesus will reclaim all of creation for himself one day.  This season two movies, “2012” and “The Road,” will address end-of-the-world themes.  Myth and popcorn can make people have the false sense that an apocalypse is something of mere fiction; Revelation shocks us with the reality that there will be an end and that Christ will usher in a new heaven and earth.

Christ the King Sunday is an important day, a time to stop trying to do things our way instead of God’s way.  “Come, Thou Almighty King, help us Thy name to sing, help us to praise:  Father, all glorious, o’er all victorious, come and reign over us, Ancient of Days!”

For my Advent discipline this year I’m going to be reading “God With Us” (Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas), Edited by Greg Pennoyer and Gregory Wolfe.  It features daily writing for Advent (and for feasts through Epiphany) by such writers as Scott Cairns, Emilie Griffin, Richard John Neuhaus, Kathleen Norris, Eugene Peterson and Luci Shaw.  I’ve already done some browsing.

The major question for me was whether to wait for Advent and live through the season day by day with the book, or to start tomorrow (and maybe be able to use what I’m reading in the week ahead.  I’m pretty sure at this point I’m going to start tomorrow, hoping that I can use some of what I’m reading with my congregation in a timely manner.  (We’ve already got our second reading for our early service on I Advent set up to use an excerpt from Neuhaus’s piece for that day.  I’m hoping it will inform my sermons.

So far, I really like what I’ve seen.  I’m looking forward to using this as a daily reading (maybe in conjunction with Morning Prayer).  I have to thank my wife, Anne, who found this and bought this for me.  There are some wonderful advantages to having a librarian in the family!

As you might gather from the title, it’s geared towards discovering the meaning of the incarnation (Jesus’ birth) in our lives.

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”

The radical realism of Chesterton is profound!  In the “old theology [rather] than the new,” Chesterton wrote, “we get wonder, curiosity, moral and political adventure, righteous indignation  – Christendom, (Christianity)”.  When G.K. wrote his book “Orthodoxy” he was an Anglican (1908). He later went to Rome, or Roman Catholicism in 1922. At the time, Chesterton thought that Rome and Catholicism, upheld the best of the orthodox Christian synergy of spirit, matter, and truth.  And for him Catholicism affirmed his great principle of grace, glory and gratitude. Which he also saw in Rome’s Thomism, the “primary and fundamental” “belief”…”the praise of Life, the praise of Being (ontology), the praise of God as Creator of the World.”

Today, we can learn much from G.K. Chesterton, his doctrine and life of the Incarnational reality, in both Church and Sacrament, but beyond to the truth of God’s creation of life, joy and beauty. Even in a sinful and broken world, which Christ has come to redeem, in fulness!

“The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.” (Inro. to the Book of Job. 1907)

Christus Rex

This coming Sunday is the Feast of Christ the King. I’m going to give a 3-minute wonder at the BCP communion (on Jeremiah 23.5–8 & John 6.5–14). In an emergency, I may have to preach at the parish eucharist also (on Daniel 7.9–10, 13–14; Revelation 1.4b–8 & John 18.33b–37), which is most definitely Christ the King.

I expect many sermons will fail to get across what ‘Christ is king’ means. In Year B of the Revised Common Lectionary, which draws to a close this coming week, we have John’s account of Jesus’ trial before Pilate (or is Jesus putting Pilate on trial?). The key phrase in understanding Jesus as king here is his words, “My kingdom is not of this world” (ἡ βασίλεια ἡ ἐμὴ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου, hē basileia hē emē ouk estin ek tou kosmou toutou). Again there is the danger of misunderstanding the line to think he is talking about heaven. That interpretation completely disarms and voids the words of any meaning. It is basically putting on Jesus’ lips the idea that he doesn’t care about earthly life and all that matters is ‘pie in the sky when you die’.

The dialogue between Jesus and Pilate is apocalyptic: hidden, subversive prophecy. The Bible readings over the last three Sundays have been trying to attune us to this apocalyptic frequency, but it’s still far too easy to miss what is being said to us. Jesus is saying that he is a king, but his kingly nature is diametrically opposed to that of world leaders. Worldly kings and queens can be characterized as

• holding absolute and/or ultimate power over their subjects,
• enriching themselves off their subjects,
• demand the servitude of their subjects.

Jesus’ kingship is the opposite to this. His incarnation is the laying aside of power. He lived a simple life to enrich others. He served others. If we understand Jesus’ kingship through his words and actions, we see that it is a completely upside-down kingdom from the earthly perspective. If we call Jesus king and fail to recognise the radical and revolutionary, subversive and prophetic nature of his authority, then we are not only missing the point, but we are collaborating in the great lie of Christendom, that Jesus upholds authoritarianism — we turn Jesus into Pilate/Caesar.

To avoid this, many take the escape route of describing Jesus’ kingdom as heavenly in its location rather than just in its nature. This relegates our earthly life to a mere waiting room for heaven in which to try to remain good enough to get in. It is presented in far lofty terms from pulpits, but it is what this boils down to.

Perhaps, this word ‘king’ is problematic for us; it was for Pilate too. But maybe renaming this the Feast of Christ Political is a bit too edgy for the church. He was part of the high-tension politics of his day, surprising all by following a unique, untrodden path. He was not on this side or that side, he was his own man. Our world has different political polarisations, but the same political passions as then. This Feast of Christ the King is a moment for specific reflection on how we as Christians, followers of Christ, follow his path through our political world.

I end with two thoughts, which maybe found more spiritual, and thus more palatable.

Earthly kings and queens send out their subjects to die for their selfish ideals; Christ is the king who died for his own for the highest of ideals.

From Celtic Daily Prayer

Question: What are the only human-made things in heaven?
Answer: The wounds in the hands, feet and side of Christ.

John Eudes

We must strive to follow and fulfill in ourselves the various stages of Christ’s plan as well as his mysteries, and frequently beg him to bring them to completion in us and in the whole Church. For the mysteries of Jesus are not yet completely perfected and fulfilled.

They are complete, indeed, in the person of Jesus, but not in us, who are his members, nor in the Church, which is his mystical body. The Son of God wills to give us a share in his mysteries and somehow to extend them to us. He wills to continue them in us and in his universal Church.

This is brought about first through the graces he has resolved to impart to us and then through the works he wishes to accomplish in us through these mysteries. This is his plan for fulfilling his mysteries in us.

For this reason Saint Paul says that Christ is being brought to fulfillment in his Church and that all of us contribute to this fulfillment, and thus he achieves the fullness of life, that is, the mystical stature that he has in his mystical body, which will reach completion only on judgement day. In another place Paul says: I complete in my own flesh what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ.

This is the plan by which the Son of God completes and fulfills in us all the various stages and mysteries. He desires us to perfect the mystery of his incarnation and birth by forming himself in us and being reborn in our souls through the blessed sacraments of baptism and the eucharist. He fulfills his interior life in us, hidden with him in God.

He intends to perfect the mysteries of his passion, death and resurrection, by causing us to suffer, die and rise again with him and in him. Finally, he wishes to fulfill in us the state of his glorious and immortal life, when he will cause us to live a glorious, eternal life with him and in him in heaven.

In the same way he would complete and fulfill in us and in his Church his other stages and mysteries. He wants to give us a share in them and to accomplish and continue them in us.

So it is that the mysteries of Christ will not be completed until the end of time, because he has arranged that the completion of his mysteries in us and in the Church will only be achieved at the end of time.

St John Eudes (1601-1680): second reading from the Office of Readings for August 19th, taken from the saint’s treatise on the Kingdom of Jesus.

The Feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple celebrates not an event recorded in Scripture, but rather calls us to contemplate the very process by which God brings us to salvation.  Metropolitan St. Philaret of Moscow  said on the Feast Day, “In man in a sinless state, ‘the image of God’ was the source of blessing; in fallen man, it was (only) the hope of blessing.” 

The Feast of the Entrance recognizes the hope of blessing – the beginning of salvation.  For humanity no longer lilved in the original sinless state, and the image of God in man had become distant from what humanity experienced in the world.   The process by which God brings humanity to salvation is beginning with the Virgin standing in the temple giving hope that “God with us” of which the temple was but a sign, might now actually be fulfilled.   We come to understand what purpose the Temple served in the process of salvation – for it was meant to be a type of the reality, but not the reality itself.  It was to prepare God’s people for how God would be with His people – how Immanuel (Matthew 1:23) is the Word made flesh who dwelt among us.   When the Virgin Mary came into the Temple, the Temple now encountered the one who would be Theotokos (the God bearer), the one who would realize that of which the Temple was but a type.   The Temple was not unimportant; it was an essential preparation for what God was going to do to save His people.  But in the encounter with the Theotokos the Temple became part of the OLD Covenant, that which fulfilled its purpose and was passing away as the New was being revealed.

Maybe there’s a dream buried deep inside your soul, and God is waiting to reconstruct it, to put all the bones back together. He is waiting to put muscle and sinew on it and wrap skin around it…God is waiting for you to recognize that you cannot control the four winds, but he can. If he commands you to act, and if you will trust him, you will see all of creation move in concert to accomplish in you what you were created to do. You were created not simply to sleep through your dreams but to live dreams bigger than you, bolder than you….Your dreams are a foretaste of the life you can have and the person you can become. But before you will ever live those dreams, you have to discover a dream worth living. That’s why God is so essential to this journey and why Jesus has come for us. Long before you took your first breath, you were a dream – a dream in the mind of the one who made you. He saw you before you were created, and he alone knows the full extent of your creative potential…He sees the dream that could become your life. A life beyond your wildest dreams. Don’t take your last breath without living it.

Irwin Raphael McManus

(from Wide Awake)

David Mullen wrote the second piece on “descended from the dead.  It follows:

Christ going down into the bowels of the earth–a metaphor for going deeper than we ever want to go–into the human condition, into the extremity of hopeless, far from God, supposedly, and lost.  But tradition has it that he preached to them.  Ah, so then the dead were undead, that is, not full of life, but able to hear, and receive the gospel.  Hope and Life!

 

But all that is a kind of literalizing of something archetypal.  Jesus descended to the dead: but this is something happening all the time.  Everywhere are the dead, in the world at large, and in the congregations everywhere that are his people, his body.  He descends into communitas to preach and bring hope and revival. 

 

The Christ cannot abide the ways of death.  If some death dweller says, I want to follow you, Jesus, but first let me take care of my dad’s funeral, Jesus says, let the dead bury the dead.  In the extremities of suffering and confusion and despair, when his community is only waiting for rigor mortis  to set in, the Christ/Spirit brings a vision of the valley of the dry bones, and a promise of revival. 

 

Christ does not take death or the dead as the final word.  Never.  The family was distraught because their brother was dead.  The community gathered and wailed, but the Christ, in an archetypal moment, knew what he was going to do and knew the outcome, but prayed loudly so that all could hear his confidence in the Mystery of the Holy One, and, next to the tomb, shouted, “Lazarus, come forth!”  

 

“But, Lord, there will be a stink.”  What?  There is always the stink, but life is stronger than even decay.  Lazarus comes forth, a sign of the great resurrection promise.  “Unbind him!” orders Christ. 

 

He descended to the dead: here where hope wanes and the greyness of the cloud of despair envelopes us.  Here where the wailing and the nattering of the undead (so to speak) seems to shout louder than the good news of salvation. Descend to us now, we pray, and give us life.  Shout to us, come forth, and order your holy angels to unbind us all Lord Christ!

 

Here in this realm of the dead, where we are not dead and gone, but dead and undead, only by your prayer and power can we stride forth from whatever tomb-like dark place we inhabit, barely existing. 

 

Come forth!  And we stumble into the sunlight of the presence of God.  Life!