This blog offers a short reflection on Bible readings in the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) for Sundays and major Christian festivals throughout the year.
The readings for this Sunday are
unusually well integrated. The Gospel passage depicting John the Baptist
expressly quotes the Old Testament passage, with its reference to ‘a voice,
crying in the wilderness’, while the tone of Psalm 85 and the message of Peter’s
second Epistle resonate with a similar theme. In one way or another, all these
readings point to two interconnected concepts -- repentance and redemption.
The interconnection is crucial. Modern
Christians widely, easily, and for the most part correctly, proclaim the
unconditional love of God. God does not love the things he has made because of their
merit, but because they are his. Still, sin is a reality, and erects a very
great barrier between humanity and divinity. The message of the Gospel – as of
many religions – is that this barrier is surmountable.
Surmounting it, though, is a two sided
affair. God’s love means that he offers us forgiveness, however vile or
despicable we may have been. In this sense his love is unconditional. But his
forgiveness is not. A precondition of God’s forgiveness is our sincere
repentance, which is to say, our honest acknowledgement of and true remorse for
the many ways in which we have fallen short of our God given potential.
Peter’s Epistle expresses just this thought when it declares that God’s
love is shown by his patience, ‘not
wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance’, while John in a similar
spirit offers ‘a baptism of
repentance for the forgiveness of sins’. Repentance is key to lifting us beyond
the level of material beings created and nurtured out of love – as other
animals are -- and into the realms of those who can participate in divine life.
“The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its
light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens
will be shaken. Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in clouds' with great
power and glory”. Mark’s Gospel for this first Sunday in Advent is undeniably
apocalyptic, a feature that makes it problematic for those main-stream
Christians who have difficulty in believing in an apocalypse. They are
understandably anxious to distance themselves from lurid conceptions of ‘the
Rapture’, or some such religious extreme.
Yet the passage can hardly be set aside. This is not the wild prediction of some eccentric
Nostradamus. It is an extract from the Christian Bible that is
expressly appointed in a Lectionary that the larger part
of the Christian world now acknowledges and uses. So how are we to understand it?
It is perhaps best to start with this thought. Any attempt
to think about time and eternity simply has to invoke imaginative language. We
cannot think about the limits of
history in historical terms. So, for instance, the Genesis stories are graphic
representations of the great truth that God created time and space, a cosmic
event whose mysterious nature science is just dimly beginning to understand. It is
not so strange, then, to think that God will also bring this great cosmic
experiment to a close. If so, however, we must think about it pictures that are no less
graphic.
The Bible is not science. It offers us something that
science cannot -- religious and theological insights into human nature and the
human condition by which we can live. We are clay, and God is the potter, Isaiah
reminds us. This means that both the number of our own days, and of the whole
cosmos is determined in God’s good time, not ours. No one – not even God the
Son -- can predict its end. This is one half of the message of Advent. The other half tells us that even the end of
history can be regarded with hope rather than fear, because, as St Paul says,
we need not lack in any spiritual gift in advance of Christ’s final revelation.
The last Sunday of the Christian
year is now celebrated as the feast of Christ the King, or The Reign of
Christ.
This is a relatively new practice, instituted by the Roman Catholic
church in
1925, and followed by other churches for only the last few decades.
Although it
rounds off the year appropriately with a culminating affirmation of the
supremacy and majesty of the risen Jesus, it brings two risks with it.
To
begin with, it appeals to a rather
antiquated conception – kingship. The world is long since gone in which
kings
and queens, surrounded by immense wealth and splendor, exercised
absolute power
and were regarded with awe because of it. No one attributes such status
to
other human beings now, or is likely to make the mistake of treating
them like
gods. So how can applying ancient royal images to Jesus Christ enrich
our
understanding or increase our devotion? Secondly, there is the risk of
an unattractive
triumphalism. Invoking the image of Christ the King can sound very much
like an
expression of Christian superiority.
Though
writing for a world in which
supreme imperial power was indeed the norm, St Paul in the Epistle
offers us a
way of responding to the first point. He tells the Ephesians that God
--the
creator of all that is -- has used his power to raise a criminalized Jew
in an
obscure part of the empire ‘far above
all rule and authority and power and dominion’. That is to say, the
truth about
Jesus sets the political power of earthly kings in its proper
perspective. For
all their majesty, such rulers are powerless to save us from sin and
death. Their
kind of ‘kingship’ is importantly hollow – an assessment that continues
to
apply to modern states.
To
hail Christ as king, therefore, does
not mean claiming supreme power for an alternative political candidate,
but reversing
our whole way of thinking about power.
It is on the Cross, after all, that Jesus receives his Crown of
Thorns. It
is of course true, as the Gospel parable of the sheep and the goats
affirms,
that Jesus has been given the final word of judgment over all creation.
This
does not license Christian triumphalism, however. On the contrary, it
leaves
believing Christians with a new and more demanding responsibility – to
make
sure that they see and honor Christ’s kingship in the poorest and
humblest
parts and people of the world.
The feast day of St Margaret of Scotland falls on November 16th. Margaret, who was born around 1046 AD was probably Hungarian. A political refugee, she found protection at the court of Malcolm King of Scotland. Though her youth, delicacy and refinement contrasted somewhat sharply with his character and life style, they appear to have had a deeply happy marriage, a fact reflected in the reading from Proverbs appointed for this day. They had eight children including David I, one of the architects of the Scottish nation.
Margaret's profound personal faith, her commitment to the reform of the Church, and her seemingly limitless charitable work were legendary in her own day. She it was who established a ferry across the River Forth to encourage pilgrimages to the Shrine of St Andrew at St Andrews in Fife. Centuries later the ferry was replaced by the famous Forth Road Bridge, but the towns of North and South Queensferry retain their commemorative names.
Margaret died on November 16 1093, just three days after the deaths of her husband and eldest son. It was over 200 years before she was canonized -- by Pope Innocent IV in 1250. Her connection with pilgrimage inspired this verse of a hymn about her.
Patience the cloak she wore
Love in her bag she bore
Grace was the staff with which she strode
Hope in her Blessed Lord
Faith in his Holy Word
These were her food upon the road.
The Gospel parable for this Sunday has entered our thinking so deeply that it has changed the meaning of a word. In Biblical times ‘talent’ was a monetary unit (distantly connected, in fact, with our word ‘dollar’). Now it means a special gift or aptitude. This change has come about largely because Matthew’s story has consistently been interpreted to refer to the special aptitudes we find in ourselves. To call them ‘talents’ or ‘gifts’ has no special resonance any more, and yet speaking in this way necessarily invokes a theological meaning. Gifts imply a giver, and who is the giver if not God? The aptitudes we have – a special talent for music or mathematics, or just as importantly, a gift for friendship – are not ours by right. Still less are they our personal accomplishments. Rather, they are blessings for which we ought to be grateful in exactly the way we are grateful for birthday or Christmas gifts from friends and family. Without these gifts, we could not make our way in the world, yet they are benefits which we have not earned, and to which we have no ‘natural’ right.
The parable Jesus tells goes beyond this important observation, however. Gifts bring responsibilities, notably the responsibility to use them well. And this, the parable reminds us, implies risk. To use your gifts to the maximum, you have to take a chance. The cautious servant who buried the talent was ‘risk averse’, understandably so, given the severity of the master who gave it to him. Nevertheless, however understandable his attitude may be, it brought him to judgment. Life is a gift that we waste to our eternal cost.
The message seems clear. Each of us must make an accurate assessment of the gifts we have been given, and launch out on paths that make the most of these. Of course, there is no guarantee that doing so will bring success as the world understands it, but for the Christian this does not mean that we are left stumbling in the dark. One the contrary, Paul tells the Thessalonians in this week’s Epistle, ‘You are not in darkness; you are all children of light’. This is not because they know what the future holds, but because by following Christ they have ‘put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation’.
Nov 11th is Martinmas -- the feast day of St Martin of Tours, the patron saint of France. Martin was a Roman soldier who converted to Christianity. After a time he became a monk, and later reluctantly accepted ordination as Bishop of Tours on condition that he could maintain his monkish lifestyle. Martin's concern for the poor was made evident while still a soldier. A famous legend recounts how he cut his valuable military tunic in two to clothe a naked beggar. He died in 397 AD, and his ascetic life, episcopal leadership, concern for the poor and championing of the oppressed quickly led to widespread veneration. His feast day became known as 'Martinmas', and was used as the 'quarter day' on which accounts were settled before winter began.
Chuck Bartow's poem 'Salvation' does not mention Martin, but it brilliantly finds spiritual significance in military and wintery images that make it specially fitting for his feast day.
The commemoration of All Saints (November 1st) has long been a major Christian festival. It is now widely celebrated on the Sunday following. Accordingly there are two sets of readings for this Sunday. This lectionary note is based on the readings for All Saints. A link to the readings for the twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost can be found below.
The Gospel for All Saints in this year of the lectionary consists in ‘The Beatitudes’, so called because they comprise a list in which each item begins with the word ‘Blessed’. Jesus tells his disciples that they are ‘blessed’ when they are persecuted, reviled and slandered. This is deeply counter-intuitive. It is also contrary to those Old Testament passages where the same word is usually translated ‘happy’ and refers to the emotional and material benefits that can be expected to flow from following God’s law. Here, it seems, Jesus is warning his followers that, in ordinary human terms at least, discipleship is likely to be bad for them.
So why would anyone go in for it? Sometimes the answer is thought to lie with post-mortem rewards – benefits that we can expect in heaven, if only we persist. But to follow Jesus for the sake of future benefits has the unwelcome implication that there is nothing to be gained from faithful discipleship now. A traditional hymn begins ‘My God I love thee not because I hope for heaven thereby’. That seems right.
The short but beautiful Epistle from the first letter of John contains a central Christian affirmation on just this point. The greatest possible blessing in life is ‘that we should be called children of God’ and ‘we are God’s children now’. Speculation about heaven and the hereafter is not really relevant because ‘what we will be has not yet been revealed’.
None of us wants to be persecuted or reviled. Being ‘meek’ or ‘poor in spirit’ is not a goal we are inclined to set our children either. Yet at All Saints we are invited to acknowledge this deep truth.Though ‘the world did not know it’, the lives of the poor and persecuted who truly lived as ‘children of God’ were as blessed as we can ever hope our own will be.
