Prior homilies or sermons of mine are occasionally downloaded by readers. Noticing this, I anticipate that some of those preparing to preach (or offer a reading) on an upcoming Sunday might benefit from the perspective I have taken regarding the Lectionary readings for a particular day. I am therefore offering (when I can) a prior text that I have used for the occasion. I will try to do this on Sunday evenings or Mondays believing that there might interest in these texts being made available. When I have one prepared, I will also offer an accompanying handout (in pdf format) in case these may also be helpful.
For Ash Wednesday this week I offer the following homily. I have shared versions of this on a number of Ash Wednesdays, and it is not specific to any of the three Lectionary Years.
The link for it is here. The link to the handout may be found further below.
The Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, which provides a metaphor
Prior homilies or sermons of mine are occasionally downloaded by readers. Noticing this, I anticipate that some of those preparing to preach (or offer a reading) on an upcoming Sunday might benefit from the perspective I have taken regarding the Lectionary readings for a particular day. I am therefore offering (when I can) a prior text that I have used for the occasion. I will try to do this on Sunday evenings or Mondays believing that there might interest in these texts being made available. When I have one prepared, I will also offer an accompanying handout (in pdf format) in case these may also be helpful.
For this coming Sunday, the last Sunday after the Epiphany in Lectionary year A, I offer the following.
The link for it is here. The link to the handout may be found further below.
Prior homilies or sermons of mine are occasionally downloaded by readers. Noticing this, I anticipate that some of those preparing to preach (or offer a reading) on an upcoming Sunday might benefit from the perspective I have taken regarding the Lectionary readings for a particular day. I am therefore offering (when I can) a prior text that I have used for the occasion. I will try to do this on Sunday evenings or Mondays believing that there might interest in these texts being made available. When I have one prepared, I will also offer an accompanying handout (in pdf format) in case these may also be helpful.
For this coming Sunday, the fifth Sunday after the Epiphany in Lectionary year A, I offer the following.
The link for it is here. The link to the handout may be found further below.
Prior homilies or sermons of mine are occasionally downloaded by readers. Noticing this, I anticipate that some of those preparing to preach (or offer a reading) on an upcoming Sunday might benefit from the perspective I have taken regarding the Lectionary readings for a particular day. I am therefore offering (when I can) a prior text that I have used for the occasion. I will try to do this on Sunday evenings or Mondays believing that there might interest in these texts being made available. When I have one prepared, I will also offer an accompanying handout (in pdf format) in case these may also be helpful.
For this coming Sunday, the fourth Sunday after the Epiphany in Lectionary year A, I offer the following.
The link for it is here. The link to the handout may be found further below.
I observe that prior homilies or sermons of mine occasionally have been downloaded by readers. I anticipate that some of those preparing to preach (or offer a reading) on an upcoming Sunday might benefit from the perspective I have taken regarding the Lectionary readings for a particular day. I am therefore offering (when I can) a prior text that I have used for the occasion. I will try to do this on Sunday evenings or Mondays believing that there might interest in these texts being made available. When I have one prepared, I will also offer an accompanying handout (in pdf format) in case these may also be helpful.
For this coming Sunday, the third Sunday after the Epiphany in Lectionary year A, I offer the following.
The link for it is here. The link to the handout may be found further below.
I observe that from time to time prior homilies or sermons of mine have been downloaded by readers. I anticipate that some of those preparing to preach (or offer a reading) on an upcoming Sunday might benefit from the perspective I have taken regarding the Lectionary readings for a particular day. I therefore plan to offer when I can a prior text that I have used for the occasion. I will try to do this on Sunday evenings or Mondays believing that there might interest in these texts being made available. When I have one prepared, I will also offer an accompanying handout (in pdf format) in case these may also be helpful.
For this coming Sunday, the second Sunday after the Epiphany in Lectionary year A, I offer the following. As with last week’s offering, this one is from 2017, as well.
The link for it is here. The link to the handout may be found further below.
The Baptism of Christ, Chartres Cathedral, 12th century
I observe that from time to time prior homilies or sermons of mine have been downloaded by readers. I anticipate that some of those preparing to preach (or offer a reading) on an upcoming Sunday might benefit from the perspective I have taken regarding the Lectionary readings for a particular day. I therefore plan to offer when I can a prior text that I have used for the occasion. I will try to do this on Sunday evenings or Mondays believing that there might interest in these texts being made available. When I have one prepared, I will also offer an accompanying handout (in pdf format) in case these may also be helpful.
For this coming Sunday, the first Sunday after the Epiphany, the Baptism of Our Lord, I offer the following.
I have long been captivated by some words offered in our Prayer Book for the newly baptized, that they might receive the gift of joy and wonder in all of God’s works. These 12 Days of Christmas are surely the time of the year when hopes for joy and wonder are most honored by people all over the world.
While we focus on the gift of the long-promised Prince of Peace, and Wonderful Counselor, we also engage in what we might think of as a widespread indulgence in sentimentality. Our celebration of the Promised One can become overwhelmed by the secular accoutrements of ‘the season,’ with various permutations of the legacy of St Nicholas of Myra morphed into an attractive mythic figure we call Santa Claus, or Father Christmas as folks in the U.K. like to call him. His popular name in America, diminutively reduced to Santa or Saint Nick, masks the religious history of his churchly origins as a figure numbered among those on the Calendar and in the Lectionary. Elves in Santa’s fabled workshop take the place of saints and un-named believers whose works of faith are not remembered with specifics, while the lore of the mythic figure who comes to visit children’s’ homes with gifts occupies public attention.
We love reminders like this of the joy to be found at Christmas
Among others who have led parish church congregations, I have done my share of encouraging observance of a traditional Advent, stressing the significance of St Nicholas’ feast day (December 6), and urging retention of Advent hymns and restraint in home and church decorations characteristic of our culture’s ways of anticipating Christmas. For me and others, the 12 Days of Christmas would be our time of celebrating our Lord’s Nativity by lighting trees, sharing gifts, and treating ourselves to special foods, right through the feast days of St Stephen, St. John, Holy Innocents, and The Holy Name, to Twelfth Night and a proper regard for the Magi’s visit on the Epiphany, January 6. Preferring such an emphasis has caused some of us to appear to be in quiet conflict with the patterns of our wider culture. For the world around us has more and more begun its anticipation of Christmas by playing ‘music of the season’ early in November, long before Thanksgiving, while also decorating homes and public spaces with Christmas-related lights, poinsettia, and objects related to our enjoyment of gift-giving and receiving. At the heart of all these outward signs of anticipation is our longing for a recovery and enjoyment of what we celebrate as ‘the most wonderful time of the year.’
My adult children like to gently rib me that I have ‘gone soft’ on Advent. And that I have slowly succumbed to the influence of ‘secular culture’ upon what I think should properly be seen as a religious holiday – as if the two emphases are in some way counterposed, and in tension. With my predilection for retaining our Anglican heritage’s rightly attributed but oft-caricatured principle of taking a “both-and” approach to many aspects of our faith and beliefs, I prefer to think that I have broadened my outlook in my search for forms of a deeper synthesis that lies within ‘reality.’ Perhaps these changes in me are due to having grandchildren who live nearby. Yet, as I remember Oliver O’Donovan encouraging us to perceive, compromise is not always ‘of the Truth,’ but can also be ‘in relation to the Truth.’
Hence, my continued fascination with joy and wonder. Joy and wonder might be two of the best words to describe what we think of, and may remember as, a child’s view of what Christmas is all about. And if there is any substance to the perception that our transition from childhood through adolescence to adulthood is often marked by our loss of genuine engagement in imagination, fantasy, and therefore with wonder, it is surely reflected in our thinking that Christmas is primarily significant for children. And therefore something that we enjoy cheerfully when we participate in social occasions where we temporarily suspend our disbelief in fantasy for the sake of the merriment we can enjoy with others.
Christmas inspires us to seek stories of places filled with wonder
All this has deeper significance. What if the world we live in is truly animated by the Holy Spirit, thoroughly infused with divine Grace and Wisdom, and permeated by a wellspring of joy that is godly? What if our culture’s pattern of anticipating and celebrating Christmas is an example of what Jesus had in mind when he encouraged his adult listeners to become like the children he embraced and held up as an example of Kingdom-participation and life?
As when he placed a child in the midst of them, and said, “Truly, … unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” Has it occurred to us that he may have been speaking first about himself (He who humbled himself to become an infant and then a child)?
Childish and child-like are, of course, not necessarily the same. And by distinguishing the terms, we may begin to recover something. That we don’t necessarily need to pare down features of our cultural approach to Christmas to get our celebration back to being something Jesus might want us to enjoy. But that we could also see our patterns of Christmas celebration as involving the kinds of gatherings and events at which he would have enjoyed himself, identifying with our delight in such moments, and where he would encourage us to embody his spirit of discernment of how God is present and at work in all that is around us.
It is all about him. And he is all about us.
Note: the quoted words of Jesus, above, are from Matthew 18:2-4. Christmas Story (filmed in Finland/Lapland, and A Boy Called Christmas are movies currently streaming.
Picture the scene: About 750 years before Jesus, at the Lord’s bidding the prophet Isaiah goes out to the south side of Jerusalem near the aquaduct. He has been asked to do a difficult thing, to meet the fearful and apprehensive Ahaz, king of Judah. This happens at the moment when God’s people are threatened by Tiglath-pileser, king of the Assyrians. Making a bad situation worse, the Assyrians have been joined by armed forces from the separated northern kingdom of Israel, who have already been brought under subjection by the threatening foreign power. Ahaz does not respond as God would like. When he demurs from asking God for a sign of assurance, Isaiah confronts him with the Lord’s Word:
“… Listen to this, government of David! It’s bad enough that you make people tired with your pious, timid hypocrisies, but now you’re making God tired. So the Master is going to give you a sign anyway. Watch for this: A girl who is presently a virgin will get pregnant. She’ll bear a son and name him Immanuel (God-With-Us). By the time the child is twelve years old, able to make moral decisions, the threat of war will be over. Relax, those two kings that have you so worried will be out of the picture. But also be warned: God will bring on you and your people and your government a judgment worse than anything since the time the kingdom split, when Ephraim (northern Israel) left Judah. The king of Assyria is coming!”
What a strange promise! How could the promised birth of a child be a gift for a troubled world?
This is the kind of promise that Mary later received through the Angel Gabriel. We all receive a similar promise when we are called to acknowledge and accept that same Gift-Child that Mary received.
During Advent this year we have reflected on how there can be several aspects of our response to God’s call, and to the promises latent within God’s Gift to us. Fear is often our first reaction, followed then by wonder and uncertainty about the fit between God’s promise and our own suitability for receiving it. By attentiveness to God’s Grace, our uncertainty can be transformed into a humility ~ a humility that is willing to accept the Word of Promise and the Call to receive it. And if we come that far, if we are willing to believe and remain attentive, we may experience a wonderful moment. We find it in a fourth aspect of Mary’s response to God’s Word of Call. It is quite simply, Joy! There is no other word for it. Both Mary and Joseph, each in their own way, accept God’s unlikely and unexpected Word of promise. By accepting and receiving God’s will for what it is, they find a beautiful joy.
Over the course of Advent, I shared with you three images portraying aspects of the Angel Gabriel’s Annunciation to Mary of the promised gift of a child ~ a child who would be God with us. In the image above, El Greco beautifully captures the sublime quality of the moment. Having accepted God’s Word in humility, Mary’s eyes and her whole being are uplifted to receive the message. Her up-turned hand says it all! The gilded and hovering angel points upward, in the direction where all this is supposed to go, into the realm of Spirit. This is where the Lord will ascend through his Resurrection, taking us and our humanity with him into the very being of God.
Joy may not be the defining feature of our lives today. Yet, we can find the fullness of joy in the beautiful Gift we celebrate this week. For we receive a gift whose meaning and value we can never fully anticipate in advance.
To this gift, Mary says “Yes!” And, with her, we can say, “yes,” as well. Yes to God’s Word that comes to us as both promise and call – a promise that he will be with us always, as we accept him for who He really is. And, a call for us to become new persons in him. For in him we find a spiritual maturity that this world can never give.
In raising our hearts in assent to God’s promises, and by receiving God’s call to be transformed by the Spirit, we grow. We grow into that quiet joy which was Mary’s, instilled by the Angel’s visit. Behold – a virgin has conceived, and has borne a Son, and we call his name Immanuel – for God is with us!
We may remember some pivotal moments from within the sweep of the Old Testament: God’s call to Moses from within the burning bush; God’s call to Isaiah in the Temple; and God’s later call to Jeremiah. In each of these encounters, a divine invitation accompanied by a word of hope comes to those whom God calls to be prophets. When this happens, they react in a similar way. Each of them responds with fear, just like the reaction we saw last week in Simone Martini’s Annunciation painting of Mary’s encounter with the Angel Gabriel. In these call passages, we also hear about Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah responding in a related way: each of them is overwhelmed by a sense of unworthiness at being called to serve the Lord. For in our hearts and our minds, we as God’s people do not always hear or receive what the Lord intends to be a word of hope as a hopeful message. And when challenged to participate in God’s ongoing mission, we fear our inadequacy in being able to respond positively.
During this season of Advent I am once again reflecting on four Annunciation paintings. Here, I invite you to consider Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s depiction of the angel’s visitation to Mary, calling her to be a servant in God’s ongoing work of redemption. Observe how Rossetti portrays Mary’s response to the angel, and its contrast with Simone Martini’s painting (included below). In Martini’s Annunciation, we see an image portraying fear – Mary clutching the top of her cloak turning away from the angel and yet not able to take her eyes off the divine messenger. In Rossetti’s Annunciation (above), we see Mary looking in a different direction. Her gaze is off into the middle distance, and we can tell that she is not looking at anything in particular, ‘out there.’ Instead, she is looking within.
Here, we can make a common mistake, based on the self-absorption that is so much a part of the fallen humanity we share. For the angel’s announcement amounted to something even more dismaying than the news that Mary would bear a son as a result of this visitation rather than through the circumstances of a conventional marriage. That alone would cause confused wonder about how much this unexpected development would alter her life. But what we usually overlook is how she was being invited to become a feature in someone else’s story! As things emerged, the challenge of this momentary encounter did not so much concern how the coming of this child might alter her life, in part by diminishing her reputation. But rather, the real challenge came later as something else became clear. The coming of this child became the story for even more astonishing reasons. Mary then had to reckon with how her life and its circumstances would be significant for this child and the message of his story.
As the Annunciation helps us to perceive, when encountering the holiness, righteousness, and purity of God, we may experience not only fear about change that might lie ahead. Very likely we will also feel a sense of our own unworthiness. Perceiving the glory of God, we will become more aware of what within us falls short of God’s glory. When the Spirit invites us to experience a process of transformation back toward God’s own likeness, we are called to face and then set aside all that stands in the way of this positive change. In the Gospels we learn how God’s Word came through John the Baptizer’s ministry as a call to repent. We hear the same call to turn toward renewal in our own day. And – in the process – we learn how Mary and then the Baptizer responded. The story is not about us. It is about the Coming One.
Notice what Rossetti depicts in the angel’s hand. When inviting Mary to bear the Word of God for the sake of the world, the angel holds lilies. Lilies are a sign of the resurrection. We also see the prominent red sash that Mary may have been stitching. It bears an image of the same lilies, along with a vine that may recall the ‘Tree of Jesse’ motif (inspired by Isaiah 11). But here they are set against a red background – a sign of the passion that lies ahead. This suggests the path of suffering which the ‘Son of Man’ must walk so that we might experience the restoration and transformation of our fallen nature into his greater likeness.
Toward Beauty 