Joy and Wonder

48 Years Ago Easter Turned My Life Downside Up
Moonrise over Athens, much as I remember it

A dusky early evening left a soft glow on the Acropolis, periodically visible as I walked from the hostel toward the church. Yet, the size and warmth of the rising full moon held my attention as its blush touched the hills, for a brief while silhouetting the pillars and pediments of the Parthenon.

It was the evening of Holy Saturday, which fell on March 25 that year. In other years the day would have been the Feast of the Annunciation, but in 1978 it was the eve of Easter Sunday. I walked the short distance to Syntagma Square, to revisit the Anglican parish I had found that morning. Now, in the approaching darkness, I was returning to make my first confession, and be baptized at the Great Easter Vigil.

St Paul’s Anglican Church, Athens

How this came to be was largely due to providential grace, for I had not traveled to Greece with this particular result in mind. I was on a college year abroad, having lived and studied in Florence during the autumn. Then, after Christmas in Germany, I traveled to England for two eight week terms of study at Oxford. My plan for the year was to focus on Art History, fulfilling in part my chosen college major.

But, as in the biblical Damascus Road surprise, when first walking into the piazza around the Duomo in Florence, I experienced an unexpectedly sudden conviction: That it was time for me to surrender to the divine power I had come to recognize but had yet to affirm. Asking if there was an English-speaking congregation nearby, I was directed to St James Episcopal Church near the American Consulate. Over the next few months, and with the guidance of Fr. Edward Lee, the parish became for me a place of spiritual nurture.

The autumn course of studies for our group of visiting students in Florence was a fixed one. But my subsequent program in England allowed me the freedom to choose a personal area of focus. The exotic sounding topic of Christian Mysticism had been commended to me, and upon naming this to my Oxford program administrator, I learned that she could arrange tutorials for me with a recognized specialist in the field. What a blessing this turned out to be.

St. James Episcopal Church, Florence, Italy

And so, during a cold and wet English winter, my catechesis in the Christian Faith was suddenly deepened. My growth was fed by readings from the early desert saints, on through to the spiritual writers of the medieval period. My study experience was complemented by a different approach to worship from what I had encountered in the liturgy at St. James Episcopal Church in Florence. By chance, I discovered Pusey House and Anglo-Catholic liturgy soon after arriving in Oxford. Passing by a notice board, I saw an announcement about an upcoming sermon focused on the spirituality of Thomas Merton, whose Seven Story Mountain autobiography I had read the year before. Fr. Cheslyn Jones, the Chaplain at Pusey and a specialist in the Greek New Testament, along with the history of liturgy and spirituality, became my next catechist.

Pusey House Chapel, Oxford, England

At the end of the Hilary (or winter) Term, I made the kind of plans many American students undertake hoping for spring warmth: To head as far south as cheaply possible, for what in my case would be a six week break before the Trinity Term.

I found a used tent and some economical camping supplies in local shops in Oxford, and located a round-trip bus ticket from London to Athens, offered by a discount travel bureau. This led to a remarkable pair of journeys to and from the continent, crossing between Dover and Ostend, through Belgium, Germany, Austria, and Yugoslavia, before finally arriving in Greece. Deposited on an Athenian curbside on an early afternoon, I found a local bus to the port of Piraeus. There I arranged for an overnight passage to Crete on a vintage island cargo and passenger ferry. The next morning, I bought a bus ticket to the south coast of Crete, going to a place a friend had recommended, the little seaside town of Ierapetra, near where St. Paul’s ship had sailed off the coast (Acts 27). Aside from my basic gear, I had brought along only a New Testament and a book of the sayings of the Desert Fathers for my Lenten reading. My plan to do a lot of fasting for spiritual reasons fit neatly with my need for economy.

My first couple of nights were spent in a farmer’s field, above the town and seaside. I awoke one of those mornings to a rapping on the tent pole that alarmed me, sensitive to a probable complaint about my trespassing. Instead, there was a kind man, his arms folded across his chest, cradling fresh tomatoes and cucumbers. I was very touched.

The beach along which I walked to Ierapetra on Crete

After a few days I relocated my tent to an area just above the pebbled beach, adjacent to the long shore upon which I would daily walk to the town. There I would buy a loaf of hearty brown bread, some cheese and sausage meat, as well as more tomatoes and cucumbers. These became the staples of my diet for about 5 weeks.

With just a couple of weeks to go before my return journey to England, a friend from our study program found me on Crete. He was conflicted and wrestling with a need to fly back to the States to be reconciled with his father. After a day or two, he resolved to act on his intuition, and departed on his long journey home.

A little Greek Orthodox church like the one in which I prayed on a morning of decision

Musing about his decision, I realized that I was moving toward a similar resolve, but that in my case it was a need to be reconciled with our spiritual Father. I was still fuzzy about what this might mean in concrete terms, but awoke the next morning with greater clarity. I walked into town to pray in a small Greek Orthodox church when I realized what I needed to do. That was to go back to Athens, find an English Church, and ask to be baptized. Fetching my sleeping bag from the tent and my New Testment, I booked a bus ticket back to the north shore of Crete for a return to Piraeus on the same overnight ship. It was then I learned that it was Good Friday.

The Greek inter-island ferry ship, the Minos, upon which I sailed overnight between Piraeus and Crete

Holy Saturday morning, the bus from Piraeus dropped me at Syntagma Square in central Athens where – very conveniently – I found St Paul’s Anglican Church. Reading the church sign with its parish notices, I learned the name of the priest, Fr. Jeremy Peake, and his telephone number. Taking the risk of calling him early on Holy Saturday morning, I surprised him with an unanticipated but what I hoped would be a welcome request: I wished to be baptized. In a wonderfully understated British way, he responded by saying, “Perhaps we should talk about that!” He then invited me to come by for coffee. When I shared with him about my months of study, and with whom I had been receiving instruction in the Christian Faith, he was reassured. Warmly, he invited me to come early to the church that evening to make my first confession, and receive Baptism at the Great Easter Vigil.

The garden area where new light of Easter was lit

The liturgy began in the darkened forecourt of the parish church, just off a main boulevard in central Athens. Amidst the busy sounds of the city around us, we gathered in silence to light the new fire with which the liturgy begins. Being my first experience of the Vigil, I was quite moved by the sequence of readings, starting with the Creation, through the Fall and the Flood, the Exodus and entrance into the Promised Land, with stories of God’s covenantal grace being extended and renewed again and again. When I was then baptized, I felt like I was on fire, an overwhelming experience of cleansing embrace and transformation. I received communion as a new member of the Body of Christ, and left the liturgy feeling like I was several feet off the ground.

On Sunday morning following the Eucharist I was invited to lunch by the kind couple who had agreed to be my sponsors for Baptism. During that wonderful meal, they explained a practice with which I was unfamiliar: Easter eggs all colored dark red, recalling a wonderful Eastertide legend associated with Mary Magdalene.

After a further week in my tent near Ierapetra, I returned to Oxford for another term of formation in the history of Christian spiritual theology. At the end of the term, I received the sacrament of Confirmation through the hands of a suffragan bishop of Winchester, at Pusey House on Pentecost Sunday.

My experience of what now seems to have been a magical series of months, forty eight years ago, comes back to me every Easter. Especially when the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25 happens to occur near Holy Week, as it did this year.

Additional note: Readers interested in the legend about St. Mary Magdalen and the red egg might like to read my earlier post on this topic, which may be found here. A further reflection of the impact of the story I share here can be seen in the opening chapter and the thematic structure of my book, Ethics After Easter.

An Offering for Sunday, April 12, Easter 2 A
Justin Matherly, (Untitled), Fear Anxiety Joy, 2016

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, Easter 2 in Lectionary year A, I offer the following.

The link for it is here. The link to the handout may be found further below.

Easter 2 A 17_2026 PDF copyDownload

Here is the link to the handout.

Easter 2 A 17 Handout copy for 2026_PDFDownload

Beauty and Revelation
James Tissot, God Creating

James Tissot’s painting depicting God’s creative work is likely to strike us as childishly simplistic in its portrayal of divinity. For it quite obviously displays what we consider to be the flaw of anthropomorphism, as if the artist was naive in his approach to faith. But what if our hesitation about anthropomorphism, aside from reflecting a proper theological concern, could also become an obstacle for us? What if the mysterious implausibility of God entering into and sharing the limitations of human being keeps us from appreciating how fallen human beings can – by the same graceful Providence – share in the beautiful fullness of God?

I believe that James Tissot came to realize this: Beauty is a form of divine revelation. And, that our joy when beholding beauty is our experience of God’s love manifest to and within us.

These themes are intrinsic to our participation in Holy Week. As we can learn from observing the traditional pattern for the liturgy on Good Friday, our focus in Holy Week is upon what God has done and is doing for us. The sign of this on Good Friday is our abstention from celebrating the Eucharist, and instead we receive communion from the sacrament reserved following the Maundy Thursday liturgy on the prior evening.

For God creates, God discloses, and God provides. Through all, God reveals self. God’s revelation involves God’s self-disclosing gifts. Within the divine attributes are those of initiative and efficacy, constitutive aspects of creativity. And so, when God creates human beings in God’s own image and likeness, God not only exercises creativity but also self-revelation.

Among the ways that we resemble our Maker is one that paradoxically can become a source of frustration for us. Positively, our Creator has given us intelligence and a God-reflecting capacity for creativity, initiative, and efficacy. In addition, God has given us an inclination toward experiencing freedom and an accompanying desire for its fulfillment. Employing these gifts can lead to an ironic and negative result: They allow us the freedom wrongly to imagine that God is actually a dispensable concept, and a coping mechanism which is just a reflection of our psychological needs and a projection of ourselves.

Reflecting on these things can lead us to recognize the heart of divine humility, that it should please God to create us in God’s own image and likeness. God has given us the capacity to imagine that we are self-made, and then to function in a parody of the divine role in Creation. This happens when we fool ourselves into thinking that we are the center of the universe. Expressions of this parody include our ideas that the universe is infinite, as are our own endless possibilities within it. Yet – and this is critical – only God is infinite, and we – like the universe – are finite beings, endowed not only with divine-reflecting capacities, but also with purpose, meaning, and identities that are not of our own making.

James Tissot, What Our Lord Saw From the Cross, a remarkable inversion of how we so often picture the scene

As we approach Holy Week, we have the opportunity once again to be those who watch, who listen, and reflect. As we do, we remind ourselves that we are bit players in the Divine Drama, whose Author has generously written for us a script that has a curious feature, ample provision for ‘ad-libbing.’ In fact, divine generosity is so abounding that we are allowed to create sub-plots within the overall story. To the point that we forget to reference the overall plot lines shaping the whole, as well as the Author’s purposes in creating them.

One thing that God achieved in the events of the Exodus was to remind both Pharaoh, as well as Moses and the people of Israel, that God was and is sovereign over history as well as over geography, the realms of both time and place. Forgetting this ancient truth, we neglect the comfort we can gain from the doctrine of Providence, that God provides for the needs of the world as well as our own, which God knows more intimately and with greater perception than we do. We should wonder that we are left free to imagine otherwise, a fantasy in which some of us at least occasionally engage.

But the humility we are invited to recover in this latter part of Lent, and most of all in Holy Week, involves opening ourselves to a very real possibility. That God’s way of overcoming our refusal and failure to live into the potential we have been given involves the beauty of a strange and unexpected gift. Christmas reminded us of part of this gift, that God became human so that humans could become God-like, and in the best possible way. Holy Week allows us to rediscover the gift that God chose to identify so much with us that, in the ‘Son of Man,’ the Incarnate divine-human being, God passed through human death into the fullness of human life so that we might be enabled by grace to do the same.

Finding Beauty in Easter Living
A book for the New Church’s Teaching Series

Visitors to this space are familiar with my fondness for the words of St. Richard of Chichester: “Day by day, dear Lord, of thee three things I pray: to see thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, follow thee more nearly, day by day.” The theme can be expressed more compactly: We seek to live more nearly as we pray. These words voice our desire to walk a path of beauty in life, such as we find in ‘Easter Living.’

While serving as an Assistant Professor at one of our seminaries in The Episcopal Church, I was invited by the editor of the New Churches Teaching Series to write the volume on Ethics and Moral Theology. This was the third such series of books going back to the 1950’s that seek to provide learning for persons interested in our tradition. Books in these series have addressed a wide range of areas in faith and community life pertinent to our common desire to become informed members. I wrote my book while teaching its content in the seminary, and in about 10 different parish weekend teaching events in Episcopal churches across the country, ‘field testing’ the material. My book was published in 2000, and is still in print. I wish to note that proceeds from all the books in this series were and are donated to the Anglican Theological Review, an independent journal offering the fruits of scholarship for the benefit and educational formation of those within as well as beyond the academy.

At the time of being granted tenure, a seminary trustee asked me what the title of the book implied about its content. It became evident that her concern was focused on my use of the word “after.” I was able to explain that I used the word to mean “in light of.” The book’s title is an indirect tribute to the theological vision of my doctoral supervisor, Oliver O’Donovan, then Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford, whose book, Resurrection and Moral Order, has had a profound impact upon my thinking.

It may be helpful to clarify that I use the terms “Christian ethics” and “moral theology” interchangeably. However, it is worth observing that many within the wider Protestant tradition tend to prefer the term “Christian ethics,” while those within the wider Catholic tradition tend to use that of “moral theology.” Note that “ethics,” as a named field of inquiry without the religious qualifier, is generally understood as a branch of philosophy, which may or may not observably underpin theological writings relevant to this field.

I would like to highlight a number of themes evident within and or suggested by the structure my book, which I think are particularly relevant to Christians at this point of time:

  • Foremost, the interdependence between ethics and spirituality, which I refer to as ‘two sides of the same coin’ despite their separate spheres of concern.
  • The centrality of Baptism in the lives of every Christian believer, and its implications regarding the vital relationship between what we believe and how we live
  • Our historic Anglican dependence upon the natural world as a source of insight about the Creator’s intentions for us and for our lives. This reflects our traditional emphasis upon the Incarnation of our Lord in human embodiment. We look for the complementarity between – but do not equate nor confuse – what the Medievals called the Book of Nature and the Book of Scripture, ‘written’ by the same Author, while having different even if overlapping purposes.
  • The distinctions that I offer between what I call “laws,” “manners,” and “moral principles.” Neglecting to distinguish among what these terms represent frequently causes confusion.

The final chapter of the book moves from elaboration of basic principles in Christian ethics/moral theology to an application of these principles by offering a methodological approach to how they might be applied with reference to a particular set of ethical questions, centering on how we approach a broad concern for all of us: “Should a Christian ever been involved in or associated with an act of violence?”

I wish to stress that this is not a book about “issues.” My goal was -and remains – an effort to recover and present the foundations of a solid Christian world view for how we might best approach any issue that may be of concern. So, this is not a book where you can turn to the index and look up such matters as capital punishment or a discussion of what might be a fair interest rate on loans. I try to remain careful about observing the important distinction between moral or ethical principles that we might share, and particular policy implementations that we then undertake to reflect or enact those principles in our common life.

For those who may be interested, I include here a précis of the structure of my book, articulated in the series of Axioms that are appended within it, as well as bullet point chapter summaries:

EAE_Axioms & Chapter Contents Amplified_for 2026Download

The Gift of Joy and Wonder

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.