The Christian Year
The concept of the Christian Year grew with the Church and out of the experience of the followers of the Lord as they discovered helpful practices of worship and discipline for the growth of spiritual life. It founds a balanced cycle of remembrance of events in the life of the Lord: it enables us to relive with him the highs and lows of Christian experience week by week and year by year as it becomes part of our lives as believers. Year by year we recall the mysteries of Christ's life among us but always in the light of the Easter Mystery, and. as well, in the awareness that he, the Lord of Glory is ever present to us through his Spirit and in his Church by way of Word and Sacrament. The liturgical cycle is not an unchanging cycle. For us it should rather be a spiral by which we come ever closer and more like our Saviour so that ultimately we may be one with him in his Glory. ' The two pivots of the Christian Year are Christmas and Easter, the main one being Easter. The whole cycle of seasons and feasts revolve around these.
Those which are regulated by Christmas are called 'fixed'; those which depend on Easter are 'moveable.'
The year begins with Advent Sunday which is always the nearest Sunday to S. Andrew's Day (30 November).
Advent
Advent is a penitential season as our attention is turned toward the end of all things. We await the coming of the Lord in glory as king and judge. This is the so-called 'second-coming', also referred to as the 'Parousia'. Although a penitential time of waiting, there should too be an underlying sense of joyful expectation.
This period has become too heavily overlaid with preparations for the first coming of the Lord as the infant Jesus, largely because of secular and commercial pressures - as Christians we need to make a conscious effort to keep hold of the original intention through all the accumulated social agenda.
The major legitimate service of preparation for Christmas that can be made during the season of Advent is the Carol Service.
Christmas
During Christmas Day, normally commencing late on Christmas Eve, we celebrate the birth of the Saviour. In this parish due to lack of congregation and manpower. we have returned to the traditional pattern of Christmas celebrations - one at midnight and one during the day. omitting the dawn service which was a late development anyway.
Epiphany
The Epiphany falls on January 06, twelve days after Christmas It is also known as 'the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles' so is related to Christmas. The strong focus on the Visit of the Magi has been a feature of the Western Church only. In other traditions the revealing or the true nature of Christ has been focused on the Declaration made at his baptism in the Jordan and the revelation made at Carla in Galilee. Thus modern Anglican practice has been to make more prominent within Epiphany tide the Feast of Tile Baptism of the Lord as well as other aspects of making Christ known to the Gentiles.
Lent
This is a period of 40 weekdays from Ash Wednesday to Easter Day.
The origins of Lent do not lie in any conscious re-enactment of our Lord's time in the wilderness but in our rigorous preparation for the celebration of the death and resurrection of the Lord during Holy Week and at Easter. The observance of Lent was first undertaken by those preparing for baptism as part of the Easter liturgy, and by those who had been excommunicated for grave and public sin who, after this period of penance, would be re-admitted to the sacramental life of the Church at Easter. It was not long before the Church realized the benefit to all Christians of joining these others in a season of preparation marked by penitence expressed in prayer and fasting. It is this sense of preparation, and so of eager expectation with Good Friday and Easter Day always in view, that should characterize our Lent. Lent commences on Ash Wednesday when ashes made frown the bellying of palm crosses from the previous year are placed on the foreheads of worshippers. The season reaches its climax on Palm Sunday and holy Week. We recall, almost minute by minute, Christ's entry into Jerusalem knowing that he faced death. his last supper with his disciples, the agony in the garden, his betrayal, arrest and trial, the crucifixion and the long hours leading up to the resurrection.
This Easter Mystery of Christ, his death and resurrection. is the very centre of the church's year of worship and our lives as believers. It is with Christ, who died and who now reigns gloriously, that we are made one through our sacramental life and our fellowship in the Spirit. We now live in the light and life of the Spirit of the risen Jesus.
Easter
As stated above this Holy Week/Easter season is the centre focus of our Christian life. The pivotal service of Easter is the Easter Liturgy on Easter Eve or at dawn on Easter Day depending on the tradition of the parish. We keep vigil, waiting with the Church world-wide for the Lord's rising, we light
the New Fire and the Paschal Candle,, symbolizing our new life in the risen Christ, it is the traditional time for new believers to be baptized, and in the Eucharist we are sacramental reunited with our risen Lord.
But in the Church's worship we are not suddenly brought back to the day-to- day after the summit of Easter Day. During the 50 days until Pentecost. we are urged to go on journey. It is a period of deepening understanding of the mystery we have celebrated. It is an extended period of instruction, as it was for the first Christians, as with the risen Jesus in their midst, they began to live the new life. Near the close of this period we celebrate the Feast of the Ascension when the Lord went back to the Father, taking our human nature with him. and making it possible for the gift of the Holy Spirit to be given to the Church at Pentecost.
Pentecost
Pentecost is not a season, it is a day. It is the day when the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles with power, enabling them, as the foundation of the young Christian Church, to be Christ to the world. A small group of help- less, frightened people became the force that was to change the world for all time. Here indeed is the Church, a new humanity, alive with a new breath, telling the world about a new, undreamed of crowning joy. Good news about the forgiveness of sin, proclaiming that this is the time for the Spirit to break down all barriers and to lead humanity to the place where God awaits it. Pentecost, formerly a Jewish harvest festival, is really inseparable from Easter, because it offers us the fruits of the victory which the Lord won then.
Trinity
Trinity Sunday is the Sunday following Pentecost and gives its name to the long series of Sundays following till the end of the Christian Year. They are really what in the Roman Church are called the 'Ordinary' Sundays. They mark the weekly remembrance and celebration of the Lord's life, death and resurrection - it is strictly speaking not a season, and it is not ordinary either, at least in any pejorative sense.
Interspersed throughout the whole of the year are special days for the commemoration of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Apostles and Evangelists and other saints. along with events during the life of the Lord, e.g. the Transfiguration.
There are also Ember Days, days of prayer and fasting especially for the ministry of the Church, and Rogation Days, which along with the Harvest Festival, are connected with the harvest.
Wednesday's and Fridays of each week are designated as days of fasting and abstinence. and the Sunday of each week is always a feast day.
Feast of the Transfiguration
The readings for today lead into the Transfiguration with part of a vision of the mythical prophet Daniel. It was written during the persecution of the people of God by that awful little tyrant Antiochus IV Epiphanies. It was he who perpetrated what the-Bible calls the abomination of desolation when he erected a statue of Zeus in the Temple at Jerusalem around 167 BC.. A similar threat was made by Caligula who wanted a statue of himself in the Temple a couple of hundred years later - which would have been even worse, after all he was far uglier than Zeus. Anyway, the prophet in his vision sees the mysterious figure of the Son of Man enthroned at the court of God, the Ancient of Days. This figure, the Son of Man, has been the subject of a vast amount of theological discussion over the centuries. But whatever, it does represent one who will assure the eternal reign of the Most High and one also who represents humanity taken up into the heavenly places of God's glory. This far Christians is the explanation of Jesus using the title in reference to himself. Similarly it represents all who stuffer now for their faith, but who will rejoice hereafter with heavenly glory.
We see in the Epistle reading from the Second Letter of S. Peter that the events of the Transfiguration had served to confirm the faith of those Apostles whom Jesus had taken with him. S. Peter and the others who were there had seen, and S. Peter wants to share this experience and conviction with his fellow Christians. He wants to assure them that Christ is no myth, but a living person who can lead them to the light.. This assurance of the living Lord will lead into the assurance also of his return in glory, with power. Sometimes of course there can be the feeling that these letters written two, thousand years ago to people of whom we have little knowledge somehow lack relevance for people today. But the fact is that they are written to us as much as they were to the original recipients. The contents are as relevant to us as they were to those who walked in the faith before us. The people who first heard these letters read were people such as ourselves, in the world, surrounded by people of false belief or no belief, who were intent on questioning and undermining the faith of believers. But S. Peter can say I was there and I saw; I know the Lord.
This event we know as the Transfiguration occurred near Caesarea Philippi because that is near where S. Peter made his confession of Jesus as the Messiah. This we learn from the Gospel of Mark. Just to the north of Caesarea is Mt. Hermon so it seems likely that this is the mountain climbed by Jesus with his three friends exactly one week later. The recording of this precise interval of time is an indication that the Gospel writers considered the two events to be linked. The events on the mountain were to be an impressive confirmation of Jesus' teaching at Caesarea. In response to Peter's proclamation of Jesus` Messiah ship, Jesus made three main points. First, that the Messiah would suffer; that his disciples must be ready to share in his suffering; and that his suffering, and theirs, must be seen against a backdrop of ultimate and assured glory. Here, in this experience on the mountainside, they have a foretaste of the glory to come. And a voice from heaven bids them to take heed of what God’s Son is saying to them. The voice from heaven clearly links this Transfiguration event on the mountain to Jesus' baptism in the Jordan at the very beginning of his ministry. At that time when Jesus had received his commission to be both Messiah and Servant of the Lord, the same voice had confirmed him in his mission. Now, on the mountainside when he has begun to reveal to his disciples what this mission is and where it is taking him, the voice again comes to confirm his wards to his hearers.
But, is the Transfiguration then merely a stage, in the disciple instruction and teaching? I think not. It was also a time of deep crisis in the life of faith of Jesus himself. S. Luke points to this when he tells us that Jesus went up the mountain to pray. The researches of that wonderful Anglican mystic Evelyn Underhill who is beginning to be read once again, and others, have shown that the intense devotions of saints and mystics are often accompanied by physical transformation and a luminous glow. Jesus' experience here was so profound that the disciples in that susceptible state between waking and sleep were drawn into it. The very fact that Jesus chose these three friends who were later to go with him to Gethsemane suggests that then, as now, he anticipated some trial on the spiritual plane that would make him glad of their presence. S. Luke gives us an idea of the nature of the trial when he tells us that Moses and Elijah appeared andspoke with Jesus of the trial which awaited him and of what he would accomplish through his death in Jerusalem. This was not the first time that Jesus had faced the prospect of death in the accomplishment of his mission. From the beginning he had accepted the prophecy of the Suffering Servant as being the guiding principle of his ministry. But it is one thing to believe that obedience to God's will can lead eventually to rejection and death; it is quite another to embrace that prospect as an immediate human fact. The Greek word used by S. Luke here for death is an unusual one - exodos - and his use of it clearly links it to its use in the OT where it speaks of God's deliverance of his people from slavery in Egypt. At Jerusalem Jesus will deliver God's people from an even greater bondage than that of Egypt: the spiritual bondage which threatens us all and is total. Jesus' walk until new had been one of absolute obedience to his Father, but these paths had been similar to those of his forerunners such as Moses and Elijah. But now he stood at the brink of a new experience; he had to travel a path which had never been trod before, a path which would lead to the spiritual agony of the Garden of Gethsemane and beyond to the Cross of Calvary. And from now on he would be utterly alone: he set his face towards Jerusalem, and the cloud of the divine presence overshadowed him and his.
This Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord is not merely a recalling of this experience of Jesus on the mountainside, of the shining light, of the divine glory. It reminds us that perseverance m the service of the Father leads to the vision of glory. The vision experienced by the disciples was only a fleeting glimpse, but one which they treasured always. It may well be that we have experienced something of the glorious vision also.
But following the experience of the vision comes the command, Listen to him. Listening must be something we do day by day, it is a present task: seeing is for the end of time. In the here and now it in the faces of those who do listen and obey the woard of God to them, that the eternal face of God can be seen. It is they who increasingly reflect the image of God in which they were created as they grow closer to him in their walk with him.
Birth of S. John Baptist
The OT reading this morning was the prologue of the part of the Book of Isaiah which we know as Second Isaiah or Deutero-Isaiah because it is really a separate book by a different writer from the earlier part. It is a most beautiful and moving passage as it seeks to express the prophet's central message which is an announcement of the imminence of salvation for exiled Israel. Thus these prophecies were being made about 550 BC and are intended to encourage the exiles who are losing heart and feeling that perhaps God has succumbed to the more powerful gods of the Babylonians.
The prophet himself is a somewhat shadowy figure, his personality does not obtrude, but he does clearly identify himself with the people he is speaking to and is concerned deeply about the message he is sent to proclaim. Like most other prophets there is some sense of resistance initially. „A voice says, 'Cry out!' And I said? 'What shall I cry?' All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades .... surely the people are grass." But then he realizes, „...but the word of our God will stand for ever. " This is a precursor to one of his most significant sayings near the end of his section of the book at chap. 55 - „For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and return not thither but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, ... so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the for which I sent it," So at the beginning, in this prologue, God says „Comfort ..my people, ....in the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight a way in the desert, a highway for our God. ....Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed: ' What God says is as good as done; his word guarantees performance. This is the confidence and conviction of the prophet.
There are many ways in which God has come for the deliverance of his people in the past. The Exodus from Egypt with the hope of the Promised Land under the leadership of Moses was one, the return from exile in Babylon to which Deutero-Isaiah paints this morning was another. The coming of God himself in the person of the Lord Jesus, to whom S. John Baptist points, recalling in fact the words of Deutero-Iisaiah. In each case God's coming or parousia was a saving act of his grace; but salvation always involves judgment. There is a sense in which every grace of forgiveness or gift of love we receive is a parousia or coming of God, and there is a final parousia at a time we do not know and are not meant to know. This will be the final judgment and the establishment of God's kingdom, God's kingly rule, for the which we pray every time we say the Lord's Prayer. The people of God are many times sinners, many times forgiven, many times exiled to distant lands and many times brought back to their own by way of the desert, both physically sometimes, certainly spiritually. This is the tortured history of the covenant - whether old or new. Today the good news consoles our repentant hearts - Comfort, O comfort my people, - the Lord is about to return to judge and lead his people.
And, as S. Paul reminds us, we have been delivered in another way too from the bondage of race, of status, of gender. In baptism we are all equally one in Christ. In Christ all are children of the one God and Father: this is the foundation of the absolute equality and radical unity of human beings among themselves. This heritage was first promised by God to Abraham; Jesus now offers it to, every believer.
Today is the day an which Holy Church calls us to celebrate the birth of John the Baptist and at his birth people asked the question, „What then shall this child become?" It was a rhetorical question, an expression of awe and wonder, only time would give the answer. Of course it is a question we ask about every baby. The proud father sees him kicking his feet in the pram and suggests he may become a football player. At 2:00 a.m. when he is bawling lustily one wonders if he is developing the lungs of an opera singer. One never knows, although there are parents who try rather too hard to push in the direction of their desires. It was the circumstances of this birth that led to the question which was really an exclamation, 'What then shall this child become?' There had been a proclamation by an angel, and a miraculous pregnancy by a woman beyond her time, and a John father made speechless (and as he was a priest that was unusual), and the demand for the name which had never been used in this family before, and the father recovered his speech with the naming of the child, speaking out in words of prophecy. A child of promise indeed.
Every child is a child of promise, although not all fulfill it. We can increase the possibility by ensuring that our home is a home where Christian faith is practiced, where our example is that which we want our children to emulate. We can baptize them into the family of Christ, and we can be , part of that family with them. These values are more important than the school, the neighbourhood or the money available. And even if we feel we missed out ourselves on doing this sort of best for our own children, it is still not too late to encourage others.
John's was in fact a strange destiny. On the one hand, a saintly intolerance of the things of this world. ,, He shall drink neither wine or any strong drink." And can you imagine a Christian conference centre receiving John's application form and under the question 'any special dietary requirements' locusts lightly grilled with a side dish of wild honey? Yet, also hand in hand with this rugged austerity, an intense spiritual joy. Twice in his life he trembles with joy: in his mother's womb, when Elizabeth his mother met with Mary, the mother of the Lord; and then when as a grown man he again meets Jesus, and points to him as the Messiah of God. Until this moment, he had remained 'the voice of one crying in the wilderness', that area of spiritual warfare between a fallen world and the kingdom which is to come. In the desert regions along the Jordan, John rises up 'in the power and spirit of Elijah' as the great preacher of judgment to whom the crowds flock, to the extent that the Temple authorities become somewhat alarmed and send out a delegation to see what is going on. With his burning words and his baptism in the waters. of the Jordan, he is to bring back the children of the covenant to the Lord their God before the deluge of fire. He is therefore the great successor of Noah whose primeval judgment by water foreshadowed the final judgment and foretold the waters of baptism which are our salvation. He is in fact the last in a great series of prophets who sought to turn back God's people before the Lord's first coming.
But more than all that, John appears as the friend who brings the bride to the bridegroom, and then goes quietly away. He turns all hearts towards Jesus. Then, eager to decrease so that Jesus may increase, he chooses to be forgotten and abandoned. Is this not the holy passion which shows us the depth and extent of his faith, and perfects the identification between servant and master. Perhaps this, even more than the rigorous preaching, can be his legacy and example to us in our daily lives and walk with God.
Candlemas
The number of names by which this feast has been known over the centuries provides some indication of the scope of the meanings and messages which lie behind it. The Orthodox used to know it as The Meeting, in our own tradition it has been The Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, and commonly Candlemas. Forty daps after Christmas, the Lord Jesus meets the God of his fathers in his temple; and there makes to him the first ritual offering of his earthly life, under the living form of doves or two young pigeons. He also meets there the believing people in Simeon and Anna, witnesses and proclaimers of this manifestation. It is noteworthy that Jesus, from his birth to his death took part in the ritual life of his people - he did not come to destroy but to fulfill.
So, this is a feast rich in meaning, with several related themes running through it - meeting, presentation, purification, light for the world. But the strongest attraction of Candlemas is the hitter-sweet nature of what it celebrates. It is a feast day, and the revelation of the child Jesus in the Temple, greeted by Simeon and Anna, calls for rejoicing. Nevertheless, the prophetic words of Simeon, which speak of the falling and rising of many and the sword that will pierce, lead on to the Passion and to Easter. The scriptures and the liturgy of the Christmas season have several pointers to the suffering of the Lord, but none more potent than the words of Simeon. Caudlemas is the natural climax, after forty days of the Christmas/Epiphany season. It is a kind of pivot in the Christian Year. It is as if we say, on 2 February, One last look back to Christmas, and now, turn towards the Cross.
Bitter-sweet, yes. Light and dark, yes. And as at the nativity, there is also the striking contrast between the quiet and ordinary attitudes of Mary and Joseph and the glory of the event as seen by the two old people. We have here a first intimation of the great theme that will unfold throughout the Gospel and finally he expounded by the risen Jesus: that the Messiah, because he comes to lead Israel to her glory, must tread with her the path of suffering. In the days ahead we will tread that path with him and attempt to reach the deep truths that it hold for us.