"The vocation of the Church is to be a community where as far as possible disagreement does not exist because truth is known, accepted and celebrated." (Martin Davie)
Few would argue that Anglicanism's most significant contribution to the wider Christian community is The Book of Common Prayer. Many a believer, Anglican or otherwise, has been enriched by its profound and theologically rich prayers and liturgy. First compiled by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in 1549, it underwent several revisions until 1662. The expansion of the Anglican Communion around the world necessitated different editions, but the 1662 edition has remained the theological standard.
The most obvious advantage of having a Prayer Book is that Anglican Christians can always be ready in season and out to offer a prayer or devotional exposition, not because they have a pre-written script, but because they have been steeped, or at least should have been, in a grand tradition of theologically rich prayer and spirituality. There should never be any need to "wing it," or to make something up as you go along. So, it is more than a little bizarre that the "Presiding Bishop" of the former American province of the Anglican Communion has so much trouble in this video, posted on her denomination's website, explaining the Christian holy season of Lent.
While some have criticized the 1979 American edition of the Prayer Book as lacking in some of the finer points of theology, it nevertheless includes a rather succinct explanation of the meaning of Lent in its Ash Wednesday liturgy.
Dear People of God: The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord's passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting. This season of Lent provided a time in which converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism. It was also a time when those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church. Thereby, the whole congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith.
I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God's holy Word. And, to make a right beginning of repentance, and as a mark of our mortal nature, let us now kneel before the Lord, our maker and redeemer.
So one is left to wonder if Madam Oven Mitt has even read her own Prayer Book!
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us, but if we confess our sins, God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:8, 9
Collect of the Day
Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Whoever reads the story of our Lord's crucifixion as we have read it here this morning feels that a part of its humiliation was that He did not suffer alone. Crucifixion was terrible and disgraceful enough in itself, but if Jesus had hung upon His cross with nothing near him to disturb the impression of His calm serenity and innocence, it might well have happened that the people who stood and watched would have lost sight of the disgrace, and would have felt the majesty of the sacrifice. Already that place of suffering might have seemed as glorious as it has seemed to the world since. An awe and wonder, almost ready to break out in thankfulness and praise, might have spread through the multitude who watched the spectacle of heroism and love. But, as it was, they went to the prison and dragged out two wretched culprit? who were waiting for their doom. That there might be no doubt about the disgracefulness of the Saviour's sufferings, they hung Him between two thieves. One on the right hand and the other on the left, those malefactors advertised the ignominy of His pain. Their friends, the thieves and roughs of Jerusalem, were side by side with His disciples in the crowd. The loathing of all honest men was heaped upon them, and He, hanging there with them, in the same condemnation, was covered with the mantle of their sin. He had come into their lot. He bore their curse. He took His share in their disgrace when He was crucified with them.
It was not many years afterward that the great St Paul, whose life had become wonderful to himself as he saw under what new motives and to what new purpose it was lived since he became a disciple of Jesus, when he tried to sum up that life and tell the beauty of its association with his Lord, used this strange language: "I am crucified with Christ." His life was full of suffering, and suffering which had to do with sin. He found himself every day "dying to the world," that is, separated by self-sacrifice and pain from the wicked things about him. In all that suffering, which was at once the token and the means of higher life, he felt himself drawn towards and taken into the experience of his Master. As he was suffering, so Jesus had suffered. As he by his suffering was able at once to bear his testimony against, to separate himself 'from, and also to help the sinful world, so Jesus had declared, upon His cross, at once His holiness and His pity. Paul saw in his ministry of self-sacrifice a dim, imperfect, far-off echo of his Lord's, and so he told the story of his new life in the terms of the story of that life into which it had entered, and he said, "I am crucified with Christ."
I have brought these two passages together, because, in their union, they bring out the complete truth on which we wish to dwell upon Good-Friday. The cross before which we stand to-day has both its humiliation and its glory. It is a tragedy that bewilders and dismays us. It is likewise a proclamation of peace and hope. In the degradation of Christ, which compelled Him to be crucified with the thieves, there is a picture of how very low He stooped to our condition. In the triumph of Paul, at his participation with Christ, we see how the believer is taken into his Master's privilege. The two belong together. Christ was humiliated into our condition that we might be exalted unto His. Christ was crucified with man that man might rejoice in being crucified with Christ. Both the depth to which He went to seek man and the height up to which He would carry man, were set forth in the cross. Alas for him who, standing on Good-Friday and looking at the crucifixion, does not see both of these, does not learn at once how low his Saviour went to find him, and how high he may go if he will make his Saviour's life his own ! Let us look at both the scenes. Let us try to understand both thoughts, — Christ's crucifixion with man, and man's crucifixion with Christ, — and bind them both together in one humbling and inspiring truth.
Turn, then, first, to the cross upon Calvary, and let us think about Christ's crucifixion with man. In the prison at Jerusalem there are two robbers lying, waiting for their death. It is sure to come. Their crimes have doomed them to it. As they look back over their miserable lives they can see how from their boyhood, when their vice began, they have been steadily and certainly moving on towards this destiny. Their sin has deepened, and, with their deepening sin, the darkness of the coming death has gathered round them. They have known whither they were going. They have known that some time or other a life like theirs must bring a violent death. There is no record of their names, or anything about them. We do not separate or individualize them. To us, as they sit there in prison, they are simply wicked men waiting for the death which their wickedness has brought upon them. And now, at last, the time ha? come. The last morning dawns upon them. Sin is finished, and, on this solemn Good Friday, it brings forth death. The soldiers are at the door, and the crosses are waiting. You see how general, how typical, how little personal it all is. It is not these two men come to the ruin which their special sin deserves. It is wickedness, which, by the terrible necessity of its nature, has brought forth death. And now with the black record of this wickedness in your minds, think of another life which comes to its crisis on this same Good Friday. There has been a man living in Palestine here for thirty years, and He has never done a sin. Nay, more than that, He has amazed the eyes of men with a positive holiness, a picture of what it is to be absolutely good, such as they never dreamed of. This spotless, strong, pure goodness has all been poured out in love. The life has been all self-sacrifice. He has never seemed to think of Himself. Health and truth have gone out from Him to whoever touched Him. A life like the shining of the sun! A life of which, as men looked at it, they have felt that in it their best dreams of humanity were surpassed, — that in it there was something more than human.
Last night Jesus of Nazareth had sat with his disciples, and talked with them in words of spiritual wisdom which have ever since been the wonder of the world. They had gone out then, together, to the Garden of Gethsemane. There Jesus had plead with God, in agony, while His disciples slept with weariness and sorrow. By and by the soldiers came and took Jesus, and carry Him away to the High Priest. After that He was wholly separated from His friends,—from everybody that believed in Him and loved Him. From the High Priest's house, where He is insulted and taunted, He is sent early on this Friday morning to the Governor's. There He is confronted with the cold, brutal unbelief of the Roman magistrate. He is sent to Herod, and back again to Pilate, walking the familiar streets in disgrace and desertion. Then He is scourged. Then the people demand His blood. At last the Governor yields to them, and, with the sentence of a criminal, He is led away, and his procession meets the procession in which the two thieves are led to death, and they are crucified together.
There, then, are the two stories. See how far apart they begin. One in the innocence of perfect holiness; the other in the blackest wickedness. And then see how they meet at last. As when a black and turbid stream goes hurrying towards a cavern's gloom, into which it is destined to plunge itself out of sight, and just before it reaches its dark doom, a pure, fresh river that was born among the snows in the sunlight on the mountain's top, and has sung its way down through flowers, drops its quiet, transparent waters into the tumultuous current, and shares its plunge,—so the pure holiness of Christ. fell into the stream of human wickedness, and shared its fate. The Saviour's life entered into the life of humanity at its blackest. He had left behind heaven; He had left behind even the little heavenliness which he had found upon the earth. All the disciples had forsaken 4im, and fled. The little flicker of sympathy which He had seen upon the face of Pilate, He had lost now. He had come to the company of robbers. There were two thieves crucified with Him.
That is the sight which we behold as we look at these three crosses standing out sharp and terrible against the sky. Into the" darkest of earth's darkness, into the deepest consequences of sin where it was possible for innocence to go, the Incarnate One has gone. Our Immanuel, our God with us, is with the worst of us in his most awful misery. No child of God shall know any suffering which this love shall not fathom to its depths with Him. No pain, except the purely personal pain of remorse, which it is eternally impossible that innocence should feel, no pain but that, shall there be anywhere upon the earth, of which any agonized soul shall be able to cry out to bis Saviour and saj', " Do not mock me with your pity. You do not know what my pain is." And even something as like remorse as is that profound contrition which comes "to a brother when his brother sins, or to a father when a child is lost, even the woe which comes of such identification with the sinner as leaves out nothing save his sin, share, even that last pain of life, which only they who have something divine in them can feel, even that the Divine One endured, and set forth before us in his crucifixion .between the robbers.
Once in the hours while he hung there, a cry of desolation, abandonment, and disgrace, burst from the sufferer's lips. "My God! My God! why hast thou forsaken me ?" He cries, making His own the words of an old psalm of woe. When I read what men have written to explain the meaning of Jesus in that cry, I always feel anew how much deeper than our comprehension went his identification with humanity when He plunged into the darkness of its sin. "He was made flesh !" Into what mysterious contact with the sinfulness to which the flesh of man had given itself that being made flesh brought him, I know no man has ever fathomed. If I try to fathom it at all, I can only picture to myself the most Christlike act, the most Messianic entrance into the strange and dreadful fate of other men which my imagination can conceive. Let me suppose that the purest woman in this town, the most sensitive and scrupulous, moved by a sense of sisterhood and by a longing pity, gathers up all her life and goes and lives among the lowest and most brutal and most foul savages that this earth contains. As she enters their land she leaves her own life behind. She accepts their life. Everything, except their wickedness, she makes her own. She sacrifices her fastidiousness every day. She finds herself the victim of habits which are the consequences of long years of sin. No sensibility that is not shocked, no fine and pure taste that is not wounded. Her common human nature with these savages asserts itself to her every day.
But the very depth of the union into which she comes with them by her pity makes her all the more sensitive to the horror of their life. Their sin is awful to her, not only because of her own purity, but because of the keen understanding of its awfulness, which comes from her profound oneness of nature with these sinners. She cannot stand off and look at them and work for them from a safe distance. She is one of them in their common humanity. In every foul wickedness of theirs she suffers. She bears their sins a heavy burden on her heart. Isn't it strange that she comes by and by to feel the wretchedness and woe of that island taking complete possession of her ? Isn't strange that, — though she knows that the sweet home across the sea, which she has left, is just as sweet as ever, and that her friends there are loving her, and have not forgotten her a moment, — the awful load she carries, the frightful atmosphere of vice that reeks around her, should seem sometimes to shut her in to desolation and shut her out from every higher life and all pure love, so that when this mood is darkest she should stand some day upon the bench, and, without any faithlessness to her task, or any distrust of the friends at home, cry out across the sea to them, "Oh, why have you forsaken me?" Do not imagine that I think that any human sacrifice can truly image His surrender, or any human pain declare the measure of His woe. But this is surely the best that earth can show us of the kind of agony with which the Christ who, in His love, had gone down to the deepest and most terrible depths of humanity, even to being crucified between two thieves, seemed for a moment to have lost himself, and cried out to the Father, with whom He was eternally and inseparably one, "Oh, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" If the cry bewilders as we try to comprehend the deity to which it appeals, it may at least reveal to us something of the depth out of which it ascends.
Such then is the story of Christ's crucifixion in and with and for humanity. It is no fantastic conception of the imputation to Him of a sinfulness which was not His, of God's counting Him guilty of wickedness which He had never done. It is something infinitely, awfully more real than that. It is that the God who made man in His own image, coming to the life of man, found that image all broken and lost. He came into men's life and found them dying for their sin. He was guiltless of their sin, but He entered with consummate intensity of suffering into their death, as the pure soul which I pictured in that foul savage island must feel the horror of the misery which vice has brought there more than its inhabitants, just in proportion as it was free from the vice with which they are polluted. It was a sin not His own which He bore upon the cross. Think, if you can, how an incarnation in a world wholly free from sin would have closed, and the Incarnate One gone up to His eternal glory, and then you have some conception of what sin has done in this world. Can we see God come among a race that does not know what sin is, and, having shared its life, at last stand ready to withdraw His presence from their sight? Think of the scene of gratitude and love. Can we not see the joyous thankful company of mortals, as with triumphant songs of praise they bring their Lord and friend up to the noblest height of earth, and with hearts full of trust that He could never leave them wholly, see His form depart out of their view? How different it all is now! Instead of this scene, there is the cross on Calvary! Instead of God with His noblest creatures among the noblest scenes of earth, in sympathy of common holiness, here is the Son of God beside the vilest of mankind upon the cross of shame. Ah, my dear friends, there is the terrible consummate testimony of what sin is. We trace its power everywhere else. We see its woe. We learn to hate it, but we come to the profoundest knowledge and the profoundest hatred of it when we come to this, that it crucified the Son of God with wicked men, it made Jesus the sharer of our human woe. Sin did this. Whose sin? What sin? Then it is that the terrible identity of sin comes out. Here in the presence of God's suffering and dying Son the oneness of God's family is clear.
All that we have ever done that has helped to make the world a different place from that holy ground on which the Holy God might have walked in perfect sympathy with His obedient children, all our willfulness, all our disobedience, all our untruth, all our passion, all our lust, all our selfishness, all our wickednesses which we call little wickednesses at home or in the street, they all take their place in, they all declare their oneness with, that sin which brought Christ to the cross. It is our punishment that He shares. It is our woe down into which His love has brought Him. We hang upon our cross and He hangs on His beside us. For our cross we can blame none but ourselves. Our sin has brought us what we suffer, but His cross no sin of His has built. It is the wickedness in which we have so deep a part, which decrees that it shall be a cross and not a throne. There comes, as the result of all, just exactly what is expressed in the strange deep words of the penitent thief to his mocking comrade, — words which the soul may turn and address to itself, invoking from itself a solemn repentance and hate of sin as it sees its Saviour a sharer in the suffering which its sin brings: "Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this man hath done nothing amiss."
But it is time now that we should turn to the other aspect of the cross. I have tried to depict the meaning of Christ crucified with man, the Son of God entei1ing into the shame and pain of human sin. Now hear St. Paul. A few short years have passed away. The crucifixion of Jesus has been illuminated by the resurrection, the ascension, and the Pentecost. It has become already, in the minds of hundreds of men and women, a dear and glorious event. Behind its shame and pain it has opened a heart of love and glory, and St. Paul, summing up his life in its best privileges and holiest purposes, says, " I am crucified with Christ." You see how great the difference is. Before, when Christ was crucified with the two thieves, it was the Son of God brought down into the misery and shame of man. Now, when Paul is crucified with Jesus, it is a man brought up into the glory of the Son of God. Evidently there must be another side, a side of privilege and delight, to this great tragedy, or else we should not hear a man cry with a tone of exultation, such as this, " Lo, I am crucified with Christ." And it is something which, strange as it would have seemed to any one who stood before the cross on Good-Friday, has grown most familiar to the Christian since. What does it mean ? Is it not this : that as Christ, by his self-sacrifice, entered into the company of man, so there is a self-surrender by which man enters into the company of Christ. He came down to us, and tasted on our cross the misery of sin. We may go up to His cross, and taste, with Him, the glory and peace of perfect obedience and communion with God.
For even the dullest, as he stands before the crucifixion, gets some dim impression that there are two different elements there, — one dreadful, and one beautiful. There is what Christ is made for us, the victim, torn and tortured and distressed, and there is what Christ is in Himself, and what he wants to make us, — the loving, peaceful son of God. Christ surrendered Himself and became the first. We, if we can surrender ourselves, may become the second, and share the glory of His crucifixion. It is a strange thought to many, but it is a thought that grows very dear to the souls that really enter into it, that there was something in the crucifixion which it is our highest privilege if we can share. Hanging there in mockery and pain, there was still something in the heart of Jesus which made it the richest heart in all the world; something which, if by any crucifixion we can gather into our hearts, we shall be rich indeed. See what it was. First, the truth of the cross must have been divinely and completely present with him. That truth was the love of God. All the memory of the past, all the way in which, from the beginning of sin, mercy had been making ready to meet the sin, all the development, age after age, of the design of pity, which at last had come here to its consummation, — all this must have filled the soul of Jesus, and, in the midst of His pain, comforted and strengthened Him. It is not for us to speak of what the mystery of Incarnation means, but we cannot help believing that there came to Christ, then, such knowledge of the Godhood in which He belonged as could come only to that one point in the moral universe where the Eternal Holiness was suffering for human sin. The truth of the cross, the truth of the love of God, inexhaustible and tireless, was with Him in His sufferings.
And beside the truth of the cross there must have been the consciousness of the cross, a clear and satisfying knowledge of his own present position, the consciousness of obedience. He was doing His Father's will. Behind every pain, behind every shame, that certainty must have rested as an abiding strength. We must know more of the soul of Jesus than we do, before we can understand what strength came to Him from that consciousness. "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work," He had said when He was preaching and working miracles; but now, when the will had culminated in this suffering, and He was dying because He must obey, there must have been a strength and nourishment in the conscious obedience that overwhelmed and sank the weakness of the flesh.
And besides these there must have been the vision of the cross. It is impossible that the Redeemer, dying for mankind, should not have seen the redeemed world stretching out before Him. "If I be lifted up," he had said "I shall draw all men unto me." When He was lifted up He must have seen them gathering. All the far ends of the earth, all the far ends of history, all the new depths of experience that should be stirred, — these must have lain open before Him. There must have flowed strength in upon Him from that vision. It was worth while, indeed, with such result before it. No pang was too great to be borne, when by the suffering of each new pang his soul climbed to the height of yet a little wider vision. Only He who sees to the end, and knows how wide and how deep the power of redemption is to go, can tell how the vision from the cross upheld and strengthened the soul of the Redeemer.
The truth of the cross, the consciousness of the cross, the vision of the cross; the Father's love, His own obedience, the world's redemption, — these were in the soul of the Saviour, sustaining it, feeding it, while he was dying. These made the glorious side of the crucifixion. And yet they were a part of the crucifixion. They were not something wholly foreign, like the wine and myrrh given to the sufferer to sustain Him. He reached them by, He found them in, His suffering. His death, and all that went with it, the sacrifice of ease and favor and delight, they brought to Him the assurance of love, the joy of obedience, the promise of redemption — the truth, the consciousness, and the vision of the cross. Can you not see, then, what a light pours into St. Paul's words, "I am crucified with Christ" ? It is no cry of pain, though the fact of pain is in it. It is not a shout of triumph. It is too full of pain for that. But it is a deep and satisfied assurance that through the pain, through distress and death to much which he had loved, he has found what his Saviour found upon His cross, — the love of God, the consciousness of obedience, the vision of a world redeemed. He had suffered for Christ, but by his suffering for Christ he had, giving up his own joy which was earthly and selfish, entered into Christ's joy which is heavenly and full of love. "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." He had left his own life at the foot of the cross. He had climbed up to his dying Lord, and shared His death unto sin; but in sharing that, he had shared also the new life unto holiness, and entered into the truth of love, the consciousness of obedience, and the vision of the world redeemed. That was what Good Friday meant to St. Paul.
And is it possible that Good Friday should mean ah that to us? Indeed it is. I hope that it does mean all that to many and many a one of you who have joined in this morning's solemn worship. May I not hope that even in this morning's worship the deep meaning has for the first time opened its light to some of you ? You are crucified with Christ. What shall that mean? That you share His pain ? Oh yes! — all the separation from sin, all the self-sacrifice by which alone you could preserve your own purity and help your brethren, has been in you the renewal, the echo, of that terrible giving of Himself for truth and man which Christ accomplished. But if, as you have sacrificed yourself in any way, there has come into you the rich divine assurance of God's love, the deep and peaceful joy in obeying God, and far bright hopes for your humanity, broken but glorious prospects of what an obedience, perfect where yours is stumbling, complete where yours is partial, shall some day make this world to be; if all this has come to you upon your cross, as it came to the Lord on His, then the glory as well as the grief of the crucifixion is renewed in you, and the satisfaction as well as the pain of your new life is uttered when you say, in soft and solemn words, "I, too, am crucified with Christ."
I see a man setting himself against temptation, conquering his sins, giving up the world for his Lord. It is a struggle full of pain. His heart and flesh fail him. How can he bear what breaks his whole strength down ? And then there comes to him the picture of the Master's crucifixion, and, humbly associating his own pain with the pain of Him on whose strength he relies, he says, " I am crucified with Christ." But as I watch him I am sure that something new is coming to him. Deep down in that pain of his he finds most unexpected treasures. He learns how God loves him. He finds the absolute happiness of doing God's will whatever be its consequence, And, drawn into the spiritual life, he sees the future glory of the world when Jesus shall be its King. He knows all this as he never could have known it save by self-sacrifice. Somebody meets him and pities him, and he says, "Oh you do not know; I am crucified indeed; there is pain enough, struggle enough; but I am crucified with Christ. What came to Him upon His cross has come to me on mine. He has lifted me up into His privilege, It is a glorious thing to be crucified with Christ."
You have your cross, my friend. You do not serve your Lord without surrender. There is pain in the duty which you do. But if in all your pain you know that God's love is becoming a dearer and plainer truth to you, and that you are finding the pleasure of obeying God; and that the vision of the world's redemption is growing more certain and bright, then you can be more than brave ; you can triumph in every task, in every sacrifice. Your cross has won something of the glory and beauty of your Lord's. Rejoice and be glad, for you are crucified with Christ.
This, then, is the full truth of Good Friday: Jesus was crucified with us, that we might be crucified with Him. He entered into our pain, that we might enter into His peace. He shared the shame of the thieves, that Paul might share His glory. This double truth was manifest at the time of Christ's suffering. You remember the penitent thief. As their crosses were lifted side by side, he saw Christ entering into his wretchedness. Before the feeble, tortured breath had left the body, he had entered into Christ's glory. First Christ was crucified with him, and afterwards he was crucified with Christ. The saved souls that have followed have entered deeper than he entered then into the knowledge of the Lord; but even then, in one of those in whom was shown the wretchedness of sin, was likewise shown the power of the new salvation.
And now the scene of that terrible day has come back to us once more. We have knelt under its shadow together. Oh, my dear people, have we indeed entered into its double truth? Christ on this day entered into our shame. Deep into its very heart He entered. The blackness of its darkness was around Him. But the purpose of His sacrifice was that we might be brought to Him. We have not learnt the whole if we have only felt His condescension. Not till He who has stooped to us has lifted us up to Him must we be satisfied. Not till He who hangs upon the cross beside us has said to us, "Today thou shalt be with me in Paradise."
Oh, that by God's grace we may today accept anew His sacrifice for us and give ourselves to Him through every self-surrender, that He may do for us all that He died to do.
Jesus said, "If anyone would come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." Mark 8:34
Collect of the Day
Almighty Father, whose dear Son, on the night before he suffered, instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Blood: Mercifully grant that we may receive it thankfully in remembrance of Jesus Christ our Lord, who in these holy mysteries gives us a pledge of eternal life; and who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
"Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner," Paul writes, "will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord" (1 Corinthians 11.27). It is unfortunate that many have cited this passage as an excuse for abstaining for receiving the sacrament of Lord's Supper. "I can't take communion," they say with a feigned piety. "I'm not worthy." Such an attitude misses the point of Paul's admonition. Paul does not say one must be "worthy" before receiving the body and blood of the Lord. If that were the case, no one would be eligible to come to the table, for no one is "worthy" of so extravagant a gift from God. The very fact that Jesus gave his body and shed his blood on the cross makes this point clear enough. If we were "worthy," there would have been no need for our Lord to sacrifice himself for our sins.
Paul's admonition is not so much about the manner in which we come to the table, but the manner in which we leave the table. None of us are worthy to come, but Jesus invites us to the feast, nonetheless. His righteousness, not ours, is sufficient to bring us into the presence of God by faith. But will we receive the gift of his body and blood in a manner which gives due reverence to the grace he imparts through them? That is Paul's concern. The bread and the cup are symbols, but they are not "bare symbols," as some have erroneously claimed. They are visible signs of the grace of God poured out most extravagantly in the broken body and shed blood of his Son. As such, they point us to the power of the cross to save us from our sins and create in us new and unending life in Jesus Christ.
It is the manner in which we respond to such an extravagant act of grace on the part of God which is judged either "worthy" or "unworthy." Will we go away from the table, having received this life-transforming nourishment, as new creatures, walking in the ways of Christ toward holiness and righteousness; or will we merely continue to follow the ways of the world, taking the grace of God for granted, and thus making a mockery of the gift he has so freely given? To partake of the Lord's Supper "in an unworthy manner" is to receive it in such a way that ignores the transforming power of God's grace. To refuse such grace in the first place is perhaps the most "unworthy manner" of all.
Jesus invites us to his table. We come as we are, unworthy and burdened with sin. We go, having been in his presence and transformed by the power of his grace.
To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, because we have rebelled against him and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God by following the laws which he has set before us. Daniel 9:9, 10
Collect of the Day
Lord God, whose blessed Son our Savior gave his body to be whipped and his face to be spit upon: Give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time, confident of the glory that shall be revealed; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
With many of Jesus' parables, the meaning is so veiled that even the disciples have to ask the Lord in private for clarification (see Mark 4.10ff). That is not the case with the parable of the tenants. Jesus' message is so crystal clear that even the religious leaders get it. In v. 12, inexplicably omitted from today's reading, Mark writes, "And they were seeking to arrest him but feared the people, for they perceived that had told the parable against them."
Even the most casually observant Jew in Jesus' day would have been familiar with the image of Israel as God's vineyard which, contrary to its purpose, had yielded wild grapes (Isaiah 5.1-7). Jesus tweaks this image just a little, but not in a manner which would have been thought unusual. The vineyard owner (God) sends servants (prophets) at harvest time to get some of the fruit. Time after time, the servants are mistreated by the tenants; some beaten, some killed. Israel's history was laced through and through with stories of prophets who had been ignored, rejected, and even put to death for trying to call the people back to faithfulness to the God who had set them apart to be a light to the nations.
The worst, however, is yet to come. The vineyard owner's final attempt to get fruit from his vineyard would involve sending his own "beloved son." The tenants, now obsessed with holding on to the vineyard for themselves, will kill the son, thinking they will rid themselves of the troublesome owner forever. They will inherit the vineyard themselves, or so they think.
The placement of this parable, coming close on the heels of Jesus' action in the Temple, is significant. It was in direct response to the cleansing of the Temple that the religious authorities began "seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching" (Mark 11:18). The parable, then, is a recounting of Israel's history of unfaithfulness from the days of the prophets right up until the day Jesus entered the Temple. The moment of truth had arrived for the religious leaders who so craved holding on to their power. Here was a man who came teaching with the kind of authority that instilled fear in their hearts. They ought, rightly, to submit to him. Instead, they choose to do away with him.
It is the owner of the vineyard, however, who will have the last word. "He will come," Jesus says, "and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others." The old order, symbolized by the Temple, will be overthrown and a new order will be ushered in; one in which Jesus himself will be the centerpiece. "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone."
In the end, as in the beginning, God is the owner of the vineyard. The original tenants may not have been faithful, but that will not hinder his plan. The vineyard will bear fruit under the stewardship of new tenants, a people chosen by him from the foundation of the world and redeemed by the death of his beloved Son. ". . . this was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes."
I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son." Luke 15:18, 19
Collect of the Day
O God, by the passion of your blessed Son you made an instrument of shameful death to be for us the means of life: Grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ, that we may gladly suffer shame and loss for the sake of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
"As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No," Paul writes to the Corinthians. "For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him."
In the Old Testament, there are many questions. Psalm 88:10-12 asks:
Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise up to praise you? Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?
In the New Testament, there is one answer:
In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:4-5)
[Jesus said,] "Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live." (John 5:25)
Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die." (John 11:25a)
In saying, "He ascended," what does it mean but that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above the heavens, that he might fill all things. (Ephesians 4:9-10)
And I heard a voice from heaven saying, "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on." "Blessed indeed," says the Spirit, "that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!" (Revelation 14:13).
The Psalmist asks, "Do you work wonders for the dead?" Jesus Christ, in dying and rising again, answers with a resounding, "YES!"
Rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and repents of evil. Joel 2:13
Collect of the Day
Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other that the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Meanwhile let's bear it in mind for our safe-conduct, that the cross is no incidental privation, no personal misfortune. I've heard everything called a cross, from ill-health to a wayward son; from loneliness to an unruly temper; from somebody who pays you no attention to somebody who pays you too much. It's a kind of blasphemy. When we talk that way we are thinking more of ourselves than of anybody else, fairly eaten with self-pity. And we dress up our complaining spirit in the garb of sainthood.
The cross is any place where a saving love goes out to undergird this life of ours, and comes back with the hot stab of nails in its hands! It's the place where you try with all your might, and have nothing it may be but a hurt for your trying, and a heart that keeps stretching anyway as far as your arms can reach. When you've begun to grow muscle like that; when you're ready for the defeat life is always trying to impose on you, yet by His grace can assert your mastery still -- striking out toward a lost world through the floods that have gone over you -- only then may you begin to talk falteringly of a cross, and reach up unashamed to the feet of Him who still rules from it. "There they crucified him." I wish we'd quit expecting anything to come of anything else -- in God's world or man's!
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us, but if we confess our sins, God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:8, 9
Almighty God, the root and fountain of all being: Open our eyes to see, with your servant John Donne, that whatever has any being is a mirror in which we may behold you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Scripture is its own best interpreter, the saying goes. An "obscure" passage may seem less obscure when interpreted in light of a more straightforward passage. Consider Paul's words in today's epistle reading, "Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, 'I believed, and so I spoke,' we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence."
Paul is here restating what he has previously said (if the scholars are correct in their historical chronology of his letters) in that all too familiar passage in 1 Thessalonians 4:14, "For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep."
Note the striking similarity in structure. In both passages, Paul ties the Christian hope in the resurrection of the dead to the resurrection of Jesus. God raised Jesus from the dead and he will, therefore, raise those who put their faith in Jesus. There is both a continuity and a discontinuity between Jesus' resurrection and the resurrection of believers.
On the one hand, Jesus' resurrection happened at a particular moment in history. Jesus is the prototype of the redeemed humanity, the new creation, which still awaits its full and final consummation.
On the other hand, when that final consummation happens, when the dead in Christ are raised to new life, it will be the realization of that which God already accomplished when he raised Jesus from the dead. The resurrection of Jesus and the general resurrection of the dead will be one and the same. As the resurrection of Jesus was the ground of all Christian hope in this world, so it will be the life-giving reality which ushers in the next world.
Jesus said, "If anyone would come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." Mark 8:34
Collect of the Day
Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
The word "sermon" is said to signify "a thrust," and, therefore, in sermonizing it must be our aim to use the subject in hand with energy and effect, and the subject must be capable of such employment. To choose mere moral themes will be to use a wooden dagger; but the great truths of revelation are as sharp swords. Keep to doctrines which stir the conscience and the heart. . . . Hence, I urge you to keep to the old-fashioned gospel, and to that only, for assuredly it is the power of God unto salvation. Of all I would wish to say this is the sum: my brethren, preach CHRIST, always and evermore. He is the whole gospel, His person, offices, and work must be our one great, all-comprehending theme. The world needs still to be told of its Saviour, and of the way to reach him. Justification by faith should be, far more than it is, the daily testimony of Protestant pulpits; and if with this master-truth there should be more generally associated the other great doctrines of grace, the better for our churches and our age. . . . We are not called to proclaim philosophy and metaphysics, but the simple gospel. Man's fall, his need of a new birth, forgiveness through an atonement, and salvation as the result of faith -- these are our battle-axe and weapons of war. We have enough to do to learn and teach these great truths, and accursed be that learning which shall divert us from our mission, or that willful ignorance which shall cripple us in its pursuit. More and more am I jealous lest any views upon prophecy, church government, politics, or even systematic theology should withdraw one of us from glorying in the cross of Christ. . . . Blessed is that ministry of which CHRIST IS ALL.
To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, because we have rebelled against him and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God by following the laws which he has set before us. Daniel 9:9, 10
Grant, O God, that in all time of our testing we may know your presence and obey your will; that, following the example of your servant John Keble, we may accomplish with integrity and courage what you give us to do, and endure what you give us to bear; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The rich young man wanted to know what he had to do to inherit eternal life. He knew all the commandments and had kept them from his youth (or so he claimed). He still lacked one thing, though, so Jesus told him to “go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”
Upon hearing this, the young man “went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.” Gaining eternal life meant losing temporal pleasure. It was a price the young man was unwilling to pay.
Many are drawn to Jesus because of his love, the love that counted not even death too great a cost to purchase the world’s redemption. Yet, in this instance, Jesus’ love turns the rich young man away. “And Jesus, looking at him, loved him.” It was the same love that drew Jesus to the cross that compelled him to tell the young man what he was lacking in his search for eternal life. This time, however, that love did not draw the young man in. Rather, it drove him away.
What the young man lacked was not compassion for the poor. Neither did he lack a heart filled with charity for others. What he lacked was faith in Jesus to provide for all of his needs. The young man failed the test not because he wasn’t willing to give up his possessions, but because he wasn’t willing to trust Jesus. He could hear Jesus’ commandment not as a loving invitation to enter into a life-transforming relationship, but as an impossible requirement for membership in an exclusive club.
Eternal life does not come cheap for anyone. It costs us everything because it cost Jesus everything. In love, he invites us to die with him to sin and rise with him to new life in the kingdom of God. That boundless, infinite love draws in all who have faith. It also drives away those who lack it.
I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son." Luke 15:18, 19
Gracious Father, we praise you because, when the zeal and love of your Church has grown cold, you stir up the hearts of your people, by sending to them men and women of faith, as you sent your servant Hans Nielsen Hauge, to preach repentance and renewal; and we pray that your Church may never be destitute of such preaching, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
There is no better way, in contemporary thought, of approaching the meaning of commitment than by reference to [20th century French philosopher] Marcel's distinction between "believing that" and "believing in." To be committed is to believe in. Commitment, which includes belief but far transcends it, is determination of the total self to act upon conviction. Always and everywhere, as Blaise Pascal and many other thinkers have taught us, it includes an element of wager. This is why in great literature, including the New Testament, the best light that can be thrown upon commitment is that provided by marriage. For everyone recognizes the degree to which marriage is a bold venture, undertaken without benefit of escape clauses. The essence of all religious marriage vows is their unconditional quality. A man takes a woman not, as in a contract, under certain specified conditions, but "for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health." Always, the commitment is unconditional and for life. The fact that some persons fail in this regard does not change the meaning of that glorious undertaking.
. . . Belief in differs from believing that, in the way in which the entire self is involved. "If I believe in something," says Marcel, "it means that I pledge myself fundamentally, and this pledge affects not only what I have but also what I am."
. . . A Christian is a person who confesses that, amidst the manifold and confusing voices heard in the world, there is one Voice which supremely wins his full assent, uniting all his powers, intellectual and emotional into a single pattern of self-giving. That Voice is Jesus Christ. A Christian not only believes that He was; he believes in Him with all his heart and strength and mind. Christ appears to the Christian as the one stable point or fulcrum in all the relativities of history. Once the Christian has made this primary commitment he still has perplexities, but he begins to know the joy of being used for a mighty purpose, by which his little life is dignified.
I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son." Luke 15:18, 19
Heavenly Father, whose Son prayed that we all might be one: deliver us from arrogance and prejudice, and give us wisdom and forbearance, that, following your servant Charles Henry Brent, we may be united in one family with all who confess the Name of thy Son Jesus Christ: who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
In one shape or another the religious question which gives thoughtful, religious people the most trouble is probably the question of Prayer. We cannot doubt that it has always been so. We feel sure that in every condition of religion, down to the lowest, in which human beings are moved to supplicate God at all, the struggle between the two feelings, between the instinct that God must hear and answer, and the doubt whether God can hear and answer, has been always going on. It is not a struggle of our days alone; it is not a question which certain peculiar tendencies of our time have brought on.
Is it possible for the great First Cause to be laid open to appeals which originate in human wills, and so to yield to causes behind God in governing God's action? You see our very jealousness for God's honor comes and lays itself across the path by which our timid souls are creeping to the mercy-seat. The very greatness which tempts us to trust God seems to forbid us to ask.
"If ye abide in me." Oh, my dear friends, how many of our prayers must go unprayed, if we sent them up tot he mercy-seat through that judgment-chamber where the words of Jesus sit! How many times we have complained that our prayer brought no answer, when it was a prayer we never could have prayed unless we first drove out every word of Christ from its abiding-place within us! is there a Christian here who can declare before God that he or she ever prayed to God in perfect submission to Christ's will, in perfect conformity to Christ's Words, and got no answer? Not here; not in all the world; not in all the ages!
This is the meaning of Christ's promise: The true Christian must always have an answer to prayer, because we can never pray a prayer incapable of answer. Does it sound like a mere truism? Is it an insignificant conclusion that we have reached? Does it amount to nothing to say that Christ will grant all our prayers because we cannot ask anything that God is not willing and anxious to grant already? Surely there is no weakening of the thought of prayer in this. How would you strengthen it? Would you say that the good Christian may ask of God things that God is unwilling to bestow, and gain them? But why is God unwilling to bestow them except for one of two causes: either that the giving of them would injure the soul that asks them, or that it would interfere with some plan that the divine wisdom has shaped for the universe at large? In either case can you conceive of a true and filial prayer demanding the unwilling boon? Grant that Christians have the power, will they use it? Must they not in using it depart out of that harmony with Christ which is the very condition of success, cease to abide in him, and so fail of the dangerous gift that is desired?
The result of our whole study of Prayer today seems to be this, that it involves far more than we ordinarily think -- a certain necessary relation between the soul and God. The condition of prayer is personal; it looks to character. How this rebukes our ordinary slipshod notions of what it is to pray! God's mercy-seat is no mere stall set by the vulgar roadside, where every careless passer-by may put an easy hand out to snatch any glittering blessing that catches the eye. It stands in the holiest of holies. We can come to it only through veils and by altars of purification. To enter into it, we must enter into God.
Pour your grace into our hearts, O Lord; that we who have known the incarnation of your Son Jesus Christ, announced by an angel to the Virgin Mary, may by his cross and passion be brought unto the glory of his resurrection; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
If a man is moved to love God apart from any sweetness he feels, he is already focusing his love upon God, whom he does not feel.
If he sets his will upon pleasurable and consoling feelings, thinking about them and resting in them, he is setting his will on creatures or related things, making them into an end instead of a means.
That man would be very ignorant who thinks that because sweetness and delight are failing him, God is failing him, or should think that in having these he is having God.
He would be still more ignorant if he followed God looking for sweetness, and rejoiced and rested in it when obtained. In this case his love is not set purely on God alone above all things, for in clinging to and desiring what is created, his will cannot soar to God.
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us, but if we confess our sins, God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:8, 9
Collect of the Day
Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him. And perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does, belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and ingraffed into that body, whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me; all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for that library where every book shall lie open to one another; as therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come; so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness.
There was a contention as far as a suit (in which, piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled) which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell, that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours, by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him, that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute, that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? But who takes off his eye from a comet, when that breaks out? who bends not his ear to any bell, which upon any occasion rings? But who can remove it from that bell, which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did; for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough, that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current moneys, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell that tells me of his affliction, digs out, and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger, I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.
O God, who by your Holy Spirit give to some the word of wisdom, to others the word of knowledge, and to others the word of faith: We praise your name for the gifts of grace manifested in your servants Jonathan Edwards and David Brainard, and we pray that your Church may never be destitute of such gifts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Jesus, Peter, James, and John had just come down from the Mount of Transfiguration when they encountered “a great crowd around them, and scribes arguing with them.” The commotion was caused by a man who has brought his son to be delivered from a spirit which not only made him mute, but also threw him into convulsions. The disciples were unable to cast this spirit out of the boy, so the man went directly to Jesus to plead his case.
Jesus responded, somewhat incredulously, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me.”
Like so many who encounter Jesus, the father seemed to be of two minds concerning the Lord’s ability to help his son. His request was conditional, “But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” Jesus immediately threw the responsibility of faith back to the man. “If you can!” Jesus replies, “All things are possible for one who believes.”
The boy’s father, however, had reached the limit of his human potential for faith. So, he cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief!” It is very important to keep this statement in mind when considering the context of Jesus’ statement immediately preceding it. Jesus was not saying to the man that he had the power in and of himself to do all things merely by believing. Rather, he was seeking to draw out of the man precisely the confession he made. He believed, yet his faith had limits because of a lingering spirit of unbelief which could only be dispelled by the power of God. In coming face to face with Jesus, God incarnate, the man finally realized that, perhaps even moreso than his son, he needed deliverance from an unclean spirit.
But neither that nor the boy's subsequent deliverance is the end of the story. What stands out in Mark’s account is a gradual, almost subtle, transition from a natural (carnal) orientation to a spiritual orientation. When Jesus first encountered the crowd, they were arguing with some scribes. At the end of the day, when his disciples asked him why they could not cast the unclean spirit out of the boy, Jesus replied, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.” Thus, the circle was complete. What began as an argument was transformed and resolved by prayer, with the key transition being the man’s desperate confession, “I believe; help my unbelief!”
The "kind” of spirit which “cannot be driven out by anything but prayer” was not a spirit which merely made the boy mute. Rather, it was a spirit which exploited the situation of the boy and his father to sow dissension and debate in order to prevent the father from dealing with his own lack of faith in the power of God to deliver his son, and himself, from a life of agony and pain. Only when Jesus intervened was the man able to make the confession which transformed the situation. What began as an argument ended as a prayer meeting.
To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, because we have rebelled against him and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God by following the laws which he has set before us. Daniel 9:9, 10
Almighty God, whose will it is to be glorified in your saints, and who raised up your servant Gregory the Illuminator to be a light in the world, and to preach the Gospel to the people of Armenia: Shine, we pray, in our hearts, that we also in our generation may show forth your praise, who called us out of darkness into your marvelous light; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever Amen.
The first time I went on live radio, I wasn't conscious of being terrified until I began to speak. Even then, I didn't feel it as a flutter in the stomach, or my knees knocking together, or anything like that. It came out -- well, it came out in the words that came out of my mouth. For two or three sentences I heard my voice saying things I hadn't planned, some of which weren't even true. I gradually managed to get hold of my voice -- that's what it felt like -- and reconnected it to the thinking bit of my brain instead of the panicking bit.
That was a long time ago, but it left a clear impression in my memory, and in my understanding of how the tongue can blurt out odd things under pressure. I imagine that's how it was for Peter, too, when his tongue disconnected from his brain for a moment in the face of one of the most extraordinary sights described anywhere in the Bible, or most other books for that matter.
Of course, what he blurted out wasn't complete nonsense, even though Mark apologizes for him, explaining in verse 6 that he was so terrified he didn't know what he was saying. The idea of building 'shelters' wasn't a reflection of the fact that it would be cold and dark before too long and that somehow Jesus, Elijah and Moses would need somewhere to stay. The 'shelters' were an echo of the ancient Israelite custom of living in makeshift shelters, 'booths' or 'tabernacles', as part of the festivals that commemorated the Exodus from Egypt. So perhaps the connection in Peter's frightened, muddled mind was a realization that this was one of those great God-moments, like the time when Moses went up the mountain and came down with his face shining from talking with God . . .
And now here is Moses, once more, but also Elijah, the great prophet who also met God on the mountain. And they are talking with Jesus. And all three are shining, faces, clothes, the lot, described by Mark with another nice touch (people have often suggested that this must be a reflection of Peter's own reminiscences): no laundry on earth could get clothes as white as that. From time to time in the long history of spiritual experiences people have described incidents such as this, but in the present case it's so unexpected, so out of character with everything else even in the gospels themselves, that we are right to be as shocked as the disciples were. What does it mean?
The meaning seems to be a confirmation of all that has gone before at the end of chapter 8. Yes, Jesus really is the Messiah. Yes, the path he is now treading -- the path that will lead to the cross -- really is the right, God-given way by which he must come into his kingdom, by which he will be obedient tot he plan of the one who addresses him, as at the baptism, as his beloved son (verse 7). And, yes, all this is happening not as an odd or bizarre occurrence, detached from the long and noble tradition of the prophets and the law, but entirely in line with Elijah and with Moses himself. And yes: looming up behind all of this, making sense of it all but a sense so overwhelming that anyone might find themselves talking nonsense at the glimpse of it all, is the fact that the one of whom the voice from heaven speaks is not just 'my son, the one I love' in a kind of honorific way, a title conveniently bestowed on a mere mortal. The one who is 'son of God' in the sense of 'Messiah' is also 'son of God' in a sense never before imagined, a sense that would take hundreds of years of prayerful thought to begin to understand.
That is the meaning of the discussion, as they come down the mountain, about 'Elijah coming first'. According to Malachi 4, God will send the prophet Elijah back to the people to prepare them for -- for what? For his own coming. As in Malachi 3.1, the messenger prepares the way for YHWH himself, Israel's God, to return to his people. What the disciples still can't get their minds around is the possibility that the living God might come back in and as a human being, in and as this Jesus they have been following, the Jesus they have just declared to be God's Messiah. But Elijah has already come and gone; Jesus was referring, of course, to John the Baptist. The one who now comes is Israel's Messiah, and more than Israel's Messiah.
Some Christian traditions have done their best to screen out the notion of transfiguration altogether: just a fantasy, they think, a projection of a deeply felt spirituality. Others, such as the Eastern Orthodox churches, have gone the other way, and have insisted that if God's own spirit is at work in his people then we ought to expect transformation, transfiguration, to be taking place in all kinds of ways. It will be unexpected, of course, but in the Christian life we are taught to expect the unexpected. It will be incomprehensible, even, just as the disciples found Jesus' command not to tell anyone until he had risen from the dead. But if we discovered a faith with nothing unexpected or incomprehensible, nothing to shake us from our cosy normal existence and assumptions, we could be fairly sure that it wasn't the real thing.
I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son." Luke 15:18, 19
Almighty and everlasting God, the source and perfection of all virtues, who inspired your servant James de Koven to do what is right and to preach what is true: Grant that all ministers and stewards of your mysteries may impart to your faithful people, by word and example, the knowledge of your grace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Millennial views are like bad days. Everybody has one. No one particular view, however, is truly adequate to explain the multi-dimensional nature of the coming eschatological kingdom of God. Jesus declared to his disciples, "there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power." This statement becomes very problematic for those who are wound up in arguments over millennial views. If "the kingdom of God" is synonymous with "the Son of Man" coming "in the glory of his Father with the holy angels," why have believers been waiting some 2,000 years to see something Jesus promised would be seen by his earliest followers?
The answer lies in understanding "the kingdom of God" as a much larger project than just its final consummation. It is connected not only with Jesus' glory, but also with his suffering. Likewise, it is seen not only in the final triumph of righteousness, but also in the ordeal of righteous suffering at the hands of the fallen world. Jesus connects his glory with his suffering and commands "anyone" who "would come after" him to "deny himself and take up his cross and follow" him. The glory of the Son of Man is inextricably connected with the suffering of the Son of Man. The kingdom of God is inextricably linked with the cross of Jesus Christ.
Jesus' first disciples would "see the kingdom of God" in their lifetime by seeing Jesus "suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again." Jesus' resurrection was the inaugural event of the kingdom of God. Jesus, after his ordeal of suffering and death, was raised up in glory, vindicated as the true Christ of God, the victorious Son of Man "in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels."
The resurrection, however, was only the beginning. Jesus called his disciples to deny themselves, take up the cross, and follow him. They were to continue the work he began. They were to proclaim the Gospel of the kingdom of God to all the nations, never being ashamed even to give their lives for their Lord. In Jesus, crucified and risen, they could "see the kingdom of God." Their mission was, and our mission is, to make others see that kingdom in lives that become an authentic imitation of the crucified and risen Savior.
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