St. Stephen & The First Sunday After Christmas

You may have noticed something was different this morning. The bulletin lists today as the Feast of St. Stephen and The First Sunday after Christmas. Most of us are not used to a Sunday being the Feast of a Saint. The Prayer Book tells us that Feasts of our Lord, and every Sunday is a Feast of our Lord Jesus Christ, these take precedence over the celebration of Saints. In the small print it tells us that we may celebrate a Saint’s day if it falls on a Sunday only if the Bishop gives permission. Bishop Duncan has graciously given us permission to celebrate the Feast of St. Stephen on this, the first Sunday after Christmas.

You may be asking yourself, why would we want to? St. Stephen was a deacon, and in the old Church of England St. Stephen’s day was the Feast of all deacons. In a little less than two weeks, God willing and the people consenting, I will be ordained a priest. So this is my last chance to preach to you as your deacon. As a deacon, I felt it was it was my duty to preach about the first person to serve the Jesus Christ in this order.

But more importantly, St. Stephen was also the first person to die for the truth of the Incarnation, the feast we celebrated just yesterday, where God Incarnated himself a human child in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. He died for the Truth so eloquently explained to us in today’s Gospel passage.

St. Stephen did not serve very long in his ministry as a deacon. In the beginning of Chapter 6 of the Book of Acts, we hear about the first deacons. The Apostles have realized that things have changed since Pentecost and birth of the new Church. The Apostles were so busy spreading the Good News of Christ that they were running out of time to serve the widows of the community. Realizing that they needed help, through the power of the Holy Spirit they ordained the first deacons, with St. Stephen among these new ordinands. These deacons were charged with caring for people, doing the work of pastoral care, especially to the sick, the lonely and the widowed. In all their work they were expected to show forth the saving truth of Christ, both through actions and words.

St. Stephen went about his work among his fellow Jews. At this early point in the Church, there was no separation between Christian and Jew, they belonged to the same religion it seemed. However, the divisions between the Jews were bound to blow up – it’s hard to keep a group of people who think salvation has come in the same room with people who think salvation has not come yet. The Book of Acts tells us that St. Stephen was full of faith and grace, and was working wonders and miracles amongst the people. It seems these works caught the attention of his fellow Jews, and the members of the local synagogues rioted against him. These people who were outraged by St. Stephen and had him arrested. He was charged with saying that Christ was the fulfillment of the Law and the One whom scripture foretold. To his fellow Jews who did not believe in Christ, this was blasphemy.

So St. Stephen is arrested and carted off to the council of the leaders and asked to answer for the charges of heresy. In a part omitted from today’s reading, St. Stephen goes on to give a lengthy speech about the entire history of God’s work amongst His people. He lays out the history of the world in a way the clearly shows that the Holy Spirit has sent prophet after prophet to the people of Israel to call them back home, but they have been ignored. St. Stephen lay’s this great charge against them "Brothers and fathers, listen to me. You are forever opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do. Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, and now you have become his betrayers and murderers. You are the ones that received the law as ordained by angels, and yet you have not kept it!” (Acts 6:51-53) This riled up his crowd and it became clear that this was going to end badly. The he tells them “Look…I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!" (Acts 6:56) With that statement, St. Stephen sealed his fate. To the Jews listening to him he could not have said anything more blasphemous. He has just proclaimed the truth that we celebrated on the Feast of the Nativity. It was not just a prophet who was born for us, but God Himself, dwelling in human flesh. By saying that he saw Jesus, the Son of Man, standing at the right hand of God, St. Stephen is saying “The man you killed was no mere reformer or prophet, but the one, true, living God, living amongst us as one of us to save us!”

Then the rocks were thrown at him, he prayed to the Lord, and he died. St. Stephen laid down his life because he was unwilling to do anything other than proclaim what he knew: God had become flesh and dwelt among us.

If you look at our parish banner or on the stone high altar you will see a phrase written on there “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” This comes from our Gospel reading today. The first 18 verses of St. John Gospel are known as the prologue to St. John’s Gospel. The other three Gospel explain the theology of what Jesus Christ means solely by narrative, by telling us His story. St. John decided to take a different route, and began his Gospel with a thick theological discourse.

This part of St. John’s Gospel is so jam packed with theology that it unfolds over time, growing in meaning and depth each time you read it. Knowing this, and just how bold a statement the prologue is, it became a custom in the middle ages for a Priest to a recite the first 14 verses of John’s Gospel as his concluding prayer. I was taught by my mentoring priests to keep this custom. After I have greeted everyone at the door, I go back to the vesting room and I recite those 14 verses which have become known as the Last Gospel. Each and every time I do this I am awed by just how much St. John was able to fit into his sentences. He wrote in a dense and beautiful Greek, which even when translated to English still retains its sense of beauty and poetry. But more than amazed, I am inspired, just as St. Stephen was, to proclaim to the world that God became Man.

Unpacking and trying to understand everything that was being said by St. John is the work of a semester long course. But to speak in gross generalizations, St. John is establishing three basic theological facts about Christ. Firstly, Jesus Christ is in fact God. Jesus Christ, who is the Word, the Son of God has always existed since the beginning of time. Although born to us in specific time and place, there has never been a time when the Son has not existed. There is one Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit that always has and always will exist. Secondly, Christ is fully human. As our altar says, The Word became Flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus Christ was no illusion, or sort of person, he was born of human flesh from the Blessed Virgin Mary. Born of a woman, just as you and I were from our mothers. Christ was fully one of us. Thirdly, Jesus Christ acts both as God and human at the same time, living in unity, joined together.

We could spend the next few hours discussing these three points, but I imagine we would not get far. The beauty of the Bible is that it is a text that always unfolds, it lives and breathes. Each time you read it, a new part of you will be enlightened, and a clearer understanding of God’s Divine Will will dawn on you.

Despite the mysteries of this text, the basic truth of it is easily said, and it is exactly what St. Stephen told his persecutors. God became man, Incarnate as one of us because he loved us so much that He could not bear to see us suffer the fate of corruption and eternal death. God prepared us for His coming through prophets and the acts of the Holy Spirit, and we denied Him and the prophets over and over again. Yet despite this disobedience He came anyways. For stating these facts to those who refused to hear them, St. Stephen died, just as many others did and continue to do so in places like the Middle East and Africa.

In the belief that beauty is of God, and shows forth God, I would like to read for you the prologue to St. John’s Gospel John from the Kings Jame’s Bible. I find in this beautiful rendering of St. John’s word the Truth of Christ in glorious mystery comes to me. Hear again the Truth that St. Stephen and so many others have and will lay down their life for:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The same was in the beginning with God.

All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the light, that all men through him might believe.

He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light.

That was the true light, which lighteth every man that commeth into the world.

He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.

He came unto his own, and his own received him not.

But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his Name:

Which were borne, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Christmas Day (Christmas II Propers)

Merry Christmas!

Bah! Humbug!

Not expecting those words? This immortal phrase of Ebenzer Scrooge was my mantra during my atheist days. Even though my family did not really believe in God, we still celebrated a secular Christmas. We never went to church and it had nothing to do with Christ, but it was still Christmas to us. It was month of family gathering and gift giving.

When I was kid I loved it. I loved the special Christmas Music. I loved the special Christmas episode of Charlie Brown’s Christmas that came on the TV. I loved the pile of gifts I received. But somewhere around the age of 15 I started to notice just how stressful it was.

I began to tire of spending hours in the car every weekend in December to visit someone different. I found trying to figure out what to give someone for Christmas was nerve wracking! I noticed that beneath the veneer of holiday cheer that most people had a high stress level boiling right below the surface. Then I began to notice the letdown that happened on the 26^th. The day after Christmas the decorations came down and people stopping singing carols.

That’s when I began to loathe Christmas.

By the time I was in college I spent the en tire month of December plain old grumpy and shot a dirty look at anybody that dared to say Merry Christmas to me. I didn’t like the holiday and I let people know it.

When I became a Christian I didn’t realize how much this part of the year would change for me. During that first year as a Christian, when that first December rolled around, I was shocked by how much I was looking forward to Christmas. That year December was truly amazing, because Advent really meant something to me that year. I was eagerly awaiting the first time that I could celebrate the birth of Christ. That December was a month of prayer and excitement for me. When that Christmas morning dawned, it really was different. For the first time, December 25^th was not about opening presents, and complaining about what I did or did not get. It was not a day of wondering what to do after I opened the presents. It was a day that began at church where I was able to proclaim Alleluia! Christ the Lord is born!

The amazement that God was actually a little child at one point carried me through the following few weeks as if I was floating on clouds. I was just so amazed at liturgically making present the fact that God was born as one of us. That he cried the same way I did. He needed His Mother the same way I did.

Wow! Was pretty much all I could say.

As the years have gone by, Christmas has not become any less amazing for me. Sure, I became aware again of the stress that engulfs any human living in the Western Hemisphere during December, but the mystery of the Incarnation began to unfold.

And now, in sure proof the God does have a sense of humor, I am here in this pulpit. The man who screamed Bah! Humbug is now preaching to you in the pulpit of The Church of the Nativity, a church named in honor of Christmas.

In many ways there is no better name for an Anglican Church. It has been said that Roman Catholics are defined by Good Friday, the Eastern Orthodox are defined by Easter Sunday and Anglicans are defined by the Feast of the Nativity, the day we call Christmas.

The savings works of Christ through his death on Good Friday and resurrection on Easter Sunday are well know to us, especially here in the Deep South where our Baptist brothers focus so much on the atoning death of Christ.

Unfortunately, the doctrine of the Incarnation, the theological doctrine that emerges from the Feast of the Nativity, is not spoken of nearly as much as the atonement and resurrection. Yet the Incarnation is just as theologically shocking as they are. As St. Athanasius put it, on this day, Jesus “assumed humanity that we might become God.” (On the Incarnation, 93)

That is a statement that scares the daylights out of most Protestants. Many people hear this and scream “heresy!” So let me be very clear about this, there is one God, and we at best can partake in the divine energies, better known as being filled by the Holy Spirit, but we will never become Him.

What it means is that God’s dwelling amongst us, as a human being, is part of how humanity can become reconciled to God. It is the beginning of Christ’s work that ends with his resurrections and the promise of His return. Jesus’ beginning here on earth harkens back to our beginning as God’s created being.

In the beginning God made man and woman, and said that we were good. He made us in His Image, as His most beloved creation. He gave us a perfect place to live in where we could share in His good creation and live in mutual love with Him. Being made in His Image, we reflected back His Love, and took on His characteristics. He was capital “G” God, and we were little “g” gods, the creation he made that mirrored Him.

Then he gave us a choice: to follow Him or to follow our own will. We chose own will, and in that moment we stopped bearing the clear image of God. We let loose death and pain into the world and became a cloudy reflection, a distorted image of God. Through this cloudy image we could no longer see God clearly, so we focused on our own wills and the evil we had let loose instead.

God in His infinite love for us gave us our second chance to bear His image clearly. To accomplish this He emptied himself and took the form and the flesh of a human. God was born into the world that was afflicted with death and pain because our own wrongdoings, yet he came not only as one of us, but as the original one of us to live in the world we had tainted. Jesus was born the new Adam. Being fully God and fully man, Jesus bore the perfect Image of God in His human flesh, undistorted and clearly, just as we did in the beginning. Jesus, the new Adam, became the first human since the fall of Adam to bear the Father’s image as God had originally created us. Jesus, the second Adam, is the second chance for humanity.

In the Sacrament of Baptism we know that we are joined to joined to Christ. We often hear about how this joining frees us from everlasting death because it joins us to the One who beat death and rose on the third day. The lesser known aspect of Baptism in this day and age is the union we have with the One who bears the perfect image of God.

We are connected and joined to He who lived just as God intended us, able to perfectly reflect back the Love of God to God Himself and the world around Him.

This process of union takes time. Although baptism immediately makes us sons and daughters of God, the ability to begin to recover our image is a process. Through this union with Christ we, gradually over time, are able to be sanctified, to be aided by the Holy Spirit to bear more and more of His image clearly.

The ancient analogy for this is a sword in a fire. When you place a sword into a fire, it will gradually begin to heat up, to turn red and become hot. The sword absorbs the fire and takes on the characteristics of the fire, while still remaining a sword. In our union with Christ at baptism, we are the sword who is put into the fire of the Holy Spirit. Over time, by saying yes to the Lord’s grace, we take on His characteristics. We begin to glow with the red hot heat of the Holy Spirit, yet we still remain human.

This is what the Feast of the Nativity really means for us. When God was born to us 2010 years again as baby, He opened the gates and lead us onto the road back home to God.

My first Christmas as Christian was a milestone for me on my journey back home to God. I may never get there, but by His grace I pray that I may bear His image more and more as I let the Holy Spirit guide me back home.

I pray that this Feast of the Nativity will be a blessing to you all. That it may be a day when you say yes again to God’s grace, and allow Him to take your hand, and lead you back homewards.

Merry Christmas!

Advent 1A - It's not the Feast of 50% off!

The seasons have changed on us again. The tress have changed color, our favorite TV shows always show scenes of pristine snow and around us it is has dipped down into the frigid 70s. There are parties at work and get-togethers with family. For many of us, this is one of the few times in the year we get to see most of our family, often in one place all together.
In my large Italian family this is the time of the year when my family cooks some my favorite recipes that only happen around the holidays. Between them and the Eggnog it’s a golden opportunity to gain 10 pounds in a month! As bad as these festivities are for my waistline – they are good for my soul. It is good to see my family and be surrounded by those I love. But now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, we are in that in-between period. The Thanksgiving festivities have ended, and the Christmas ones are still a few weeks away.
What will occupy the airwaves, the TV shows and unfortunately 90% of our time for the next few weeks will be that dreadful thing that comes in between Thanksgiving and Christmas – Secular Christmas.
By Secular Christmas I mean a time that has nothing to do with Christ. It’s the Feast of 50% off, the Feast of special door prizes for the first few shoppers in the door at 4AM at Sears. The time when we show our love for one another by spending money we don’t have and putting it on our credit cards.
This is the time when, unfortunately, Western Society does its best to make sure that our poor and outcast feel as lonely as possible, as the media tells them to buy, buy, buy while they must hope for the charity of others just to get by. Now, I don’t think the retail business world intended to cause seasonal depression and stress us out, but they do intend to shout at us until we listen to them.
Eventually this will pass, and the true Christmas, the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord will be upon us. We will pray together as we remember that God loved us so much He came down from heaven as a defenseless infant, dependent on the love of His Mother and father here on earth. We will share this Love that God has given us with each other. We will love our children and parents just as God the Father and God the Son shared their love. We will glory in the love of our friends just as God looked at all of His creation and said it is good.
Yet until this Feast we have to deal with what the secular world will throw at us, and persevere in our prayers. I think that at no other part of the year is it clearer that we are citizens of a different city. The City of Man tells us “Seasons Greetings!” and “Buy today and save half off!” while we here in the City of God we sing “Christ is nigh! Let us be wakened by that solemn warning, from Earth’s bondage let us rise!” (Hymnal 59)
Instead of being bullied into thinking this is the season of sales, we know this is the season of preparation for the Lord.
Advent has the distinction of being the one season that is both joyous and yet quite penitential at the same time. It ages past you and I would be in the midst of a strict fast from certain foods for this entire season. Yet even today when we deny ourselves during this season in some way, be it giving up something food wise or simply not saying Alleluia, we can’t but help be a bit joyful too. The day of God’s Incarnation among us is just around the corner, and that reminds of us how much God loves us.
The three readings for today show both the joyous and penitential aspects of this season. They remind us that this season is not just about sacramentally remembering and making present God’s Incarnation in Bethlehem, but also His second coming in great Glory at the end of ages.
In St. Matthew’s Gospel we encounter Jesus as he is telling his disciples of the end time, the days before he comes to judge the quick and the dead and usher in the fullness of His Kingdom. In today’s Gospel passage Jesus tells his disciples what the world will be like before he comes back. He is quite explicit in telling them that there is no one other than the Father who knows when this will all happen – but Jesus tells us what the world will be like before it happens. It will be as in the days of Noah… “For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, and marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark.” (Matt 24:38) In other words it will be time when most of the world goes on, serving itself and ignoring others except for a select few who are actually listing and looking for God. It sounds a lot like today….and it sounds like almost every other age of mankind. For all that God does in the world; a good chunk of humanity will be so focused on itself that it will ignore everything else.
Knowing that this has been the state of the world, and knowing that there is no way to know exactly when Christ is returning, many a Christian has asked – what do we do in the meantime? St. Paul’s addressed this in his Epistle to the Romans. St. Paul, obedient to Christ’s teaching that we are not to know when the exact time is tells the community in Rome that he doesn’t know when it will happen, but he thinks it is soon. In light of this, he instructs those in Rome to live their lives accordingly. He tells them “Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” (Romans 13:12) Now the end did not comes as soon as St. Paul seems to have expected it, but his message to us remains the same. We are to live knowing that His return is soon, soon in God’s time, and we are to live in that knowledge. Living a life showing forth our faith Jesus Christ, striving to live a good life by the commands of Our Lord; not just because we expect impending judgment, but because it shows forth God’s love to the world.
For all that we don’t know about the timing of Christ’s second coming in glory we do get a glimpse of what this world, perfected by God, will be like. Isaiah prophecies about a time when people will “beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” (Isaiah 2:4b)
That is the glorious vision of the future, and that is a reason to be joyful in Advent. We await the ushering in of that spectacular world of love, peace and charity. Yet here we find ourselves, living in a time just as Jesus predicted, where the world is paying attention to itself and ignoring God. The good news is that although we find ourselves in a time just like those of Noah, we know that God has promised that he will deal with us differently than he did with people of Noah’s time.
To us he gives us a Divine Church, full of the Holy Spirit, to bring the world back to God. To transition the world from its own ways to the ways of God; to change the calls of “Sale! Sale! Sale!” all through December to “Salvation! Salvation! Salvation!”
Towards this purpose we will be ending our service of Morning Prayer with the ancient Great Litany. I wrote an article in the Window last week giving the history of the Great Litany, so I want bore you the history of it again. I will say though, that I can’t think of a better way to sum our prayers for the world in this season than the Great Litany.
The Great Litany is quite comprehensive. It leads us in prayer about every facet of our life and the life of the world. It names many of our fears and prayers that we in a polite society are often afraid to voice in such an explicit way.
Jesus has told us that we don’t know when He will return, but maybe THIS is the last Advent. Maybe this really is the final season of preparation, and He will come back to usher in His Kingdom in just weeks. In this spirit I invite you to join in the litany and all the prayers that follow, praying along with the whole church the we may be ready for Him when he comes; and that entire world and every single person in it, aided by our prayers will say yes to the grace of God and able to stand before Jesus and say, “Yes, Lord. Your will be done.”

Proper 26C - Lex Orandi Lex Credendi (or Why I love the Prayer Book and how it speaks of grace)

“Today salvation has come to this house.” (Luke 19:9) These are the amazing words Jesus speaks to Zacchaeus. Salvation is a big word, and it is not tossed around lightly. So when I come across a word this important, I want to make sure I really understand what is being said.
Jesus speaks these words after an odd and even humorous encounter. Jesus, on his way to Jerusalem, enters the town of Jericho. As Jesus passes through the town a crowd gathers around him. For some reason, just like the others, Zacchaeus is drawn towards Jesus and seeks to see Him. This man wants to see Jesus so much that he climbs a tree in order to see Him. Jesus sees Zacchaeus in the tree and tells him to come down so he can go his house. When Jesus enters the house Zacchaeus exclaims that he will give half of possessions to the poor and will pay pack fourfold anybody he is defrauded. These are bold words for a tax collector, because a tax collector makes his living by defrauding people! Now after these amazing words, Jesus responds with even bolder words: “Salvation has come to this house!”
What remains unclear is the context of this statement. Is Jesus saying: Zacchaeus, because I chose to see you, you have been changed, therefore I grant you salvation!”? So there we go, God chose Zacchaeus and he is saved. If this is what Jesus meant, what happens to Zacchaeus next? Is he all set for life because of this one encounter? Or is Jesus saying “Zacchaeus, I AM Salvation. Because you let me in your house, you have begun to choose the better path, and it will lead you to me, the one that is Salvation”? With this interpretation, Zacchaeus has simply taken a baby step towards God. So, what will the rest of Zacchaeus’ life lived with God look like?
The Greek text of St Luke’s Gospel is unclear in this point, and scholars disagree as how Jesus meant His statement. This distinction, this choice between two quite different interpretations, has a big effect on some of our biggest questions: How do we respond to God’s grace? Is it an invitation or a command? And once we have been affected by grace, what happens in the rest our life?
These questions hung in the air during the reformation, and the forever affected the way Anglicanism has instilled the Christian life into its people. By the early 1600’s the Churches of the West had been torn apart about by the questions of grace, and could not agree on how it works. When the English church split from Rome, it became quite clear that Church of England would not let you think that you could earn your salvation by your own imitative through works. However, unlike the theologians of the reformation on the European continent, we never issued a big Confession, instead Anglicans only mad a short list of ideas we condemned as being in error. Our primary response to the questions of salvation and grace was to issue a prayer book.
Yet despite our amazing prayer book, Anglican theologians kept on asking these questions: How do we respond to grace, and what happens after grace? In 1619 a big group of theologians, including some from England, got together to hammer out these issues. They came to the conclusion that grace is irresistible. God offers grace to whom he will, and the people he offers grace to always say yes. If God chooses you to receive grace you have no choice be to say yes to it. They also came to the conclusion that once you were chosen for grace, you were part of the elect and you were incapable of backsliding – once saved, always saved. Well, when the English representatives reported this to the Church back home, they couldn’t quite sell the people on this. Objections were raised. If we can’t say no to God’s grace – do we really have free will? And if those who are saved are not capable of sliding back into damnation, why do the elect need to bother with anything?
For a several years various people in the Church of England tried to get the Church to officially agree to the theology put forth by that. However, with the advent of a new King of England, and thus a new Supreme Governor of the Church of England, these notions of irresistible grace and permanently earned salvation were rejected.
Now there were people who could give you big theological arguments about why these ideas had to be rejected, but in the end, that wasn’t why they were rejected. They were rejected because the Church of England took a look at its initial response to these issues: the Prayer Book. At first, people thought that the prayer book, with its list of prayers for mercy and help and utterly lacking in precise definitions of who God is and how He works (aside from what Scripture had told us) would lead us right back to the medieval problems - but it didn’t. Instead the Church of England had before it several generations who knew nothing other than the prayer book and Scripture. They had been formed by the practice of fixed liturgies and prayer through, and with, scripture. This was a time when compulsion was at a minimum. While other Christians were being forced to swear to a litany of precise definitions on who God is and how He works on us, the English were bring compelled to do only one thing – come to prayer. Come to service and be formed by it. And prayer was shaping people. The Church of England began to flourish and the great age of Classical Anglicanism was ushered in.
This realization, that the Church had begun to blossom, to show the fruits of the Spirit, gave us an answer about grace. People who were being shaped and molded were evident, and that very process of growth was being praised. Even the King during this period, St. Charles the Martyr , praised how the Payer Book was changing people. He wrote: “the manner of using set and prescribed forms…wholesome words, being known and fitted to men’s understandings are soon received into their hearts.” (Cross & More, 622) If grace was irresistible, why were people being shaped by the Prayer Book? If you can’t say no to grace, wouldn’t people show signs of sudden transformation when they were compelled by God to accept his grace?
Instead, our Prayer Book showed a spiritual growth of learning to say yes to God. Each opportunity to go to prayer was an opportunity to say yes to God or to tune out, ignore the service and say no to God’s grace. And one of the opportunities offered most often to those coming to the Prayer Book services was to confess one’s sins and to ask for mercy. This is a habit that is not needed by someone who has been granted a salvation they can’t fall away from.
It turns out that we, as Anglicans, came close to our aims during the English Reformation. We tried to remove the errors that accumulated in the medieval period and return the church back to the Church of the Church Fathers, when East and West were in full love and charity with each other. Well, as it turns out, we stripped too much away, but we did succeed and getting back to original way the Church saw our formation and response to Grace.
Before the Western Church began to take St. Augustine’s theology too far, we had seen the world as a place where sin and death ran rampant because of the Fall, but also a place where God’s grace abounded, surrounding us all. Now, we never taught that mankind would be able to turn to God by his own initiative, but instead, saw our relationship with God as a work of synergy. The Eastern Orthodox never lost this view, and the modern Orthodox theologian Kalistos Ware describes the ancient view of grace that has shown itself through our experience with the Prayer Book. Ware writes: the Book of Revelation states “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in.” (Rev 3:20) God knocks, but waits for man to open the door – He does not break it down. The grace of God invites all, but compels none.” (the Orthodox Church, 227)
This understanding of how we respond to grace flows into the idea that grace is not a one time event. God is always knocking on the door, and we can keep opening the door over and over again…or not. A lifetime of opening the door to God could make for a life time of growth in grace, and the Epistle reading today testifies to this. In his second letter to the Thessalonians, St. Paul writes “We must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of everyone of you for another is increasing.” (2 Thes 1:3)
What we had accomplished in the English Reformation was, then, a return to the ancient, orthodox and catholic way of living the Christian life. It is a life where we encounter God through Sacrament and Word. Instead of large dogmatic statements on every single issue, we focus on right liturgy and right prayer. We study Scripture and encounter the Holy Tradition of our forebears and open the door when God knocks to offer us grace so that we make grow in faith and love. We went back to the model of the ancient undivided church, which was to make theological statements only when clarification was demanded by the Church because an error of immense proportions had emerged. Yet barring that, our response to most questions was simple – Go to the Divine Services, study the scriptures, read the Church Fathers and keep praying!
So then, what did Jesus mean when He told Zacchaeus that Salvation had come to the house? Considering my experience with God’s grace and my formation through the Prayer Book, I can believe it to be no other than the second option we explored. Jesus told Zacchaeus “I AM Salvation. Because you let me in your house, you have begun to choose the better path, and it will lead you to me, the one that is Salvation.” This service, and the gift of the Sacrament to follow, are another chance to open the door to God, and accept His grace, and grow in faith and Godly love.

Proper 24C - Pray always and do not lose heart!

When I was born my parents made the decision that they would not have me baptized, much to the surprise of my grandparents. My father had stopped going to church years before I was born, but my mother was still attending on the big Holidays. My parents decided they didn’t want to force a religion they were not sure about on me.
My grandmother, being the concerned Christian that she is, was worried about me. She went and spoke to her priest, and she was instructed to baptize me herself when my parents were not looking. Now my mother had an idea that my grandmother might be up to something, but because she was unsure about this whole Christianity thing, she didn’t do anything to stop her. So when my grandmother had the opportunity to babysit me, she took me over to the kitchen sink and baptized me!
Now baptizing someone is good first step, but as we know from our Baptismal liturgies, a child needs to be instructed in the Christian life. My grandmother knew that my parents were not going to teach me about Christianity any further than letting me know that my father didn’t believe in it. So my grandmother did the best thing she could – she enlisted people to pray for me constantly. My grandmother’s sister had been a Roman Catholic Carmelite nun, so my grandmother has ties to a convent. These where serious nuns: full habit, separated from the world so they could constantly pray for the world. My grandmother asked them to pray for God’s Grace to pour upon me and for me to become a Christian despite the lack of help for my parents. So week after week, year after year, they prayed for me. Well eventually something happened. As a teenager I became intensely interested in Christianity, but not in the way that my Grandmother had hoped. I became intensely interested in it because I thought I wanted to tear it down.
I can only imagine my grandmother talking to the nuns after hearing me tear into the Church and tell them: “Sisters – you are doing it wrong! The prayer got messed up somehow. Oh, he knows about God now, but he seems to hate Him!”
Yet despite all this, my grandmother never gave up hope. She kept on praying for my conversion, and the sisters kept on praying. After twenty one years of prayer what they asked for finally happed and here I am.
The Gospel passage today deals directly with all of this – what are we to do in prayer? Few Gospel passages are as direct as this one is. Most of them make you read the surrounding text and look for context in order to really get what Jesus was trying to get us to focus on. In today’s Gospel, St Luke tells us “Jesus told the disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.”
Now even with this direct description about the parable, a little context will help. There is a whole section in St Luke’s Gospel in between last week’s Gospel and this week’s that the lectionary skipped. In this section Jesus tells the disciples about the end times. He assures them it will happen and that the disciples will be vindicated in their faith, but those times are not going to happen right away. So I can imagine the disciples asking Jesus: “Well, what do we do in the meantime? How do we live through this in-between period when we are uncertain as to what will happen and how we will make it through these times?”
To this question, Jesus answers them with a parable about prayer. On a first reading it seems that Jesus might be saying you can annoy God into doing things.
We hear about a widow who keeps asking for justice from an unrighteous judge who does not fear God. She keeps coming back, asking for justice and he eventually gives in.
It seems it’s just like when a child asks for a cookie 30 minutes before dinner. He keeps asking for a cookie and you keep telling him no. Then after he has asked you a thousand times you give in and give it to him, just so he will leave you alone. Is this what Jesus meant? You can wear God down into doing what you want Him to do for you?
The Church has been pretty universal that this is not what the parable meant. St. Augustine says of this parable “By no means does that unjust judge furnish an allegorical representation of God.” (Ancient Christian Commentaries III:277)
The contemporary scholar Luke Timothy Johnson thinks that if we all had a better understanding of ancient Greek it would be abundantly clear that the judge is not an allegory for God. Our version translates the unrighteous Judge’s thoughts this way: “because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” (Luke 8:5 NRSV) Sounds a lot like that parent giving in, doesn’t it? Johnson, in his own translation of the Greek puts the unrighteous judge’s thoughts this way: “…this widow gives me so much trouble that I will give her justice! Otherwise, she will keep coming and end up giving me a black eye!” It turns out that St. Luke was using the language of a Greek boxing match and applying to the widow in this story. Johnson writes in his commentary “The parable makes its point so forcefully and humorously that little comment is required. Contemporary readers can imagine an enraged bag lady hitting the negligent magistrate over the head and literally “giving him a black eye.” We are meant, I think, to laugh.” (Luke, 273)
Obviously the translators of our lectionary text thought we, the frozen chosen, couldn’t take a joke and translated the humor right out of this parable, and I think it was a disservice to us to do so. When we hear that joke, it becomes abundantly clear that the unrighteous judge is not meant to be a stand in for God.
Now Luke Timothy Johnson tells us that once the translation issues have been cleared up, this message of the parable is abundantly clear. Well other than the clear comic relief, I am not so sure that the message is clear from a first reading.
When we look at who this parable really focuses on, it becomes clearer what Jesus was telling us. While we tend to focus on the unrighteous judge because either we think he might be a stand in for God or we think he is funny when we read the right translation, this parable is really about the widow. In Jesus’ time and community, a widow was a powerless person. A woman’s voice in the community was tied to her husband. As widow, with her husband dead, no longer has anybody to speak for her. She would have been seen as a voiceless burden to the community. Yet this woman does not accept this – she dares to speak to the judge. She seems even braver when we remember the context of the judicial system of the time. The judge would have heard grievances publicly in front of a large group of people who had all come for their turn in front of him. Into this situation comes the widow. She dares to speak when she has no right in this society to speak. And she doesn’t plead her case in some sort of meek, soft voice. She berates the judge and demands over and over “Give me justice!”
This has many implications towards our prayer life. In my own life there have been times I have been afraid to say to God some of things I wanted to say, afraid I didn’t have permission to say them before God. It wasn’t until someone told me that I had biblically sanctioned permission to bring my questions and frustrations to God that I was able to do so, and doing so allowed me to have some very deep and clear conversation with God.
This parable is one of those sanctions for saying to God things you think you may not have permission to say. Through this parable, Jesus is telling us, that those of us who have either been restricted in our prayer because of what the world has told us, or restricted in our prayer by what we have told ourselves, we can be like the widow. We can bring before God the things that are pressing on our souls, and not only can God take it, he will listen, and it will sustain us.
I don’t think that we are meant to come away from this parable thinking that if we ask God enough times in prayer we will get what we want, even though the widow did indeed get what she wanted. Instead, we can learn that what sustained the widow was her ability to continually come before the judge, always living in hope.
My grandmother was in that situation once. She and the sisters prayed over and over again that I might become a Christian, but for so long it didn’t happen. Yet, my grandmother and the sisters held out hope. Even when I cursed at God, they persevered n their prayers, and it sustained my grandmother. Even when it looked like her prayer would never be answered she never gave up and stopped praying.
What my grandmother taught me is her lived experience of this Gospel passage. Yes, I became a Christian, so eventually she did get what she wanted. However, that is not the lesson in this. The lesson for me was that she was able to still love me when I was an angry atheist and never gave up on me because she knew she could keep putting the matter before God in prayer. Her knowledge that she could keep asking God for a miracle even when it seemed impossible is what sustained her. It sustains her still as she prays for the conversion of the rest of my family.
The widow knew that it was unlikely that she would ever get justice from unrighteous judge, and was probably shocked when she did get it. But she only made it through her dark days by perseverance.
So when the disciples ask “How do we make it through these uncertain times?” Jesus gives his answer. “Keep praying, it will carry you through those times. Pray always and do not lose heart!”

Proper 23C – 2 Timothy 8-15

“Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David-- that is my gospel”
I had a whole sermon worked out dealing with the Gospel reading for today. I had mulled the Gospel passage over and over in my head, and found that it was probably going to be easy to preach on. Before I decided to start writing down this sermon, I went over all the readings again. This time, I only got as far the Epistle reading, and knew I had to get rid of the other sermon.
I had recently read an article by someone who was critiquing the preaching he heard regularly in the Episcopal Church. He said, that to him, he was disappointed when it felt like the preacher was talking about an issue they wanted to talk about an ignored what the Scriptures wanted to say.

Now in defense of preachers who sometimes preach on something not explicitly in the readings, well, I think it is ok on occasion. The job of the preacher is to preach about Jesus Christ and life in His church. Sometimes a bigger issue in the Church comes up, and the preacher needs to address how that bigger issue fits into the demands of the Gospel and life in the Church. An honest preacher knows that sometimes they simply have to let the Scriptures speak on their own, while they preach on another holy matter.

With this indictment of preachers who ignore the text ringing in my head, I went through the readings again. The Epistle jumped out at me. “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David-- that is my gospel!”

This is only half a sentence, yet I was stopped dead in my tracks. We read these phrases all the time – Christ, descendent of David, resurrection – so much that I usually say “Yeah, yeah” and move on. The thing is, these are words of gigantic importance. These are loaded terms that split the religion of Israel in half.

St. Paul says in this part of his letter to St. Timothy “remember Jesus Christ.” We say Christ all the time, but what does Christ mean? Sometimes we say it as if it was Jesus’ proper last name, a man born of Mr. And Mrs. Christ.

We know that is not the case, his name was Jesus of Nazareth, perhaps called Jeshua Bar Joseph, (Jesus, son of Joseph) in his youth. Yet during his ministry and after his death and resurrection he is called the Christ, or Christ Jesus as St. Paul often phrases it.

So what and who is the Christ? Christ is the English version of the Greek word Christos, which was a translation of the Hebrew word Messiah. To the ancient Jews this meant a leader, a high priest who was anointed by God. The Messiah was the ruler of Israel, appointed by God to lead His people in His ways. We see this in the old testament where King David is called a messiah, a Christos, the ruler of Israel anointed and appointed by God. (2 Sam 23:1) To the ancient Jews a messiah was simply a divinely appointed ruler or priest.

By the time we get to the Judaism of Jesus’ age the expectations had changed. There was an expectation not of A christ, but of THE Christ. The Jews has been fighting with their overlords for centuries, sometimes winning, more often loosing. Their leaders had been called christs by their followers, but it wasn’t enough to free the Jews.

There became divisions amongst the Jews as to what to expect. They expected salvation from their Pagan rulers. But there was disagreement on how this salvation would come. Some expected that God would continue to send anointed leaders, small “c” christs who would lead the Children of Israel eventually to their freedom, somehow separating them from the pagans, by force, politics or both. Some of the more radical Jews thought a capital “C” Christ, in the singular, was promised to come. This Christ would come with a sword to deal out God’s Judgment against the Pagans with fire and bloodshed.

Amongst all this Jesus is born of the Blessed Virgin Mary into this world to deliver us all. Jesus’ followers and St. Paul later say to the world: this man, this God-Man, is the capital “c” Christ, the one to come and save all of us. To the Jewish world this is shocking. To those who expected many anointed leaders to eventually save the Children of Israel, St. Paul is saying “Stop looking!” The Christ came and already freed us – you just refuse to see it!” To the more radical Jews he tells them “You misunderstood! The Christ was not coming to deal with this world with ineffective human means. You expected a Christ with a sword, but God in His Wisdom sent the Christ to fight with the real enemy: the Devil and his friend Death.”

In case this was not enough, St. Paul adds to this. Not only is Jesus the Christ, but he is the descendant of David.

Those of you who have read through the Bible in its entirety know that you will often encounter genealogies. These long lists that seemingly come out nowhere seem an unimportant distraction to us Christians and we often skip over them. We know that these genealogies were very important to the Jews but we are not sure if they really matter to us. So when we open up the Gospel of Matthew and read the opening verse “An account of the genealogy of Jesus” we often skip right over it. Yet right in this first verse, St. Matthew makes the same point the St. Paul made earlier. That first verse of the Gospel says “Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” (Matt 1:1)

So once again we ask: why is this important? So what if Jesus was a descendent of David?
What it means is that God keeps his promises. God told Abraham “I will make you exceedingly fruitful; I will make nations of you, and Kings shall come from you.” (Gen 17:6) And indeed God did, for the great King David was born of Abraham.

We know that David was a great king who established the ancient kingdom of Israel, but his descendant did a horrible job. The worshiped the false gods of their neighbors and broke almost every promise they had made to God. As a result of all this heresy the kingdom fell and was scattered, only to be rebuilt and then conquered again! Yet the Jews knew this was not the end of the story. Psalm 89 tells us that God said “I have made a covenant with my chosen one, I have sworn an oath to David my servant: I will establish your line forever, and preserve your throne for all generations.” (Ps 89:3-4)

To the those who said “God has forsaken us, God promised that David’s throne and line would last forever, yet here we are in ruin!” St Paul says “No He hasn’t! David’s line came to its fulfillment in Jesus, who has become the great High Priest, greater than David ever was, and has freed us from the grip of this fallen world!”

Now these two statements, that Jesus is the Christ and the descendant of David are pretty radical but what is the boldest of all, is when St. Paul says that Jesus was raised from the dead. Now here is a statement that is still shocking to us today, just as much as it was when St. Paul made it: Jesus was raised from the dead! St. Paul was very clear about what had happened. This was no symbol, no metaphor, but a reality. Jesus was killed by us, by all mankind, on the cross and he suffered the death that all mankind was subject too. But then, on the third day, the tomb was found empty. The flesh and bones put in the tomb, gone. And as St. Mary Magdalene and the Apostles saw, this flesh and bone that had been really, truly, dead, was now alive again! And not in the reanimated way that Dr. Frankenstein’s monster had, but capital “R” Resurrection flesh and blood that had beat death, hallowed Hades, and come again amongst the living , then fully assumed to sit at the right hand of the Father.

It is no wonder that St. Paul called this all a “stumbling block to the Jews and a foolishness to the Gentiles.” (1 Cor 1:23) That was true yesterday just as much as it s today. We hear today from people who say “I just can’t believe in a religion that thinks some guy actually rose from the dead.” And sadly, ever from within parts of the Church we hear, “Well, the resurrection was a metaphor, or it has been misunderstood – the Resurrection was only Jesus’ spirit!” To these objections then and now, St. Paul says “No! Jesus literally died, and literally rose from the dead, all of Him!”

So this then is our faith: Jesus the Christ. Jesus came to save us all. Not to save us from the grip of the Greeks or Romans – but to save us from the death that awaited us all after Adam’s transgression and the damaged relationship with God that followed. Jesus, the Christ, came and undid the results of the fall and gave us a new and perfected relationship with God.

This also is our faith: Jesus, the descendant of David. God has invited us into several covenants, where we promise to serve God and He in turn promised to deliver us. We broke our promises to God, but God never broke His, He still continues the line of David just as He said He would in the Jesus the High Priest of the Kingdom of God.

Finally, this too is our faith: Jesus was raised from the dead. We all were destined for a death that separated us from each other and from God, but Jesus undid this. Jesus trampled down the Devil and Death, removing Death’s sting, allowing us to be united into His own death and resurrection so that we too might be delivered from the land of the Dead to join Him at the Heavenly Altar.

My Brothers and Sisters: Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David-- that is THE Gospel.

Proper 20C - Catholic Biblical Interpretation

Proper 20C - Luke 16:1-13
Many people can tell you without a moment’s hesitation what their favorite parable is. Most often it is the Good Shepherd or the Good Samaritan. For all the times I have heard people tell me what their favorite parable is, not one person has ever mention this one: the Parable of Steward.
Mother Ede and I have a schedule of preaching that allows us to usually preach every other week. This gives me the luxury of sitting with my text for two weeks before I preach on it. A little over two weeks ago, while setting up for a wedding, I peeked ahead in the Gospel book, and saw that this parable was in the lectionary for today. I saw Mother Ede later in the day and remarked to her that my least favorite section of all the Gospels was on deck for today. That is the honest truth: of any portion of the Gospels to proclaim to you all , this would be my last choice. And I have been working through this parable for the past two weeks.
I remember hearing a sermon at seminary on this lesson where one of my professors got in the pulpit and essentially said “I hate this parable!” And he went on stated his problem with it – from a surface reading, this parable seems to say that out of nowhere Jesus is praising immoral business practices. I confess that I don’t remember much more of his sermon. I was too busy being shocked by the fact that he was honest enough to admit to the congregation that he was really struggling with the Gospel that day. I decided that I too, would do my best to always be honest when I found a text difficult in my sermons.
There are times when preachers look at a text and say “I just don’t know that I have anything to say about this today.” Other times, they look at the text and say plainly “I don’t want to preach on this text.” I am in the second group today. I find this parable challenging to the point that I feel that if I am going to tackle it, I need to first teach for about a year on topics including Biblical interpretation, first century Judaism, Imperial Roman economics and the particulars of St. Luke’s community.
However, I don’t have that option. I also don’t have the option of choosing something else. I am obedient to a long standing Church tradition in which the Church chooses the texts. Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, and some Presbyterians, Lutherans, Unitarians and northern Baptist churches have this same text this morning. All of us preacher must some present this text to our congregations today. How each preacher deals with the text will depend in part on whether they come from a Liberal Humanist tradition, a Protestant tradition or a Catholic tradition of Scriptural interpretation.
For those coming from the Liberal Humanist tradition, Scripture is often seen as a human attempt to deal with the divine. It sees Scripture as an entirely dependent on premodern ethics and world views, and must always be understood to be of human origin. Preachers from this perspective do their best to relate the scripture to a modern context if they can, and leave behind what doesn’t fit in our modern perspective.
Many coming from Protestant backgrounds that began during the 17th through 19th centuries have almost the exact opposite approach as their Liberal Humanist brethren. They see Scripture as the explicit and clear word of God, divinely given to a human writer without error. Because of this, scripture is plain and clear to all who read it, and mankind was meant to read scripture, and see the clear meaning in it, with no need for any other person to tell him what it means.
We Episcopalians come from the Catholic tradition. Like most things Anglican and Catholic, we are somewhere in between the two extremes I mentioned. We too believe that Scripture was written by men in previous times who were beholden to their culture. They wrote with the words of their communities, and conformed their writing to the literary genres of the time. We also believe that God is the true author of Scripture because He divinely inspired it’s writers in order to communicate His saving Truth through it. When you put this all together this means that every word in the Holy Scriptures is in there for a reason, and it contains the Truth. However, it also means that to be properly understood, it must be read in community, in light of the human author’s particular way of conveying the Truth. After all, Scripture was written with the intention that it would be read before groups of people. This community that we read it in is vast. We read it in the community that is Holy Tradition. We see how our brothers and sisters in the past have explained and interpreted the Scriptures to their smaller communities. We look at how it has informed our theology, how it has been enacted in liturgy. We stand back and look for the ways the Holy Spirit has guided the Church in its understanding of Scripture. When we come to views on Scripture that have been accepted by the Church both East and West, we see a sign that the Spirit is at work.
So with this all in mind we come back to today’s challenging Gospel passage. On the surface, we hear the story of a financial manger for a rich person who is about to be dismissed by his master. Knowing he is about to lose his job, the manager goes to everyone who owes him money and tells them they own him less now. When the rich man finds out what his financial manager has done, he commends him for his shrewd financial actions. Jesus then tells his disciples that the unfaithful people of His day are more shrewd than the people of faith. Jesus then seems to commend this example to us but then ends with a saying we know well: “You cannot serve God and wealth.”
Read directly on its own, and in isolation, it is easy to see how you could read this story in think that in certain cases, Jesus actually appears to condone sneaky and dishonest business practices in certain circumstances. Yet, when we read Jesus’ direct statement that one cannot serve God and wealth, this interpretation seems ruled out.
So, going back to our Catholic tradition of interpretation, we know we must look for issues that were important to Jesus’ followers in the early first century. Jesus lived in a Judea that was occupied by the Romans. The Romans had a vast empire that supported a systematized economy on a scale that was unseen before. In Jesus’ time a middle class had arisen, the merchant class. This class raised itself up by making a profit, not just scraping by. Just as today, Jesus and St. Luke’s community saw a difference in how people were treated according to the amount of their wealth. In His parables and stories Jesus also spoke a lot about those who were in charge of the Temple worship, because they abused their power, often to gain money. The pursuit of ill-begotten gains and the abuses of the religious authorities became metaphors for each-other in Jesus’ preaching.
Knowing that Jesus used speech about money as a metaphor, combined with His stinging statement on the incompatibility of serving God and wealth, eliminates the possibility that Jesus is actually praising bad business practices. So we now know that we are hearing a metaphor.
Many scholars, preachers and teachers have written articles and chapters trying to figure exactly what the best interpretation of this metaphorical parable is. When we have so many options in interpretation our Catholic tradition bids us to look back at what the Church and the Church Fathers have said about this parable. Many of the Church Fathers have agreed that what Jesus is actually speaking of is the undeserved gift we all have – the Love of God and the salvation He purchased us – even though we are the ones who betrayed God.
God is the Steward who rewrites our bills, out debt owed to God for our transgressions. We are the debtors, and we incurred that debt in Adam’s fall. Jesus is the steward who comes to us unexpectedly and says to us “You owe the Father everything, but I will I grant you a favor! I will reduce your debt to this: all you must do is believe in Me and live a life bearing the fruits of that belief. I cancel the debt that you owe the Father when you disobeyed Him and chose yourself over Him.” Our responsibility then is to live up to this great act. The Church Father Origen tells us “If God rewrites our documents of sin, do no rewrite what God has blotted out.” (Ancient Commentary, III:254)
There are many other thoughts from the Church Fathers on this parable. Some have seen this parable as admonition to distribute alms to all. Some have seen it as an explanation that the gifts you have from God are temporary and must be used for good while you have the chance.
I have shown my preference for interpreting this parable, but I won’t tell you that one of these interpretations of the Church Fathers is more correct than the other. The fact that there are several good ways to explain this parable in our Tradition is the beauty of Catholic Tradition. We have a way of looking at scripture that shows that it is a living, breathing thing. We read it and we are compelled to think about it, to speak about it, to ask about it. We are forced to ask our brethren who lived centuries ago what they made of it.
That is why, in the end, I am glad the Church in her wisdom gave me this Parable this morning. Now, it is still not my favorite Parable, and it is not the text I am going to point an atheist to first. Yet this parable was handed down to me today and made me think hard about what it means to proclaim Scripture as the true word of God. It reminded me of the depth our tradition and just how privileged I am that the Church has asked me to delve into Scripture daily, and share my love of it with you.

John Henry Newman's Tract 90

The Patriarch of Rome, Benedict XVI, is visiting England this week and will be officially declaring John Henry Newman to be "Blessed." Before he was Cardinal Newman, he was The Rev. Newman, leading Anglican theologian of the Oxford (Catholic) Movement, in the The Church of England in the mid 1800's. He was essentially booted from the Church for his infamous Tract 90, a tract defending the 39 Articles as compatible with the Council of Trent. Newman's opinions on the Eucharist got him in some of the biggest trouble. Here is my humble defense of Newman's thoughts on Article XXVIII:

John Henry Newmans’ Tract XC

In 1841, John Henry Newman issued Tract XC, a commentary on certain parts of the XXXIX Articles of Religion that caused such a great controversy it effectively ended his career in the Church of England. In this tract, Newman discussed 12 of the articles and explained how they could be interpreted in a way that does not contradict catholic theology. Newman’s Tract XC was deemed radical and over the top, and dangerously close in theology to a Roman Catholic document.

The following focuses on Newman’s commentary on Article XXVIII (Of The Lord’s Supper), which also included references to Article XXIX (Of the Wicked, which eat not the Body of Christ in the use of the Lord's Supper). I beleive that Newman’s interpretation of Article XXVIII was not nearly as radical or as incompatible with traditional Anglican doctrine as it was said to be by Neman’s contemporaries. By comparing Newman’s Tract XC with Bishop Edward Browne’s An Exposition of The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion , published in two volumes between 1850 and 1853[1] and Charles Hardwick’s A History of the Articles of Religion, which was published in 1851. I will endeavor to show that Newman’s assertions do not conflict with non-Tractarian commentaries of the same time period on the same article.

John Henry Newman was a member of a group of scholars at Oxford University in England who began issuing tracts, entitled Tracts For The Times. The tracts, and the general theology of the group of scholars, sought to emphasize the pre-reformation catholic roots of the Church of England, and the powers and duties of the church that were due to the church owing to its maintained Apostolic Succession and Episcopal structure. They pursued this theology to defend the church from what they saw as an overly secular and liberal leaning church and society in general in England. Due to the tracts they published, they earned the name of “Tractarians”[2]

The last of the tracts to be issued was Tract XC. Newman and his fellow Oxford scholars had come under the increasing scrutiny by the leaders of The Church of England since the first tract had been published in 1833.[3] By the time Tract XC was released, the criticism against Newman and the other authors of the Tracts had reached a fever pitch. Although Tract XC was published anonymously, it was no secret that Newman was the author. C. Brad Faught, in his book “The Oxford Movement,” states that “The theological opinion that Newman took in the tract was hardly radical, however…But the timing of Newman’s tract was all wrong.”[4] In the aftermath of the storm that arose around Tract XC, Newman eventually withdrew from public and eventually left the Church of England for the Roman Catholic Church.

If we look past the hysterics that surrounded the tract, we can see that indeed it was not all that radical, and the opinions and not all that dissimilar from other commentaries on the articles published in the same time period.

In the beginning of Tract XC’s chapter 8, Newman begins his commentary by defining what he believes is being rejected by the term “transubstantiation.” Newman writes “What is here opposed as “Transubstantiation” is the shocking doctrine that “the body of CHRIST,” as the Article goes on to express it is not “given, taken, and eaten after an heavenly and spiritual manner, but is carnally pressed with the teeth;” that it is a body or substance of a certain figure and disposition of parts, whereas we hold the only substance such, is the bread which we see.”[5]

Newman goes on to say that Article XXIX proves that this is the doctrine being refuted. Newman states that as both St. Augustine and the article speak of “the wicked a “carnally and visibly pressing with their teeth the sacrament of the body and blood of CHRIST,” not the real substance.”[6]

In Bishop Browne’s An Exposition of The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion and Charles Hardwick’s A History of the Articles of Religion, he also begins his commentary on the article by defining Eucharistic theology. Browne defines transubstantiation as “the doctrine of the Church of Rome…that in the Eucharist, after the words of consecration, the whole substance of the bread is converted into the substance of the Body of Christ, and that the substance of the wine into the substance of His Blood….the change is a real and miraculous conversion of the bread and the wine into the very Body of Christ, which was born of the blessed Virgin and crucified on Calvary.”[7]

Charles Hardwick’s A History of the Articles of Religion states that the purpose of the article is to refute the Zwinglians and the “opposite dogma of some physical transubstantiation in the Eucharistic elements….”[8]

Newman and Browne are in agreement that “Transubstantiation” that is rejected by the article is the idea that consecrated elements are Christ’s actual substantive Body and Blood.

Newman goes on to suggest that while this substantive change of the actual bread and wine was the official rejected notion, the framers of the article were actually seeking to counter medieval superstitions that had developed around the Eucharist. Newman gives several examples of the superstition by quoting the works of Bishop Taylor. One of these quotes listed several disturbing images: “Sometimes CHRIST hath appeared in His own shape, and blood and flesh hath been pulled out of the mouths of communicants: and Plegilus, the priest, saw an angel, showing CHRIST to him in the form of a child upon the altar, whom he first took in his arms and kissed, but did eat him up presently in his other shape, in the shape of a wafer.”[9] Newman goes on to quote others to show just how many superstitions arose in the church around what was actually happening at the Eucharist.

Neither Browne nor Hardwick spend much time explaining how out of control superstitious beliefs had become at the time of the writing of the Articles of Religion. If one were looking to find a text to prove what misguided beliefs a doctrine of Transubstantiation could lead do, the Tractarian commentary has more to say on the subject than the “Protestant” commentaries of Browne and Hardwick.

What Newman has provided us with in the first parts of chapter 8 are an unequivocal rejection of the notion of Transubstantiation that was in wide held belief at the time of the Article first appearance in 1553.[10] The fact that Newman’s condemnatation was so strong yet garnered so much outrage shows that Newman’s writing were probably being read with a suspicion that wasn’t attached to work of on non-Tractarians. A key difference in the handling of Transubstantiation between Newman and Browne, is that Browne assign this belief specifically to the Roman Catholic Church as an official position, while Newman simply shows it to be a wide spread idea that had been held by Christians of the time. Newman never assigns the doctrine as an official position to the Roman Catholic Church, because in his mind the Roman Catholic Church had yet to adopt the classic doctrine of Transubstantiation.

Newman argues that because the articles were first published in 1553, had had taken years to formulate, they could not be written against the official doctrine of Transubstantiation because that doctrine was officially formulated by The Council of Trent, which did not end until 1563, ten years after the first publication of this Article XVIII.[11]

This logic must have seemed suspicious to the Tractarianism opposition, especially when they already considered Newman’s theology Roman Catholic. However, when Newman’s denunciation of Transubstantiation is read against Browne’s, it seems that Newman has not actually said anything that conflicts with the Protestant interpretation of Article XVIII of the time period. One is left wondering if Newman’s opposition simply saw the word “Transubstantiation” and went after Newman without thoroughly reading and considering it.

In Tract XC, after Newman has described what the article is arguing against, he begins to describe what it is not arguing against, namely, a “Real Presence” in the Eucharist. In a church were communion services had gone from a daily activity to a service that was relegated to a few times a year, any lengthy discussion of what was going on during the services was bound to raise ire. Yet once again, when we put Newman’s arguments for a “Real Presence” up against the commentary of Browne and this historical description of the article’s composition contained in Hardwick’s, we are hard pressed to find an assertion in Newman’s work that isn’t balanced by similar ideas in the other two works.

Newman makes that transition between his arguments with: “We see then, that, by transubstantiation, our Article does not confine itself to any abstract theory, nor aim at any definition of the word substance, nor in rejecting it, rejects a word, nor in denying a “mutation panis et vini,” is denying every kind of change….”[12]

Newman then goes on to explain in Tract XC what the sacrament that is referred to in Articles XXVIII and XXIX is, if is not the actual Body and Blood of Christ. By the end of the Tract, Newman argues for “a real super-local presence in the Holy Sacrament,”[13] but refutes imagined arguments against a theory of a real presence before he concludes that it is the natural conclusion of the Articles and 1662 The Book of Common Prayer, to which the Articles must not contradict.

Newman was not alone in suggesting that Article XXVIII suggests a real presence in the Sacrament. In A History of the Articles of Religion, Hardwick explains that the original version of what we now know as Article XXVIII originally contained an additional section condemning the notion of any presence in the Sacrament. The fact that the paragraph was proves that there is a history in the Church of England of not asserting there is no presence in the Sacrament.

Newman begins by analyzing the explanation appended to the Communion service in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The explanation instructs the communicants to kneeling while receiving, rejects the notion of a corporal presence in the elements and concludes that “For the sacramental bread and wine remain still in their very natural substances….and the natural body and blood of our SAVIOUR CHRIST are in heaven, and not here, it being against the truth of CHRIST’S natural body to be at one time in more places than one.”[14] Newman argues that Homilies, which are enjoined to the Church by the Articles, speak of a presence in the Sacrament. In order for the Articles, Homilies, and The Book of Common Prayer to not contradict themselves, Newman is left to now answer the question: “How can there be a presence, yet not a local one?”[15]

Hardwick also came up with the same question. While disusing the dropped clause of Article XXVIII that had rejected any presence, Hardwick states: “The ejected clause had also opened an ulterior question…whether the humanity of our Lord, as now glorified, is so absolutely and inseparably associated with His Divinity, that we are justified in speaking of His Body as present in many places at one and the same time.”[16]

Newman goes on to explain what meaning of presence is. He believes that this they key to understanding how “He is really here, yet not locally”[17] in the Sacrament. Newman explains that the Article isn’t speaking of material presence, but Spiritual presence. Newman argues that spiritual presence is different from a local or physical presence, and is not bound by the same rules of distance. Newman explains that Divine Grace and spiritual presence are akin, and we never speak of distance when speaking of the reach of Divine Grace.

If we are not speaking of a corporal presence in the Sacrament, but a spiritual sprence, it make no matter that Christ’s natural body is at the right hand of the Father, for His spiritual presence isn’t hedged by the same restriction so distance. Newman argues that once the problems of our ability to phrase what we mean is overcome, we can now see that “CHRIST’S Body and Blood are locally present at God’s right hand, yet really present here,- present here, but not here in place,- because they are spirit.”[18] With this understanding, there is no longer any conflict between the explanation appended to the Communion service and a doctrine of a real presence.

Newman concludes by insisting that while he has come to the conclusion that a real presence is suggested, it is not the only one possible. Newman states: “Let it be carefully observed, that I am not proving or determining any thing; I am only showing how it is that certain propositions which at first sight seem contradictions in terms, are not so – I am but pointing out one way of reconciling them…It seems at first sight a mere idle use of words to say that CHRIST is really and literally, yet not locally, present in the Sacrament; that He is there given to us, not in figure but in truth, yet is still only on the right hand of God. I have wished to remove this seeming impossibility.”[19]

Newman seemed so cautious to assert the possibility that there could a notion of the real presence could be sustained by Article XXVIII the named and argued the objections to his conclusion before he had even really stated it. Yet as radical as the claim may seem by the way Newman presents it, other scholars where ready to unequivocally state that the Church of England supports the doctrine of a real presence.

In Browne’s commentary on Article XXVIII he states that “The doctrine of a real, spiritual presence is the doctrine of the English Church, and was the doctrine of Calvin and of many reformers.”[20] With this sentence, Browne links the conclusion that Newman has stated in Tract XC with the doctrine of Calvin. This is starling connection when one considers that that accusation against Newman and the other Tractarians was that they were theologically as far from Calvin’s Geneva as they could get, yet here Newman and Calvin are shown to hold a common doctrine on the Eucharist!

Browne goes on to describe this real, spiritual presence in a similar fashion to Newman’s explanation. Browne explains that the doctrine “teaches that Christ is really received by faithful communicants in the Lord’s Supper; but that there is no gross or carnal, but only spiritual and heavenly presence there, not the less real, however, for being spiritual….The result of which doctrine is this: its is bread, and it is Christ’s Body.”[21]

Browne later goes on to make a statement that that seems much more controversial than Newman’s, and opposes his Newman’s assertion that received notion of Transubstantiation in the 16^th century was a superstitious degradation of a real presence doctrine. Browne states: “Here is the question; and it must be carefully noted. If there were no alternative, but that the fathers must have been either Papists or Zuinglians, - must have held either a carnal presence, or none at all, than we must acknowledge that they believed in a carnal presence, and were transubstantialists.”[22] Browne goes on to explain that a version of the doctrine of the real presence might also have been possible of the early father, but he does not seem as convinced of that. Much of the English Reformation’s zeal was to return to the faith of the fathers, and here is Browne has attributed a belief to them that Newman did not dare to in his Tract.

Once compared against his contemporaries, Newman’s assertions in Tract XC do not to appear to be nearly as radical as they were thought to be at the time. It seems that some of Newman’s more Protestant contemporaries were actually making similar if not more emphatic statements that in the end, both Article XXVIII and XXIX logically lead to a doctrine of a real presence.

Wild assumptions where made about Newman and Tract XC when it was first published. Future Archbishop of Canterbury A. C, Tait feared that young men would read the tract and be persuaded to leave the Church of England for the Roman Catholic Church. Tait even accused Newman of raising “curious questions” that were not relevant.[23] If young men of the church were being persuaded to leave the Church of England, it certainly was not over Newman’s Eucharistic theology, as Neman’s theology has been shown to be consistent with Calvin’s according to Browne’s work.

In the end Newman’s work was banned by the board of Oxford University. Newman was also brought up on Episcopal Charges over the purported erroneous theology contained in Tract XC. After being harassed by Bishops and the leaders of the Church of England, Newman slipped out of the public eye into seclusion. A few years later, after ruminating on the evolution of his beliefs, and still dealing with the public mockery he had incurred, Newman left the Church of England to join the church he felt truly called to; the Roman Catholic Church.

It would seem that Newman was never judged fairly for his work. While other parts of Tract XC were more radical than the section on Article XXIX was, in its entirety, it wasn’t nearly the subversive nor the Roman Catholic document it was decried as being.

A comparison of Newman’s work with his contemporaries, at least on Article XXIX just do not support the accusations leveled against Newman. Tract XC was a victim of it it’s timing. Had it been published earlier in Newman’s career, it might not have gone down in history as the controversial document as it was. Chadwick writes that the fate of Tract XC was for it to spark a “declaration of war on the part of the Oxford authorities against the Tractarian party. The suspicion, alarms, antipathies, jealousies, which had long been smoldering among those in power had at last take shape in a definite act.”[24] When all this is removed, and nothing is left but the document itself, the declaration of war seems much less warranted.

[1] Dr. Robert Prichard

[2] Michael Chandler, An Introduction to the Oxford Movement (New York: Church Publishing Inc., 2003), 1-16.

[3] C. Brad Faught, The Oxford Movement (University Park, IL: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 15.

[4] Faught, The Oxford Movement, 93.

[5] John Henry Newman, Tract Number Ninety (1841; repr., New York: H.B. Durand, 1865), 77.

[6]Newman, 77.

[7]Edward Harold Browne, An Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles (1865; repr., N.p.: Classical Anglican Press, 1998), 683-684.

[8] Charles Hardwick, A History of the Articles of Religion (1851; repr.; London: George Bell & Sons, 1876), 103.

[9] Newman, Tract Ninety, 78.

[10] Hardwick, A History of the Articles of Religion, XV.

[11] Chandler, An Introduction to the Oxford, 56.

[12] Newman, Tract Ninety, 83.

[13] Newman, Tract Ninety, 95.

[14] Newman, Tract Ninety, 86.

[15] Newman, Tract Ninety, 86.

[16] Hardwick, 136-137.

[17] Newman, Tract Ninety, 88

[18] Newman, Tract Ninety, 91.

[19] Newman, Tract Ninety, 94.

[20] Browne, 684.

[21] Browne, 684.

[22] Browne, 685.

[23] Chandler, 57.

[24] Chadwick, 56.