Liturgical Piety Archives - All Saints Anglican Church, Charlottesville VA

October 4, 2016 By Fr. Spencer

Sermon for Trinity XIX

“And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing. The neighbours therefore, and they which before had seen him that he was blind, said, Is not this he that sat and begged? Some said, This is he: others said, He is like him: but he said, I am he. Therefore said they unto him, How were thine eyes opened? He answered and said, A man that is called Jesus made clay, and anointed mine eyes, and said unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam, and wash: and I went and washed, and I received sight. Then said they unto him, Where is he? He said, I know not.” John 9: 1-12

This is a continuation of our study of the Gospel of John. We are just entering chapter nine today. There is no break between the narratives of chapter eight and nine. Jesus walked, without a scratch, through the middle of the rulers who were about to stone him, to a road by the Temple. At which point he and his disciples passed by a man who was blind from birth. The manner of their questioning indicates that they were not hightailing it for their life, but rather in their usual manner, walking toward some destination. Their question is one that people were asking back then and for that matter today as well. But Jesus deflects the question about the origin of the man’s blindness and simply says that what was about to be manifested in this man’s life is the glory of God. This man is a real man, yes; with real parents, yes. But he is also representative of every Jew and eventually we can say he is representative of Everyman. But we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves and sanitize the narrative. First of all this Jewish man was born blind. His neighbors identified him as the blind beggar and though some of his neighbor said he looks very much like the blind beggar they were not sure. “But I am he,” the beggar declared. Later on we will meet his parents who will positively identify him as their son who was born blind. Blind from birth, he had never seen anything. He did not regain his sight — he had no sight to regain. When Jesus healed him it was a matter of the blind man receiving “that which by nature he did not have,” namely the ability to see with his eye. What Jesus did was not contrary to nature, but rather Jesus perfected nature in the man born blind.

The emphasis upon the man’s congenital blindness is important. Why blind from birth? Why not just blind? This is what you should take away: the man’s congenital blindness is another way of saying what Jesus said to Nicodemus — that a man must be born again to see the Kingdom of God. How so? The true child of Abraham is not one who has recovered what he has lost, rather he is one who has received “that which by nature he did not have.” The Christian is not one who has recovered his sight but rather he is the one who has for the first time ever seen things the way they really are. He has not recovered a lost liberty, he has come to the Son of the Father and the Son set him free for the first time ever.

There was a British heretic in the Church in the day of St. Augustine whose name was Pelagius. In fact he was well known through out the Church and he was very popular, much more popular than his arch-enemy Augustine. He was accused of teaching that men and women did not need God’s grace to perform good works that were pleasing to God because though human beings had been soiled, smeared, stained by Adam’s sin, a good washing would clean them up. Pelagius, we are told, taught that no permanent damage was done to humankind by sin and if we muster up sufficient will power God will clean us up. It was a matter of washing off the dirty smudge that sin has left upon us. If one were to work in the fields all day and come home with muddy feet and splattered clothing all one has to do is to wash it away and be more careful next time.

In the Mass we all prayer the Prayer of Humble Access:

“We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are no worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under our thy Table. But thou are the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.”

Now Pelagius would understand that prayer to mean we simply need to wash the dirt away because underneath that surface of dirt is a sparkling, fresh, free will. No real damage has been done men and women and our natural piety is sufficient to keep us from sinning and to please God. The Sacrament of the Altar washes away the surface stain of sin because we need nothing deeper. Thus Pelagius taught that what the Church called Original Sin did no lasting harm that we couldn’t fix ourselves. He would not like our Collect for Trinity XIX: “O God, forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee; Mercifully grant that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” According to Pelagius, all men and women by nature, apart from the sacraments of the Church, have a free will and thus the ability to avoid sin and please God. St. Augustine and Catholic Church said, “no” to Pelagius. Man is not free. The Fall has wounded us deep inside of ourselves; and those wounds and lacerations have crippled and blinded us so that we cannot avoid sin and please God without God supernatural intervention.

But Christians by definition have received God grace through Holy Baptism. Baptism is the grace of God that regenerates men and women, but not by merely washing off a stain. When we were baptize we were born again, infused with the virtues of faith, hope, and charity, grafted into Christ’s Church, and the Holy Spirit made us his Temple. And yet we all know by hard experience that the wounds of the Fall are still in our life — the difference being that now we have the ability to resist sin and please God and as we receive more of God’s grace the wounds are being healed. So rather than thinking that the precious blood of Christ is simply washing off grime, realize that the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar is washing out the wounds of the Fall. Just as the Good Samaritan took the man who was nearly beaten to death and “bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine,” so our Lord pours his healing life-giving blood into our wounds, and he seals in the medicine of his blood with the oil of the Holy Spirit. When we declare that baptism bestows upon the child, “that which by nature he cannot have,” we do not mean that baptism is contrary to the nature of a human being, but rather that the sacrament of Baptism completes, perfects our human nature. And that cannot be without God’s supernatural intervention. When Jesus gave sight to the man who was born blind he perfected the man’s nature, he did not restore something he had lost through his own sins or the sin’s of his parents.

“Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool… He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.”

This Jewish man was born blind. He had heard his mother and father call his name and felt their loving embrace as they helped him walk. He had heard the birds of the sky singing and he has heard the bushes and flowers of the field rustling. He has smelled the odor of the lilies and the holiness of incense in the Temple. But he had never seen anything in his life. When Jesus healed him it was a matter of the blind man receiving “that which by nature he did not have,” namely the ability to see with his eye. He did not regain his sight — he had no sight to regain. Jesus did not contradict nature, but rather Jesus perfected this man’s nature. The Christian is not one who has recovered his sight but rather he is the one who for the first time ever may see things the way they really are. As I said at the beginning, the fact of the man’s congenital blindness is another way of grasping what Jesus said to Nicodemus — that a man must be born again to see the Kingdom of God. The true child of Abraham is not one who has recovered what he lost, rather he is one who has been born again with God as his Father and the Church as his Mother.

August 3, 2016 By Fr. Spencer

Sermon for Trinity X

Thomas Aquinas - 1600 — Thomas Aquinas – 1600

“Jesus went unto the mount of Olives. And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them. And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.” John 8: 1-11

This morning we are continuing our study of the Fourth Gospel and I want to begin by making a few comments concerning Jesus’ baffling conversation with his male kinsmen in Chapter 7 and then look at the narrative of the woman caught in adultery at the beginning of Chapter 8. These two texts provide us with examples of how theological instruction developed in the Church and especially how theological studies became systematic. Before we go to the Fourth Gospel, let us look here first. In the early medieval university, first in Paris, then Oxford, and then Cambridge, lectures focused on reading and learning the Church’s texts. The most important, indeed, frequently the only texts were the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. The discipline came to be called sacra doctrina. Sacra Doctrina was not first the study of sacred doctrine as in sacred dogma, but first it was the study of the texts of the Old & New Testaments. In the beginning the lectures were simply a matter of reading the text out loud accompanied by interpretations of the narratives and precepts as well as explanations of the syntax, grammar, and the vocabulary of the of St. Jerome’s Vulgate — his translation of the Old & New Testament. Western universities all started out as Bible colleges.

As a taproot is the main root of a living plant that grows deep and vertically downward, forming the center of the plant from which all other subsidiary roots spring, so the Old and the New Testaments form the taproot of Western culture even if most people in the West have forgotten it. Forgetfulness is a deadly wound. I’ve told this story before but it illustrates: I will never forget an undergraduate class in literature when we came upon a poem that referred to one being swallowed up by a great whale. The professor stopped and asked, “What do you think the poet is referencing?” And then from the back of the class a student said, in all seriousness, “Would it be Pinocchio?” I am not making that up and I am not making fun of that person. Maybe he was having one on us. Who knows? But listen to me — we live in a world that is adrift in forgetfulness and that is a fearful and pathetic state of being. A truly common life is impossible for those who carried out to the sea of forgetfulness. In that state of being temporal powers will enforce a “coerced life” while calling it a “common life.” But let us not stray any further and let us get back to the matter at hand.

In addition to the Bible, the writings of the Church Fathers, both Eastern & Western, which were largely explications of Scripture, constituted a second lower tier of important texts. If you, in your mind’s eye, will imagine yourself in Paris or Oxford in a classroom with other students, this is what would be happening: your professor would be reading the Bible of St. Jerome’s Latin and he would be lecturing in Latin while at other times he would be reading one of the Fathers out loud. You and your fellow students would be furiously writing down both the texts and the master’s comments. He would explain the meaning of the words and the sense of the text, but he would have paid special attention to points where the Scriptures presented different and apparently contradictory statements and narratives. But there was no book as such that dealt with these disputed questions. These were the professor’s marginal notations, sentences on the tops and bottoms of the page and in between the sentences of the text that the lecturer would use as his notes. These disputed points and contradictions came to be call “the sentences” (sententis). Peter Abelard’s (1079 – 1142) Yes and No (Sic et Non) is a compilation of the apparent contradictions in the Bible along with possible explanations — not only his explanations, but all the Fathers of the Church he could find who had commented on the issue he was addressing.

After Abelard there was another “Peter,” Peter Lombard (1096 – 1164) who took theological education to a higher viewpoint with his Four Books of Sentences, another collection of contradictory positions and counter-positions on sacred doctrine. Lombard’s Sentences would be well over 1,000 pages in today’s book-world. The Sentences became the text book for theology in the fledgling medieval Universities of Paris (1150), Oxford (1196), and Cambridge (1209), and it continued to be used as the primary textbook up to the seventeenth century. No one, not even Calvin or Luther, could escape the Lombard. The Sentences organized the conflicting theological positions and counter-positions held by Church authorities in four Books. Books I — III dealt with what he called Reality: Book I treats the Trinity, Book II treats of Creation, Book III treats Christ and Virtues. Book IV he called Signs and it treats of the Sacraments. Theological students were required to produce a commentary on Lombard’s Sentences as the lion’s share of the examination process. At the end of the university lectures on The Sentences, which was usually several years, the student could apply to the theological faculty for bachelor status by presenting your own commentary on The Sentences. If the faculty approved your commentary on Lombard you were rewarded the bachelor’s degree. You can purchase Thomas Aquinas’ Commentary on the Sentences from Amazon.

Why do I tell you all this? I tell you this because if you were to read or listen to some people today talk about the “problems of the Bible,” they might give you the impression that low and behold in our enlightened, scientific era the scales have fallen from our eyes and we see the contradictions in Scripture and the Church as no one else has ever seen them thanks to the almighty but always undefined “scientific revolution.” You might get the impression that in our day no one, not even Jesus, eludes the fearless “fact checker.” It would be a good idea for some of these so-called scholars to get down from their high horse and do a little fact checking of their own facts. Some of these scholars are simply not intellectually honest. Some set up straw men problems while giving the impression that the Fathers and the Doctors of the Church have swept ugly truths under the rug, while all along it is the rug of some contemporary so-called scholars that has a mounds of hidden facts underneath. Men like Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas were so intensely attentive to reality they frequently disturbed their students, while our boy-scholars of today have less in common with Lombard and Aquinas and more in common with Pokemon Go because they have constructed an augmented, virtual, reality in which they slay virtual contradictions of their own making. This is what happens when we are adrift in forgetfulness.

Let us get back to our texts and the really real. First please recall the conversation between Jesus and his male kinsmen. They were preparing to go up to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles at which time they tried to get Jesus to go up with them and to really pour it on with signs and wonders so as to not only encourage and cement his sagging following, but also to increase his numbers. Jesus tells his male kinsmen that they are soulmates with this world — this world whose horizon is truncated by materialism. But then he goes on to say,

“You go up to the feast. I go not yet up to the feast for my time is not yet come.”

And then we are told that after his kinsmen left him behind, Jesus, about mid-week, went up to the feast secretly. The problem is that the word “yet” is not in most manuscripts. Thus when Jesus tells his kinsmen that he is not going up to the feast when in fact he does go up secretly it sounds as though he has lied to his kinsmen. On the basis of this statement Neoplatonists around the day of Jerome and Augustine charged Jesus with deceiving his kinsmen and it is easy enough to see the logic of their accusation.

In our day and time there a few modern teachers who have asserted that Jesus did lie to his kinsmen and he did so in order to present to us an example of what they call a “good lie,” instructing us that there are times when telling lies may be holy. For example, if you had lived in Germany in the 1930s and if Nazis had come to your door and asked you where the Jews in your neighborhood were living it would be appropriate to lie in order to accomplish the good and save their Jewish neighbors. I reply, first of all that Jesus did not lie to nor did he mislead his kinsmen. Secondly, there is no such good object to be obtained from a lie in this narrative about his kinsmen anyway. And finally, we hardly need an example of our Lord and Savior lying in order to know that we should not have told Nazis where Jews were hiding.

There is a second approach which focuses rightly upon the word “yet.” There would be no problem at all if Jesus said, “I go not yet up to the feast,” since that little word “yet” is a very big qualifier. The word “yet” (oupo) does appear in most manuscripts but it does appear in the oldest ones. St. John Chrysostom held this understanding of the John 7:8.

A third approach others have made in order to understand this phrase is that the words, “I go not up to the feast,” or “I go not up yet to the feast,” in either case, is in the present tense indicative and do not necessarily have to be taken as Jesus’ intention for the future — and that is exactly right. Thus, I submit to you that the meaning would be, “I will not go up to this festival day,” “that is,” as St. Thomas Aquinas says, “not today with you because my time is not come.” I conclude that the second and third approach both make good sense to me and are not mutually exclusive. The fact of the matter is the word “yet” as in “I go not yet up to the feast” is contained in the oldest texts. But even if that were not the case the statement is in the present indicative and that means “I am not going with you at this present time” and that solves the problem. Jesus did not deceive his kinsmen. But one final note: If my explanation does not satisfy your conscience on this matter please come by and let’s spend some time pondering the Word of God, let us make more time for this important issue. We cannot live with easy half-answers that sweep problems under the rug; such half-truths only create bigger problems for us down the road.

Now I will have to end here before we get into the beginning for chapter 8 and the narrative of the woman taken in adultery. This narrative too presents us with what Lombard and Aquinas would have called a “disputed question.” But unlike the problem we have just looked at where the earliest biblical texts support the use of a word that changes the meaning entirely, the story of the woman caught in adultery cannot be found in the earliest text we have. “Why not,” you rightly ask? To compound the problem some newer translations, like for example the Revised English Translation, have taken the astonishing path of removing it from the John chapter 8 and placing it in a footnote. It matters not who these scholars are or what faculties they are members of, they are not the Church and they have no right to take such an action. But we will have to wait till next week to examine the status of the narrative of the woman caught in adultery as well as its precious meaning for the Church. But remember this: forgetfulness will remain our daily bread if we disregard the Bible.

July 6, 2016 By Fr. Spencer

Sermon for Trinity VI

“For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread. And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. But I said unto you, That ye also have seen me, and believe not. All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.

The Jews then murmured at him, because he said, I am the bread which came down from heaven. And they said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? how is it then that he saith, I came down from heaven?” John 6:33-42

We are continuing our study of the Gospel of John. One thing that is occurring over and over again in the Fourth Gospel is what some people in the past have seen as dualisms and they point to motifs like light vs darkness, spirit vs. flesh, Jews vs “the Jews,” life vs death, earthly kings vs the heavenly king, the individual vs the community, and law vs grace. But a true dualism is heretical because it assumes there are two really real but entirely opposite truths manifested in creation that are at war with one another. People who think that way believe that Light is really real while at the same time they believe that Darkness is really real — even apart from Light. They are right about the war. We were baptized to fight manfully as members of the Church, and we also fight individually, personally under the banner of Christ. But this is not a war in which two opposite, really real kingdoms are trying to destroy one another while claiming our loyalty. There is only one Kingdom and that is the Kingdom of the God who is God and the Conquering Lion of that Kingdom is Jesus the Messiah. The other “kingdoms,” those of the world, the flesh, and the devil are rebellious kingdoms and they are already doomed. They only exist because the really real Kingdom of God allows them exist for a time. Take darkness — darkness is really nothing at all except the absence of Light. Jesus said men love darkness because it hides their sins. Light is really real, while darkness is merely the absence of the light. Grace is not the opposite of the Law but rather the Law is a manifestation of grace. And yet the Temple Authorities in the Fourth Gospel expunged grace by means of the Law, so that when Jesus healed a man who had been paralyzed for thirty-eight years on the Sabbath it ignited a firestorm among the Jewish ruling class. And those Jews of the ruling class who hated Jesus and plotted to have him killed — those Jewish authorities would have no existence whatsoever except that they were biologically children of Abraham. Biology does not determine whether or not one is in the Kingdom of God; biology does not determine whether or not one is in touch with Reality. When Jesus told Nicodemus that he had to be born again he was saying that his biological birth as a Jew did not make him a true child of Abraham. Furthermore, in the Gospel of John the individual Christian does not fade away, absorbed into the Body of Christ as though the Church were a totalitarian community, but rather the Church is made up of individually, baptized people who are destined to become more and more distinctive in our identities from one another and yet we are already launched upon a harmonious trajectory that constitutes, not merely a community, but a living organism and a future of glory that will not end, but rather that will continue to flourish and blossoming world without end. The point is made over and over again by Jesus in the Fourth Gospel: there is only one really real truth, goodness, and beauty that is and that is God the Blessed Trinity and all else depends upon God. There is only one Kingdom and that is the Kingdom of the God who is God and the Conquering Lion of that Kingdom is Jesus the Messiah. We either participate in God’s reality or we align ourselves with that which is in rebellion against God and reality itself. The rebellion is a hopeless, dead end ending in oblivion. If we keep that in mind we will understand Jesus’ reaction when they wanted to make he their king.

Chapter six is mostly composed of the sermon Jesus preached to the multitude that had followed him to Capernaum after he had fed them miraculously with a handful of bread and a few small fish. That feeding was not a trick, it was a bonafide miracle by which he multiplied the loaves and fishes till the whole lot had eaten their fill. The next day when they found him with his disciples in Capernaum he began preaching and the first thing he said was that they were doing the right thing but for the wrong reasons. It was right that they should seek Jesus, it was right that they come to Jesus. It was right that the multitude should seek some way to attach themselves to him in a more permanent manner. After Jesus miraculously fed the multitude he realized they would attempt to force him to become their King, the King of Israel, and he left them went to a mountain alone. It is right to come to Jesus since he is the God who is God and he is the only salvation there is; and it is right to seek some permanent attachment to him as well, but their manner of coming to him and the attachment they wanted with him was wrong, sinful, and destructive.

I take Jesus’ interpretation of the crowd’s motives for following him to Capernaum. They wanted a more permanent attachment to Jesus and the best they could come up with was to make him their King of Israel right then and there. A king needs an army and they were ready to follow him and purify Israel by shedding the blood of Romans and their own blood as well. From a few loaves and fishes Jesus could materialize sufficient food to feed five thousand people which is to say he fed a virtual army and if he could materialize food he could materialize anything an army might need.

Those who are drawn to Jesus in wonder and love whether by his miracles, his words, or his love are those make up his Kingdom — a Kingdom not of this world. He said that if his Kingdom was of this world then would his subjects fight to keep him safe from the Romans. But these are not men and women seeking the heart of Jesus, seeking the Shepherd of Love — these are men and women seeking an earthly kingdom, the kind of kingdom that Pilate could grasp and understand. They pled of our Lord that he would reveal to them what the work of God is that they might do, thus offering their services to Jesus, and without skipping a beat he tells them what he has told everyone else over and over again:

“And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. But I said unto you, That ye also have seen me, and believe not. All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.”

Please note that John dedicates the lion’s share of chapter six to Jesus’ interpretation of the miracle these people had just experienced and that explanation is that Jesus himself is the true bread and his blood is the true drink that every man and woman in the world deep within their heart desires and that desire is true and good. Jesus is the Bread that has come down from heaven:

“I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

I pointed out last week that some would even say — Judas for example and most of the people who wanted to make Jesus their King — they would say that Jesus had failed to capitalize upon the opportunity presented to him when they wanted to make him King of Israel.

It is remarkable just how deeply the Jews believed that God would raise up a righteous army to liberate Israel from the Gentiles. Even after Jesus’ resurrection on the day of his Ascension, he gathered with his Apostles and disciples at Mount Olivet when out of the crowd of his sincere followers came the question recorded in Acts:

“When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” Acts 1:6

Some very bad ideas die very slowly. There are no true dualisms. Darkness is merely the absence of light. When men chose to live in the absence of light their lives become shadows of reality. The kingdoms of this world are legitimate only as they participate by the will of God in the reality of the Kingdom of God. When an earthly kingdom makes the God who is God its enemy they begin pretending to be their own gods then they become shadows of the reality they claim to be. If you want to be in touch with reality and to know the truth that will set you free then you must come to Jesus. Christians actually believe, just as Jesus believed, that his personal honor and glory is equal to his Father’s honor and glory. Jesus himself is our salvation, the Life, the Light of God and he outshines and outlast any other claim whatsoever to salvation and happiness. That means that the only reasonable thing to do is to come to Jesus and offer him all your loyalty, all your love, and all your life.