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On the Feast of Corpus Christi, by Archdeacon Stringfellow

At the Church of the Holy Cross in Wilkes-Barre
3 June 2010

In the Name of the True and Living God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
 
Thanks go to Father Daniel Jones and to all the people involved in the celebration of this Feast for the kind invitation to celebrate and to preach this Eucharist. I am grateful indeed. Father Jones is on my mind these days as Sunday will be his last as rector of this parish. He is retiring at least for the second time. Please accept my condolences, Father Jones. I extend my condolences even as I ask his priestly colleagues here tonight to have some pity on him and to extend to him the courtesy and the opportunity from time to time to plead the sacrifice of the Eucharist at one of the altars in their stewardship.
 
What, really, is going on tonight? It’s a warm night in Wilkes-Barre, and I could be doing something else entirely. I could be traveling back to the Wyoming Valley from watching the Yankee game this afternoon in the Bronx. Why did I choose to do this rather than that? The answer to that question is the main point I wish to make, and I plan to take it up after making the briefest trip through renaissance drama and historical theology.
 
Hamlet has a scene where the king, Claudius, is at prayer. Probably he has a lot to bring to the Lord. Claudius likely killed his brother to get the crown and his brother’s wife. He works hard at his prayer, and he makes an effort to repent that would satisfy the most demanding confessor, but the scene ends not with repentance nor with the satisfaction of a deed well done but with this couplet:
 
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts never to heaven go. (III.iii.97-98)
 
Claudius is not able to pray. That terrifies me. It is totally beyond my experience. Think of the possibility that your prayers are not heard for whatever reason, or that there is no one there when you pray. I understand that terrifying possibility as a dramatic representation of one or more of the striking ideas of the Protestant Reformation.
 
Standing silently and stolidly behind Claudius’ inability to pray, I believe, are the twin towers of the Reformation: Luther and Calvin. For Luther and Calvin believe that our wills are not free. Claudius may not be free to pray to God; he may not be free to repent of the sins we believe he committed. In the world of Luther and Calvin’s theology (and much less urgently Saint Augustine’s) we are not free, unaided by prevenient grace, to take a decision that leads to our repentance or to our salvation.
 
For early Protestants Luther solved the mystery of grace and free will when he denied the freedom of the will in De Servo Arbitrio (On the Bondage of the Human Will, 1525), a riposte to Erasmus. In it Luther congratulates Erasmus on having seen that the denial of free will was the foundation of nascent Lutheran theology: “You have not wearied me with all those extraneous issues about the Papacy, purgatory, indulgences and such like—trifles, rather than issues—in respect of which almost all to date have sought my blood (though without success); you, and you alone, have seen the hinge on which all turns, and aimed for the vital spot. For that I heartily thank you” (Packer and Johnston, trans., 1957, p. 319).
 
Luther and Calvin see the human race as not simply losing free will, but as never possessing it. And Calvin’s views on the subject pervade his Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536) where he stresses repeatedly that the human lack of free will is the result of God’s will—a will that has determined, in eternity, what the eternal fate of every person will immutably and irrevocably be, whether for the elect or for the reprobate.
 
Claudius may simply be, very sadly, a theatrical representation in accord with Calvin’s theology of those unfortunates whose reprobation God willed from eternity. Both his attempt to repent and his failure to repent may be part of an awesome decree that withholds from him the grace necessary to repent. Calvin is memorably logical and inflexible on the subject: “Againe I aske: how came it to passe, that the fall of Adam did wrap up in eternall death so many nations with their children being infants, without remedie, but because it so pleased God? Here their tongues which are otherwise so prattling, must of necessity be dumme. It is a terrible decree, I graunt: yet no man shalbe able to denie, but that God foreknewe what end man should have ere he created him, and therefore foreknewe it because he had so ordeined by his decree” (Institutes, III.xxiii.7, Norton, trans., 1582).
 
And so, I return to the original question of this homily: What, really, is going on tonight? Why did I choose to do this rather than go to the game in the Bronx? Why have all of us put aside the other opportunities tonight affords to be here and to celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi? I can answer for myself, and I can hope your consciences allow you to agree or to write your own version.
 
Not very much reformed, I am here and take the occasion of celebrating this Eucharist to give an assent of my will to God and so to continue a relationship and a conversation as old as my consciousness. Any feast, any service of prayer, or any reading of Scripture, of course, is an occasion that may be used similarly. More specifically, by asking God’s blessing on this bread and this wine, I exercise to its fullest extent the agency given me, my free will, for the purpose of carrying out God’s mission in the world that is the reconciliation of the world to God. By pleading the sacrifice of the Eucharist tonight, I ask that this sacrament incorporate all who partake of it into the mystical Body of Christ and that all of us be Christ’s Body in the world that is so desperate for meaning and purpose. I ask God to forgive and to restore all who have erred or sinned to his fellowship and to ours. All of these things are most definitely in play in my intention tonight. The Feast of Corpus Christi is a feast—like any other—whereby our identity as God’s servants and as Christ’s Body may be realized and strengthened. In fact, so many wonderful things are in play tonight, that were they so clearly in play every night, I very well might chose to keep only them in play and never watch a Yankee game again.
 
And now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit be ascribed, as is most justly due, all might, power, dominion, and praise, henceforth and forever more. Amen.

Ascension Day reflection by Archdeacon Stringfellow at Diocesan House

The Bear Went over the Mountain?
by Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow
The Eucharist at Diocesan House on Ascension Day
13 May 2010
 
In the Name of the True and Living God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
 
A senior warden of a prominent Anglo-Catholic parish in the Mid-West said to his priest that the Ascension of the Lord was a case of the bear going over the mountain to see what he could see. This charming anecdote came my way as a cautionary tale from priest to seminarian not to inquire too closely into what the lay people believe.
 
I have taken that advice but, at the same time, have held out to all people at all times that the bodily ascension of the Lord continues the Lord’s bodily resurrection to it full conclusion as St. Paul points out in the Epistle: God the Father raised Jesus from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly place, putting all things under his feet and making him head of all things for the church (Ephesians 1:20-23).
 
That to me is a lot more engaging, a lot more worthy of our worship, than a bear who went over the mountain. Somehow I think: that bear sadly disappoints. But the Lord of Life never does disappoint. The Lord of Life continually engages and delights; the Lord of Life takes us with him, and not just over the mountain. Amen.

From the Lectionaries, by Archdeacon Stringfellow

Scapegoats, Bond Traders, and Big Petroleum Companies
by Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow
Tuesday in Easter 5 (Year Two)
Leviticus 16:20-34
6 May 2010

In the First Lesson at Morning Prayer on May 4 we read: “When he has finished atoning for the holy place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall present the live goat. Then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgression, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and sending it away into the wilderness by means of someone designated for the task. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a barren region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness” (Leviticus 16:20-22).

My first encounter with this selection of holy Scripture was not in church or in Sunday School; it was in a Shakespeare class when the play discussed was The Merchant of Venice. The professor’s object in introducing us to the Biblical source for scapegoats was to say that Shakespeare’s intention was to make of Shylock a scapegoat on whose head had been placed “all the iniquities of the people” of Venice before he was banished to compulsory baptism. For many reasons, the professor said, this intended effect did not “work”: “all the iniquities” of the Venetians did not fit or properly belong on his head, and we, probably like the Elizabethans, have a question or two when the subject turns to baptism against one’s will.

The Vestry Meeting, by Archdeacon Stringfellow

The Vestry Meeting
Beyond Majority and Dynamics to Functioning Up
6 April 2010

“Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:8-9).

Every Eastertide, I seek this passage out though the lectionaries put it forward during the season. It seems to describe our circumstances perfectly: we do not see the resurrected and ascended Lord except in the Sacrament and in peoples’ lives transformed by his Spirit, yet we love him and are joyous, and we receive and look forward to the salvation of our souls.

That is quite a lot, more than enough to see the dots of life most every day and to connect them to the resurrection of Jesus. The Epistle is addressed to people in provinces of Asia Minor (1:1), and the head note in a Bible I have suggests it may have been written in Rome for the people in those comparatively remote places.

Again, I think the Epistle describes our circumstances exactly: we do not see the Lord; we were not there when they crucified him or when he appeared to the disciples afterwards. But we know him, and we love him. As we receive the consequence, the result, of our faith, we follow his guiding through his Spirit. The distances, in time and space, I mention are bridged by fidelity to the Lord and by living the abundant life he came to give us and to open to us. All of this remains true any day of the year on any day of any of the seasons of the Church Year.

And so all of it was true when I attended a meeting several months ago. The theological and experiential context I’ve tried briefly to set is true of any of the many meetings I attend. But this context contrasts sharply with what happened, what went down, we might say, at this particular meeting.

Three members of the clergy attended, and five members of the laity were present also. And as often is the case (but often is not understood to be the case), the clergy had a specific role, a role not to take the decision or to determine the outcome of the meeting. Our role was to provide the context as described as an elaboration of the verses from 1 Peter and to try to encourage the people to see their decision as part of the way forward for all the people concerned, a way forward that bridges the distance in time and space between all of us and the Lord, a way forward that we all can see as a step toward salvation, the abundant life that Jesus died and rose to bestow upon us.

The role of laity was no less specific; they were to take the decision, and by that decision they were to take that step toward salvation and abundant life. The decision (I believe) that was in the air, hovering about the heads of us all that would take that step, was a decision that three of the five were prepared to make. Two of the five were not prepared to make that decision, and they found pleasant and affective reasons not to make it. And those two, the minority, held the emotional valence in their hands. To be fair, the majority, the three prepared to take the decision and to move forward, had given them that valence. And there the matter stood for the meeting. Nothing could be done, and nothing was done. We left the meeting accomplishing very little (I thought) except participating in an exercise that was to me an example of what life is like when we let the distance between Asia Minor and Rome, between our direct experience and our spiritual experience of the Lord, and the empty tomb and the recognition of the Lord in the breaking of the bread prevent us from taking a step toward our salvation.

Well-meaning and sincere people may disagree about the issues present at this meeting (or any meeting). But what Christians, I think, should agree upon is that the resurrection of Jesus improves the quality and increases the possibilities in our lives. We are “delivered from the gloom of sin, and are restored to grace and holiness of life,” as we heard proclaimed at the Easter Vigil (Prayer Book, page 287).

A crusty and flinty Scottish headmaster used to admonish with a pithy proverb me and all of my fellow urchins in elementary school: “You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink.” This may very well be true of dumb animals, but let it not be true of us, the resurrected and ascended humanity of God.

Christ's Own For Ever, by Archdeacon Stringfellow

From the Lectionaries
Christ’s Own For Ever
The Easter Vigil
Romans 6:3-11
By Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow
3 April 2010

At each Easter Vigil, we hear St. Paul’s famous Epistle exploring our union with Christ in his death and in his resurrection through our Baptism: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3-4).

Over the years, I have so accepted St. Paul’s identification of each of us with Christ’s death and resurrection that I have often thought that at our births and certainly at our Baptisms something of Christ’s dead body lies buried in each of us. And when it is raised in us, when we experience something like the Easter moment, we are raised with it to newness and abundance of life. It is the moment, in the words of the Celebrant’s opening address to the people at the Easter Vigil, that “we share in” the Lord’s “victory over death” (Prayer Book, page 285).

Reflection on the gospel for Last Epiphany C

From the Lectionaries
By Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow
Year C, Last Epiphany
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43a)
14 February 2010

The Lectionary (formerly known as the Revised Common Lectionary) calls for the transfiguration Gospel on the Last Sunday after Epiphany from the Synoptic Gospel associated with each of the years in the three-year cycle. Year C has the Lucan version of the Transfiguration; Year A has the Matthean version (Mt 17:1-9); and Year B has the Markan version (Mk 9:2-9).

The question that inevitably arises in my mind is whether or not Jesus’ transfiguration predicts a transfiguration in us as we journey through Lent toward Easter and the resurrection of Jesus? Does the transfiguration of Jesus anticipate what happens to us in Lent, the “season of penitence and fasting” that we observe “by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word” (The Book of Common Prayer, page 265)?

The answer, I think, is yes, but the road of that transfiguration is difficult and can require unusual steadiness along the way. And, looking back, rather than forward, in the liturgical year, we can easily see how the transfiguration of Jesus (a great theophany, perhaps the greatest except for the resurrection) ends the Season of Epiphany, the season of manifestations of Jesus and his identity of prophet, priest, king, healer, and savior.

Reflection on the gospel for Epiphany 5C

From the Lectionaries
By Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow
Year C, Epiphany 5
Luke 5:1-11
7 February 2010

The Collect of the Day is new in this Prayer Book, and The Rev. Dr. Massey H. Shepherd, Jr., wrote it.

The Gospel today is Lk’s account of the calling of Simon Peter, and James and John, the sons of Zebedee. The source for Lk is Mk 1:16-20, and the parallel is Mt 4:18-22. Unlike Mk and Mt, Lk sews into the story of the calling the story of the wondrous catch of fish, and the addition of that story provides motivation for Simon Peter, James, and John to follow Jesus.

In Mk, Jesus sees Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea, and he calls them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people. And immediately they left their nets and followed him” (Mk 1:17-18). Similarly in Mt: “And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.’ Immediately they left their nets and followed him” (Mt 4:19-20).

The prophetic nature of Jesus’ ministry, additionally, Lk underscores with the wondrous catch of fish. Jesus predicts a catch, “let down your nets for a catch” (5:4), and the fulfillment of the prediction, “they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break” (5:6) is a another example of Jesus as prophet. Because the prediction is fulfilled, Simon Peter, James, and John are the more willing to follow him.

The other important prediction Jesus makes is that Simon Peter “from now on…will be catching people” (5:10). That prediction, too, is fulfilled, but the fulfillment requires the rest of Lk and most of Acts.

This Gospel is Jesus’ introduction to Simon Peter except for the mention of him at 4:38 when Jesus enters his house and rebukes the high fever assailing his mother-in-law. This episode falls in Jesus’ ministry in Capernaum just after the episode in the synagogue in Nazareth. Beginning in the Gospel for today, Simon Peter quickly assumes his role among the disciples as spokesperson and as a person of faith. Despite having worked all night long, catching nothing, Simon Peter has enough faith and enough trust in the new prophet to let down the nets once again.

By letting down the nets once again, Simon Peter steps through the looking glass to another world; it is the world that Jesus prophetically has begun to proclaim and to identify with himself. It is a world in which the poor have good news brought to them, the captives hear of release, the blind receive their sight, the oppressed go free; it is a world that is the year of the Lord’s favor for all time (4:18-19). It is a world with a different logic, the logic that is not based on the scarcity of human economy but on God’s loving-kindness generously distributed to all creatures. It is a world wherein a fisherman’s nets remain empty all night, but at Jesus’ word those nets are filled to so full a capacity that the nets begin to break and the boats begin to sink. Its logic startles human expectation and upsets human logic.

Simon Peter enters not rashly or blindly but at Jesus’ suggestion, and he enters, evidently, expecting faithfully that God will be in this particular instance as God eternally and ineffably is: faithful to the suggestion that a catch is possible and perhaps even probable. The suggestion to cast the nets again is not a tease. Simon Peter catches on to this and properly expects Jesus to provide. He casts the nets again not to show Jesus to be wrong and himself to be right but to give Jesus the opportunity at his own suggestion to show his own nature, the nature of God who provides abundantly.

Simon Peter’s reaction to the catch of fish is to fall down at Jesus’ feet and to command him to go away, “for I am a sinful man!” (5:8). As a sinner Simon Peter unquestionably belongs to one of the categories of “the poor” who respond to Jesus over and over in Lk. And in his response to Jesus Simon Peter moves from “sinner” to “saved.” He trusts the logic in the new world he just stepped into. In Acts 15:11, Peter asserts, “On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they [“our ancestors,” (15:10)] will.” And he began the journey from “sinner” to “saved” after a long night of frustration and failed fishing when a new prophet strangely and surprisingly said to try just one more time.

Reflection on the gospel for Epiphany 4C

From the Lectionaries
By Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow
Year C, Epiphany 4
Luke 4:21-30
31 January 2010

The Gospel today is Lk’s account of the second half of the initial episode of Jesus’ ministry that begins immediately after his temptations (4:1-13). The first half of this episode was the Gospel last week.

The break between last Sunday’s Gospel and this week’s Gospel separates the very brief “era of good feelings” at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry from the moment he declares the nature of his ministry, a declaration that enrages the people of his hometown.

The entirety of this episode is instructive. This is the outline of the Gospel for last week:

1. Jesus filled with the Spirit in Galilee and a report spreading about him (4:14

2. Jesus begins to teach in the synagogues receiving praise from everyone (4:15)

3. In Nazareth, in the synagogue he reads from Isaiah: the Spirit is upon me; he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (4:16-19)

4. The eyes are fixed on Jesus, and he says, “today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (4:20-21). Verse 21 concludes last week’s Gospel, and the verse begins this week’s Gospel.

The outline of the Gospel this week is:

5. All speak well of him and ask if he is Joseph’s son (4:22)

6. Jesus anticipates them saying, “Doctor, cure yourself” and “Do here in your hometown what you did in Capernaum,” and he gives the maxim, “no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown” (4:23-24)

7. Jesus gives Elijah’s example: many widows in Israel but Elijah was sent to a widow in Zarephath in Sidon (4:25-26)

8. Jesus gives Elisha’s example: many lepers in Israel but Elisha was sent to a leper, Naaman, in Syria (4:27)

9. The people are enraged; they drive him out of town to the brow of a hill to throw him off a cliff (4:28-29)

10. Jesus passes through them and goes on his way (4:30).

Jesus answers the question of what kind of Messiah he will be and identifies his boundaries as surpassing the boundaries of Israel. The people react against him, and the tension between him and them is established but held in suspense, until his Crucifixion, by his escape from them.

Lk unlike Mk (6:1-6a) and Mt (13:53-58) moves the rebuke of the people for Jesus’ ministry to its very beginning before any extensive teaching, preaching, and healing. Their rebuke is immediate.

Very interesting to me is the second half of verse 23: “And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” Lk omits the episode or episodes in Capernaum having placed the Nazareth episode at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry (immediately after the temptations). But Lk has Jesus refer to the past Capernaum episodes in the future tense, anticipating a comment by the people of Nazareth, “you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” It appears that Lk knows about the Capernaum material from a source; Lk decides not to include it, preferring to inaugurate Jesus’ ministry with the Nazareth episode; and by having Jesus use the future tense in anticipating a remark Lk prepares for the main point of the four subsequent verses: Jesus is a prophet.

We begin to see that Jesus will be a prophetic Messiah. Jesus suggests that Elijah’s ministry to a Sidonian and Elisha’s to a Syrian will model his ministry. Jesus is most direct and blunt in this regard. The Sidonian and the Syrian both are Gentiles. The people’s rage at his references to the prophets deters him not. He will not be a beloved leader, one who will buttress the conservative tradition and “the way we’ve always done things.” He will look to a fuller understanding of God, extending the boundaries of the people’s understanding of God’s concern and love. The people will need to understand what the angel of the Lord proclaimed to the shepherds: Jesus’ ministry is “good news of great joy for all the people” (2:10).

Additionally, as a prophetic Messiah, Jesus is “destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed” as Simeon predicts (2:34). And as Mary’s song foretells, this prophetic Messiah will be part of God’s bringing down the powerful from their thrones and lifting up the lowly (1:52). In the synagogue in Nazareth, these things begin to take place while we watch his ministry from its outset.

The Lectionary devotes two Sundays to the episode in Nazareth. The episode’s effect doubles as a consequence. We cannot expect after it Jesus to be any other than flintily resolute, self-defined, and self-possessed. At no point will he shy away from his first disclosure at Nazareth. Later, at a significant turning point in Lk, we shall read, “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem” (9:51). Jesus’ face, however, is set from the beginning of his ministry. He is who he is, and he will be who he will be.

            HS

Reflection on the gospel for Epiphany 3C

From the Lectionaries
By Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow
Year C, Epiphany 3
Luke 4:14-21
24 January 2010

The Gospel today is Lk’s account of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry inaugurated immediately after his temptations (4:1-13). Jesus’ temptations, incidentally, are the Gospel on Lent 1 in Years A, B, and C.

Jesus’ ministry begins in the next verse (14) after the episode of his temptations ends. But today’s Gospel is only half of the first episode in his ministry, and it ends at the conclusion of verse 21. We have then:

1. Jesus filled with the Spirit in Galilee and a report spreading about him (4:14)

2. Jesus begins to teach in the synagogues receiving praise from everyone (4:15)

3. In Nazareth, in the synagogue he reads from Isaiah: the Spirit is upon me; he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (4:16-19)

4. The eyes are fixed on Jesus, and he says, “today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (4:20-21). Here the Gospel today ends.

We do not have the second half of the episode unless the proclamation is lengthened:

5. All speak well of him and ask if he is Joseph’s son (4:22)

6. Jesus anticipates them saying, “Doctor, cure yourself” and “Do here in your hometown what you did in Capernaum,” and he gives the maxim, “no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown” (4:23-24)

7. Jesus gives Elijah’s example: many widows in Israel but Elijah was sent to a widow in Zarephath in Sidon (4:25-26)

8. Jesus gives Elisha’s example: many lepers in Israel but Elisha was sent to a leper, Naaman, in Syria (4:27)

9. The people are enraged; they drive him out of town to the brow of a hill to throw him off a cliff (4:28-29)

10. Jesus passes through them and goes on his way (4:30).

The shorter proclamation has quite a different character than the longer. In the shorter Jesus manifests himself (in keeping with the theme of the Season of Epiphany) as the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy (58:6 and 61:1-2). That identification, perhaps, satisfies the requirement of the Season.

In the longer proclamation, Jesus answers the question of what kind of Messiah he will be and identifies his boundaries as surpassing the boundaries of Israel. The people react against him, and the tension between him and them is established but held in suspense, until his Crucifixion, by his escape from them.

Lk unlike Mk (6:1-6a) and Mt (13:53-58) moves the rebuke of the people for Jesus’ ministry to its very beginning before any extensive teaching, preaching, and healing. Their rebuke is immediate.

We begin to see in this fuller Gospel that Jesus will be a prophetic Messiah. Jesus suggests that Elijah’s ministry to a Sidonian and Elisha’s to a Syrian will model his ministry. The Sidonian and the Syrian both are Gentiles. The people’s rage at his references to the prophets deters him not. He will not be a beloved leader, one who will buttress the conservative tradition and “the way we’ve always done things.” He will look to a fuller understanding of God, extending the boundaries of the people’s understanding of God’s concern and love. The people will need to understand what the angel of the Lord proclaimed to the shepherds: Jesus’ ministry is “good news of great joy for all the people” (2:10).

Additionally, as a prophetic Messiah, Jesus is “destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed” as Simeon predicts (2:34). And as Mary’s song foretells, this prophetic Messiah will be part of God’s bringing down the powerful from their thrones and lifting up the lowly (1:52). In the synagogue in Nazareth, these things begin to take place while we watch his ministry from its outset.

For a long time I wanted to know whether the passages Jesus reads in the synagogue are the assigned readings from the prophets (the haptarah) or were specifically selected by him to make his breath-taking point. Lk, I think, keeps Jesus’ reading ambiguous in this regard, so this question, for the duration of our lives, must remain unanswered, and we must consequently live with the ambiguity. It is enough to perceive, however, that Jesus at the very beginning of his ministry is bold enough to select the passage while being at the same time so filled with the Spirit that he is the fulfillment of the prophecy he proclaims.

Reflection on the gospel for Epiphany 2C

From the Lectionaries
By Archdeacon Stringfellow
Year C, Epiphany 2
John 2:1-11
17 January 2010

A homilist recently mentioned the “three early epiphanies” of Jesus: the adoration of the magi, Jesus’ baptism, and the wedding at Cana. The grouping of these three epiphanies together is new to me (except for stanzas 1 and 2 of Hymn 135 though later stanzas mention other epiphanies), but if they do comprise a group according to a tradition, then we have them together as a sequence in Year C on The Epiphany, Epiphany 1, and Epiphany 2.

The third of these early epiphanies is the Gospel this week. Certainly since R. H. Lightfoot’s St. John’s Gospel: A Commentary (1956), Scriptural commentators have drawn attention to a series of “signs” in Jn that contribute to the structure and the themes of the Gospel. Lightfoot puts it this way, quoting the Authorized Version:

“The unity of this gospel is not only a unity of structure, it is also a unity of themes; and the attempt will be made in the exposition to show how the great themes of light and life, of witness, judgement, glory, and others, some of which are more prominent in particular parts of the book, run like threads throughout it. We may here, however, give some treatment of two which may be said to stand out, inasmuch as the evangelist himself draws attention to them in the highly important statement with which he concludes his book. When he writes: ‘Many other signs therefore did Jesus in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book: but these are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye may have life in his name’ [20:30-31], he sums up his work as a narrative of the ‘signs’ of the Lord, whose purpose was the evoke ‘belief’.”

Various lists of the signs have been put forward, and here is a list characteristic of them:

1. Turning water into wine in Cana (2:1-11)

2. Healing an official’s son in Capernaum (4:46-54)

3. Healing an invalid at the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem (5:1-18)

4. Feeding the 5,000 near the Sea of Galilee (6:5-14

5. Walking on the water of the Sea of Galilee (6:16-21)

6. Healing a blind man in Jerusalem (9:1-7)

7. Raising dead Lazarus in Bethany (11:1-45)

A sign may be understood to be a “visible pointer to the invisible truth” about the Lord who performs it (Lightfoot). Often the teaching that accompanies the sign makes clear the relationship between the pointer and the truth. In terms I have used before, a sign could be understood as an earthly thing that reveals a heavenly idea (or form). In the terms of today’s Gospel the water turned to wine reveals the nature of the Creator who made wine in the first place, a revelation that would not be so clear if Jesus, for example, had turned a tree or a rock or a cloak into wine.

Commentators occasionally suggest that the list shows an increasing degree of revelation or importance. Most all agree that the last sign, the raising of Lazarus, crowns the list as a preparation for the resurrection that is itself, perhaps, the ultimate sign.

However we understand the list of signs, today’s Gospel is the first of them: “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him” (2:11). And today’s Gospel establishes the nature and purpose of them: a sign reveals Jesus’ glory, and his disciples respond to that revelation with belief.

The changing of water into wine points to the Creator who has placed in nature the process of water becoming grapes that then become wine quite naturally. Speeding up this process, short-circuiting it supernaturally, if you will, identifies Jesus with that Creator and establishes him as one in whom we can believe. It is a sign that changes unbelief into belief. Changing water into wine is a sign that presages many great things to come for those who believe. As Jesus told Nathanael in the episode immediately prior to the wedding at Cana, “You will see greater things than these” (1:50). Greater things, greater revelations, come to those who believe.

            HS

Reflection on the Lectionaries for Epiphany I, Baptism of Our Lord

From the Lectionaries
Epiphany I: The Baptism of Our Lord
Luke 3:15-17 and 21-22
10 January 2010

The first Sunday after the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6) always is The Baptism of Our Lord. The need of Jesus’ baptism has always been for me something of a theological puzzle never quite adequately explained. Why does he need it? Or, rather, why is it part of the Gospels?

Perhaps greater understanding of the matter, if not an answer to this question, lies in looking at the baptism in the four Gospels. The quotations are from the nrsv.

Mark (1:9-11)

“In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’”

To the question, “Why is Jesus baptized?,” Mk seems to offer no answer, but Mk includes the baptism, though, without underscoring it or putting it into special relief. Mk gives greater attention to the heavenly proclamation, the theophany (a manifestation of God) that is the heavenly voice directly quoted.

Seemingly absent from Mk is concern either about whether John is greater than Jesus (the precedence question) or about whether Jesus requires the repentance (the repentance question) John’s baptism signifies (1:4). Before verse 9 John proclaims “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me” (1:7), but Jesus receives John’s baptism nonetheless. Mk is silent about Jesus’ need or lack of need for repentance. In fact, the mention of Jesus in verse 9, when he is baptized, is only the second mention of him in the Gospel, the first mention being verse 1: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

His heart and his $80 million treasure

The Religious Sports Fan
The Boundaries Blur; The Boundaries Clarify
5 January 2010

The New York Times reported on December 29 that Jason Bay awaits a physical early this week before signing a four-year contract with the New York Mets valued at 66 million dollars with an optional fifth year that could allow him to earn 80 million dollars over all.

Bay played last season and part of 2008 as the left fielder for the Boston Red Sox, replacing Manny Ramirez who was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers while Bay left the Pittsburgh Pirates for Boston.

The Red Sox recently offered him 60 million for four seasons but, evidently, were unwilling to commit to a fifth year. Bay rejected their offer, and Boston signed Mike Cameron as his replacement.

So far, the story of Bay’s move to the Mets is unexceptional. He rejected one offer and has accepted one with higher pay. These events become more interesting with the report that Bay’s agent tried to reopen talks with Boston, who, with Cameron signed, had no interest.

 

With so much “treasure” weaving through these events, the question of Bay’s “heart” surely comes to mind. The reference, of course, is to the Sermon on the Mount wherein Jesus says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Mt 6:21).

And so questions arise. Is Bay’s heart in Boston or New York? Evidently his heart was not sufficiently in Boston to take 60 million for four years. But having accepted 66 million for four years with an option for a fifth year at 14 million in New York, his agent went back to talk to Boston. Was he telling Boston his heart was there? Or was he trying to increase the treasure promised in New York?

Bay will probably play in New York and test the home run-resistant fences at Citi Field. And while he does so, Mets’ fans may understandably wonder whether he’s playing for his heart’s team. And there’s always a chance Bay will reconcile his heart to his treasure.

A New Year's reflection on the miracle of compound interest

The Religious Investor
The Boundaries Blur; The Boundaries Clarify
by Archdeacon Stringfellow
4 January 2010

The religious investor faces particular tensions and opportunities with the arrival of the new secular year on January 1. Beginning once again are the commitments to give, perhaps even to tithe, to a parish and to give as well to the new annual cycle of continuing commitments to multi-year capital campaigns such as the Diocese of Bethlehem’s New Hope Campaign.

Beginning again is the new tax year’s charitable contributions whether as part of the “standard deduction” or as part of an itemized list whose total may far exceed the standard amount and whose total will substantially reduce tax liability for the year.

And while the new year signals new opportunities for giving, it signals additionally a new cycle of opportunities to fund maximally an individual retirement account (IRA). Those who are employed by 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations (I think especially of the clergy and lay employees of parishes and the diocese) have also the opportunity to fund maximally a 403(b)(7) salary deferral account.

A reflection on Matthew's Infancy Narrative

From the Lectionaries
A reflection on Matthew's Infancy Narrative
by Archdeacon Stringfellow
Christmas II
Matthew 2:13-15 and 19-23
3 January 2010

Matthew’s story of Jesus’ birth and childhood (frequently called an infancy narrative) differs very substantially from Luke’s—the familiar “Christmas” story. Neither Mark nor John contains an infancy narrative.

The Second Sunday after Christmas Day, which we do not have every year, holds its own place in the liturgical calendar identified by the familiar and common name of Holy Family Sunday.

For this day, the first choice of Gospel proclamations is Matthew’s story of three of Joseph’s dreams, the flight to Egypt, the return to Nazareth, and the fulfillment of two prophecies. None of this material is in Luke except that in Luke Nazareth is Mary and Joseph’s own town and the place where Jesus grows up.

Matthew contains the story also of Herod’s attempt to kill Jesus by killing “all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under” (2:16). Herod’s murder of the holy innocents, also, is not to be found in Luke’s infancy narrative.

In the Gospel for today, an angel of the Lord warns Joseph in his second dream to take Jesus and his mother to Egypt to avoid Herod’s attempt to destroy Jesus. This Joseph readily and swiftly does, and we read an example, so common in Matthew, of an event followed quickly by the statement that the event fulfills a particular prophecy that Matthew quotes: “This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son’” (2:15). Here Matthew quotes Hosea 11:1.

While the holy family lives in Egypt, Herod dies, and Joseph has his third dream. This time, the message of the angel is that those who sought to kill Jesus are dead and that Joseph is to take the child and his mother and to go to the land of Israel (2:20). When the holy family arrives there, however, Joseph hears that Herod’s son Archelaus rules there, in Judea, and when he is also warned in his fourth dream, Joseph pushes on to the district of Galilee, and there the holy family makes their home in Nazareth. This event, too, fulfills a specific prophecy: “so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He will be called a Nazorean’” (2:23). It’s not clear what prophecy Matthew refers to here. “Nazareth” is not mentioned in the Old Testament. But what Matthew does, perhaps, is to draw from a mention of a word similar to Nazareth, such as Isaiah 11:1, where we read, “a shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse.” The Hebrew neser is bud or shoot.

It is worth noting that in Matthew’s account of the flight to Egypt and the return to Israel not only does Jesus fulfill rather specific and small prophecies, if you will, but he also fulfills the history of all Israel by recapitulating in his person the whole history of Israel. That history is succinctly and famously stated in Deuteronomy: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous.” “The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders” (26:5 and 8).

The point that Matthew seems to want to make here and elsewhere is that Jesus is all Israel and the complete Israel, “the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (1:1).

Bridging Ideas and Things – A reflection by Archdeacon Stringfellow on John's Prologue

From the Lectionaries
Bridging Ideas and Things
by Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow
Christmas I –– John 1:1-18
27 December 2009

The Prologue to the Gospel of John is the Gospel for the third eucharist of the Nativity of our Lord (through verse 14) as well as for the first Sunday after Christmas Day. John is unique: it shares not one source with the Synoptic Gospels, those that can be “seen together,” or compared, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. John shares no outline of Jesus’ life and ministry with the other Gospels; rather, John presents Jesus Christ as the eternal Logos, the creative principle, (or Word) of the Father whose Incarnation (taking on human flesh) echoes God’s original Creation. All people have the choice to accept or reject him. John thus presents Jesus Christ after mature theological and philosophical reflection. Probably John was the last Gospel written.

Friends in low places ... A Christmas reflection by Archdeacon Stringfellow

From the Lectionaries
Friends in low places
by Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow
Luke 2:1-20
24 December 2009

Herod was King of Judea (1:5, at the annunciation to Zechariah) while Augustus was Emperor (2:1), but Herod died before Quirinius was governor of Syria (2:2). Luke has got the facts wrong, but what really is the harm? The tradition had Jesus’ birth during the reign of Herod (as in Matthew), and Luke has to get Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem as the birth there is an important messianic credential. Quirinius was the one who ordered the census. Telling the story of Jesus compellingly for Luke is a higher priority than scrupulosity about the facts. And he may not have had all the facts available to him.

Jesus' birth exalts the poor

From the Lectionaries
Jesus' birth exalts the poor
by Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow
Advent 4 –– Luke 1:39-45 (and 46-55)
20 December 2009

Our Lady headlines the Gospel this week, replacing John the Baptist who held center stage for two Sundays. Enduring, however, are the comparisons and contrasts between John and Jesus except they are made between their parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth, and Mary and Joseph. Before Luke 2:1, the beginning of the “Christmas” story, Joseph has but one brief mention (1:27) and does not appear.

When Gabriel announces the birth of John to Zechariah, and Zechariah disbelieves the announcement, he is struck dumb (1:20). When Gabriel announces the birth of Jesus to Mary, she doesn’t disbelieve but asks “how” (1:34). And when she visits Elizabeth, she bursts into the Magnificat, the opposite of having her mouth closed for her.

We Don’t Help People –– We Help Them Help Themselves

The Theory and Practice of Ministry
We Don’t Help People –– We Help Them Help Themselves
By Howard Stringfellow, Archdeacon, Diocese of Bethlehem
16 December 2009

Some weeks ago the Daughters of the King invited me to become their Chaplain. This development was not anticipated, but I agreed to accept their truly sincere invitation. Then my internal debate began. I am comfortable opening the door to it.

Sudan –– U. S. Policy and New Hope

14 December 2009
By Howard Stringfellow
Archdeacon, Diocese of Bethlehem
 

Charlie Barebo and I flew to Kajo-Keji October 20 none the wiser. We landed on the grass and gravel airstrip the following day still not knowing anything had happened. When Bishop Anthony arrived from Juba having attended an election of ten new bishops for ten new dioceses in the Episcopal Church of Sudan, he told us.

“President Obama has changed U. S. policy regarding Sudan. It just happened.” I looked at him blankly for two reasons: I knew nothing about the old policy, and as surely I knew nothing about the new one. But right away my neglected homework stood right in front of me. No way around it. An agenda had been set. “Archdeacon, I will send you some documents that I just received.”

It was one of those moments that seemed then and now as though time slowed, and something was being revealed from somewhere beyond the surface. I find that the priestly vocation is like this. Another layer of possibility and reality is revealed when you least expect it. There’s no danger of missing the revelation, but there’s every danger that the revelation won’t be heeded or won’t be honored. We come in to the picture heeding and honoring the revelation; we come into the picture by accepting the love of God the revelation represents.