"The infant Word"

But what kind of mediator is this, you ask, who is born in a stable, laid in a manger, wrapped like other infants in swaddling clothes, who cries like the others - a baby who lies there just as others have always done? ... Yes, he is an infant, but the infant Word, and not even his infancy is silent.


"Be consoled, be consoled, says the Lord our God", Emmanuel, "God with us", is saying this.  The stable proclaims this, the manger proclaims it, the tears proclaim it, the swaddling clothes proclaim it. 

St Bernard of Clairvaux - a Christmas sermon, "On the Father of Mercies, who has mercy on our many miseries".

"Not even his infant limbs are silent"

His tongue does not yet speak, and everything about him cries aloud, preaches, declares the good news.  Not even his infant limbs are silent.

In everything is the world's judgment censured, turned upside down, and confuted.  What human being, if given the choice, would not choose a strong body and the age of understanding rather than of babyhood? ... The Word became flesh, weak flesh, infant flesh, tender flesh, powerless flesh, flesh incapable of any work, of any effort.

St Bernard of Clairvaux - a Christmas sermon "On Christ's birth and passion, on Mary's virginity and fruitfulness".

Christmas

God the Father has made his Word abbreviated.  Do you want to know how long his Word was and how short he made it?  "I fill heaven and earth", says his Word; now made flesh, he has been laid in a narrow manager.  "From everlasting and to everlasting", says the Prophet, "you are God", and see, he has become an infant one day old.

St Bernard of Clairvaux - a Christmas sermon, reflecting on the Vulgate's translation of Romans 9:28, "Verbum breviatum".

(The painting is Geertgen tot Sint Jans' Nativity at Night, 1490.)

"A physician is coming"

A physician is coming to the sick, a redeemer to those who have been sold, a path to wanderers, and life to the dead.  Yes, One is coming who will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea, who will heal our diseases, who will carry us on his own shoulders back to the source of our original worth. 

St Bernard of Clairvaux - a Christmas Eve sermon on Exodus 16:6-7, used as the Invitatory at the Eucharist and a responsory at the Night Office on Christmas Eve.

O Emmanuel

With the invocation of O Emmanuel, the Church's Advent prayer draws to a close.  Here the Church's memory goes back to a time of insecurity, failure and unfaithfulness: the reign of Ahaz.  And in the midst of that insecurity, failure and unfaithfulness a sign of promise is given - a Maiden will be with Child.

Isaiah dared Ahaz to ask for any sign of Yahweh, as "deep as Sheol or as high as heaven".  The sign given, however, entirely lacks the imperial grandeur that Ahaz would have desired or the military might that would have brought relief to the residents of Jerusalem.  Instead, a Maiden will be with Child.

It is the very weakness and vulnerability of the sign that proclaims hope.  In the midst of our sense of insecurity, our failure, and our unfaithfulness, it is not our own resources which save.  Nor is it the might and power of empires of this world.  It is, rather, the weakness and vulnerability of the Child born of the Maiden.

In the words of Austin Farrer:

Mary holds her finger out, and a divine hand closes on it.  The maker of the world is born a begging child; he begs for milk, and does not know that it is milk for which he begs.  We will not lift our hands to pull the love of God down to us, but he lifts his hands to pull human compassion down upon his cradle.  So the weakness of God proves stronger than men, and the folly of God proves wiser than men.  Love is the strongest instrument of omnipotence, for accomplishing those tasks he cares most dearly to perform; and this is how he brings his love to bear on human pride; by weakness not by strength, by need and not by bounty.

O Rex Gentium

Tertullian's question, "what has Athens to do with Jerusalem?", demonstrates - albeit dramatically and with some over-emphasis - the priority for the Church of Israel's story over and against the claims of classical Athens and Rome.  The Church stands in continuity not with the academies of Athens or the rhetorical schools of Rome, but with the story of Abraham, Moses, David and Isaiah. 

Paul's description emphasises the organic unity between Israel's story and the Church's proclamation and mission:

You have been cut from what is by a nature a wild olive tree and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree.

Now the promise of Covenant with Abraham has been extended to the Gentiles.  In and through Jesus the Christ, Israel story is now also our story - he is the cornerstone, uniting the Gentiles to Israel.  Jew and Gentile together share in Abraham's blessing.  Here is the rich narrative which the Church proclaims during a time when the rise and fall of great powers and great economies is deemed to be the prime narrative.  Amidst the fears of decline and depression, the Church's prayer of O Rex Gentium speaks of Abraham's blessing, fulfilled in the One who is "the son of Abraham".

In the words of Marvin Wilson:

"Our father Abraham" expresses more than historic memories of a virtuous biblical character or present spiritual ties to a family of faith.  The expression is ultimately an eschatological statement.  Abraham is a symbol of hope; he binds Christians and Jews together with a common vision of the outworking of the kingdom of God: Abraham, "all peoples on earth will be blessed through you".

"At this time to be born of a pure Virgin"

Thanks to Anglican Down Under for highlighting the TLC article on Cranmer's Christmas collect.  ADU notes that the NZPB makes "modest changes" to the collect.  This is true but for one phrase - Cranmer's "pure Virgin" becomes "Virgin Mary".

NZ appears to be somewhat out of step with liturgical reform elsewhere in the Communion.  The CofE's Common Worship, the CofI's BCP 2004 and TEC's BCP 1979 have all retained Cranmer's original phrase - "pure Virgin".

The change in the NZPB has not insignificant, although almost certainly unintentional, implications.  Contrary to what we may guess were the assumptions of the NZPB authors, "pure Virgin" is not a biological reference.  ARCIC's Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ summarises the context in which the Anglican Reformers understood the phrase:

Following Augustine, they showed a reticence about affirming that Mary was a sinner ... They neither affirmed nor denied the possibility of Mary having been preserved by grace from participation in this general human condition.  It is notable that the Book of Common Prayer in the Christmas collect ... refers to Mary as 'a pure Virgin' (45).

Together with the fact that the BCP calendar from 1561 retained the commemoration of the Conception of the BVM - which, notwithstanding the debate in the medieval West between maculist Thomists and immaculist Scotists, affirmed Augustine's "exception" regarding Mary - it does seem clear that Cranmer's "pure Virgin", understood in the context of the Latin West's Augustinian reflections, had soteriological rather than biological overtones. 

All of which should leave us thankful that, NZPB apart, most of the Communion's liturgical revisions have retained Cranmer's original phrase, a phrase which allows Anglicans to receive and confess the ARCIC formulation:

In view of her vocation to be the mother of the Holy One (Luke 1:35), we can affirm together that Christ's redeeming work reached 'back' in Mary to the depths of her being, and to her earliest beginnings (59).

O Oriens

In his Planet Narnia, Michael Ward summarises C.S. Lewis' study of the medieval worldview, The Discarded Image:

Lewis ... repeatedly encourages his readers to take a stroll under the sky at night.  Looking up at the heavens now, Lewis argues, is a very different experience from what it was in the Middle Ages.  Now we sense that we are looking out into a trackless vacuity, pitch-black and dead-cold.  Then we would have felt as if we were looking into a vast, lighted concavity.

In praying O Oriens, the Church in the midst of the flattened, disenchanted universe of postmodernity, perceives the weight of glory present in our universe.  Here is the Church's apologetic of imagination, described by Alister McGrath as "a world, which though rooted in the real, reaches upwards and beyond it". 

The Morning Star - dimly perceived in Balaam's vision, fully revealed in the vision of John the seer - speaks of the One who brings light to our darkness.  We do not gaze into a trackless vacuity, pitch-black and cold.  The Advent hope proclaims a meaning-drenched universe, bearing the weight of glory.

O Clavis David

The invocation of the Key of David is no statement of imperial triumphalism.  In Isaiah, it is invoked from a context of deep pain:

Look away from me,
   let me weep bitter tears;
do not try to comfort me
   for the destruction of my beloved people.

In the Revelation of John, the Key of David is invoked in the Exalted Christ's message to the Philadelphian church:

 I know that you have but little power.

Today's antiphon is a recognition of weakness.  It is, in the words of Rosemary Hannah's reflection on Thinking Anglicans, addressing "all those of us who know too well our flawed and dark passions, our divided loyalties and the complexities of our lives".  We are thus exhorted to turn from our own resources, our own narratives, to the One daily lauded daily in the Church's liturgy as he who "gives light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death". 

For the post-Christendom church, confused and disorientated in the secular public square, here is hope.  Not in projects to restore Christendom, but to know that the One whom we proclaim opens doors - in our compromised, shadowed lives - that no power can shut.

"Adam asks this of you ... Abraham begs this of you"

In preparation for the Church's celebration of the Incarnation, the Gospel readings in the daily eucharistic lectionary for 20th and 21st December are those of the Annunciation and Visitation.  This reflects the ancient Western custom of having these Gospel readings during the old December Ember Days. 

In central Europe there is a custom of celebrating the Eucharist on these days before dawn by candlelight - we see the beginnings of the Dawn in the Annunciation and Visitation.

St Bernard of Clairvaux's reflection on the Annunciation highlights how the hopes of patriarchs and prophets, priests and kings rest on this moment when Gabriel addresses Blessed Mary:

Adam asks this of you, O loving Virgin, poor Adam, exiled from paradise with all his poor children.  Abraham begs this of you; David begs this of you; all the holy patriarchs, your very own fathers, beg this of you, as do those who dwell in the valley of the shadow of death.  The whole world is waiting, kneeling at your feet.  And rightly so, for on your lips hangs the comfort of the afflicted, the redemption of captives, the deliverance of the damned; in a word, the salvation of all the sons and daughters of Adam, your entire race.

O Radix Jesse

The hopes and dreams invested in a tribal dynasty of an Ancient Near Eastern monarchy significantly shape the imagination of the scriptures of Israel and of the Church.  What O'Donovan says about the second stanza of the Te Deum applies to the hopes and dreams placed in the line of Jesse:

The general picture is a political one, quite clearly: there is a ruler; he has achieved a decisive act of public liberation; by that act he has founded and sustained a community.

This, however, is not the politics of postmodernity - the politics of focus-groups, of apathy, of disengagement, of the impoverished discourse of secularism.  As O'Donovan goes on to state of the politics of the Te Deum:

Yet it all belongs not within the usual sphere of earthly politics but in heaven.  And at its centre is the breathtakingly unpolitical image of the Virgin's womb.

In the dreams of the prophets of the Exile, the hope of the line of Jesse was to become the breathakingly unpolitical image of the wolf living with the lamb.  And in the cross and resurrection of the One born of the Virgin, the breathtakingly unpolitical image finds its fulfilment.

In the disenchanted, flattened polities of postmodernity, the Church prayerfully invokes the politics of Radix Jesse - the breathtakingly unpolitical politics of the King to whom the nations pray.

O Adonai

The Advent hope takes shape in Israel's story of Torah and Covenant, Exodus and Exile.  This is not the traditional triumphalist narrative of nation and empire, a narrative praising national virtues.  It speaks, rather, of something quite different.  In the words of Balthasar:

The God of Israel ... is distinguished from all other gods by the fact that he brings into being a people to worship him by his own free sovereign act of choosing - whether we look at the first manifestation of this choice of a people - when God called Abraham - or at his choosing his people when he led them out of Egypt at the hand of Moses ... thus making something like a nation out of a miserable collection of uncultured and demoralized slaves; before all this, in each case there is a free act of the divine initiative that can neither be foreseen, demanded, nor deduced.

Here, then, is the shape of the Church's Advent hope, revealed in Torah and Covenant, Exodus and Exile.  The Church's hope rests not in powers or privileges bestowed by and in the city of this world.  As with Israel in Egypt and in Babylon, our hope rests in the One whose love alone redeems the slaves and the exiles:

It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love upon you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples; but it is because the Lord loves you, and is keeping the oath which he swore to your ancestors, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage.

O Sapientia

There is something almost underwhelming, perhaps even cautious about the concluding petition of the first of the Advent antiphons:

Come and teach us the way of prudence.

Aquinas defines prudence as "wisdom concerning human affairs".  He goes on to say:

actions are about singular matters: and so it is necessary for the prudent man to know both the universal principles of reason, and the singulars about which actions are concerned.

Why do these ancient prayers of Advent hope begin with a petition for a virtue which appears to have little eschatological significance? 

Prudence is, however, grounded in the reality of exile.  It was the "wisdom concerning human affairs" exercised by Daniel in Babylon, the same wisdom that led Jeremiah to urge the exiles "seek the welfare of the city". Prudence in exile was an expression of hope as Israel awaited restoration. For the post-Christendom Church, experiencing a not dissimilar exile, prudence is indeed - as for Israel - a part of our eschatological orientation. 

"Wisdom concerning human affairs" expresses the Church's Advent hope, for we know that the Kingdom is yet to come and, as a result, our affairs in the city of this world should be marked by the meaningful waiting of prudence.

(The illustration is from Linda Witte Henke's "The Great O Antiphons", to be found at the Episcopal Cafe's Art Blog.)

There's something about Mary

Lord,
we beseech thee, give ear to our prayers,
and by thy gracious visitation
lighten the darkness of our hearts
by our Lord Jesus Christ ...

Tom Wright would probably be pleased with the Advent 4 collect for the Church of Ireland's Rite One - Cranmer's translation of the Sarum rite's Advent collect.  In For all the Saints?, Wright complains of contemporary liturgical provision for Advent:

The newer [Advent] lectionaries focus on people: on John the Baptist, and (not for the first or only time in the year) on Mary.

Neither the Advent 4 collects in 1662, in the ancient Latin rites nor in the contemporary Roman Missal focus on Mary.  That said, the lectionary provision across those Communions using the Revised Common Lectionary has an explicit focus on Mary, with most contemporary Anglican collects similarly having reference to her.

There are good pastoral reasons for this.  The majority of Anglican worshippers (and this is probably true across Communions) do not participate in the cycle of Marian feasts.  And as Anglicans continue to celebrate 1st January as the Naming/Circumcision of Jesus rather than the Orthodox/Roman feast of Mary Mother of God, there is no opportunity in the Christmas cycle - or, indeed, on other Sundays of the liturgical year - to reflect on the role of Mary other than Advent 4.

There is, however, also a compelling theological case for the contemporary lectionary focus on Mary.  The Lutheran theologian David Yeago puts it this way:

The Mother of Jesus is not simply present in the scriptural witness by implication, as a Christological postulate; she is named and presented to us directly as a character in the Christological narrative of salvation ... A Christ without Mary, a Christ in whose presence Mary is not also present, would be some other Christ than the scriptural Christ, the construct of some variety of "gnosis falsely so-called".

In the midst of the Church's prayerful reflection on the Advent hope and preparations for the celebration of the Incarnation, we surely must think upon Mary - the one pregnant with Hope.

Dark night and Advent faith

There is something particularly appropriate about commemorating St John of the Cross during Advent - a time (in the northern hemisphere) of darkness, a time when the theme of exile is prominent in the Church's liturgy, a time when our eschatological hope confronts the reality of pain, failure, fear and confusion.

In a 2010 lecture +Rowan urges us to listen to John of the Cross on faith in the One who remains when the signposts and landmarks (social, personal, ecclesial) have been taken away:

What St John of the Cross says to us – and he's not just writing for Carmelite nuns in sixteenth-century Spain – is that out of this sense of a 'brick wall' before our intelligence, and this sense of confusion and loss where our understanding is concerned, faith grows in its true meaning. It appears not as system, not as a comprehensive answer to all our problems. It appears quite simply in the form of 'dependable relationship'. You may not understand, you may not have the words on the tip of your tongue, but you learn somehow to be confident -- or at least to be reliant – on a presence, an other who does not change or go away. You realize that when the signposts and landmarks have been taken away there is a presence that does not let you go. And that's faith, I would say, in a very deeply biblical sense. Look at the disciples in the gospels. Look at the number of times when they say something spectacularly stupid and Jesus says, 'Don't even you understand?' Look at the times when they ask the silly questions, the times when they try to turn away, when they manifestly don't know what's going on. But in the great words at the end of John spoken by Peter, they also say, 'Where else can we go?' They know that the presence that has called them is dependable and that while they may be insecure, volatile, and easily capable of betrayal, forgetting and running away; what they confront in the one they call Rabbi and Master is one who will not go away.

The episcopate and the unexpected

Anglican Down Under is wondering if "any bishop has ever done the unpredictable or the unexpected".  He points to two quite predictable episcopal performances - Akinola (former Primate of Nigeria) supporting a draconian anti-gay bill before the Nigerian Senate and Spong (formerly of Newark) being Spong at a lecture in the Episcopal Divinity School.

The entirely predictable nature of both performances, however, should not mean that certain questions are not asked. Most obviously, of course, what on earth did the EDS think it was doing inviting Spong to lecture?  Spong's (very tired, old hat) pronouncements have no place in thoughtful liberal theology and the contribution it can make to the Church's mission.

But then there is Akinola.  Leave aside for the moment the grave assault on the civil rights of gay people that the legislation before the Nigerian Senate propagates and the fact that this contradicts Lambeth 1.10 (c) and (d).  What is odd is Akinola's conformity to his cultural context:

Same-sex marriage ... is against our African custom and traditions.

Custom and traditions in London, Dublin, and New York have significantly changed over the last 20 years on this matter.  But if Anglicanism's theological discourse is to be shaped by something more than merely assenting to our differing cultural contexts, invoking "our ... customs and traditions" will not do.  The alternative is Spong and Akinola, each conformed to their cultural context, talking past one another.

So can bishops ever do anything unpredictable or unexpected?  Perhaps two examples suggest that they can. The new Bishop of Durham - James Welby - has responded with charity and grace to one of his parishes, and its priest, moving to the Ordinariate:

I have known Ian Grieves [the parish's priest] for a long time. When I was training, in 1992, I did a placement with him at St James and I learnt a huge amount from him. He’s a very good priest and he’s clearly going to be a loss to the diocese and we are sad about that ...


This is the path that he and a number of the congregation have chosen. We have friendly relations with him and he’s very kindly invited me to preach on the last Sunday before they leave. I think the tone of that will be to wish them every blessing in their continued walk with Jesus Christ.

No bitterness.  No recriminations.  Instead, a grace-filled response to a painful situation.

The second example is from outside the Anglican Communion.  In his Advent pastoral letter, the new Roman Bishop of Aberdeen urged not a culture war nor action on global warming ... but silence:

We live in a noisy world. Our towns and cities are full of noise. There is noise in the skies and on the roads. There is noise in our homes, and even in our churches. And most of all there is noise in our minds and hearts ...


There can be no real relationship with God, there can be no real meeting with God, without silence. Silence prepares for that meeting and silence follows it. An early Christian wrote, ‘To someone who has experienced Christ himself, silence is more precious than anything else.’ For us God has the first word, and our silence opens our hearts to hear him. Only then will our own words really be words, echoes of God’s, and not just more litter on the rubbish dump of noise.


Grace and prayerful silence: now there is an episcopal agenda that could renew the Church.

Reclaimers and imaginatively engaged faith

In a Church Times article (h/t Thinking Anglicans), Fr Duncan Dormor - President and Dean of St John's College, Cambridge - reflects on the renewed popularity of Anglican choral worship in the chapels of Cambridge and Oxford colleges:


Choral compline or evensong provide an accessible and non-threatening space within which young people can think about their lives and become accustomed to the idea of worship — to the possibility that worship might actually make sense.


In some ways, the Anglican choral tradition may well be entering a golden age — not necessarily a fresh, but certainly a refreshed and refresh­ing expression of Christian worship, fit for purpose in the 21st century.


That may appear counterintui­tive, although recent research from the United States, which seeks to identify characteristic types of reli­gious engagement among the young, suggests that a significant proportion of those becoming involved in Chris­tian worship can be described as “Reclaimers”. Like many others, they seek religious experience rather than instruction or dogma, but, unlike some, they reject most of the elements of contemporary worship, seeking instead to reclaim estab­lished traditions, finding within them a refuge from the super­ficiality of much popular culture, and the onslaught of the commercial world.


This thesis finds strong support in the increased engagement with Anglican choral worship, where young people can reconnect with the depths of human experience, in a context that allows, indeed en­courages, them to think things through for themselves. Unsurpris­ingly, under such conditions, many find an intelligent, imaginatively engaged Christian faith compelling.

Yes, the social context of Oxford and Cambridge is somewhat exclusive and Oxbridge college chapels are not parish churches.  But there are points here worth considering - the place of non-eucharistic worship in giving space to meaningfully reflect on the  Christian story; the counter-cultural nature of traditional liturgy, challenging the hegemony of the market and its culture; the phenomenon of the 'Reclaimers', suggestive of the extent to which in a post-Christendom society the Christian narrative can be authentically radical.  And all of this, of course, is given expression through the Anglican tradition, which surely speaks of the potential of this tradition even in the midst of our debates and divisions.

Into the wilderness, fleeing illusory landscapes

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness ...

In the disconcerting season of Advent, few figures are as disconcerting as the Baptist.  Why does his word address us from the wilderness?  Rowan Williams' Silence and Honey Cakes - a reflection on the wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers - perhaps provides an answer:

Every search for truth involves some kind of fleeing, some kind of asceticism.  Every act of imaginative creation, in science as well as art, needs silence, a wariness about what looks easy.  At a time when politics is increasingly dominated, it seems, by people's worries about appearance and presentation, about 'how it will play', where the culture of celebrity is a daily trading in illusory images, where show business reaches out tentacles in all directions, we need to know how and when to flee; bearing in mind that it is not other people's folly we are running from so much as our own deep-rooted propensity to be drawn into these games.  Remember Macarius's blunt summary, that the world is a place where they make you do stupid things ...


It takes time, once again, to discover that the apparently generous horizon of a world in which my surface desires have free play is in fact a tighter prison than the constrained space chosen by the desert ascetics.  When you have learned more or less successfully to 'flee' some of the illusory landscapes in which life appears easier, you still have to learn how to inhabit the landscape of truth as more than occasional visitor.

Rejoice, O daughter Zion

Richard Hooker's reference to the conception of the Blessed Virgin in his Learned Discourse on Justification exemplifies how Anglicans approach this mystery within the plan of salvation with a reserve shaped by the patristic witness:


Now concerning the righteous, there neither is, nor ever was, any mere natural man absolutely righteous in himself: that is to say, void of all unrighteousness, of all sin. We dare not except, no not the blessed Virgin herself; of whom although we say with St. Augustine, for the honour’s sake which we owe to our Lord and Saviour Christ, we are not willing, in this cause, to move any question of his mother; yet forasmuch as the schools of Rome have made it a question, we must answer with Eusebius Emissenus, who speaketh of her, and to her to this effect: “Thou didst by special prerogative nine months together entertain within the closet of thy flesh the hope of all the ends of the earth, the honour of the world, the common joy of men. He, from whom all things had their beginning, hath had his own beginning from thee; of thy body he took the blood which was to be shed for the life of the world; of thee he took that which even for thee he paid. ‘A peccati enim veteris nexu, per se non est immunis nec ipsa genitrix Redemptoris:’ The mother of the Redeemer herself, otherwise than by redemption, is not loosed from the band of that ancient sin.” If Christ have paid a ransom for all, even for her, it followeth, that all without exception were captives. If one have died for all, all were dead, dead in sin; all sinful, therefore none absolutely righteous in themselves; but we are absolutely righteous in Christ. The world then must shew a Christian man, otherwise it is not able to shew a man that is perfectly righteous: “Christ is made unto us wisdom, justice, sanctification, and redemption:” wisdom, because he hath revealed his Father’s will; justice, because he hath offered himself a sacrifice for sin; sanctification, because he hath given us of his Spirit; redemption, because he hath appointed a day to vindicate his children out of the bands of corruption into liberty which is glorious.


Hooker's reflections flow from the two patristic statements by Augustine and Eusebius of Emesa.  But for the speculative theology of others, Hooker declares of the reformed Church of England, "we say with St Augustine".  Augustine's affirmation is thus worth quoting in full:


Now with the exception of the holy Virgin Mary in regard to whom, out of respect for the Lord, I do not propose to have a single question raised on the subject of sin - after all, how do we know what greater degree of grace for a complete victory over sin was conferred on her who merited to conceive and bring forth Him who all admit was without sin - to repeat then: with the exception of this Virgin, if we could bring together into one place all those holy men and women, while they lived here, and ask them whether they were without sin, what are we to suppose that they would have replied?  (De natura et gratia PL 44:267).


This, says Hooker, is what Anglicans confess.  The statement from Eusebius of Emesa then addresses the consequences of speculative theology as to the precise nature of the grace bestowed upon Blessed Mary at her conception - how does it relate to the fullness of the redeeming work of the Incarnate Word?  Mary's status, says Hooker following Eusebius, is also ours:


none [is] absolutely righteous in themselves; but we are absolutely righteous in Christ.


This concern to ensure that we understand the grace lavished upon Mary at her conception to be fully and totally dependent on Christ similarly shaped ARCIC's Seattle Statement:


The negative notion of 'sinlessness' [in the 1854 papal pronouncement] runs the risk of obscuring the fullness of Christ's saving work.  It is not so much that Mary lacks something which other human beings 'have', namely sin, but that that the glorious grace of God filled her life from the beginning (59).


On this basis, ARCIC then goes on to confess the mystery of Blessed Mary's conception in a manner distinct from the 1854 pronouncement but much closer to the patristic witness central to classical Anglican thought:


In view of her vocation to be the Mother of the Holy One, we can affirm together that Christ's redeeming work reached 'back' in Mary to the depths of her being and to her earliest beginnings.


The fact that Anglican liturgical calendars have since 1561 - in common with the tradition of Latin West and Greek East - commemorated the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary testifies to a shared belief (albeit rendered in different doctrinal grammars) in the grace lavished from her beginnings upon the one called to be the Theotokos.  In the midst of Advent, then, we rejoice in the grace that gives hope: the Triune God pours out grace upon a daughter of Zion, preparing her to be the God-bearer.

"No one before or since ..."

On the eve of the feast of the Conception of the BVM, Adam Hamilton's (senior pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, Leawood, Kansas) celebration of the vocation of Mary in his Advent book The Journey illustrates why we give thanks for her conception:

The redemption of humanity, and God's plan to step into our world, all hinged upon what Mary would say to Gabriel, the messenger.


Her assent set in motion the mystery of the Incarnation.  As a consequence of her willingness, Mary's own body knit together the Messiah.  It was her blood that carried nutrients to the child.  It was her tender words, spoken and sung as mothers do to the children in their wombs, that quieted and comforted him. For nine months, divinity resided in her womb.  No one before or since has had such intimate union with God.  An ancient Christian hymn captures Mary's role in our salvation when it says, "He whom the entire universe could not contain was contained within your womb".  The early church called her Theotokos - the one who gives birth to God - as a way of capturing both the identity of her son and the importance of her role in this story.

Questions in a disconcerting season

In a discussion of the character of the Advent season, Creedal Christian rightly reminds us of its penitential nature: "it's about hope and repentance".  In an earlier post, he emphasised the the cultural significance of recognising Advent's character:

That’s a strikingly counter-cultural message for a time when many churches are all too eager to embrace in part if not in whole the consumer culture’s Advent-trumping version of Christmas. But the message is right there in our Prayer Book.


Advent is indeed meant to be disconcerting.  The traditional themes of the four Sundays - patriarchs, prophets, John the Baptist, and the Blessed Virgin - each illustrate how the Advent of Yahweh is inherently disconcerting.  Before the revelation of the God of Israel, these foundational characters in the history of salvation are led to question.  Abraham is forced to ask, "what will you give me, for I continue childless?".  The  prophet can only ask, "What shall I cry?".  The imprisoned Baptist sends his disciples to ask Jesus, "are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?".  And in the final Sunday of Advent we hear Blessed Mary's, "how can this be ...?"

The revelation of the God of Israel - to patriarchs and prophets, to the Baptist and to she who is to be the Theotokos - so overturns our understanding that we must question our assumptions of ourselves, the world and the God who acts.  In Advent, then, rather than merely echoing the consumer society's holiday season, the Church's proclamation should be provocatively disconcerting.  As +Rowan has written in an Advent article for a popular UK magazine:

what changes things isn’t a formula for getting the right answer but a willingness to stop and let yourself be challenged right to the roots of your being.


(The painting is by Jim Curtis, based on the Third Song of Isaiah, part of the ECVA exhibition "Imaging the sacred art of chant".)

"God showed up in Mary's belly"

In the week that the Church celebrates the Conception of the Blessed Virgin, The Living Church has published a great sermon by Stanley Hauerwas, preached as he was installed as Canon Theologian of Christ Church Cathedral, Nashville:


Once in the burning bush, now in the womb of Mary, the grandeur of creation is made manifest as God himself comes to us, reminding us who we are. We are those who receive him. This is our good work.


Christian humanism is not based on the presumption that our humanity is self-justifying. Rather Christians are humanists because God showed up in Mary’s belly ... Together, at this time called Advent, let us wait in joyful expectation for the surprising coming of the Lord.

The tension of being on the eve

Advent pulls the imagination in two directions.  We turn our minds to the universal longing for God that is given voice in the Jewish scriptures, the great yearning towards the 'desire of the nations'; in the cycle of the great Advent antiphons that begins with O Sapientia on 16th December, the phrase comes twice, in the the sixth and seventh texts: O Rex gentium, 'O King of nations and their desire', O Emmanuel, 'desire of all nations and their salvation'.  And at the same time, 'Woe unto you who desire the day of the Lord' and 'Who may abide the day of his coming? For he is like a refiner's fire' ...


In Advent, in that day, we all become - as it has been said - Jews once more.  We relearn the lessons of the first covenant: that we cannot make God, however we long for him; that we must be surprised, ambushed and carried off by God if we are to be kept from idols.  The loyalty of the Jewish people to God is the fierce preservation of such a story: there is no sense to be made by thinking or imagining only the violent upheaval by which Israel become a single community of obedience and praise ...


We are perpetually looking forward to and giving thanks for an uncovenanted event, a transforming newness, the history of Israel and Jesus; we are perpetually 'on the eve' of God's coming, knowing and not knowing what it will be.  Advent insists that we stay for a while in this tension of being 'on the eve', if only in order that the new thing we celebrate at Christmas may have a chance of being truly new for us, not a stale and pious cliché ...


Because Advent tells us to look for mystery, absolute grace and freedom, in a fleshly human face, within the mobile form of our shared history, it brings our idolatry - philosophical and mythological alike - to judgement. Our hunger is met, we are talked and touched into new and everlasting life, our desire is answered; but only insofar as we have lived in an Advent of the religious imagination, struggling to let God be God; casting out idols of silver and gold to the moles and bats.


Rowan Williams "Advent: a university sermon" in Open to Judgement.

Our food and our dwelling in exile

There is an interesting and honest admission by Kathleen Henderson Staudt on the Daily Episcopalian:

In our effort to distinguish ourselves from literalist and fundamentalist approaches to Scripture and doctrine, we may well have ceded too much ground in the public conversation about and use of Scripture to guide and inform our account of ourselves.

This is preceded by an equally interesting acknowledgement of the classical Anglican tradition:

Certainly it is true to our tradition to take Scripture seriously -- part of the “three-legged stool” of Scripture, Reason and Tradition, but taking a place of priority in many ways. At the consecration of Bishop Mariann Budde I noticed again that one of the things every ordained person must say publicly (in addition to accepting the “doctrine, discipline and worship of Christ as this church has received them”) is “I do believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary for salvation” (BCP, 538).

There is a 'postliberal' character to such observations.  In their Good News in Exile, three postliberal pastors in mainline US churches similarly emphasised the need to rediscover Scripture over and against "the insights and experiences" of modernity:

Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann has observed that it was during times of exile that Israel became a textual community.  Living as strangers in a strange land, Israel's very identity as a people was threatened, so they read and listened to stories to remind them of who they were and where their true home was ... When a community of people is no longer in charge, when the more corporeal sources of identity are vanishing, the community turns to texts and stories as wellsprings of life.  Surely this is part of what we are observing in our churches today.  It is now becoming clearer that the scriptural story is our home in exile ... Now that the world no longer provides such an accommodating home for the scriptural community, Scripture has become our home.

That we all - evangelical, catholic and broad-church, conservative and liberal - became too comfortable and complacent in modernity is surely a given.  The same culture of individualism which so profoundly shaped liberal theology in modernity, also influenced evangelical hermeneutics.  The challenge of reading Scripture disappeared in the midst of the culture wars.  For liberals - in the words of Good News in Exile - "neither tradition nor Scripture was thought to hold much authority".  Conservatives succumbed to an Enlightenment epistemology in which, as Oliver O'Donovan has stated, "the immediacy of the insight tends to make the interpretation of Scripture seem superfluous": what Scripture proclaimed was 'known' before Scripture was read and listened to.

In his recent Advent letter to the Primates of the Communion, +Rowan referred to the Communion's "Bible in the Life of the Church" as a "very significant project".  It will indeed be very significant if the project leads to Anglicans more seriously engaging with Scripture.  The two case studies undertaken by the project - Biblical engagement with our approach to the environment and regarding our call to challenge unjust structures in society - pose challenges to both 'Left' and 'Right': a 'Left' which too easily abandons the canonical text and canonical readings for progressive, secular discourse and a 'Right' which too easily ignores the catholic and cosmic nature of Scripture's witness.

Advent, when we prayerfully place ourselves within the experiences of ancient Israel, is a meaningful season in which to rediscover Scripture as our food and our dwelling in the midst our exiles - amidst the ruins of Christendom and a global economic crisis, and within our own personal exiles of brokenness, disappointment, fear, and grief.  It is indeed a time to "read, mark, learn and inwardly digest".

World Aids Day

"To be made more truly the Church"

+Rowan's Advent letter to the Primates of the Communion wonderfully summarises the Advent challenge to the churches:

In these weeks before Christmas, we Christians all have to acknowledge that in many ways we still live as if Christ had not come.  We recognize the marks of the old habits in our lives, the ‘works of darkness’ that the Collect speaks of. We pray that the new light of Jesus may rise in our hearts.  In other words, we as believers acknowledge that we are all of us, whatever ecclesiastical communion we live in, still on the way to being truly and fully the Church here and now in history, a place fully inhabited or indwelt by Christ through his Spirit.  The gift of life in Christ is given us in baptism, and the reality of Christ’s Body is at work in our life together; nothing can cancel out that supreme privilege.  Yet we have to pray continually to be made more truly the Church by being set free to receive more of Christ, more of the gifting of the Spirit.  As St Augustine wrote in his treatise on baptism, if we were a perfect Church, we should no longer need to pray the Lord’s Prayer, asking for the Kingdom to come and for our sins to be forgiven.