Category: Church year

I Jeremiah 11 & Romans 13

Do not pray for this people nor offer any plea or petition for them…

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities…Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect….Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another…

First Jeremiah: The Lord said to me: Do not pray for this people nor offer any plea or petition for them.

God has spoken to Israel. But Israel has not replied. Or rather Israel has replied to every god of every one of the surrounding foreign powers. Israel likes to give itself away to every conceivable nonsense. Israel sells itself very cheap – changes gods with the season, always rolling out an improved model, a tragic fashion victim – that’s what we heard from Jeremiah last week. Who knows perhaps the people of Israel are secretly convinced that, once they had thoroughly wasted themselves and one another, the real God will still be there to come home to.

Jeremiah is God’s pray-er for Israel and to Israel, who has to point out that if we don’t talk to God we address our petitions, hopes and prayers to the latest re-launched updated contemporary God-image. Now the Lord makes Jeremiah tease and provoke Israel into reclaiming its pride and joy in being God’s beloved, in returning respect for respect and love for love. If we peek ahead to next week we find Jeremiah admitting that he cant not pray ‘If I say ‘I will not mention him or speak his name any more in his name, his word is in my heart like a fire, too strong I cant hold it in…..’.

Well, I cant think that that is like our society at all. We’d never do that. We wouldn’t waste the inheritance given to us, or wouldn’t exchange the love of God for us, and the truth of this love, for a series of lesser products just because we told that these other divinities are more exciting or contemporary.

But it was for us that this was written, Saint Paul tells us. Israel went through all distress this so we can see how huge and demanding is the life with God in order to make us want this life and ask for it. It is for us that Israel is different, has suffered all these indignities, recorded them and passed this record to us – out of love.

And it is for the world that we are different. We are the pray-ers and intercessors, and witnesses of God for this society of ours. We gather here to receive the love and truth of the God who let Jeremiah go through the mill for our sake, who sent us gentiles Paul the apostle, who taught the English to pray to the right God, who heard the prayers of the church that wrote the collects in this Prayer Book and built and re-built this building.

II Spirituality in the City

I have been asked to say something about Spirituality in the City – the book the theological discussion group has been reading, and to set out some questions. Let me just remind you of what is in the book, so two broad questions to kick off:

What do we mean by spirituality and what do we mean by city? Spirituality first.
In his chapter Rowan Williams tells us that:

1. ‘We need to rescue spirituality from some of the ways in which it has been domesticated,. …. It becomes only a code for techniques of making people feel a bit better about themselves… where the Spirit makes people ‘uncomfortable about themselves and their environment, critical and creative. (p. 24)

When the New Testament speaks of the life of ‘spirit’ it speaks about the virtues gifts of life together. It assumes that to grow in the spiritual life is to become free to give others what has been given to you

Spirituality cannot be treated as a separate issue, it is about the life with Christ and so discipleship as whole. No spirituality without the Spirit of the Son sent into our hearts whereby we call God Father. And the Spirit is engaged in the business of making us human, which of course means being in relationship with God.

2. The Church might open a way to the story of that city whose founder is God, and to citizenship in that community,… ready to explore their own ‘citizenship of heaven’ and to open it up to others in such a way as to transform the citizenship and the cities of this earth. (p.26)

The archbishop says what several contributors say –

3. The church is obliged just to be there speaking a certain language, telling a certain story, witnessing to certain non-negotiable things about humanity.

The contributors point out that spirituality does not mean escaping our grotty urban reality, and that even when polite society has given up and left it, the church does not leave the bad bits of town. Archbishop Williams is concerned by the poverty of imagination of the generation growing up in front of Play Station. He wants a Church to know it has something distinct from the surrounding culture of consumerism and endless re-validated ‘choice’. To be this distinct thing, in which other criteria, those of discipleship, operate. Then we have something distinct to offer this society.

The chapter I chose was ‘Spirituality in Everyday Life, by Andrew Davey. He tells us:

4. ‘The call to enter the new Jerusalem is one to participate in its maintenance, and to practise human formation in the presence of God… it enables us to celebrate and engage with, the life of the city in our quest for the ‘new ordering of God’ on earth as it is in heaven.’ (p. 106)

I think ‘practise human formation in the presence of God’ means that God’s presence, here amongst us in the worship, forms us human beings, on God’s definition, and that in all our worship and life together we practice being human together. Is that right?

What do we mean by City? Every contributor to this book refers to London then points out the inadequacy of this definition of city, for by city we also mean our Society. Our identity is not given only by our location in London, but also by the calendar..

According to Andrew Davey the calendar of the Church year gives us an alternative identity. We are located by the Scripture set out through the church year. Each reading, of Old testament, psalm, epistle and gospel, adds something and by a process of triangulation the sermon tells the result of all these readings of Scripture for who we are, where we are, which way we are facing and what is coming up.

5. Through the offering of the Eucharist, the offices, prayer and the sharing of Scriptures, Christians have a collection of tactics through which they can begin to reimagine and reshape the communities and context of which they are a part.

6. Liturgy in the city becomes a counter-cultural activity … the means through which Christians stake their interest in a place by creating events, new histories – concrete, historicized acts that proclaim God’s new order’.

7. In realising an urban spirituality those strategies come together as the Christian community becomes more aware of a memory that heals, redeems and transforms, of a narrative that, when told and prayed in community, allows the integrating principle to take root. (p. 111).

Finally Andrew Davey quotes Stephen Sykes:

8. ‘Would it not be consistent with the Anglican tradition to see our churches offering praise on behalf of a specific part of the world which God loves, the praise of which it has forgotten to express.’

In other words we have to pray for those who cannot pray for themselves. That is what we doing here. So when Andrew Davey talk about spirituality in everyday life, he says that this is about Christians worshipping God together in public. He says they speak for the whole city when they do.

A couple of questions – fair and unfair – about the book as a whole. Its editor Andrew Walker ‘is developing The London Centre for Spirituality at St Edmund the King’. Now wait a minute, we must say, this is the London Centre for Spirituality, here and now where we confess God, when humbled we ask almighty God if we may approach him with our petitions, meekly on our knees. This happens here and in the Sunday morning eucharist when we are all gathered together in one congregation. Just as that eucharistic loaf is lifted up high, so we are lifted up by the Son and just so in our prayers we lift up the whole world to God.

Isn’t St Mary’s Stoke Newington is the London centre for petitioning God, since it is God who petitions us? We do this when the whole congregation is present – made up as it is of all the unlikely and most contrary elements, the young, old, this and that class and ethnicity, this and that churchmanship, gathered and animated by the Spirit we pray and call on God and so become members of his Son. When the whole congregation is present we are the Spirit-filled, catholic people. Spirituality is not an add-on: it is our main and only business.

So there is plenty for us to extract from Spirituality in the City. But I think the best response to it comes from another little book. Actually it is the most immodest little book. It is the St Mary’s Church order of service for Eucharist and Holy Baptism. To read just one snippet:

‘For thou only art holy; thou only art the Lord; thou only, O Christ, with the Holy Spirit, art most High in the Glory of God the Father…’

You sing this without flinching. I am just amazed that the ideology police haven’t impounded this little book of ours, or don’t come running down the aisles blowing whistles and announcing that we can no longer make such claims in public. The most exciting book, the most controversial, is the very book we sing from, and it should be our next choice as book for the theology discussion group. We sing it – what do we mean by it? A Church that gave good answers to this would be doing its city a big favour.

III A catholic people

The most significant statement in this book is the quote from Sykes: We pray for those who do not pray for themselves. In two senses – we pray to God on their behalf. And we ask the leaders of society for what they should ask for themselves – chiefly some hope, aspiration and leadership.

‘Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities.’ This doesn’t just mean civil authorities. We are here under authority of Christ, who has given us the more gentle practices of his people the Church, of its worship, which we sing on behalf of London, but also to make London curious and envious. If do not follow this liturgy we will by default follow the liturgy of the many other counterfeit gods of the global marketplace and media.

‘Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities.’ The authority of Christ is made available to the whole Christian church, and the authority of the whole church is made available to us in the approachable figure of our own church leaders. They authority is good – let us tell them so until they become more convinced of it themselves. They authority is given by God for us, and it is good for us, and bad for us if we don’t receive it. Our priests and bishops are under the authority of the whole Christian church and tradition, the experience of many centuries. We must pray for them and encourage them to dispense that largesse to us. It is not only teaching, but it is discipline. By our praying to God for them and making requests to them we have to so change the climate that it is possible for the clergy to lead and give us the correction we need. But by the insistence of our prayers and petitions for them and to them, we have to give them the authority to speak to us in a new way.

I think we should illustrate the catholicity of the church in the eucharist is the hope of this city of ours. I have three suggestions:

1. We have to show that our congregation is not autonomous – not the whole Church – even in stoke Newington. So how would it be if we sent some (pre-sanctified) bread to every other little shop-front church in Hackney, and ask them to give us some word of encouragement, and perhaps even send us some bread back?

2. The economy of London is not autonomous, and the Church in London is not autonomous. So why don’t we send some (pre-sanctified) bread to one or two other cities in the world and ask them to give us some word of encouragement, and even send us some bread back that we can break in our eucharist? We are not a self-sufficient people: for example, in other cities all over the world people sew the clothes we wear in London, and I doubt we in London pay enough for them. How would it be if we sent bread, and whatever other tokens of encouragement we can think of, to whatever churches we can contact in one or two of those cities in the Philippines or South China where our clothes come from?

3. It is the job of this church to pray. I think the intercessions in the Sunday eucharist are one of the great things about this congregation. Here perhaps we could really hope to teach others. We should collect our intercessions and package them so we produce our own Lent course and discussion books in the hope that we can offer something distinct to our diocese and this city.

Every congregation worldwide and through out history is united by God with every other, and each prays for its part of the world, and speaks back to God in thankfulness. St Mary’s is the city on the hill, placed here so the rest of London can see our life together and say this is the people we want to become. This congregation is a city, a new society, inaugurated here. It speaks for those who do not know how to speak for themselves, and the poor and the voiceless can come and find their voice here. It does this because it itself is the product of the love and labour of the Holy Spirit who has placed us here before the world, gathered around Christ, in earshot of the Father so we can pray Lord hear us, Lord graciously hear us.

In the name of Father the Son and Holy Spirit Amen

Praise the LORD, O my soul.
O LORD my God, you are very great;
you are clothed with splendor and majesty.
He wraps himself in light as with a garment;
he stretches out the heavens like a tent
and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters.
He makes the clouds his chariot
and rides on the wings of the wind.
He makes winds his messengers,
flames of fire his servants.
He set the earth on its foundations;
it can never be moved.

These all look to you
to give them their food at the proper time.
When you give it to them,
they gather it up;
when you open your hand,
they are satisfied with good things.
When you hide your face,
they are terrified;
when you take away their breath,
they die and return to the dust.
When you send your Spirit,
they are created,
and you renew the face of the earth.
May the glory of the LORD endure forever;
may the LORD rejoice in his works-
he who looks at the earth, and it trembles,
who touches the mountains, and they smoke.
I will sing to the LORD all my life;
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live

Psalm 104 Pentecost Revised Common Lectionary

The Father gives the Son to the world. God presents the world with this gift of himself in the person of the Son. Then, when many ages have passed, the perfected world presents the Son to the Father, by the Spirit. The Son will present the world, in the form of the church, to the Father, to receive his inspection and approval. But the Son also continually presents the first installments of the future world, the perfected creation, to the Father. The future world is entirely present to the Father in the Son. It is created by that conversation and continuously opened by the Spirit who sustains their conversation. The future and completed world is continually given to the present world by the Spirit in the church, which is itself the body of the Son for the world. The Spirit stands in for the future act of the world. Where the world is going to be one day established in its own free and joyful activity, there the Spirit is now, representing it and preparing it for this future. The someday competent world will accompany the Spirit; it will take the action the Spirit gives it and, in the company of the Spirit, it will take what is the Spirit’s and return it via the Son to the Father. In that joint act of Spirit and world, the world will become living, active, and free.

The church is the visible tip of the not yet visible company of heaven. This company is held together by God, and made visible by him to us on earth. The church understood on this eschatological definition, holds together what would otherwise drift apart. The church sustains the world, which has no unity of its own, and so the church represents that future in which the world will be spacious and free. In raising Jesus Christ, and calling out the church, God has elected the human race. He has made the church to be the body that embodies and guarantees both plurality and unity for the world. As the church is itself the work of the Spirit, it works this priestly task of bringing the world together around the Son.

Everything is changed by the ascension of Christ. The ascent of man is complete, in this man. Jesus Christ has gone to God the Father. But he has not left us and the incarnation is not ended. A human sits with God. Christ is with the Father and with us. We have not returned to the stand-off and enmity between God and man. One of us has at last broken through to heaven. This human being now sits at the right hand of God, and is forever divine and human. He is our man, there, so the incarnation continues now forever. One of us has gained admittance to the palace and throne room of the great King. That Christ is with the Father does not mean that he is not with us. It does mean we do not control how he is visible or available to us.

Jesus is no longer available to us as a single figure we can be alone with. He is no longer in our grasp, but we are in his grasp. We grabbed Christ, but could not hang on to him. He grasped and holds on to us. He is holy, spiritual, with the glory of his whole company. Christ has now attached us to the people of God. They, or rather, we, stand in a line that stretches back through the door of the palace, where he sits with the Father, outside across the courtyard and out into the world. This procession stretches all the way from there to here, where we are. We are part of the procession that stretches from the Son and that loops around, and connects up, all the world. Our leader is at one end, we at the other. We do not see him, but for him this procession is one with him, is part of him. The whole procession, and all the people in it, us included, are made impregnable by his protection. His Spirit holds together the whole long train of the people of the Son and makes them holy so that they are increasingly able to look forward to his coming again in great glory.

The (RCL) readings for Ascension day are

Acts 1:1-11
In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.

Psalm 93
The Lord is king, he is robed in majesty; the Lord is robed, he is girded with strength. He has established the world; it shall never be moved; your throne is established from of old; you are from everlasting

Ephesians 1:15-23
God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Luke 24:44-53
Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

Lent is a recapitulation of our understanding of creation and fall, and of regeneration and sanctification.

Because Lent was seen as a season preliminary to Easter, in some older interpretations Lent was predominantly or even exclusively about the suffering and death of Jesus. Lent was the season of the cross. Period.
But those serious about the pursuit of Christian history had to wrestle with the fact that Lent began as a time of final instruction and intensive preparation for baptism. Ancient lectionaries (or at least portions of them) were reconstructed and found to contain Lenten readings such as the story of the man born blind (John 9), for in the early centuries baptism with likened to the recovery of sight. This Lectionary inclusion, grounded in a very old understanding of Lent as preparation for baptism, helped to reestablish Lent in the church as a season for the consideration of the meaning of baptism as related to the new life we have in Christ, the Crucified and Risen One.

Lawrence Hall Stookey Calendar: Christ’s Time for the Church

Why use the Lectionary? Who compiled it? Why are there variations and alternative readings, so the Church sometimes is and sometimes isn’t on the same page? Why does my own church, the Church of England, have a different set of readings from the Revised Common lectionary at this time of year? I have just found that some answers are offered by Consultation on Common Texts (CCT). Here they are:

Q: How similar is the ecumenical system to the original Roman scheme?
A: The three-year, three-reading plan is exactly the same. The calendar is virtually the same. The Gospel readings are almost always the same, as are the second-lesson selections, drawn from the Epistles and (after Easter) the books of Acts and Revelation. The only serious divergence is at the point of the Hebrew Bible lessons after Pentecost, where we laid aside the Roman typological choices in favor of a broader kind of linkage that uses the Patriarchal/Mosaic narrative for Year A (Matthew), The Davidic narrative for Year B (Mark), and the Elijah/Elisha/Minor Prophets series for Year C (Luke).
Q: What is the rationale for that?
A: In our initial survey of Protestant use of the denominational variants of the Roman table, we discovered that there was unhappiness at the absence of the Old Testament’s narrative and historical literature, as well as a deficiency of Wisdom texts. So we have tried to remedy that with our more expansive kind of linkage, but for the purposes of ecumenical acceptability we continue to publish an alternative Old Testament set that is closer to the Roman, Episcopal and Lutheran tables in this regard for the Sundays after Pentecost.
Q: How widely is the Revised Common Lectionary now being used?
A: The information we gathered is compelling. Throughout the English-speaking world, most churches that have anything like a tradition of lectionary use are recommending our work.
Q: What is the ecumenical significance of this development?
A: In the first place, it is a totally unexpected development in that after all these centuries since the 16th-century reformation, many of the churches that divided at that time are now committed to reading the scriptures together Sunday by Sunday. This is a kind of ecumenism nobody anticipated, least of all the Roman See. And it makes possible wonderful weekly clergy gatherings all over the world for the purpose of mutual work on sermons and homilies.
Q: The question keeps recurring from just such groups as to why on so many Sundays there seems to be no clear theological or thematic relationship among the readings. Can you explain this?
A: The thematic situation is different depending on whether you are in the core liturgical seasons of Advent through to Lent and Lent through to the Day of Pentecost, or in that long stretch of Sundays between Pentecost and Advent, known in Roman terminology as Ordinary Time. In the festival liturgical seasons there always will be an obvious (we hope) unity that is governed by the Gospel lesson for the day. In post-Pentecost Ordinary Time, however, the situation is quite different, and not even the most sophisticated guides to lectionary preaching seem always to be aware of this. On those Sundays, we cut loose the Old Testament reading from the Gospel on a Sunday-by-Sunday basis, even though we chose those readings from First Testament books that the Gospel author (of- the year) seems most interested in – i.e., Matthew/Patriarchs and Moses, Mark/David, and Luke/Prophets.
In that same time, preacher should notice that the second (New Testament) reading proceeds from week to week on a continuous chapter-by-chapter course, and so there will be no obvious correlation between that lesson and the Gospel or the Old Testament. So on those Sundays the three readings, which have deliberately no thematic interrelationship, are all proceeding on a continuous or semi-continuous track.. If this were thought curious or troublesome, it should be remembered that such an in course sequence of reading is borrowed directly from the synagogue’s use of the Torah and the subsequent practice of the churches of the first several centuries. That is to say, the public reading of the scriptures was never originally conceived simply as source texts for preaching, but rather as the only possible way to acquaint the congregation with as much of the scriptures as possible. And that of course is the expressed intention of the Vatican Council’s desired revision of the Roman lectionary, and therefore of all systems derived from it.
Q: What does that mean for sermon preparation, particularly in those Ordinary Time Sundays after Pentecost?
A: That question regularly comes when someone says that they use the lectionary sometimes, meaning that they avoid it in Ordinary Time. It misses the point of the continuous principle altogether. That is to say, during that time the preacher who is serious about the lectionary must decide which track (Gospel, New Testament or Old Testament) to use Sunday by Sunday. Certainly there should be no attempt to force a thematic unity on all three readings where none in fact exists. Much less should the preacher hop, skip and jump around among three sets of readings that are organized on a week-to-week basis. The radical shift that this system requires is for the preacher to think about weekly preaching as sequential rather than thematic.

You can read more over at Consultation on Common Texts

Epiphany means appearance (See, I told you this is about stating the obvious). Epiphany means revelation and the mystery (secret) now revealed. That God’s appearing, his arrival, here, with us. He, the Lord, has come to us, man. So we can call him Immanuel, God with us. He said he would, his coming and arrival has been forecast and looked forward to for weeks, the weeks of Advent (=coming). So we could regard the Feast of Christ, Christmas, as the first part of Epiphany. Epiphany is a matter of stages. Who God is for us, in Jesus, is revealed to us bit by bit, week by week as it were.

So we are in the season of Epiphany. Last week was the naming and circumcision of Christ – the first stage.

This week, Epiphany itself, all the kings of the earth come to worship Jesus as king of Israel, and as their own king. Even these gentiles come, while the present puppet king of Israel, Herod, does not recognise or worship him. So this week we had Isaiah 60: 1-6

Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you. Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. Lift up your eyes and look around; they all gather together, they come to you; your sons shall come from far away… They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.

Then we had Psalm 72.

Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king’s son. May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice. May the mountains yield prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness. May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor.

We replied with: ALL KINGS BOW DOWN BEFORE HIM; NATIONS ALL ADORE

Then we had Ephesians 3: 1-12 spelling out this epiphany-appearance. What is appearing now is what (though long trailed and previewed to Israel) was quite unknown to the world, a secret the existence of which the world never suspected.

The mystery was made known by revelation.. In former generations this mystery was not made known to humankind, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: that is, the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel… to bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ, and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. (In other words, it is not so much that we bring him gold and gifts, but that he represents the wealth of God that is now to be given to us).

Then the gospel is read. Matthew 2: 1-12.

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage… When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

These are the readings set down by the Lectionary which, together with Common Worship, determines the course of each service in our Church.

So you see, in the next few weeks, through demonstrations (miracles) and instruction, we are taught who Jesus is, and we thereby learn who God is, and we are taught this by God, through these specific Scriptures and the rest of the service. More anon.