I've been reading about Epiphany (Jan 6), which in the Western Christian tradition commemmorates the wise men's visit to Jesus, which is symbolically the revelation of Jesus Christ to Gentiles. Apparently Epiphany is a multifaceted feast which can be celebrated in many ways, with different emphases. The idea of universal adoration of our great God is a stirring note in the Epiphany readings, though, so I thought I'd post the text of the hymn, "We Three Kings", which reflects this vibe.
We Three Kings (John H. Hopkins Jnr, 1857)
We three kings of Orient are;
Bearing gifts we traverse afar,
Field and fountain, moor and mountain,
Following yonder star.
O star of wonder, star of light,
Star with royal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to thy perfect light.
Born a King on Bethlehem’s plain
Gold I bring to crown Him again,
King forever, ceasing never,
Over us all to reign.
Frankincense to offer have I;
Incense owns a Deity nigh;
Prayer and praising, voices raising,
Worshipping God on high.
Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes a life of gathering gloom;
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
Sealed in the stone cold tomb.
Glorious now behold Him arise;
King and God and sacrifice;
Alleluia, Alleluia,
Sounds through the earth and skies.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Sunday, December 28, 2008
The Real Twelve Days of Christmas
The main problem with me trying to undergo the year of living liturgically is that I have no idea. I discovered a thought-provoking article about the twelve days of Christmas today - http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/news/2004/dec24.html. I don't necessarily agree with all the statements but it's certainly interesting.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
A bit of Christmas fun
Last night at my 'family and family friends' Christmas Eve party, I opened with the Christmas Day Midnight collect and prayer from the Australian Prayer Book and got my four Tay cousins (visiting from Brisbane) to read the four lectionary readings, interspersed with carol singing. Earlier in the day, I had spent some time helping them to pronounce and understand what they were reading - 10 year old Aidan was particularly impressive as he exhorted us to 'renounce ungodliness' and be 'zealous for good works'.
These lectionary readings are well-chosen indeed, and I can imagine a wonderful carols service with selected carols complementing each reading. As it was, we had some incongruous and amusing juxtapositions, like Psalm 96 ("Ascribe to the LORD") followed by "Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer". Well, reindeer praise the LORD too, no doubt.
In a less reverential mood, I also thought of three Christian slogans to redeem the vitiated image of Christmas that many people have:
1) Jesus' birth rocked the earth.
2) The baby who rules out maybe.
3) God with us. Worth the fuss.
How are you celebrating Christmas? Can you think of other slogans? =p
These lectionary readings are well-chosen indeed, and I can imagine a wonderful carols service with selected carols complementing each reading. As it was, we had some incongruous and amusing juxtapositions, like Psalm 96 ("Ascribe to the LORD") followed by "Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer". Well, reindeer praise the LORD too, no doubt.
In a less reverential mood, I also thought of three Christian slogans to redeem the vitiated image of Christmas that many people have:
1) Jesus' birth rocked the earth.
2) The baby who rules out maybe.
3) God with us. Worth the fuss.
How are you celebrating Christmas? Can you think of other slogans? =p
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Mary the model believer
Across various church traditions, Mary has often been held up as the model believer. Here, when the angel Gabriel reveals to her that God has chosen her to bear the long-awaited Messiah, we catch a glimpse of why this is so. Mary does not put on a show of false humility and declaim her unsuitability for this great role. Nor is she a check-your-brains-at-the-door religious fanatic - she is aware that the situation will look a bit suss and has the temerity to question the angel: How will this be, since I am a virgin? (Read: I may be an uneducated, hitherto unremarkable, young Jewish girl, but even I know how babies are made!)
But when Gabriel informs her that with God all things are possible and cites Elizabeth's pregnancy as contemporary evidence of a similar miracle of the womb, Mary shows humble submission to God even if not all her questions have been answered: I am the servant of the LORD; let it be to me according to your word.
In case it has all been a dream, she goes to check out Elizabeth. Thence issues the Magnificat, in which she praises God and shows that she gets enough about Him to joyfully serve Him in what she does know, not being hung up on what she (still) doesn't (like the how can this be question). I find what Mary does with her questions an encouraging model to follow - ask God, listen to the answer, submit to God's will regardless of whether the answer is fully satisfactory, check out corroborating evidence if relevant, praise God.
But when Gabriel informs her that with God all things are possible and cites Elizabeth's pregnancy as contemporary evidence of a similar miracle of the womb, Mary shows humble submission to God even if not all her questions have been answered: I am the servant of the LORD; let it be to me according to your word.
In case it has all been a dream, she goes to check out Elizabeth. Thence issues the Magnificat, in which she praises God and shows that she gets enough about Him to joyfully serve Him in what she does know, not being hung up on what she (still) doesn't (like the how can this be question). I find what Mary does with her questions an encouraging model to follow - ask God, listen to the answer, submit to God's will regardless of whether the answer is fully satisfactory, check out corroborating evidence if relevant, praise God.
Monday, December 15, 2008
I've got the joy joy joy joy...
When I was a kid, we used to sing that catchy song of few words, "I've got the joy joy joy joy down in my heart (where?), down in my heart (where?), down in my heart. I've got the joy joy joy joy down in my heart (where?), down in my heart to stay." Yesterday at the airport, amidst the tired and resigned passengers in transit, a small girl behind me was piping away with another of those childhood songs, "If you're happy and you know it, [perform some bodily function like clapping your hands]...If you're happy and you know it and you really want to show it, if you're happy and you know it [perform abovementioned function]."
This week's lectionary readings all have the theme of joy in them: joy in the prophecies being fulfilled, in God coming near in Jesus, in the way God raises up the lowly and poor and humbles the rich and those who think they are self-sufficient, in the sure hope we have that Jesus will return to make righteousness and peace spring up all over God's earth and in His sanctified, glorified people, us! I am praying that God will make this inexpressible joy in Jesus (1 Pet 1) spring up down in my heart and overflow so that it is manifested by various outward responses like my speech and the way I live, whatever circumstances I find myself in. After all, because of Jesus, we have a joy that goes deep and demands to be shown, a joy that is the ultimate word over sorrow or anxiety or fear. Praise God!
This week's lectionary readings all have the theme of joy in them: joy in the prophecies being fulfilled, in God coming near in Jesus, in the way God raises up the lowly and poor and humbles the rich and those who think they are self-sufficient, in the sure hope we have that Jesus will return to make righteousness and peace spring up all over God's earth and in His sanctified, glorified people, us! I am praying that God will make this inexpressible joy in Jesus (1 Pet 1) spring up down in my heart and overflow so that it is manifested by various outward responses like my speech and the way I live, whatever circumstances I find myself in. After all, because of Jesus, we have a joy that goes deep and demands to be shown, a joy that is the ultimate word over sorrow or anxiety or fear. Praise God!
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Origen on Isaiah 40
The stirring prophecy in Isaiah 40 is one reason to long for Jesus' return - to fully straighten out the crooked and to raise and lower as appropriate, to make a way for the LORD to dwell among us. We have partial fulfilment of this prophecy in Jesus' first coming. Origen (183-253), whatever else he got wrong, has some thought-provoking words on this:
Now let us turn to that part of the prophecy which also concerns the coming of Christ and see whether this too has been fulfilled. The text continues: Every crooked way shall be straightened. Each one of us was once crooked; if we are no longer so, it is entirely due to the grace of Christ. Through his coming to our souls all our crooked ways have been straightened out.
If Christ did not come to your soul, of what use would his historical coming in the flesh be to you? Let us pray that each day we may experience his coming and be able to say: It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
Jesus my Lord has come, then. He has smoothed out your rough places and changed your disorderly ways into level paths, making in you an even unimpeded road, a road that is absolutely clear, so that God the Father may walk in you and Christ the Lord make his dwelling in you and say: My Father and I will come and make our home in them. [from Origen, Homily on Luke’s Gospel 22, 1-4: SC 67, 300-02]
Sometimes I wonder how much symbolic reading of the Old Testament we can do before we're reading too much into it. After all, isn't Isa 40's emphasis on the making straight of crookedness on a universal (or at least all-God's-people) scale rather than on an individual level? And yet the universal levelling out in preparation for God's glory to be revealed cannot happen universally if it does not happen individually, or can it? Are we promised merely a levelling out 'whether we want it or not' (every knee shall bow, willing and unwilling) or are we promised what Origen reads into it, an individual transformative levelling out? And if Isa 40 does not directly promise the latter, are we still justified in reading that individual transformation into this passage, in the context of the overall revelation of God's plans and promises throughout Scripture? I'd love to hear your thoughts, so do respond!
(By the way, is anyone besides me able to post? I would like you to be able to participate not merely by comments responding to posts, but by initiating posts too...)
Now let us turn to that part of the prophecy which also concerns the coming of Christ and see whether this too has been fulfilled. The text continues: Every crooked way shall be straightened. Each one of us was once crooked; if we are no longer so, it is entirely due to the grace of Christ. Through his coming to our souls all our crooked ways have been straightened out.
If Christ did not come to your soul, of what use would his historical coming in the flesh be to you? Let us pray that each day we may experience his coming and be able to say: It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
Jesus my Lord has come, then. He has smoothed out your rough places and changed your disorderly ways into level paths, making in you an even unimpeded road, a road that is absolutely clear, so that God the Father may walk in you and Christ the Lord make his dwelling in you and say: My Father and I will come and make our home in them. [from Origen, Homily on Luke’s Gospel 22, 1-4: SC 67, 300-02]
Sometimes I wonder how much symbolic reading of the Old Testament we can do before we're reading too much into it. After all, isn't Isa 40's emphasis on the making straight of crookedness on a universal (or at least all-God's-people) scale rather than on an individual level? And yet the universal levelling out in preparation for God's glory to be revealed cannot happen universally if it does not happen individually, or can it? Are we promised merely a levelling out 'whether we want it or not' (every knee shall bow, willing and unwilling) or are we promised what Origen reads into it, an individual transformative levelling out? And if Isa 40 does not directly promise the latter, are we still justified in reading that individual transformation into this passage, in the context of the overall revelation of God's plans and promises throughout Scripture? I'd love to hear your thoughts, so do respond!
(By the way, is anyone besides me able to post? I would like you to be able to participate not merely by comments responding to posts, but by initiating posts too...)
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Advent: season of hope and waiting
Nov 30 AD 2008: First Sunday in Advent
Advent is a season of waiting for Christ's return. The Israelites in our readings today were longing for God's presence to restore them; they wanted God to come down so they could see Him face to face and be saved. We in turn wait for Jesus to come again so that we can experience the full realization of the hope we have as Christians. I value the reminder that Advent is to keep awake – I often forget to really long for Jesus to return: my mind is frequently bound by the mundane realities of this world or plans and anxieties that are temporal.
I've started reading a fascinating book by a guy called Adrian Nocent called “The Liturgical Year” (there are 150 pages on the Advent season, though – I will only be able to dabble! =p). He asks a good question: Is there a Christian way of hoping? Here is some food for thought from Nocent:
“Péguy, in one of his brilliant theological intuitions, saw hope as a little girl who goes off to school between her two big sisters, faith and love, holding each by the hand. He explains his meaning in his La porche de la deuxième vertu: In the eyes of those who see the three sisters passing, little hope is being guided by the other two; in fact, however, little hope is pulling forward the two who seem to be leading her...for the believer, his personal hope is inseparably connected with the hope of the entire Church and when united to the hope of the Church, it is oriented in two directions: toward Christ and toward the renewal of the world.
Christ? We await during Advent the actualization of his incarnation and then we celebrate Christmas, but we still hope and wait for his second coming. This is a hope that the non-believer cannot share, for it is contrary to what hope should normally be. This Christian hope is indeed a strange thing...why? Because the Christian hopes for what he already possesses! In the inscription of Pectorius we read: “(You hold) the Fish in your hand.”...Christian hope is thus compounded of certainty: that is, we hope for what we already possess. The powerful dynamism that inspires this hope of a reality we already possess and grasp, though we do not see it, is an intense light for faith and a joyful spur to love.”
Advent is a season of waiting for Christ's return. The Israelites in our readings today were longing for God's presence to restore them; they wanted God to come down so they could see Him face to face and be saved. We in turn wait for Jesus to come again so that we can experience the full realization of the hope we have as Christians. I value the reminder that Advent is to keep awake – I often forget to really long for Jesus to return: my mind is frequently bound by the mundane realities of this world or plans and anxieties that are temporal.
I've started reading a fascinating book by a guy called Adrian Nocent called “The Liturgical Year” (there are 150 pages on the Advent season, though – I will only be able to dabble! =p). He asks a good question: Is there a Christian way of hoping? Here is some food for thought from Nocent:
“Péguy, in one of his brilliant theological intuitions, saw hope as a little girl who goes off to school between her two big sisters, faith and love, holding each by the hand. He explains his meaning in his La porche de la deuxième vertu: In the eyes of those who see the three sisters passing, little hope is being guided by the other two; in fact, however, little hope is pulling forward the two who seem to be leading her...for the believer, his personal hope is inseparably connected with the hope of the entire Church and when united to the hope of the Church, it is oriented in two directions: toward Christ and toward the renewal of the world.
Christ? We await during Advent the actualization of his incarnation and then we celebrate Christmas, but we still hope and wait for his second coming. This is a hope that the non-believer cannot share, for it is contrary to what hope should normally be. This Christian hope is indeed a strange thing...why? Because the Christian hopes for what he already possesses! In the inscription of Pectorius we read: “(You hold) the Fish in your hand.”...Christian hope is thus compounded of certainty: that is, we hope for what we already possess. The powerful dynamism that inspires this hope of a reality we already possess and grasp, though we do not see it, is an intense light for faith and a joyful spur to love.”
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