The Annunciation and the HIC Town of Nazareth

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Inscription on the Altar of the Annunciation.

We know from the scriptures that Nazareth was a hick town (i.e. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”), but when I was there in the fall of 2006, I found it to be a hic town, as in the Latin for “here.” On the altar in the Basilica of the Annunciation, the inscription reads, “Verbum caro hic factum est”: “The Word was made flesh here.”

Nazareth.

Bethlehem is overshadowed by the tableau of the wise men and the heavenly host; the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem radiates the drama of the salvation; but the holy sites of Nazareth have a homely hic that may convey the reality of the incarnation more than those greater sites. It was here that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man. It was here that he spent most of his life, here that his family lived.

Ritual bath in the crypt of the Church of St. Joseph.

The grotto of the Annunciation in the Latin Basilica is built on the traditional site of Mary’s house. The Church of St. Joseph is built over the traditional site of the house where the Holy Family lived and in the crypt you can look down a shaft to see the tiled floor of its ritual bath. The Greek Cathedral stands over the site of the well where Mary drew water. Every place seems to cry out hic! There is none of the grandeur of Rome’s great churches and the shrines here lack the anthill bustle of the Holy Sepulcher. Instead, there are an infinity of little hiccups, from places associated with the Lord’s childhood to the precipice where the adult Jesus was rejected by his fellow townsmen.

The Church of Mary's Well.

It becomes just a bit harder to remake God in our own image in the face of these commonplace remembrances. In Nazareth, the Word defers to the reality of the flesh. Here God took on humanity, and Mary treasured up all of these things in her heart.

The Precipice.

Low Sunday: Are We Afraid Not to Be Doubting Thomases?

An old sermon for Low Sunday from seminary days asking fellow progressives whether they really doubt the resurrection or whether they actually fear the consequences of not doubting.  Many people certainly doubt, but I think there are also many educated folks who fear the social and intellectual consequences of believing.

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Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe." Eight days later, his disciples were again in the house, . . . but Jesus came and stood among them, and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!"

            For many years it has been fashionable among some preachers to portray Thomas as the romantic doubting everyman.  In my tradition's lectionary, today's gospel is the same for all years on the second Sunday of Easter.  Each year I dread what sort of homey portrayal of Thomas to which I may find myself subjected.  Or how I might be told that Thomas's doubts are like my own grapplings.

              It seems all too rare that we reflect that Saint John uses the empirical Thomas's doubt as a foil for Thomas's subsequent confession, "My Lord and My God," which is the capstone of the fourth Gospel.  Thomas's confession finishes the declaration of John 1:1 that "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God."  The confession is the climax of the story, not the skepticism.

            While garden variety Thomas sermons annoy me, I recognize the reality to which they speak.  In my years at Harvard I have had discussion section with Thomas.  I have been Thomas.  Like the doubting apostle, our community is better known for what we can liberate, demythologize, and deconstruct than it is known for what we confess.  Too often, however, I question the honesty of some of our doubt.

 

            I do not question that many of us confess particular creeds, but I know that too often we have a reticence to speak of them.  We fear whom we might offend.  We fear who might ridicule us.  We fear that we may find ourselves on the community’s margins.

            Many of us spend evenings and weekends in convents and covens, but in our common life we seem to be afraid to transcend being clever.  We speak in the language of doubt and inquiry though many of us were brought here by faith.

 

            We are like Schopenhauer’s porcupines.  The philosopher tells the story of a group of porcupines caught in the open during a winter storm.  As the night progressed and the temperature dropped, the porcupines moved closer together for warmth.  As they moved closer, their quills began to prick one another.  The closer the porcupines drew together, the greater the pain.  Some, no longer able to bear the agony,  dropped our of the circle as the night progressed, but when morning came, only those who had drawn together despite of the discomfort had survived.

            We must become all too willing to risk discomfort and blood loss if we are to make our years in Andover Hall worthwhile.  We must risk confession.  Each week this chapel is the site of Zen meditation, Mass, and many other forms of prayer, but how often do we take that spirit beyond these doors and into our halls?  How often do we feign Thomistic objectivity, then confess in some upper room?  We like Thomas must engage our fellow porcupines.  Thomas did not believe the first reports of the resurrection, but he remained willing to return to the company of the disciples for a second time.

 

            For the most part, we have not come to Harvard Divinity School for ourselves only.  Many of us are preparing for lives as priests, preachers, advocates,  and educators.  How comfortable are we with letting our particular lights shine?  Have we hidden our lights under a basket of detached discourse or have we illuminated others?  In speaking of our beliefs, have we too often settled for being clever when we could have been clear?

            I recently reread Emerson’s "Divinity School Address."  Emerson warns the senior class of 1838 against the formalism which he feels has weakened the church.  He says:

To this holy office you propose to devote yourselves, I wish you may feel your call in throbs of desire and hope. . . For all our penny wisdom . . . it is not to be doubted that all men have sublime thoughts We mark with light the memories of the few interviews we have had with souls that made our souls wiser . . . that gave us leave to be what we inly were.

            Like poor maligned Thomas, Emmerson's contemporaries seized upon what he doubted, not the vision that he confessed.  What formalisms and etiquette do we hide behind that keep our colleagues and peers from seeing the confession behind the critiques?

            Emerson would, I think, share my impatience with the current Tommy-rot.  After Thomas's confession, Christ answers him:

Have you believed because you have seen me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.  

            Blessed are we when honest inquiry leads us to risk speaking from faith.  Blessed are we when we transcend being clever.

            Christians now enjoy the season of Easter, the great 50 day feast of the resurrection.  As my Christian brothers and sisters and those of other faiths celebrate the possibilities of new life in this season , I ask that we search our souls for the boldness and vulnerability in each of us that could transform our community.  I encourage you to risk the quills.  I ask that we may all overcome our crutch of detachment and liberate Thomas from the homiletic hell of doubt.

            Amen.

Richard Weaver on Simplicity as Barbarism

As the liturgy wars heat up once again, I am reminded of this favorite passage from Richard Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences in which he proposes that calls for simplicity are often symptoms of a narcissistic personality: 

"It is characteristic of the barbarian … to insist upon seeing a thing “as it is.” The desire testifies that he has nothing in himself with which to spiritualize it; the relation is one of thing to thing without the intercession of the imagination. Impatient of the veiling with which the man of higher type gives the world imaginative meaning, the barbarian and the Philistine, who is the barbarian living amid culture, demands the access of immediacy. Where the former wishes representation, the latter insists upon starkness of materiality, suspecting rightly that forms will mean restraint. . . .

"Every group regarding itself as emancipated is convinced that its predecessors were fearful of reality. It looks upon euphemisms and all the veils of decency with which things were previously draped as obstructions which it, with superior wisdom and praiseworthy courage, will now strip away. Imagination and indirection it identifies with obscurantism; the mediate is an enemy to freedom. . . .

"All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion. . . .

". . . or, when these veils are stripped aside, we find no reality behind them, or, at best, we find a reality of such commonplaceness that we would willingly undo our little act of brashness. Those will realize, who are capable of reflection, that the reality excites us is an idea, of which the indirection, the veiling, the withholding, is part. It is our various supposals about a matter which give it meaning, and not some intrinsic property which can be seized in the barehanded fashion of the barbarian."

My Sleep Will Rouse You From Your Sleep

From an ancient homily on Holy Saturday

Something strange is happening--there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear. 

He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: "My Lord be with you all" Christ answered him: "And with your spirit." He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: "Awake, sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light" 

I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, a sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated. 

For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I whose home is above the heavens, descended to earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of the human race, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden,. I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden. 

See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree. 

I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you. 

Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God is worshiped. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity. 

Sung Mass for Easter Sunday

Sung Mass for Easter Sunday

The Oratory of St. Raphael - St. Rafe's

6:00 p.m., Sunday March 31
St. Martin's Chapel
Fayetteville, Akansas

Dinner to follow at John's
Directions and More Info

Support the Good Friday Collection for the Holy Land

Children in the Aida Refugee Camp, Bethlehem.

The photo above is from rough little flash movie I made six years ago asking friends to support the Good Friday collection for the Church in the Holy Land. It's about 2 minutes long and I hope you'll take the time to watch it.

Watch the movie. >>>

No matter what your politics, it's hard to disagree that our brothers and sisters in the Holy Land need our help now as much as ever or the Christian presence there may one day disappear entirely. Your gift to the Good Friday Collection will support schools and medical facilities and help keep roofs over families' heads. It will sustain communities whose existence have been a witness to hope for 100 generations.

The photos in the movie above are from my visit to Israel and Palestine 2006. They are certainly not the most sensational pictures I took. The images could all be of tanks, demolished houses, and young men with guns, but I think these catch not only the seriousness of the present situation, but also the dignity with which the these communities meet it.

The sound track is the congregation at the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazereth singing the Lord's Prayer in Arabic. When the congregation began to sing this, it came home to me that these are the descendants of those first Christians who have kept their faith and identity through 1400 years as an embattled minority.

On my way out of Mass, an old woman took both of my hands in hers and said, "Pray for us." At several other times, people I met asked me to go home and tell people what I had seen. Sharing this short clip with you is part of keeping that promise.

Please give generously today and ask your friends and loved ones to do the same.

Watch the movie. >>>

Learn more about the Christian Communities of the Holy Land. >>>

The Stations of the Cross with photos from the Via Dolorosa >>>

Christ the Paschal Lamb

From a paschal homily by St. Melito of Sardis read at Tenebrae of Maundy Thursday:

There was much proclaimed by the prophets about the mystery of the Passover; that mystery is Christ. and to him be glory for ever and ever, amen.

For the sake of suffering humanity he came down from heaven to earth, clothed himself in that humanity in the Virgin's womb, and was born a man. Having then a body capable of suffering, he took the pain of those who suffered on himself. He overcame the sufferings of the flesh and by his Spirit, which was incapable of dying, he dealt murderous death a fatal blow.

He was led forth like a lamb; he was slaughtered like a sheep. He ransomed us from our servitude to the world as he had ransomed Israel from the land·of Egypt; he freed us from our slavery to the devil as he had freed Israel from the hand of Pharaoh. He sealed our souls with his own Spirit and the members of our body with his own blood.

He is the One who covered death with shame and cast the devil into mourning, as Moses cast Pharaoh into mourning. He is the One who smote sin and robbed iniquity of offspring, as Moses robbed the Egyptians of their offspring. He is the One who brought us out of slavery into freedom, out of darkness into light, out of death into life, out of tyranny into an eternal kingdom, who made us a new priesthood, a people chosen to be his own for ever. He is the Passover that is our salvation.

It is he who endured every kind of suffering in all those who foreshadowed him. In Abel he was slain, in Isaac bound, in Jacob exiled, in Joseph sold, in Moses exposed to die. He was sacrificedin the Passover lamb, persecuted in David, dishonored in the prophets.


It is he who was made man of the Virgin, he who was hung on the tree; it is he who was buried in the earth, raised from the dead. and taken up to the heights of heaven. He is the mute Lamb, the slain lamb, the lamb born of Mary, the fair ewe. He was seized from the flock. dragged off to be slaughtered, sacrificed in the evening, and buried at night. On the tree no bone of his was broken; in the earth his body knew no decay. He is the One who rose from the dead, and who raised us from the depths of the tomb.

R. IN THE BREAD see the Body which hung on the Cross: in the Chalice behold the Blood which streamed from His opened side: * And so, take and eat of the Body of Christ; take and drink of the Blood of Christ.

V. For as often as you do this, you proclaim the Lord's death, until He comes.
R. And so, take and eat ofthe Body of Christ; take and drink of the Blood of Christ.