'Before Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasses': waiting with ancient Israel on Stir-up Sunday

We came on foot to a certain place where the mountains, through which we were journeying, opened out and formed an infinitely great valley, quite flat and extraordinarily beautiful, and across the valley appeared Sinai, the holy mountain of God ... Now on reaching that spot, the holy guides who were with us told us, saying: "The custom is that prayer should be made by those who arrive here, when from this place the mount of God is first seen." And this we did.

So opens the account we have of Egeria's pilgrimage. Recently re-reading Egeria for the first time in some decades, I was struck by her reverence for and joy in the holy sites associated with "holy Moses":

The spot is also shown hard by where holy Moses stood when God said to him: Loose the latchet of thy shoe, and the rest. Now it was about the tenth hour when we had arrived at the place ... prayer was made in the church and also at the bush in the garden, and the passage from the book of Moses was read according to custom. 

It was appropriate reading as Stir-up Sunday approached.  While we are now well-used, in the three year lectionary, to hearing the Old Testament read at the Eucharist, it was, of course, a more rarer occurrence in 1662 the traditional one year lectionary. In fact, it only happens three times in the one year lectionary - on Monday and Tuesday of Holy Week, and on Stir-up Sunday. 

The use of readings from Isaiah twice in the eucharistic readings for Holy Week has an obvious significance, preparing us to perceive the Lord's Passion as fulfilling the Prophet's vision. This alerts us to the significance of the reading from Jeremiah 23 appointed for Stir-up Sunday:

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgement and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely ...

Hearing this passage from Jeremiah on Stir-up Sunday draws us alongside ancient Israel, with its prophets, priests, and kings, waiting over centuries for the fulfilment of the promises. It brings us, too, alongside Egeria, as she beheld the holy sites where Moses encountered Yahweh, hearing at those sites readings from the 'books of Moses'. It prepares us for season of Advent, when we sing 'come and ransom captive Israel'; when the prophecy of Isaiah rings out; when the haunting words and music of the Advent Prose echo, "for I am the Lord thy god, the holy one of Israel, thy Redeemer".

A line from a Rowan William's Advent sermon comes to mind:

And in Advent ... we all become - at it has been said - Jews once more. 

For those of us for whom the three year lectionary is standard, the 1662 provision for Stir-up calls us to a renewed attention to the Scriptures of Israel read Sunday by Sunday at the Eucharist, and when read as the first lesson at Matins and Evensong. To be Christian must, necessarily, mean to be rooted deep in Israel's Scriptures: in patriarchs and prophets, priests and kings; in the story of land and exile, of Sion and Temple.

What is more, as a new liturgical year is about to begin, the reading from Jeremiah on Stir-up Sunday also prepares us to again read the Gospels, rooted in the waiting and hopes of Israel over the centuries. It is through waiting with Israel, looking for the "righteous branch" of great David, that we perceive the purpose of the Gospels as revealed in their the openings: of Saint Matthew setting forth the "book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham"; of Saint Mark declaring "as it is written in the prophets"; of Saint Luke announcing, "And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end"; of Saint John's Prologue as a reading of Genesis 1 and Proverbs 8, for the Logos is (as Daniel Boyarin powerfully states) "a Jewish Logos".

Stir-up Sunday, then, calls us to wait alongside Israel, preparing us to enter into Advent, sharing "that faith of our father Abraham", knowing that "Abraham rejoiced to see my day", and mindful that the great collect of the day flows from the ancient prayer of Israel:

Before Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasses: stir up thy strength, and come, and help us (Ps.80:2).

(The first illustration is of a mosaic from St. Catherine's monastery, Sinai, depicting the Prophet Moses loosening his sandal before the Burning Bush. The second is of the Jesse Tree window in Chartres Cathedral.)