laudable Practice

At the Parish Eucharist on the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, 25.1.26 Matthew 4:13 “He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the lake.” [1] Some time in the late fourth or early fifth century AD, a large Christian church was built in Capernaum, by the Sea of Galilee, in the shape of an octagon. It was built around and centred upon an earlier 1st century AD building, a quite modest house.  Why was this grand church built around a 1st century AD house in Capernaum? The house in question was identified as the home of Saint Peter. Those who built the church in the 4th or 5th century knew what archeologists have recently confirmed: the home had been a place of Christian worship from the earliest years of Christianity. Archeologists have discovered that the house had been renovated to become a place of Christian worship.  Pilgrims had been visiting it long before the 4th or 5th century church was built around it. The walls of that 1st century dwelling carried inscription...

Yesterday, the First Sunday after the Epiphany, most Anglicans - in common with other western liturgical traditions - will have been celebrating the Baptism of our Lord. What, however, of the absence of this observance from the various iterations of the classical Book of Common Prayer? (A significant exception to this is the Canadian BCP 1962 .) Is it not the case that this absence is a significant failure to acknowledge the place of the Lord's Baptism in the mystery of our salvation? Such questions are to be answered by pointing out how the classical Prayer Book tradition does commemorate the Lord's Baptism but does so in a different manner to the contemporary observance on the First Sunday after the Epiphany. The focus for the classical Prayer Book tradition's commemoration of the Baptism of our Lord is the Sacrament of Holy Baptism itself. The opening prayer of the Prayer Book Baptismal rite declares: by the Baptism of thy well-beloved Son Jesus Christ, in the river Jo...

At the Parish Eucharist on the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, 28.1.24 Mark 1:21-28 “Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, ‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.’ But Jesus rebuked him, saying, ‘Be quiet and come out of him!’” It is in the very opening chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Mark.   It is the first act of the public ministry of Jesus in Mark's Gospel. It is a scene which must be understood by the author of Mark’s Gospel to reveal something fundamental about the meaning and purpose of Jesus Christ; something of the meaning and purpose of Christian faith. And that can be rather embarrassing for us.   We are, after all, talking about an evil, 'unclean' spirit. And this spirit’s claim that it is not alone: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?”. And Jesus casting out this evil spirit. ...

At the Parish Eucharist on the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, 21.1.24 1 Corinthians 7:29-31 “... let even those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who mourn as they they were not mourning …” Yes, more than a few eyebrows were raised this morning during our epistle reading. If we are confused, bewildered, or perplexed by this morning’s reading from Saint Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, good. When a passage of scripture confuses, bewilders, or perplexes us, it calls us to dwell upon it; to ponder it; to consider what it might possibly be saying to us. A significant part of our perplexity about Saint Paul’s words comes from the fact that it seems to contradict what we read elsewhere in the New Testament - including elsewhere in Paul’s letters. ‘Let those who have wives be as though they had none’ - but earlier in this very letter, Saint Paul reminds the Corinthian Christians of the Lord’s teaching on marriage, recalling Jesus’ words “what God has joined togethe...

'Fulfilled in your hearing': beholding the Christ with the prophet Isaiah At the Parish Eucharist on the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, 2022 Luke 4:14-21 A sabbath in Nazareth “...and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him.”  When Jesus read the words of the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue on that Sabbath day in Nazareth, he was reading words that were already ancient, dating back over half a millennium. And yet those listening as Jesus read from the scroll are clearly aware that the ancient words have a new and an immediate relevance. Luke captures the atmosphere of anticipation and expectation: “And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him”. How come ancient words from centuries before, read on a sabbath day in a synagogue in unremarkable, insignificant Nazareth, were understood in a new and dramatic way? What was happening? And what relevance does it have for us? What did the prophet...