Homily for Advent 1 2007, 2nd December 2007 i
The Very Revd Michael J. Pitts
Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal
Isaiah 2:1-5
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44The night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light… ii
The weeks that lie ahead of us from the lighting of the first Advent Candle this morning to the feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple in early February form the great season of light. Of course, it has to be said that that the occurrence of this season at this time of year has much to do with the fact that Christianity grew to maturity in the northern hemisphere. The choice of December 25th as the feast of the Birthday of Jesus was made in order to replace the Roman festival of Sol Invicta, the unconquered Sun, which itself occurred at the time of the longest night of the year. In more northern Europe, where the days were even shorter, the festival of light to summon the return of the warming sun was linked with cults of the gods of fertility. Many of what we think are ancient Christian customs, like fruit cakes and lighted trees were actually taken over by the church from these European fertility religions.
This is not to say that light does not form part of the core message to the original Christmas story itself. Paul’s words today, Matthews shining star, Luke’s account of the shining heavenly host appearing to the shepherds, and several other texts present Jesus as the light of the world. The combination of this core Christian message with the pagan feasts of light in the darkness was a process of pure genius, which gave us this exciting celebration of the possibility of new beginnings even at times when the world seems dark and hope seems almost extinguished. We have of course each year to spare a thought for those of the southern hemisphere who inherited the northern religion long after the conjunction of faith and season had become fixed. Being myself a person of the dark cold north, I can only imagine what it would be like to take a cooling dip in the ocean at mid-summer with an outside temperature of over 40°C, and then return to light candles and sing “In the deep mid-winter”.
The feast which ends this season, Candlemass, is the time of the blessing of the church candles for the rest of the year. That arises from the Gospel story of the feast, which tells of the presentation of Jesus in the Temple and the blessing of the child Jesus by the aged Simeon. It includes the beautiful poem known to evensong-junkies as the Nunc Dimittis. It contains Simeon’s description of the child as a light to lighten the Gentiles. This I believe returns us to a second major theme of this season which requires us to think of history, prophecy and politics. In our first lesson this morning Isaiah says:
Many peoples shall come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths." For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. iii
The light which the Christian message brings is not just an inner guiding light for the soul. It is a light for society and nations.
Because of the way in which we read the scriptures in our liturgy, and in our private reading, we sometimes tend to ignore the fact that both the scriptures and the events of which they speak are set in a matrix of history, politics and society. If we do not take this context into account we can be in danger of misinterpreting the meaning of our texts, and drawing from them false, and sometimes dangerous lessons. So at the risk of boring you to tears I want in the second part of my words this morning to give an extremely brief historical background to the events and stories which we relate in this Advent and Christmas season. iv
We shall begin in the year 538 BCE when, under the leadership of Cyrus, the Persian empire finally conquered Babylon and put an end to all those earlier empires which are so thoroughly confusing when we try to read the books of Kings. Cyrus decreed that the Jews in Babylon were no longer exiles but resident aliens. A few returned to Jerusalem to begin a new life. During the previous four decades in exile, some very important things had happened in the Jewish community. The laws and stories which we now know as the Pentateuch, the first five books of our bible, began to be edited into their present form from both previous texts and oral traditions. But even more important was a shift in the fundamental orientation of Jewish faith. Before this time the faith had been henotheist, that is, the Jews would worship only one God. While there were other gods, Yahweh (in some texts known as Elohim) was the only God for the people of Israel. But during the exile, perhaps guided by the genius of the writer of the second part of Isaiah, monotheism, the belief that there is only one God, became the dominant faith.
But for those who returned to Jerusalem with this faith, times were tough. The tiny homeland was not a country, but a mere province of the mighty Persian empire. As time went by the Persian empire, seemingly like all empires, went through both internal decay and outside attack. The next empire waiting in line was Macedonian and it was the mighty warrior Alexander the Great who, in a mere thirteen years became master of the world from Greece to India. After his death in 323 BCE however, his empire was eventually divided into four parts. The two rulers who most concern us are the Ptolemies in Egypt and the Seleucids in Mesopotamia. The little province around Jerusalem lay in the middle of their competing spheres of influence. One of the most vicious of the Seleucids, Antiochus Epiphanes in the years following 168BCE attacked Jerusalem and began what is the probably the world’s first organised religious persecution. This gave rise to a Jewish revolt, which ended with the setting up of an independent Jewish state under Judas Maccabeus. We should note that this success and the accompanying cleansing of the Temple is celebrated to this day in the Jewish Festival of Hannukah, which occurs around the same time as our Advent and Christmas, and is also a festival of light in the darkness. We should also note that during the Seleucid and Maccabean era two aspects of Jewish faith, which are of importance to us, became more sharply defined. The first was the beginning of the Messianic hope, the theme that God would send an anointed one, priest or king, to sort out the mess of the present situation and set everything to rights. Both Matthew’s Gospel and the libretto of Handel’s Messiah have led us to think that there are many texts which contain this theme, but if we stick to interpretation within historical context, the number is somewhat fewer. The second was apocalyptic writing, a form of prophecy in mythical or coded language, which when critique could not be openly expressed, brought both political opposition and hope for a different future to the fore. Again much fundamentalist interpretation has been completely ignorant of the historical and literary context of this writing.
This independent nation founded by Judas Maccabeus lasted under the Hasmonean Dynasty until the dying days of the Hellenistic Empire. Waiting in the wings to take control was Rome. But first Rome was convulsed by civil war, the first part of which brought Julius Caesar to power, but continued with renewed vigour after his assassination. It was during this civil war, in 37BCE that Herod the Great was appointed by the Roman Senate as King of the Jews (this first time this title had been used). He ruled until 4BCE. The bitter and destructive Roman civil war was brought to an end in the Battle of Actium in 31BCE by Octavian, thereafter better known as the Emperor Augustus. With Augustus, the Roman Empire begins. Augustus was known as the Prince of peace, the Son of God, the saviour of the world and bringer of light. It was soon believed that he was born of a virgin mother through union with the God Apollo. His life and work were described as Good News or Gospel.
This then is the historical matrix of the birth of our Christian faith. What I have hoped to show is that the story of the Birth of Jesus, as told to us by Matthew and Luke is not just a cute narrative around which our church and family celebrations are organised. It is a story of Jesus, the Prince of peace, the Son of God, the saviour of the world and bringer of light which is set in real history and brought a direct challenge to the politics and society of that time. As we read the story in its context, it should call us to consider what the story means for our society and our politics today.
1 This sermon and those of the Christmas season draw on the writings of Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, especially on their recently published joint work The First Christmas, HarperOne, 2007.
2 Romans 13:12 NRSV
3 Isaiah 2:3-4 NRSV