The Epiphany

Isaiah 60:1-9
Eph 3:1-12
Matt. 2: 1-12

The most radical line to be uttered in the ancient world must have been the first of the Ten Commandments. “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” It was completely out of the ordinary in the days when the peoples of the earth were expected to worship the local deities; in fact, for Israel to believe that their God was the only true God, and all others were vain, was as out of place amid the pagans of antiquity as a fervent expression of Nationalism would be out of place on the floor of the United Nations. To what degree any of the ancient pagans may have thought themselves to be refined and sensitive, the Israelites must have come across as ill mannered. And, since the Law and the prophets of Israel denounced the practices of some of the religions, such as child sacrifice, it was very clear that the Jews simply were not willing to change with the times, and that they were intolerant.

Furthermore, not only was the God of Israel considered to be the one and only true God to His own people, but the only true God at all. The phrase that is translated “before Me” is quite significant. The Hebrew expression is al peni, and it means “in front of my face.” That might not be so bad for a local god that stayed within his boundaries; but this God had been in Chaldea with Abraham, called him into Canaan, went with the family of Israel into Egypt, and took them back to Canaan. Everywhere He went He was the ruler, showing no regard for the customs and religions of the people, and treating their idea of divinity as vain and silly. He judged the gods of Egypt in the plagues, even by putting out the light of their supreme deity, the sun. So, to have no other gods before Him, that is, in front of His face, the face of the God who is everywhere, is to make the judgment that only the people of Israel, believing in the One God who made Heaven and Earth, have the truth.

Syncretism was expected in the ancient world, a polite recognition of the various gods of the different places where nations settled. If nothing else, it was just bad manners to treat any religion as false, any god as a mere idol, and any practice as an abomination. Of course, when it became necessary to save mankind from the worst kind of paganism, the better kind came to the rescue; the Romans defeated the Carthaginian Hannibal whose army fought to spread the madness of child sacrifice everywhere. And, nowhere does this receive treatment that has better insight than in The Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton.

But, even the Romans fell short of the Israelite standard, the worship of one and only one God, the maker of all things and judge of all men. They allowed the Jews to worship the God of their fathers only because He was the God of their fathers. They tolerated Jewish intolerance out of respect for its antiquity. But, they persecuted the Christians who converted from among the Gentiles, using the excuse that they were rejecting the gods of their fathers and the worship of Caesar. And, even during the early days of the Christian Church, as recorded in the Book of Acts, the Emperor Claudius sought to banish all Jews from the City of Rome itself. The idea of any religion that could not take an equal place among the devotions to the various gods of the peoples was completely strange to ancient peoples everywhere.

Yet, what we know that the pagans of antiquity did not know, is that the revelation of God to man was a gift and the offer of salvation. Jewish monotheism was intolerant of the gods for the same reason that men of medicine are intolerant of folk remedies. The real trouble with all people everywhere is that two-sided coin of sin and death; so the intolerance of Judaism for idolatry was a necessary first step toward what would become the mission of the Church. Inherent in the first commandment of the Law of Moses is the Great Commission of the Risen Christ. “Thou shalt have no other gods in my presence-before my face” is echoed in the words, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. (Matt. 28: 19, 20).” It is expressed in the words of Saint Peter, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved (Acts 4:12).” Emmanuel, “in ancient times did give the Law, in cloud and majesty and awe,” and now He stood risen from the dead to authorize the Church to go with His presence to all nations, going everywhere among fallen mankind and with all their gods before His face, to root up, pull down and destroy, and to build and to plant. Jesus Christ, after dying on the cross for the sins of the whole world, gave us our commission. He is the only salvation revealed by the only true God, Whom to know is eternal life (John 17:3).

This is the meaning of the wise men coming from afar to worship Him in His infancy. Any other kind of writing would have told us all about these men; where they came from, how large their company really was, and details about the route they took, and alternative route by which they returned. But, sacred scripture was composed by the Holy Ghost, and the focus in the Gospel of Matthew is on Jesus Himself. Therefore, all these interesting details about the Magi have become the study of modern historians and archeologists uncovering a mystery, because the Gospel had no space to give to such minor issues. It focuses attention on the salvation of God in the person of Jesus, and it tells His story. The Holy family’s flight into Egypt and return to Galilee is given the space that follows, and the three wise men – or Magi – simply disappear back to the place from which they came. But, their significance is not lost.

Their significance is taken up by Saint Paul in the Epistle we have heard today, about the Jews and Gentiles being made one new man in Christ, the middle wall of division broken down. We, that is those of us whose ancestry is from the Gentiles, are one with the people of Israel through faith in Jesus Christ. A gentile- that is, anybody who is not of Jewish descent- becomes grafted into the heritage of the people of God, made a child of Abraham by faith in Jesus Christ. This is why I have never been impressed by the apologists for women’s “ordination” when they argue that Christ chose only Jews, and so if we do not believe that women can be ordained based upon His example of choosing only men, we should be consistent and logical, and realize that this would mean we should not allow Gentiles to be ordained. The reason their argument does not make sense is contained in the truth revealed to the apostles and prophets, as taught in today’s Epistle: No Christian is a Gentile. When you were baptized you were taken out of your wild Gentile tree, and grafted into the cultivated tree of Israel.

It is a basic understanding of salvation itself, as Isaiah prophesied that the Root of Israel would grow and blossom and fill the earth, the same earth that is to be “filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Isa. 27:6, Hab. 2:14)” that upon being made part of the Church, one becomes a part of the Israel of God. By faith Abraham is our father, the Lord is our God, and there is salvation in none other than His Son (Rom. 4:11, Acts 4:12). All of our beliefs are based firmly upon revelation, and not based on even the best speculations of the wisest of men.

The difference between revelation and imagination is the difference between the true God and every idol. Even the unseen and unfelt idols of the mind, housed in the Arian speculations of Muslims and Unitarians of an unrevealed and lonely brand of monotheism that cannot possess the eternal attribute of love because it is alone, is an idol. A god who cannot be seen, touched, heard and even tasted, is the new kind of idol; for, “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth (John 1:14, 14:9).” Apart from this revelation of the Wholly Other uncreated God taking our time and space world into His Person; apart from the revelation of this invisible deity found in fashion as a man whose glory is beheld; apart from this unknowable God being known in the Person of the Incarnate Word, there is no salvation. There is no salvation in all of the other gods that men worship before His Face.

We have the Great Commission to spread the knowledge of the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. Thou shalt have no other gods in front of His face, for neither is there salvation in any other. The name of Jesus is given under heaven among men, whereby we must be saved. Each of you, as a member of Christ's Body the Church, is being called to take your part of this great work that Christ gave to His Church from the beginning, of which prophets had spoken from the dawn of history. You can see that as a reason to be excited and motivated. I hope you will.

Fr. Wells' Bulletin Inserts

EPIPHANY I

After the Feast itself of the Epiphany we have a season of varying length, which can be as short as one Sunday or as long as six. The Gospels appointed for these Sundays all maintain the theme of “manifestation” in one way or another. Today's Gospel presents Jesus as a mere boy (at an age when boys can be difficult to live with) speaking of “my Father,” and revealing Himself as God's Son. On Epiphany II we read of His Baptism, when the heavenly voice declared, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Then comes Epiphany III, the lovely account of the miracle at Cana's marriage feast which simultaneously saved a poor family from social disgrace and manifested Jesus as the One to bring a new marriage bond between God and His people. On Epiphany IV, Jesus manifests Himself as the One who heals, and then reiterates the theme of Epiphany Day itself, the welcome of the Gentiles into the kingdom of God. Epiphany V shows a simple manifestation through teaching. Epiphany VI describes the “Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” The ultimate manifestation of God Incarnate yet remains to be seen, but the Gospel promise is that He will indeed make Himself visible to all the world.

Epiphany VI has a thrilling Epistle reading, which contains the verse, “It doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him.” This speaks of the renewal of the Image of God in us, damaged by sin but reconstituted in sanctification. So at the End, His manifestation is our manifestation; His Epiphany becomes our epiphany as well. Imagine looking at yourself in the mirror in heaven! What a make-over, what a face-lift that will be! You will look like Jesus, as the Image of God has been restored.

In the early Epiphany Sundays we have a series of readings from Romans 12 and 13. These readings all describe the morality of the Christian lifestyle. These are impressive in their very simplicity. No painful moral dilemmas, no impossible commandments, just a series of suggestions. But the key to the entire two chapters is in one exceedingly demanding verse: “And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Not conformed, but transformed! The message of Jesus, God Incarnate, is not for the self-satisfied but for those who are willing to be changed, made over, rehabilitated. If you like yourself the way you are, the Gospel is not for you, for the Gospel is all about internal and external change. And that, again, is God's ultimate and greatest self-disclosure. LKW

* * *

Both Christmas and Epiphany celebrate the same event and same truth, but the difference in which the two great holy days are observed is painful. Christmas has become a popular secular holiday, whereas Epiphany (in spite of the slang use of the word itself) is barely known. In churches Christmas is celebrated with much ado. Congregations are filled and God is worshiped gloriously with our finest music and best liturgy. Epiphany is celebrated, if at all, with the plainest of plain services and tiny congregations. For Christmas we decorate our churches and our homes, making them beautiful for the Infant King. At Epiphany we take those decorations down and pack them away. Joy gives way to gloom, in the wretched cold of January. Now which observance is more like the Event itself?

Theologians speak of Christ in His two states, the state of His humiliation and of His exaltation. God's self-exhibition was first of all a revelation of His humility. It may seem rash to speak of “the humility of God,” but it is necessary to remember that His coming to earth was not an interlude, a change of plan, a deviation from the script. The babe visited by the shepherds, the young child worshiped by the wise men, the precocious boy who startled the teachers of the law, all were manifestations of God as He truly is.

St Paul wrote (1 Cor. 1:27-29), “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, God hath chosen the weak things in the world to confound the things that are mighty, and base things of the world hath God chosen, yea things which are not, to bring to nought things that are, so that no flesh should glory in his presence.” Of course the Apostle was describing his Corinthians converts and the methods by which they had been won for Christ: foolish, weak, base. But the humility of the Infant Church was firmly grounded in the humility of God Incarnate in Jesus Christ.“That no flesh should glory!” The Gospel makes sense only to those who remember why it was necessary in the first place.

The original and most enduring sin was the pride of Adam and Eve, who aspired to be equal with God, “knowing” (that is, determining for themselves) “good and evil.” Their offspring can be saved only by a drastic event of humiliation, a radical leveling of our pride. A desperate situation required a Divine intervention.

The shepherds, the wise men, the doctors in the Temple, have one thing in common with us. Left to our own devices, they and we knew very little of what God is like. But in Jesus Christ we have seen God face to face. “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” And as we see Him clearly, our sin is exposed, our pride is levelled, and our boasting is put to silence. LKW

The Epiphany

January 6th

Painting by Tom duBois

Isaiah 60:1-9 * Eph 3:1-12 * Matt. 2: 1-12

The most radical line to be uttered in the ancient world must have been the first of the Ten Commandments. “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” It was completely out of the ordinary in the days when the peoples of the earth were expected to worship the local deities; in fact, for Israel to believe that their God was the only true God, and all others were vain, was as out of place amid the pagans of antiquity as a fervent expression of Nationalism would be out of place on the floor of the United Nations. To what degree any of the ancient pagans may have thought themselves to be refined and sensitive, the Israelites must have come across as ill mannered. And, since the Law and the prophets of Israel denounced the practices of some of the religions, such as child sacrifice, it was very clear that the Jews simply were not willing to change with the times, and that they were intolerant.

Furthermore, not only was the God of Israel considered to be the one and only true God to His own people, but the only true God at all. The phrase that is translated “before Me” is quite significant. The Hebrew expression is al peni, and it means “in front of my face.” That might not be so bad for a local god that stayed within his boundaries; but this God had been in Chaldea with Abraham, called him into Canaan, went with the family of Israel into Egypt, and took them back to Canaan. Everywhere He went He was the ruler, showing no regard for the customs and religions of the people, and treating their idea of divinity as vain and silly. He judged the gods of Egypt in the plagues, even by putting out the light of their supreme deity, the sun. So, to have no other gods before Him, that is, in front of His face, the face of the God who is everywhere, is to make the judgment that the people of Israel believed in the One true God who made Heaven and Earth.

Syncretism was expected in the ancient world, a polite recognition of the various gods of the different places where nations settled. If nothing else, it was just bad manners to treat any religion as false, any god as a mere idol, and any practice as an abomination. Of course, when it became necessary to save mankind from the worst kind of paganism, the better kind came to the rescue; the Romans defeated the Carthaginian Hannibal whose army fought to spread the madness of child sacrifice everywhere. And, nowhere does this receive treatment that has better insight than in The Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton.

But, even the Romans fell short of the Israelite standard, the worship of one and only one God, the maker of all things and judge of all men. They allowed the Jews to worship the God of their fathers only because He was the God of their fathers. They tolerated Jewish intolerance out of respect for its antiquity. But, they persecuted the Christians who converted from among the Gentiles, using the excuse that they were rejecting the gods of their fathers and the worship of Caesar. And, even during the early days of the Christian Church, as recorded in the Book of Acts, the Emperor Claudius sought to banish all Jews from the City of Rome itself. The idea of any religion that could not take an equal place among the devotions to the various gods of the peoples was completely strange to ancient peoples everywhere.

Yet, what we know that the pagans of antiquity did not know, is that the revelation of God to man was a gift and the offer of salvation. Jewish monotheism was intolerant of the gods for the same reason that men of medicine are intolerant of folk remedies. The real trouble with all people everywhere is that two-sided coin of sin and death; so the intolerance of Judaism for idolatry was a necessary first step toward what would become the mission of the Church. 

Inherent in the first commandment of the Law of Moses is the Great Commission of the Risen Christ. “Thou shalt have no other gods in my presence-before my face” is echoed in the words, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. (Matt. 28: 19, 20).” It is expressed in the words of Saint Peter, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved (Acts 4:12).” Emmanuel, “in ancient times did give the Law, in cloud and majesty and awe,” and now He stood risen from the dead to authorize the Church to go with His presence to all nations, going everywhere among fallen mankind and with all their gods before His face, to root up, pull down and destroy, and to build and to plant. Jesus Christ, after dying on the cross for the sins of the whole world, gave us our commission. He is the only salvation revealed by the only true God, Whom to know is eternal life (John 17:3).

This is the meaning of the wise men coming from afar to worship Him in His infancy. Any other kind of writing would have told us all about these men; where they came from, how large their company really was, and details about the route they took, and alternative route by which they returned. But, sacred scripture was composed by the Holy Ghost, and the focus in the Gospel of Matthew is on Jesus Himself. Therefore, all these interesting details about the Magi have become the study of modern historians and archeologists uncovering a mystery, because the Gospel had no space to give to such minor issues. It focuses attention on the salvation of God in the person of Jesus, and it tells His story. The Holy family’s flight into Egypt and return to Galilee is given the space that follows, and the wise men – or Magi – simply disappear back to the place from which they came. But, their significance is not lost.

Their significance is taken up by Saint Paul in the Epistle we have heard today, about the Jews and Gentiles being made one new man in Christ, the middle wall of division broken down. We, that is those of us whose ancestry is from the Gentiles, are one with the people of Israel through faith in Jesus Christ. A gentile- that is, anybody who is not of Jewish descent- becomes grafted into the heritage of the people of God, made a child of Abraham by faith in Jesus Christ. This is why I have never been impressed by the apologists for women’s “ordination” when they argue that Christ chose only Jews, and so if we do not believe that women can be ordained based upon His example of choosing only men, we should be consistent and logical, and realize that this would mean we should not allow Gentiles to be ordained. The reason their argument does not make sense is contained in the truth revealed to the apostles and prophets, as taught in today’s Epistle: No Christian is a Gentile. When you were baptized you were taken out of your wild Gentile tree, and grafted into the cultivated tree of Israel.

It is a basic understanding of salvation itself, as Isaiah prophesied that the Root of Israel would grow and blossom and fill the earth, the same earth that is to be “filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Isa. 27:6, Hab. 2:14)” that upon being made part of the Church, one becomes a part of the Israel of God. By faith Abraham is our father, the Lord is our God, and there is salvation in none other than His Son (Rom. 4:11, Acts 4:12). All of our beliefs are based firmly upon revelation, and not based on even the best speculations of the wisest of men.

The difference between revelation and imagination is the difference between the true God and every idol. Even the unseen and unfelt idols of the mind, housed in speculations of an unrevealed and lonely brand of monotheism that cannot possess the eternal attribute of love because it is alone, is an idol. A god who cannot be seen, touched, heard and even tasted, is the new kind of idol; for, “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth (John 1:14).” Apart from this revelation of the Wholly Other uncreated God taking our time and space world into His Person; apart from the revelation of this invisible deity found in fashion as a man whose glory is beheld; apart from this unknowable God made known in the Person of the Incarnate Word, there is no salvation. There is no salvation in all of the other gods that men worship before His Face.

We have the Great Commission to spread the knowledge of the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. Thou shalt have no other gods in front of His face, for neither is there salvation in any other. The name of Jesus is given under heaven among men, whereby we must be saved. Each of you, as a member of Christ's Body the Church, are called to take your part of this great work that Christ gave to His Church from the beginning, of which prophets had spoken from the dawn of history.

Epiphany IV

Rom. 13:1-7
Matt. 8:1-13

Today is not only the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, but also a day with so much significance for us that January 28th is given a special place on the Ordo Calendar as printed for Anglicans in our churches as the feast of the Preservation of the American Episcopate. In 1978, on this day, in Denver Colorado, four Episcopal priests were consecrated as bishops for the purpose of Continuing the faith and practice of orthodox Anglicanism. The decision was reached late in 1977 that action had to be taken to preserve our Faith and valid sacraments. And so, to keep the Apostolic Succession of bishops alive, these men were consecrated even though it meant that they were forced to leave the Episcopal Church. On that day was the birth of the Anglican Province of Christ the King, and of the Anglican Catholic Church. Those four bishops were brave enough to leave the security of the Pension Fund, and all the safety of a large well-endowed organization, because something far more important was at stake, namely the truth. The truth makes demands on the conscience because the world is always in the grip of spiritual warfare. If not for the reality of human sin, the conscience would be easy to live with, and would never call us to painful duties.

The last remaining bishop to have been consecrated that day, that is the only one out of the four who is still active (and I think the last one who is still alive), is our own Archbishop, Robert Morse. Not only does he remain active as our Archbishop, but he also remains active as a chaplain at the University of California in Berkley (which he has been for more than fifty years), where he still goes to the campus just about every weekday and continues a very genuine ministry of personal evangelism among the students. Many years ago, the Rector of Christ Church in Carefree, our friend Fr. Steven Dart, when a student at Berkley, was converted through the ministry of Archbishop Morse. The Archbishop uses the Confessional as an evangelistic tool, and so it was in the Confessional that Fr. Dart was converted. And, the Archbishop has his office at our own Saint Joseph of Arimathea Seminary right there near the Berkley campus. He spoke of the day that followed his consecration by relating a mystical experience: He realized that he was carrying the cross in a way new to him. He felt its weight when faced with the new work he had to do. Earlier this year, in Wisconsin, Archbishop Morse was reminiscing for our benefit about that and the events that led to the consecration, including his own personal experiences of the dangers of spiritual warfare that he had endured as a priest serving under the infamous, the notoriously heretical, Bishop James Pike, the Episcopal bishop in San Francisco in the 1960s. He said that from Bishop Pike he learned the meaning of brutality- and Archbishop Morse is a World War II combat veteran.

Heresy is brutal, and the cold-heartedness with which ecclesiastical office holders like Pike have been so willing to crush the hearts of people who looked to them for spiritual leadership, is best expressed by the title of a book written by the retired Episcopal Bishop of South Carolina (who ordained my brother many years ago), Fitzsimons Allison. That title is The Cruelty of Heresy. Indeed, it is very cruel. I think of a lady I knew for years, a saintly matriarch of a large family in Catonsville, Maryland, forced to choose between the place that for more than eighty years had been for her the house of God, where all her family including her husband were buried, and the truth. That old church, with its stained glass, its walls covered with angels, its marble altar where the sacrament had been consecrated perhaps as many as a million times, had been her spiritual home, a bit of heaven on earth. Maybe some people would think of it as unworthy or carnal to be so attached to one place. But, I do not think so; people do have sentiments and deep feelings, affections for their memories, and attachments to the holiness of sacred space. There she was baptized as an infant. There she was confirmed. There she was married. There her husband’s funeral had been held. There she helped to teach the faith to her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. There she had received Holy Communion thousands of times in over eight decades. With the Diocese of Maryland having taken over that church because the people of the congregation felt compelled to give it up, again due to the demands of conscience, this lady was forced to decide. Leave to go with her faithful brethren, or stay under the power of an unbelieving bishop?

The cruelty of heresy is that it forces such choices. And, that is only the smallest of its cruelties. Its greatest cruelty is that it aids the damnation of the soul rather than the salvation of the soul. It gives sweet comfort to the unrepentant sinner, a false security that his sins are not a separation from God. On the Last day it will not deliver anyone from the pains of Hell. Its other great cruelty is to both discourage and blame the true believer who does follow the demands of conscience. It heaps upon the honest believer false charges of meanness, of hatred, of bigoted intolerance. But, who is the real bigot? Is it the one who thinks and reasons that God does not contradict Himself or change His mind? No. The real bigot is often the one who imagines himself to be truly enlightened and sophisticated, but who, in reality, lives by a prejudiced rejection of Christian teaching, a prejudice he mistakes for knowledge. Another cruelty of heresy is that, in the name of a new and up to date religion, it restores the terror of the grave. Where do people go when they discover that the leaders of their church no longer believe in the Incarnation? What do they do when they find out that those leaders themselves are the ones who deny everything that the same church had once taught them to believe? If the clergy cannot say the Creed with sincerity, where does that leave the people?

The priests who left the Episcopal Church that day, by becoming bishops at the hands of Bishop Albert Chambers of the Episcopal Church, and Bishop Francesco De Jesus Paktigan of the Philippine Independent Catholic Church, were forced out by the truth. So were all the people who went with them. The only way to keep the faith of the Episcopal Church alive was to leave the Episcopal Church, and to teach that faith without compromise. It was necessary.

All these years later, here we are. We are deliberately mischaracterized as an angry bunch who are attached to old worn out ways and won’t change with the times. They say that we are only here because of the old Prayer Book (but the ‘79 book never hit the pews of the Episcopal churches until 1980- two years after the Denver Consecrations). They are always writing our epitaph, despite the fact that our numbers keep growing, and we keep building new churches. They think that all our congregations are old and have no future; but, most of our churches are filled with families and people of all ages. Most of the members of many congregations are people who never were in the Episcopal Church at all, but were evangelized or who converted from other backgrounds. But, make no mistake about the motives for the mischaracterizations: It is not that our critics believe we are dead: It is that they wish us dead.

What is it that the truth gives to us, after we have declared our independence from apostasy? It gives us freedom, as we know. It also give us power. The Holy Spirit works through the truth of the Gospel, because it is, as Saint Paul wrote long ago, “the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes.” Jesus healed the leper in today’s Gospel reading; and He was willing to enter the home of a Gentile to bring healing. This upset the religious authorities. To touch a leper was to touch uncleanness; to enter the home of a Gentile was to defile oneself- or so they taught. Let me remind you of what I said a year ago:

“[The leper] wanted not only to be healed, but to be clean; clean of leprosy which he saw as being itself a sinful state. Jesus not only heals him, but gives him the great restoration he desires. He sends him to the priests in the temple, and reminds him to offer to God the gift ordered in the Torah for the cleansing of a leper. He restores him to obedience to the Law, giving him the commandment to follow, right out of its pages. This was more than a mere ritual; the man was being given back his place in the religion of the God of his fathers, the people of Israel. More than only his body, his heart was healed that day.

“The Gentile, the Centurion, is not only a Gentile, but a Roman. He is what is called a God-fearer, not a convert to Judaism, but a worshiper of the true God nonetheless. However, he is not circumcised; and so, to enter his home is to make oneself unclean (again, by the rules of the rabbis of that time. The Torah really says no such thing). You may recall, from the Book of Acts, how many years later St. Peter would enter the home of another Centurion and God-fearer named Cornelius, and would say upon entering what difficulty he had doing so (for he was not supposed to enter the home of a man who is unclean).

“It is the Centurion who begs Christ not to come, and then proceeds to reveal the depth of his faith by saying ‘Only speak the word.’ Jesus, again looked upon a heart of faith. He knew that the true children of Abraham were those who believe, a teaching that would later be written down so eloquently by St. Paul. He knew that His own Divine presence carries with it the power to cleanse and to heal wherever He goes. His actions are never disorder, but the very essence of order; it is He Who made the heavens and the earth, and set them in their perfect course. He has come into the world to save us from sin and death, to bring order out of disorder, life out of death; to bring light into darkness, to make all things right. He alone has this power; though He has come and is a man who sees the outward appearance, He is also the Lord Who looks upon the heart.”

The Denver Consecrations were like these two healings. Certain religious authorities, to this day, condemn the decision taken by those four priests, and by those who went with them. It was “out of order” by their rule. But, it was the work of Jesus Christ, and the restoration of order into the chaotic turmoil created by the cruel and brutal spirit of heresy. And, because we have the Holy Spirit among us due to the simple faith that was expressed by that “man under authority”, we can reach out to the world around us as Jesus did. We can touch the pain of its uncleanness with the gift of healing; because there is no substitute for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, It is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes. We have the ministry of the word and of the sacraments; we have the medicine that people need. And, this is because we allow the truth to teach our conscience, especially that great truth of the Incarnation, that Jesus is the Lord.

The Collect - Epiphany IV

Collect from the Roman Breviary
Deus, qui nos in tantis periculis constitutos, pro humana scis fragilitate non posse subsistere : da nobis salútem mentis et córporis ; ut ea, quæ pro peccátis nostris patimur, te adjuvante vincamus. Per Dóminum.

Collect of 1549
GOD, whiche knoweste us to bee set in the middest of so many and great daungers, that for mannes fraylnes we cannot alwayes stande uprightly; Graunt to us the health of body and soule that al those thinges which we suffer for sinne, by thy helpe we may wel passe and overcome; through Christ our lorde.

Collect of 1662
O GOD, who knowest us to be set in the midst of so many and great dangers, that by reason of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright; Grant to us such strength and protection, as may support us in all dangers, and carry us through all temptations; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

History:
Clearly Cranmer is happy to translate the Sarum Latin collect verbatim. The compilers of the 1662 BCP encourage us to take some personal ownership of "mannes fraylnes", but the content is largely the same.

Reflection:
Jamal is a crack racing driver who has performed many stunts for televison and films. His hand-brake turns are legendary and he is regarded in the film industry as an remarkable asset since the last few stunts have rendered the productions a roaring success. Jamal's reactions are remarkably quick, the impulses taking microseconds to process infromation gained from his senses, before they reach his steering wheel. Truly, like everyone else, Jamal's body is a feat of hydraulic, pneumatic and mechanical engineering, only Jamal has exercised his reactions as far as he can.
The wind blows, a tree falls, and even Jamal's honed reflexes cannot save him as he crashes into its bulk. The safety devices in his car work as well as they can, air-bag, side impact bars, crumple-zone, but nothing can stop the damage done to Jamal's body.
In hospital, he pays neurosurgeons to help him regain the use of his legs. He gets the top bod, those with more doctorates and degrees than an MIT reunion. For all their knowledge they can do nothing. Jamal sits in his wheelchair for the rest of his life.
You'd think he would be bitter, angry at God for this complete removal of his ability, passion and livelihood. But he sits and laughs. "Sure, I am tempted to curse God and die, but it was He who has given me some wonderful experiences in life. I've been part of some great films and I've been proud of what God gave me. Sure, He took it away - He's boss. I wasn't expecting for this body to last forever, but my life isn't over yet. With God, I've got all I need, and if He wants me, life everlasting too when this body finally falls to bits."

Jonathan Munn

The Collect - Epiphany III

The Prayer
Almighty and Everlasting God, mercifully look upon our infirmities, and in all our dangers and necessities stretch forth thy right hand to help and defend us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Commentary:
Another ancient and rather general collect as translated by Cranmer.

Meditation
He knows our weakness, our physical weakness, our mental limitations, and above all our sins and moral failings. He knows.
He does not need us to tell Him, but asks us to do so nonetheless, and, in a fashion we would call 'gentlemanly', He does not reach into our lives to transform us without our permission and request.
But, in all our need, whether in the outward circumstances of our life, or, more importantly, in the inner condition of our hearts, he stands ready to help us onward.
Note that all through the Old Testament there are references to the 'Right Hand of the Lord'. It has been traditional for Christians to see these references as refering to the preincarnate Son of God, and thus this is a prayer for the wondrous blessings of the Cross and Resurrection.

Ed Pacht

The Epiphany

Isaiah 60:1-9
Eph 3:1-12
Matt. 2: 1-12

The most radical line to be uttered in the ancient world must have been the first of the Ten Commandments. “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” It was completely out of the ordinary in the days when the peoples of the earth were expected to worship the local deities; in fact, for Israel to believe that their God was the only true God, and all others were vain, was as out of place amid the pagans of antiquity as a fervent expression of Nationalism would be out of place on the floor of the United Nations. To what degree any of the ancient pagans may have thought themselves to be refined and sensitive, the Israelites must have come across as ill mannered. And, since the Law and the prophets of Israel denounced the practices of some of the religions, such as child sacrifice, it was very clear that the Jews simply were not willing to change with the times, and that they were intolerant.

Furthermore, not only was the God of Israel considered to be the one and only true God to His own people, but the only true God at all. The phrase that is translated “before Me” is quite significant. The Hebrew expression is al peni, and it means “in front of my face.” That might not be so bad for a local god that stayed within his boundaries; but this God had been in Chaldea with Abraham, called him into Canaan, went with the family of Israel into Egypt, and took them back to Canaan. Everywhere He went He was the ruler, showing no regard for the customs and religions of the people, and treating their idea of divinity as vain and silly. He judged the gods of Egypt in the plagues, even by putting out the light of their supreme deity, the sun. So, to have no other gods before Him, that is, in front of His face, the face of the God who is everywhere, is to make the judgment that only the people of Israel, believing in the One God who made Heaven and Earth, have the truth.

Syncretism was expected in the ancient world, a polite recognition of the various gods of the different places where nations settled. If nothing else, it was just bad manners to treat any religion as false, any god as a mere idol, and any practice as an abomination. Of course, when it became necessary to save mankind from the worst kind of paganism, the better kind came to the rescue; the Romans defeated the Carthaginian Hannibal whose army fought to spread the madness of child sacrifice everywhere. And, nowhere does this receive treatment that has better insight than in The Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton.

But, even the Romans fell short of the Israelite standard, the worship of one and only one God, the maker of all things and judge of all men. They allowed the Jews to worship the God of their fathers only because He was the God of their fathers. They tolerated Jewish intolerance out of respect for its antiquity. But, they persecuted the Christians who converted from among the Gentiles, using the excuse that they were rejecting the gods of their fathers and the worship of Caesar. And, even during the early days of the Christian Church, as recorded in the Book of Acts, the Emperor Claudius sought to banish all Jews from the City of Rome itself. The idea of any religion that could not take an equal place among the devotions to the various gods of the peoples was completely strange to ancient peoples everywhere.

Yet, what we know that the pagans of antiquity did not know, is that the revelation of God to man was a gift and the offer of salvation. Jewish monotheism was intolerant of the gods for the same reason that men of medicine are intolerant of folk remedies. The real trouble with all people everywhere is that two-sided coin of sin and death; so the intolerance of Judaism for idolatry was a necessary first step toward what would become the mission of the Church. Inherent in the first commandment of the Law of Moses is the Great Commission of the Risen Christ. “Thou shalt have no other gods in my presence-before my face” is echoed in the words, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. (Matt. 28: 19, 20).” It is expressed in the words of Saint Peter, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved (Acts 4:12).” Emmanuel, “in ancient times did give the Law, in cloud and majesty and awe,” and now He stood risen from the dead to authorize the Church to go with His presence to all nations, going everywhere among fallen mankind and with all their gods before His face, to root up, pull down and destroy, and to build and to plant. Jesus Christ, after dying on the cross for the sins of the whole world, gave us our commission. He is the only salvation revealed by the only true God, Whom to know is eternal life (John 17:3).

This is the meaning of the wise men coming from afar to worship Him in His infancy. Any other kind of writing would have told us all about these men; where they came from, how large their company really was, and details about the route they took, and alternative route by which they returned. But, sacred scripture was composed by the Holy Ghost, and the focus in the Gospel of Matthew is on Jesus Himself. Therefore, all these interesting details about the Magi have become the study of modern historians and archeologists uncovering a mystery, because the Gospel had no space to give to such minor issues. It focuses attention on the salvation of God in the person of Jesus, and it tells His story. The Holy family’s flight into Egypt and return to Galilee is given the space that follows, and the three wise men – or Magi – simply disappear back to the place from which they came. But, their significance is not lost.

Their significance is taken up by Saint Paul in the Epistle we have heard today, about the Jews and Gentiles being made one new man in Christ, the middle wall of division broken down. We, that is those of us whose ancestry is from the Gentiles, are one with the people of Israel through faith in Jesus Christ. A gentile- that is, anybody who is not of Jewish descent- becomes grafted into the heritage of the people of God, made a child of Abraham by faith in Jesus Christ. This is why I have never been impressed by the apologists for women’s “ordination” when they argue that Christ chose only Jews, and so if we do not believe that women can be ordained based upon His example of choosing only men, we should be consistent and logical, and realize that this would mean we should not allow Gentiles to be ordained. The reason their argument does not make sense is contained in the truth revealed to the apostles and prophets, as taught in today’s Epistle: No Christian is a Gentile. When you were baptized you were taken out of your wild Gentile tree, and grafted into the cultivated tree of Israel.

It is a basic understanding of salvation itself, as Isaiah prophesied that the Root of Israel would grow and blossom and fill the earth, the same earth that is to be “filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea,” that upon being made part of the Church, one becomes a part of the Israel of God. By faith Abraham is our father, the Lord is our God, and there is salvation in none other than His Son. All of our beliefs are based firmly upon revelation, and not based on even the best speculations of the wisest of men.

The difference between revelation and imagination is the difference between the true God and every idol. Even the unseen and unfelt idols of the mind, housed in the Arian speculations of Muslims and Unitarians of an unrevealed and lonely brand of monotheism that cannot possess the eternal attribute of love because it is alone, is an idol. A god who cannot be seen, touched, heard and even tasted, is the new kind of idol; for, “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth (John 1:14).” Apart from this revelation of the Wholly Other uncreated God taking our time and space world into His Person; apart from the revelation of this invisible deity found in fashion as a man whose glory is beheld; apart from this unknowable God being known in the Person of the Incarnate Word, there is no salvation. There is no salvation in all of the other gods that men worship before His Face.

We have the Great Commission to spread the knowledge of the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. Thou shalt have no other gods in front of His face, for neither is there salvation in any other. The name of Jesus is given under heaven among men, whereby we must be saved.

The Collect - Epiphany I

The Prayer

LORDE we beseche the mercyfullye to receive the praiers of thy people which cal upon thee; and graunt that they maie both perceave and knowe what thinges they ought to do, and also have grace and power faithfully to fulfill the same, through Jesus Christ our lord.

Commentary

This collect is Cranmer's translation of the Old Latin Collect as it appeared in the Sarum Missal

Between the Papacy of Pope Leo XIII and Vatican II, the First Sunday of Epiphany celebrated the feast of the Holy Family (with a new collect written to correspond with the old readings). This has subsequently been moved to the first Sunday after Christmas (or December 30) to make way for the feast of the Lord's Baptism which brings Catholic celebrations in line with the Eastern understanding of the Epiphany (now adopted by Protestants and many Anglicans). The collect instituted by Cranmer for the Sunday in the octave of Epiphany evolved very little save for the addition of "through Jesus Christ our lord" in 1552.

Meditation

The Collect from Cranmer seems rather non-specific, doesn't it? "Dear Lord, hear our prayers. Help us to know what we are supposed to be doing, and help us to do it." It's a very simple prayer, but is it a prayer that is ever answered? Despite its simplicity, it recognises two central facts about human beings:

1) We don't know what we're supposed to be doing.
2) Even when we do know what we're supposed to be doing, we don't do it.

It's easy for Christians to get hung up on these two facts, to become paralysed with the fear of sinning so that we cannot do anything, which in itself is a sin. God is remarkably generous with the gift of free-will. We have an enormous freedom to become the person whom God created us to be despite the attempts by the Adversary to stop us. What does God want of us? Keep the commandments: love Him most, love others too. We cannot disobey God if we fulfil these rules. But the trouble with love is that it calls us to walk right up to the boundary of sin and to skirt that boundary continually. Go over that boundary and we sin; withdraw from that boundary and we are not loving enough.

We constantly fall one way or the other, and Cranmer prays that we strike the balance between not doing enough and going too far in our attempts to love our neighbour. We will go wrong, but have a merciful God, as Cranmer recognises in his collect. How far away are you from the boundary?

Jonathan Munn (with minor additions by EP)