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“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them”

At the Sunday Eucharist a few days ago we read or heard the following utterance from Christ:  “Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld”  (John 20:22-23).  This and its counterparts in the Gospel of Matthew can be rather contentious verses among Protestants today.

As jarring as this might be for modern evangelicals, Jesus meant exactly what he said.  He invested his apostles with the power of the Holy Spirit to forgive and withhold (or retain) sins.  In Matthew’s Gospel book this is expressed in the language of “binding” and “loosing” – people are bound to their sins or loosed from their sins by the power of the Holy Spirit.  This is called The Power of the Keys (after how Jesus introduces it in Matthew 16), and is a feature not only of Roman theology but of classical protestantism as well.

“But only God forgives sins!” scoffs the pharisees and evangelicals alike.  Naturally, this is a valid point, and the whole point of that objection in the Gospels is to highlight the true divinity of Jesus.  However, Jesus unapologetically tells his apostles to forgive and retain sins.  Saint James would go on to reflect on this in chapter of his epistle: “Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.  And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.”  So there must be a way to connect the dots.

Thankfully, as Anglicans, we have hard-wired our theological answer to this conundrum into our liturgy.  In the Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer the absolution read by the priest contains this sentence:

He has empowered and commanded his ministers to pronounce to his people, being penitent, the absolution and remission of their sins.

That is the wording in the 2019 Prayer Book, but it’s essentially the same in all historic Prayer Books.  The interpretation is clear: John 20:23 is a granting of authority to Christ’s ordained ministers.  But what it also does is link the minister’s words to the power and authority of Christ, who

pardons and absolves all who truly repent and genuinely believe his holy Gospel.

Thus the forgiveness of sins is not a special power of the priest so much as it is the promise of God to all faithful penitents; the priest or bishop is merely the mouthpiece for God in the congregation for that role.

In the Communion service the words of absolution are different.  But they are followed up with The Comfortable Words, which provide the Word of God as a more sure foundation of the absolution spoken by the priest.  In short, it is God, in Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit working through an imperfect priest, who forgives sins.  The priest has a solemn and fearful duty and role in this, but has no magical or divine powers of his own.

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Reflection – The Fish – John 21:1-14

After a month of the quarantine lifestyle I’ve gotten a bit tired and find it difficult to keep up with daily blogging, so I apologize for the lack of entry yesterday.  Today I’m simply sharing a little video reflection on the Gospel for today’s Communion service.

God bless!

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The Few Words of Jesus

One of the interesting opportunities of online ministry when people have to livestream or read-on-their-own the various liturgies of Holy Week is that we can release sermons, homilies, and reflections that don’t necessarily have to fit perfectly into one of those particular liturgies.  For example, I was struck by something in John 18, which is our Morning Prayer New Testament lesson on Good Friday, and then traced its theme into chapter 19, which is the Gospel lesson in Good Friday’s principle service.

So here is that reflection, The Few Words of Jesus, aided with a seemingly-innocuous quote from the book of Ecclesiastes.

“Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few.” – Ecclesiastes 5:2

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Easter Week Readings all-in-one

I made one for Holy Week, and now for Easter as well: an all-in-one sheet laying out the Morning Prayer, Communion, Midday, Evening, and Compline lessons and psalms throughout Easter Week.

Easter Week, in particular, is often overlooked.  Folks tend to be exhausted by the end of the Easter Vigil and the many goings-on during Holy Week.  This is understandable, but also very unfortunate, as there are a number of significant angles on Easter that we have opportunity to celebrate.  There is a certain irony in the fact that those who are happy to see Pre-Lent done away with in order to “restore the balance” between Lent and Easter then fail to go on and actually celebrate Easter Week.

Historically, the Prayer Books have appointed more things for Holy Week than for Easter Week, so it’s understandable that we still tend to be more busy in the former than in the latter.  But now that most of us are at home most of the time, unable to exhaust ourselves with long and multiple church services, perhaps this is our great opportunity to discover Easter Week!  So here it is: easter week all-in-one 2020.

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Video: Passiontide through Easter Week

We’re a few days into Passiontide already, but Holy Week is still not quite here, so this is a good time to share this introduction to Passiontide, Holy Week, the Triduum, and Easter/Pascha.

subject index:

  • 00:00 Nomenclature
  • 05:03 Major Themes and Traditions of these three weeks
  • 11:33 Walkthrough of Passiontide & Holy Week in the 2019 Prayer Book
  • 15:08 Walkthrough of Easter Week in the 2019 Prayer Book
  • 19:47 Daily Office Lectionary and other liturgical features
  • 23:47 Closing in prayers
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Holy Week Readings all-in-one

There’s a lot going on during Holy Week.  Morning and Evening Prayer continue.  This Customary’s supplemental midday prayer lectionary appoints special readings for these days, and there are Communion propers for each day of the week as well.  So there are a lot of opportunities for deeper devotions, both in the following of the liturgy itself as well as in simply taking their Bible readings for individual reading and reflection.

So I’ve put together an all-in-one chart: Holy Week all-in-one 2020

There you’ll see for the day of the week the Psalm(s) and Lessons for: Morning Prayer, Holy Communion, Midday Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Compline.  There are a couple of either/or choices in the 2019 Book’s lectionaries, and I picked them for you, according to what I’ve developed of the Saint Aelfric Customary thus far.  The goals, as usual are:

  • to be faithful to historic Anglican tradition whenever possible
  • to make the maximum use of the 2019 Prayer Book material
  • to avoid repetition of Lessons whenever possible

Since so many of us are home-bound during this time of plague, this is a golden opportunity to step up our disciplines of prayer, and observe more of our liturgical tradition than we might normally experience.  I hope this chart helps you so to do!

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Work as to the Lord

Nearly every church and clergyman is doing a lot of stuff online now during the global pandemic.  I don’t mean to overload anyone with devotional resources, but I since I have a history of sharing occasional reflections on a lesson from the Daily Office lectionary here already, it seems alright to do so now.

“Work as to the Lord” is my brief homily on Ephesians 6:1-9, which is the New Testament lesson in Evening Prayer today.

Happy Friday!  Keep the fast, pray the litany.  Work as to the Lord.

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Annunciations to Mary and to the world

In the 2019 Prayer Book, Luke 1:26-38 is the New Testament reading at Morning Prayer on March 25, as well as the Gospel lesson for the Communion service on this holy day – The Annunciation to Mary.  It may be obvious, but it’s easy to miss, that we are now nine months ahead of Christmas Day, the exact relative timing between this gospel story and the birth of Christ.  I’ve written about its timing before, and how it can assist our reading of Scripture in the daily lectionary, compared it to other Marian holy days, and even shared a hymn appropriate for the Annunciation.  So my backlog of blog posts provide quite a few opportunities for devotional reading.

I also put together a trilogy of theological explorations of various doctrines concerning our Lady, soberly examining the biblical and traditional foundations behind a few popular beliefs.  So you can read about typologies of Mary in the Old Testament and their theological implications, the motherhood of Mary from various angles, the significance of the virginity of Mary, and the potential extent of the blessedness of Mary.  If you like to learn and study, there you go, have fun!

Rabbit trails aside, let’s settle down with the text mentioned at the start.  The angel (traditionally considered one of the Archangels) Gabriel appears to Mary with a message.  Gabriel has appeared before, to prophets like Daniel, and will promptly appear again to Joseph.  As one great hymn puts it, Gabriel is the “herald of heaven”, always appearing with a message, invariably about the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus.  While there is a lot about angels that we simply don’t, and can’t, know, the angelic role of messenger is one that is very informative for the Christian calling – we, too, in our own ways, are messengers or ambassadors or witnesses, proclaiming to the world in some fashion or another that Jesus is here.  Just as Gabriel appears, surprises Mary, and gives her good news, so too do we go about the world with surprising news that’s hard to believe: God loves his world such that he came among us in the humblest of ways!  We proclaim a Jesus who is great, and is called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God has given to him the throne of his father David, and Jesus will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.  Gabriel’s message to Mary, almost verbatim, is the message of the Church to the world to this day.

“How will this be?”  How can we proclaim the reality of Christ to a world that so rarely seems interested in listening to us?  This is hard question and the answers look different, according to the situation.

Sometimes we must wield the hammer of the Law – identifying the sins of the people and pointing out the dire demands of divine justice.
Sometimes we must apply the salve of the gospel – announcing the prodigal love of a merciful God.

Sometimes we need to proclaim the truth with emotion – that through our fervency the world will realize how serious we are.
Sometimes we need to proclaim the truth with carefully reasoned argumentation – that through such apologetics we may show ourselves a people who are thoughtful and wise, even “scientific” in the truest sense.

Whatever the details, the underlying reality is the same: God is a worker of miracles.  He made the barren womb bear life, the made the virgin womb bear life, “for nothing will be impossible with God.”

At the end of the day, our posture before God is perfectly embodied in Mary’s response at the climax of this text.  “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”  Car puns aside, this is Mary’s fiat.  The first fiat is God’s, in Genesis 1: fiat lux, “let there be light.”  That is how the old creation begun.  The new creation begins in the second fiat from the Second Eve, the mother of all re-living, fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum, “let it be to me according to your word.”  This is then simplified and codified forever in the Lord’s Prayer: fiat voluntas tua, “thy will be done.”

I daresay there is no holier, no more humble, prayer than this.

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The Gospel in Apocalyptic Vision

If you’re using our Supplementary Midday Prayer Lectionary, you’ll be coming across this gem today from 2 Esdras 7…

For behold, the time will come, when the signs which I have foretold to you will come to pass, that the city which now is not seen shall appear, and the land which now is hidden shall be disclosed. And every one who has been delivered from the evils that I have foretold shall see my wonders.   For my son the Messiah shall be revealed with those who are with him, and those who remain shall rejoice four hundred years.

And after these years my son the Messiah shall die, and all who draw human breath.  And the world shall be turned back to primeval silence for seven days, as it was at the first beginnings; so that no one shall be left.  And after seven days the world, which is not yet awake, shall be roused, and that which is corruptible shall perish.

In the first paragraph, the Messiah is said to live for 400 years, and in the second the Messiah is said to be dead for seven days.  Are these just bad predictions?  No, this is apocalyptic writing.  This literary genre is meant to read like an epic tale, not like a dry history book of the future.  400 years of life and 7 days of death depict the grand importance of the life and death of the Messiah both by using dramatically large numbers and by using symbolically significant numbers.  People make this kind of mistake with the writings of the Bible all too often, trying to line up Daniel’s “weeks of years” and Revelation’s “thousand years” with chronological history – apocalyptic writings such as these are not meant to be understood in such shallow and mundane terms.

It’s also fascinating to note how the language here anticipates New Testament language quite vividly.  The world “shall be roused, and that which is corruptible shall perish.”  This is very much like what St. Paul would write to the Corinthians.  In the death of Christ, we who are united with Him also die; and in the resurrection of Christ, we who are united with Him also arise.  We put off that which is perishable (sin) and put on that which is imperishable (the righteousness of Christ).

I have written more of this vision from 2 Esdras 7 (the above is just a sample), so if you’re interested in learning more, I’d encourage you to give this article a read: https://leorningcniht.wordpress.com/2016/06/01/the-gospel-in-apocalyptic-vision/