Bring your brother

Today the church celebrates the Feast of Saint Andrew.  The symbol of Saint Andrew is the saltire, a traverse cross, or simply Saint Andrews' cross.  There is also a spider with this name.

Image from Wikimedia Commons, Saint Andrews Cross.

The appointed Gospel for Evening Prayer on Saint Andrews' recounts how Andrew, having heard John declare that Jesus was the Lamb of God, brought his brother Simon Peter to meet Jesus, saying:

"...We have found the Messias..." John 1:41

Yes, that's the same Peter (stone) upon which the church was built.

Remember to bring your brother.

The answer revealed?

Sometimes I have puzzled over statements, especially in the Gospels, that seem to be purposefully obscure.  Jesus seems downright difficult at times, frustrating his critics and sometimes his followers, too.  For example, in today's Gospel reading from Saint Luke, Jesus turns away the scribes with an abrupt dismissal after a tangled discourse about authority.

"...neither tell I you by what authority I do these things." (St. Luke 20:14)

 For years I treated that as the end of the story.  Maybe it is.  Maybe it isn't.  Immediately following this Saint Luke says "Then he began to speak to the people this parable..."  He turns away the scribes and speaks to the "people."  (Will either party understand him?  Do we?)  What follows of course is the parable of the vineyard.  Here is the answer!  Jesus is the Christ sent by the Lord God to the sinful husbandmen.  Jesus is explaining to everyone what is happening to them in the context of history (God's plan) at that very moment; He is summarizing history; He is expressing the outcome of history.

"Bull of Saint Luke" from the Eglise Saints-Pierre-et-Paul, Rosheim, from Wikimedia Commons used with Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

We do not trust in our own righteousness - Advent I

On this first Sunday of Advent, 2011, I would like to call your attention to Archbishop Cranmer's collect for the day:

"Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility..."  BCP, Collect for First Advent

The homilist this morning reminded us that we can only go so far in putting on this new garment ourselves.  And that's not very far.  This is so difficult to remember.  We must stop struggling and allow the Lord to put this garment on us. This is what St Paul tells us:

"Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light...and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." (Romans 13:13-14)

All familiar words and themes: humility, light and dark, putting away of self, putting on Christ.

How to regard the other

At this conclusion of the liturgical year, the reading from Philippians presents us with words that would seem to be not too difficult on the surface, but what if we truly carried this out?

"...in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves." (Philippians 2:3)

Is this a particular aspect of the commandment (law) to love one's neighbor?

Olivet

Only one more day after today in the liturgical year.  We have observed the feast of Christ the King, a feast I'm told was begun by Pope Pius XI in 1925 to emphasize the culmination of the Christian year and the Christian hope.  We listen to the prophet Zechariah talk about the coming of Christ:

"And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives..." (Zechariah 14:4)

 A little research informs me that tradition says that the prophet himself is in the tombs of Mount Olive, perhaps in one similar to that in the image, Tombs of Zkharia and of the Hezir family from Wikimedia Commons.