Our name is a very long story

To those who are not of the household of faith, what we are about to do must look very peculiar.  We are about to stand in the dark, carry candles about, sing lengthy and sublime religious texts, read stories from the Bible.  What does this all mean?  What is going on here in this community?

I think that I first came to understand what this was all about and why I came to think that this was the most important thing in my life when I read The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.  In their wandering and meandering, two of the main characters, called hobbits, meet a talking tree, called an Ent, and they introduce themselves and the conversation proceeds:

“I’m a Brandybuck, Meriadoc Brandybuck, though most people call me just Merry.”

“And I’m a Took, Peregrin Took, but I’m generally called Pippin, or even Pip.”

“Hm, but you are hasty folk, I see,” said Treebeard.  “I am honored by your confidence; but you should not be too free all at once.  There are Ents and Ents, you know; or there are Ents and things that look like Ents but ain’t, as you might say.  I’ll call you Merry and Pippin, if you please – nice names.  For I am not going to tell you my name, not yet at any rate.” A queer half-knowing, half-humorous look came with a green flicker into his eyes.  “For one thing it would take a very long while: my name is growing all the time, and I’ve lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story.  Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to in my language, in the Old Entish as you might say.  It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time to say anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to.”

To use Treebeard’s mode of expression, we are not going to be hasty folk tonight, satisfied with glibly saying the name “Christian.”  Tonight, you might say, is “Old Entish” night in the church.  Tonight we are going to tell our name – to ourselves, by way of reminder, to those who will become part of us this night through baptism and confirmation, and to those of the world who will listen, who will take the time to hear what our name is.

And our name is a very long one, one that has been growing since the creation of the world.  Our name is a very long story – of how we are made, of how God chose us from among all peoples, of how God liberated us from bondage, of how God planted us in the promised land, of how, in these last times, God has given a new twist, given our name meaning in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Because we have been here for so long, it takes a long time to tell who we are, to recount the story of our life as a people, and none of us would be here if we did not think that that name was worth telling and listening to.  Now the trick to this kind of name-telling is to relax.  You cannot be hasty in this time ahead of us.  Haste will stop up your ears finally, and then you will not hear this lovely language and our beautiful name.

Relax and make yourself comfortable in the darkness and don’t even try to “make sense” of the name.  Just hear it, let it roll over you in waves of meanings.  Tonight we are going to listen to a series of episodes, not write a theological treatise on the resurrection. A practical word about relaxing: if you need to get up and move about, do so. If you need a breath of fresh air, go out to get it. We’ll still be telling the story when you rejoin us. Whatever you need to do to stay comfortable, do it. All of this will enable you to hear the lovely language in which we can really name ourselves as God himself has named us.

“Christian” is merely an inadequate abbreviation for what we are about to tell.

Brian Helge, A Triduum Sourcebook

O Night brighter than day!

O Miracle! Hades has swallowed Christ the Lord and has not digested him. The lion has devoured the lamb, and has not stomached him. Death has swallowed life and has vomited in nausea, even those which it has previously devoured. The giant could not bear the dead Christ. The corpse was dreadful to the giant. It struggled with the living but has fallen, vanquished by a corpse. If the devil had been vanquished by a living being, he could have alleged, “I was unable to wrestle with God.” But he wrestled with a living being and fell victim to a dead one and completely lost his alibi.

A single grain was sown and the whole world is nourished. As a man he was slaughtered and as God he became alive, and gave life to the whole world. As an oyster he was trampled upon, and as a pearl he has adorned the Church. As a sheep he was slaughtered and as a shepherd with his cross for a staff he has expelled the flock of demons. As a light on a candelabrum he was extinguished on the cross, and as the sun he arose from the tomb. A double wonder could be seen: when Christ was crucified the day became dark, and when he arose the night became bright as day. Why was the day darkened? Because it was written concerning him, he made darkness the cloak about him (Ps. 18:11). Why did the night become bright as day? Because the prophet said to him, for you darkness itself is not dark and night shines as the day (Ps. 139:12).

O Night brighter than day;

O Night brighter than the sun;

O Night whiter than snow;

O Night more brilliant than torches;

O Night more delightful than paradise;

O Night which knows not darkness;

O Night which has banished sleep;

O Night which has taught us to join vigil with angels;

O Night terror of demons;

O Night most desirable in the year;

O Night of torchbearing of the bridegroom in the Church;

O Night mother of the newly baptized;

O Night when the devil slept and was stripped;

O Night in which the Inheritor brought the beneficiaries into inheritance;

An inheritance without end.

Asterius of Amasea

Bede on Easter and Baptism

We can understand that each of us enacts the mystical celebrations of Easter on the day of our baptism, in that we escape spiritual annihilation through the sign of the precious blood, and pass over from spiritual darkness.

Bede the Venerable, De temporum ratione

In spring

In spring all creatures came into being and the first parent was formed from the clay of the earth. In spring Jacob was called from Mesopotamia to his own land. In spring the children of Israel were led out of the land of Egypt, the blood of the lamb turned the destroyer of Egypt away, and they entered the promised land after crossing the Jordan. In spring Christ our Redeemer, ascending by the example of his death from the valley of tears to the mountain of Paradise, summons the church, saying: Arise, hasten, my love, my lovely one, and come, for winter is past.

Apponius, In canticum Canticorum Expositio

Springtime is nature executing her Easter liturgy

Spring with its transformation of hill and meadow, is, accordingly, a great symbol of an event in sacred history and of an event now taking place within the church. Springtime is nature executing her Easter liturgy. Neither poetry nor art can even approximate her grand display. In every corner of her vast cathedral a thousand voices are shouting Alleluia, the voices of creatures that have come to life.

Pius Parsch, The Church’s Year of Grace, vol. 3

T. S. Eliot on Peace

Now think for a moment about the meaning of this word ‘peace.’ Does it seem strange to you that the angels should have announced Peace, when ceaselessly the world has been stricken with War and the fear of War? Does it seem to you that the angelic voices were mistaken, and that the promise was a disappointment and a cheat?

    Reflect now how Our Lord Himself spoke of Peace. He said to His disciples, ‘My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.’ Did He mean peace as we think of it: the kingdom of England at peace with its neighbours, the barons at peace with the King the householder counting over his peaceful gains, the swept hearth, his best wine for a friend at the table, his wife singing to the children? Those men his disciples knew no such things: they went forth to journey afar, to suffer by land and sea, to know torture, imprisonment, disappointment, to suffer death by martyrdom. What then did He mean? If you ask that, remember then that He said also, ‘Not as the world gives, give I unto you.’ So then, He gave to His disciples peace, but not peace as the world gives.

T. S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral

Let us give our attention to that which is beautiful, comely, and good

As far as we are able, let us give our attention to that which is beautiful, comely, and good; let us be occupied with it, let us hold it in mind, so that by its glow and light our souls may become lovely and our minds transparent. For, if our eyes are refreshed with green fields and beautiful groves, after being clouded by mist, or if grassy hills take away the blur of the sick man’s gaze, while his pupils and eye-balls seem to take on color, how much more does the eye of the mind, when it gazes upon the Highest Good, turning to It and feeding on It, become bright and shining, and so fulfill the words of Scripture: ‘My soul shall be filled as with marrow and richness.’ One who wisely understands the souls of his flock cares for the grass of the field so that he will have large pastures, for the sweet grasses make the lambs fatter, and their milk is more healthful. The rich use these pastures, they who ‘have eaten and adored,’ for it is the saint of God who is placed in these good pastures of faith.

St. Ambrose of Milan, Letter to Irenaeus (Summer, 393)

The sheep’s only security is the shepherd

Sheep have a special problem. They have no defenses. Cats have teeth, claws and speed. Dogs have their teeth and their speed. Horses can kick, bite and run. Bears can claw, bite and crush. Deer can run. But the sheep have no bite or claws and cannot outrun any serious predator. They can butt other sheep, but that ability will not protect them from a wolf or a bear. The sheep’s only security is the shepherd.


Kenneth Bailey, The Good Shepherd: A Thousand Year Journey from Psalm 23 to the New Testament, chapter one

A Prayer for Advent II

Lord Jesus, who once came into the world to save sinners, and who will come again to judge the quick and the dead, let us in repentance and faith find Thee in Thy manger and on the cross, so that we may see Thee with joy upon the clouds and on Thy throne.

C.F.W Walther, Gospel Sermons, Advent II