The apse in San Vitale … a ‘most exciting introduction to Byzantine art’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Patrick Comerford
Professor Judith Herrin of King’s College, London, is one of the greatest Byzantine scholars today. In one of her books, Byzantium: the Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire, she recalls how the mosaics in Ravenna were her ‘first and most exciting introduction to Byzantine art.’
Her mother had seen an exhibition on the Ravenna mosaics and was keen to see the originals, while she was learning Italian at school. They both agreed that Ravenna should be the focus of a summer holiday. They rented a Fiat Cinquecento in Milan, and off they headed to Ravenna to see the mosaic panels that commemorate Justinian and Theodora.
The Court of Justinian in a mosaic in San Vitale (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
It was only later that Judith Herrin wondered why portraits of rulers of Byzantium who never visited Ravenna flank the approach to the altar in the Church of San Vitale. For her, that journey from Milan to Ravenna was the beginning of the path that led her to stand alongside John Julius Norwich and the late Steven Runciman as one of the finest Byzantine scholars of our day.
I have taught a module on Byzantine studies and have visited Byzantine sites throughout Greece, Turkey, Sicily, Cyprus and Egypt. Perhaps, in all those visits, I was building up my anticipations for the joys awaiting me on an eventual visit to Ravenna.
A train from Bologna
The fifth century mosaic of the Baptism of Christ in the Neonian Baptistry (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
A few weeks before Christmas, two of us set off, not by car but by train, and not from Milan but from Bologna, to see Ravenna, those Byzantine mosaics and some of its eight Unesco World Heritage Sites.
The Romans ignored Ravenna during their conquest of the Po Delta, and it was not until 89 BC that it was incorporated into the Roman political system. It was there that Julius Caesar gathered his forces in 49 BC before crossing the Rubicon.
Today the city is landlocked, but Ravenna was an important Adriatic seaport until the early Middle Ages, and prospered under Roman rule. In the year 402, Emperor Honorius transferred the capital of the Western Roman Empire from Milan to Ravenna, which was easy to defend because it was surrounded by swamps and marshes yet had good connections by sea to the Eastern Roman Empire.
Alaric and the Visigoths bypassed Ravenna in 409 and went on to sack Rome in 410, taking Galla Placidia, the daughter of Emperor Theodosius I, as a hostage. When Galla Placidia eventually returned to Ravenna with her son, Emperor Valentinian III, and with the support of her nephew Theodosius II, Ravenna enjoyed a period of peace.
The Baptismal Font in the Neonian Baptistry (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
In that time, Ravenna gained some of its most famous monuments, including the Baptistry, the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia – although she is not actually buried there – and the Church of Saint John the Evangelist.
Ravenna remained the capital of the Western Roman Empire until that empire collapsed in 476. The Eastern Emperor Zeno then sent the Theodoric the Great to retake the Italian peninsula. Theoderic took Ravenna in 493 and it became the capital of the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy until 540.
While Theoderic was in power, he built splendid buildings in and around Ravenna, including his palace church, Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, an Arian cathedral, now Santo Spirito, a Baptistry, and his own mausoleum outside the city walls.
The Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo was built in the sixth century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Theodoric was an Arian, but he co-existed peacefully with the largely Orthodox people of Ravenna, and their bishops built more splendid church buildings, including the Capella Arcivescovile. When a mob burned down the synagogues of Ravenna in 519, Theoderic ordered the city to rebuild them at its own expense.
Theodoric died in 526, and in 540 the Byzantine Empire recaptured Ravenna, which became the seat of Byzantine government in Italy. Ravenna’s bishops embarked on a new building programme that included the Basilica of San Vitale and the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Classe.
Inside the Cathedral, beside the Neonian Baptistry, on the Piazza Duomo (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Under Byzantine rule, the Archbishop of Ravenna enjoyed autonomy from Rome, and held second place in Italy after the Pope. Later, the city was the centre of the Byzantine Exarchate of Ravenna until the invasion of the Lombards in 751, and it then became the seat of the Kingdom of the Lombards.
Byzantine rule came to an end when Ravenna was captured by the Lombards, and gradually the city and the church in Ravenna came under the direct authority of the Popes. In a bewildering act of singular vandalism, Pope Adrian I allowed Charlemagne to take away from Ravenna anything that he liked, and an unknown number of columns, mosaics, statues and other items were pillaged and taken to Aachen.
World Heritage sites
A mosaic in Sant’Apollinare Nuovo shows Christ long-haired and bearded in Byzantine fashion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Ravenna is a pleasant town in the Emilian-Romagna region of Italy, with pleasant narrow streets, cobbled piazza, and fine buildings and shops. But most visitors arrive to see the mosaics, which date from the years of Roman and Byzantine rule. In all, eight early Christian monuments and buildings in Ravenna are listed by Unesco as World Heritage sites.
The Orthodox Baptistry, also known as the Neonian Baptistry, is Ravenna’s oldest monument, and was built in the fifth century near the remains of a Roman bathhouse and. It is named after the bishop who commissioned its decoration, which includes a beautiful mosaic depicting the Baptism of Christ.
Beside it, on the Piazza Duomo, stand the cathedral, Archiepiscopal Museum, and the tiny Chapel of Saint Andrew, often missed by visitors.
The fifth century Arian Baptistry has a cupola with a mosaic showing the Apostles ringed around a centrepiece depicting the Baptism of Christ.
The White-Robed Army of Martyrs on the walls of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
The Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, built in the sixth century, is named after Ravenna’s first bishop. The walls of the church have two rows showing processions of martyrs and virgins bearing gifts for the Christ Child and the Virgin Mary. They include the Magi, with an early example of them being shown as three in number and named as Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar.
The mosaics in the apse of the Basilica of San Vitale date from 526-547, and show Christ, San Vitale receiving a martyr’s crown, two angels and Bishop Ecclesius, who started building this octagonal church, and priests and members of the Imperial Court of the Emperor Justinian, who reigned in 527-565. He was an important lawgiver and one of the most powerful Byzantine emperors. The courtiers depicted in this mosaic include Belisarius, the general who won back much of Italy from the Goths, but the only courtier or cleric named is Archbishop Maximian of Ravenna.
Virgins and Martyrs on the walls of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Beside the Basilica of San Vitale, the earlier Mausoleum of Galla Placidia was begun in 430. But this exquisite, cross-shaped building was never the burial place of the wife of the barbarian emperor. One of the best-known mosaics adorning the tiny mausoleum shows Christ as the Good Shepherd.
It was a short visit and I did not get to the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare south of Ravenna, in Classe. This basilica was built in the early sixth century by Bishop Ursicinus and funded and adorned the Greek banker Julianus Argentarius. It was built beside a Christian cemetery, and possibly on top of a previous pagan one, as some of the ancient tombstones were reused in its building.
The basilica was consecrated in 549 by Archbishop Maximian and dedicated to Saint Apollinaris, the first bishop of Ravenna and Classe. It is a contemporary of the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna. In 856, the saint’s relics were moved from the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Classe to the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna.
The Visit of the Magi in the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
I also missed the Mausoleum of Theoderic, just outside Ravenna, and built by the emperor in 520 as his future tomb. However, the significance of the mausoleum lies in its Gothic style and decoration, which owe nothing to Roman or Byzantine art.
But I visited other sites in Ravenna, including the Church of Saint John the Evangelist, built in the fifth century by Galla Placidia after she survived a storm at sea, and restored after the World War II bombings; and the Palace of Theoderic, which was, in fact, the entrance to the former church of San Salvatore, although it has mosaics from the actual palace of the Ostrogoth king.
Dante in exile
The Tomb of Dante, who died in 1321 on his way back to Ravenna from Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
In the 14th century, Dante’s wanderings around Italy after his exile from Florence eventually brought him to Ravenna. He lived there from 1318, and the city is mentioned in Canto V in Dante’s Inferno.
When Dante died in 1321, on his way back to Ravenna from a diplomatic mission in Venice, he was buried in Ravenna at the Church of San Pier Maggiore, now known as San Francesco.
His sepulchre was rebuilt in 1780, and a lamp there is kept alight with oil given by the city of Florence.
Byron and Yeats in Ravenna
The Mausoleum of Galla Placidia … she was never buried there (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Lord Byron lived in Ravenna in 1819-1821, when he worked on Don Juan and wrote his Ravenna Diary. Oscar Wilde visited Ravenna in 1878, but does not refer to the mosaics in his poem Ravenna. When WB Yeats spent Christmas with Wilde in 1888, Wilde shared his experiences. It is not surprising, then, that Ravenna, and not Istanbul (Constantinople), inspired Yeats and his vision of Byzantium.
When Yeats visited Ravenna with Lady Gregory in 1907, he was taken aback by the beauty of the Byzantine mosaics. Later in Sicily, the Irish poet visited the mosaics in Monreale and Palermo in 1924, and in 1928 he published his poem ‘Sailing to Byzantium’:
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
– Those dying generations – at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect …
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Christ as the Good Shepherd … a mosaic in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
The American literary critic Professor Helen Vendler of Harvard suggests the ‘gold mosaic of a wall’ and later references in the poem to ‘Grecian goldsmiths’ who ‘make of hammered gold and gold enamelling to keep a drowsy Emperor awake’ were inspired by his memories of his visit to Ravenna over two decades earlier.
The Church of Saint John the Evangelist, built by Galla Placidia, was restored after World War II (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Apart from short occupation by Venice (1527-1529), Ravenna was part of the Papal States until 1796, when it was annexed by France. It returned to the Papal States in 1814. Ravenna had become part of the modern state of Italy in 1861. Surprisingly, the city suffered very little damage during World War II, and today has a population of almost 160,000.
The Piazza del Popolo, the main square in Ravenna, dates from the 13th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
This essay was first published in February 2018 in the ‘Church Review’ (Dublin and Glendalough) and the ‘Diocesan Magazine’ (Cashel, Ferns and Ossory).
The ‘Palace of Theoderic’ is the entrance to the former church of San Salvatore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
04 February 2018
When Christ dines with people whose
trades make them social outcasts
Waiting for dinner in Rethymnon in Crete … but Christ dines with people whose trades make them social outcasts (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
Sunday 4 February 2018,
The Second Sunday before Lent,
Readings: Hosea 2: 14-20; Psalm 103: 1-13, 22; II Corinthians 3: 1-6; Mark 2: 13-22.
11.30 a.m.: Saint Brendan’s Church, Kilnaughtin (Tarbert), Morning Prayer.
May I speak to you in the name of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.
The Season of Christmas came to an end not at Epiphany [6 January 2018] or the end of the 12 days of Christmas, but 40 days after Christmas at the Feast of the Presentation or Candlemas, the great feast that fell last Friday [2 February 2018].
Now we are in the time between Candlemas and the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday [14 February 2018]. Some of us may remember when this Sunday, the Second Sunday before Lent, was known as Sexagesima, one of those odd-sounding Latin names once used in the Book of Common Prayer for the Sundays between Candlemas and Lent: Septuagesima, Sexagesima, Quinquagesima.
Today, we know this time in the calendar of the Church as Ordinary Time. But instead of archaic Latin names, the two Sundays immediately before Lent now have special themes, Creation today and the Transfiguration next Sunday [11 February 2018], to help us prepare appropriately for the 40 days of Lent.
There are two sets of reading for today, and the set of readings we have used this morning continues our readings through Saint Mark’s Gospel this liturgical year, Year B.
These readings today compare the love of God for us as his created people with the love of a good marriage, and hold a promise of a new relationship with God, a new creation.
Empty tables waiting for the wedding banquet … Hosea compares the new covenant to a new wedding (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
In the Old Testament reading (Hosea 2: 14-20), the prophet Hosea uses marriage as a metaphor to describe the relationship between God and Israel, in which God is the loving husband and Israel the wayward wife. She has succumbed to worshipping Canaanite gods, including Baal, and has come to see these pagan gods rather than God as the source of all her basic necessities (verse 4).
The prophet warns that God will take the fertility of the land away from the people, who will be exposed like a wayward spouse for who she is.
However, this could never be God’s final decision. God is ever-forgiving and ever-loving. He will ‘allure’ her back, make new contact with her, as he did during the Exodus, he will care for her, and he will again bless her; she will become his partner once again and will no longer be a slave to the old ways, the old idols or gods.
God will make a new covenant not just with her, but with all living things, he will abolish warfare, and so protect his people. This marriage will be forever, and the signs of the dowry will be righteousness, justice, steadfast love, mercy and faithfulness (see verse 20).
Taking a similar theme, the psalmist praises God for all he has done, and he gives thanks for the healing that is a sign of God’s forgiveness and the restoration of a good relationship with God (Psalm 103: 1-13, 22). God is slow to anger and is forgiving; he is like a father who knows our frailty, who loves those who are faithful to him.
In our Epistle reading (II Corinthians 3: 1-6), the Apostle Paul reminds us that we are in a new covenant. And, of course, when we think of covenantal relationships, we think of God and God’s people, and the covenantal relationship of marriage, each love a reflection of the other love.
‘No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins’ (Mark 2: 22) (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
In our Gospel reading (Mark 2: 13-22), Christ is in Capernaum, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee.
Now he dines with people whose trades make them ritually unclean and social outcasts. When the religiously powerful question his actions, Christ replies that he comes to call and to invite into his Kingdom those in need of repentance, not those who think they are righteous in God’s eyes.
In his answer, Christ uses the metaphor of marriage between God and his people, which we have heard about in the reading from the Prophet Hosea. Christ is the bridegroom and his followers are the wedding guests.
The feast is in progress, so this is a time for joy, while after his death it will be a time for fasting.
He insists that the old way of being and the new way he brings are separate, even if both are to be valued. New material stretches more than old. When wine ferments, it expands. Soft new wineskins expand with the wine, but old ones do not.
And so, in a way, I find myself thinking of two other banquets where the wine must have been flowing freely.
The first of these is the Wedding at Cana, the banquet before Christ’s ministry begins and also one of the traditional themes at Epiphany time. There the wine runs out, and then the wine runs freely.
The second banquet is at the end of Christ’s ministry, the Seder or Passover meal at the Last Supper. Not only must the wine have been flowing freely at that meal, it is the meal of the New Covenant, in which bread and wine are freely given, just as Christ gives himself freely, body and blood.
So, these Sundays between Christmas and Epiphany on the one hand and Lent and Easter on the other hand, link the Christmas and the Incarnation with the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.
But the time in between, the in-between time, is important in bridging that gap, in making that link.
In that in-between time, there are ordinary meals that offer a promise of what the heavenly banquet is like. And constantly, as in this morning’s Gospel reading, he uses the image of the wedding banquet to convey how sacred, how loving, how caring, how beautiful., how full of promise, is the heavenly banquet.
Just as the wedding banquet is not the wedding itself, but a celebration of the wedding and the promise of the wedding, the meals in the Gospel in the in-between times are foretastes of, promises of, the great heavenly banquet.
And at those banquets, Christ dines with tax-collectors like tax-collectors like Levi, Pharisees like Simon, those who are rejected by polite society like Zacchaeus, just as he is going to dine at the Last Supper with those who are going to betray him like Judas, those who are going to deny him like Peter, just as he is going to insist on dining with those who fail to recognise him after the Resurrection, like the disciples at Emmaus.
No matter how wayward others may think we are, no matter how wayward we may think we have been, Christ calls us back to dine with him, to have a new and intimate relationship with, wants to dine with us, so that, as it says in the ‘Prayer of Humble Access,’ so that ‘that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us.’
And so, may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.
A wedding in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge … Christ uses the metaphor of marriage between God and his people (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
This sermon was prepared for the Second Sunday before Lent, Sunday 4 February 2018.
Collect:
Almighty God,
you have created the heavens and the earth
and made us in your own image:
Teach us to discern your hand in all your works
and your likeness in all your children;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who with you and the Holy Spirit
reigns supreme over all things, now and for ever.
Hymns:
Hosea 2: 14-20:
528, The Church’s one foundation
Psalm 103: 1-13, 22:
1, Bless the Lord, my soul
686, Bless the Lord, the God of our forebears
688, Come, bless the Lord, God of our forebears
349, Fill thou my life, O Lord my God
33, O Lord of every shining constellation
366, Praise, my soul, the king of heaven
365, Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation
660, Thine for ever! God of love
47, We plough the fields and scatter
374, When all thy mercies, O my God
II Corinthians 3: 1-6:
382, Help us, O Lord to learn
306, O Spirit of the living God
Mark 2: 13-22:
218, And can it be that I should gain
608, Be still and know that I am God
549, Dear Lord and Father of mankind
417, He gave his life in selfless love
418, Here, O my Lord, I see thee face to face
94, In the name of Jesus
584, Jesus calls us! O’er the tumult
130, Jesus came, the heavens adoring
605, Will you come and follow me
Patrick Comerford
Sunday 4 February 2018,
The Second Sunday before Lent,
Readings: Hosea 2: 14-20; Psalm 103: 1-13, 22; II Corinthians 3: 1-6; Mark 2: 13-22.
11.30 a.m.: Saint Brendan’s Church, Kilnaughtin (Tarbert), Morning Prayer.
May I speak to you in the name of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.
The Season of Christmas came to an end not at Epiphany [6 January 2018] or the end of the 12 days of Christmas, but 40 days after Christmas at the Feast of the Presentation or Candlemas, the great feast that fell last Friday [2 February 2018].
Now we are in the time between Candlemas and the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday [14 February 2018]. Some of us may remember when this Sunday, the Second Sunday before Lent, was known as Sexagesima, one of those odd-sounding Latin names once used in the Book of Common Prayer for the Sundays between Candlemas and Lent: Septuagesima, Sexagesima, Quinquagesima.
Today, we know this time in the calendar of the Church as Ordinary Time. But instead of archaic Latin names, the two Sundays immediately before Lent now have special themes, Creation today and the Transfiguration next Sunday [11 February 2018], to help us prepare appropriately for the 40 days of Lent.
There are two sets of reading for today, and the set of readings we have used this morning continues our readings through Saint Mark’s Gospel this liturgical year, Year B.
These readings today compare the love of God for us as his created people with the love of a good marriage, and hold a promise of a new relationship with God, a new creation.
Empty tables waiting for the wedding banquet … Hosea compares the new covenant to a new wedding (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
In the Old Testament reading (Hosea 2: 14-20), the prophet Hosea uses marriage as a metaphor to describe the relationship between God and Israel, in which God is the loving husband and Israel the wayward wife. She has succumbed to worshipping Canaanite gods, including Baal, and has come to see these pagan gods rather than God as the source of all her basic necessities (verse 4).
The prophet warns that God will take the fertility of the land away from the people, who will be exposed like a wayward spouse for who she is.
However, this could never be God’s final decision. God is ever-forgiving and ever-loving. He will ‘allure’ her back, make new contact with her, as he did during the Exodus, he will care for her, and he will again bless her; she will become his partner once again and will no longer be a slave to the old ways, the old idols or gods.
God will make a new covenant not just with her, but with all living things, he will abolish warfare, and so protect his people. This marriage will be forever, and the signs of the dowry will be righteousness, justice, steadfast love, mercy and faithfulness (see verse 20).
Taking a similar theme, the psalmist praises God for all he has done, and he gives thanks for the healing that is a sign of God’s forgiveness and the restoration of a good relationship with God (Psalm 103: 1-13, 22). God is slow to anger and is forgiving; he is like a father who knows our frailty, who loves those who are faithful to him.
In our Epistle reading (II Corinthians 3: 1-6), the Apostle Paul reminds us that we are in a new covenant. And, of course, when we think of covenantal relationships, we think of God and God’s people, and the covenantal relationship of marriage, each love a reflection of the other love.
‘No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins’ (Mark 2: 22) (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
In our Gospel reading (Mark 2: 13-22), Christ is in Capernaum, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee.
Now he dines with people whose trades make them ritually unclean and social outcasts. When the religiously powerful question his actions, Christ replies that he comes to call and to invite into his Kingdom those in need of repentance, not those who think they are righteous in God’s eyes.
In his answer, Christ uses the metaphor of marriage between God and his people, which we have heard about in the reading from the Prophet Hosea. Christ is the bridegroom and his followers are the wedding guests.
The feast is in progress, so this is a time for joy, while after his death it will be a time for fasting.
He insists that the old way of being and the new way he brings are separate, even if both are to be valued. New material stretches more than old. When wine ferments, it expands. Soft new wineskins expand with the wine, but old ones do not.
And so, in a way, I find myself thinking of two other banquets where the wine must have been flowing freely.
The first of these is the Wedding at Cana, the banquet before Christ’s ministry begins and also one of the traditional themes at Epiphany time. There the wine runs out, and then the wine runs freely.
The second banquet is at the end of Christ’s ministry, the Seder or Passover meal at the Last Supper. Not only must the wine have been flowing freely at that meal, it is the meal of the New Covenant, in which bread and wine are freely given, just as Christ gives himself freely, body and blood.
So, these Sundays between Christmas and Epiphany on the one hand and Lent and Easter on the other hand, link the Christmas and the Incarnation with the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.
But the time in between, the in-between time, is important in bridging that gap, in making that link.
In that in-between time, there are ordinary meals that offer a promise of what the heavenly banquet is like. And constantly, as in this morning’s Gospel reading, he uses the image of the wedding banquet to convey how sacred, how loving, how caring, how beautiful., how full of promise, is the heavenly banquet.
Just as the wedding banquet is not the wedding itself, but a celebration of the wedding and the promise of the wedding, the meals in the Gospel in the in-between times are foretastes of, promises of, the great heavenly banquet.
And at those banquets, Christ dines with tax-collectors like tax-collectors like Levi, Pharisees like Simon, those who are rejected by polite society like Zacchaeus, just as he is going to dine at the Last Supper with those who are going to betray him like Judas, those who are going to deny him like Peter, just as he is going to insist on dining with those who fail to recognise him after the Resurrection, like the disciples at Emmaus.
No matter how wayward others may think we are, no matter how wayward we may think we have been, Christ calls us back to dine with him, to have a new and intimate relationship with, wants to dine with us, so that, as it says in the ‘Prayer of Humble Access,’ so that ‘that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us.’
And so, may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.
A wedding in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge … Christ uses the metaphor of marriage between God and his people (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
This sermon was prepared for the Second Sunday before Lent, Sunday 4 February 2018.
Collect:
Almighty God,
you have created the heavens and the earth
and made us in your own image:
Teach us to discern your hand in all your works
and your likeness in all your children;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who with you and the Holy Spirit
reigns supreme over all things, now and for ever.
Hymns:
Hosea 2: 14-20:
528, The Church’s one foundation
Psalm 103: 1-13, 22:
1, Bless the Lord, my soul
686, Bless the Lord, the God of our forebears
688, Come, bless the Lord, God of our forebears
349, Fill thou my life, O Lord my God
33, O Lord of every shining constellation
366, Praise, my soul, the king of heaven
365, Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation
660, Thine for ever! God of love
47, We plough the fields and scatter
374, When all thy mercies, O my God
II Corinthians 3: 1-6:
382, Help us, O Lord to learn
306, O Spirit of the living God
Mark 2: 13-22:
218, And can it be that I should gain
608, Be still and know that I am God
549, Dear Lord and Father of mankind
417, He gave his life in selfless love
418, Here, O my Lord, I see thee face to face
94, In the name of Jesus
584, Jesus calls us! O’er the tumult
130, Jesus came, the heavens adoring
605, Will you come and follow me
An invitation to the banquet
and to dine with Christ
‘No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins’ (Mark 2: 22) (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
Sunday 4 February 2018,
The Second Sunday before Lent,
Readings: Hosea 2: 14-20; Psalm 103: 1-13, 22; II Corinthians 3: 1-6; Mark 2: 13-22.
9.30 a.m.: Saint Mary’s Church, Askeaton, Holy Communion.
May I speak to you in the name of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.
The Season of Christmas came to an end not at Epiphany [6 January 2018] or the end of the 12 days of Christmas, but 40 days after Christmas at the Feast of the Presentation or Candlemas, the great feast that fell last Friday [2 February 2018].
Now we are in the time between Candlemas and the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday [14 February 2018]. Some of us may remember when this Sunday, the Second Sunday before Lent, was known as Sexagesima, one of those odd-sounding Latin names once used in the Book of Common Prayer for the Sundays between Candlemas and Lent: Septuagesima, Sexagesima, Quinquagesima.
Today, we know this time in the calendar of the Church as Ordinary Time. But instead of archaic Latin names, the two Sundays immediately before Lent now have special themes, Creation today and the Transfiguration next Sunday [11 February 2018], to help us prepare appropriately for the 40 days of Lent.
There are two sets of reading for today, and the set of readings we have used this morning continues our readings through Saint Mark’s Gospel this liturgical year, Year B.
These readings today compare the love of God for us as his created people with the love of a good marriage, and hold a promise of a new relationship with God, a new creation.
Empty tables waiting for the wedding banquet … Hosea compares the new covenant to a new wedding (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
In the Old Testament reading (Hosea 2: 14-20), the prophet Hosea uses marriage as a metaphor to describe the relationship between God and Israel, in which God is the loving husband and Israel the wayward wife. She has succumbed to worshipping Canaanite gods, including Baal, and has come to see these pagan gods rather than God as the source of all her basic necessities (verse 4).
The prophet warns that God will take the fertility of the land away from the people, who will be exposed like a wayward spouse for who she is.
However, this could never be God’s final decision. God is ever-forgiving and ever-loving. He will ‘allure’ her back, make new contact with her, as he did during the Exodus, he will care for her, and he will again bless her; she will become his partner once again and will no longer be a slave to the old ways, the old idols or gods.
God will make a new covenant not just with her, but with all living things, he will abolish warfare, and so protect his people. This marriage will be forever, and the signs of the dowry will be righteousness, justice, steadfast love, mercy and faithfulness (see verse 20).
Taking a similar theme, the psalmist praises God for all he has done, and he gives thanks for the healing that is a sign of God’s forgiveness and the restoration of a good relationship with God (Psalm 103: 1-13, 22). God is slow to anger and is forgiving; he is like a father who knows our frailty, who loves those who are faithful to him.
In our Epistle reading (II Corinthians 3: 1-6), the Apostle Paul reminds us that we are in a new covenant. And, of course, when we think of covenantal relationships, we think of God and God’s people, and the covenantal relationship of marriage, each love a reflection of the other love.
Waiting for dinner in Rethymnon in Crete … but Christ dines with people whose trades make them social outcasts (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
In our Gospel reading (Mark 2: 13-22), Christ is in Capernaum, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee.
Now he dines with people whose trades make them ritually unclean and social outcasts. When the religiously powerful question his actions, Christ replies that he comes to call and to invite into his Kingdom those in need of repentance, not those who think they are righteous in God’s eyes.
In his answer, Christ uses the metaphor of marriage between God and his people, which we have heard about in the reading from the Prophet Hosea. Christ is the bridegroom and his followers are the wedding guests.
The feast is in progress, so this is a time for joy, while after his death it will be a time for fasting.
He insists that the old way of being and the new way he brings are separate, even if both are to be valued. New material stretches more than old. When wine ferments, it expands. Soft new wineskins expand with the wine, but old ones do not.
And so, in a way, I find myself thinking of two other banquets where the wine must have been flowing freely.
The first of these is the Wedding at Cana, the banquet before Christ’s ministry begins and also one of the traditional themes at Epiphany time. There the wine runs out, and then the wine runs freely.
The second banquet is at the end of Christ’s ministry, the Seder or Passover meal at the Last Supper. Not only must the wine have been flowing freely at that meal, it is the meal of the New Covenant, in which bread and wine are freely given, just as Christ gives himself freely, body and blood.
So, these Sundays between Christmas and Epiphany on the one hand and Lent and Easter on the other hand, link the Christmas and the Incarnation with the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.
But the time in between, the in-between time, is important in bridging that gap, in making that link.
In that in-between time, there are ordinary meals that offer a promise of what the heavenly banquet is like. And constantly, as in this morning’s Gospel reading, he uses the image of the wedding banquet to convey how sacred, how loving, how caring, how beautiful., how full of promise, is the heavenly banquet.
Just as the wedding banquet is not the wedding itself, but a celebration of the wedding and the promise of the wedding, the meals in the Gospel in the in-between times are foretastes of, promises of, the great heavenly banquet.
And at those banquets, Christ dines with tax-collectors like tax-collectors like Levi, Pharisees like Simon, those who are rejected by polite society like Zacchaeus, just as he is going to dine at the Last Supper with those who are going to betray him like Judas, those who are going to deny him like Peter, just as he is going to insist on dining with those who fail to recognise him after the Resurrection, like the disciples at Emmaus.
No matter how wayward others may think we are, no matter how wayward we may think we have been, Christ calls us back to dine with him, to have a new and intimate relationship with, wants to dine with us, so that, as it says in the ‘Prayer of Humble Access,’ so that ‘that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us.’
And so, may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.
A wedding in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge … Christ uses the metaphor of marriage between God and his people (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
This sermon was prepared for the Second Sunday before Lent, Sunday 4 February 2018.
Collect:
Almighty God,
you have created the heavens and the earth
and made us in your own image:
Teach us to discern your hand in all your works
and your likeness in all your children;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who with you and the Holy Spirit
reigns supreme over all things, now and for ever.
Post Communion Prayer:
God our creator,
by your gift the tree of life was set at the heart
of the earthly paradise,
and the Bread of life at the heart of your Church.
May we who have been nourished at your table on earth
be transformed by the glory of the Saviour’s Cross
and enjoy the delights of eternity;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Hymns:
Hosea 2: 14-20:
528, The Church’s one foundation
Psalm 103: 1-13, 22:
1, Bless the Lord, my soul
686, Bless the Lord, the God of our forebears
688, Come, bless the Lord, God of our forebears
349, Fill thou my life, O Lord my God
33, O Lord of every shining constellation
366, Praise, my soul, the king of heaven
365, Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation
660, Thine for ever! God of love
47, We plough the fields and scatter
374, When all thy mercies, O my God
II Corinthians 3: 1-6:
382, Help us, O Lord to learn
306, O Spirit of the living God
Mark 2: 13-22:
218, And can it be that I should gain
608, Be still and know that I am God
549, Dear Lord and Father of mankind
417, He gave his life in selfless love
418, Here, O my Lord, I see thee face to face
94, In the name of Jesus
584, Jesus calls us! O’er the tumult
130, Jesus came, the heavens adoring
605, Will you come and follow me
Patrick Comerford
Sunday 4 February 2018,
The Second Sunday before Lent,
Readings: Hosea 2: 14-20; Psalm 103: 1-13, 22; II Corinthians 3: 1-6; Mark 2: 13-22.
9.30 a.m.: Saint Mary’s Church, Askeaton, Holy Communion.
May I speak to you in the name of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.
The Season of Christmas came to an end not at Epiphany [6 January 2018] or the end of the 12 days of Christmas, but 40 days after Christmas at the Feast of the Presentation or Candlemas, the great feast that fell last Friday [2 February 2018].
Now we are in the time between Candlemas and the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday [14 February 2018]. Some of us may remember when this Sunday, the Second Sunday before Lent, was known as Sexagesima, one of those odd-sounding Latin names once used in the Book of Common Prayer for the Sundays between Candlemas and Lent: Septuagesima, Sexagesima, Quinquagesima.
Today, we know this time in the calendar of the Church as Ordinary Time. But instead of archaic Latin names, the two Sundays immediately before Lent now have special themes, Creation today and the Transfiguration next Sunday [11 February 2018], to help us prepare appropriately for the 40 days of Lent.
There are two sets of reading for today, and the set of readings we have used this morning continues our readings through Saint Mark’s Gospel this liturgical year, Year B.
These readings today compare the love of God for us as his created people with the love of a good marriage, and hold a promise of a new relationship with God, a new creation.
Empty tables waiting for the wedding banquet … Hosea compares the new covenant to a new wedding (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
In the Old Testament reading (Hosea 2: 14-20), the prophet Hosea uses marriage as a metaphor to describe the relationship between God and Israel, in which God is the loving husband and Israel the wayward wife. She has succumbed to worshipping Canaanite gods, including Baal, and has come to see these pagan gods rather than God as the source of all her basic necessities (verse 4).
The prophet warns that God will take the fertility of the land away from the people, who will be exposed like a wayward spouse for who she is.
However, this could never be God’s final decision. God is ever-forgiving and ever-loving. He will ‘allure’ her back, make new contact with her, as he did during the Exodus, he will care for her, and he will again bless her; she will become his partner once again and will no longer be a slave to the old ways, the old idols or gods.
God will make a new covenant not just with her, but with all living things, he will abolish warfare, and so protect his people. This marriage will be forever, and the signs of the dowry will be righteousness, justice, steadfast love, mercy and faithfulness (see verse 20).
Taking a similar theme, the psalmist praises God for all he has done, and he gives thanks for the healing that is a sign of God’s forgiveness and the restoration of a good relationship with God (Psalm 103: 1-13, 22). God is slow to anger and is forgiving; he is like a father who knows our frailty, who loves those who are faithful to him.
In our Epistle reading (II Corinthians 3: 1-6), the Apostle Paul reminds us that we are in a new covenant. And, of course, when we think of covenantal relationships, we think of God and God’s people, and the covenantal relationship of marriage, each love a reflection of the other love.
Waiting for dinner in Rethymnon in Crete … but Christ dines with people whose trades make them social outcasts (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
In our Gospel reading (Mark 2: 13-22), Christ is in Capernaum, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee.
Now he dines with people whose trades make them ritually unclean and social outcasts. When the religiously powerful question his actions, Christ replies that he comes to call and to invite into his Kingdom those in need of repentance, not those who think they are righteous in God’s eyes.
In his answer, Christ uses the metaphor of marriage between God and his people, which we have heard about in the reading from the Prophet Hosea. Christ is the bridegroom and his followers are the wedding guests.
The feast is in progress, so this is a time for joy, while after his death it will be a time for fasting.
He insists that the old way of being and the new way he brings are separate, even if both are to be valued. New material stretches more than old. When wine ferments, it expands. Soft new wineskins expand with the wine, but old ones do not.
And so, in a way, I find myself thinking of two other banquets where the wine must have been flowing freely.
The first of these is the Wedding at Cana, the banquet before Christ’s ministry begins and also one of the traditional themes at Epiphany time. There the wine runs out, and then the wine runs freely.
The second banquet is at the end of Christ’s ministry, the Seder or Passover meal at the Last Supper. Not only must the wine have been flowing freely at that meal, it is the meal of the New Covenant, in which bread and wine are freely given, just as Christ gives himself freely, body and blood.
So, these Sundays between Christmas and Epiphany on the one hand and Lent and Easter on the other hand, link the Christmas and the Incarnation with the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.
But the time in between, the in-between time, is important in bridging that gap, in making that link.
In that in-between time, there are ordinary meals that offer a promise of what the heavenly banquet is like. And constantly, as in this morning’s Gospel reading, he uses the image of the wedding banquet to convey how sacred, how loving, how caring, how beautiful., how full of promise, is the heavenly banquet.
Just as the wedding banquet is not the wedding itself, but a celebration of the wedding and the promise of the wedding, the meals in the Gospel in the in-between times are foretastes of, promises of, the great heavenly banquet.
And at those banquets, Christ dines with tax-collectors like tax-collectors like Levi, Pharisees like Simon, those who are rejected by polite society like Zacchaeus, just as he is going to dine at the Last Supper with those who are going to betray him like Judas, those who are going to deny him like Peter, just as he is going to insist on dining with those who fail to recognise him after the Resurrection, like the disciples at Emmaus.
No matter how wayward others may think we are, no matter how wayward we may think we have been, Christ calls us back to dine with him, to have a new and intimate relationship with, wants to dine with us, so that, as it says in the ‘Prayer of Humble Access,’ so that ‘that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us.’
And so, may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.
A wedding in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge … Christ uses the metaphor of marriage between God and his people (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
This sermon was prepared for the Second Sunday before Lent, Sunday 4 February 2018.
Collect:
Almighty God,
you have created the heavens and the earth
and made us in your own image:
Teach us to discern your hand in all your works
and your likeness in all your children;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who with you and the Holy Spirit
reigns supreme over all things, now and for ever.
Post Communion Prayer:
God our creator,
by your gift the tree of life was set at the heart
of the earthly paradise,
and the Bread of life at the heart of your Church.
May we who have been nourished at your table on earth
be transformed by the glory of the Saviour’s Cross
and enjoy the delights of eternity;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Hymns:
Hosea 2: 14-20:
528, The Church’s one foundation
Psalm 103: 1-13, 22:
1, Bless the Lord, my soul
686, Bless the Lord, the God of our forebears
688, Come, bless the Lord, God of our forebears
349, Fill thou my life, O Lord my God
33, O Lord of every shining constellation
366, Praise, my soul, the king of heaven
365, Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation
660, Thine for ever! God of love
47, We plough the fields and scatter
374, When all thy mercies, O my God
II Corinthians 3: 1-6:
382, Help us, O Lord to learn
306, O Spirit of the living God
Mark 2: 13-22:
218, And can it be that I should gain
608, Be still and know that I am God
549, Dear Lord and Father of mankind
417, He gave his life in selfless love
418, Here, O my Lord, I see thee face to face
94, In the name of Jesus
584, Jesus calls us! O’er the tumult
130, Jesus came, the heavens adoring
605, Will you come and follow me
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