There are seven principal feasts in the Church calendar: Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, Christmas, Epiphany, and All Saints’ Day. Three of these—Easter, Pentecost, and Trinity—always occur on a Sunday, which means we mark them in worship at church. Our new practice of having a church birthday dinner on Epiphany means that it is marked by celebration together. And even when it doesn’t occur on Sunday, no one skips Christmas! But Ascension and All Saints’ Day frequently go unnoticed.
The ideal for all of these feast days is both worship and celebration, but we only hit the ideal on Christmas and Easter. Most of us have probably never thought about having a feast on Pentecost or Trinity Sunday (If we feast to celebrate the incarnation or resurrection, why wouldn’t we feast to celebrate the giving of the Spirit?), and most of us probably don’t even remember when All Saints’ Day or Ascension Day happens.
The staff at Incarnation has been talking about beginning to mark each of these feasts in some fashion. We are creatures of days, seasons, and time who are shaped by our practices and habits. Each season of the year shapes our hearts and our minds. Our holidays both reveal what we value and transform us over time. This is why worship and celebration are the ideal practices for Christian feast days. Our hearts are revealed and shaped by what we choose to do on the days that commemorate what God has done for us.
Next week, on November 1, we will worship on All Saints’ Day for the first time. Our first step will be incredibly modest—a short Eucharist service at noon. But this simple step is a decision to mark this day with worship.
All Saints’ is the feast day that celebrates what God has done in the lives of those who have gone before us. Each of us has people in our families whose testimony has shaped us. Each of us likely has saints from ages past whom we admire. We need a day devoted to remembering what God did in their lives, and the appropriate first step is to gather and worship that day.
Because this feast day doesn’t usually occur on Sunday, we recognize that most people won’t be able to come. If you can’t come to the church, spend time in prayer at some point during the day thanking God for those who have gone before you in the faith. And if you can come, join us at noon on Tuesday for a short service!
Steven+
Scripture Reflections
There is an inherent tension in the parable of the persistent widow (Lk. 18:1-8), which we read on Sunday. On the one hand, Jesus says that God will give justice speedily—he won’t delay long over the pleas of his people. And yet the people are described as those who “cry to him day and night,” and the parable concludes with the question, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
How do we reconcile these two things? God won’t delay, but some people will lose faith while waiting! God will act speedily, yet his people cry day and night! The two perspectives—God’s quick answer and our wait in faith and frequent prayer—seem to be at odds with each other, and we need the preceding context to see how they fit together.
This parable is the end of Jesus’ answer to a question about when God’s kingdom would come. The beginning of his answer is, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed…, for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you” (Lk. 17:20-21). In other words, when asked about the coming of the kingdom, Jesus says, “You won’t see it with your eyes; in fact, it is already among you!”
Jesus says a lot more, but his answer begins with a premise—the kingdom is coming and is already here, yet you can’t see it with your eyes. It is this premise that explains the tension in the parable. God is not delaying, because the kingdom is already here, and yet his people must wait in prayer, because the kingdom is not yet fully visible. It takes faith to see the kingdom of God.
This answer explains the life of the Christian. We are new creations, fully forgiven, joined to the body of Christ, and filled with the Spirit! Yet we can’t see all of this visibly, and we must wait in prayerful faith for the time when these things will be revealed to our eyes. God is not delaying, because the kingdom is already here! These things are already true, yet we still wait for when what is true will be seen.
Living in this tension is difficult! Jesus’ final question (“Will the Son of Man find faith on earth?”) reveals that he understood the difficulty of living according to what cannot be seen. It is easy to lose faith when we cannot see what has already occurred. But his reassurance is also clear: Even a bad judge can be coerced into giving justice. Therefore God, who alone is good (Lk. 18:19), will certainly answer your prayers! Keep praying in faith!
Steven+
Scripture Reflections
“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” John 14:9b
No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known. John 1:18
He is the image of the invisible God… Col. 1:15a
He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature… Hebrews 1:3a
A few people in the Old Testament were given partial glimpses of God. Moses, hidden in a cleft of the rock with his face covered, saw only his back—the train of God’s glory. Isaiah saw the throne with God upon it and the temple full of the glorious train of his robe—yet he wasn’t even allowed to see the face of the angels, let alone God’s face. Even the angels covered their eyes in God’s presence! Ezekiel saw a figure on a throne, but it was shrouded in fire, like trying to gaze into the sun itself. Behind all of these theophanies is the simple truth: No one can see the face of God and live (Ex. 33:20).
How startling it is, then, to hear from Jesus himself that everyone who has seen Jesus has seen the Father! The hidden face of God, the face shrouded by the very glory of his holiness, has been revealed. All that is true of God is visible in Jesus himself.
And what is the face of God like, this face that is revealed in Jesus? According to Luke 17:11-19, Jesus revealed that the Father’s face is compassionate to the weak, the sick, and the outcast. Even lepers crying for mercy are worth his time.
This was already known. Hagar, a slave used and rejected by Abraham and Sarah, met God in the desert and said, “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.” Psalm 113, which we prayed on Sunday, testifies, “He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap…He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children.” Over and over the Scriptures say this, and so when the compassionate gaze of God is revealed in the actions of Jesus, it should not surprise us.
And yet it still might, because many of us continue to harbor the fear that perhaps God does not like to look at us. The sense that he does not really love us or that we need to earn his compassion runs deep in our hearts. We assume that our unworthiness, weakness, and sinfulness are all God sees when he looks at us.
Remember that Jesus has made God visible! In his actions, he has shown that God does not despise those who are lost, filthy, and weak. His face is full of compassion towards those who cry out for mercy.
Steven+