December 31: Sons and Heirs
♫ Music:
WEEK FIVE- INTRODUCTION TO THE WEEK
December 31 - January 6
Christmas is not a day but a season that stretches to January 6, culminating with the celebration of Epiphany. Epiphany calls to mind that the Light of the World is a light for the whole world. That is, all human beings are invited to acknowledge and receive the benefits of God’s free gift of salvation. In this way Christ is the hope of the world, he is God the Father’s blessing to the whole of fallen humankind. Epiphany illumines and makes apparent the end for which God sent his only-begotten son, so that we may have eternal life in him and have it abundantly. It declares God’s offer of salvation and demands a response so that we can, like Christ, grow in wisdom and stature with the Lord. May the Light of Christ who shines in our hearts give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:6) as we ponder anew what the Almighty has done and will do.
Day 29 - Sunday, December 31
Title: Sons and Heirs
Scripture: Galatians 3:23-4:7
Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
Poetry:
Amoretti LXVIII: Most Glorious Lord of Life
By Edmund Spenser
Most glorious Lord of life, that on this day,
Didst make thy triumph over death and sin:
And having harrow'd hell, didst bring away
Captivity thence captive, us to win:
This joyous day, dear Lord, with joy begin,
And grant that we for whom thou diddest die,
Being with thy dear blood clean wash'd from sin,
May live for ever in felicity.
And that thy love we weighing worthily,
May likewise love thee for the same again:
And for thy sake, that all like dear didst buy,
With love may one another entertain.
So let us love, dear love, like as we ought,
Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.
THE FULLNESS OF TIME?
In our passage from Galatians, the Apostle Paul uses a curious phrase. He writes, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son….” What does he mean by “the fullness of time?” If he would have said, “When the time had come, God sent forth his Son” it would have made perfect sense.
When speaking of God and His interaction with creation, the concept of fullness is an important one to bear in mind. It is repeated throughout God’s written word. Studying the Scriptures, we learn that in the person of Jesus Christ, the fullness of deity dwells bodily (Col. 2:9); the fullness of all creation is found in Christ (Col. 1:19); the followers of the Lord receive His fullness (John 1:16 and Eph. 3:19); and the church is the fullness of Christ, who fills all in all. In short, God is fullness, the opposite of want. He is perfection and He desires to make perfect, not only mankind, the crown of His creation, but the entire cosmos. He does this by filling man and all of creation with Himself. Thus, when God enters His created order of space and time by becoming one with us, even time itself becomes full.
Paul portrays the incarnation of Christ as a decisive moment for the salvation of the world. And so it is. God acted, and all of creation was affected. God stands above and beyond time, being eternal. In fact, He created time. And yet, in the conception and birth and life of Jesus Christ, He entered time. Insofar as He became fully human, He accepted to be governed by both time and space while He walked this earth.
During the Christmas season, we are rightly focusing on the coming-in-the-flesh of Emmanuel, God with us. And it is ever so appropriate that this Edmund Spenser poem has been chosen to accompany our Biblical text. At first glance, we may read it and think that it is more fitting for Lent, when we are approaching the remembrance of the death and resurrection of Christ. After all, in the opening lines of this poem, Christ’s shed blood, His death, His triumph over sin and death, and His harrowing of hell are all mentioned. What does this have to do with Christmas?
Everything that Jesus Christ has done is for our salvation. Nothing He did is superfluous. His incarnation was not merely a necessity that enabled Him to die and rise from the dead. Some may consider the crucifixion and the resurrection as the only saving acts of Christ. But His incarnation itself brings salvation to the world. There is a saying from the early centuries of the Church that God saves only that which He assumes. If He doesn’t draw near something and fill that thing with Himself, then it is lost. For this reason, we understand that our salvation is tied into Christmas as much as it is tied into Good Friday and Easter.
As we continue to keep this Christmas season alive in our hearts, let us give thanks to the One who became one of us, so that we might become more like Him.
Prayer:
What shall we offer You, O Christ, who for our sakes appeared on earth as a man? Every creature made by You offers you thanks. The angels offer You a hymn; the heavens, a star; the Magi, gifts; the shepherds, their wonder; the earth, its cave; the wilderness, the manger; and humanity offers You a virgin mother. O God before the ages, have mercy upon us.
Amen.
(Adapted from a prayer sung at vespers on the Feast of the Nativity of Christ in the Orthodox Church)
Fr. Ignatius Valentine
Pastor of St. Raphael Orthodox Church
About the Artwork:
Golden Rule, 1961
Norman Rockwell
Oil on canvas
44½" x 39½"
Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, April 1, 1961
Norman Rockwell Museum
Stockbridge, Massachusetts
In the 1960s, the mood of the country was changing, and Norman Rockwell's opportunity to be rid of the art intelligentsia's claim that he was “old-fashioned” was on the horizon. His 1961 painting Golden Rule was a precursor to the type of subject he would soon illustrate. A group of people of different religions, races, and ethnicities serve as the backdrop for the inscription "Do Unto Other as You Would Have Them Do Unto You," a command based on the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Rockwell was a compassionate and liberal man and this simple phrase reflected his philosophy and value system.
About the Artist:
Norman Perceval Rockwell (1894–1978) was a 20th-century American author, painter and illustrator. His work has enjoyed a broad popular appeal in the United States for its reflection of American culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life that he created for five decades for The Saturday Evening Post Magazine. Among the best-known of Rockwell's works are the Willie Gillis Series, Rosie the Riveter, The Problem We All Live With, Saying Grace, and the Four Freedoms Series. Norman Rockwell was a prolific artist, producing more than 4,000 original works in his lifetime. Rockwell also was commissioned to illustrate more than 40 books, including Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, as well as painting portraits for Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. Serious art critics dismissed Rockwell’s work in his lifetime, especially the Saturday Evening Post covers, which tended toward idealistic or sentimentalized portrayals of American life. However, Rockwell began receiving more critical attention as a painter after he chose more serious subjects such as his series on racism for Look Magazine.
About the Music:
“Tenebrae for String Quartet, Movement I” from the album Oceana
About the Composer:
Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1969) grew up in an Eastern European Jewish home in La Plata, Argentina. He studied composition at the Jerusalem Rubin Academy in Israel, immersing himself in the colliding musical traditions of the Holy Land. The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind, originally recorded by David Krakauer and the Kronos String Quartet, depicts the mysticism of Kabbalist Rabbi Isaac the Blind of Provence. In it, the clarinet serves as a Jewish cantor, weeping and praying for peace and communion. The final postlude completes a prayer from the beginning of the work “...Thou pass and record, count and visit, every living soul, appointing the measure of every creature’s life and decreeing its destiny.”
About the Performers:
The Kronos Quartet is an American string quartet based in San Francisco, California. They have been in existence with a rotating membership of musicians for over forty years. The quartet covers a very broad range of musical genres including: Mexican folk, experimental, pre-classical early music, movie soundtracks, jazz and tango, as well as contemporary classical music. More than 900 works have been written for them. Violinist David Harrington from Seattle, Washington, founded the quartet in 1973. With almost forty studio albums to their credit and having performed worldwide, they have been called "probably the most famous 'new music' group in the world", and have been praised in philosophical studies of music for the inclusiveness of their repertoire. They have worked with many minimalist composers including John Adams, Arvo Pärt, George Crumb, Henryk Górecki, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Terry Riley, and Kevin Volans.
About the Poet:
Edmund Spenser (1552 –1599) was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor Dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of early Modern English verse and is often considered one of the greatest poets in the English language. He was deeply influenced by Irish faerie mythology. Spenser strove to emulate such ancient Roman poets such as Virgil and Ovid, but many of his best-known works are notably divergent from those of his predecessors. His use of language in his poetry is purposely archaic, reminiscent of earlier works such as The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer and Il Canzoniere by Francesco Petrarca, whom Spenser greatly admired. Spenser has been called a “Poet's Poet", and was admired by such writers as John Milton, William Blake, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Lord Byron, and Alfred Lord Tennyson, and many others.
About the Devotional Writer:
Father Ignatius Valentine is a 1993 graduate of Biola University with a BA in Biblical Studies. Since 2006, he has been the pastor of St. Raphael Orthodox Church in Iowa City, Iowa, where he lives with his wife Maria and their children.