The Feast of the Annunciation: Letter 16
The Scripture Lessons for today are found HERE!
Today we
look at Letter #16 on the Feast of the Annunciation. You may remember that Major Feasts celebrate
a key event in the life of our Lord or one of the major Saints of the Church. You can learn more about The Calendar of the
Church Year on pages 15 – 17 in the Book of Common Prayer.
The Feast of
the Annunciation celebrates the visit of the archangel Gabriel to Mary with the
announcement that she would be the mother of Jesus. Our reading for today from the Gospel of Luke
tells the story. As I read it again I
noticed for the first time that Gabriel announces that “The Holy Spirit will
come upon you…” and that she WILL conceive.
The next story skips to Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth who is also
pregnant with John the Baptist. Mary at
this point is already expecting. So we
do not have an account of when the Holy Spirit actually came upon Mary or how
it happened. I do think somethings just
need to be kept a mystery of the faith.
The Feast of
the Annunciation usually falls on March 25 which is close to the vernal
equinox. When the A.D. calendar system
was first introduced in 525 AD, the beginning of the New Year was on the Feast
of Annunciation. January 1 did not
become the official first day of the year until the Gregorian calendar was
adopted in 1582.
The Feast of
the Annunciation should not be confused with the Feast of the Immaculate
Conception celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church and in some Episcopal and
Anglican churches. The Immaculate
Conception holds that the Virgin Mary was born without the taint of original
sin. In the Anglican Church this is NOT
what we would say is a belief necessary to Salvation. You may certainly believe it, but it is not
required.
Because this
is a major feast, there is a full slate of scripture lessons in addition to the
Luke reading.
The first
reading from Isaiah includes the familiar verse “Therefore the Lord himself
will give you a sign. Look, the young
woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.” Incidentally, Immanuel with an “I” is the transliteration
of the original Hebrew word meaning God with us. Emmanuel with an “E” is Greek.
There are 2
selections from the Psalms. Psalm 45 is a
beautiful and poetic psalm that celebrates a royal wedding, often interpreted
as a prophetic depiction of the Messiah and His relationship with the church. Psalm 40:5-10 is part of a psalm of David
that expresses his gratitude for God's deliverance and his trust in God's
continued faithfulness.
The
Magnificat or The Song of Mary is also an option in place of one of the
Psalms. This canticle is the response of
Mary the mother of Jesus when her cousin Elizabeth proclaims her blessed by God
among women.
Our reading
from the Epistle to the Hebrews discusses how animal sacrifices are no long
sufficient, but rather faith in the risen Lord as the ultimate sacrifice.
All of these are marvelous scripture readings on the Feast of the Annunciation. However it would be quite a stretch to tie them into a discussion of Screwtape Letter #16.
We begin
Letter 16 with the question from Uncle Screwtape to his nephew, Wormwood as to
WHY the Patient is still attending the same parish church. Two approaches can be helpful in the business
of tempting the young man.
The First step
is to send the Patient on a church shopping adventure “until he becomes a
taster or connoisseur of churches.” This
may seem rather unlikely but we actually see it regularly among the larger
churches in Birmingham. Each church offers
its own attraction to those attending and demons ultimately hope to turn this
to their advantage by making the congregation into an exclusive faction. By the way if you are not familiar with the
word “coterie” – I was not – the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as an intimate
and often exclusive group of persons with a unifying common interest or
purpose. It is basically a clique.
Screwtape
now moves to the Second step which is to make the Patient into a critic – a
negative critic. I remember learning at
some point in my life that many critics only point out what is wrong. I will never forget Carl at my first parish
out of seminary, St. Andrew’s in Memphis, Tennessee. Carl had something to complain about every
Sunday but never a suggestion on how to fix whatever it was he did not
like. His wife, on the other hand,
constantly had good ideas on how to make our parish better. They were quite the complimentary couple.
Screwtape
gives examples of two churches near the Patient to which Wormwood could direct
him. The first is led by a Vicar who is
quite adept at preaching only nice things.
It has reached the point that even his “incredulous and hard-headed congregation”
are beginning to question the priest’s faith.
I could not help but think of the Thomas Jefferson Bible as Screwtape
described the priest with 15 favorite psalms and 20 favorite scripture lessons
that he used as his weekly texts. You
may remember from your history lessons that Jefferson basically took the parts
of the New Testament he could agree with and pasted them together in a book
titled “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. While Jefferson never called it a Bible, history
ultimately renamed it.
Of course,
as Screwtape points out, the problem is that only the truth known to the
preacher ever makes it his congregation.
Perhaps you have heard the preacher who continually recycles a few
stories and a few scripture lessons to the point you know the sermon and can
tune it out within a few minutes of the beginning.
The second
parish is led by an Angry Preacher. Here
is the priest who is forever taking one side or the other – likely whatever is
the popular philosophy of the moment.
Certainly we remember the fashionable couple who befriended the Patient in
Letter 10 and who Screwtape described as “rich, smart, superficially
intellectual, and brightly sceptical about everything in the world.”
Screwtape
notes that this preacher is driven by his emotions – which you will remember
are fertile soil for the work of a demon – so that he preaches mainly as an
outward and visible sign of his hatred for his family or friends. This is the kind of preacher who hides behind
the pulpit in order to preach whatever is his personal issue of the day.
Screwtape
does reference a French philosopher by the name of Jacques Martain who was a
contemporary of Lewis’s. Like Lewis he
had been raised a Christian, became an agnostic, and then converted to
Catholicism. Both were part of a
Christian humanism movement in Europe after World War II. There were among a group of intellectuals who
sought to rebuild Europe’s moral fabric and reassert Christian values.
Screwtape
describes these parishes as “Party Churches.”
In this case, he means that they align with political movements and
factions within the Christian community.
We already know from previous letters that Lewis thought little of the
High Church/Low Church movements within the Church of England. Screwtape tells Wormwood
“And it isn’t the doctrines on which we chiefly depend for
producing malice. The real fun is
working up hatred between those who say ‘mass’ and those who say ‘holy
communion’ when neither party could possibly state the difference…”
By the way,
Hooker’s doctrine refers to the Church of England priest and theologian
prominent in the 16th century, Richard Hooker. He developed Anglicanism’s 3 legged stool of
authority – Scripture, Tradition and Reason.
Thomas Aquinas on the other hand was the Italian Dominican friar and
priest who developed the Natural Law theory that became the foundation of Roman
Catholic Theology.
Screwtape,
however, wants Wormwood to focus the Patient’s attention not on the major
doctrines of the church, but the little things that hardly make a
difference. And yet the Patient should
be led to defend these insignificant “beliefs” at all cost.
Letter 16
can be said to be a study in the least important things that separate the Body
of Christ. Remember, work of demons is to corrupt what
God has created – including the Church.
Let us pray
Pour your
grace into our hearts, O Lord, that we who have known the incarnation of your
Son Jesus Christ, announced by an angel to the Virgin Mary, may by his cross
and passion be brought to the glory of his resurrection; who lives and reigns
with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.