A sermon for Sunday
by the Revd Dr Robert Wilson PhD (Cantab), Old Roman Apostolate UK
St. Joachim/Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Today we celebrate the Feast of St. Joachim, as well as commemorating the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost. St. Joachim was the husband of St. Anne (whose feast we recently celebrated on 26th July) and father of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We are now in the Octave of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, so it is fitting that we celebrate the feast of her own father, St. Joachim, today. Information about St. Joachim and St. Anne is not found in the canonical Gospels, but in a later document called the Protoevangelium of James. This tells the story of the birth of Mary to a hitherto childless couple, St. Joachim and St. Anne. Since the Protoevangelium of James is not part of the canonical Scriptures, it does not have the same authority for the Church as the canonical Gospels. However, the Church receives the Protoevangelium of James as valuable early Christian tradition which is why we celebrate the feast of St. Joachim today.
It is good for us to celebrate the feast of St. Joachim today because it reminds us that the background that precedes the coming of our Saviour into the world is rooted in the history of Israel at a particular time and place. Today’s Gospel is from St. Matthew and it gives the genealogy of St. Joseph. It begins with Abraham, the father of Israel, then follows the generations to David, the greatest king of Israel (whose descendants reigned as kings of Judah until the conquest of the nation by the Babylonians) and then from the time of the Babylonian conquest to the time of St. Joseph himself, the husband of Mary (whose own father St. Joachim we celebrate today).
But what does this antiquarian genealogical information have to do with the Christian faith? Should not religious truth be general and universal, rather than something rooted in the genealogy of a particular family at a particular time and place? Should we not rather follow the example of the ancient Greeks who sought to establish the truth through the study of philosophy and tried to look beyond the contingent particularities of human history to establish a truth that was general and universal? Surely what matters should be not the particular history of one time and place, but a universal philosophy? Much modern post-Enlightenment Western thought has followed the ancient Greeks in this respect and has contrasted the contingent facts of history (which are particular to one time and place) with the eternal truths of reason. Hence, from this perspective, the Bible is seen as crude and unsophisticated because it is focused on events, first in the history of Israel, then in the life of Jesus, that happened at one particular time and place in history. People find the so called “scandal of particularity” offensive. Surely everyone should be allowed to have their own private religious experience and we should shun the biblical worldview which attributes universal significance to the events of a particular time and place?
But what would we say to someone who said to us that we should take no interest in our own family history, because it is something that is particular to our own families rather than to humanity in general? We would probably say to them that we found their seeming rationalism in practice unreasonable, for it is only by being part of one particular human family that we can relate to any other human family. Here, at least, we find the so called scandal of particularity to be something that does not detract from our being part of humanity as a whole, but rather enhances it. It is only by telling the story of our own human family that we can show how we relate to humanity as a whole. It is not truth about abstract philosophy, but rather one of our own lived experience.
Now the biblical worldview also functions in this way. It is not about abstract philosophical truth of the type associated with the ancient Greek philosophers or post-Enlightenment Western rationalism, but rather about truth lived out in actual human experience. It tells the story of how God, the creator and redeemer of all, makes himself known, not through a philosophical system of abstract ideas, but in the history of one particular nation. It tells of the call of Abraham and the promise that in his seed all the nations of the earth would blessed, of the escape from bondage in Egypt under Moses and the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai to guide the life of the people. It tells of their struggles after their settlement in the land of Israel to live up to the standard given in the Law of Moses and how their failure ultimately led to the collapse of their nation. In the face of adversity in the present it still looks forward to final redemption, when the truth which they had experienced in the history of their own nation would be known universally.
When St. Matthew’s Gospel begins with the genealogy of Joseph, showing his descent from David and ultimately from Abraham, he is demonstrating how in the life of Jesus the hope of Israel for redemption and a new covenant between God and man has now been fulfilled. The Incarnation is all about the scandal of particularity, that when the fullness of time was come God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, that they might receive the adoption of sons. We can now become by grace what he is by nature. This is the fulfilment of the promise of God to Abraham that in his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed. If we belong to Christ, then we are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. In other words when we are baptised and become Christians we become part of that story and become heirs of the promises of salvation history.
This is why twelve prophecies from the history of Israel are recited in the Vigil on Holy Saturday, and when the Exsultet is sung it refers to the Exodus as “the night in which thou didst first cause our forefathers, the children of Israel, when brought out of Egypt, to pass through the Red Sea with dry feet.” That is why in the Canon of the Mass the priest refers to “the sacrifice of our patriarch Abraham.” We can speak of the children of Israel as our forefathers because by faith we can become their heirs. The so called scandal of particularity is not an obstacle to our faith but is rather something that is fundamental to it. This is what the Eucharist, the Mass is all about, the re-presentation in liturgical action of events wrought out once for all in time and history, when we celebrate that types and shadows have their ending for the newer rite is here.
So it is right and fitting that St. Matthew’s Gospel begins with a genealogy, for our faith is not an abstract philosophical system of ideas divorced form the world of particular events, but is rooted in flesh and blood, in genealogy, in time and history and in lived experience. Grace does not abolish nature, but rather perfects it. In celebrating the feast of St. Joachim today we show that we are followers of him who did not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but rather to fulfil them.
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