Arise, My Love, My Fair One, and Come Away – Br. James Koester

SSJE Sermons

Br. James Koester,
Superior

Proper 17 B

There is a lot going on today. It’s the Sunday of the Labour Day weekend, a holiday marking the social, economic and political achievements of the labour movement. (As an aside, in the Nineteenth Century, our own Father Field was a great proponent of the move to implement a 5 ½ day work week for child labourers. He created a half-day fund, and each Saturday would take as many boys as he could find, sometimes in the range of over 200, out into the country for an afternoon of games and a picnic, bringing them back to the city in the evening tired, well fed, and happy.) Today is also the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, sometimes known as the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity. Over this is laid the first Sunday in the Season of Creation, when many parishes, including us, focus their attention on the beauty and wonder of creation, and our need to protect its integrity. Closer to home, I stand before you in the last moments as my time as Superior. Later this morning we will install our brother Keith as our new Superior.

All around us, different things are happening, and it’s hard to know where to look, where to focus. Some things are ending, while others are just beginning. Still others are in mid-course. What is true for the monastery and the church, is no doubt true in your own lives. It is certainly true for the world. So much seems to be changing all at the same time, with some things coming to an end, or even dying, while others are just beginning, and coming to life. Still others are somewhere in between.

But isn’t that what renewal looks like? Renewal is not things simply changing. For renewal to happen, some things must come to an end, while others take their first steps and move into place. The Prayer Book puts it this way,

O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquillity the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord….[1]

This is very much a season when things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new.

This image of ending and beginning, of dying and rising, of the old being made new, doesn’t simply come to us from the imagination of a liturgical scholar working away at their desk. This image, indeed, this process, is deeply imprinted in the human soul. We know the Collect to be true, not because it’s in the Prayer Book, but because we see that process, in our own lives; and in the lives of others around us. We know it to be true, not because we see the coming and going of Superiors. We know it to be true because we see that process in creation itself.

Father Congreve of our Society put it this way:

The stillness of the evening clouds expresses for me the patience of the creature waiting for God: “My soul waiteth still upon God.”[2] Standing there, watching the night fall, as the day dies, listening to the crashing of the waves upon the shore, and everything, he writes seems to be absorbed in the solemnity of divine mysteries, everything seems awake to the infinite, and to breathe the awfulness of eternity… Here God visibly touches nature… We rise and stand upon our feet to hear what He is saying to us, as our hearts burn….[3]

Who among us has not watched the sky, golden with the praises of a sunset, or blackened by a threatening storm, and not thought silently, it is the Lord? Who has not been saddened at the first sign of autumn, and whose heart has not rejoiced when the first robin of spring is spotted. It is the Lord.

As we watch creation die and renew itself day by day, century by century, eon by eon, humanity has seen in it a revelation of the Divine, who makes all things new.[4] We see this same revelation of the Divine, as creation is renewed today, upon the altar.

Here on this altar, as on altars around the world, the creatures of bread and wine are taken, blessed, broken, and given. Again, as Father Congreve says, Christ the High Priest takes these creatures into His hands and offers them to the Eternal Father; they become the Lord’s Body and Blood, and so they are raised from the sphere of the perishing world, and consecrated to become powers of eternal life, uniting earth and Heaven. These are creatures which have shared our curse (cursed be the ground for thy sake), [now] lifted in the hands of our Lord to an immeasurable dignity.[5] In this way, created matter, this time bread and wine, becomes a revelation of the Divine, and a means and sign of God’s grace and love. By them, and in them, and through them, we hear the voice of God speaking to us and saying, ‘Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.[6]

There is a lot going on today, but in reality only one thing is happening, in creation, in our world, in this nation, here at the monastery, and in each of our lives, and that is that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things [including you, and me, our community, this nation, and all creation] are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, … Jesus Christ our Lord….

And that, my friends, is a cause of hope, for just as creation is being perfected on this altar today, so that it will be for us a revelation of God, so too are you, and I, and we Brothers being renewed and perfected to be a revelation of the Divine who says to all of us, arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

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[1] TEC, Book of Common Prayer, 1979, page 515

[2] Congreve SSJE, George, The Spiritual Order, The Sorrow of Nature, Longmans, Green, and Co., London, 1906, page 53

[3] Ibid, page 54

[4] Revelation 21:5

[5] Congreve SSJE, George, Christian Progress, The Fellowship of Man with all Created Things in Sorrow and in Hope, Longmans, Green, and Co., London, 1910, page 263

[6] Song of Songs 2: 10 – 13