All Saints Gazette: Don't Look Away
Greetings from All Saints! This week:
Monday t/m Friday, 9:00 and 18:00: Morning and Evening Prayer on Zoom
No service at Vrijburg this week! Next service: 6 June
For online events, see church calendar for link (note: Sunday is the same link as morning and evening prayer)
Tuesday, June 24, was the Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist. In the wheel of the year, it is the opposite pole of Christmas (John having been born six months before his second cousin). In some countries, its eve is the big summer festival (often with bonfires). Its proximity to the northern summer solstice sometimes gives it a pleasantly spooky air, so it’s also associated with witchcraft and the like, as in Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain.” But that piece and the folkloric and literary traditions it’s based on also veer into the horrific and macabre (this makes it a rather close parallel to US Halloween).
I think there is something quite fitting about these associations with the birth of John the Baptist (or St. John the Forerunner, as he is known in Eastern churches). You probably know the story: John is born as the culmination of the biblical prophetic traditions (in Christian understanding). He inhabits the old world, but his whole life points to the new one, and he lives like he’s already in it. He’s a bit odd, out of step. He wears odd things and eats odd things, making people question what they think they need and want. He fascinates some and threatens others. On two dramatic occasions, he prominently does what his whole life was about: he points to Jesus. He also baptizes him (hence the epithet), standing in the old world and at the same time, most fully participates in the revelation of the Triune God in Jesus.
And he is horrifically murdered. The horror is expressed well in the way it’s told in the Gospels. It’s told in a flashback, disrupting the narrative entirely. Jesus is teaching, healing, and driving out demons—oh by the way, this absolutely terrible thing happened and a king served John’s head to a princess on a plate—and then Jesus is healing again. It’s one of few moments when Jesus is not present (and something bad always happens).
The story of John is about Jesus as the triumph and deliverance of God. As his father prophesied as his birth:
You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way,
to give his people knowledge of salvation
by the forgiveness of their sins.
In the tender compassion of our God
the dawn from on high shall break upon us,
to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of|death,
and to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Luke 1:76-79)
But it also includes and (and John’s part ends) in horror. We know that this horror has been and will be overcome, but we still have to live with it (unless we’re the one killed, like John). The Bible stares right it. It names it. It promises a dawn from on high, a resurrection, and a new world. But it doesn’t integrate the horror into the narrative, because it doesn’t and can’t make any sense. The whole story is about Jesus, but in this life we will not see how Jesus is present in that scene.
As I write this, starving people are being shot in Gaza while they go to one of the designated safe places to receive the food that the Israeli government supposedly accepts on their behalf. When this sight was becoming too much even for the usual cowardice and servility of most of our countries, the Israeli Prime Minister and his government began a bombing campaign against Iran. Then this weekend, my president ordered my country’s armed forces to join this campaign. As if this were not morally horrific enough (despite our genuine relief that it does not seem to have led to a wider war, and whether or not it “achieved” its stated objective), it was distressing for many of us in the Netherlands to see the leaders of this and other countries conduct their whole summit around humoring and pampering him. Highways were closed and trains canceled as NATO leaders resolved to reevaluate their countries’ hard-learned suspicion of committing resources to the machines of war. It is said that this is a tragic necessity—and I do necessarily disagree. But but even if many of us are reluctantly persuaded by the tragic logic, we may not allow this to lessen our learned revulsion. It is and will remain the service and duty of Christians to pose critical questions to this emerging orthodoxy at every turn (it was no polarizing progressive, but Dwight Eisenhower, who said: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed”). Meanwhile, Gazans are starving and being shot while they seek food.
Do not despair, now or ever. The story continues, and it will end with the Risen Jesus Christ judging the living and the dead, as John the Baptist bore witness his whole life (just as Mussorgsky’s tone poem ends with daybreak and the church bells dispersing the hellish company). But the evangelist must also show you the head on the platter. Don’t look away.
Almighty God, by whose providence your servant John the Baptist was wonderfully born, and sent to prepare the way of your Son our Savior by preaching repentance: Make us so to follow his teaching and holy life, that we may truly repent according to his preaching; and, following his example, constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth's sake; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
-Collect for the Nativity of John the Baptist from the Book of Common Prayer
No Eucharist this Sunday
It is “first and third” Sundays, not every other Sunday. There is no Eucharist this week, but daily prayer continues. The next Eucharist is on 6 July.
Pastoral Care Available!
We know what’s happening in the world and what’s going on with many of you personally. There’s certainly more going on that we don’t know about. Don’t suffer alone! You have each other (and the person you’re wondering if it would be okay to call is probably wondering whether it’s okay to call you). And you have your priests. Seriously, reach out. We became priests because we love people, not our year-end parochial report!
“Offer to God a Sacrifice of Thanksgiving”
All Saints is what we make it, and what God makes it through us. Can you give something this week? How about every week? Try on a practice of regular giving and see if God doesn’t bless you and us through it!
Use the QR code or this link, or make a transfer through your banking app (the latter saves us a few cents). Please consider making your offering recurring, and pray about what you are called to pledge when we have our winter pledge drive.
Bank details
All Saints Amsterdam
IBAN NL32 TRIO 0320 8657 62
BIC TRIONL2U
St. John’s Eve, Sankthans, Midsummer
Modest Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain” was originally entitled “St. John’s Eve.” If you’re my age or older, you mainly know it from Disney’s Fantasia (where it’s paired with Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” expanding the final bells from Mussorgsky and making them more explicitly Angelus bells). I can’t not love that version, and it’s got some sound theology in the power of morning prayer (with or without the Angelus), but here’s Mussorgsky by himself.
That’s all for Today! Want to talk to a priest? We want to talk to you too!
Website: https://allsaintsamsterdam.church
Mpho: mpho@allsaintsamsterdam.church
Kyle: kyle@allsaintsamsterdam.church
General: info@allsaintsamsterdam.church
Instagram: @allsaintsamsterdam.church
