43: Advent with Andrew McGowan

Hosts: Brandon Nappi and Hannah Black

Guest: Andrew McGowan

Production: Goodchild Media

Music: Wayfaring Stranger, Theodicy Jazz Collective

Art: Ella Landino

Instagram: @theleadersway.podcast

berkeleydivinity.yale.edu/podcast

You can support our work at https://tinyurl.com/support-transforming-leaders 

• How December 25 became Christmas
• Andrew’s Version: Dean McGowan’s Substack of reflections often related to the Revised Common Lectionary

Advent Dean McGowan Podcast

Hannah:  Well, welcome, Andrew or Dean McGowan, maybe, I should say, to the Leaders Way podcast. You may not know you’ve been our guest before, but it was a prerecorded thing. So 

Dean McGowan: Thank you, Hannah–or Dr. Black. We’ll zigzag between the niceties and the, and the more intimate exchange. But it’s nice to be here, really in real time with you.

H:           Yeah. It’s very exciting. And we’re now smack dab firmly in Advent. I’m wondering, is there anything different about Advent in Australia versus the United States? 

M:           The obvious thing is, of course, hot versus cold. So in the southern hemisphere, all these things are reversed. And it does make you ponder, some of both of the sort of silliness of, you know, winter wonderland kind of trappings of the northern hemisphere. I mean, bizarrely, you will go to Australia and you will walk down streets that are decorated with, you know, objects with snowflakes and, you know, Santa …  Santa people looking as if they’re dressed in ways that they wouldn’t survive the climate for a day. So you do get that weirdness.

               But I think that sometimes with the seasonality and the way it’s the reverse of the natural symbolism of the church’s year, it actually forces you to think about it a little bit more. It’s more obvious maybe at Easter where there’s all this language in the tradition of spring and so forth, and it’s not spring. 

H:           Oh, weird. 

M:           But then I said to the first person, I remember, asking me about this and making me think about it decades ago when I first came to this country, that you ponder that it’s, you know, as the hymn says, “the spring of souls” today. And so even if it isn’t actually in keeping with the natural order, sometimes, of course, the divine order is not in keeping with the natural order. So, it makes you think about that, but I … it is an interesting phenomenon to go and, go to the beach and swim on Christmas day. 

H:           I grew up around a lot of imagery of, like, snowmen that were actually sandmen. Oh, yeah. This kind of a thing.

M:           Yeah. That’s right. 

H:           And, Santa Claus in his, like, flip flops and Hawaiian shirts. Right. 

M:           And we’ve got versions of that sometimes, you know. And so there are there are some Australians who will sort of go hard at that sort of paradoxical Christmas in in the Anglo Saxon world, of which Australia is a part to some extent, is, of course, has food traditions that are a bit more like those of the American Thanksgiving. 

H:           Okay. Yeah. 

M:           So there is sort of quite a strong tradition of feasting at Christmas. And, but on the other hand, my family has always been one of those that would doggedly sweat their way through the hot meal at the table with, you know, the turkey and the Christmas pudding, you know, the plum pudding of lore, with the sweat dripping off.  And places … underneath the funny paper hats that we put on because we’re sort of … we’re, you know, Anglo-Celtic people in exile, and sure enough, we’re gonna assert that cultural specificity while we can. 

H:           I mean, not to the same extreme, but I did my fair share of sweating in jumpers in California in the winter. So you just at some point, you feel like, “I have to wear this.” 

M:           Right. Because it’s it goes with the season, doesn’t it? But yes. But that’s right. Sometimes we learn things because of the harmony between the sort of revelatory and the natural phenomena, and sometimes we learn things because of the contrast. 

H:           Yeah. Very true. And I should say we have a fair few listeners in Australia. I think they’re right behind the United States and the UK in terms of number of listeners. 

M:           Well, g’day, everyone. 

Brandon: Hi. I’m Brandon Nappi.

H:           Hi. I’m Hannah Black, 

B:            And we’re your hosts on the Leaders Way podcast. A Yale podcast empowering leaders, cultivating spirituality, and exploring theology. 

H:           This podcast is brought to you by Berkeley Divinity School, The Episcopal Seminary at Yale. Let’s dive in.

               Would it be okay if the listeners kind of got a window into your life, if you could tell us a bit of the story of your pathway to the priesthood, even discernment, and then becoming a seminary dean? 

M:           Okay. So a couple of different things there, but I am one of those people who rejoices in being, you know, a child of the rectory, so to speak. My late father was a priest as well, and I’m sure that any virtue or benefit in my own ministry owes a lot to things that I was just able to take for granted by sort of understanding the day-to-day rhythms of what it meant to be in a family that was engaged in ministry, as that was necessarily the case.

               I think that probably meant that I had a vocation to priesthood, not that that necessarily follows, but in my case, that I did have a vocation to priesthood from the earliest point that I can remember, but one which I was not necessarily, at certain points, aware of, or at certain other points willing to be aware of, which is not the same thing. I think that when you’re in that sort of situation, denial is a pretty good, you know, life tool, life skill. And so, you know, I … I think I knew it was coming, but I was sort of looking for other possibilities as well. You know, I thought about medicine for a while. I was always interested in historical and archaeological things.

               But I’d more or less surrendered to the possibility of vocation by the time I finished high school, to be honest, which is an unusual thing, I guess. But I think that was just the truth and one that I had to accept. I’ve also, of course, zigzagged a bit at other points since. I mean, even when you’re a priest and even when you’re in ministry, you know, there are hours of the day, and sometimes days and weeks, when it doesn’t feel as real as it might otherwise, and that’s inevitable. Acknowledging that, I think, is perhaps liberating, but it doesn’t mean that the truth that undergirds your being isn’t always the same. 

               So, the path of seminary deanship is a little different. I think that, I was, you know, always a somewhat academically-focused sort of person, but my father was a parish priest by dedication and profession as a sort of specialist. And I have always felt that the heart of ministry is expressed in the leadership of the local worshiping community. So even though I did actually spend six years as a parish priest before I went to graduate school, and my students are sometimes surprised to hear that because they just assume there’s sort of an academic track, you know, that you just sort of jump straight to a PhD and that’s it. But I kind of knew enough to realize that if I wanted to work with people, that I imagined I was gonna help be formed, as parish clergy, then I needed to know a little bit more about that.

               So I had a very, very busy six years before grad school of doing those things. But always, I think, with the assumption that I would head back towards further study. And for me, further study, though, initially, was just about having enough resources to feel that I could be a seminary teacher with a straight face. And that was that was really how that began. But at the end of my graduate school time, I had these sort of, I had these academic mentors sort of looking at me and saying, you know that you got a bit more there, don’t you? And you should be thinking, you know, in terms of continuing to think and write, and, as well as to teach. And so that changed my outlook a bit. And so I’ve constantly, ever since, struggled with the unlikely triangle of being a scholar and teacher, but also being … continuing to have a priestly vocation, and also, of course, taking on roles of leadership and administration, which … Doing all those things, I must say, has not always been easy, but I think that I would probably all, myself, would always feel that if one of those fell away, the stool would have only two legs, you know?

H:           Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

M:           And that’s just a that’s a very specific thing. That’s not, of course, true for every academic or for every administrator or for every member of the clergy, but for me, my priestly vocation has very much been bound up in being a theological educator, but not because I felt that the academy was a superior place of ministry to the parish. Quite the contrary. I feel the academy is in service to the church as a living, functioning entity, and that for me, the sense of academic pursuit without the connection with teaching and formation would be rather hollow. 

H:           How do you maintain sanity as someone with, you know, more than a few jobs and possibly no free time whatsoever? 

M:           Yeah. That’s … that’s the question I ask myself from time to time. But I think that I don’t …

H:           That in and of itself is a helpful answer, you know?

M:           Yeah. It does … it’s not easy, I will admit that much. But there are a couple of things that I think are relevant to that. One is maintaining rhythm and structure. So I think, you know, saying the daily office with a group of people is an enormous gift to me. And, you know, I think that might surprise my students who think that I’m inflicting it upon them rather than that they’re giving it to me. But the truth is, to be a part of a community that prays together on a daily basis is a huge privilege, and people who have that opportunity shouldn’t take it lightly. And I imagine there are people listening who are sort of thinking, “I wish that I had such.” So that the you know, and you go to the office, and the daily office, like the formal liturgy of Anglicanism generally, is not on every day the words that come spontaneously from your heart, but that’s actually part of what’s important: that even on the days when you’re not quite sure whether you agree with the psalmist or whether that part of the creed makes as much sense as it did last week, or whether we really should have, you know, read that particular verse from 2nd Samuel, that it sort of doesn’t matter because it’s going on across, within and without you at various times. You’re in the flow of something which is bigger than yourself. 

               That’s why I’m a great believer in the daily office from that point of view, because it’s a kind of objective prayer of the church in which we participate, and which, of course, requires our own hearts and minds to join as best we can on a given day, but it doesn’t depend upon the state of our heart and mind for it to happen. 

               So that’s one thing that … acknowledging you’re part of something bigger than yourself can allow one to kind of relax into the fact that not every day is perfect and that not everything works the way it is. 

               The second thing I’d say relative to your question about maintaining sanity is that it does connect for me with that three-legged stool I mentioned in my own case. I would feel much less happy and probably more, imbalanced, if I didn’t have those different parts to interact with one another. Even though there’s more, sometimes more is better if the more is the right more. So even the capacity on my part to grind out a little bit of writing and to contribute to, you know, a conference or a volume or something and make me feel that the life of the mind is still something I have a connection to, actually makes the rest of my life more doable rather than less, even though it’s an additional task. 

               So that’s something, I guess, other people may have their own versions of if they think it through. To make life manageable isn’t always about the amount of stuff you do. It’s sometimes qualitative as well. 

H:           Mhmm. Mhmm. I remember when I was much younger, I was thinking about taking a gap year to apply for grad school. And I explained this to a friend who said, “You’re gonna hate that. You’re gonna go crazy.”

M:           Having nothing to do. You have to do it. Right.

H:           Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Which gap years could take multiple forms. But there’s something to that, to having a life giving kind of generative soul-feeding work. 

               One question we’ve asked people from time to time, and you may or may not have an answer, is we’ve either asked people about an early experience of God or a notable experience of God. And I’m wondering if you have any stories like that. 

M:           Yeah. Yeah … just a softball, right? So, I think this does relate a little bit to my vocational reflections we shared a few minutes ago, that I believe that God’s presence and activity is something that’s constant in our lives, and I think a lot of what we need to do is to acknowledge that that’s what’s actually happening to us. In other words, we are a part of God’s story rather than that … our experiences are about attuning to that fact, rather than about creating it. There is a subtle, but really fundamental difference there. 

               And for me, part of the challenge, of course, was the fact that I was sort of immersed in a world in which the activity of God was always being spoken of, and yet, that collective and institutional and historical element of it, which I’m which is wonderful and to which I’m deeply committed, can, of course, be, I don’t know, it could of course, it can be alienating for people. But what I’m really wanting to express here is the fact that it’s the fact that it can always be somebody else’s experience is a danger. The South African Pentecostalist theologian, if I have this right, John de Grucci, said, “God has no grandchildren.” And I think it’s tempting for those of us in the institutional church environments and in the traditionally-focused and sacramentally-focused church to all be members of God’s extended family, whereas, in fact, what not only our Pentecostal, but also evangelical friends would remind us is that we do indeed, as Billy Graham would have said, need a personal relationship with Jesus. This is true, even though the ways that’s been expressed and lived out have often been inadequate. So let’s acknowledge what we should. 

               So I think that, you know, for me growing up, the moment … there were moments of finding out when that story was my story and not simply somebody else’s story that I liked. You know? And that’s for me one way of thinking about what it means to have a personal experience of God. You know, we’re always having a personal experience of God. What we’re challenged and invited to do is to be self-consciously a part of that relationship, as opposed to simply the fact that it’s always there all the time. And the temptation, of course, can be from that more experientially-focused form of Christianity to assume that it’s our attentive experience to it that creates it. That’s not the case.

H:           Yeah. Yeah. 

M:           So, I could give you a couple of examples here. I mean, one that comes to mind was my personal encounter with the late Trevor Huddleston, who, some people will recognize the name. He was an anti-apartheid campaigner, an Englishman by birth who was a monk, a member of this Community of the Resurrection, and who worked in South Africa for many years. He was kicked out during the 1950s for his closeness with Mandela and others, who were about to be imprisoned on Robben Island at that point. He wrote the book, Naught for Your Comfort, which basically lifted the lid on the apartheid regime of the, you know, late forties and fifties in South Africa for the Western world. And, in later life, he became Bishop of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. I was growing up in Perth in Western Australia, and weirdly enough, he was the bishop, therefore, of the neighboring diocese. 

H:           Okay. Yes. 

M:           You have to think about that and perhaps get your atlas out here to know what I mean. But he visited Western Australia when I was in college, and I met him. He stayed with my family once, in fact. And, I didn’t really know this in the 1980s, that he had been one of the great heroes of the anti-apartheid struggle of the 1950s, but in particular, an exemplar of how Christian social witness was something which could be quite fundamental to–not only to, sort of, Christian belief, but in particular to that tradition of sacramentally-focused Christian life, which is sort of, you know, basically Anglo-Catholicism, for want of a better word.

               And he described himself in talks that I heard him give in the first time he visited Perth as a Christian socialist, and I was rather startled by that, because, you know, I was a college student, sort of flirting with leftist politics as one–as every college student–should. And, you know, whether or not they maintain that commitment is another question. And, talking with him and thinking with him and so forth was … provided some of those light-globe moments that went on, went off for me, where I realized that there was … not only that God was present and real, but that there was an understanding of God which he sort of helped me encounter, which has helped actually to define my own Christian faith ever since. And I do regard that as a personal encounter with God, which, of course, in one sense was helped– to which I was helped by another person, but which was nevertheless part of God’s work in my life and not simply somebody else’s story. So Huddleston is opening the door for that tradition, of which, of course, Desmond Tutu is another well-known example.

               Tutu, in fact, was his protege. And, one of Tutu’s children is named Trevor, for Trevor Huddleston. Huddleston sort of helped look after him when he was a sick young boy in a hospital in Sophiatown, brought him books and magazines to read, and Tutu said in his own biography that Trevor Huddleston was the first white man he had ever seen lift his hat to Tutu’s mother. Simple things. Simple things. Right? So, you know, the effective witness that people will give in the face of such circumstances is a powerful witness, not just to what is important, but to who God is and where God is. 

H:           So let’s shift gears slightly to Advent. And before we really dive into Advent, I wonder whether you could kind of give us an overview of what the deal is with the lectionary.

M:           Oh, so the yeah. The lectionary as we currently encounter it? 

H:           Mmmhmm. Yeah. Yeah. 

M:           So, nearly everybody hearing this podcast is probably using a version of a 3-year lectionary, which was first promulgated by the Roman Catholic church in the late 1960s and which various Protestant groups quickly began to use, because that was an era in which we had these wonderful ecumenical visions of worshiping together and doing things that, if not in the same space, would at least have parallel lives.

               And, of course, not only our lectionary, but liturgies, the modern Eucharistic liturgies of Anglican, Roman Catholic, and other mainline Protestant churches are very similar because they were part of this mid-20th century movement of ecumenical scholarly consensus. So the lectionary is one element of this. And in Advent, of course, the liturgical year begins in Advent, and across Advent, whichever of the three years we’re in, we have a sort of progress through the three synoptic gospels. So we’re about to … we are beginning have begun the year of Luke. We always start with something from Jesus’ so-called “Little Apocalypse” speech he makes in Jerusalem just prior to his passion, about the end of the temple and then the end of all things and so forth in week one.

               And then we get a couple of weeks of John the Baptist, which have slightly different focal points, I guess. In the first week, John is sort of just appearing, and, you know, he’s the forerunner. We get the famous quote from Isaiah 40 and so forth. And then the third week, we get a little bit more about John and what John’s actual ministry and speech is, and there’s a sort of emphasis upon the need for us to prepare. I guess that feels like how how the third week flows.

               And then the fourth week, we’re starting to shift gears towards the incarnation. We get stories like the Annunciation and it becomes a bit more Marian and a bit more focused on the … Jesus’ own first Advent that we’re about to celebrate with Christmas. So the themes of the current lectionary do zigzag a bit, but they include, you know, those various things, actually, that have to be all borne in mind, with Advent, from, you know, the end of all things to the first coming of Jesus, and then in between, you know, John as the sort of person who reminds us of, you know, the need to sweep the house out, you know. And get ready ourselves for what is coming, both with Christmas, but also, of course, what is always coming, in a sense, in terms of the Christian hope of, you know, what whatever it means when we say “Come, lord Jesus.” You know?

H:           Mhmm. Could you explain for me the themes that come out of death, judgment, heaven, and hell in Advent? I think when I think of Advent, I think of like Christmas trees. This could be, you know, incorrect, but this is what comes to my … at least in the popular imagination. It’s like Christmas trees, nativity sets, maybe pageants, and a lot of these things are fairly Christmassy rather than … Adventy.

M:           Definitely. Yeah. So I’m … I’d be curious if we could if we could do some survey of how many listeners are sort of gasping at the death, judgment, heaven and hell things because I’ve seen in my own social media sort of over the past week the fact that there’s almost now this sort of alternative canon of some sort of set of themes that people invoke when they light the four candles of peace, love, joy, hope, or something like that. I don’t know if that’s the order or whatever because it all that’s just something made up in a Sunday school curriculum from the seventies, I think. 

H:           Unlike death, judgment, heaven, hell?

M:           Well, they, of course, are also made up in a sense, but maybe I have…  I have taken it upon myself and any of my former students will giggle as they listen to it. Listen. Yeah. I’ve taken it upon myself to sort of try and promote those things, not just … not so much because I really imagine that any parish church is likely to, you know, hang those up as decorations on the trees. 

H:           I like to think about what a full decorating scheme would be. It’s very hardcore. 

M:           My Instagram feed does include former students who have literally created ornaments with those, hanging them on the trees, and I’m very proud of them. I must say, Congratulations to you all. But here’s the serious side of that, I guess.

               You know, originally, the sort of this … Advent is about a preparation for Christmas. It’s got the same sort of inherent logic as Lent. In fact, Christian time generally involves this sort of structure. We know this best at Easter because we know that Lent and then holy week in particular and then Good Friday even more involve this, for want of a better word, a movement downwards away from the joyous and the festive to the reflective, to the introspective, to the penitential, to sort of be very blunt about it.

               And we can celebrate Easter with a greater sense of genuine joy and festivity because we’ve created that contrast. So there is almost a kind of dramaturgical aspect of this. If we don’t take that movement away from festivity seriously, it’s really, really hard to work out how to celebrate. And, of course, that is a crisis that Christmas experiences. Because the secular capitalist Christmas is basically just an increasing a curve that moves upwards. You know, it’s just accumulate, accumulate, accumulate, consume, consume, consume, consume. And the 25th, when there’s no more consuming to be done, boom, it collapsed downwards. At the end. And the Christmas tree lands up on the curb on the 26th, and, you know, that kind of thing.

               But Advent is really driven by a logic much more like that of Lent, which is step back, reflect. And it’s a penitential season, to be honest. People balk at that. And I realized, by the way, those of you active in pastoral ministry, I’m not about to suggest that you can get a whole lot of mileage out of simply inflicting that understanding upon people. 

H:           “No one shall celebrate.”

M:           No–do not celebrate. You know? And how to … how to actually negotiate the difference between the sort of civil, civic, secular Christmas and the Christian lectionary and the Christian festivity of the season is a very difficult pastoral problem, which I don’t dismiss for a minute. 

               But part of the reason that I’ve been among those asking us to take death, judgment, heaven, and hell seriously is precisely the shock value of saying, what if it were something else? Now the reason, just to really try and answer your question properly, the reason for those themes is that, of course, we think about the Advent theme, the coming of Christ, and so forth, and then we’re faced with the fact, “Okay, so what happened? Where is he? What”–you know, “he hasn’t shown up,” you know. And you even find the gospel writers themselves are starting to struggle with that question. Even across the three different synoptic gospels, let alone into John’s gospel, we’re finding people trying to think twice about that, not ever to let go of that possibility, that expectation of a personal return, you know, an apocalyptic personal return, but realizing that if it doesn’t make sense to people who live their lives without that happening, then it doesn’t make sense at all.

               So what do we do instead? And the medieval church basically creates this conception that we’re talking about, which is to think of eschatology, to think about the end of all things, as something that has to do with personal existence and not simply with cosmic. So death, judgment, heaven, and hell is a way for the individual to ponder, What does it mean that today might be the day of reckoning for me, the day which I have to stand, you know, before the throne of God and to acknowledge, you know, whether my life has been lived the way it should be or not?

               And so each of the four themes, death, judgment, heaven, hell– unfortunate finish perhaps, but bear in mind that Christmas is always gonna follow, right?—but those are all sort of ways of sort of dwelling upon that aspect of, “Well, well, mortal human being. What about it? You know, what if it’s today?”

               It’s … you could think of scriptural parallels to this, you know… the parable of the rich fool. You know, it says, “I’m going to tear down my barns and build new ones. I’m going to eat and drink and make merry, and I’m going to accumulate and accumulate and accumulate,” and then, you know, “Fool, this night your soul will be required of you.” So, if Advent is not a time when we don’t get to– when we get stopped at some point and say, “What if, fool, this night, your soul will be required of you?” What would it have meant?

               Now Christians, in fact, of course, cast their hope upon the fact of Jesus’ own action rather than the accumulation of deeds and misdeeds, but and so parts of that medieval reckoning are a little bit out of kilter, I think, relative to what we would want to say about the nature of salvation. But that doesn’t mean that the gospel doesn’t call upon us also to ask whether we have responded to God’s grace in Jesus in a way that is appropriate. And we live in a culture that is so averse to talking about death, to acknowledging death. You know, I mean, the current trend towards having celebrations of life instead of funerals. You know, some people, of course, could accentuate the positive about that. It’s great to celebrate people’s lives. But if you look at how that fits into a culture of denial of death, you know, nobody has a body any more there at these events. And the problem with the celebration of life is that it’s fundamentally nostalgic. A Christian funeral should always be forward looking. 

H:           Right. Right.

M:           Whether it’s about the deceased or about ourselves. 

H:           Well, let me ask you a question about the sort of Advent vibe that you’re painting for us. Yeah. Is it the same thing as, like, fire and brimstone preaching, or could you kind of tease that out a little bit?

M:           Well, I think that if there isn’t room for one fire and brimstone sermon in Advent, when in the year is it going to happen, I guess? And, you know, I of course, I do believe that God’s reconciling love is ultimately what drives the universe rather than dividing people into good and bad. I think that even the most horrifyingly vicious people–we’re not supposed to talk about politics, I suppose–even the most horrifyingly vicious people who achieve public prominence and high office are people who are manifestly broken, pathetic people. And that’s what we’re really talking about in that question of contemporary people in high office. Fire and brimstone won’t sort of make them change their ways, I suspect. 

               But, we do all understand in one sense, when you think about it, that the stakes are actually pretty high, that there is fire and brimstone being inflicted upon the poor and the marginalized in so many ways, and much more threatened, you know, for illegal immigrants, so-called, and various other, you know, populations in the current moment. So, you see, it’s not really whether the fire and brimstone is something to preach, it’s really how to preach it, you know, and how it actually fits into our understanding of God. If we think that fire and brimstone–if we admit that fire and brimstone is part of how many people live their lives because of inequality and injustice, because of climate change, because of everything else, but then think that the only things we can talk about in church are love, joy, hope, peace, then there’s something wrong.

H:           Right. 

M:           So how do we make those connections? I don’t think I’ve got an easy formula for that. But, you know, if people don’t go away at some point in Advent thinking, “Ooh, that shook me up a little bit,” then maybe the preacher has failed in her task, you know. So that’s at least something to ponder.

H:           Oh, that’s great. One thing I wanna ask is why kind of prescribe readings in the first place? 

M:           Uh-huh. 

H:           So this is really a lectionary question yet again. But why have people read certain stories during Advent? Why have people read them from Luke during this Advent? Why not just kind of let the spirit lead? 

M:           Yeah. Well, you know, I think that’s a good question, and I suppose my answer really would wanna be a both/and. So lectionaries are very old, but, you know, even … there was a time before lectionaries, I guess. The evidence for lectionaries appears, you know, in around the 4th and 5th centuries, times that you and I are very fond of, and we probably won’t have watched getting too nerdy about that with this group, or they’ll leave us behind. But, anyway, I think that for that long, at least, which is therefore about as long as we’ve had creeds and about as long as we’ve had the canon of scripture and about as long as we’ve had the sacraments as we know them, you know. So in other words, this is something which is fairly fundamental to the DNA of Christianity, which is historic and sacramental and traditional. And I think it’s not so much that, it’s not so much that the spirit can’t lead and help people to read as well, it’s more that it’s something that ideally we do together, so that we’re actually undertaking this process of interpretation and struggling with scripture as a community. And that’s part of the argument for the seriousness of these 3 year lectionaries, not just that they give us quite a lot of scripture.

               So just as a bracket, bear in mind that those of us using these lectionaries are getting exposed to much more scripture than your average “Bible-believing Christian.” You can’t see my scare quotes formed with my fingers here in the air, but, you know, this is one of the great paradoxes of modern Christianity that, that those of us in these churches are actually spending a lot more time with scripture than people who claim to be very Bible-focused. However, what they might have over us and which we need to pay attention to is that, you know, that shouldn’t be the way we encounter– the whole of the way we encounter the Bible. So, you know, there is such a thing as personal Bible reading, there is such a thing as –

H:           Woah. Woah.

M:           –Yeah. That’s right. Woah! Well, that’s, of course, what the daily office is, too. You know, in the daily office, we actually read through the whole of scripture and not just the bits in the lectionary. So, two or three arguments, therefore, apart from antiquity itself, and not everyone will be equally persuaded by that. 

H:           I mean, I like antiquity.

M:           That’s right. But one is the collectivity. The fact that it’s something we’re doing together and that we’re therefore journeying with scripture, you know, not only with other Anglicans or Episcopalians, with other … with Roman Catholics, with many mainline Protestants as well, and we’re doing this together. The other is that the lectionary does, especially in this three-year form, expose us to a great deal of scripture, and the problem with the Spirit-led approach, so-called, is that, you know, I don’t wanna get into the position of telling the Spirit her business, but there are a lot of people who do.

H:           Mhmm. And it’s usually Romans. 

M:           That’s right. Well, and Romans read a particular way and particular bits of it. So if the spirit leads you only to read certain parts of scripture, you might well ask whether that’s actually the spirit. Far be it for me to say. 

H:           Right. Right. Oh, that’s great. Well, I’ll ask you one last lectionary question and then I wanna kind of move on to thinking about seminary a little bit since that’s, you know, another thing we’re both very fond of. But at the risk of opening a real can of worms, why is Christmas on December 25th? 

M:           Everyone’s favorite topic for Andrew at this time of year. Yes. So if this little precis doesn’t satisfy you, please just Google Andrew McGowan Christmas and you’ll find any number of things.

H:           We’ll put it in the show notes. 

M:           Including the “Biblical Archaeology Review’s” most popular article of all time, by the way, you know, which is hilarious. It’s not really something I consider an area of specialization, but here’s the short version. 

               Even before Christmas itself emerged as a feast, which isn’t the oldest of Christian feasts, by the way. It only appears really in the fourth century. Same time as the lectionaries and the creeds, so we’re still saying that’s pretty old. 

H:           What a fabulous century. 

M:           That’s right. But, of course, Easter is as old as Christianity itself, because Easter is essentially a Christianized Passover. Christmas doesn’t turn up for a few hundred years, but when it does, you know, people then say, Well, it seems to be close to the winter solstice, and, you know, perhaps they’re just borrowing pagan existing festivals and so on. Well, no, apparently not. Because a hundred years before that, we find evidence for Christians trying to calculate Jesus’ birth, even though they weren’t thinking of it as a liturgical feast. They were thinking, you know, just in a purely speculative, theological way. 

H:           Just a little detective exercise. 

M:           Right. That sort of thing. And they seem to have landed on either December 25th or January 6th. Okay. And those are the two sort of big Christmassy dates, of course. The reasons for that have to do with the time between then and the date of the crucifixion, which is gonna have a few listeners scratching their heads as well it might. But the understanding was this; that the great events of salvation history happen at the same time. This is a Jewish tradition as well. We find the understanding, for instance, that the date of the destruction of the temple, both with the Babylonians and the Romans, was the same day. That, you know, that the Messiah would come on the same day, that these sort of notions of cyclical time are deeply embedded here. And the belief was, in effect, that Jesus must have come to earth via the Annunciation, incarnate, at the same time that he “left,” quote, unquote, the earth in the crucifixion. You can write lots of footnotes to that and raise various objections, but we’re talking about the logic of these third century theologians here, not about what I would necessarily think made sense myself. 

               So the date of Christmas effectively was calculated as 9 months after the date of the annunciation, and the date of the annunciation was assumed to be the date of the crucifixion. And in sort of more in the eastern Mediterranean, January 6th was popular, a little bit further west, December 25th was popular. They both then emerged in the 4th century as dates on which people began to celebrate Jesus’ birthday, although that was a bit late to the party. And then, of course, they realized that there were 2 different dates going on, and that was effectively how we got the 12 days of Christmas by saying, let’s just build a bridge.

H:           Ah. Oh, that’s interesting. 

M:           And we’ll do the shepherds and the angels on 25th, and we’ll do the Magi on 6th. 

H:           Everybody has a day. 

M:           And everybody has a day, and it’s all the Christmas season. We get 12 days because it’s a major feast. Why shouldn’t we have 12 days? So that’s how we get Christmas. Of course, there were pagan winter solstice festivals, but none of them actually landed on December 25th. Even … the only evidence we have for such a thing of a sun god festival, the earliest evidence for that is later than the earliest evidence for Christmas. Not earlier. So it looks as if there was some religious competition going on in the 4th century, as paganism and Christianity was still, you know, duking it out. Until we until we get to the end of 4th century and it’s all clear. 

               So, yes, Christianity, obviously, has therefore also borrowed customs and folklore and things that relate to the changing of the seasons. And, also, when you think about it, that connection with the Annunciation and with the death of Jesus is also connected to the cycles of seasons and seasonality, because Passover is related to the vernal equinox, you know, and to a to a harvest festival connected with the spring equinox. So it’s not as if those things aren’t there, but they’re not there because we took them from the Romans and the Greeks. They’re actually there in Judaism. 

H:           So I think one … one final question and then I’ll ask you to lead us in prayer. But as some of our listeners are considering seminary and doing some discernment of their own, I wonder what kind of advice or words of wisdom you have for people who are in that kind of a space in life of discerning holy orders or seminary or what have you?

M:           I think that’s a great question. I’m … I’ve been pondering this a little bit, reading some news in the last week about numbers offering themselves or at least going forward for training in the Church of England plummeting over the past five to ten years. I don’t know if you may have seen that as well. One of the things I value most about the rather open system that we work with here in the United States, and which Australia also has sort of a limited version of, I guess, is the possibility of people entering into theological study itself as an act of discernment.

H:           Yeah. 

M:           And I think this is something the Church of England loses out with, to be honest, because it’s really like going to Sandhurst or something. You’ve got to get your secret birthmark stamped, you know, I’m mixing my metaphors, sorry, but, you know, you can’t get into the system until you’ve gone through all this vetting process. We’re actually at a time when we need to sort of throw the doors open. We’ve been saying for fifty years that the laity are ministers, and yet if we treat theological training and education as a closed shop for those people who are preapproved, we’re working with a model that really belongs before that point, let alone before the point of the last ten or twenty years when we started to face with more honesty the reality of secularization and so forth.

               So, my quick observation about theological education is that it should be a more open and free system. I celebrate the fact that there are different options for people to collect both degree-level and non-degree level educational experiences. You know, would that all God’s people were prophets, as Moses once said. Why shouldn’t theological education be for everyone, just according to their ability and their needs? So I think that we have the capacity, and I’m happy to say, I think, you know, that we’re a part of this at Berkeley at Yale to sort of drive a culture of exciting and transformative experiential theological education.

               I don’t want people to choose to come to Berkeley at Yale because they’re looking for a credential. I want people to choose to come to Berkeley at Yale because they wanna have their lives changed. But why shouldn’t that also be something that those who are doing non-degree work think about? You know, I’m excited to learn. I’m excited to grow spiritually. I want to, you know, my walk with God to be enhanced and enriched by the possibility of going deeper in scripture and deeper in theology and so forth. So I think we’ve got to recapture the excitement of theological education at whatever level we’re offering it, however formal, however elite, or however dispersed, because theologic … theology is exciting, Hannah. Isn’t it? 

H:           Well, I think so. 

M:           I know you do. That’s why I thought I could throw you that one. Yes. So I…  that’s my thought. More theology for everyone.

H:           More theology for everyone. And in so saying, you’ve given an accidental commercial for Brandon and my work of the online courses that I’ve talked about. 

M:           Indeed. Of course, it’s part of why we set up Transforming Leadership, you know, more generally in Leaders Way, as a program both in the podcast and the residential form because we know that clergy need to continue to think about their faith and about their practice, not just at a how-to level, but at a why level. And, you know, I’m sure we’re hoping to do more with lay leaders and others as well in time to come. 

H:           If you’re enjoying the Leaders Way podcast, you might like to join us in person as a Leaders Way Fellow. The Leaders Way Yale certificate program combines the best of seminary, retreat, and pilgrimage. Fellows meet in person at Yale for a week in June, then continue their learning in mentor groups online. To learn more, visit our website. 

Brandon: You might also like to join us for one of our upcoming online courses or workshops. Our learning space is hopeful, courageous, and imaginative. This year’s offerings include courses and workshops on prayer, preaching, conflict management, and more. 

H:           Clergy and lay leaders from every country, denomination, and seminary background are warmly welcome to join us for all of our programs. 

               

Well, I think this has been a very rich and thought provoking conversation. And I wonder if we can kind of hit that Advent note one last time and have you lead us in an advent prayer. 

M:           Happily. And, I think what I’d like to do is to share again the collect for Advent Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent, which is a couple of weeks behind the experience of those who will be listening, but is a really a wonderful collect to pray right through the season, I think, just as sometimes people pray the collect for Ash Wednesday right through Lent. And this is, one of the collect, I’ll  say with my tongue planted firmly in my cheek because you can’t see me, a new collect because it was only written in 1549. Some of the collects in the prayer book go back to the Leonine and Gregorian Sacramentaries, you know, of late antiquity, but this is one of the ones that Thomas Cranmer himself seems to have written when the new prayer book came out. And it has a real scriptural zinger in the middle. It refers to Romans 13, 12. See if you can work out that reference. So let us pray.  

               Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility, That in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal. Through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

H:           Amen. Thank you, Dean McGowan. 

M:           Thank you, Dr. Black. 

H:           Perfect. Thanks for listening to the Leaders Way podcast. You can learn more about this episode at berkleydivinity.yale.edu /podcast. Follow along with us on Instagram at theleadersway.podcast.

B:            And you can rate and review us on your podcast app and be sure to hit follow so you never miss an episode. And if you liked this episode, please share it with a friend. 

H:           Until next time.

B:            Peace be with you.