The Orthodox-Catholic Anglican
I concluded my preaching for the First Sunday of Advent with these words: “Recognizing that Christ is always the Coming One is the basis of life in Christ’s Kingdom, and thus the basis of Kingdom culture.” How is He the Coming One? In Advent we especially recognize that Christ is the Coming One by means of Scripture and by means of Sacrament. The knowledge that He is the Coming One through Scripture and Sacrament makes for a truly lively faith, a life in the Holy Spirit. And I said that the apostles, whose names are inscribed on the walls of the foundation of heaven, preached Christ the Coming One so that all who hear it with faith may be caught up in the life of wonder, awe, and openness to the coming presence of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit: living and moving and having our being within the Kingdom of our King.
The Second Sunday of Advent is particularly given over to celebrating, savoring, and wondering at the fact that Christ always seeks to come to us through Holy Scripture. Hence the famous and beautiful Anglican collect for this Second Sunday of Advent: Blessed Lord, Who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: grant that we may in such wise (wise is the old word for way: that we may in such way) hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of Thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life, which Thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Through the Scriptures, inwardly digested, Christ is known. Indeed, Christ took on our human nature in significant part because in doing so He would be known through the opening of Scripture: the opening of it, and our reception of Him, inwardly digesting Him because as He said, “I am the Bread of life.” This Bread, our daily bread, is received both through opening Scripture and by the breaking of bread. And we know Christ, the Eternal Word of God, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, took on our human nature to be known and received as our daily Bread because on the very day of His Resurrection, He taught the disciples to interpret Scripture as always concerning Him and to receive Him in the Eucharist.
Hence we have Saint Paul teaching the Romans: “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction.” What kind of instruction? Paul specifies and says, “that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. Because Christ is our hope, then we are to read Scripture to know Christ in the Scriptures, and in knowing Him in Scripture, we may together with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed, Paul says that Christ took on our human nature, the nature of a servant, to show the truthfulness of God the Father. In reading Scripture – in marking, learning, and inwardly digesting Christ as He is known through Scripture – the root of Jesse will come, and through His coming by the opening of Scripture, the God of hope will fill us with joy and peace, that by the power of the Holy Spirit, we may abound in hope.
Let us “inwardly digest” Christ through Scripture. That phrase “inwardly digest” has taken on a special meaning unique to Anglican tradition. The Anglican Divine blessed John Keble has this to say about “inwardly digesting”: “When something is digested, it agrees with him, nourishes him, is changed, as it ought to be, into the substance of his body. So the word and commandments of God, made known in Holy Scripture, are inwardly digested, when a man so receives them, as that they shall enter into his character, become, as it were, part of himself. How may that be? There is but one way. We must actually do as God bids us.” And this is a strong echo of the words of Saint James in his Epistle, that we must not only be hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word. To be a doer of what God commands us to do, and what He reveals of His Son through Scripture as our daily bread, is what it means to inwardly digest. Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction – our instruction in how to pray, how to love, how to worship, how to be humble, how to be a disciple, how to live a godly life of Scripture and Sacraments through the Liturgy: how to live, in other words, in Kingdom Culture, taken up into the life of the Holy Spirit, as He teaches us all things and guides us into the Truth Who is Jesus as He seeks to come to us and be known through the opening of Scripture and the Breaking of Bread: He who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the same Holy Spirit: ever one God, world without end. Amen.