The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



St. Agnes of Rome, January 21, 2011, Diocesan Convention, St. Bartholomew’s Church, Nashville

“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past…” (Sg of Sgs 2:10-11).

There are times when the Lectionary conspires with the natural order itself in offering an unwitting commentary on what’s going on around us, and today is a case in point. No, the winter is not past; no, the rains have not gone: instead it’s Nashville, in the deep freeze of winter and with no sign of spring. Nature and Super-nature seem to be at odds here, the Scriptures and the Natural Order pitted against each other, on this Feast of St. Agnes, Virgin and Martyr. But it is precisely in this startling juxtaposition that our sermon lies today.

First, Agnes herself. She was a young woman, a Roman, who was martyred in the last great persecution of the Church under the Empire in the year 304. There are various parts of her legend, but an outstanding piece is that she was twelve or thirteen years old, of marriageable age under Roman law. Thus our Gospel today, about receiving the kingdom as a little child. Agnes was a determined young woman from a patrician family, certainly used to having her own way, to choosing her own course. Perhaps you know such a person: the Episcopal Church used to produce formidable ladies like these, though usually not quite as young as Agnes. Running true to type, she was steadfast in her faithfulness, even eager in her innocence to witness to the Lordship of Christ. The Church of St. Agnes constructed over her grave in Rome can still be found on the Via Nomentana. Pilgrims can still descend into the crypt and pray at the shrine constructed just above her tomb a few years after her death.

The early Christians looked to young women like Agnes for inspiration in bearing their own witness to Christ. This is all the more remarkable because neither children or women counted for much in the ancient world. It’s part of the revolution in social relations that Christianity initiated in the first century. It’s a reminder of the present witness of youth in our Church. For St. Augustine the fact that young women who were considered weak by the world could show strength in their faith made them significant figures that both men and women were called to imitate. It made them leaders in the Church. Women and men together were equally called to this most decisive form of discipleship, of following in the Way of the Cross.

But what about the curious juxtaposition of our festival today, the gap between our winter and the promise of summer that we find in our reading? Martyr means “witness”; and though we usually think about a person witnessing to a past event, testifying as it were to what has been, this is outweighed by the Christian martyr’s witness to the world as it should be, the world as it will be in God’s future. In the midst of winter we remember spring. The martyr witnesses to what is to come.

Christians are not just witnesses to what has been done, but witnesses to what is to be. As we come to this altar today, we remember the words of the Eucharistic Prayer: “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” In this present age we are citizens of the age to come, and witnesses to it as well.

So it is that in our winter, the winter of sin and death, Christ invites us through the witness of Agnes to arise and come away, to walk through the door into the spring of resurrection and new life. Even now, when spring seems impossible, we have the hope of a new life and a new world. We are witnesses to the kingdom, to the reality of new and everlasting life in Christ that is coming, that is breaking out, even in the midst of this old world that is passing away. It’s like that wonderful scene in the movie version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, when the children are pursued by their enemies out onto the ice and then escape as the ice begins to crack and break. Narnia too was a land where it was “always winter and never Christmas” until the spell was broken and the spring could come.

We are frozen in our sins until God’s grace overcomes them. The Church needs forgiveness, renewal, new life. That’s what we’re doing here today in this Convention. Thank God for the presence of persons, persons like you, who witness to the reality of the life of the world to come. Our witness is oriented to the world that is still to come, that is breaking through, the coming kingdom of God.

No, the winter has not past; no, the rains have not yet gone; but in the witness of this young woman there is something of God’s spring, something new and fresh that speaks of resurrection and the hope of new life. Our witness is to that world and its reality.

- The Rt. Rev’d John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee

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