A friendly tip: when one listens to a sermon from the current Principal of Pusey House, do not allow your mind the usual drifting. Otherwise, you will surely miss something. For George Westhaver’s sermons are brief, fast-paced, and packed!
And so it is with his first sermon of Hilary Term this past First Sunday after Epiphany (the text of which may be found on the Pusey House recent sermons page). His unusual takes on two Epiphany readings are especially edifying.
On the Gospel from the end of Luke 2, Dr. Westhaver suggests that the wisdom of the 12-year-old Jesus may have come more from his being unclouded from sin than from his divine nature.
This had not occurred to me. But it is in line with Dr. Pusey’s view, noted in Westhaver’s DPhil thesis, that sin can and does cloud the intellect. Accordingly, Westhaver in his sermon contends, “We don’t know what a human mind free from the pollution of sin is capable of.”
Then he presents the anxious search of Mary and Joseph for the boy Jesus as a type of our search for Him. This, too, is an unusual take today but in line with Dr. Pusey’s thinking. For, as the aforementioned thesis examines, Pusey advocated a revival of typological interpretation of scripture and rightly thought our study of scripture is impoverished if we are not alert for types. Westhaver’s take in his sermon demonstrates how types can enrich interpretation:
The events of the Gospel are not just stories about Him, they are stories about us. We should not be surprised that before Christ has fully grown up within us, before he has fully taken possession of us, that he may appear to be lost to us. We find ourselves in the situation of the bride in the Song of Songs, ‘I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways will I seek him whom my soul loveth’.[1] The experience of the saints through the ages has been that there are times when Christ seems lost to us, and the only way to find him is with a kind of struggle and anxiety.
The Gospel does give us some pointers to help us in the search. We may still expect to find our Lord in his temple, His Father’s House, in the place of worship, not only there, but certainly there. We don’t need to be afraid of our questions and doubts – He will listen to us with the same attention he gave the Doctors, his attention is His love. We can also expect him [to] address us with penetrating questions, His love for us, questions which are no less difficult than the journey, questions which are part of the answers He will give us, also in Love.
Turning to the Gospel for the Feast of Epiphany itself, the sermon also uses Herod and the travels of the Magi as types. Herod represents our fallen selfish nature that prefers King Me to King Jesus. And, as the Magi were directed to avoid Herod after they met Jesus, so we need to avoid selfish grasping King Me after we meet King Jesus.
Herod is not just a figure in history. We too have to avoid Herod, because we all have something of Herod in us. Herod did not want to have a rival, and it is part of our condition that we don’t want to have another king, even a king as wise and as good as Christ. Even after we have seen and adored Christ, we still have something of Herod in us, and so we must avoid our Herod-nature. If we want to the transformed minds which share in the divine freedom and light, then we need to turn away from the Herod-nature in us.
Did I mention George Westhaver’s sermons are packed? So do read it for yourself. And, as you are able, avail yourself of the wealth of erudition and activities at Pusey House, both past and present.
Yes, Hilary Term is off to a very good start at Pusey House.
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