BEFORE I GET to a specific instance of turn around and fair play, that of the medieval Boy Bishop, a disclaimer.
Last night, my parish, St. Andrew’s, Port Angeles/St. Swithin’s, Forks, hosted
the Bishop and Archdeacon of the Diocese of Olympia.
Any number of priests, pastors, other deacons, and lay folks from across our diocese and beyond gathered while our bishop installed our new rector, the Reverend Laura Murray.
It was a glorious occasion with organ and voices and gold and red and white vestments, our sanctuary full, and a feast, a veritable feast, at the reception afterwards.
Please do know that beautiful service was not the occasion of this column, which I actually began in March 2022, and set aside for St. Nicholas Day earlier this week.
The fact that I am about bishops today is mere coincidence.
What I want to talk about is the nature of Advent, by way of a mostly lost medieval practice.
We writer types and preachers usually talk about slowing down, about taking time, about quiet.
All that is true and necessary and needful, and God knows we need that reminder as we race toward Christmas.
We should be living in silence, and maybe even thinking less and feeling more.
Advent, however, has a long tradition of radical overturn of the powerful of all kinds, especially of the rich and the politically powerful.
This practice, the Boy Bishop, took a very serious matter—the Episcopacy—and made fun of it.
The Boy Bishop himself was a mixture of glee and seriousness.
As the article on boy bishops in Wikipedia notes, “’Boy Bishop’ is the title of a tradition in the Middle Ages, whereby a boy was chosen … to parody the adult Bishop.
The adult Bishop, symbolically, steps down at the deposuit potentes de sede (‘he hath put down the mighty from their seat’), Mary’s great song on hearing that she will give birth to the Messiah, the one who will restore justice; one half verse later, the
boy takes his seat at et exaltavit humiles (‘and hath exalted the humble and meek’)”
That’s an Advent expectation—that God turns everything, all power structures, over and around and upside down, from St. Nicholas Day on Dec. 6 to the Feast of Holy Innocents on Dec. 28 and more.
That twist is celebrated for that period, again with both solemnity and goofiness.
Winter in England still remains a time for various merriments including costumes, dances and even ghost stories — there’s a reason Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” has no fewer than four ghosts in it.
Thus, the inversion of power, symbolically represented by the deposing of a bishop and replacement of that bishop with a singer, a boy, reminded everyone present that in the Christian worldview, those who have power now, whether religious or otherwise,
may not tomorrow, that justice may be temporary now, but not forever, that God’s reign of justice will come.
As Christians, and along with other faithful people, we wait for that inversion to occur, not just for less than a month but permanently, however permanence is defined in our various traditions.
It’s not an accident that the playful reign of the Boy Bishop ends with the feast that recalls the deaths of every two year and under child in Bethlehem, Herod’s attempt to kill the Christ Child before he could gather (as Herod thought) the political power to end Herod’s reign.
As the mothers’ sing in the medieval carol:
“Herod the King / In his raging / Charged he hath this day
His men of might / In his own sight / All children young to slay
So Herod did, because he could. But his day came and went, and a new reversal will come, may it be so, for the hungry, the sick, the unhoused, the unemployed.
Know this, your day will come too.
Human power never lasts, never.
We are mortal, and we die. But God will provide.
Blessed, indeed, are the weak for justice is coming.
Turn around is fair play.
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Issues of Faith is a rotating column by religious leaders on the North Olympic Peninsula. The Rev. Dr. Keith Dorwick is a Deacon at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Port Angeles/St. Swithin’s Episcopal Church, Forks.
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