Thinking allowed

Nicaea and the date of Easter

on Saturday, 21 June 2025 at 11.32 am by Simon Kershaw
categorised as history, liturgy

This art­icle was first pub­lished in the June 2025 issue of Trans­form­ing Wor­ship News (formerly Prax­is News of Wor­ship).

The date of East­er is often regarded as rather com­plic­ated, too com­plic­ated for nearly every­one to worry about. But it links us with the ori­gin of the annu­al fest­iv­al, and the way the early Church cel­eb­rated the resurrection.

When the Emper­or Con­stantine decided that Chris­tian­ity was the best hope of uni­fy­ing his empire, he found dis­agree­ment on sev­er­al top­ics, includ­ing the nature of Christ and the date on which to hold an annu­al cel­eb­ra­tion of his resur­rec­tion. The Coun­cil of Nicaea in 325 attemp­ted to resolve both issues, agree­ing a state­ment of belief and form­al­iz­ing the date of Easter.

The story begins with the Jew­ish fest­iv­al of Pas­sov­er, held at the first full moon of the spring, when the moon lights the sky all night. In the Jew­ish lun­ar cal­en­dar this day is 15 Nis­an, and the pre­vi­ous day, 14 Nis­an, is the day of pre­par­a­tion. In the late after­noon of that day, until the Temple was des­troyed, Pas­sov­er lambs were slaughtered in the Temple pre­cincts. They were then roas­ted and eaten at the Pas­sov­er meal that began with the full moon at sun­set, the start of 15 Nis­an. In the fourth gos­pel, the cru­ci­fix­ion was on 14 Nis­an, and in the syn­op­tics on 15 Nisan.

There is no expli­cit evid­ence in the New Test­a­ment of a yearly East­er. The focus in the early Church was the weekly cel­eb­ra­tion of the resur­rec­tion on the first day of the week, every Sunday. Although it is not entirely clear – and there may have been a cov­er up – it seems that Chris­ti­ans in Jer­u­s­alem and the Jew­ish dia­spora did keep an annu­al fest­iv­al, but Gen­tile Chris­ti­ans prob­ably didn’t. The former group kept an annu­al cel­eb­ra­tion of both the cru­ci­fix­ion and resur­rec­tion on 14 Nis­an, whichever day of the week that fell on.

Per­haps influ­enced by this annu­al feast kept in the dia­spora, oth­er Chris­ti­ans began to observe it and a fast on the pre­vi­ous day. But rather than keep­ing it on 14 Nis­an they cel­eb­rated the fol­low­ing Sunday, the day of the weekly com­mem­or­a­tion of the resur­rec­tion. Per­haps just as today, it was more con­veni­ent to trans­fer week­day fest­ivals to  Sunday.

These two groups co-exis­ted until at the end of the second cen­tury, Pope Vic­tor I con­tro­ver­sially excom­mu­nic­ated those who kept 14 Nis­an – the Quar­to­de­cimans (or “four­teen­ers”). A cen­tury later the dis­pute had not ended although the Quar­to­de­cimans were a dis­tinct minor­ity. So when, com­manded by Con­stantine to agree a com­mon date, the bish­ops assembled at Nicaea it was not sur­pris­ing that major­ity opin­ion, favoured by Rome and oth­er major sees, pre­vailed. The Coun­cil ruled that the annu­al paschal feast, cel­eb­rat­ing the resur­rec­tion, should be observed on the Sunday after the first full moon of the spring, the full moon after the equinox.

The Coun­cil did not pre­scribe how this might be determ­ined in advance, and ini­tially it was per­haps left to dir­ect obser­va­tion. Com­pet­ing tables of dates soon emerged, fre­quently based on a 19-year lun­ar cycle that had been known since at least the Baby­lo­ni­ans. The date of the equi­nox, which in the first cen­tury had fallen on 25 March, had by the fourth cen­tury drif­ted to 21 March. Tables from Alex­an­dria were gen­er­ally regarded as the best, and the declar­a­tion each year from that see of the date of East­er was usu­ally fol­lowed, though for many years the see of Rome used dif­fer­ent tables so occa­sion­ally East­er would fall on anoth­er date. Even­tu­ally the tables com­piled and exten­ded by the sixth-cen­tury monk Dionysi­us Exiguus were accep­ted as defin­it­ive. These con­tin­ued in use through­out the Church, across the schism between East and West. As the middle ages wore on it was recog­nised that both lun­ar and sol­ar com­pon­ents of the tables were increas­ingly inac­cur­ate, but it was not until after the Reform­a­tion that Pope Gregory XIII uni­lat­er­ally intro­duced a mod­i­fied cal­en­dar with self-cor­rect­ing lun­ar tables. Although these were gradu­ally accep­ted by the churches of the Reform­a­tion they have not been adop­ted in the East, at least not for determ­in­ing Easter.

In the twen­ti­eth cen­tury there were some moves to fix the date of East­er, but at the end of the cen­tury the World Coun­cil of Churches pro­posed abol­ish­ing cal­cu­lated tables based on the approx­im­ate 19-year cycle and instead using accur­ate astro­nom­ic­al cal­cu­la­tions of the equi­nox and the full moon as observed in the time zone of Jer­u­s­alem. They sug­ges­ted this might be adop­ted in 2000 when both East­ern and West­ern cal­cu­la­tions coin­cided on the same date. There was some sup­port for this from Rome, from Anglic­ans and vari­ous churches of the Reform­a­tion and some Ortho­dox churches, but it was far from uni­ver­sal. In this 1700th anniversary year of Nicaea, when East­er dates again coin­cide, the WCC has re-iter­ated its pro­pos­al. Once again, it seems unlikely to gain enough sup­port to be brought in.

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Simon Ker­shaw remem­bers try­ing to cal­cu­late East­er from the tables in the BCP while endur­ing long ser­mons as a young chor­is­ter at Even­song. He has con­tin­ued to cal­cu­late and write about the date of Easter.

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Ascension Day: 29 May 2025

on Friday, 30 May 2025 at 11.14 am by Simon Kershaw
categorised as sermon

Read­ings: Acts 1.1–11; Daniel 7.9–14; Psalm 47; Eph­esians 1.15–23; Luke 24.44–53

May the words of my mouth and the med­it­a­tion of my heart
be accept­able in your sight, O Lord.

Did you ever watch I, Claudi­us?
Or per­haps you’ve read the books?
I sup­pose I was about 15 when I first read them,
shortly before the BBC made that won­der­ful adaptation.
Remem­ber – Derek Jac­obi in the title role,
and a host of oth­er stars?
I well recall our Lat­in teach­er back then
telling us that the books were so good
that occa­sion­ally he would forget
wheth­er some incid­ent was actu­ally historical
or had instead been inven­ted by the author, Robert Graves.
And cer­tainly Graves did include
a host of real his­tor­ic­al inform­a­tion in the books.

For example, Graves relates
that a few weeks after the emper­or Augus­tus died in AD 14,
the Roman Sen­ate declared him to be divine.
They built an offi­cial state temple,
and spe­cial coins were minted
show­ing the emper­or being car­ried up to heaven,
per­haps in a chariot,
accom­pan­ied by wing’d figures.

So you see there’s some history
of great rulers being declared gods
when they died
or even whilst still alive.

And a few years after Augustus,
around AD 40,
the emper­or Caligula declared him­self a god.
Claudi­us was next,
declared divine imme­di­ately he died in 54.
Even his neph­ew, the infam­ous Nero
who ruled until 68,
was wor­shipped as part of the divine imper­i­al family.

I’ve men­tioned these dates,
not to try and give a his­tory lesson
– there’s no exam later –
but because they remind us
that this is exactly the time
when the events of the New Test­a­ment took place
and when much of it was written.
This is the context
in which Jesus was first pro­claimed by Christians
as the Son of God,
and described as being taken up into heaven.
We might well won­der what the rela­tion­ship is
between the descrip­tions of Jesus’s ascension
and the tra­di­tion of emper­ors and others
taken up to a pagan heaven.

Let’s think about what we heard earli­er in our readings.

The Old Test­a­ment les­son from Daniel draws on traditions
sev­er­al hun­dred years before those Roman emperors,
Claudi­us and Co.
It’s a vis­ion of a human figure
“com­ing with the clouds of heaven”,
com­ing to the throne of God and receiv­ing etern­al kingship.
Clearly Jesus’s ascen­sion sits in this tradition.

And we also had two accounts of that Ascen­sion of Jesus.
Our ser­vice began with the open­ing words of the Acts of the Apostles.
It’s rather the defin­it­ive account,
the one we think of when the Ascen­sion is mentioned.

And our gos­pel read­ing had the ascen­sion story again,
this time from the very end of Luke.
Did you notice any dif­fer­ences between these two –
one from Acts and one from the gos­pel accord­ing to Luke?

Did you?
Because they aren’t quite the same.

In the gospel
the Ascen­sion hap­pens at the end of East­er Day itself,
but in Acts it’s forty days later,
just as today is forty days after East­er Day –
remem­ber I said it’s the Acts account we gen­er­ally recall?
And it’s only in Acts that
“two men in white robes” appear
and explain to the dis­ciples what’s happened,
telling them Jesus will return in the same way.

Now don’t for­get Claudi­us and those oth­er emperors.
I’ve sug­ges­ted that the New Test­a­ment descrip­tions of Jesus’s ascension
have a parallel
in the con­tem­por­ary Roman emper­ors being declared divine.
But at the time, of course,
the stor­ies of emper­ors were much bet­ter known
than the story of Jesus.

Whatever it was that the dis­ciples witnessed,
what they are doing is assert­ing a cult
that is a rival to the offi­cial cult of the Roman state.
A cult, a reli­gion, in which their leader
mys­tic­ally ascends into the heav­ens in recog­ni­tion that he is divine.
And of course the dis­ciples, the early Christians,
assert that it is their story which is true,
and that the divin­ity of the emper­ors is bogus.
They use the well-known stor­ies about emperors
to pro­claim the truth about Jesus.

So what is it that they are try­ing to say?

Let’s con­sider two import­ant things.

First
these early Chris­ti­ans were abso­lutely con­vinced that Jesus was divine.
They hadn’t yet worked out the theo­lo­gic­al details,
but there’s no doubt that they had become con­vinced it was true.
They want the world to hear about Jesus;
and
they want the world to hear
that Jesus is divine.

And secondly:
what do the pas­sages say?
“you will be my wit­nesses in Jer­u­s­alem …  to the ends of the earth”
(that’s Jesus in Acts)
and “repent­ance and for­give­ness of sins is to be proclaimed …
to all nations, begin­ning from Jerusalem”
(that’s from Luke).
And this is surely the key les­son for us.
You’ve heard me say it before
and I make no apo­logy for say­ing it again.
The task that Jesus gives his disciples
is to tell every­one the good news about the king­dom of God.
We are to tell people about our hope:
hope in the recon­cili­ation that is God’s love –
hope in recon­cili­ation with God the creator
and
recon­cili­ation with God’s cre­ation, with all our fel­low creatures.

Recon­cili­ation with God the creator
and recon­cili­ation with our fel­low creatures.

What does that mean in prac­tice? What can we each do?

It means liv­ing at love and peace
with our fam­ily and our neighbours,
not get­ting into dis­putes, not bear­ing grudges
– “for­give us our sins as we for­give those who sin against us” –
and this applies to every aspect of our lives:

to per­son­al conflict,
to loc­al and region­al conflict,
to inter­na­tion­al conflict.
And it applies to issues of social justice as well:
to equit­ably shar­ing the bounty of this world –
food, hous­ing, healthcare,
fair employ­ment and fair wages,
end­ing unjust discrimination.
And to our stew­ard­ship of the world that we are called to live in.
It isn’t always easy, is it?
But all this flows directly
from Jesus’s mes­sage of love and reconciliation.

This is Jesus’s mani­festo of com­pas­sion­ate love.

What any one of us can do
may be quite limited,
but it isn’t zero.
In our per­son­al lives,
in our sup­port for char­it­ies, for campaigns,
in how we shop,
how we vote or sup­port polit­ic­al parties,
in how we speak and how we act,
we each of us make
a small but sig­ni­fic­ant impact.

And one final thought.
We’re not alone.
Church is the com­munity of people com­mit­ted to doing this together.
Here should be the primary community
where we care for each other,
and where we are strengthened for that ser­vice in the world,
strengthened by each other
and strengthened by our belief
in the God who loves and reconciles.
Col­lect­ively we help advance the king­dom of God,
where God’s love and com­pas­sion are shared with all,
and peace and justice flow like a river.

Amen.

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4 before Lent: 9 February 2025

on Monday, 10 February 2025 at 11.07 am by Simon Kershaw
categorised as sermon

Read­ings: Isai­ah 6.1–8 [9–13]; Psalm 138; 1 Cor­inthi­ans 15.1–11; Luke 5.1–11

May the words of my mouth and the med­it­a­tion of my heart
be accept­able in your sight, O Lord.

Over the last few weeks,
since the start of January,
we’ve been listen­ing each Sunday
to stor­ies about the begin­ning of Jesus’s ministry.
How Jesus was bap­tized by John the Baptist;
and about the wed­ding at Cana,
where ordin­ary water was turned into abund­ance –
an abund­ance of the best pos­sible wine.
We heard how Jesus came to Nazareth
and him­self read the passage
where Isai­ah foresees
good news for the poor and the oppressed,
for the blind and the captive.

And today we have Jesus
gath­er­ing his first disciples.

In Luke’s account,
which is what we are mostly read­ing this year,
this is the first time Andrew, James and John have appeared,
though Simon Peter gets
a teensy men­tion in the pre­vi­ous chapter.
And yet they do exactly what Jesus says.

What’s going on?

Luke does­n’t really tell us,
but we can get a hint from John’s gospel.
You see, John tells us
that Andrew was a dis­ciple of John the Baptist;
that when Jesus was baptized
John the Baptist poin­ted him out to Andrew,
and Andrew then went and fetched his broth­er Simon Peter
and intro­duced him to Jesus.
Anoth­er dis­ciple with Andrew is not named,
but it is tra­di­tion­ally thought to have been John –
that’s the same John who was one of the fishermen
in today’s story,
the broth­er of James.

So it seems Jesus already knew these four fishermen,
Andrew and Simon Peter, James and John.
But they had not yet begun to travel around with Jesus.
What changed?

Well,
what changed
was that John the Baptist had been arres­ted by Herod
and was now a cap­tive in Herod’s dungeons,
where he would soon be executed.
Can you ima­gine what it must have been like
for those who had flocked to hear him preach
and become his disciples?
It must have been a dark and dif­fi­cult time, mustn’t it?
Well, the gos­pels don’t tell us anything
about what happened to John the Baptist’s followers
when he was arrested –
but it’s easy to ima­gine, I think, that they all ran away,
away from the danger that they too
might be iden­ti­fied with his movement
and his cri­ti­cism of Herod.
Away from the danger
that they too might be arres­ted and per­haps put to death.
That they ran away
back to the anonym­ity of their homes
and their fam­il­ies and their every­day jobs.

And that’s where we find
Andrew and Simon Peter, James and John –
back in their fam­ily busi­nesses of catch­ing fish
and no doubt try­ing to keep a low profile.

And then – Jesus comes back too.

Per­haps he’s real­ized that his time has arrived:
that with John the Baptist silenced
it is his turn to pro­claim the word of God,
to pro­claim the good news about the king­dom of God.
And already people are listen­ing to him:
Luke, in our read­ing today,
says “the crowd was press­ing in on him”.
Why?
Luke tells us they wanted “to hear the word of God” –
Jesus preach­ing about the king­dom of God.

And in this mêlée,
there right in front of Jesus
are some people he knows:
Andrew and Simon Peter, James and John.
Was he look­ing for them?
Or did he just come across them?
What he saw though was an opportunity
to stop the crowd press­ing in on him
and to con­tin­ue to teach from the safety of a boat,
pre­sum­ably just out in the shallows.

And then
they put down their nets
and catch fish –
fish in great abund­ance,
fish almost bey­ond their capa­city to bring to shore.

And this mira­cu­lous catch of fish
provided the per­fect opportunity
for Jesus … to tell a joke.
To me that’s one of the things
that comes across so strongly
in the gos­pel stor­ies about Jesus.
He was just the most won­der­ful speaker –
a really skilled orator.
Jesus knows when to tell a story and when to argue;
he knows when to cross-ques­tion and when to debate;
and he knows how to use
exag­ger­a­tion and sar­casm and humor­ous one-liners
to great effect.

And that’s what he does here, isn’t it?
“Yes, you can carry on catch­ing dead fish,” he says,
“or you can come with me and we’ll fish for liv­ing people.”

Of course it’s not just a one-liner –
the punch­line to the teach­ing about the king­dom of God
they have just heard him deliver,
or the punch­line to the great catch of fish
they have some­how just man­aged to land.
No, it’s not just a one-liner,
it’s also a proph­ecy, isn’t it?
Because we know that’s exactly what these fishermen,
these ordin­ary people,
will become.

They start right here
becom­ing Jesus’s first disciples.
They will fin­ish,
bey­ond the end of Luke’s book,
bring­ing in a mira­cu­lous catch of people,
fol­low­ers of Jesus in great abund­ance.
They were frightened fishermen
who had run away
when John the Baptist had been arrested,
and they would do so again when Jesus is arrested.
And yet
Jesus inspired them and nur­tured them
and gave them what it takes
to be catch­ers of people,
mira­cu­lously so,
fear­lessly pro­claim­ing the king­dom of God’s abund­ant love.

Here we see the very first steps of that journey,
Jesus gath­er­ing together
this group of John the Baptist’s disciples,
who become the core of Jesus’s own disciples.
And it’s a jour­ney that has continued
down the ages and across the world,
right down to us,
to you and to me,
here today in this place
far from the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

Because it is our respons­ib­il­ity now.
We are the dis­ciples sit­ting on
– if you like –
the beach.
We are the disciples
who have heard Jesus’s mes­sage about the king­dom of God –
where the hungry are fed and the home­less housed,
the sick nursed and the stranger cared for,
the oppressed and the per­se­cuted set free,
and where peace and reconciliation
replace bit­ter­ness and war.

And our job,
our job is to share this good news,
to live as people who believe this good news
and to invite our friends and our neighbours
to come and live it
and to share in its great abund­ance.

Thanks be to God.

 

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