Author Archives: Fr. Tom McAlpine

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About Fr. Tom McAlpine

Fr. Tom is a semi-retired priest in the Episcopal Church living in Fitchburg, Wisconsin.

Re the Daily Office Readings May 11 Anno Domini 2020

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The Readings: Leviticus 16:1-19; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 6:1-6,16-18

Of many things we say “It’s not rocket science.” Here, on the threshold of the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur in the Jewish tradition), we might say that rocket science is easy compared to this. This being how G-d deals with human sin with all its destructive effects, Spufford’s HPtFtU (see May 4). And here the prophet’s words are perhaps particularly relevant: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa. 55:8-9). It appears that the closest G-d can come to an explanation intelligible to us humans of the how is a rich set of irreducible analogies. One analogy is the father, torn by conflicting emotions:

“How can I give you up, Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, O Israel?
How can I make you like Admah?
How can I treat you like Zeboiim?
My heart recoils within me;
my compassion grows warm and tender.
I will not execute my fierce anger;
I will not again destroy Ephraim;
for I am God and no mortal,
the Holy One in your midst,
and I will not come in wrath. (Hos. 11:8-9)

Another analogy, the Day of Atonement, which analogy we encounter at various points in the Book of Common Prayer. Perhaps the most prosaic example appears in the Catechism:

Q.           What is the great importance of Jesus’ suffering and death?
A.           By his obedience, even to suffering and death, Jesus made the offering which we could not make; in him we are freed from the power of sin and reconciled to God.

The classic description (not explanation—see Isa. 55:8-9) of the analogy is in the Epistle to the Hebrews. I’ll close this post with a portion of that description. For the continuation of Lev. 16 in tomorrow’s reading I’ll include another portion of Hebrews together with other echoes of the analogy in our Book of Common Prayer.

“But when Christ came as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation), he entered once for all into the Holy Place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, with the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer, sanctifies those who have been defiled so that their flesh is purified, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God! For this reason he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, because a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant” (Heb. 9:11-15).

Re the Daily Office Readings May 10 Anno Domini 2020

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The Readings: Leviticus 8:1-13, 30-36; Hebrews 12:1-14; Luke 4:16-30

The consecration of Aaron and his sons: our reflections could take us in so many directions; here are two.

Among the ceremonies setting individuals apart this account has no equal in the Old Testament. There may have been equally elaborate ceremonies for the consecration of a king, but the Old Testament does not bother recording them. The prophets? Typically, there was no public ceremony, another reason why the credibility of the prophets was a recurrent issue. And yet stories in which a high priest plays a decisive role in the nation’s history are few and far between. Because of who is telling and passing on the stories? Or another illustration of Charles Williams’ dictum “the sacrifice must be made ready, and the fire will strike on another altar”?

The second direction: Peter uses Exodus 19’s “priestly kingdom” language to describe our vocation: “like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ… you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:5, 9). Alexander Schmemann (Of Water & the Spirit) has some words that may help us think about this priestly role:

“…to offer sacrifice, i.e., to be mediator between God and creation, the ‘sanctifier’ of life through its inclusion into the divine will and order.…

“The fall of man is the rejection by him of this priestly calling, his refusal to be priest. The original sin consists in man’s choice of a non-priestly relationship with God and the world. And perhaps no word better expresses the essence of this new, fallen, non-priestly way of life than the one which in our own time has had an amazingly successful career… consumer.… The first consumer was Adam himself. He chose not to be priest but to approach the world as consumer: to ‘eat’ of it, to use and to dominate it for himself, to benefit from it but not to offer, not to sacrifice, not to have it for God and in God.”

As the priest lifts up the bread and wine, asking God to do something wonderful with them, so our human vocation is to daily take whatever is in our hands (including, of course, ourselves) and lift it up to God, asking God to do with it something wonderful.

Three Prayers from Ghana

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Ginger Johnston introduced me to these in the late sixties in Berkeley, California.

I lie on my mat and pray

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
four men squat around the mat
on which I lie,
and pray,
and sleep.
Night comes,
sleep comes.
Dear Lord Jesus, come.
Four men
have told us this story.
Your story.
Two sit at the foot,
two at the head.
They will carry me to you,
Lord Jesus Christ,
when the last breath
beats against my tired lips.
Amen.

Is there work for me?

The day is there.
There is the sun.
Ships are in the harbor.
But is there work for me?
The others have friends.
They also have money.
They have given
a dash of whiskey.
And I stand aside
and have no work.
Can’t you make work for me
in the harbor,
dear Lord,
so that I can share money
with my wife and children?
Then, on Sunday,
I can put something in the plate.
Please, let me have work.
Dear Lord Jesus,
we praise you.
Amen.

I lie down to sleep

Come,
Lord,
and cover me with the night.
Spread your grace over us
as you assured us You would do.

Your promises are more
than all the stars in the sky;
Your mercy is deeper than the night.
Lord,
it will be cold.
The night comes with its breath of death.
Night comes,
the end comes,
but Jesus Christ comes also.

Lord,
we wait for Him
day and night.
Amen.

From I lie on my mat and pray and I sing your praise all the day long, edited by Fritz Pawelzik.

Re the Daily Office Readings 5/9/2020

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The Readings: Exodus 40:18-38; 1 Thessalonians 4:1-12; Matthew 5:38-48

Component by component, Moses sets up the tabernacle until the glory of the LORD fills the tabernacle. What is this like? Like this.

In our world’s future: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’” (Rev. 21:1-4).

Today’s text: only a foretaste, but truly a foretaste.

The other readings…

Reading today’s Gospel with Exodus still ringing in our ears, recall that Matthew frames his Gospel with God-with-us (“Emmanuel” in 1:23; “I am with you always” in 28:20). I wonder: is there some relation between Matthew’s God-with-us and the expectations Jesus lays out in Matt 5-7 (the “Sermon on the Mount”), life in the camp around the Tabernacle as it were? The Tabernacle completed, the LORD’s glory very visible. Is the point of Matt 5-7 that the LORD’s glory be very visible in the LORD’s children?

(I wondered about some of this when Matt 5 appeared in the Sunday Lectionary (6th Sunday after the Epiphany) and have posted that sermon on this blog.)

Making G-d’s Generosity Visible: A Sermon for the 6th Sunday after Epiphany

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Good Shepherd, Sun Prairie, February 16, 2020.

The Readings: Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 119:1-8; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37

Three years ago, I had the privilege of being with you to celebrate and to preach when we last heard these lessons. I focused on the Gospel text: how are we supposed to hear it today? Some interpreters think Jesus is promulgating a new law, others, that he is encouraging us to pay attention to the intention of the law. I sided with the second group for a variety of reasons. If “do not be angry” is a law, then Jesus is in trouble, because he is periodically angry, even calling the scribes and Pharisees “blind fools.” Again, almost from the start teachers have had to warn the enthusiasts that “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away” is not to be taken literally. Again, the various destructive attempts of the church to make “no divorce” a law are evidence enough of the shortcomings of this strategy. So, as sermons go, not a bad one, and I hope it was helpful.

Today I want to approach the text differently, focusing on its immediate context in Matthew, because it’s really important that today’s lesson is not recording the first words out of Jesus’ mouth. Or out of Matthew’s, for that matter. Recall: Matthew devotes the first two chapters to Jesus’ birth, starting with a genealogy that highlights his link with Abraham and David, and includes the story of the Magi, who set Jerusalem on edge asking “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?” The third chapter introduces John the Baptist and closes with Jesus’ baptism with the heavenly voice: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Whatever else that voice is doing, it identifies Jesus as royal.

So—chapter four—we hear the temptation story, arguably about just what sort of king Jesus is going to be, about just what sort of kingdom Jesus is going to announce. Jesus returns to Galilee: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” The kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, the reign of God: throughout the Gospels Jesus tries to help us catch the vision. Here are two of the parables from later in Matthew:

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.”

Find that treasure, find that pearl, and so many issues sort themselves out. Returning to today’s Gospel, hearers often find the teaching absurdly demanding. And it is: if we haven’t encountered the treasure/the pearl. As we begin to catch the vision, the teaching approaches being self-evident.

Chapter 5, in which we find today’s Gospel, opens with the Beatitudes. Catch the vision of the kingdom, and you understand who is fortunate: the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, etc. Or, take seriously Jesus’ declaration that these are the fortunate, and you get a sense of what sort of kingdom Jesus is proclaiming.

And then comes what may be the truly scary part. It’s one thing to hear Jesus say “I am the light of the world.” Wonderful: it’s on Jesus. But here, right after the Beatitudes: “You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world.” We’re on the critical path for the world’s healing, the world’s restoration: “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

It’s important that that light shine, that God’s generous character be visible in the lives of those who bear God’s name. That, I think, is close to the heart of Jesus’ quarrel with the scribes and Pharisees, that they were spending too much energy seeking their individual purity, and way too little energy making God’s generosity visible.

Making God’s generosity visible: that may not be a bad way of summarizing what Jesus is getting at in today’s lesson. Handle your anger, handle your sexuality, in ways that make God’s generosity visible.

OK. Where does that leave us? I’ve read today’s lesson as flowing from Jesus’ vision of the kingdom. As we catch Jesus’ vision—and note that there’s no space between Jesus Himself and Jesus’ vision of the kingdom—texts like today’s lesson move from being absurdly demanding toward being self-evident.

But there’s where the rub is. Our vision of Jesus and the kingdom varies in clarity—to put it generously. But it’s fundamental. The Jesuit Pedro Arrupe put it this way:

“Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will direct everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you will do with your evenings, how you will spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.

“Fall in love, stay in love and it will decide everything.”[1]

It’s easy to get the impression that all this—motioning around the sanctuary—is about what we’re supposed to do. And what we’re supposed to do is, of course, important. But that risks missing the point. The point is what this generous God has done, is doing, and will be doing, and that this generous God invites us to join in the quest that what pleases this God be done on earth as it is in heaven. It’s worth protecting time for this reality to work on our imaginations, to mess with our imaginations. So we gather here, and at home we pray and open the Bible to catch and hold this vision, or, as Fr. Arrupe put it, to fall in love and stay in love. It’s a royal waste of time that our tradition cannot recommend highly enough.

But, since our bodies and spirits are intimately connected, it’s also true that as we follow Jesus’ teaching so that our bodies make God’s generosity visible, our spirits find it easier to catch and hold this vision of this God’s generous kingdom.

Let’s give John’s witnesses in the Revelation the last word:

17 The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let everyone who hears say, “Come.” And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

[1] From James Martin’s The Jesuit Guide to (almost) everything, p. 219.

Re the Daily Office Readings 5/8/2020

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The Readings: Exodus 34:18-35; 1 Thessalonians 3:1-13; Matthew 5:27-37

Two brief observations. “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk” (v.26b). The command also occurs in 23:19, one of many bits of evidence that a complex history of tradition and editing lies behind the present form of these chapters. Exodus 34 rather looks like an alternative tradition of the Sinai covenant, repurposed editorially as an account of the covenant renewal.

Re the specific commandment, Jeffrey Tigay in the Jewish Study Bible comments “As noted by Philo…Ibn Ezra, and Rashbam, this law is similar to the rules that forbid acts of insensitivity against animals such as slaughtering cattle on the same day as their young, sacrificing cattle in their first week, and taking a mother bird along with her fledglings or her eggs (22.29; Lev. 22:27-28; Deut. 22:6-7).” One example of the largely untapped resources for ethical reflection on how we live on this earth with our fellow creatures.

(For “how we live” less about altruism and more about self-interest, this from The Guardian.)

“The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (Jn. 1:17). True, but quite misleading if taken as a description of contrasting patterns of divine action in the Old and New Testaments. Even the most cursory reading of Exodus 32-34 shows that the giving of the law and its re-giving to this “stiff-necked people” (34:9; recall Spufford’s HPtFtU) is sheer grace on the part of Jesus’ Father:

“The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

The other readings…

I’ve found it hard to read 1 Thessalonians sympathetically this time around: Paul too often sounds smarmy. But then I’m reading from a (sub-)culture with different rhetorical norms, and from a group not experiencing persecution. Abraham Smith has been helpful (again), noticing how much of Paul’s vocabulary challenges the pretensions of Rome, including ‘peace and security’, ‘gospel’, ‘savior’, and even ‘father’ (Augustus had really liked that title). In that fundamental respect Moses and Paul are working the same project: nurturing a community that is life-giving, not death-dealing. In this country we have a way to go before Christians are again known as the folk whose political allegiances lie Elsewhere.

Re the Daily Office Readings 5/7/2020

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The Readings: Exodus 34:1-17; 1 Thessalonians 2:13-20; Matthew 5:21-26

Moses’ intercession succeeds. The LORD proclaims the Name and announces the renewal of the treaty (covenant)—along with its conditions.

The proclamation of the Name (vv.6-7) is, judging by the number of times it is cited elsewhere (e.g., Numbers 14:17-19; Nehemiah 9:16-19; Psalm 103:8; Jonah 4:1-3), the most important divine description in the Old Testament. Jewish tradition hears in it the thirteen attributes of divine mercy, and the text plays an important role in the liturgy. Without it, Jesus’ life and teaching make no sense.

The treaty and its conditions: here’s something from Brueggemann (New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary) to chew on:

“The covenant requires that Israel undertake complete loyalty to God in a social context where attractive alternatives exist. In that ancient world, the attractive alternative was the established religion of the inhabitants of the land, with all its altars, pillars, and sacred poles—its technology to ensure productivity. In our own Western context, mutatis mutandis, the attractive alternatives to covenanted faith are likely to be the techniques of consumerism, which provide ‘the good life’ without rigorous demand or cost and without the covenantal requirement of the neighbor. Then, as now, the jealous God calls for a decision against that easy alternative.”

The other readings…

…leave me with more questions than answers. Jesus’ “if you are angry” is probably not about an emotion but—given the rest of the paragraph—an action. Paul’s “the Jews… [who] displease God and oppose everyone”: an example of this anger? Would it have been better to end v.16 with “overtaken us at last”? (And whatever Paul was doing, to what degree is he responsible for the afterlife of his words?) Abraham Smith (also The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary) makes the helpful observation that Paul’s words leave the Roman Empire offstage, although “the Jews” (however understood) pale in comparison to the fear and anxiety the Empire generates.

None of this is academic. We have enemies, who, unless we’re close to the top of the food chain, do us real harm. Anger is often (particularly for men) our go-to emotion, and strains to transition from emotion to action. What do I do with that? When do I use “them,” when “us”? LORD have mercy.

Re the Daily Office Readings 5/6/2020

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The Readings: Exodus 33:1-23; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-12; Matthew 5:17-20

The chapter opens with a divine announcement of a bleak future: Moses and the people Moses brought from Egypt (v.1) are to go to the promised land but without the Lord’s presence. The people show signs of serious repentance; Moses continues to intercede, gaining first the Lord’s presence for Moses’ benefit (v.14) and finally the Lord’s presence for the people’s benefit (v.17). The point of Moses asking to see the Lord’s glory (v.18) is unclear; the effect is a parallel between the divine manifestation to the people and the making of the covenant (chapters 19-24) and the divine manifestation to Moses and the renewal of the covenant (chapter 34).

Childs comments “The Old Testament rather runs the risk of humanizing God through its extreme anthropomorphism—God changes his mind, v.5—than undercut the absolute seriousness with which God takes the intercession of his servant. Moses, on his part, refuses anything less than the full restoration of Israel as God’s special people.”

Abraham’s intercession gave Sodom and Gomorrah a decent shot at survival. Moses’ intercession secures a future for his people. To what intercession might this text motivate us?

And speaking of prayer…

The sandhill cranes were feeding in our yard again, causing this from Madeleine L’Engle’s And it was good to jump out:

“I was asked how we could pray for our planet, with the devastating wars which are tearing it apart, with greed fouling the air we breathe and the water we drink. And I replied that the only way I know how to pray for the body of our planet is to see it as God meant it to be, to see the sky as we sometimes see it in the country in wintertime, crisp with stars, or to see the land with spring moving across it, the fruit trees flowering and the grass greening, and at night hearing the peepers calling back and forth, and the high, sweet singing of the bats.”

There’s something of L’Engle’s “to see it as God meant it to be” in the gift of the presence of the cranes with their beauty and grace. L’Engle makes me wonder if their presence isn’t also an invitation to understand (offer up?) my delight as prayer, not only for them but for all God’s creatures, and an invitation to learn to see the beauty and grace proper to all these creatures.

A Prayer of Protection from the Coronavirus

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Lord our God, You who are rich in mercy,
and with careful wisdom direct our lives,
listen to our prayer, receive our repentance for our sins,
bring an end to this new infectious disease, this new epidemic,
just as you averted the punishment of your people in the time of David the King.
You who are the Physician of our souls and bodies,
grant restored health to those who have been seized by this illness,
raising them from their bed of suffering,
so that they might glorify You, O merciful Savior,
and preserve in health those who have not been infected.
By your grace, Lord, bless, strengthen, and preserve,
all those who out of love and sacrifice care for the sick,
either in their homes or in the hospitals.
Remove all sickness and suffering from your people,
and teach us to value life and health as gifts from You.
Give us Your peace, O God,
and fill our hearts with unflinching faith in Your protection,
hope in Your help,
and love for You and our neighbor.
For Yours it is to have mercy on us and save us, O our God,
and to You we ascribe glory: to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,
now and forever, to the ages of ages. Amen.

(Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America; h/t Bp. Matt Gunter

For additional prayers from the Archdiocese, here.