Category Archives: Daily Office Readings

Re Daily Office Readings 4/14/2020

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The Readings: Exodus 12:28-39; 1 Corinthians 15:12-28; Mark 16:9-20

Some time ago we read:

And the LORD said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders that I have put in your power; but I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go. Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the LORD: Israel is my firstborn son. I said to you, “Let my son go that he may worship me.” But you refused to let him go; now I will kill your firstborn son.'” (Exod. 4:21-23)

And in today’s reading it all plays out. There’s a sort of brutal symmetry to it all. Pharaoh had commanded that all newborn males be thrown into the Nile (1:22); G-d or “the destroyer” (12:23) kills the firstborn, and the Egyptian army will soon perish in another body of water. Pharaoh sins; all the people suffer. Sarna: “The Torah recognizes societal responsibility; thus, the entire Egyptian people is subject to judgment for having tolerated the inflexibly perverse will of the pharaoh” (JPS Torah Commentary). Perhaps, but just what “the entire Egyptian people” were in a position to do is an open question, as it is in many other times and places.

Mercifully, all this is not the last word re Egypt. From Isaiah: “On that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the LORD of hosts has blessed, saying, ‘Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my heritage’” (19:24-25).

“…how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?” What’s at stake? Hays’ argument merits reflection: “The resurrection of the dead is necessary in order to hold creation and redemption together [italics his]. If there is no resurrection of the dead, God has capriciously abandoned the bodies he has given us. The promise of resurrection of the body, however, makes Christian hope concrete and confirms God’s love for the created order. God, the creator of the world, has not abandoned the creation. Furthermore, this teaching is consistent with what we have come to understand about the psychosomatic unity of the human person. Contrary to the ideas that held sway in much of Hellenistic antiquity, we are not ethereal souls imprisoned in bodies. Rather, our identity is bound up inextricably with our bodily existence. If we are to be saved, we must be saved as embodied persons, whatever that may mean” (Interpretation commentary).

Re the Daily Office Readings April 13, 2020

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The Readings: Exodus 12:14-27; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Mark 16:1-8

The Exodus reading, equally concerned to narrate the one-off events and to institute their yearly remembrance. It succeeded, and continues to succeed. (Twenty centuries later in Connecticut our Jewish friends would sell us their leaven at this feast, which we’d sell back to them a week later.) What about these one-off events is so important that such care is invested in preserving its memory?

Paul, just warming up for the argument that starts in v.12 (“Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?”). We can come back to it later in the week.

“So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid” (Mark. 16:8). Familiarity breeds, if not contempt, complacency. If the dead don’t stay dead, if G-d raises from the dead one legally executed by the governing authorities instituted by G-d (Rom 13:1), perhaps more terror and amazement are in order?

Since the first century readers have been puzzled by the ending to Mark’s Gospel. The various endings following v.8 are almost certainly not original; did Mark intend v.8 as the ending, or did his ending somehow get lost or not get written?

I like what Joel Marcus does in his Anchor Yale Bible commentary, reminding us that v.8 is something like that scene in Genesis when Sarah laughs at the divine promise of a son, and then denies the laugh “for she was afraid”) (Genesis 18:9-15). “Here, as in our periscope, there is a divine promise of life springing out of deadness, a promise that human incredulity, which is linked with fear, finds impossible to accept” (Marcus). And it’s something like the ending of Jonah (and the ending of the parable of the two lost sons) in which the divine question posed to Jonah (and the elder brother) hangs unanswered because we the readers must answer it (Jonah 4:1-11; Luke 15:11-32).

Marcus concludes: “Since Mark does not wrap up all the loose ends, we have no alternative but to return to the inception of the narrative, “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ” (1:1), and read it again as our story… Mark’s Gospel is just the beginning of the good news, because Jesus’ story has become ours, and we take it up where Mark leaves off.”

Celebrating Easter with the poets

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Inspired by today’s feast and tomorrow’s reading from 1 Corinthians…

“Death be not proud”

John Donne

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou are slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

From The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

C. S. Lewis

‘Who’s done it?’ cried Susan. ‘What does it mean? Is it more magic?’

‘Yes!’ said a great voice behind their backs. ‘It is more magic.’ They looked around. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it apparently had grown again) stood Aslan himself.

…

‘But what does it all mean?’ Asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.

‘It means,’ said Aslan, ‘that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.’

 “Seven Stanzas at Easter”

John Updike

Make no mistake: if he rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit,
The amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
Each soft spring recurrent;
It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the
Eleven apostles;
It was as His flesh; ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes
The same valved heart
That—pierced—died, withered, paused, and then regathered
Out of enduring Might
New strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,
Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded
Credulity of earlier ages:
Let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
Not a stone in a story,
But the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of
Time will eclipse for each of us
The wide light of day.

And if we have an angel at the tomb,
Make it a real angel,
Weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in
The dawn light, robed in real linen
Spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
For our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
Lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed
By the miracle,
And crushed by remonstrance.

Easter (April 12, 2020)

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The Readings: Morning: Exodus 12:1-14; John 1:1-18; Evening: Isaiah 51:9-11; Luke 24:13-35

To whom am I listening?

That first Easter the disciples were mostly hunkered down, afraid, unsure to whom to listen. So this year—alas—we’re well-positioned to celebrate with them.

The disciples on the road to Emmaus to the (risen) Jesus: “Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him” (Lk. 24:22-24).

So maybe listen to the women? At Evening Prayer we traditionally join Mary in her song (Luke 1:46-55):

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; *
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed: *
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his Name.
He has mercy on those who fear him *
in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm, *
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things, *
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel, *
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
The promise he made to our fathers, *
 to Abraham and his children for ever.

(In passing, for “the strength of his arm,” recall “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD!” from the Isaiah reading, and “to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?” which occurs in the Isaiah text which forms the virtual script for Good Friday.)

What if we use Mary’s song as the lens for encountering today’s Event (Jesus 1, Death 0)?

These days it can be deeply unnerving to realize that things may not get back to normal. Perhaps Mary’s song can remind us that that’s not what we’re about.

Mary, Moses (in Exodus), the speaker in the Isaiah text, John the Baptist (in John), “some women” (in Luke)—so many witnesses. And today, so many additional witnesses whose voices this world’s pharaohs would also silence.

To whom am I listening?

Holy Saturday

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The Readings: Lamentations 3:37-58; Hebrews 4:1-16; Romans 8:1-11

The Lectionary readings bridge from the pain of Good Friday to the joy of the Jesus’ resurrection. On both sides of the bridge, the perhaps unexpected call to repentance and self-awareness:

Let us test and examine our ways, and return to the LORD. (Lam. 3:40)

Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one may
fall through such disobedience as theirs. (Heb. 4:11)

Even here, it appears to remain true that

  • Nothing is foolproof.
  • The line between wisdom and folly is often razor-thin. (See particularly Proverbs 26:1-12, particularly vv.4-5.)

Repentance itself is tricky. On the corporate level, C. S. Lewis’ “Dangers of National Repentance” warns “The first and fatal charm of national repentance is, therefore, the encouragement it gives to turn from the bitter task of repenting our own sins to the congenial one of bewailing—but, first, of denouncing—the conduct of others” (reprinted in God in the Dock; for a longer excerpt, Ken Symes’ blog).

In this election year the sins of our opponents are important; the challenge is to not let awareness and amendment of our own sins get lost in the shuffle.

“Indeed, the word of God is living and active.” In the tradition in which I received my early formation this was the go-to text regarding the Bible. Reading it today: it’s not about the power of God’s word as we choose to deploy it, but as God is already deploying it for/against us. To be wise is to recognize the deployment, to be a fool, to ignore it—like the wilderness generation of whom the epistle’s author is speaking.

Still speaking of our salvation, hard to say whether it’s Jesus or the Spirit doing the really heavy lifting. Jesus’ victory brings the Spirit onstage in a new way (Romans 8); it’s the Spirit that deploys the word for/against us (Heb 3:7—hat tip to Koester’s commentary). So, already in Holy Week: “Come, Holy Spirit.”

Good Friday

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The Readings: Lamentations 3:1-9, 19-33; 1 Peter 1:10-20; John 13:36-38 (Morning)

“You could not step twice into the same river” (Heraclitus). And what will we encounter this Good Friday?

Sometimes we use a confession that includes these lines:

We repent of the evil that enslaves us,
the evil we have done,
and the evil done on our behalf. (Enriching our Worship 1)

The “evil done on our behalf” is on full display at Golgotha. This is what national security and domestic tranquility require—repeatedly.

Peter, neither the worst of the apostles nor an average apostle; one of Jesus’ inner circle. Yet “Very truly, I tell you, before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times.” These days it is easy to be (at least) impatient with Christians on the other side of whatever cultural or political fences are important to us. Perhaps Peter can remind us of our own vulnerability and prompt us to pray for grace that we all may when necessary acknowledge our errors and trust in God’s forgiveness.

The testimony of the Victim:

The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul that seeks him.
…
Although he causes grief, he will have compassion
according to the abundance of his steadfast love;
for he does not willingly afflict
or grieve anyone.

There’s no promise of answers here. The more we learn, the more questions we accumulate, sometimes gut-wrenching questions. There is the testimony that however absurd it may appear, waiting and seeking are appropriate (necessary!) responses to this G-d. That’s a testimony I need.

Maundy Thursday

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The Readings: Lamentations 2:10-18; 1 Corinthians 10:14-17; 11:27-32; Mark 14:12-25

This Maundy Thursday the last two readings focus on the Lord’s Supper.

I’ve extended the second reading for the sake of this exhortation: “Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup.” From the context it’s reasonably clear that Paul isn’t exhorting the hearers to confession before communion or to a proper eucharistic theology. At this time the Lord’s Supper was still part of a shared meal, and what horrifies Paul is that everyone is, so to speak, eating out of their own picnic basket, with the pride and callousness of the well-to-do on full display. And the one Body, Christ’s Body, the Church (1 Cor 10:17), suffers. In Israel some congruence was necessary between what happened in the temple and what happened outside the temple (e.g., Isa 1:10-17); in the Church some congruence between the reception of the Body and Blood of Christ at the Lord’s Supper and the ways all the members of Christ’s Body receive (treat) each other.

“Do this in remembrance of me.” “Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacles of human greatness to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth. Men have found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold…” (Dom Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy, 744).

But this week? Earlier this month Fr. Chris Arnold pointed us to Rev. Ruth Meyers’ “Spiritual Communion in a Season of Social Distancing”. Meyers notes various current strategies, highlighting the prayer for spiritual communion found in the Prayer Book for the Armed Services:

“In union, O Lord, with your faithful people at every altar of your Church, where the Holy Eucharist is now being celebrated, I desire to offer to you praise and thanksgiving. I remember your death, Lord Christ; I proclaim your resurrection; I await your coming in glory. Since I cannot receive you today in the Sacrament of your Body and Blood, I beseech you to come spiritually into my heart. Cleanse and strengthen me with your grace, Lord Jesus, and let me never be separated from you. May I live in you and you in me, in this life and in the life to come. Amen.”

Another reason why I’m thankful for our Companion Diocese in Masvingo (Zimbabwe).

Re Daily Office Readings 4/8/2020

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The Readings: Lamentations 2:1-9; 2 Corinthians 1:23-2:11; Mark 12:1-11

I wonder when and why we started reading Lamentations during Holy Week. The Jews used Lamentations on the anniversary of the destruction of the temple; Jesus had spoken of himself as temple (e.g, John 2:19): perhaps that was the route. But once in place, reading Lamentations invites further reflection. Here’s Gregory of Nazianzus on a somewhat different theme: “For that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved” (Critique of Apollinarius and Apollinarianism). ““For that which He has not assumed He has not healed…” So yes, Jesus’ death under Pontius Pilate is one thing, and our current desolation (COVID-19) and brutal politics another thing, but has Jesus not assumed these too? “If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there” (Ps 139:8b).

When we read the Passion during Holy Week we say/shout “Crucify him!” Today’s Gospel can help us chew on that. Jesus’ parable is a rereading of Isaiah’s vineyard parable (5:1-7), where our sympathies lie with the vineyard owner. Times change, and in Jesus’ time absentee landlords are usually part of the brutal politics “grinding the face of the poor” (also Isaiah: 3:15). So we, heirs of the revolution some 200 years ago against this sort of thing, where do our sympathies lie? What claim does this vineyard owner have on us, really?

April 2020: in what ways are we experiencing this G-d as absent from us, present with us, distant, near?

Re Daily Office Readings 4/7/2020

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The Readings: Lamentations 1:17-22; 2 Corinthians 1:8-22; Mark 11:27-33

“For in him [Jesus] every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes’.”

We are approaching the Great Vigil, which is also an extended celebration of Paul’s ringing affirmation. From the story of the deliverance at the Sea (Exodus) to the vision of the dry bones (Ezekiel): Jesus God’s “Yes” to God’s promises. Someone we might desire to spend time with, which desire is the motor for the Daily Office.

Spending time with Jesus: not always smooth sailing, as the reading from Mark reminds us. Here a short detour may help. David Zarefsky does the course “Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning” for the Teaching Company. Arguing (properly done) “is a process, analogous to the scientific method, for determining what one believes is true about matters that are uncertain and contingent.” And arguing “is fundamentally a cooperative enterprise” in which the participants “risk being shown to be wrong” (from the course summaries).

The religious leaders are unwilling to risk, unwilling to acknowledge anything that does not support their position (e.g., the source of John’s baptism). So the argument goes nowhere, even with Jesus, in whom “every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes’.” I wonder if those leaders prided themselves on that culture’s equivalent of transparency.

Transparency. We want it in our leaders. Transparency when acknowledging the truth is damaging? We demand it of our opponents, are tempted to give it a pass with our allies. And with ourselves?

“For in him [Jesus] every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes’.” But apparently being God’s “Yes” doesn’t mean being willing to play games. What am I willing to risk when I approach this Jesus?

Re Daily Office Readings 4/6/2020

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The Readings: Lamentations 1:1-2, 6-12; 2 Corinthians 1:1-7; Mark 11:12-25

vehicles beside buildings
Photo by Anas Hinde on Pexels.com

Then there are the mornings when engaging with the readings is like trying to drink from a fire fighter’s hose…

“How lonely sits the city that once was full of people!” This coronavirus disaster, in the USA both natural and human in origin (google comparative national infection and unemployment rates)… Some mornings we may not get past the first reading.

When, and only when, we’re ready to do something other than lament, the other readings offer two paths. Paul: solidarity, in the form of consolation (or encouragement). How might I console, encourage, show solidarity? Which groups particularly need our solidarity?

Mark sandwiches one sign-act (the cursing of the fig tree) around another (the cleansing of the temple). Both seem to point to the temple’s destruction (cue Lamentations?). G-d also is in the game; G-d bats last. And Jesus points to our second path: prayer. Prayer, unlimited in power (vv.23-24), but with a demanding requirement: “Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.” I wonder: the demand to forgive does not immobilize Jesus (see the two sign-acts); how does the demand affect how he carries these out?

Between lamentation, solidarity, prayer and forgiveness my hands need not be idle.