Category Archives: Daily Office Readings

Palm Sunday

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The Readings: Morning Prayer: Zechariah 9:9-12; 1 Timothy 6:12-16;
Evening Prayer: Zechariah 12:9-11; 13:1, 7-9; Luke 19:41-48

We are entering Holy Week, filled with liturgies that can move us to tears. Luke’s telling of the Triumphal Entry provides a sort of counterpoint: in the middle of the Entry Luke narrates Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace!” We weep for Jesus; Jesus weeps for us.

Peace is implicit in the staging of the Entry, which takes Zechariah 9:9-10 as its script: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war-horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations…” But Jesus weeps for Jerusalem: the process will be more complicated, bloodier, than this text might suggest.

Of course it will be. Jerusalem was no more willing to open its gates to Jesus than Washington was to Martin Luther King Jr., whose feast we celebrated yesterday.

Peace. Later in the week the crowd will choose Barabbas, leader of an insurrection, over Jesus, further sealing the trajectory that will end in Jerusalem’s destruction a few decades later. “If you had only recognized the things that make for peace!”

April 2020. What are the things that make for peace?

Re Daily Office Readings 4/4/2020

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The Readings: Exodus 10:21-11:8; 2 Corinthians 4:13-18; Mark 10:46-52.

Pharaoh’s hard heart is a recurrent motif in the plague cycle, a source of understandable anxiety to readers. Sometimes it’s simply noted (e.g., 7:13), sometimes attributed to Pharaoh (e.g., 8:15), sometimes to G-d (e.g., 4:21). The motif resists bowdlerization, but mirrors an old Greek proverb: “Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad” (Longfellow’s paraphrase). Perhaps in this story Pharaoh prayed to his own gods for strength to deal with the uppity Hebrews; G-d granted the request. So file under (1) “Be careful what you pray for” and (2) “Don’t tempt G-d to use this weapon”?

Paul’s “But even if our bodies are breaking down on the outside…” resonates. I’m in the fortunate part of the spectrum, but every year my performance on the road bike’s a little less impressive, and prostate cancer did a number on last year’s calendar. Two things keep “bodies… breaking down” from dominating Paul’s story: “the person that we are on the inside is being renewed every day” (cf. the General Thanksgiving’s “means of grace”) and Paul’s participation in a project larger than himself: “As grace increases to benefit more and more people, it will cause gratitude to increase, which results in God’s glory” (v.15; translations in this paragraph from CEB). So if I find myself not looking forward to what today will bring, it doesn’t have to be that way. With Bartimaeus, “My teacher, let me see again.”

We celebrate the saints also because they show us how to enact our Scriptures, and today, Martin Luther King, Jr. Confronting the modern pharaohs, he got it right: racism, poverty, militarism: profoundly interconnected. And he sought effective ways to challenge them. And he dreamed.

Re the Daily Office Readings 4/3/2020

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Throughout 2nd Corinthians Paul’s in an impossible situation, trying—from a distance, without FaceTime or Zoom—to warn a congregation he’s invested heavily in against “money-grubbing ‘preachers’” (11:12; Peterson’s translation) without sounding like it’s simply Paul’s ego at stake. Readers differ on the degree to which Paul succeeds. What does seem to be at stake: what leadership’s about.

That’s a very old question. Well before king David, there’s Jotham’s biting parable. And Jesus sums up the answer we’re too familiar with: “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.” (Here’s where Pharaoh comes into this reflection, with his self-exaltation (v.17) bringing repeated disasters on his people.) And Jesus sets out for the Twelve a different model, ending with “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (10:45).

We could go many directions with that; here are two not related to being in an election year. Jesus regularly claims that he’s just doing what his Father does (e.g., Jn 5:19). So is Jesus’ description of his own work a fair description of the Father’s, of what we encounter from Genesis to Malachi? It’s not the description of God we usually start with; perhaps it should be (Isa 46:3-4)?

Meanwhile, us, the clay jars. Sometimes we have more scope for leadership than others; how are we using whatever scope we have? Dan Schutte has a good song about that; I’ll let him have the last word.

Re the Daily Office Readings 4/2/2020

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The Daily Office Readings of the Episcopal Church (USA) are available at a number of websites including Mission St Clare (https://www.missionstclare.com/english/) as part of Morning Prayer.


The good news: the glory of the Lord repeatedly enters the world that Pharaoh/Caesar/The Powers That Be presume to control. To those shepherds in the fields outside Bethlehem: “Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified” (Lk. 2:9). The glory of the LORD, like being in the middle of those thunder and lightning storms that shake the earth—but present to Elijah in that “sound of sheer silence” (1 Ki. 19:12). And this glorious G-d desires our freedom.

So veils—and the synagogue has no monopoly on veils—can only be provisional. Ditto anything—like the man’s possessions in Mark—to which we attach for freedom. Can we detach? Jesus: “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible” (Mk. 10:27). So Paul speaks of a life-long process: “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:18). There’s always fresh work to be done each Lent.

And prudence also suggests attention to the process:

“All things (e.g., a camel’s journey through
A needle’s eye) are possible, it’s true.
But picture how the camel feels, squeezed out
In one long bloody thread from tail to snout.”
C. S. Lewis Poems p.134

Re the Daily Office Readings 4/1/2020

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The Daily Office Readings of the Episcopal Church (USA) are available at a number of websites including Mission St Clare (https://www.missionstclare.com/english/) as part of Morning Prayer.

Reading strategies. In Exodus we encounter the first of the plagues (the water of the Nile into blood) that will culminate in Israel’s exodus from Egypt. The prophet Hosea addressing Israel gives us a way of reading these plague stories:

“Hear the word of the LORD, O people of Israel; for the LORD has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land. Swearing, lying, and murder, and stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns, and all who live in it languish; together with the wild animals and the birds of the air, even the fish of the sea are perishing.” (Hos. 4:1-3)

Exploitation and oppression in the human community spill over into the rest of creation. Environmental degradation: too often the result of the powerful overriding the powerless. What happens if we read the plagues as God compressing the process to make it more visible, to give Pharaoh opportunity to repent?

In Mark, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” The theme of mission (recall Bp. Curry’s “Jesus Movement” video) might make us think—it made the disciples think—that in this Important Project marginal folk like children are, well, marginal. But in another of Jesus’ stunning reversals (recall the Pharisee and tax collector praying in the temple story (Lk 18:10ff)), even receiving the kingdom has something to do with owning one’s marginality. So here a possible reading strategy is to go contemplative: have/ how have I been willing to receive the kingdom as a little child? When was the last time I let Jesus take me up in his arms, lay his hands on me, bless me?

Re the Daily Office Readings 3/31/2020

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“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me…” A sharp warning, with no guarantee that it’s not also applicable to us hearers. So let’s chew on it a bit.

Today’s reading is part of a unit that perhaps starts in v.30 with Jesus warning the disciples “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands” (v.31). And we think “the hands of the priests, Romans, etc.” But then Mark tells us about the disciples arguing over who’s the greatest, John rebuking an unaffiliated exorcist, and (later) the disciples rebuking the folk bringing little children to Jesus—so maybe Jesus’ “human hands” isn’t about them.

Stumbling blocks look like one of the ongoing topics in Jesus’ arguments with the Pharisees and scribes, e.g., hand-washing, where Jesus cites Isaiah: “This people honors me with their lips, / but their hearts are far from me; / in vain do they worship me, / teaching human precepts as doctrines” and concludes “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition” (7:6b-8).

And there’s the challenge, because from the inside it can be really hard to distinguish between the commandment of God and human tradition. It’s easy to assume that our human traditions faithfully reflect God’s commandment.

So Jesus’ warning isn’t superfluous. Ironically, tragically, we have an example in today’s epistle: “women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church” (vv.34-35). Our Lectionary omits these verses, for on text-critical grounds they’re “almost certainly an early gloss” (Hays), not to mention flatly contradicting Paul’s earlier words (11:2-16). It’s those stumbling blocks we put in place with the best (?!) of motives…

The psalmist got it right: after eloquently praising the Law, “But who can detect their errors? / Clear me from hidden faults” (19:12).

Re the Daily Office Readings 3/30/2020

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The Daily Office Readings of the Episcopal Church (USA) are available at a number of websites including Mission St Clare (https://www.missionstclare.com/english/) as part of Morning Prayer.

What’s the Church for, anyway? I ask because Paul introduces a new word, “building up” into his argument (vv. 3, 5, 12, 26). And “building up” is usually for something. In our first reading it’s the Exodus; in the New Testament it’s… Well, Presiding Bp. Curry talks about the Jesus Movement (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcipDDJoiIs); a sort of Exodus 2.0.

If something on that scale is the project, it’s important that Moses and Aaron work well together, that the folk in Corinth use their gifts in ways that build the church up, that the disciples stop arguing about who’s the greatest.

Paul’s argument about tongues and prophecy is, I think, more broadly about the difference between gifts that primarily benefit me (tongues) and those that primarily benefit those around me (prophecy). So Paul wants me to pay attention. Yes, I enjoy using my gifts. But am I using them in ways that best equip my community for its work?

BTW, Exod. 4:24-26 has long been a puzzle to interpreters. Propp in his Anchor Bible commentary (1999) may have made some progress. Here’s his summary: “Although Yahweh commands Moses to return to Egypt (4:19), he still holds him accountable for the death of the Egyptian. Zipporah sheds the blood of their son and dabs Moses’ penis with it, thereby expiating her husband’s sin.” Why’s that important? It’s easy to misread Exodus in a nationalistic way (Hebrews good, Egyptians bad). Here, on the eve of the exodus, that murdered Egyptian’s blood (2:11-12) is so important to God that God jeopardizes the whole project—until Zipporah finds a resolution.

Re the Daily Office Readings 3/29/2020

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The Daily Office Readings of the Episcopal Church (USA) are available at a number of websites including Mission St Clare (https://www.missionstclare.com/english/) as part of Morning Prayer.

So on this 5th Sunday in Lent when many of us would really like to be coming together at St. Dunstan’s, 6205 University Avenue, Madison WI, we get this from Paul:

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Rom 12:1-2)

All of life is worship. That’s Paul’s, and, I think, Scripture’s vision of our human vocation, expressed universally at the beginning of Genesis and in psalms like 8, 103, and 104, expressed for Israel at the foot of Mt. Sinai: “you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exod. 19:6). Commentators generally agree that these first two verses introduce a major chunk of Romans running through chapter 15, so all the questions addressed there—living together in the parish, relating to the government, building bridges across ethnic divides—are questions of worship. And, in this season of too many dislocations, it’s worth remembering that the worship is equally honorable whether we come with full or empty hands. (It’s the poor widow’s two small copper coins that Jesus notices—and praises (Mark 12:41ff).)

Translators struggle with the end of v.1 (NRSV’s “spiritual worship”; Greek logikēn latreian). ‘Spiritual’ suggests interior or immaterial, but Paul’s talking about presenting our bodies. Perhaps KJV’s ‘reasonable’ is better, in the sense of a worship that matches / mirrors / corresponds to the mercies of God with which Paul has started the appeal.

We’d prefer to be gathered with Rev. Miranda at the altar. Paul reminds us that it’s at least equally important to God what we do at our own altars (worlds!), presenting all of our interactions as living, holy, acceptable sacrifices. Which makes me wonder: what transformation(s) (v.2) in my life might bring the biggest smile to G-d’s face?