Re the Daily Office Readings 4/23/2020

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The Readings: Exodus 16:10-21; 1 Peter 2:11-25; John 15:12-27

The people are in the wilderness, transitional or liminal space between slavery and having land. And, as in the Native American vision quest, perhaps learning what they need to learn for their future responsibilities. These days’ readings: the “whatsit,” a.k.a. “manna” (our transcription of the Hebrew word that might translate as “Whatsit?”). I wonder if the whatsit doesn’t turn out to be about divine generosity and human stewardship, passable themes for Earth Day + 1.

Most days—we meet the other days in tomorrow’s reading—they gather what they need for the day (an omer, or about two quarts, per person). The divine generosity: the whatsit’s there. And the generosity extends to the gathering process: “…some gathering more, some less. But when they measured it with an omer, those who gathered much had nothing over, and those who gathered little had no shortage; they gathered as much as each of them needed.” The weak do not go hungry.

Human stewardship: it resists hoarding. “And Moses said to them, ‘Let no one leave any of it over until morning.’ But they did not listen to Moses; some left part of it until morning, and it bred worms and became foul.”

After a long stretch of slavery and its distorting effects, the whatsit is a reintroduction to this G-d’s creation: there is enough for everyone, it is dependable, hoarding is counterproductive.

Fast-forward several centuries: how much of the societal sickness diagnosed by Israel’s prophets came from not having learned from the whatsit?

Fast-forward several centuries: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal… do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” (Matthew 6:19,-25) Same G-d, same creation, same lesson to be learned.

“Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins.”

Re the Daily Office Readings 4/22/2020

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The Readings: Exodus 15:22-16:10; 1 Peter 2:1-10; John 15:1-11

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Peter continues to expound his new exodus theme. Arriving at Sinai Israel heard: “Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exod 19:5-6a). Peter: “But 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” (2:9). So William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury during WW II: “The church exists primarily for the sake of those who are still outside it” (for variants, see here).

That’s the goal; in today’s Exodus reading Israel is, like us, very much a work in progress. Temple again: “Thou canst do all things. I have nothing. I am not fit to offer the meanest service. Surely God will first require and help me form a character worthy to serve him, and then appoint me my task. No; in point of fact it is only through service that such a character could be formed.” (Readings in St John’s Gospel, cited in Schmidt’s Glorious Companions). So perhaps we can be patient with ourselves and those around us.

In that last quote Temple could have been talking about today’s reading from John. It’s one of Jesus’ two retellings of Isaiah’s Song of the Vineyard (5:1-7), the other being the parable of the wicked tenants (Matt 21:33-46 and parallels). Isaiah’s song concludes: “For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!” I’m puzzled. When we explore what sort of fruit God is seeking in John 15, why doesn’t the exploration start with Isaiah 5?

Re the Daily Office Readings 4/22/2020 (Take 2)

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From today’s readings: “But 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. 2:9).

So on this Earth Day here’s St. Basil the Great’s Prayer of Compassion

O God, enlarge within us the sense of
fellowship with all living things,
our brothers the animals to whom thou
gavest the earth as their home in
common with us.

We remember with shame that in the past
we have exercised the high dominion
of man with ruthless cruelty
so that the voice of the earth,
which should have gone up to thee
in song, has been a groan of travail.

May we realize that they live not for
us alone but for themselves and for
thee, and that they love
the sweetness of live.

Source: https://earthministry.org/worship/prayers/

Re the Daily Office Readings 4/21/2020

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The Readings: Exodus 15:1-21; 1 Peter 1:13-25; John 14:18-31

It is one of the oldest human stories: our God defeats chaos and death, wins sovereignty, creates a stable world in which we can thrive. Israel’s neighbors in the east, the Babylonians, had it in the epic “When on high” (Enuma Elish); to the north there was the cycle of Baal poems. Israel celebrated its occurrence in their history at the Red Sea, the oldest version of that celebration being today’s reading from Exodus. Whatever the threat, we need not fear. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.

Peter picks up the Passover/exodus/wilderness imagery addressing those ransomed “with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish.” “…love one another deeply from the heart.” A seamless transition from celebrating God’s generosity to a corresponding generosity on our part. These days, maintaining the social distancing recommended by our physicians. (“There may come a time when recovery lies in the hands of physicians, for they too pray to the Lord that he grant them success in diagnosis and in healing, for the sake of preserving life. He who sins against his Maker, will be defiant toward the physician” [Sirach 38:13-15].) These days, at least remembering those whose fate has been pushed off the front page, e.g., the some 40,000 held in our immigrant detention centers (Amnesty International).

We have passed through the Red Sea / across the Atlantic / over the Rio Grande. Now what?

Re the Daily Office Readings 4/20/2020 (Take 2)

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Psalm 104, assigned in the 30-day Psalm cycle to the evening of the 20th day of the month, begins:

“Bless the Lord, O my soul,
O Lord my God, how excellent is your greatness!
you are clothed with majesty and splendor.”

Tonight at dusk Dunn’s Marsh, across the street from our home, joined in the celebration. The majesty and splendor in creation, God’s open invitation to draw nearer to God, in whose right hand “are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16:11).

Re the Daily Office Readings 4/20/2020

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The Readings: Exodus 14:21-31; 1 Peter 1:1-12; John 14:8-17

We heard the Exodus text just over a week ago at the Great Vigil. There it’s followed by this prayer:

O God, whose wonderful deeds of old shine forth even to our own day, you once delivered by the power of your mighty arm your chosen people from slavery under Pharaoh, to be a sign for us of the salvation of all nations by the water of Baptism: Grant that all the peoples of the earth may be numbered among the offspring of Abraham, and rejoice in the inheritance of Israel; through Jesus Christ our Lord. (BCP 289)

Coming at it cold, and, perhaps, more awake, the story may give us pause. Is this what the soldiers in Pharaoh’s army signed up for (if choice was even involved), soldiers not unlike those serving our country for which we pray weekly. We humans live in societies in which we’re profoundly interconnected. It makes our life possible; it allows both dying and killing to cascade.

The Jews have wrestled with this story, as in this saying: “God silenced the song of the angels with the words: ‘The work of My hands is drowning in the sea, and ye wish to chant songs!” (Ginzberg The Legends of the Jews, VI.12).

Can we bail with “Well, that’s the god of the Old Testament for you”? Not with today’s Gospel: “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.” The God at work in Jesus: the God who orchestrated the Exodus.

Where might this reflection end up? Here’s one possibility: all those Egyptians “dead on the seashore”: we owe it to them not to replicate Egypt’s idolatry and oppression in our common life. Otherwise, they truly would have died for nothing.

Re the Daily Office Readings 4/19/2020

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The Readings: Exodus 14:5-22; 1 John 1:1-7; John 14:1-7

Exodus: A paradigmatic deliverance story, also, perhaps, a reflection on the challenge of belief. The Hebrew words for ‘to see’ (rāˀâ) and ‘to fear’ (yārāˀ) are close in sound, and the story employs them from the introduction of the crisis to its resolution (‘to see’: 14:13, 30, 31; ‘to fear’ 14:10, 13, 31). And so the story ends (tomorrow’s reading) with “Israel saw the great work that the LORD did against the Egyptians. So the people feared the LORD and believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses” (v.31).

That’s the end of that story; it’s more challenging in the middle. The Letter to the Hebrews: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (11:1). I like Jim Wallis’ paraphrase: “Hope means believing in spite of the evidence and then watching the evidence change” (“The Way of Hope,” written in 2015, but equally relevant today).

Program note: Jesus’ words in John come right after Judas’ departure to betray Jesus and Jesus’ prediction of Peter’s denials. The soundtrack for Exodus is increasingly dominated by approaching Egyptian army; the soundtrack for John by the approaching soldiers and police.

COVID-19 and fear, both in the air. So I might take some time to enter today’s Exodus reading contemplatively. The Jesuits talk of “composing the place,” asking for God’s help to imagine oneself in the story in as much detail as possible. What do I see? What do I hear? What do I smell? What do I feel? What do I taste? Now, the place composed, I ask God to be with me as I let the story play out in my imagination. How will the story play out? What will God and I discover together? (See “Father James Martin: An Introduction to Ignatian Contemplation.)

Re the Daily Office Readings 4/18/2020

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The Readings: Exodus 13:17—14:4; 2 Corinthians 4:16—5:10; Mark 12:18-27

What to make of Paul’s striking contrasts? “Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day” (4:16); “slight momentary affliction…an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure” (4:17); “we groan… we are always confident” (5:2, 6).

I doubt that it’s about having some sort of psychic balance sheet that happily ends in the black. That would set me off on a search for experiences to counterbalance the wasting and groaning. I might find them, but at the end of the day I’d still be at the center.

I suspect that what grounds Paul’s contrasts involves Rowan Williams’ decentering. Here’s a bit from The Wound of Knowledge: “To be absorbed in the sheer otherness of any created order or beauty is to open the door to God, because it involves that basic displacement of the dominating ego without which there can be no spiritual growth” (Cited in Burkhard Conrad’s essay “Rowan Williams on ‘Decentering’”). (“God is my copilot.” “You two really need to change places.”)

“…we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal” (4:18). What Israel sees—anticipating next week’s readings—is the advancing Egyptian army in all its glory; what Israel cannot see is the glory of G-d, poised for Israel’s deliverance. (For a whimsical replay, Elisha and the Aramean army here.)

There are tools here for unsettling times: decentering, remembering that there are more pieces on the board than I can see… And letting Jesus awaken the imagination. How easy to repeatedly use a traditional phrase “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” never realizing its celebration of the God of the living!

Re the Daily Office Readings 4/17/2020

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The Readings: Exodus 13:1-2, 11-16; 1 Corinthians 15:51-58; Luke 24:1-12

There’s a world of difference between “I don’t want to die” (near universal) and “I’d be happy if my life continued forever” (not so much). Ask Tithonus, that Greek fellow who asked for immortality but forgot to ask for eternal youth. So death is destroyed at the last trumpet (Paul): until we get the living part right death can provide a merciful end.

Moses is working at getting the living part right in the interwoven practices regarding the first born (Exod 13:1-2, 11-16) and unleavened bread (Exod 13:3-10). The practices will serve “as a sign (ˀôt) on your hand and as a reminder (zikkārôn) on your forehead” (v.9), and “as a sign (ˀôt) on your hand and as an emblem (ṭôṭāpôt) on your forehead” (v.16). By Jesus’ time Jews interpreted these texts literally, underwriting the use of tefillin (“phylacteries” Matt 23:5), small leather cubes bound on the arm and forehead.

For better or worse, Christians do not follow this practice, but the interpretive challenge remains. What Moses understands is that what and how we remember are profoundly formative of both the individual and community. Torah—particularly Deuteronomy—is filled with calls to remember; Jesus and the New Testament writers are no less attentive to remembering well and effectively. Torah is about love of God and neighbor: healthy memory nourishes that love; diseased memory starves that love.

In this season social distancing sidelines some of our cherished ways of remembering (e.g., Holy Eucharist), but may create space for other ways (e.g, Compline and the other services in the Daily Office). So, what are we supposed to remember, and how in this season can we better help ourselves remember?

Re the Daily Office Readings 4/16/2020

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The Readings: Exodus 13:3-10; 1 Corinthians 15:41-50; Matthew 28:16-20

Exodus: unleavened bread to support Israel’s memory. Deuteronomy repeatedly stresses memory’s importance: the motor for trust in God (e.g., 8:17-18) and solidarity with the poor (e.g., 24:17-18). An honest memory: where does it need support today?

Paul’s argument for the continuity and discontinuity between our present and future bodies is dense, and complicated by challenges in translation. I find Hays helpful (First Corinthians):

“Yet the last item in this sequence is the one that he is driving toward: ‘It is sown a natural body [psychikon sōma], it is raised a spiritual body [pneumatikon sōma].’ (v.44, NIV). This is the nub of his argument. This last contrast, however, presents a vexing problem for translators… The phrase psychikon sōma is notoriously difficult to translate into English. The NRSV’s translation (‘physical body’) is especially unfortunate, for it reinstates precisely the dualistic dichotomy between physical and spiritual that Paul is struggling to overcome.…

“By far the most graceful translation of verse 44, and the one that best conveys the meaning of Paul’s sentence is found in the Jerusalem Bible: ‘When it is sown it embodies the soul, when it is raised it embodies the spirit. If the soul has its own embodiment, so des the spirit have its own embodiment.’ That is Paul’s point: our mortal bodies embody the psyche (‘soul’), the animating force of our present existence, but the resurrection body will embody the divinely given pneuma (‘spirit’). It is to be a ‘spiritual body’ not in the sense that it is somehow made out of spirit and vapors, but in the sense that it is determined by the spirit and gives the spirit form and local habitation.”

C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, a fantasy in which the heavenly is more solid than anything preceding it, may help imagine what Paul’s pointing towards:

“Nothing, not even the best and noblest, can go on as it now is. Nothing, not even what is lowest and most bestial, will not be raised again if it submits to death. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. Flesh and blood cannot come to the Mountains. Not because they are too rank, but because they are too weak. What is a Lizard compared with a stallion? Lust is a poor, weak, whimpering whispering thing compared with that richness and energy of desire which will arise when lust has been killed.” Submit to death: now what does that mean in the middle of COVID-19?

Matthew. Previous generations obeyed that commission, so here we are in the New World. And, perhaps in an exercise of the reach exceeding the grasp, the corporate and legal entity of the Episcopal Church is the “Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society.”