Tag Archives: Daily Office Lectionary

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.

Re the Daily Office Readings 5/9/2020

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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.)

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.

Re the Daily Office Readings 5/5/2020

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The Readings: Exodus 32:21-35; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 5:11-16

Moses has persuaded the LORD not to destroy the people and start over with Moses, but there’s still the problem of the people “running wild (for Aaron had let them run wild, to the derision of their enemies).” Moses has to ask for volunteers to salvage the situation; the Levites step up; the seriousness of the situation is reflected in the death toll.

The bigger problem: with the treaty torn up (the tablets broken, v.19), do the LORD and the people have a future, and on what basis? When Moses returns to the LORD to plead for forgiveness, the divine response is two-fold: a command to lead the people to the Land accompanied by an “angel.” Not by the LORD? All the instructions regarding the tabernacle and the priesthood (chapters 25-31): are they all now moot? The plague of unspecified severity (v.34, omitted, oddly, by the Lectionary) seems almost an afterthought.

Looking back over the whole chapter, what advice would we have given Aaron, with Moses off stage for who knows how long and the people expressing real needs? Or we can flip the question. Followers’ expectations constrain their leaders. When do our expectations place our leaders in Aaron’s situation?

Re the Daily Office Readings 5/4/2020

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The Readings: Exodus 32:1-20; Colossians 3:18––4:18; Matthew 5:1-10

In a post-Christian society ‘sin’ turns out to be a pretty useless word, if one is, like Francis Spufford, trying to commend Christianity to that society. Spufford’s solution in his book Unapologetic is to talk about the human propensity to fuck things up (HPtFtU). HPtFtU is on full display in our first reading: Israel is newly freed from Egypt, on a beeline to a land flowing with milk and honey, the ink not yet dry—so to speak—on the treaty that secures Israel’s status as the “treasured possession” of the God who’s just gained their freedom without breaking a sweat. The text is an opportunity to wrestle with Spufford’s diagnosis: “The HPtFtU is bad news, and like all bad news is not very welcome, especially if you let yourself take seriously the implications that we actually want the destructive things we do, that they are not just an accident that keeps happening to poor little us, but part of our nature; that we are truly cruel as well as truly tender, truly loving and at the same time truly likely to take a quick nasty little pleasure in wasting or breaking love, scorching it knowingly up as the fuel for some hotter or more exciting feeling.”

Re the Daily Office Readings 5/3/2020

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The Readings: Exodus 28:1-4, 30-38; 1 John 2:18-29; Mark 6:30-44

William Propp, reflecting on our first reading: “The Priestly Writer continually wrestles with a paradox so excruciating it verges on the comic. Israel and Yahweh crave nearness, yet can scarcely tolerate one another” (The Anchor Yale Bible). So here the description of the high priest’s clothing is punctuated with unnerving explanations: “so that he may not die… take upon himself any guilt incurred in the holy offering that the Israelites consecrate.”

How might we read the text? The New Testament sets the framework. Jesus is our High Priest (Hebrews, e.g., 2:17), echoed in the BCP’s prelude to confession in the Penitential Orders, (e.g., p.352) and the prayer before receiving communion (p.834). Christians, corporately (e.g., Eph 2:21) and individually (e.g., 1 Cor 6:18-20) are the Temple, echoed in this Collect:

“Almighty God, you have built your Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone: Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their teaching, that we may be made a holy temple acceptable to you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen” (BCP p.230)

So, in the New Testament the Church is a dangerous place, whether in Jerusalem (Ananias and Sapphira, Acts 5:1-11) or Corinth (“many of you are weak and ill, and some have died” in 1 Cor 11:27-30), both occurring at the intersection of issues of money and status. “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name” (Exod 20:7): where is the danger greater than in the Church?

So caution is important. Ditto clothing. Not the sanctuary garments for the ordained: after Jesus performed his supreme high priestly act stripped naked such garments are clearly in the “things indifferent” (adiaphora) category. But, picking up on Colossians’ references to stripping off and clothing oneself in yesterday’s readings (Col 3:9-12), we might wonder whether the proper clothing for Aaron and sons (Exod 28:41) and for ourselves (Rom 13:14; Eph 4:24; military: Rom 13:12 Eph 6:11-17 1Th 5:8) are analogous.

“Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (Col. 3:14). Even (especially?) in this season of COVID 19, clothing is important.

Re the Daily Office Readings 5/2/2020

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The Readings: Exodus 25:1-22; Colossians 3:1-17; Matthew 4:18-25

Since the Lectionary omits much of the following chapters, a quick overview. Exodus 25-31 records the instructions Moses receives during his 40 days on the mountain regarding the portable shrine (the Tabernacle; chapters 25-27) its personnel (chapters 28-29), and related arrangements (chapters 30-31). Execution of the instructions follows (Exodus 35-40) but only after the unfortunate business of the Golden Calf and its aftermath.

“And have them make me a sanctuary, so that I may dwell among them.… There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the covenant, I will deliver to you all my commands for the Israelites” (vv.8, 22).

Centuries later at the dedication of the temple, Solomon prays: “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27). But there it is.

The Celtic Christians talked of thin places, places where heaven and earth met. The Tabernacle, a portable thin place, not in some remote place, but at the center of the camp. And, as Israel’s long history will show, G-d will sometimes reside in, sometimes bypass the Tabernacle/Temple. Charles Williams: “the sacrifice must be made ready, and the fire will strike on another altar.”

In our experience, where has G-d shown up expectedly? Unexpectedly?

Coda

What happens if we come to the second reading with the first still ringing in our ears?

Exodus starts with a list of raw materials for the tabernacle (vv.3-7); Paul sorts through the raw materials appropriate for the Colossians as tabernacle (vv.5, 8-9, 12-14). (Now it’s the peace of Christ ruling the hearts, the word of Christ dwelling “richly”).

But the dominant metaphor seems to be clothing—perhaps recalling how baptisms were done—what’s to be stripped off (v.9), what’s to be put on (vv.12, 14).

Half awake, I’m headed for the coffee. Perhaps what the text wants me to notice is that even half awake I’m making choices: what to put on, what to leave in the wardrobe.