Tag Archives: Episcopal

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.”

Re the Daily Office Readings 4/15/2020

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The Readings: Exodus 12:40-51; 1 Corinthians 15:29-41; Matthew 28:1-16

Exodus, again a careful blend of narration and instruction for remembering, with noticeable emphasis on eating the Passover restricted to the households of circumcised males. Alter comments (note on Exodus 12:48): “Circumcision is the mark of belonging to the covenantal community, as God announced to Abraham when He enjoined the practice (Genesis 17); and so circumcision is a prerequisite to participation in the community-defining Passover ritual. But the mention of circumcision also ties in this law with the Bridegroom of Blood episode [Exodus 4:24-26] that was the prelude to Moses’ mission in Egypt: there is a symbolic overlap between the apotropaic blood of circumcision, the apotropaic blood of the lamb on the doorposts, and God’s saving Israel from the bloodbath of Egypt to make them His people?” Still wondering about that. Also wondering: in the current conversations regarding continuing to restrict the Eucharist to the baptized, is the restriction here an appropriate analogy?

Matthew’s narrative is a delight. One element that always delights me, and two that got me wondering today:

  • Jesus doesn’t seem to be able to stay on script. The script called for a rendezvous in Galilee (vv.7, 10). But Jesus sans SFX intercepts the two Marys. A brief lifting of the curtain on Jesus’ desire (need?) for connection with us?
  • The angel gets the SFX (earthquake, dazzling garments)—for the guards’ benefit? They’ll be given money to spread a different story; did our merciful God arrange for them an unforgettable experience?
  • Pilate had asked (cynically? pensively?) “What is truth?” Vv. 11-15 enact one answer to the question. Most of the time—truth occasionally crashes through—the important thing is what people believe, and money is very useful for shaping belief. Is Matthew warning church leaders to watch how they themselves use money?

Re the Daily Office Readings 4/14/2020 (Take 2)

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“For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ” (1 Cor. 15:21-22).

Gracious God,

Looking out the window at the two sandhill cranes on our front yard, rejoicing in their grace and beauty, about that “all” in Paul’s letter…

You repeatedly rejoiced in the goodness of your creation (Genesis 1), and elsewhere Paul writes “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:19-21).

We’ve made it to Easter and are celebrating Jesus’ resurrection. I really hope those two cranes get to share in that. Bluntly, it sure seems like it would be a shabby general resurrection if it were just about us humans—without all the fellow creatures that are integral to our humanity. And if getting the cranes means also getting the mosquitos, that’s OK.

So please, as you make good on that “See, I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:5), remember the joy you experienced in all the days of this world’s creation.

Tom

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?