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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.”

But what about the texts that don’t show up in the Daily Office Lectionary?

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Within our (Episcopal) tradition the Daily Office is the natural starting-point, and half a loaf is much better than no loaf. Full stop.

But its schedule of readings (lectionary) leaves out large chunks of the Old Testament, most notably, all of Song of Songs.

The attached PDF file presents one way the lectionary can be supplemented to achieve continuous readings of all the books in the pre-Reformation western canon within a two-year cycle.

daily-office-lectionary-study-edition-4Download

Suggestions for improvement welcome!

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 4/6/2020

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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.

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