Tag Archives: Parish

Light in the Darkness (Christmas Day, 12/25/2025)

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Readings

[Call & response:] Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!

The truly odd thing about the way our culture celebrates Christmas, a.k.a. the Holiday Season, is the contrast between its obligatory gaiety and the despair-encouraging darkness assumed in the Christmas readings. “The people who walked in darkness” in our first reading: in Isaiah’s time, the northern tribes just swallowed up by the Assyrian Empire. Or the Roman Empire assumed in our Gospel reading. As Ben Franklin observed, “Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.” Only under the most generous reading are the Romans guests, and they’ve been throwing their weight around for decades. That registration decree from the Emperor Agustus? The Empire needs—wait for it—more money.

Then there’s Crete. Earlier in the letter Paul writes about its inhabitants “It was one of them, their very own prophet, who said, ‘Cretans are always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons.’ That testimony is true” (1:12-13). It would be understandable if he’d given the place a wide berth, but, no, he’s left Titus there to sort things out. So, in the verses before today’s reading, Paul’s focused on what various groups need to hear: older men, older women, younger men, slaves… Not the finer points of etiquette, but painfully basic stuff: the older women shouldn’t be slaves to drink; the younger men should show some self-control; the slaves shouldn’t pilfer…

Why? In all that darkness booze etc. sound like rational responses! Paul in today’s reading: “For the grace/gift of God has appeared…” Later in the letter he writes: “He saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit” (3:5). It’s a matter of remembering their identity, our identity. Every day we receive countless messages (print, TV, radio, social media, etc.) each encouraging us to experience ourselves in terms of a particular identity: consumer, tax-payer, citizen, privileged white male, oppressed white male… But we are baptized. Paul would have us use that as a filter, a spam blocker, if you like. How is this message relevant to us as baptized, in which Jew, Greek, slave, free, male, female, “all…one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:27-28)?

Because, as Paul writes, there’s a point to God’s gift/grace: “that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.” “A people of his own:” that’s a somewhat unwieldy translation for the phrase that occurs repeatedly in the Torah about Israel: “you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples” (Exo 19:5). God hasn’t given up on that, a people whose life is human, humane. As you may recall, Matthew uses “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light” to celebrate Jesus’ arrival in Galilee (4:15-16). Jesus is the light. But then in the next chapter we hear Jesus saying “You are the light of the world” (5:14).

God’s gift, the gift that keeps giving in the lives of those who receive it. Our reading from Isaiah ended with “The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.” And if we wonder how that works, the ending from our reading from Titus supplies part of the answer: “and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.”

“The people who walked in darkness…” A couple millennia on from Isaiah we have no lack of darkness, whether imported or home-grown. But, as Isaiah promised, we have God’s gracious gift, Emmanuel, God with us. The darkness will not get the last word. That Spirit that brooded over the dark chaos at the beginning of creation was given to us at baptism—or, better, we were given over to that Spirit at baptism—and the invitation of Christmas is to celebrate what that Spirit is stirring up in our midst.

[Call & response:] Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!

Songs for Pilgrims (20th Sunday after Pentecost, 10/26/2025)

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Readings (Track 2)

Today’s readings include Psalm 84. Since it’s perhaps not one of the more familiar psalms, let’s ease into it by recalling Psalm 23 (BCP 612):

1 The Lord is my shepherd; *
I shall not be in want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures *
and leads me beside still waters.
3 He revives my soul *
and guides me along right pathways for his Name’s sake.
4 Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I shall fear no evil; *
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
5 You spread a table before me in the presence of those who trouble me; *
you have anointed my head with oil,
and my cup is running over.
6 Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, *
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Psalm 23 is often described as a psalm of trust, of pilgrimage. The goal’s at the end: “the house of the Lord;” the psalm describes the pilgrimage, the Lord’s reliable shepherding. There are dark moments (“the shadow of death,” “those who trouble me”), but these do not get the last word.

Now, Psalm 84:

1 How dear to me is your dwelling, O Lord of hosts! *
My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.
2 The sparrow has found her a house
and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young; *
by the side of your altars, O Lord of hosts,
my King and my God.
3 Happy are they who dwell in your house! *
they will always be praising you.
4 Happy are the people whose strength is in you! *
whose hearts are set on the pilgrims’ way.
5 Those who go through the desolate valley will find it a place of springs, *
for the early rains have covered it with pools of water.
6 They will climb from height to height, *
and the God of gods will reveal himself in Zion.
7 Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer; *
hearken, O God of Jacob.
8 Behold our defender, O God; *
and look upon the face of your Anointed.
9 For one day in your courts is better
than a thousand in my own room, *
and to stand at the threshold of the house of my God
than to dwell in the tents of the wicked.
10 For the Lord God is both sun and shield; *
he will give grace and glory;
11 No good thing will the Lord withhold *
from those who walk with integrity.
12 O Lord of hosts, *
happy are they who put their trust in you!

It’s not hard to recognize Psalm 84 as another psalm of trust, of pilgrimage. Here the goal (“your dwelling”) is at the start (vv.1-3); the rest of the psalm is mostly a description of the pilgrimage. Again, no lack of potentially dark moments (“the desolate valley,” plenty of heights to climb), but these do not get the last word.

There are differences. Psalm 23 so focuses on the shepherding that the “I” sounds pretty passive. Psalm 84 pays more attention to the Lord’s empowerment during the pilgrimage (“whose strength is in you,” “they will climb”). And the speakers are more obviously making choices: better “to stand at the threshold of the house of my God / than to dwell in the tents of the wicked.” And notice Psalm 84’s repeated “happy”:

3a Happy are they who dwell in your house!
4a Happy are the people whose strength is in you!
12b happy are they who put their trust in you.

In passing, while ‘happy’ isn’t a bad translation, the problem is that English doesn’t have a word that matches the Hebrew ´ašrê. It’s ‘happy’ in the sense of well-positioned. Happy is the one whose house is built on rock. The Common English Bible offers “truly happy.”

One commentator writes “Enthusiastic joy in YHWH, the theme developed in the first strophe of our psalm (vv.2-5), and unshakable trust in him, the essential statement of the third strophe (vv.9-13), are the two basic attitudes on the basis of which human paths succeed, because they kindle in the human person an inner strength that empowers to withstand obstacles and overcome them” (Zenger in Psalms 2, 358; verse numbers reflect Hebrew text).

How might we hear this psalm today? Two suggestions. First, to talk of joy and trust is not to go full Pollyanna. The psalm’s well aware of the desolate valleys, the heights that look unclimbable. We daily make choices about what we focus on, what we dwell on, that nurture or not our capacity for joy and trust. What’s the first app I open in the morning, the last before calling it a night? There’s a reason our Book of Common Prayer starts with the daily offices (and bless the folk that created the apps that save us the constant turning of pages!).

That said, joy and trust work differently. Trust is anchored in who we are as a people. Jews trust the God who brought them out of Egypt. So the big annual celebration is Passover, and, no longer being under Pharaoh, the Sabbath means working six days a week, not seven. Christians trust that same God who raised Jesus from the dead. So we gather every Sunday to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection, and remember that whatever the situation, God bats last.

Joy is more complicated. Paul: “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Phil 4:4), but joy’s not evident in long stretches of his letters. The largest group of psalms in the Psalter: they want joy, they look forward to joy, but at the moment: Help! After all, were joy more often in the present, we’d talk less about trust.

Second, after all the talk in our psalms about the temple, since the Romans destroyed the temple in ad 70, where does that leave us? From our brothers Peter and Paul:

Peter: “Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and 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” (1 Pet. 2:4-5)

Paul:“In [Christ Jesus] the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. (Eph. 2:21-22)

No need for a single temple in Jerusalem when there are parishes (temples!) scattered around the world, even in Beaver Dam. So we should expect to experience something of the pilgrim’s joy described in Psalm 84 as we come together here? That seems to be the idea, despite the fact that as we and the apostles know (recall Paul’s letters to the Corinthians!) parishes can generate great pain as well as great joy.

The potential for good and evil in every parish is one of the reasons our Eucharistic Prayers ask our God for not one, but two transformations. From Prayer A:

“Sanctify them [the bread and wine] by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of your Son…
Sanctify us also that we may faithfully receive this holy Sacrament, and serve you in unity, constancy, and peace…”

Being the temple implies no less!

And this is perhaps the appropriate moment to notice today’s Gospel. Jesus is working multiple agendas: how to pray, what attitudes make entry into God’s kingdom easier or harder, and also—with Psalm 84 ringing in the ears—what behaviors are appropriate or not in the temple.

We’re social animals. And in this culture, as in many others, the default is to sort out the pecking order, no matter where we are. The Pharisee’s prayer is a classic example of that sorting out. But the problem isn’t just some Pharisees; Jesus’ own followers are just as capable of the same behavior. There’s not much distance between “God, I thank you that I am not like other people” and what Paul was hearing in Corinth: “’I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or ‘I belong to Christ’” (1 Cor. 1:12).

What of the tax collector’s “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”? That’s an essential part of our liturgy. The pause between the invitation to the general confession and the confession itself is for us to remember, individually and collectively, that we’re dealing with more than words on a page. The Eucharistic Prayer (and remember, ‘Eucharist’ is simply the transliteration of the Greek word for ‘thanksgiving’) is our thanksgiving for God’s mercy to us sinners. But the point is not to stay there, but to enter more deeply into the joy and trust of Psalm 84.

What is life? Not just one darn thing after another, but a pilgrimage to the living God. With David: “You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Ps. 16:11).