That Which We Have Heard & Known

Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Category: Daily Office (Page 4 of 70)

Old Rags & Worn Clothes ~ From the Daily Office Lectionary

October 15, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Old Rags & Worn Clothes

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Thursday in the week of Proper 23, Year 1 (Pentecost 20, 2015)

Jeremiah 38:11-13 ~ Ebed-melech took the men with him and went to the house of the king, to a wardrobe of the storehouse, and took from there old rags and worn-out clothes, which he let down to Jeremiah in the cistern by ropes. Then Ebed-melech the Ethiopian said to Jeremiah, “Just put the rags and clothes between your armpits and the ropes.” Jeremiah did so. Then they drew Jeremiah up by the ropes and pulled him out of the cistern.

About a half-century ago, I dropped out of college and went to work as a janitor in a small Southern California hospital. Not too long after being hired, I found myself invited to become an orderly in the facility, an invitation I accepted and went to work primarily in the radiology and emergency departments. In that position, I had opportunity observe situations in which rescues had resulted in injuries that the patient would otherwise not have suffered.

I remember one instance in which a surfer had been knocked out by his own surfboard. Because of inept handling by the rescue crew, he suffered a broken leg and a broken arm while unconscious. That surfer came to mind as I read today’s story of the rescue of Jeremiah the prophet from the cistern of Malchiah.

I’m sure there are greater lessons to learn from the tale of Jeremiah’s cistern imprisonment and rescue, but what impresses me today is the care taken by the eunuch Ebed-melech to insure that Jeremiah is not injured by the ropes during the rescue. There’s a lesson there about ministry, especially our “rescue ministries,” our food pantries, soup kitchens, clothing cabinets, and other “handout” programs. We must ask ourselves whether we are doing more harm than good; are the ropes of these programs chafing those we rescue?

The surfer suffered those fractures because his rescuers, getting him out of the water and off the rocks of the beach, weren’t sufficiently careful; they failed to make use of “old rags and worn clothes” to protect the subject of their beneficence. How often do we do the same? How often do we foster dependence or cause greater injury by our handouts and our rescue ministries?

We’ve all heard the old saw about giving a hand-up, not a handout. Usually, we hear this from those who want curtail both hand-ups and handouts, to cut off all social services and so-called “entitlements” from government funding. However, there is some validity to the notion that our rescue missions should encourage self-determination and independence rather than foster dependence; whether a hand-up or a handout, our actions should not further harm those rescued. Again, we must ask whether the ropes of our programs are chafing those we rescue and, if so, make use of the “old rags and worn clothes” to prevent that.

Inevitability – From the Daily Office Lectionary

October 14, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Inevitability

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Wednesday in the week of Proper 23, Year 1 (Pentecost 20, 2015)

Jeremiah 37:10 ~ Even if you defeated the whole army of Chaldeans who are fighting against you, and there remained of them only wounded men in their tents, they would rise up and burn this city with fire.

As I read the Scriptures and pray the Daily Office this morning, I am in the fourth day of an ear infection which awakened me with sharp stabbing pain in the middle of Sunday night. Monday morning my physician prescribed an antibiotic and some decongestant nasal spray.

“How long?” I asked. “As long as it takes,” he answered. The antibiotic prescription is for a two-week course, and he gave me three refills on the nasal spray, so that might be a hint.

In today’s Old Testament lesson, Jeremiah is prophesying the inevitability of Jerusalem’s destruction. This is a no-matter-what-you-do sort of message. Many things are like that: no matter what you do they will happen. I remember an old saw about the common cold: left untreated a cold will last seven days; with aggressive treatment it will be over in a week. Nothing you do will change that.

At this point in my ear infection, the pain has been reduced to discomfort. Instead of feeling like a hot poker shoved into my ear, it has more the feeling of a hot, wet lump of oatmeal sitting there. I feel as if I could sniff in the right way and dislodge it, or blow my nose just so and get rid of it, or swallow in the proper manner and move it out. But, of course, none of that will happen.

There’s an inevitability that cannot be changed; it will take as long as it takes. No matter what you do, Jerusalem will be burnt. No matter what you do, a cold takes so long to run its course. No matter what you do, an ear infection will take as long as it takes. Sometimes one just needs to accept that.

Still . . . if I could just position my head in the proper way, maybe . . .

Second Draft – From the Daily Office Lectionary

October 13, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Second Draft

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Tuesday in the week of Proper 23, Year 1 (Pentecost 20, 2015)

Jeremiah 36:32 ~ Then Jeremiah took another scroll and gave it to the secretary Baruch son of Neriah, who wrote on it at Jeremiah’s dictation all the words of the scroll that King Jehoiakim of Judah had burned in the fire; and many similar words were added to them.

A second draft. That’s what this story is about . . . not a willingly done second draft, but one necessitated by the reader’s destruction of the first. Jeremiah had written (or, rather, dictated) his words of prophecy and delivered them to the king, who tore the scroll into pieces and burnt them. So Jeremiah does it again, and then some! “Many similar words were added!”

I would guess that prophets didn’t write second drafts very often. They got their words from God, wrote them down (or dictated them to hapless secretaries like Baruch), delivered the product to the intended audience, and that was that. The rest of us are not so fortunate, at least I’m not. I write plenty of second drafts, and third, and fourth.

Seldom do I write something down and call it done. There is always room for improvement, even if there isn’t always time to make the improvements. I often find myself editing sermons on the fly – jotting something in the margin just before the worship service, scratching through a line and adding another, ad-libbing an additional thought. I also find myself looking back a few days after preaching, thinking “I could have, should have, ought to have, might have . . .” That’s not second drafting, however; that’s second guessing.

Second guessing looks back and tries to improve on something that has already had an effect, and that’s what has happened between Jeremiah and the king. The prophet wrote, the king reacted (by burning the scroll), now the prophet is writing again. How many of those “many similar words [which] were added” got added because Jeremiah had had more to say to begin with and how many were added because Jeremiah is now hoping for a different result? We’ll never know.

This is why second (and other later) drafts are necessary. Most writers and preachers don’t get a chance to second guess ourselves, so all we can do is second draft, and third draft, and fourth draft, and . . . until the final product is presented and then it’s done. That’s best, too. Better to second draft than to second guess.

The Devil’s Dust – From the Daily Office Lectionary

October 12, 2015 / / 0 Comments

The Devil’s Dust

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Monday in the week of Proper 23, Year 1 (Pentecost 20, 2015)

Matthew 10:14 ~ Jesus told his disciples: “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.”

I was born in the desert and spent the formative, play-outside years of my childhood there. We had a small plot of grass as our front yard, but the back was desert sand, gravel, and rock. My best friend Richard and I often played there catching “horned toads” and other lizards, sometimes confronting more dangerous reptiles: I have early memories of instruction from my father about rattlesnakes and even more vivid memories of encountering them. (“Back away, smoothly but quickly!”)

After a time playing in a desert yard, one is generally covered with dust, not just one’s feet but one’s entire being. We lived in small house, we didn’t have what I have come in later life to call a “mud room”; such a chamber would have been a “dust room” in our home, I guess. Instead, our back door entered directly onto the kitchen, which also served as our dining room.

My mother, a fastidious housekeeper right up to the day she died, hated dust, and she hated having anyone track dust into her home. So there was a large mat outside the kitchen door on which my friends and I were to wipe our feet very well, and just inside the door was a bin in which she required us to deposit any dusty outerwear. My friends (I hope) got used to playing inside at the Funston home dress only in t-shirts and tighty-whities if they had started their visit with an hour or two of reptile capture in the backyard.

Dust had to be kept out! So when Jesus tells the disciples to “shake off the dust,” I know exactly what he is saying. Dust is the Enemy!

Just recently, I had the opportunity to preach on St. Francis Day and, while researching my sermon, I ran across this image of the devil attributed to Francis by his first biographer, Thomas of Celano. The devil, Francis said, “carries fine dust with him in little boxes and scatters it through the cracks in our conscience in order to dim the soul’s pure impulses and its luster.” (Celano, Second Life)

That’s what we need to shake off, the Devil’s Dust. That dust is the cloud of evil that blocks the good, that sullies the good news, that dims our consciences, and that chokes off the proclamation. Shake it off!

You Are What You Eat ~ From the Daily Office Lectionary

September 30, 2015 / / 0 Comments

You Are What You Eat

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Wednesday in the week of Proper 21, Year 1 (Pentecost 18, 2015)

1 Corinthians 8:8 ~ “Food will not bring us close to God.”

Apparently St. Paul is quoting someone? I have not the vaguest idea who that might be . . . but it seems a strange thing to say as the proponent of a religion whose principal act of worship is a meal!

I haven’t done a service of the Holy Eucharist using Rite One of the current Book of Common Prayer in so long that I can’t remember the last time. The last time I used the 1928 Book of Common Prayer was more than twenty years ago. Nonetheless, phrases from those services are indelibly etched in my psyche. One of them is this sentence from the Prayer of Humble Access as it is found in the earlier liturgy: “Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his Body, and our souls washed through his most precious Blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.” If ever there was a refutation of Paul’s quotation from whomever, it is found in that sentence which (in my opinion) is at the heart of Anglican eucharistic theology: food, this food we call “communion,” does indeed bring us closer to God!

Of course, Paul wasn’t thinking of that when making his arguments about eating meat sacrificed to pagan idols. His thoughts, however, did turn to Christian table fellowship almost immediately for just three chapters later he recounts: “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” (1 Cor 11:23-26)

Perhaps Paul might better have quoted the aphorism, “You are what you eat,” to make his points both about pagan-sacrifice meat and the eucharist.

Golden Rule Halfway – From the Daily Office Lectionary

September 29, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Golden Rule Halfway

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Tuesday in the week of Proper 21, Year 1 (Pentecost 18, 2015)

Matthew 7:12 ~ In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.

Ah, yes, the Golden Rule, or at least one Christian version of it spoken by Jesus. When I think of the GR, I cannot help but remember the opening lyric of the song Iowa Stubborn from Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man:

Oh, there’s nothing halfway
About the Iowa way to treat you,
When we treat you
Which we may not do at all.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was nothing halfway about the way people lived and applied the GR? Unfortunately, in my experience (and today that experience celebrates 63 years) folks seldom live the GR even a quarter of the way, let alone half, let alone all the way!

Did you know there’s a Silver Rule? It’s the negative formulation of GR and is attributed to Hillel the Elder, a First Century rabbi who was a contemporary of Jesus. The story told in the Babylonian Talmud is that he was challenged by a Gentile who agreed to convert to Judaism if the Torah could be explained while standing on one foot. Hillel, standing on one foot, replied: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary; go and learn.”

In one form or the other, positive formulation or negative, this idea that we should gauge our own treatment of others against how we would wish those others to treat us is common to nearly every religion and ethical system known to humans. It seems to be both universally recognized and universally ignored. If we would only live it halfway, as the Iowa song suggests, how much better the world might be!

“I Give My Opinion” – From the Daily Office Lectionary

September 28, 2015 / / 0 Comments

“I give my opinion”

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Monday in the week of Proper 21, Year 1 (Pentecost 18, 2015)

1 Corinthians 7:25 ~ Now concerning virgins, I have no command of the Lord, but I give my opinion as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy.

Wouldn’t it have been great if Paul had prefaced every letter with a comment like this: “This isn’t a command from God, it’s just my opinion”? Wouldn’t it be great if every preacher began his or her sermon in a similar way?

I know that’s contrary to what preachers are taught. I can’t remember in which seminary class nor from which seminary professor I heard it, but I do remember a comment being made that a preacher should steer away from saying, “I believe” or “I think” because the congregation “doesn’t want to know what you think; they want to hear the Word of the Lord.” Maybe so, but in all honesty the only thing I can give my congregation are my thoughts; I can’t give them “the Word of the Lord.” (It’s no accident that one of my favorite prophetic utterances is from Amos: “I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees.” 7:14) So my sermons tend, in contravention of that professor’s admonition, to be liberally peppered with “I believes” and “I thinks” . . . .

Truth be told, after a quarter century of preaching, I am more tempted than I was when I started to preface every homily with Paul’s words, “I have no command of the Lord, but I give my opinion,” and end each one with my own, “But what do I know?”

Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered! – From the Daily Office Lectionary

September 25, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered!

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Friday in the week of Proper 20, Year 1 (Pentecost 17, 2015)

Matthew 6:9-13 ~ Jesus said, “Pray then in this way:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.”

Today the Lord’s Prayer instruction from Matthew’s Gospel is paired in the Daily Office readings with the story of the death of Jezebel (with dogs eating her corpse) in the Second Book of Kings, and with Paul’s advice to the Corinthians about sex and marriage. It’s been three hours since I said the Office and read those lessons; I’ve had several cups of coffee and a high-fiber-high-protein breakfast. Despite that nourishment and caffeine, which should have kickstarted my brain, I confess to befuddlement. I don’t get the connection, any connection!

So that’s the take away today, not from the lessons themselves but from the Lectionary and its lack of connection between the readings that come up on the rota. In the Sunday Lectionary, one can generally find a linkage between at least two of the four readings (For non-Lectionary folk: the Eucharistic Lectionary for Sunday celebrations nearly always has four selections from Scripture – a lesson from the Old Testament, a Psalm, a lesson from the Epistles, and a lesson from one of the Gospels. Frequently, there is a thematic connection between the Old Testament readings and the Gospels), but not always. In the Daily Office Lectionary, thematic connections are even less common.

As a preacher I strive to find those connections when drafting my homilies for Sundays, and that influences my meditations on the Daily Office readings. Out of habit I try to find the linkages, the thematic relationships, the common message . . . and when it’s not there, I get bewitched, bothered, and bewildered. I become a simpering, whimpering child again . . . I want the lessons to make sense, together, not individually, and I’m angry with the Lectionary and whatever group of editors put it together!

Especially when I feel like I should be getting a good jolt of religion and spirituality with the Our Father but, instead, get Jezebel’s bloody death and Paul’s going on about people “aflame with passion.” I’m vexed again, perplexed again, and (frankly) oversexed again! Lead us not into temptation . . . .

Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered!

Play Acting? – From the Daily Office Lectionary

September 24, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Play Acting?

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Thursday in the week of Proper 20, Year 1 (Pentecost 17, 2015)

Matthew 6:1 ~ Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

Jesus said this and then launched into a rant about the practices of “the hypocrites.” In modern English, this word means someone who says one thing but does another, or someone who adopts inconsistent positions. For example, a lot of people in the news media and are criticizing Pope Francis for taking “political” positions apropos of climate change and other issues; he should stick to “religion,” they say. These very same people just a couple of weeks ago were championing Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk, who politicized her religious beliefs through her very public refusal to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples. Clearly such people are hypocrites in this modern sense.

But . . . they are, then so must I be. I condemned Davis for her words and actions but defend Francis for his. I can salve my conscience in this regard by pointing out that Davis was refusing to do what I believe is her public sector job while Francis is doing what I believe to be his. Her job as a civil servant in a secular state does not entail (in fact, by definition, precludes) the application of religious belief to political issues, while that is the very essence of at least part of the pope (and every clergy person’s) job as a religious leader. Nonetheless, I have at least a twinge of a sense, scintilla of self-perception that there is a bit of hypocrisy in my positions about these two persons.

In classical Greek and, I suspect, in the koiné Greek of Jesus’ day, hypokrités, meant something different, although Jesus can be understood to be using the word in the modern sense. The original Greek means a stage actor, one who pretends to be what he or she is not. In other words, Jesus was accusing “the hypocrites” (most likely members of the Pharisaic party) of play acting at religion.

So, are the critics of Francis and champions of Davis just play acting at politics or religion? Certainly one of the news media outlets voicing the loudest criticism of the pope must be; in fact, it has denied being a news channel despite its name – it claims to be an entertainment channel (when it suits its purposes to do so). In any event, that is a question that they must answer.

And so must I. Am I just play acting?

Favorite Bible Verse? Not Likely – From the Daily Office Lectionary

September 19, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Favorite Bible Verse? Not Likely

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Saturday in the week of Proper 19, Year 1 (Pentecost 16, 2015)

1 Corinthians 4:7 ~ What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?

“I built this.”
“I earned this.”
“I am a self-made man/woman.”

These are the self-affirmations of the American dream. Paul challenges them, and that mythology, with this simple question: “What do you have that you did not receive?” I can claim to have built or earned something but, in the final analysis, whatever I have built or earned came as a result of the skills, talents, and resources that I received somewhere along the line in my life, and (more importantly) with the investment of the skills, talents, and resources of many others.

Paul’s point (I think) is the same one he makes privately to the young bishop Timothy: “We brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it.” (1 Tim 6:7) Coming into this world naked and unprepared, suckling infants unable to build, earn, or self-construct, we start only with that which we a given by others: parents, family, community, and God. At core, everything we end up with, even that which we claim to have built or earned (including ourselves), comes from those gifts. Why, then, do we boast as if anything were not a gift?

Political candidates are being asked to quote their favorite bible verses. Wouldn’t it be nice to hear one mention this question? Not very likely, though.

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