That Which We Have Heard & Known

Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Category: Daily Office (Page 6 of 70)

An Egotistical Cabaña Boy – From the Daily Office Lectionary

September 1, 2015 / / 0 Comments

An Egotistical Cabaña Boy

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Tuesday in the week of Proper 17, Year 1 (Pentecost 14, 2015)

Psalm 36:1 ~ There is a voice of rebellion deep in the heart of the wicked; there is no fear of God before his eyes.

Earlier this week I listend to Krista Tippett on NPR interview Grace Lee Boggs. At the beginning of the interview, philosopher Boggs opined: “What is the difference between a revolution and a rebellion? … A rebellion is mainly an explosion of anger and revolution is a tremendous leap forward, a tremendous evolution in consciousness and responsibility, a new way of thinking.” I’m not, by any stretch, anywhere near as versed in philosophy as Dr. Boggs and I am loath to contradict so venerable a sage, but I think she’s wrong.

I don’t believe a rebellion is “an explosion of anger.” That, I think, would be a riot or a revolt. There may be a component of anger in rebellion, but I would posit that rebellion is an explosion of ego, even when rebellion involves a large group.

I suggest the Psalmist is wrong, too, though not in what he says. The Psalmist is wrong in what he implies, in the suggestion that the “voice of rebellion” is found only in the hearts of the wicked. I believe there is a “voice of rebellion” in the heart of every human being. The wicked give in to that voice; the righteous listen to another.

St. Augustine of Hippo wrote in his Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” In his Pensées, Blaise Pascal offered, “What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace?” This emptiness Pascal called an “infinite abyss [which] can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.”

But human beings try to fill that “God-shaped hole,” as some have called it, with other things. Standing next to that hole “deep in the heart” of humankind is the ego, waiting like a cabaña boy to dive into the pool at a trendy upscale spa. The dive . . . that’s rebellion calling with its siren song to the cabaña boy of the human soul; the wicked answer that call and take the dive putting themselves, their egos, in the place of God.

Rebellion is not “an explosion of anger.” It’s the dive of an egotistical cabaña boy!

Oh Come On Now! Really? – From the Daily Office Lectionary

August 31, 2015 / / 2 Comments

O Come On Now! Really?

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Monday in the week of Proper 17, Year 1 (Pentecost 14, 2015)

2 Chron. 7:5 ~ King Solomon offered as a sacrifice twenty-two thousand oxen and one hundred and twenty thousand sheep.

The writer (or writers or editors or redactors or whomever) of the Second Book of Chronicles includes this hyperbolic detail in the account of King Solomon’s dedication of the Temple in one of the many verses of Scripture that just make me cringe. It’s not the death of so many innocent animals that does so because, frankly, I don’t think it’s true. It’s the fact that I don’t think it’s true, that I just want to roll my eyes and say, “Oh come on now! Really?”

There is plenty of fiction in the Bible already. The whole creation myth (both of them, although the first one – which is probably the more “modern” of the two being more sophisticated – has more the sense of theological poetry than of mythology) are clearly not meant to be taken as factual despite the fact that there are plenty of literalist Bible readers who do take them as such. Esther and Ruth are probably fiction; Joshua, Job, and Jonah are certainly fiction. There’s nothing wrong with faction in Holy Scripture. Fiction, poetry, lover letters, metaphoric prophecy can all convey truth; the testimony of truth isn’t limited to facts. The writers of history, however, really don’t need to add exaggerated details which detract from their message.

I have several Palestinian Muslim friends who, because of details like this, argue that the entire claim of the Jewish people to what the Muslim’s call the Haram al-Sharif (“the Noble Sanctuary”), which the Jews call Har HaBáyit (“the Temple Mount”) is entirely invented. They believe it to be a fiction, in spite of the fact that there is archeological evidence for at least the Second Temple if not Solomon’s structure. This is the very problem with hyperbolic exaggeration in the histories; they make them unbelievable.

And there are plenty of such details. So what are we to do with them. The literalists claim, with some justification, that as soon as one starts claiming some part of the Scriptures are not factual it’s a “slippery slope” to concluding that the entire library of the Bible is untrue. The Bible, however, is not an either-or, black-and-white, take-it-or-leave-it thing! At one end of a spectrum of understanding is the literalist position that everything in it is factually accurate; at the other end is the conclusion that nothing in it is true. One encounters error at either extreme. Somewhere in the middle, recognizing the variety of genres the Bible incorporates and that its authors and editors had differing agendas at differing times, is the truth.

Determining that truth is an act of discernment, of critical, educated, willing-to-be-wrong, open-to-mystery, and accepting-of-ambiguity discernment. That’s a tough thing to do and that’s why being in that somewhere-in-the-middle place is often uncomfortable, often a place where one cringes and moans, “Oh come on now! Really?”

Under the Protection of the Dioscuri – From the Daily Office Lectionary

August 28, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Under the Protection of the Dioscuri . . . .

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Friday in the week of Proper 16, Year 1 (Pentecost 13, 2015)

Acts 28:11 ~ Three months later we set sail on a ship that had wintered at the island, an Alexandrian ship with the Twin Brothers as its figurehead.

One of the things I most love about Holy Scripture are the odd little details that its writers throw in; this is true for both Hebrew and Christian Scriptures in the Bible, and it is true for the Scriptures of other faiths. I sometimes wonder if there is point to them, or if they are just odd little details, the sort of thing someone would write down in their diary without much thought other than to report a stray fact.

This is particularly so with Luke’s mention of the ship’s figurehead of the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux. Is this just something he noted in his journal and then repeated when transcribing his diary notes into his history for Theophilos? Or is he saying something about the faith of the Alexandrian ship captain and his crew? Something about Paul’s (and his own) open-mindedness in sailing on a Gentile ship under the protection of pagan demi-gods? Something about the Dioscuri themselves.

The myths about the Twins, the children of Leda and Zeus (who seduced their mother in the form of a swan) are varied and contradictory. One story holds that both are the sons of Zeus; another version says that only Pollux is and that Castor is the son of Leda’s earthly husband Tyndareus. Thus, only Pollux is “naturally” a demi-god but it is said that Pollux bargained with his father to give like status to his half-twin Castor. They have an ambiguous relationship with immortality being required, after their earthly life, to spend half of their time in Pluto’s realm of the dead, Hades, while allowed to spend the other half alive on Olympus with Zeus. They are said to be helpers of humankind, particularly of travelers and sailors; their intervention is sought during times of crisis.

Is Luke suggesting something, some parallelism perhaps, in specifically noting that he and Paul are bringing to Rome the Gospel of the Son of Yahweh on board a ship under the protection of the sons of Zeus? Probably not; his mention of the figurehead of the Twin Brothers is probably just one of those odd little details one records in a diary.

Solomonic Justice – From the Daily Office Lectionary

August 27, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Solomonic justice . . . .

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Thursday in the week of Proper 16, Year 1 (Pentecost 13, 2015)

1 Kings 3:24-25 ~ So [Solomon] said, “Bring me a sword”, and they brought a sword before the king. The king said, “Divide the living boy in two; then give half to one, and half to the other.”

There’s a term in law (and in common speech) which describes a compromise judgment: Solomonic justice. It describes exactly what Solomon doesn’t do here. The “Solomonic justice” solution to the quandary presented by the two women who each claim the baby as her own is to split the baby. This would not have worked justice and it is not what Solomon did, so term is entirely ironic.

And yet we often seek compromise as a solution to disputes. I recall a law school professor opining that compromises are the worst of solutions because everyone loses something in a compromise and no one is ever satisfied with them; the better way, he said, is to seek consensus. This rang true (and still does) as it recalled to me the observation by the pioneer of organizational theory Mary Follett, some of whose works I had read while pursuing an MBA.

Follett used the term “integration” rather than “consensus,” but her point was the same when she observed that every dispute has three possible outcomes: domination, in which one side gets what it wants; compromise, in which neither side gets what it wants; or integration, in which a was is found by which both sides may get what they wish. The justice displayed in the Bible’s story of Solomon and the two women is domination, neither the compromise of “Solomonic justice” nor a way in which both women could be satisfied.

It is often said of current American politics that we live in a world where compromise has become impossible. I wonder, however, if it might be that we live in a world where compromise has become to common, where people have been compromised to a point of fundamental frustration, where we have been required again and again to give up a little here, give up a little there, until we have nothing more to give up. Mahatma Ghandi once said there can be no compromise on fundamentals, to compromise on fundamentals is merely surrender. Having been asked to compromise, to give up bits and pieces until it feels there are no bits or pieces left to give, have we reached a place where all that remains are fundamentals which cannot be surrendered?

Perhaps so, and perhaps this is the place where consensus or, to use Follett’s word, integration can begin. If we can define fundamentals on which both sides agree, perhaps we can move on from there. The issue then becomes one of overcoming the frustration and anger existing on both sides. We cannot talk, negotiate, or explore consensus and integration until that anger is diffused.

That is the true “Solomonic justice” on display in today’s Bible story. The king used the shock of the threat of bloody infanticide to defuse (at least on one side) anger and frustration, and revealed the deceit on the other. This may be what we need now, a slap in the face to shock us into facing reality.

And, maybe, given the quality (or lack thereof), character (or lack thereof), and sheer ridiculousness of some current “politicians,” it’s what we’re getting.

There’s always an “only” – From the Daily Office Lectionary

August 26, 2015 / / 0 Comments

There’s always an “only” . . . .

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Wednesday in the week of Proper 16, Year 1 (Pentecost 13, 2015)

1 Kings 3:3 ~ Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of his father David; only, he sacrificed and offered incense at the high places.

Yessireebob! The Deuteronomic historians responsible for the Books of Kings loved Solomon . . . except for that one little thing: he didn’t restrict his worship to the Jerusalem Temple (which he built) and he married all those foreign wives with their foreign gods (and maybe – hint, hint, nudge, nudge – participated in their religious activities).

Those historians are a lot like . . . well . . . everyone. There always seems to be an “only” or an “except” or a “but” – often unspoken – annexed to every human word of praise or expression of love. As a parish priest, I preside at weddings from time to time (really pretty frequently) and, under the rules of the Episcopal Church, I cannot do so unless the couple has undertaken a course of premarital counseling with me. I use a testing instrument (“It’s NOT a test!” I tell every couple, but it really is – it doesn’t test their compatibility or likelihood of success; it tests their communication) which each partner completes separately; it allows each, through indications of his or her level of agreement with several statements, to express any “excepts,” any “onlies,” and any “buts” in ways which are non-threatening to his or her partner. They don’t even realize that that is what they are doing, but I do. I see it in the scoring of the instrument. We deal with it, to some extent, in the course of the counseling.

To love unconditionally, with no “onlies” and no “excepts,” with “no ifs, ands, or buts” as my late mother liked to say, is not a human capacity. The Deuteronomic historians were incapable of it. The couples I counsel in advance of their nuptials are incapable of it. You are incapable of it. I am incapable of it.

God, on the other hand . . .

I have a bumper sticker on my car which reads “God Loves You. No Exceptions.” Yesterday, I took my car to the local dealer for service. As I pulled into the garage, another customer, a woman whom I would guess to be in her late 40s or early 50s, greeted me and said, “I love your bumper sticker.” I thanked her and chatted about the PR campaign of my diocese which produced the stickers and about my church. I gave her my card and invited her to join us on Sunday. It was one of those great, unplanned encounters when one can do that. We had a great conversation.

I love the opportunity to talk with people like that woman, only . . . I don’t really expect her to show up on Sunday. See? There’s always an “only”.

Learning, Ignorance, Insanity – From the Daily Office Lectionary

August 25, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Learning, Ignorance, Insanity

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Tuesday in the week of Proper 16, Year 1 (Pentecost 13, 2015)

Acts 26:24 ~ While [Paul] was making this defense, Festus exclaimed, “You are out of your mind, Paul! Too much learning is driving you insane!”

I confess to a fondness for this verse and often wonder can too much learning drive a person insane? I don’t think so, but it’s certainly worth contemplating. It may just be a matter of perspective; perhaps in some circumstances the actions of a learned person can appear irrational to those lacking knowledge which the educated person possesses. In any event, with two masters degrees and two doctorates, I’m hardly the person to scoff at education.

In fact, I believe in life-long education and continue to take classes when I can and to read and study new things. Each year I find a subject about which I knew only a little and strive to learn more. Last year, I read several texts on quantum mechanics, string theory, and the nature of the universe (or the multiverse, according to some). Did I understand it all? Of course not! There times when what I was reading seemed absolutely crazy, but I continued my course and I think I’m a better person for having done so. This year, I am reading the history of Palestine and Israel from a variety of perspectives.

I don’t believe that too much learning leads to insanity. But I do believe that ignorance can produce irrational conduct. Consider, for example: the anti-vaccination craze, denial of human causation of climate change, so-called “creation science,” congressional refusal to fund federal research into gunshot injuries as a medical issue, a state legislature’s refusal to allow its state agencies to properly measure changes in sea level along its coasts, laws requiring doctors to give their patients misinformation about birth control and abortion, etc. We now live with governmental policies affecting nearly every facet of our lives adopted by people who say, “I am not a scientist, but . . . . ” and then enact laws regarding the very scientific issue about which they have confessed ignorance. That’s crazy!

I don’t believe that too much learning leads to insanity, but I do believe that too little does. You are out of your mind, America! Too little learning is driving you insane.

Leavening the Lump – From the Daily Office Lectionary

August 20, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Leavening the Lump . . . .

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Thursday in the week of Proper 15, Year 1 (Pentecost 12, 2015)

Acts 24:22 ~ But Felix, who was rather well informed about the Way, adjourned the hearing with the comment, “When Lysias the tribune comes down, I will decide your case.”

Paul, a Roman citizen demanding his rights, is brought before Felix the governor after being accused of starting a riot in the Jerusalem Temple. The Jewish authorities lay out their case; Paul makes his defense; the governor postpones judgment. In recording the scene, Luke (the author of Acts) makes this parenthetical remark which is easily overlooked, that Felix “was rather well informed about the Way,” i.e., about the claim of some Jews (and now a few Gentiles) that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, risen from the dead and ascended into heaven, and the way of life lived in consequence of that belief.

Antonius Felix, the procurator of Judaea, a Greek freedman, divorced and remarried to a divorced woman, known for cruelty and licentiousness, more than willing to accept bribes and look the other way, under whose governorship the province experienced a significant increase in criminal activity, “was rather well informed about the Way.” How could that be?

Felix was governor of Judaea for only six or seven year, 52-58 AD, about twenty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. Although the Christian faith had spread (this trial takes place about six years after Paul’s trip to Athens, for example), it was still a small community, so how is it that the Roman governor, a pagan from the imperial city itself, in office and in the province only a few years, is “well informed about the Way”?

I suggest there’s only one way for this to be true: early Christians talked about their faith, shared their story with others, and spread the gospel in their daily lives. I’m not suggesting that any member of the church actually had spoken directly to Felix, but rather that (if I may use one of Jesus’ own metaphors) like yeast in a lump of dough knowledge of the Christian story spread through the community as neighbor talked to neighbor, Jew talked with Gentile, Palestinian native spoke to Roman occupier, and so it goes.

Some 2,000 years later, we live in a society where many claim to be “rather well informed about the way” but few are. There is a lot of talking about Christianity, but precious little of that talk is accurate and few who talk it actually live it. It may be that Antonius Felix was rather better informed about the Way than are many modern Christians and certainly better than the “nones” among us.

There is only one remedy for this: yet again, the yeast must leaven the lump.

This is not how it’s supposed to be! – From the Daily Office Lectionary

August 19, 2015 / / 0 Comments

This is not how it’s supposed to be!

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Wednesday in the week of Proper 15, Year 1 (Pentecost 12, 2015)

2 Samuel 18:33 ~ The king was deeply moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and as he went, he said, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would that I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

This verse reports King David’s reaction on learning of the death of his son Absalom. Even though Absalom has rebelled, even though there is “bad blood” between father and son, even though David has every reason to be bitterly disappointed in his offspring and, perhaps, even to rejoice at the end of a threat to his throne, the bond between parent and child, severed by the death of the child, leads to his outpouring of deep sorrow.

“This is not how it’s supposed to be,” is how one parent mourning the loss of her first-born put it. That was my mother speaking about the death of my older brother from brain cancer. She knew well that pain of parental loss; my father also died (in an automobile accident) before his parents and my mother had stood by my grandparents as they mourned their son. (My grandparents experienced that loss again when my uncle, my brother’s only sibling, died of cancer several years later.)

This is not how it’s supposed to be! And, yet, it is again and again and again. I am almost 63 years old; for 59 of my years my country has had troops on battlefields somewhere in the world. (Earlier this year, the Washingtons Blog website detailed the 222 years America has been at war.) Hundreds of thousands of young men and women, and children, uniformed soldiers and civilians, had been killed in those conflicts; numerous children have predeceased their parents. Again and again, fathers and mothers have echoed David’s lament: “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would that I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

This is not how it’s supposed to be!

Figs & Forgiveness – From the Daily Office Lectionary

August 17, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Figs and Forgiveness . . . .

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Monday in the week of Proper 15, Year 1 (Pentecost 12, 2015)

Mark 11:12-14 ~ On the following day, when they came from Bethany, [Jesus] was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it.

A day or two later (after Jesus has overturned tables in the Temple and driven out the money-changers), he and his band will pass by this tree again. The disciples will notice that it is withered to the root and comment on that fact. Jesus will instruct them about the power of prayer using the famous example of a mountain tossed into the sea. Mark’s use of the withered fig tree story is as a demonstration of power, both Jesus’ power and our own potential, which is all fine and good. Nonetheless, I have always been curious about the story.

It may be that the story is an embodied metaphor, that it happened in another way, that the author of Mark hasn’t really understood it, and that Mark has therefore tried to make sense of it by using it at this point in his narrative. Rabbinic commentary has long used the fig tree as a metaphor for the Torah, noting that the crop of figs do not ripen uniformly so that one most go back to the tree many times to harvest its fruit; the Torah is said to be like that, yielding fruit each time we return to study the scriptures. Perhaps Jesus blasted the fig tree as a way to demonstrate the fruitlessness of Torah as it had come to be used by the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and others. Perhaps there was more conversation apropros of the withering which had been lost to communal memory by the time Mark put pen to parchment, recording the action but not its contemporary explanation, adding words about prayer from another conversation. Perhaps . . . .

However that may be, the story as Mark relates it, wrapping it around the “cleansing of the Temple,” reveals a very human Jesus, one given to anger and frustration – righteous anger in the case of the Temple money-changers and livestock salesmen, petulance in the case of the fig tree. When challenged about the result of his fit of pique, he avoids the question, turning it aside with a “Well, you could do it, too, if you just have enough faith.”

I really don’t think Mark intended to portray an angry, frustrated Jesus, but that’s how I read the text . . . and I’m thankful that the story is here, told in this way. Mark’s Jesus is a human being to whom I can relate. I completely understand and I can fully relate the frustrations, the annoyance, and the pique apparent in this story, and even the larger, more justified anger Jesus expresses in the Temple. What I always have a hard time comprehending is Jesus ability a few days later to forgive those who execute him, but the two episodes are intimately connected and, therefor, give me hope. If Jesus is like me in the former, then maybe I can be like Jesus in the latter.

I can learn a lot about scripture, theology, and religious history if the story is one of an embodied metaphor, the fig tree as Torah. I can learn a lot more about me and about God Incarnate if the story is one about Jesus, human, frustrated, and annoyed, who can later offer the ultimate in forgiveness.

A Theology of Rape – From the Daily Office Lectionary

August 15, 2015 / / 0 Comments

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Saturday in the week of Proper 14, Year 1 (Pentecost 11, 2015)

2 Samuel 16:22 ~ So they pitched a tent for Absalom upon the roof; and Absalom went in to his father’s concubines in the sight of all Israel.

I’m having a hard time with Scripture today … I have notes for a sermon for tomorrow, so I’ll be able to mumble my way through some sort of ad libbed homily … but tomorrow’s lessons are not cause of the problem. The cause was this lesson in today’s Daily Office Lectionary in which Absalom attempts to wrest the kingdom of Israel from his father David. Absalom takes control of Jerusalem and then, on the advice of Ahithophel, whose counsel is extolled “as if one consulted the oracle of God,” this happens: to demonstrate his control of the city and his contempt for his father, Absalom’s men “pitched a tent for Absalom upon the roof; and Absalom went in to his father’s concubines in the sight of all Israel.” ~ “Go in to” is a biblical euphemism for sexual intercourse. In other words, Absalom, on the advice of one whose counsel is considered to be like that of God, publicly raped his father’s concubines as part of a military conquest.

This is a week in which many of us have been disgusted by the NY Times report on ISIS’s “theology of rape,” by the Jihadists’ use of women as property, as sex slaves, as rewards for their followers, by their calling rape an act of prayer! So these verses really leapt out at me!

Absalom is not a hero of the Bible. Eventually, his rebellion is put down and he is killed. Nonetheless, this lesson portrays his act with callous nonchalance and praises the man who advised it. I’m disgusted. A theology of rape is not so distant. I’m having a hard time with Scripture today.

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2025 That Which We Have Heard & Known

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑