“They read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.”[1] Lord, may we also have grace to understand the readings from Scripture. Amen.
The People of Israel, on their return from exile in Babylon, faced a question which faces many of us today: “What are we to do now?” That is a question which plagues humankind, which we human beings have been asking since time immemorial. With each and every change in our individual and corporate lives we face the same question: What are we to do now?
This was the question which Nehemiah the governor and Ezra the priest sought to help the Jews answer in the event recorded in our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures this morning. (By the way, it wasn’t just those two: the verses left out of the lectionary selection name 26 other people who read from the Bible and “helped the people to understand the law.”[2])
Again this week as last, our first reading today is from the First Book of Kings and like last week’s, it is a prayer spoken by King Solomon. Last week, it was a private prayer spoken in a dream late at night. Today, it is a public prayer. As long as it was, this reading is just a small part of the dedicatory prayer that Solomon offered when the Temple was finished and consecrated. In it, Solomon asks an important question, “[W]ill God indeed dwell on the earth?”
There’s a story about a pastor giving a children’s sermon. He decides to use a story about forest animals as his starting point, so he gathers the kids around him and begins by asking them a question. He says, “I’m going to describe someone to you and I want you to tell me who it is. This person prepares for winter by gathering nuts and hiding them in a safe place, like inside a hollow tree. Who might that be?” The kids all have a puzzled look on their faces and no one answers. So, the preacher continues, “Well, this person is kind of short. He has whiskers and a bushy tail, and he scampers along branches jumping from tree to tree.” More puzzled looks until, finally, Johnnie raises his hand. The preacher breathes a sigh of relief, and calls on Johnnie, who says, “I know the answer is supposed to be Jesus, but that sure sounds an awful lot like a squirrel to me.”
When I find myself in times of trouble,
It’s the last Sunday of the Christian year, sort of a New Year’s Eve for the church. We call it “the Feast of Christ the King” and we celebrate it by remembering his enthronement. Each year on Christ the King Sunday we read some part of the crucifixion story. As Pope Francis reminded the faithful in his Palm Sunday homily a few years ago, “It is precisely here that his kingship shines forth in godly fashion: his royal throne is the wood of the Cross!”
Come Holy Spirit, Comforter, Spirit of Truth,
With churches suspending public worship out of concern for the contagion of Covid-19, the noval coronavirus, we Episcopalians (and many others) are prevented from receiving Holy Communion. An ancient practice of the Church in such circumstances, for there have always been those who, for whatever reason, are unable to take the Sacrament, is to make an act of “spiritual communion.” 
Two things happened last Saturday.
