Stir up your power, Lord God, to prepare the way of your only Son.
By his coming give to all the world knowledge of your salvation;
through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns
with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
–Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), page 19
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The Assigned Readings:
Isaiah 19:18-25 (Tuesday)
Isaiah 35:3-7 (Wednesday)
Psalm 126 (Both Days)
2 Peter 1:2-15 (Tuesday)
Luke 7:18-30 (Wednesday)
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When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion,
then we were like those who dream.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy.
They they said among the nations,
“The LORD has done great things for them.”
The LORD has done great thins for us,
and we are glad indeed.
Restore our fortunes, O LORD,
like the watercourses of the Negev.
Those who sowed with tears
will reap with songs of joy.
Those who go our reaping, carrying the seed,
will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.
–Psalm 126, The Book of Common Prayer (1979)
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St. John the Baptist was a political prisoner. The great forerunner of Jesus was having doubts, perhaps due in part to despair. That was understandable.
Many Hebrews were exiles in the Chaldean/Neo-Babylonian Empire. Other Hebrews lived in their homeland, yet under occupation. Hopelessness was understandable.
Yet God was undefeated and not in prison. No, God was preparing to do something new. Egypt was going to suffer, in part because its “sages” depended on their “received wisdom” (actually foolishness), not on God. Yet after punishment, First Isaiah wrote, Egypt was going to turn to God and become an instrument of divine mercy. Later, in Isaiah 35, the Babylonian Exile was going to end, the prophet wrote. And sadly, St. John the Baptist died in prison. He was a forerunner in execution also. Yet at least John received his answer from Jesus, who went on to suffer, die, and not remain dead for long.
The Kingdom of God, partially in place since at least the earthly lifetime of Jesus of Nazareth, awaits its full unveiling. Until then good people will continue to suffer and sometimes die for the sake of righteousness, if not the reality that they prove to be inconvenient to powerful bad people. One Christian duty during this time of evil coexisting with the Kingdom of God is building up faithful community, thereby striving for justice and reaching out to those around us. The church is properly salt and light in the world, not an isolated colony living behind barricades and living at war with it.
You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under a bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
–Matthew 5:13-16, The New Revised Standard Version (1989)
God is faithful and generous, but that reality precludes neither punishment for offenses nor suffering for the sake of righteousness. Those who expect God to be a cosmic warm fuzzy are in error, just as those who imagine that the existence and love of God lead to an end to suffering (especially of the godly) are wrong. Yet, if we suffer for the sake of righteousness, God is at our side. Can we recognize the reality that God loves us, sides with us, and has suffered for us? How will that recognition translate into thinking, and therefore into living?
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
AUGUST 11, 2015 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF SAINT GREGORY THAUMATURGUS, ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP OF NEOCAESAREA; AND SAINT ALEXANDER OF COMANA “THE CHARCOAL BURNER,” ROMAN CATHOLIC MARTYR AND BISHOP OF COMANA, PONTUS
THE FEAST OF AUGUSTUS MONTAGUE TOPLADY, ANGLICAN PRIEST AND HYMN WRITER
THE FEAST OF SAINT CLARE OF ASSISI, FOUNDER OF THE POOR CLARES
THE FEAST OF MATTHIAS LOY, U.S. LUTHERAN MINISTER, EDUCATOR, HYMN WRITER, AND HYMN TRANSLATOR; AND CONRAD HERMANN LOUIS SCHUETTE, GERMAN-AMERICAN LUTHERAN MINISTER, EDUCATOR, HYMN WRITER, AND HYMN TRANSLATOR
One of the great virtues of High Churchmanship is having a well-developed sense of sacred time. So, for example, the church calendars, with their cycles, tell us of salvation history. We focus on one part of the narrative at a time. Much of Protestantism, formed in rebellion against Medieval Roman Catholic excesses and errors, has thrown the proverbial baby out with the equally proverbial bath water, rejecting or minimizing improperly the sacred power of rituals and holy days.
Consider, O reader, the case of Christmas–not in the present tense, but through the late 1800s. Puritans outlawed the celebration of Christmas when they governed England in the 1650s. Their jure divino theology told them that since there was no biblical sanction for keeping Christmas, they ought not to do it–nor should anyone else. On the other hand, the jure divino theology of other Calvinists allowed for keeping Christmas. Jure divino was–and is–a matter of interpretation. Lutherans, Anglicans, and Moravians kept Christmas. Many Methodists on the U.S. frontier tried yet found that drunken revelry disrupted services. Despite this Methodist pro-Christmas opinion, many members of the Free Methodist denomination persisted in anti-Christmas sentiment. The holiday was too Roman Catholic, they said and existed without
the authority of God’s word.
Thus, as the December 19, 1888 issue of Free Methodist concluded,
We attach no holy significance to the day.
–Quoted in Leigh Eric Schmidt, Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), page 180. (The previous quote also comes from that magazine, quoted in the same book.)
Many Baptists also rejected the religious celebration of Christmas. An 1875 issue of Baptist Teacher, a publication for Sunday School educators, contained the following editorial:
We believe in Christmas–not as a holy day but as a holiday and so we join with our juveniles with utmost heartiness of festal celebration….Stripped as it ought to be, of all pretensions of religious sanctity and simply regarded as a social and domestic institution–an occasion of housewarming, and heart-warming and innocent festivity–we welcome its coming with a hearty “All Hail.”
–Quoted in Schmidt, Consumer Rites, pages 179 and 180
Presbyterians, with their Puritan heritage, resisted celebrating Christmas for a long time. In fact, some very strict Presbyterians still refuse to keep Christmas, citing their interpretation of jure divino theology. (I have found some of their writings online.) That attitude was more commonplace in the 1800s. The Presbyterian Church in the United States, the old Southern Presbyterian Church, passed the following resolution at its 1899 General Assembly:
There is no warrant for the observance of Christmas and Easter as holy days, but rather contrary (see Galatians iv.9-11; Colossians ii.16-21), and such observance is contrary to the principles of the Reformed faith, conducive to will-worship, and not in harmony with the simplicity of the gospel in Jesus Christ.
–Page 430 of the Journal of the General Assembly, 1899 (I copied the text of the resolution verbatim from an original copy of the Journal.)
I agree with Leigh Eric Schmidt:
It is not hard to see in this radical Protestant perspective a religious source for the very secularization of the holiday that would eventually be so widely decried. With the often jostling secularism of the Christmas bazaar, Protestant rigorists simply got what they had long wished for–Christmas as one more market day, a profane time or work and trade.
–Consumer Rites, page 180
I affirm the power of rituals and church calendars. And I have no fear of keeping a Roman Catholic holy day and season. Thus I keep Advent (December 1-24) and Christmas (December 25-January 5). I hold off on wishing people
Merry Christmas
often until close to Christmas Eve, for I value the time of preparation. And I have no hostility or mere opposition to wishing anyone
Happy Holidays,
due to the concentrated holiday season in December. This is about succinctness and respect in my mind; I am not a culture warrior.
Yet I cannot help but notice with dismay the increasingly early start of the end-of-year shopping season. More retailers will open earlier on Thanksgiving Day this year. Many stores display Christmas decorations before Halloween. These are examples of worshiping at the high altar of the Almighty Dollar.
I refuse to participate in this. In fact, I have completed my Christmas shopping–such as it was–mostly at thrift stores. One problem with materialism is that it ignores a basic fact: If I acquire an item, I must put it somewhere. But what if I enjoy open space?
I encourage a different approach to the end of the year: drop out quietly (or never opt in) and keep nearly four weeks of Advent and all twelve days of Christmas. I invite you, O reader, to observe these holy seasons and to discover riches and treasures better than anything on sale on Black Friday.
Pax vobiscum!
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
NOVEMBER 25, 2013 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF SQUANTO, COMPASSIONATE HUMAN BEING
THE FEAST OF JAMES OTIS SARGENT HUNTINGTON, FOUNDER OF THE ORDER OF THE HOLY CROSS
–Martin Luther; translated by William James Kirkpatrick
Yesterday I sang in my parish choir’s performance of the Christmas portion of Handel’s Messiah. We dropped “His yoke is easy and his burden is light,” culminating instead in the Hallelujah Chorus. The concert was glorious and spiritually edifying for many people.
There are still a few days of Advent left. So I encourage you, O reader, to observe them. Then, beginning sometime during the second half of December 24, begin to say
Merry Christmas!
and continue that practice through January 5, the twelfth and last day of Christmas. And I encourage you to remember that our Lord and Savior was born into a violent world, one in which men–some mentally disturbed, others just mean, and still others both mean and mentally disturbed–threatened and took the lives of innocents. Names, circumstances, empires, nation-states, and technology have changed, but the essential reality has remained constant, unfortunately.
The Hallelujah Chorus, quoting the Apocalypse of John, includes these words:
The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.
That is not true yet, obviously. But that fact does not relieve any of us of our responsibilities to respect the Image of God in others and to treat them accordingly. We must not try to evade the duty to be the face and appendages of Christ to those to whom God sends us and those whom God sends to us. We cannot save the world, but we can improve it. May we do so for the glory of God and the benefit of others.
May the peace of Christ, born as a vulnerable baby and executed as a criminal by a brutal imperial government, be with you now and always. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
DECEMBER 17, 2012 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF MARIA STEWART, EDUCATOR
THE FEAST OF EGLANTYNE JEBB, FOUNDER OF SAVE THE CHILDREN
THE FEAST OF FRANK MASON NORTH, U.S. METHODIST MINISTER
Stir up our hearts, Lord God, to prepare the way of your only Son.
By his coming strengthen us to serve you with purified lives;
through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns
with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
–Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), page 19
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The Assigned Readings:
Isaiah 26:7-15
Psalm 27
Acts 2:37-42
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When evildoers came upon me to eat up my flesh,
it was they, my foes and my adversaries, who stumbled and fell.
–Psalm 27:2, The Book of Common Prayer (1979)
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Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.
–Acts 2:40b, New Revised Standard Version (1989)
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We read of evildoers. They receive grace yet continue to deal unjustly and to fail to recognize the majesty of God. They practice and/or condone unnecessary violence. They exploit the poor and act without compassion. They are corrupt.
Human nature is, for better and for worse, constant. Thus every generation is “this corrupt generation.” I survey my North American dominant culture and find reasons for both optimism and pessimism. On one hand, for example, women can vote, Jim Crow laws are dead, and homosexuals have more rights than they once did. On the other hand, racism continues to permeate sections of society, homophobia survives, income inequality is becoming worse, and certain big-box retailers with dodgy ethical reputations as public citizens begin to display Christmas items before Halloween. I have, without resorting to perpetual grumpiness, escaped to a man cave with many books, compact discs, and DVDs. I subscribe to no television, satellite, or similar service, so I am functionally popular culturally illiterate. Yet I know much about history, theology, liturgy, and classical music. Mine is the better lot, complete with Christmas shopping at thrift stores. In some ways I never dropped in, In other ways I have dropped out. So be it.
One challenge of being a Christian is to transform the world for the better. God will save it, but we mere mortals can at least leave it better than we found it. We cannot transform the world either by condemning it from afar or by becoming indistinguishable from it. Those who retreat from the world can also play a vital role, for convents and monasteries have preserved knowledge, sheltered orphans and abandoned children, provided medical care, et cetera. So may nobody criticize monastics unjustly. We need more of them, in fact.
How is God calling you, O reader, to make this corrupt generation better? May you fulfill that vocation well.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
OCTOBER 26, 2014 COMMON ERA
PROPER 25: THE TWENTIETH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
THE FEAST OF SAINT ALFRED THE GREAT, KING OF THE WEST SAXONS
THE FEAST OF SAINT CEDD, ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP OF LONDON
THE FEAST OF DMITRY BORTNIANSKY, COMPOSER
THE FEAST OF PHILLIP NICOLAI, JOHANN HEERMANN, AND PAUL GERHARDT, HYMN WRITERS
Today’s readings are about fruits–descendants (in the case of Abram/Abraham) and deeds and words (in the case of Matthew 12). Abram/Abraham had free will, as does each of us, O reader. God is mighty, but we are not cosmic puppets, so we can choose to cooperate with God or to do otherwise. Our deeds reveal our creeds, for such as we think, we are. So, if we suffer, may we do so for the sake of righteousness, not sin.
I examine my spiritual history and conclude that my part is mixed. Sometimes, however, I have thought mistakenly that I was doing that. And, on other occasions, I have not even tried. But I have returned to God again and again, trusting in love which covers a multitude of sins and has only one unpardonable sin. To the best of my knowledge, I have not committed blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, for my conscience seems to have been intact for as long as I remember. And I can distinguish between good and evil.
We should, of course, know that our families, subcultures, cultures, friends, and societies influence our views of right and wrong. Sometimes they err. To some extent each of us is wrong–sinful. But God knows that about us–that we are but dust. I think that the mere effort to do the righteous thing pleases God, by grace. At least I hope so. But I depend on grace to lead to positive spiritual results for communities, cultures, subcultures, societies, families, individuals, et cetera.
Advent receives inadequate attention. The season is certainly not commercial. Indeed, Christmas receives much commercial attention even before Halloween, for retailers need the money from Christmas-related sales to sustain stores through other times of the year. I admit to being of two minds. On one hand I do my rather limited Christmas shopping at thrift stores, so my deeds reveal my creed. Yet I know that many jobs depend on Christmas-related sales, so I want retailers to do well at the end of the year. Nevertheless, I am not very materialistic at heart; the best part of Christmas is intangible. And nobody needs any more dust catchers.
Observing Advent is a positive way of dropping out of the madness that is pre-December 25 commercialism. The four Sundays and other days (December 2-24 in 2012) preceding Christmas Day are a time of spiritual preparation, not unlike Lent, which precedes Easter. Garrison Keillor used the term “Advent Distress Disorder” (ADD) in a monologue last year. Indeed, finding positive news in the midst of apocalyptic tones of Advent readings can prove difficult. Yet the good news remains and the light shines brightest in the darkness.
So, O reader, I invite you to observe a holy Advent. Embrace the confluence of joy and distress, of darkness and light. And give Advent all the time it warrants through December 24. Christmas will arrive on schedule and last for twelve days. But that is another topic….
Pax vobiscum!
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
NOVEMBER 6, 2012 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF WILLIAM TEMPLE, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY
THE FEAST OF TE WHITI O RONGOMAI, MAORI PROPHET
THE FEAST OF SAINT THEOPHANE VERNARD, ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST, MISSIONARY, AND MARTYR IN VIETNAM
