Stir up the wills of your faithful people, Lord God,
and open our ears to the preaching of John, that
rejoicing in your salvation, we may bring forth the fruits of repentance;
through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives
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:
Amos 9:8-15
Isaiah 12:2-6
Luke 1:57-66
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In that day, you shall say:
“I give thanks to You, O LORD!
Although You were wroth with me,
Your wrath has turned back and You comfort me,
Behold the God who gives me triumph!
I am confident, unafraid;
For Yah the LORD is my strength and might,
And He has been my deliverance.”
Joyfully shall you draw water
From the fountains of triumph,
And you shall say on that day:
“Praise the LORD, proclaim His name.
Make His deeds known among the peoples;
Declare that His name is exalted.
Hymn the LORD,
For He has done gloriously;
Let this be made known
In all the world!
Oh, shout for joy,
You who dwell in Zion!
For great is your midst
Is the Holy One of Israel.”
–Isaiah 12:1-6, TANAKH: The Holy Scriptures (1985)
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Now the texts really sound like Advent! Exile will occur, but it will also end. Afterward divine generosity will be a wonder to behold. And, in the New Testament, some people wonder what the newborn St. John the Baptist will become. The elements of the drama of Advent are coming together.
Exile is an important aspect of the story of Jews living under Roman occupation in their homeland. The Roman Republic, which allied itself with the Hasmoneans in 1 Maccabees 8, became an occupying force in time. Then it turned into the Roman Empire. Jews living in their homeland were in exile in a way. One way of coping with that reality was hoping for a Messiah who would end the Roman occupation and restore national greatness. It was a common (yet not universal) expectation, one which Jesus defied.
St. John the Baptist founded a religious movement to which Jesus might have belonged for a time. (New Testament scholars have been debating that question for a long time. They will probably continue to do so for a while longer.) If Jesus did belong to John’s movement initially, that fact might shed important light on the baptism of our Lord and Savior. (Why did a sinless man undergo baptism, which St. John the Baptist administered for the repentance of sins?) Either way, our Lord and Savior’s cousin was his forerunner in more than one way, including execution.
I invite you, O reader, to embrace Advent as a time of prayerful preparation for Christmas–all twelve days day of it–if you have not done so already. Read the pericopes and connect the proverbial dots. Become one with the texts and discover where that reality leads you spiritually.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
AUGUST 13, 2015 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF ELIZABETH PAYSON PRENTISS, U.S. PRESBYTERIAN HYMN WRITER
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
Above: Ambassador Delenn, from Rising Star, a 1997 Episode of Babylon 5 (1994-1998)
A screen capture I took via PowerDVD and a legal DVD
Faith Manages
DECEMBER 10, 11, and 12, 2020
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The Collect:
Stir up the wills of your faithful people, Lord God,
and open our ears to the words of your prophets,
that, anointed by your Spirit, we may testify to your light;
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:
Habakkuk 2:1-5 (Thursday)
Habakkuk 3:2-6 (Friday)
Habakkuk 3:13-19 (Saturday)
Psalm 126 (All Days)
Philippians 3:7-11 (Thursday)
Philippians 3:12-16 (Friday)
Mathew 21:28-32 (Saturday)
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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 out weeping, carrying the seed,
will come in again with joy, shouldering their shears.
–Psalm 126:5-7, The Book of Common Prayer (1979)
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The readings for these three days combine to constitute a tapestry of hope, faith, violence, and judgment.
The lessons from Habakkuk complain to God about persistent injustice and report a divine reply that (A) God will settle scores one day, and (B) the righteous must remain faithful during trying times. Some of the material is disturbing:
You tread the earth in rage,
You trample nations in fury.
You have come forth to deliver Your people,
To deliver Your anointed.
You will smash the roof of the villain’s house,
Raze it from foundation to top.
You will crack [his] skull with Your bludgeon;
Blown away will be his warriors,
Whose delight is to crush me suddenly,
To devour a poor man in an ambush.
–Habakkuk 3:12-14, TANAKH: The Holy Scriptures (1985)
Happier is the end of the book:
Though the fig tree does not bud
And no yield is on the vine,
Though the olive crop has failed
And the fields produce no grain,
Though sheep have vanished from the fold
And no cattle are n the pen,
Yet will I rejoice in the LORD,
Exult in the God who delivers me.
My Lord GOD is my strength:
He makes my feet like the deer’s
And lets me stride upon the heights.
–Habakkuk 3:17-19, TANAKH: The Holy Scriptures (1985)
As I have written many times, I understand the reality that some oppressors will not cease oppressing until someone forces them to do so. Thus a rescue mission becomes necessary. This is good news for the oppressed and a catastrophe for the oppressors. Yet the imagery of God cracking open skulls bothers me.
The note of judgment continues in Matthew 21:28-32, set in the context of the final days leading up to our Lord and Savior’s crucifixion.
Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.
–Matthew 21:31b-32, New Revised Standard Version (1989)
The bad news for chief priests and elders, beneficiaries of the Temple system, comes amid a series of controversies in the Gospel of Matthew. The Parable of the Wicked Tenants (Matthew 21:33-45) follows on the heels of those harsh words, for example.
St. Paul the Apostle picks up the theme of remaining faithful during difficult times in Philippians. His reference to the righteous living by faith echoes a line from Habakkuk–a nice touch, which the lectionary amplifies. Faith, in the Pauline sense of that word, is inherently active, compelling one to do something. In contrast, the definition of faith in the Letter of James is intellectual, hence that author’s insistence on pairing works with faith. So no disagreement between Sts. Paul and James regarding faith and works exists. Maintaining that active faith under great pressure is both difficult and crucial, as St. Paul knew well.
When times and circumstances challenge our trust in God, may we say with St. Paul:
But even beyond that, I consider everything a loss in comparison to the superior value of knowing Jesus Christ my Lord. I have lost everything for him, but whatever I have lost I think of as sewer trash, so that I might gain Christ and be found with him.
–Philippians 3:8-9a, Common English Bible (2008)
Faith (in the Pauline sense) functions in the absence of proof for or against a given proposition. As Ambassador Delenn, a character from Babylon 5 (1994-1998), one of my favorite science fiction series, said,
Faith manages.
(Indeed, that was one of the major themes of the series.) Faith keeps one on the proper path when, as Habakkuk wrote, the crops have failed and the livestock have vanished. If we give up, we have decided to act in a way which will create a more negative future. Yet if we persist, we act based on hope. Such hope as overcome incredible odds many times, from ancient to contemporary times. Many people have suffered and died so that members of subsequent generations can lead better lives.
Advent is a season of hope and violence. Some of the violence is contemporary. Other violence comes from the texts we read. For example, St. Mary of Nazareth, the mother of our Lord and Savior, would have died by stoning if not for the graciousness of St. Joseph. Faith manages during times of doubt, despair, and suspicion. It persists during protracted periods of whisper campaigns and rumor-mongering, such as Jesus and his mother had to endure.
May we, by grace, have healthy faith from God in God, in whom both judgment and mercy exist. And may we leave the judgment to God.
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
The Johannine tradition, in opposition to Gnosticism, emphasizes the centrality of the Incarnation; Jesus is essential. He was far more than a wise teacher; he was, in time and space, the incarnation of God. The author of 1 John has spent preceding chapters writing of the centrality of detachment from the world in opposed to God, of sound Christology, and of active love. The author is not content with theological abstractions.
Whenever I read the word “faith” in the Bible, I want to know what it means in that particular context. Authors used that term to in at least three different ways. So, if I am going to grasp a particular text accurately, I must know what it says in all germane contexts. The commentaries I have consulted agree that faith, as in 1 John 5:4, is intellectual. This understanding of faith seems closely related to that one finds in James; faith must be joined with actions. Therein lies salvation. That, by the way, is Roman Catholic theology.
I must also write about verse 18, which says that no child of God sins. A child of God, as established in verse 1, is anyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ. The translations on verse 18 vary, of course, but the passage, read in contexts of 1 John 5 and the rest of the Bible, means that no child of God is a slave to sin. We might be children of God, but we are still prone to sin.
Isaiah 24:14-29 condemns treaties the leaders of Judah made with their Assyrian and Egyptian counterparts, hardly trustworthy partners. Such treaties are in vain, the prophet, quoting God, said. And Isaiah was correct. Then, at the end of the passage, we read metaphors for the fate of the northern kingdom (Israel) and the preservation of a remnant of the southern kingdom (Judah). These are the words of Yahweh, of whom the text says:
His counsel is unfathomable,
His wisdom marvelous.
–Isaiah 28:29, TANAKH: The Holy Scriptures
Why should one kingdom end for all time and its neighbor survive as a remnant? And why did God come among us as one of us, beginning as a helpless child? These are questions one can answer only in God, who has unfathomable counsel and marvelous wisdom. There is one in whom we can and should believe both intellectually and actively, in whom we can and should have faith, both active and intellectual. Despite the different uses of “faith” in the Bible, a consensus emerges from the texts: Faith, essential in the context of a lack of evidence for against a proposition, such as that Jesus in the Christ of God, begins intellectually yet must find expression in works. There is, in other words, a difference between having faith and agreeing that a proposition is true but not acting on it. The former makes us victorious.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
DECEMBER 11, 2011 COMMON ERA
THE THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT, YEAR B
THE FEAST OF OCTAVIUS HADFIELD, ANGLICAN BISHOP OF WINCHESTER
