By your merciful protection alert us to the threatening dangers of our sins,
and redeem us for your life of justice,
for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and forever. Amen.
–Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), page 18
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The Assigned Readings:
Numbers 17:1-11
Psalm 90
2 Peter 3:1-18
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For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past
and like a watch in the night.
–Psalm 90:4, The Book of Common Prayer (1979)
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Complaining frequently, rebelling occasionally, and angering God in the process are recurring motifs in the post-Exodus parts of the Torah. The people were free, had sufficient food and water, and should have been grateful. Many were, to be sure, but a large proportion of the population waxed nostalgically regarding Egyptian leftovers and kept angering God. They were impatient.
Allowing for change in God concepts from Numbers 17 to 2 Peter 3, the principle of obeying God remains constant. The context in 2 Peter 3 is the fact that expectations of the imminent return of Christ proved to be false. Many early Christians were dying without the Messiah having come back and replaced the corrupt, violent, and exploitative world order with the fully realized Kingdom of God. Many people were losing hope. Some were seizing the opportunity to live wrongly.
God is never late, but we humans are frequently impatient. We are fortunate, for God has blessed us in more ways than we can count, but often we murmur or shout our complaints. Giving thanks, not kvetching, is in order.
If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
–John 14:15-17, The New Revised Standard Version (1989)
We need not rely on our own power to have a proper, respectful, awe-filled relationship with God, who advocates for us and does not strike us down with plagues. No, abundant grace is available. Will we accept it, maintain Christian hope, and embrace divine love, which demands much of us?
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
AUGUST 10, 2015 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF WILLIAM WALSHAM HOW, ANGLICAN BISHOP OF WAKEFIELD AND HYMN WRITER; AND HIS SISTER, FRANCES JANE DOUGLAS(S), HYMN WRITER
THE FEAST OF EUNICE SHRIVER KENNEDY, FOUNDER OF THE SPECIAL OLYMPICS
THE FEAST OF SAINT LAURENCE OF ROME, ROMAN CATHOLIC DEACON AND MARTYR
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
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Daily Lectionary from Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006) skips over Genesis 8:20-22 (over J, the Yahwist, and from P, the Priestly Source) to 9:1-17 (back to P), which covers much of the same ground–plus a rainbow. In that composite narrative many people had died because of their sinfulness. In Hebrews 11:32-40, however, we read of people who have died because of their righteousness, people
of whom the world was not worthy.
–Verse 38a, The New Revised Standard Version
These saints, the lesson tells us,
…were commended for their faith [yet] did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better, so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.
–Verses 39-40, The New Revised Standard Version
Both readings contain the element of the unworthiness of the world. Although the world might be unworthy God vows never to flood it again. The world might be unworthy yet God does not give up on it, hence the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity as Jesus of Nazareth and all that followed it–especially the death and resurrection of Jesus and their spiritual implications for us. God has not given up on the world yet; unwritten chapters in the story of grace on this planet remain for people to see unfold.
Yes, we are unworthy; I take that as a given. But does that reality constitute a topic upon which we should dwell? No. God knows what we are yet has identified with us by means of the Incarnation. Our worthiness is in God alone. May we respond lovingly to God, who loves us.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
JUNE 10, 2013 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF THE INAUGURATION OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH (U.S.A.), 1983
THE FEAST OF THE INAUGURATION OF THE UNITED CHURCH OF CANADA, 1925
THE FEAST OF SAINT EPHREM OF EDESSA, ROMAN CATHOLIC DEACON AND HYMN WRITER
THE FEAST OF SAINT LANDERICUS OF PARIS, ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP
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
Humility towards one another must be the garment you all wear constantly, because God opposes the proud but accords his favour to the humble. Bow down, then, before the power of God now, so that he may raise you up in due time; unload all your burdens on him, since he is concerned about you.
–1 Peter 5:5b-7, The New Jerusalem Bible
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The reading from Isaiah spells out doom for Israel (the northern kingdom), Judah (the southern kingdom), and the Assyrian Empire. Embedded among that gloomy news is yet another condemnation of economic injustice. If I seem to beat this drum often in my devotional posts, I do; so do the texts from which I write many devotions. The repetition of this theme ought to tell us to pay attention, correct our ways, and reform our legal, economic, and political systems accordingly.
Each of us bears the image of God. This, I am convinced, constitutes the best basis of equality and mutual respect and humility. God cares for all of us, so we ought to care for each other, not to use each other for selfish goals. As the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., reminded us,
…injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.
What happens to my brother or sister affects me, for my brother or sister and I, although physically distinct, are not as separate as we might seem. We are all connected to others, so what affects one person has consequences for others.
May we, by grace, make them positive effects.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
DECEMBER 3, 2011 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF JOHN OWEN SMITH, UNITED METHODIST BISHOP IN GEORGIA
THE FEAST OF SAINT FRANCIS XAVIER, ROMAN CATHOLIC MISSIONARY IN ASIA
