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 6:1-8 (Thursday)
Amos 8:4-12 (Friday)
Isaiah 12:2-6 (Both Days)
2 Corinthians 8:1-15 (Thursday)
2 Corinthians 9:1-15 (Friday)
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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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“That day” in Isaiah 12:1 is when God will begin to send Hebrew exiles to their ancestral homeland, a place they have never known. They have firsthand and secondhand accounts of it, but they have always lived in a foreign country.
The prophet Amos anticipated that exile and condemned the hubris and complacency of many in the population as the kingdom approached its end. He also criticized those who maintained sacred rituals outwardly while exploiting and cheating people. Holy rituals are serious matters, not talismans which protect those who sin without repenting, Amos wrote.
God is generous and grace is free. That free grace can prove to be most inconvenient, for it is costly, not cheap. Accepting grace imposes great responsibilities upon the recipient. This was on the mind of St. Paul the Apostle in 2 Corinthians. St. Titus was collecting funds for the benefit of the Christians at Jerusalem. Some of the most generous donors were those who had known great hardship and deprivation. God had guided them through those perilous times and provided for them. Now they were sharing enthusiastically. 2 Corinthians 8:15, quoting Exodus 16:18, which referred to manna in the Sinai Desert, established a fine standard:
The one who had much did not have too much,
and the one who had little did not have too little.
—The New Revised Standard Version (1989)
Everyone has enough in divine economics. Artificial scarcity, which is sinful, is a human creation.
Giving in thankful response to divine faithfulness and generosity can entail donating many things, including money. Focusing exclusively or primarily on money, however, is in error, for doing so ignores or gives short shrift to other forms of giving. One might have little money but plenty of time to share a necessary skill or talent, for example. Money pays bills and wages, so nobody should ignore its necessity, but sometimes giving only money is the easy way out of exercising one’s full responsibility. Whatever one has to give, may one donate it for the glory of God and the benefit of others. May one give cheerfully and out of gratitude for divine faithfulness and generosity. It will never be enough to compare to what God has done, is doing, and will do, but that is not the point. I think of a witty Billy Collins poem about a child giving a lanyard to his or her mother. No gift to God or one’s mother can match what God or one’s mother has done for one, but the thought is what counts.
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
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:
Ezekiel 36:24-28
Psalm 85:8-13
Mark 11:27-33
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Mercy and truth have met together;
righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
Truth shall spring up from the earth,
and righteousness shall look down from heaven.
The LORD will indeed grant prosperity
and our land will yield its increase.
Righteousness shall go before him,
and peace shall be a pathway for his feet.
–Psalm 85:7-13, The Book of Common Prayer (1979)
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That positive vision is similar to the one in Ezekiel 36:24-28. The internalized covenant in a renewed and restored Israel is happy news. Yet one ought not to overlook or minimize Ezekiel 36:32 (New Revised Standard Version):
It is not for your sake that I will act, says the Lord GOD; let that be known to you. Be ashamed and dismayed for your ways, O house of Israel.
God will act, Ezekiel tells us, on behalf of the holy divine name, which the Hebrews had profaned.
I read Mark 11:27-33 and 12:1-12 then imagine Jesus saying,
Be ashamed and dismayed for your ways, O chief priests, scribes, and elders.
That concept exists in the words of Mark 11:27-12:12. The Temple system exploited the pious poor economically and collaborated with the Roman occupiers. It also propagated a form of piety which only those of certain means (a minority of the population) could afford to maintain. Woe indeed to those who benefited from that system! Although Jesus refused to answer the trick question in 11:27-33, the Parable of the Wicked Tenants (12:1-12) provided an unambiguous reply just a few days before the death of our Lord and Savior, as the Gospel of Mark tells the narrative.
Lest we of today feel overly comfortable in our denouncement of people dead for thousands of years, we need to look around and ponder our contexts. Are we complicit in structures which exploit people? Do we participate in or make excuses for organizations which ignore the principle of the internalized covenant with God and twist religion into an instrument for improper spiritual authority? If so, we ought to be ashamed and dismayed for our ways.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
OCTOBER 25, 2014 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF HERBERT STANLEY OAKELEY, COMPOSER
THE FEAST OF ANGELINA AND SARAH GRIMKE, ABOLITIONISTS
THE FEAST OF SAINT PROCLUS, ARCHBISHOP OF CONSTANTINOPLE; AND SAINT RUSTICUS, BISHOP OF NARBONNE
Happy are those who have the God of Jacob for their help,
whose life is in the Lord their God;
Who made the heaven and the earth,
the sea and all that is in them;
who keeps his promise forever;
Who gives justice to those that suffer wrong
and bread to those who hunger.
–Psalm 146:4-6, The Book of Common Prayer (2004)
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The Book of Ruth is a story of loyalty–loyalty to people to each other and to God. The theme of loyalty occurs again in 2 Samuel, where David praises those who had been loyal King Saul, who had tried to kill him more than once. But Saul had been the anointed one of God, despite his many faults. Loyalty to God, according to St. John the Baptist, was something one expressed by, among other things, treating each other honestly and respectfully. And we read in 2 Peter 3 that God’s sense of time differs from ours, so we ought not to lose heart over this fact.
Another Recurring theme in these readings is the human role in God’s good work. Jesus became incarnate via St. Mary of Nazareth, who was not the passive figure many have imagined her to be. St. John the Baptist was far from “respectable.” And Naomi and Ruth conspired to seduce Boaz. As the Reverend Jennifer Wright Knust wrote:
To the writer of Ruth, family can consist of an older woman and her beloved, immigrant daughter-in-law, women can raise children on their own, and men can be seduced if it serves the interests of women.
—Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire (New York: HarperOne, 2011, page 33)
The methods of God’s grace can be scandalous and merely unpleasant to certain human sensibilities much of the time. Will we reject that grace because of its vehicles? And will we lose heart because God seems to be taking too much time? Loyalty to God is of great importance, no matter hos shocking or delayed God’s methods might seem to us.
The liturgical observance of Advent acknowledges both scandal and perceived tardiness. St. Joseph of Nazareth had to spare the life of his betrothed due to the scandal of her pregnancy. And nearly 2,000 years after the birth of Jesus, where has he been? But we should not lose heart. May we not do so.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
JULY 2, 2013 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF WALTER RAUSCHENBUSCH, WASHINGTON GLADDEN, AND JACOB RIIS, ADVOCATES OF THE SOCIAL GOSPEL
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
Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning:
Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them,
that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life,
which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ;
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
for ever and ever. Amen.
—The Book of Common Prayer (1979), page 236
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The Assigned Readings:
Isaiah 26:1-19
Psalm 24 (Morning)
Psalms 25 and 110 (Evening)
1 John 3:1-24
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Trust in the LORD for ever and ever,
For in Yah the LORD you have an everlasting Rock.
–Isaiah 26:4, TANAKH: The Holy Scriptures
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We are all aware that we have passed from death to life
because we love our brothers.
Whoever does not love, remains in death….
Children,
our love must be not just words or mere talk,
but something active and genuine.
–1 John 3:14, 18, The New Jerusalem Bible
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How much do we really need? Perhaps not nearly as much as we think. Yes, we want a great many things. And we might be addicted to certain substances. But our needs are far more basic than our desires. And we are far better off without addictions than we are with them.
Our most basic spiritual need is for God–the only one who exists, the Judeo-Christian one. For thousands of years monks and other ascetics have lived this fact. We cannot take our physical possessions and our money with us when we die, so they, although important, are temporal. We all need adequate food, shelter, clothing, and money in the here and the now. To give mere lip service to this fact when one can do more is inadequate and sinful.
If anyone is well-off in worldly possessions,
and sees his brother in need
but closes his heart to him,
how can the love of God be remaining in him?
–1 John 3:17, The New Jerusalem Bible
Here we see the intersection of the physical and the spiritual. Categories such as “physical” and “spiritual” are like circles in a Venn Diagram; they overlap. Spiritual values–good or bad–will find expression in he realm of the physical.
This is the season of Advent, the time of preparation for Christmas. “Thou didst leave thy throne,” a hymn says. Christ risked and sacrificed much for us; how can we, if we are truly Christian, not to do the same for others? How can we make excuses for unjust and economically exploitative systems?
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
DECEMBER 11, 2011 COMMON ERA
THE THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT, YEAR B
THE FEAST OF OCTAVIUS HADFIELD, ANGLICAN BISHOP OF WELLINGTON
ADVENT, CHRISTMAS, AND EPIPHANY DEVOTIONS 
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