Some people seem to live to criticize. They are not content to be happy, so they carp. St. Paul the Apostle knew this well. After a painful visit to the Corinthian church, he had planned to visit them again yet changed his mind not out of spite (as some in Corinth alleged), but out of consideration. The reading from 2 Corinthians (actually part of the fourth letter to them) is an exercise in easing ruffled feathers. That pericope is similar in tone to 2 Corinthians 10, the beginning of his third letter to the Corinthians. (For your information, O reader, 1 Corinthians was St. Paul’s second letter to that church, and the first letter is lost.)
Regardless of all the motivations of King Cyrus II of the Persians and the Medes (reigned 559-530 B.C.E.), his decision to send Jewish exiles to their ancestral homeland was God’s work. Cyrus II might have been a nice person, but he certainly had some political reasons. So be it. He was as benevolent a foreign ruler as Jews could expect at the time.
People do the right things for a variety of reasons. Motivations count, of course, but how many beneficiaries care about the reasons? The actions themselves count also. The best combination of motivation and action remains doing the right thing for the proper reason.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
OCTOBER 14, 2015 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF ALL CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES
THE FEAST OF SAMUEL ISAAC JOSEPH SCHERESCHEWSKY, EPISCOPAL BISHOP OF SHANGHAI
THE FEAST OF THOMAS HANSEN KINGO, DANISH LUTHERAN BISHOP, HYMN WRITER, AND “POET OF EASTERTIDE”
Everlasting God, you give strength to the weak and power to the faint.
Make us agents of your healing and wholeness,
that your good may be made known to the ends your creation,
through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen.
–Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), page 24
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The Assigned Readings:
Job 30:16-31
Psalm 6
John 4:46-54
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I grow weary because of my groaning;
every night I drench my pillow
and flood my bed with tears.
–Psalm 6:6, Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006)
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The titular character of the Book of Job was faithful to God consistently. Even his arguing and complaining came from a place of fidelity. This was remarkable, given the fact that said book says at the beginning that God permitted Job’s suffering as a test of loyalty.
Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.
–Jesus in John 4:48, The New Revised Standard Version (1989)
“You” is plural in that quote.
The (possibly Gentile) royal (Herodian) official accepted that Jesus would save his son (who was elsewhere) from death. Thus the audiences for that comment did not include the father. Throughout the canonical Gospels people followed Jesus in search of a cure or healing of some kind. Many received what they sought, but how many gained faith (or a deeper faith–trust, that is) in God?
What do we seek from God? Is the deity merely a dispenser of convenient blessings, in our minds? Or do our professions of faith have substance of high spiritual quality?
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
DECEMBER 2, 2014 COMMON ERA
THE THIRD DAY OF ADVENT, YEAR B
THE FEAST OF SAINT BRIOC, ROMAN CATHOLIC ABBOT; AND SAINT TUDWAL, ROMAN CATHOLIC ABBOT AND BISHOP
THE FEAST OF CHANNING MOORE WILLIAMS, EPISCOPAL BISHOP IN CHINA AND JAPAN
THE FEAST OF JOHN BROWN, ABOLITIONIST
THE FEAST OF SAINT OSMUND OF SALISBURY, ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP
The Law of Moses is a complex code. In one breath it speaks of responsibilities people have to each other in community, such as not to exploit each other. Yet the same law code classes women and servants with inanimate property in the Ten Commandments, has a negative view of female biology, and contains many offenses which end with death by stoning. I join with my fellow Christians since the earliest years of Christianity in applying parts of the Law of Moses literally while not keeping other sections thereof. There are, of course, the letter and the spirit of the law, with much of the letter consisting of culturally-specific principles. So one might identify contemporary applications in lieu of examples from the Bible. Yet I refuse to execute or condone the execution of a child who disrespects his or her parents severely, for example.
Thus I pick and choose amid the provisions of the Law of Moses, as I should. I focus on mutual responsibilities, for all of us are responsible to and for each other. This is a timeless truth, the keeping of which builds up communities, nations, societies, and the human species. We ought never to exploit or seek to exploit one another. To exclude another person wrongly or seek to do so is sinful. To fail to recognize the Image of God in another is to sin.
That can be advice difficult to follow. And the following counsel is really hard for me:
Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and completely lacking in nothing.
–James 2:2-4, Revised Standard Version–Second Catholic Edition
I do not welcome
various trials (RSV-SCE)
as
friends (James 2:2, J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English, Revised Edition, 1972).
Rather, I prefer the absence of
various trials (James 2:2, RSV-SCE).
Yet I recognize that
various trials
in my past have resulted in more mature faith. I examine myself spiritually and recognize benefits I have gained from adversity. Yet I do not wish to repeat the experiences. I interpret the good results of
various trials
as evidence of abundant divine grace and rejoice in that.
May we, by divine grace, extend such grace to others as we have opportunity to do so.
Liturgical time matters, for it sacramentalizes days, hours, and minutes, adding up to seasons on the church calendar. Among the frequently overlooked seasons is the Season after Epiphany, the first part of Ordinary Time. The Feast of the Epiphany always falls on January 6 in my tradition. And Ash Wednesday always falls forty days (excluding Sundays) before Easter Sunday. The Season after Epiphany falls between The Feast of the Epiphany and Ash Wednesday. In 2013 the season will span January 7-February 12.
This season ought to be a holy time, one in which to be especially mindful of the imperative to take the good news of Jesus of Nazareth to others by a variety of means, including words when necessary. Words are meaningless when our actions belie them, after all. Among the themes of this season is that the Gospel is for all people, not just those we define as insiders. No, the message is also for our “Gentiles,” those whom we define as outsiders. So, with that thought in mind, I encourage you, O reader, to exclude nobody. Do not define yourself as an insider to the detriment of others. If you follow this advice, you will have a proper Epiphany spirit.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
NOVEMBER 9, 2012 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF MARTIN CHEMNITZ, GERMAN LUTHERAN THEOLOGIAN
THE FEAST OF BARTON STONE, COFOUNDER OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH (DISCIPLES OF CHRIST)
Zophar the Naamathite opens his address in Job 11:1-20 by insulting Job. A note on page 1519 of The Jewish Study Bible makes a succinct point:
Like Bildad in 8.2, Zophar here, in the house of a man bereft of his children (1.18-19) and infested with maggots (7.5), has the colassal gall to tell Job, the master of the house, that he talks too much!
And Zophar persists in the practice of relying on “received wisdom” as a basis for his theodicy.
The reading from John 5 constitutes part of a discourse attributed to Jesus after he healed the paralyzed man at the Pool at Bethesda on a Sabbath. (The Synoptic Jesus does not talk as much as does the Johannine Jesus, by the way.) The content of the discourse interest me, but the relative newness of it fascinates me today. Zophar’s discourse was stale and insulting. Yet our Lord’s discourse was revolutionary. Consider one verse, O reader:
In all truth I tell you,
whoever listens to my words,
and believes in the one who sent me,
has eternal life;
without being brought to judgement
such a person has passed from death to life.
–John 5:24, The New Jerusalem Bible
If I did not take the truth of that verse as a given, I might think Jesus to have been a madman. Now, of course, my position has become “received wisdom.” (I am aware of the irony of that reality.) Some “received wisdom” is wiser than the rest. And other “received wisdom” is pure drivel.
The power of “received wisdom” holds sway over the intellects and imaginations of people, does it not? When I started my abortive doctoral studies in history at The University of Georgia (UGA), Athens, Georgia, the Graduate Coordinator informed me that I would learn the “received wisdom.” He used that term; I recall that part of the conversation clearly. I wound up questioning much of the “received wisdom,” with the predictable result in the social sciences. But I maintained my intellectual integrity. And I am a terrible liar. Please understand me correctly, O reader; that happened years ago, and the trauma of that experience has washed out of my system. Yet memories remain. And objective reality remains. I have no desire to start an argument with anyone at the UGA Department of History. What would I gain from it? Yet I offer this cautionary tale of the allure received foolishness masquerading as received wisdom. The experience remains with me and makes me a better teacher. I hold my students accountable for getting the facts correct then reasoning their ways to interpretations. I do not grade them according to whether I agree with those interpretations. And some of the kindest comments on course evaluations begin the acknowledgement that the student disagreed with me often in subjective matters.
Reality is objective, of course. But our understandings of it are inherently subjective. Two people can absorb the same stimuli and understand it differently. Culture (defined as social learning), educational attainment, age, cognitive development, intellectual capacity, and other factors shape our perceptions. Sometimes our proverbial tapes are running, so we hear yet do not listen and see yet do not comprehend. So the character of Zophar , who was an insulting idiot, understood himself as standing on the shoulders of theological giants. And our Lord’s words were blasphemous in the ears of some people despite those words’ truth–and therefore lack of blasphemy. Reality is objective and our perceptions are subjective, yet our perceptions can be correct. May they be so, by grace.
Until the next segment of our journey….
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
APRIL 26, 2012 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF SAINTS REMACLUS OF MAASTRICHT, THEODORE OF MAASTRICHT, LAMBERT OF MAASTRICHT, HUBERT OF MAASTRICHT AND LIEGE, AND FLORIBERT OF LIEGE, ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOPS; LANDRADA OF MUNSTERBILSEN, ROMAN CATHOLIC ABBESS; AND OTGER OF UTRECHT, PLECHELM OF GUELDERLAND, AND WIRO, ROMAN CATHOLIC MISSIONARIES
THE FEAST OF CHRISTINA ROSSETTI, POET
THE FEAST OF SAINT PASCHASIUS RADBERTUS, ROMAN CATHOLIC ABBOT
THE FEAST OF ROBERT HUNT, FIRST ANGLICAN CHAPLAIN AT JAMESTOWN, VIRGINIA
Holy Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints (2010), of The Episcopal Church, contains an adapted two-years weekday lectionary for the Epiphany and Ordinary Time seasons from the Anglican Church of Canada. I invite you to follow it with me.
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James 1:12-18 (Revised English Bible):
Happy is the man who stands up to trial! Having passed that test he will receive in reward the life which God has promised to those who love him. No one when tempted should say,
I am being tempted by God;
for God cannot be tempted by evil and does not himself tempt anyone. Temptation comes when anyone is lured and dragged away by his own desires; then desire conceives and gives birth to sin, and sin when it is full-grown breeds death.
Make no mistake, my dear friends. Every good and generous action and every perfect gift comes from above, from the Father who created the lights of heaven. With him there is no variation, no play of passing shadows. Of his own choice, he brought us to birth by the word of truth to be a kind of firstfruits of his creation.
Psalm 94:12-19 (1979 Book of Common Prayer):
12 Happy are those whom you instruct, O Lord!
whom you teach out of your law;
13 To give them rest in evil days,
until a pit is dug for the wicked.
14 For the LORD will not abandon his people,
nor will he forsake his own.
15 For judgment will again be just,
and all the true of heart will follow it.
16 Who rose up for me against the wicked?
who took my part against the evildoers?
17 If the LORD had not come to my help,
I should soon have dwelt in the land of silence.
18 As often as I said, “My foot has slipped,”
your love, O LORD, upheld me.
19 When many cares fill my mind,
your consolations cheer my soul.
Mark 8:14-21 (Revised English Bible):
Now they had forgotten to take bread with them, and had only one loaf in the boat. He began to warn them:
Beware,
he said,
be on your guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and the the leaven of Herod.
So they began to talk among themselves about having no bread. Knowing this, Jesus said to them,
Why are you talking about having no bread? Have you no inkling yet? Do you still not understand? Are your minds closed? You have eyes: can you not see? You have ears: can you not hear? Have you forgotten? When I broke the five loaves among the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?
They said,
Twelve.
He asked,
And how many when I broke the seven loaves among the four thousand?
They answered,
Seven.
He said to them,
Do you still not understand?
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The Collect:
O God, the strength of all who put their trust in you: Mercifully accept our prayers; and because in our weakness we can do nothing good without you, give us the help of your grace, that in keeping your commandments we may please you both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
From time to time I hear really bad theology. I would hear more of it, except for the fact that I choose not to listen to certain preachers whose programs populate radio and television waves. Nevertheless, much bad theology has permeated the laity. There, from time to time, I hear that God is testing people’s faith by doing something like creating false yet convincing-looking rock layers which contradict Creationism. First, I am a Theistic Evolutionist and one who affirms the veracity of geological layers, so I have expressed my opinion of Creationism; it is foolishness. Can we join the scientific age now? But, to the point of God making rocks look older than they are: If one accepts that (A) the rocks are younger than they seem and that (B) God has pulled off this deception, what is one saying about God? Is one saying that God tempts people to believe something that is objectively false?
I hope that is not what some people are saying, but it sounds like that.
James is one of my favorite books. Martin Luther famously dismissed it as an “epistle of straw,” but he was mistaken on that point. (In fact, I have heard more than Lutheran pastor speak critically of James. It must be all that talk of the importance of works in the epistle.) The Letter of James is full of practical advice and common-sense comments, such as the one that God does not tempt us. Instead, God calls us to repentance, literally turning around or changing our minds. And, as we think, so we are. This makes sense, for our attitudes lead to our actions, barring accidents.
Desire is powerful. There are many physical desires, including but not restricted to those related to sexuality. Food, for example, is the subject of many desires, some of them unhealthy. The existence of desire is morally neutral, although what one does with it is not. There is no moral error is savoring a well-cooked meal, for example. Indeed, the taste buds provide much wonderful pleasure, and one ought to enjoy blessings, including food. There is not even anything wrong with savoring an occasional cheeseburger, but a steady diet of them leads to negative consequences. (I have greatly reduced my consumption of cheeseburgers and replaced them with healthy alternatives.) As James points out, we should control our desires; they ought not do drag us away to sin and death. Sometimes that death is spiritual; other times, physical; other times, both.
Resisting temptation can be very difficult. If I were to tell you, O reader, that I have mastered the resistance of temptation, I would lie to you. It is true, however, that, by grace, I have improved. There is much room for further improvement, and there is also plenty of grace available. Thanks be to God!
Holy Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints (2010), of The Episcopal Church, contains an adapted two-years weekday lectionary for the Epiphany and Ordinary Time seasons from the Anglican Church of Canada. I invite you to follow it with me.
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Genesis 8:6-13, 20-22 (Revised English Bible):
At the end of forty days Noah opened the hatch that he had made in the ark, and sent out a raven; it continued flying to and fro until the water on the earth had dried up. Then Noah sent out a dove to see whether the water of the earth had subsided. But the dove found no place where she could settle because all the earth was under water, and and so she came back to him in the ark. Noah reached out and caught her, and brought her into the ark. He waited seven days more and again sent the dove from the ark. She came back to him towards evening with a freshly plucked olive leaf in her beak. Noah knew that the water had subsided from the earth’s surface. He waited yet another seven days, and, when he sent out the dove, she did not come back to him. So it came about that month, on the first day of the first month of his six hundred and first year, the water had dried up on the earth, and when Noah removed the hatch and looked out, he saw that the ground was dry.
…
Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking beasts and birds of every kind that were ritually clean, he offered them as whole-offerings on it. When the LORD smelt the soothing odour, he said within himself,
Never again shall I put the earth under a curse because of mankind, however evil their inclination may be from their youth upwards, nor shall I ever again kill all living creatures, as I have just done.
“As long as the earth lasts,
seedtime and harvest. cold and heat,
summer and winter, day and night,
they will never cease.”
Psalm 116:10-17 (1979 Book of Common Prayer):
10 How shall I repay the LORD
for all the good things he has done for me?
11 I will lift up the cup of salvation
and call upon the Name of the LORD.
12 I will fulfill my vows to the LORD
in the presence of all his people.
13 Precious in the sight of the LORD
is the death of his servants.
14 O LORD, I am your servant;
I am your servant and the child of your handmaid;
you have freed me from my bonds.
15 I will offer you the sacrifice of thanksgiving
and call upon the Name of the LORD.
16 I will fulfill my vows to the LORD
in the presence of all his people.
17 In the courts of the LORD’s house,
in the midst of you, O Jerusalem.
Hallelujah!
Mark 8:22-26 (Revised English Bible):
They arrived at Bethsaida. There the people brought a blind man to Jesus and begged him to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village. Then he spat on his eyes, laid his eyes upon him, and asked if he could see anything. The man’s sight began to come back, and he said,
I see people–they look like trees, but they are walking about.
Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; he looked hard, and now he was cured and could not see anything clearly. Then Jesus sent him home, saying,
Do not even go into the village.
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The Collect:
O God, the strength of all who put their trust in you: Mercifully accept our prayers; and because in our weakness we can do nothing good without you, give us the help of your grace, that in keeping your commandments we may please you both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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The readings from Genesis and Mark might seem incongruous, but, after sifting through commentaries, I have found a common thread. Follow it with me.
Let us begin in the Gospel of Mark. Know that juxtaposition is very important here. Jesus also put on a shamanic show involving spittle (with a deaf man that time) in Chapter 7. And, in Chapter 8, Jesus has had to deal with chronically critical Pharisees and oblivious and overly literalistic Apostles. So, on the heels of that incident, we read of our Lord and Savior putting on a shamanic show involving spittle while healing a blind man. As I wrote while addressing the account of the healing of the deaf man, the Gospel of Mark contains stories of Jesus performing long-distance healings, so the song and dance with spittle was of no healing quality, but it was what people expected and believed would work. So he met them where they were. Jesus was gracious that way.
This healing occurs in two stages, with the gift of clear vision not arriving immediately. The Gospel of Mark may be pithy, but it is not simplistic. This is a story on two levels: literal vision and spiritual vision. The man, presumably blind from birth, not due to poor sanitation and too many bird droppings (Life was harsh for many.), does begin to see clearly. But what about the Apostles? They are still clueless much of the time. And what about the chronically critical religious authorities, the culturally recognized guardians of orthodoxy and holiness? What excuse do they have? Jesus’ healing of a blind man becomes an indictment of Apostles and Pharisees.
The treatment of the Gospel in Mark in Volume VIII of The New Interpreter’s Bible divides this book into two main section: Jesus Heals and Teaches with Power (1:1-8:26) and The Son of Man Must Suffer (8:27-16:30). Indeed, beginning in 8:27, the foreshadowing of the cross deepens, and the Apostles do not understand that, either. But I begin to get ahead of myself, so I switch to Genesis.
There is an oft-repeated stereotype of the presentation of God in the Hebrew Bible. God, I have heard too many times, is harsh and judgmental in the Old Testament. This is a gross oversimplification, one people would not repeat so casually if they would read the Jewish Bible carefully. If God is harsh in the Old Testament yet merciful in the New Testament, how do we explain the end of the Noah’s Ark story in Genesis or the dark and apocalyptic sayings of Jesus in the canonical Gospels? Flee for the hills, he says. Woe unto pregnant women on the day of wrath, he says. Are those merciful words? Oversimplifications cannot account for the complexity of the Bible, and both judgment and mercy are present in the Old and New Testaments, often very close to each other.
In the Noah’s Ark story God destroys most of the human race because of its rampant sinfulness. This, of course, is judgment. Afterward, God recognizes the continued sinfulness of the human race but vows never to try to destroy us again. This is mercy. God will be present with us in many ways, notably the predictable rhythms of nature. As Chauncey Gardner says in Being There (1979):
In the garden, growth has it seasons. First comes spring and summer, but then we have Fall and Winter. And then we get spring and summer again.
And, as the Anabaptists (hence the Mennonite logo at the top of this post) say, this is the season of God’s patience. Do we understand this? Are we trying (more often than not) to respond favorably to God and to please God, or are just trying God’s patience?
There is hope for us yet. The eleven surviving Apostles transformed from dunderheads into great leaders of early Christianity. Our faith flows from theirs. So, when we work with God, we can become great vehicles of grace. May we do so.
ADVENT, CHRISTMAS, AND EPIPHANY DEVOTIONS 
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