Above:  He Wept Over It, by Enrique Simonet

Image in the Public Domain

The Aroma of Christ

FEBRUARY 8-10, 2024

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The Collect:

Almighty God, the resplendent light of your truth

shines from the mountaintop into our hearts.

Transfigure us by your beloved Son,

and illumine the world with your image,

through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.  Amen.

–Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), page 26

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The Assigned Readings:

1 Kings 11:26-40 (Thursday)

1 Kings 14:1-18 (Friday)

1 Kings 16:1-7 (Saturday)

Psalm 50:1-6 (All Days)

2 Corinthians 2:12-17 (Thursday)

1 Timothy 1:12-20 (Friday)

Luke 19:41-44 (Saturday)

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The Lord, the most mighty God, has spoken

and called the world from the rising of the sun to its setting.

Out of Zion, perfect in beauty, God shines forth;

our God comes and will not keep silence.

Consuming fire goes out before him

and a mighty tempest stirs about him.

He calls the heaven above,

and the earth, that he may judge his people:

“Gather to me my faithful,

who have sealed my covenant with sacrifice.”

Let the heavens declare his righteousness,

for God himself is judge.

–Psalm 50:1-6, The Book of Common Prayer (2004)

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The readings for these three days weave together two themes:  the reality of God and the influence of holy people.  Often these holy people were prophets of God; I point to Ahijah of Shiloh (1 Kings 11 and 14) and Jehu son of Hanani (1 Kings 16), who were instrumental in establishing and replacing monarchs.  There were many others, such as St. Paul the Apostle (2 Corinthians 2), pseudo-Paul (1 Timothy 1), and Jesus himself (Luke 19).  The messenger is crucial, as is the message.  If someone refuses to deliver a message from God, another will accept the mission.  The message will go forth.

To ponder divine mercy is pleasant, but that statement does not apply to God’s wrath.  God is not a teddy bear, so to speak; if one thought to the contrary, one was in serious error.  May we have a balanced perspective, one which takes into account both divine judgment and mercy in proper proportions.  (This is possible by grace, not human power.)  And may we remember that Jesus sought forgiveness for those who had him crucified.

I do not pretend to know the details of every person’s spiritual vocation from God.  Sometimes, in fact, my vocation from God confuses me.  Yet I am confident that all such vocations for Christians include, in the words of St. Paul the Apostle, being:

…the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.

–2 Corinthians 2:15-16a, The New Revised Standard Version (1989)

May we bear the aroma of Christ faithfully.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

DECEMBER 4, 2014 COMMON ERA

THE FIFTH DAY OF ADVENT, YEAR B

THE FEAST OF JOSEPH MOHR, AUSTRIAN ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST AND HYMN WRITER

THE FEAST OF SAINT BARBARA, ROMAN CATHOLIC MARTYR

THE FEAST OF SAINT JOHN OF DAMASCUS, HYMN WRITER

THE FEAST OF SAINT JOHN CALABRIA, FOUNDER OF THE CONGREGATION OF THE POOR SERVANTS AND THE POOR WOMEN SERVANTS OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE

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https://blogatheologica.wordpress.com/2014/12/06/the-aroma-of-christ/

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Above:  The Divided Monarchy

Donatism of a Sort

FEBRUARY 9, 2024

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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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1 Kings 11:29-32; 12:19 (TANAKH:  The Holy Scriptures):

During that time Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem went out of Jerusalem and the prophet Ahijah of Shiloh met him on the way.  He had put on a new robe; and when the two were alone in the open country, Ahijah took hold of the new robe he was wearing and tore it into twelve pieces.

Take ten pieces,

he said to Jeroboam.

For thus said the the LORD, the God of Israel:  I am about to tear the kingdom out of Solomon’s hands, and I will give you ten tribes.  But one tribe shall remain his–for the sake of My servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem, the city that I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel….

…Solomon dies and Rehoboam succeeds him and maintains and makes more severe his policies regarding “the harsh labor and the heavy yoke,” per 12:4 and 12:11…

Thus Israel revolted against the House of David, as is still the case.

Psalm 81:8-16 (1979 Book of Common Prayer):

8 Hear, O my people, and I will admonish you:

O Israel, if you would but listen to me!

9 There shall be no strange god among you;

you shall not worship a foreign god.

10 I am the LORD your God,

who brought you out of the land of Egypt and said,

“Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.”

11  And yet my people did not hear my voice,

and Israel would not obey me.

12  So I gave them over to the stubbornness of their hearts,

to follow their own devices.

13  Oh, that my people would listen to me!

that Israel would walk in my ways!

14  I should soon subdue their enemies

and turn my hand against their foes.

15  Those who hate the LORD would cringe before him,

and their punishment would last for ever.

16  But Israel would I feed with the finest wheat

and satisfy him with honey from the rock.

Mark 7:31-37 (J. B. Phillips, 1972):

Once more Jesus left the neighbourhood of Tyre and passed through Sidon towards the Lake of Galilee, and crossed the Ten Towns territory.  They brought to him a man who was deaf and unable to speak intelligibly, and they implored him to put his hand upon him.  Jesus took him away from the crowd by himself. He put his fingers in the man’s ears and touched his tongue with his saliva.  Then, looking up to Heaven, he gave a deep  sigh and said to him in Aramaic,

Open!

And his ears were opened and immediately whatever had tied his tongue came loose and he spoke quite plainly.  Jesus gave instructions that they should tell no one about this happening, but the more he told them, the more they broadcast the news.  People were absolutely amazed, and kept saying,

How wonderfully he has done everything!  He even makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak.

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The Collect:

Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

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Some Related Posts:

Week of 5 Epiphany:  Friday, Year 1:

https://adventchristmasepiphany.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/week-of-5-epiphany-friday-year-1/

Matthew 15 (Parallel to Mark 7):

https://adventchristmasepiphany.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/fourth-day-of-advent/

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A Partial Chronology:

Reign of Solomon, a.k.a. Jedidiah or Yedidiah, King of (united) Israel = 968-928 B.C.E.

Reign of Rehoboam, King of Judah (southern kingdom) = 928-911 B.C.E.

Reign of Jeroboam I, King of Israel (northern kingdom) = 928-907 B.C.E.

Reign of Hoshea, last King of Israel = 732-722 B.C.E.

Reign of Zedekiah (Mattaniah), last King of Judah = 597-586 B.C.E.

–courtesy of The Jewish Study Bible, page 2111

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“What,” [King Rehoboam] asked [the elders who had served his father Solomon], “do you advise that we reply to the people who said to me, ‘Lighten the yoke that your father placed upon us’?”  And the young men who had grown up with him answered, “Speak thus to the people who said to you, ‘Your father made our yoke heavy, now make it lighter for us.’  Say to them, ‘My little finger is thicker than my father’s loins.  My father imposed a heavy yoke on you, and I will add to your yoke; my father flogged you with whips, but I will flog  you with scorpions.'”

–1 Kings 12:9-11 (TANAKH:  The Holy Scriptures)

Rehoboam obeyed that advice, to the detriment of his kingdom, which sundered during a predictable and predicted rebellion.  The leader of that uprising was Jeroboam, a former underling (in charge of forced labor in the House of Joseph–1 Kings 11:28) of Solomon who had been living in exile in Egypt.  There was popular support for Jeroboam, soon to become King Jeroboam I, but there might also have been Pharonic support, for Egypt attacked Rehoboam’s Judah but not Jeroboam’s Israel.  And, during the dueling reigns of Rehoboam and Jeroboam I, the two Jewish kingdoms were openly hostile to each other, fighting a war.

The text lays much of the responsibility for this state of affairs upon Solomon, but does not let Rehoboam off the hook either.  The new monarch of the House of David could have done as his people asked of him, but he chose not to do so.  For the best explanation of what happened immediately after the death of Solomon I turn to Voltaire:

Injustice in the end produces independence.

And, with two Jewish kingdoms, where there used to be one, fighting among themselves off and on, it became easier for foreign and more powerful powers to play them off each other and subdue and conquer them.

None of this had to happen.  It occurred because people in positions of power made certain decisions, which had consequences.  As the Gospel of Mark quotes Jesus in a different context,

…If a kingdom is divided against itself, then that kingdom cannot last…. (Mark 3:24, J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English, Revised Edition, 1972)

There is an obvious lesson here for leaders of nations, regardless of geography, timeframe, or political persuasion.  But what ought the rest of us learn from it?  What can we take away from it and apply in our public lives?

I am a student of ecclesiastical history.  In ancient Church history I point to the Donatist controversy, which divided northern African Christianity from the time following the Diocletian persecution to the spread of Islam. Beginning in the early 300s, there was a raging and divisive question:  Should the Church have forgiven and readmitted to its fellowship those who had repented of buckling under the harsh Diocletian persecution?  They had managed to avoid suffering by renouncing their faith.  The Roman Church, being in the forgiveness business, accepted heartfelt confessions.  This did not satisfy the holier-than-thou Donatists, however, so they broke away.  The Donatist schism persisted long after the original cause, weakening Christianity in that part of the world.

Modern-day Donatists of various types are with us today.  Every time some group breaks away to the ideological right (Church schisms are usually to the right.), there is Donatism of a sort.  Every time an exclusionary message leads to a denominational or congregational split, one sees evidence of Donatism of a sort.  Donatism in any age is that message which says, “Those people are not pure enough to be part of my church, for they are too lax.”  In the context of the Civil Rights Era U.S. South, some white congregations chose to exclude African Americans from membership.  That was also Donatism.  “Those people are not pure enough to be part of my church, for they are not white.”  There should be standards in the church, of course, but there is no way for loving Christian discipline to coexist with a holier-than-thou attitude.  And there should never be room for racism in the Church.

The Church is stronger when it is relatively unified, maintaining a balanced discipline while remaining in the forgiveness business.  We Christians have much work to do:  people to visit, feed, clothe, convert, and disciple.  This work is more than sufficient to keep us busy.  So I must conclude that, when we find the time to argue about issues Jesus never addressed, we are falling down on our jobs.  When we become so concerned about being theologically correct that we choose not to accept sincere confessions of sin and to forgive others, we have gone wrong.  Did not Jesus associate in public with disreputable and repentant people?

Here are the probing questions with which I leave you, and which only you, O reader, can answer:  Are you a Donatist?  If yes, what will you do about that?

KRT

http://blogatheologica.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/donatism-of-a-sort/

Above:  An Eastern Orthodox Icon of Solomon

Faith–Individual and Communal

FEBRUARY 8, 2024

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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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1 Kings 11:1-13 (TANAKH:  The Holy Scriptures):

King Solomon loved many foreign women in addition to Pharaoh’s daughter–Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Phoenician, and Hittite women, from the nations of which the LORD had said to the Israelites,

None of you shall join them and none of them shall join you, lest they turn your heart away to follow their gods.

Such Solomon clung to and loved.  He had seven hundred royal wives and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned his heart away.  In his old age, his wives turned Solomon’s heart after other gods; and he not as wholeheartedly devoted to the LORD his God as his father David had been.  Solomon followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Phoenicians, and Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.

Solomon did what was displeasing to the LORD and did not remain loyal to the LORD like his father David.  At that time, Solomon built a shrine for Chemosh the abomination of Moab on the hill near Jerusalem, and one for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites.  And he did the same for all his foreign wives who offered and sacrificed to their gods.

The LORD was angry with Solomon, because his heart turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice and had commanded him about this matter, not to follow other gods; he did not obey what the LORD had commanded.  And the LORD said to Solomon,

Because you are guilty of this–yo have not kept My covenant and the laws which I enjoined upon you–I will tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your servants.  But, for the sake of your father David, I will not do it in your lifetime; I will tear it away from your son.  However, I will not tear away the whole kingdom; I will give your son one tribe, for the sake of My servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem which I have chosen.

Psalm 132:11-19 (1979 Book of Common Prayer):

11  The LORD has sworn an oath to David;

in truth, he will not break it:

12  ”A son, the fruit of your body

will I set upon your throne.

13  If your children keep my covenant

and my testimonies that I shall teach them,

their children will sit upon your throne for evermore.”

14  For the LORD has chosen Zion;

he has desired her for his habitation:

15  ”This shall be my resting-place for ever;

here will I dwell, for I delight in her.

16  I will surely bless her provisions,

and satisfy her poor with bread.

17  I will clothe her priests with salvation,

and her faithful people will rejoice and sing.

18  There will I make the horn of David flourish;

I have prepared a lamp for my Anointed.

19  As for his enemies, I will clothe them with shame;

but as for him, his crown will shine.”

Mark 7:24-30 (J. B. Phillips, 1972):

Then he got up and left that place and went off to the neighbourhood of Tyre.  There we went into a house and wanted no one  to know where he was.  But it proved impossible to remain hidden.  For no sooner had he got there, than a woman who had heard about him, and who had a daughter possessed by an evil spirit, arrived and prostrated herself before him.  She was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth, and she asked him to drive the evil spirit out of her daughter.  Jesus said to her,

You must let the children have all they want first.  It is not right, you know, to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.

But she replied,

Yes, Lord, I know, but even the dogs under the table eat the scraps that the children leave.

Jesus said to her,

If you can answer like that you can go home!  The evil spirit has left your daughter.

And she went back to her home and found the child lying quietly on her bed, and the evil spirit gone.

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The Collect:

Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

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Some Related Posts:

Week of 5 Epiphany:  Thursday, Year 1:

https://adventchristmasepiphany.wordpress.com/2010/10/15/week-of-5-epiphany-thursday-year-1/

Matthew 15 (Parallel to Mark 7):

http://ordinarytimedevotions.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/proper-15-year-a/

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The theology of 1 Kings holds that faithlessness to God led to the decline of the Jewish kingdoms of the Old Testament.  The truth is not quite that simple, I maintain, for one must consider economic factors in the mix.  Marxian analysis rounds out the historical analysis nicely.  I covered some of that ground in the previous post.

There is also the question of how to relate to Gentiles.  The author of 1 Kings 11 preferred to stay away from them.  But Jesus went to them in Mark 7.  Tyre was, simply put, Gentiles Central.  Thus I propose that, if our Lord had wanted to avoid Gentiles, he would not have chosen to visit Tyre.  With that social context in mind, what might seem like an insult comes across as a statement meant to elicit a faithful response, which it did.

The proper question is not whether one is a Jew or a Gentile, but whether one is faithful.  A home ought to be a place for the nurturing of faith, so marrying within the faith makes sense to me, assuming that marriage is one’s vocation.  (There is nothing wrong with remaining single if that is one’s call from God.)  Nurturing faith is also the proper work of a congregation and certain other social support system one has.   Religion, which is somewhat personal, is also inherently public, not that this fact ought to lead to the establishment and maintenance of a theocracy.  Besides, mutual forbearance and toleration where respect fails at least has the virtue of fostering civility.  And, as Roger Williams, a minister and a colonial advocate of the separation of church and state, said, a prayer one utters under compulsion is meaningless.

As for me, I stand by and for certain propositions, but I do so without being habitually cranky.  Most of my professions, many of which I offer via this and other weblogs, are positive.  The grace of God is for all people–Jews and Gentiles.  The Apostle Paul and James, Bishop of Jerusalem, stirred up controversy by welcoming Gentiles.  These great men were correct, of course.  Simon Peter came to realize in Acts 10 that purity codes separating Jews from Gentiles were null and void.

I, as a Gentile, stand on the shoulders of these men.

An enduring lesson I offer you, O reader, is this:  Who are your “Gentiles,” those you consider impure, assuming, of course, that you make such judgments?  Like Peter, Paul, and James, and Jesus, may you reach out to them and welcome them in God’s Name, to the glory of God and for the benefit of your “Gentiles.”

KRT