DOESN’T THIS MAKE YOUR DAY!

February 3rd, 2010

ATT00001A Benedictine friend sends this little story to all of us:  
 
A nurse on the pediatric ward before listening to the little ones’ chests would plug the stethascope into their ears and let them listen to their own heart.. Their eyes would always light up with awe, but she never got a response equal to four year old David’s comment.

Gently she tucked the stethoscope into his ears and placed the disk over his heart. “Listen,” she said, “what do you suppose that is?”

He drew his eyebrows together in a puzzled line and looked up as if lost in the mystery of the strange tap, tap, tapping deep in his chest. Then his face broke out in a wondrous grin and he asked, “Is that Jesus knocking?”

Blessed are those who walk with one hand held by God and the other one held by a friend.

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The Third and Fourth Sundays after Epiphany: One Story, Two Sermons, the Second One Here

February 3rd, 2010
Bernardo Strozzi, "Prophet Elijah and the Widow at Sarepta," 1630s

Bernardo Strozzi, "Prophet Elijah and the Widow at Sarepta," 1630s

As I noted in my previous posting,  the appointed Gospel readings for the Third and Fourth Sundays after Epiphany are in fact one story, divided in half–Part I: Luke 4.14-21; Part II: Luke 4.21-30–giving pastors, priests, and preachers ample opportunity to clarify what Jesus did (and did not do!)  while giving his first sermon in the Nazareth synagogue, his hometown “church.”    Here is Pastor Luckey’s second homily, based on Luke 4.21-30, as the people of Faith Lutheran Church, Lexington, Kentucky, heard it on the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, January 31, 2010:

 The story in the gospel reading today began last Sunday.  You remember from last Sunday’s gospel that Jesus has been preaching and teaching throughout Galilee for several months and is home for a few days.  He goes to worship at the synagogue on a Friday evening, the beginning of the Sabbath.  He’s been asked to read scripture at the service and to give a little sermon based on the text.

This is how we left the story last week.  “He stood up to read,” Luke says “and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was Read the rest of this entry »

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The Third and Fourth Sundays after Epiphany: One Story, Two Sermons, the First One Here

February 3rd, 2010

jesus in synagogueFor whatever reason (perhaps because it takes two Sunday to do justice to Luke’s story in chapter 4), the appointed Gospel readings for the Third and Fourth Sundays after Epiphany are in fact one story, divided in half, giving pastors, priests, and preachers ample opportunity to clarify what Jesus did (and did not do!)  while giving his first sermon in the Nazareth synagogue, his hometown “church.”   Although I heard Pastor Katie Pasch of St. John Lutheran Church in Griffin, Georgia, unpack the full meaning and impact of Luke’s story, her busy schedule (she was the grandmother of a new baby yesterday!) precluded her sending me her text; and as a consequence, I’m making available Pastor Ron Luckey’s two sermons.   Here is his first homily, based on Luke 4.14-21, as the people of Faith Lutheran Church, Lexington, Kentucky, heard it on the Third Sunday after Epiphany, January 24, 2010:

It’s a Friday evening.  Sundown.  The Jewish Sabbath has begun, and the town of Nazareth has gathered in the synagogue to worship.  Jesus, the hometown boy who’s been out in the world making a name for himself is in the congregation that night.  Before the service starts, the rabbi walks up to him.  “Jesus, I wonder if you’d be willing to be our assisting minister and read a portion of the scripture for us, and say a few words this evening?  I know the folks would appreciate it.”  Read the rest of this entry »

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Praying before praying

February 3rd, 2010
Marc Chagall, The Praying Jew

Marc Chagall, The Praying Jew

Now that June is away for the week with her daughter and friends, I am at the lakehouse by myself until Saturday.  There are certain pleasures and blessings in being alone for a while, and even more of them when the solitude is extended.   Retired and in the house by myself, I have the privilege of planning my own days; and as a consequence I’m able to experiment somewhat with what goes on in my prayer life.   Having established a daily round of “fixed-time” Morning and Evening Prayer for many years now, I’m able to try some adjustments that may be for the better.

On most days my wife and I do our “fixed-time” praying at 8 in the morning and 5 in the evening.  Most of the time we simply drop whatever we’re doing, sit down, open up our prayerbooks, and, as we sometimes say, “go to it.”  What we really mean, of course, is that we want to “go to God.”   Our going usually takes about twenty minutes (a little more in the evening when we make our intercessions), and then we return to whatever else we need to do.   Daily prayer is thus something of an twice-daily interruption, two short openings in the day.

When I’m alone, however, I’m finding that my sense of “fixed-time” praying is under expansion so that more of each day is now opening up to “going to God.”  One addition to my habit of prayer is especially proving helpful, and I like to share how it is that I came upon it.

On a Friday two weeks ago a group from St. John Lutheran Church and I spent the evening at B’nai Israel synagogue in Fayetteville, Georgia, joining our Reformed Jewish brothers and sisters in their Sabbath worship.  Using their service book, Gates of Prayer, I mumbled my way through transliterations of Hebrew, listened to a good talk by the rabbi, and managed, at least a little bit, to acquaint myself with a spattering of Jewish prayer life.  As I opened Gates of Prayer, I found this sentence on page 3:

The pious ones of old used to wait a whole hour before praying, the better to concentrate their minds on God.

Reading that sentence took me back a bit!  Instead of dropping everything and jumping into prayer, the “pious ones” apparently spent considerable prayer time preparing for prayer.  Since reading that observation, I’ve tried to put its suggestion into practice by slightly changing how I begin evening and morning prayers now that I’m alone at the lakehouse. 

Here’s how it is working for me.  Instead of turning off the TV or coming in from some outside chore and entering prayer a few seconds later, I’m now deliberately settling into prayer with more preparatory silence.   First, I light the votive candle before icons of the Lord Jesus and His Mother.   Then I sit down and carefully preview what I’ll read in my prayer book and place my book marks accordingly so that I won’t need to fumble around later on.  I check my church calendar to make sure that I’m not overlooking something or someone special to the day.   Next I turn the day’s pages and find out what psalms and lessons are appointed for the day so as to alert myself as to reading surprises I may encounter.   Next I see what hymn is to be sung (or chose one), and if I don’t know the tune, I take the time to finger a nearby keyboard, learning the melody if that’s necessary.  All of this I do slowly.  I’m in no rush. 

I then look over my list of names of people who have asked for intercessions.  Now and then I’ll pencil in an additional name that comes to mind.  With my list updated, I then begin to review my own life for several minutes.  If I’m in Morning Prayer, I reflect upon what happened since yesterday’s Evening Prayer.  Did I do or not do anything that needs to be brought before God.  In the evening I review the whole day, examining personal motives, examining my conscious, noting especially where repentance is required and necessary.  I make a mental list of thanksgivings and praises I want to offer to God.   Once in a while I’ll look over my daily planner’s “to do” list to see if something was left undone that may need immediate attention during and after prayer.

What used to be about twenty minutes or so of “fixed-hour” praying is now turning out to take about twice as long.   Everything is slowly down.  I find myself more relaxed, centered, and settled.  It’s certainly not “a whole hour before praying,” but it is way of coming before God with more awareness and attention.  Perhaps it’s close to what the pious ones meant when they recommended praying before praying.

In Gates of Prayer, there’s this little story, also on page 3:

The REBBE [rabbi] of Tsanz was asked by a Chasid [Hasidic friend], “What does the Rabbi do before praying?”  “I pray,” was the reply, “that I may be able to pray properly.”

Two Fridays ago in their synagogue, God showed me how He can help me in my prayer life, and I learned a lot from my Jewish friends.  This week I’m beginning to realize that some time spent praying before praying helps my prayer life.

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2 February 2010: The Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple

February 1st, 2010

entrnce-of-our-lord-christ-into-the-temple-1-st-andrei-rublyov

 

My wife is away for the week, spending some time with her daughter Becky and classmate friends.  And since my flight to Haiti, once scheduled to leave this morning, was cancelled, I now have the opportunity to be more by myself than usual.  This brief “hermiting” means that my days are now more fully open to prayer, lectio divina, walking, and feeding Mitzy, the neighbor’s brown lab who wears a generous splash of white around her neck.   This afternoon I went over the library in Jackson and brought home Robert Alter’s The Book of Psalms, a distinctly Jewish reading of the Psalter that I plan to enjoy immensely.

On this Eve of The Feast of the Presentation of our Lord, I feel privileged to see the parents of Jesus bring their son into the Temple in Jerusalem for the first time. 

Evening Prayer, which I said about 5:00, was especially enjoyable, believing as I do that prayer time with God is to be thoroughly enjoyed whenever the opportunity arrives.  The appointed psalm was 84, and I quietly sung it twice so as to enter its beautiful going into God’s temple, the temple into which Blessed Mary and Joseph brought their infant son, forty days old.  One of my prayer books includes a number of icons appropriate for each season, and I was particularly struck with the theological loveliness of The Icon of the Presentation of Our Lord(albeit reproduced in black and white).  The editor of this prayer book, Frederick J. Schumacher, himself an iconophil, provided a helpful commentary on the icon, and I would like to share it with you, this time, however, with a reproduction of the icon in  color, The Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple as written by St Andrei Rublyov.  In the sharing that follows, I lightly edit Schumacher’s commentary inasmuch as some details of Rublyov’s icon differ slightly from the reproduction in my prayer book:

The first known image of the Presentation of our Lord dates from the fifth century and represents St. Luke’s account (2.22-38) of the occasion when Mary and Joseph went to the temple in Jerusalem for the purification of Mary forth days after the birth of Jesus (Leviticus 12.6-8) and the consecration of him to God as her first-born son (Exodus 13.2).

Here we see the very author of the law himself who gave it to Moses on Mt. Sinai coming with the mother of God to fulfill the law pertaining to her and to himself.

As Luke records, we see that the meeting takes place in the temple, at an altar which is covered by a canopy.  In most icons there is a book or scroll on the table, symbolic of the Old Covenant, or else a cross foreshadowing the words spoken by Simeon to Mary that “a sword will pierce through your own soul also (Luke 2.35).

Mary is on the left side of the altar and extending her hands which are covered, symbolic of adoration and respect, as is the case in many icons in which something is being presented, here the very Son of God.  To the right of the altar Simeon, who was looking for the “consolation of Israel” and was “told by the Holy Spirit that he should not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ” (Luke 2.25-26) is leaning forward as he has received the offering of the child and now hold him in his hands which are also covered (as are Joseph’s).  Jesus seems to be seated in the arms of Simeon as on a throne, and one can wonder—as some icons more vividly show—whether Simeon holds the child or the child holds Simeon.  This is expressed in the Orthodox tradition in the singing of Ode 9 of Matins where Jesus says, “I am not held by the old man; it is I Who hold him, for he asks Me forgiveness.”

One can imagine Simeon saying the words known as the Nunc Dimittis in reponse to his hope that  he would not die before he saw the Lord’s Messiah:

Lord, now you let your servant go in peace;
     your word has been fulfilled.
My own eyes have seen the salvation which you have
     prepared in the sight of every people:
    a light to real you to the nations and the glory of
    your people Israel

Here as Moses had once received the tablets of the law, Simeon now received the very one who with God the Father gave the law and is now present among his people in the flesh.

Joseph is following Mary, carrying the offering of “a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons,” the offering of poor parents as prescribed in Leviticus 12.8.  Behind Simeon is the prophetess Anna, “who was of great age.”  She looks up in an expression of prayer which Luke tells us she engaged in day and night, not leaving the temple.  She also looks as though she is giving prophetic utterance that she “spoke of him for all who were for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2.36-38).

In its totality, the icon presents us with the message Luke proclaimed: that here two representatives of the Old Covenant meet the Savior who comes in fulfillment of the promise to Israel and to be a light to the whole world.  In the fifth century in Jerusalem this feast associated with Jesus as the light given to lighten the Gentiles was celebrated with the people holding candles.  From this tradition has come the other name for the day of Presentation in the western church, Candlemas.

Here is the collect or prayer for this day:
  
Almighty and everliving God, we humbly pray that, as your Only-begotten Son was this day presented in the temple, so we may be presented to you with pure and clean hearts by Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
  
For more reflection on the Presentation, visit the following:
  

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29 January 2010: House cleaning in God’s presence

January 29th, 2010

cleaning houseToday while June has driven down to Macon to see about a recall regarding her Lexus (which she inherited from her brother Harold several years ago) from the Toyota corporation regarding something to do with an oil hose, I’m staying at home, having decided to do a bit of pre-spring house cleaning:  scrubbing the bathroom floors, cleaning spots out of the carpets with a pan of vinegar-water, pouring some Drano into a drain that should be taught to work better, washing a load or two of clothes, vacuuming the house, and straightening up my study.  All of this, quite frankly, in preparation for my stay-at-home next week while June goes on a cruise and her daughter and friends.  As you might imagine, I like a clean house, everything in its place, and a place for everything–as the cliche goes.

It’s on days like this that I like to remember Brother Lawrence who wrote The Practice of the Presence of God.  Brother Lawrence is famous for his recommendations to be constant in prayer even while doing chores around the kitchen.  As a seventeenth-century French monk, Brother Lawrence developed a way of praying with awareness which some say is closely allied to the kind of attention practiced of by our brothers and sisters who train themselves in mindfulness meditation.   For example, in The Practice of the Presence of God, he wrote:  “Lift up your heart to Him, sometimes even at your meals, and when you are in company; the least little remembrance will always be acceptable to Him. You need not cry very loud; he is nearer to us than we are aware of.”    Brother Lawrence was intensely aware that he was in constant need of grace, and much of praying was given to frequent repentance.   So with me.   Today I find myself far less devoted to God, my wife, friends and family that I wish.  Like Brother Lawrence I too am in need of grace, repentance, and forgiveness.   May God have mercy on me, and may He empty Himself into me even as I empty myself so I can be filled with His Spirit.   Renew my intensions, O Lord, so that this day I live with all my heart, soul, and mind given to You.  May God help me to love others, especially those whom I find irritating and irksome, while I take out the trash, get some laundry done, blow more pine needles off the deck, and drive the truck to the Monticello landfill where I take two old, wornout tires that need to be recycled.

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28 January 2010: Thomas Aquinas, Teacher, 1274

January 28th, 2010

thomas_aquinas-719213Today our service book, Evangelical Lutheran Worship, asks us to remember St. Thomas Aquinas.   While Thomas is not one of the favorite saints in the Lutheran Church, our service books always include a number of his hymn texts, one of which is “Thee We Adore, O Savior” (ELW, 476).  Certainly in the overall history of Church, Thomas’ life, scholarship, and witness to the Gospel is exceptionally important.   Indeed, there is an increasing appreciation for Thomas nearly everywhere, especially for whose intellectual acumen allows them to follow his sometimes dense but insightful writing and thought.  Georgia most famous author, Flannery O’Connor, for example, read in her adult life from Thomas’ Summa Theologica almost every evening.   Aidan Nichols’ Discovering Aquinas: An Introduction to His Life, Work, and Influence (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003) is one of the best books to read if you’d life to get acquainted with this towering theologian.  Here is the prayer the Church often uses to thank God for the gift of Thomas Aquinas:

Almighty God, you have enriched your Church with the singular learning and holiness of your servant Thomas Aquinas: Enlighten us more and more, we pray, by the disciplined thinking and teaching of Christian scholars, and deepen our devotion by the example of saintly lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

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27 January 2010: Lydia, Dorcas, and Phoebe, Helpers of the Apostles

January 27th, 2010

phoebeInbetween storms now; the sun radiant up in the pines and bare oaks.  Although I got myself turned around this morning and delayed Matins, doing it early this afternoon provided special graces.  Soaking up the shine, I sat outside near the bird feeders  and a dozen or so of newly-yellowed goldfinches, along with several titmice and black-capped chickadees, flew in, just feet away, to make a winged corsage of the feeder.  A red-bellied woodpecker jack-hammered his head nearly off in the tree crowns.  I thought about what Our Lord said concerning the falling of these delicate creations.  I wondered if Lydia, Doras, and Phoebe listened to birds similarly.  Did they know that saying of Jesus?  I suppose so.  At least I hope so.

My postwoman Shay left Philip H. Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations: A Proposed Common Calendar of Saints at my door stoup this afternoon.  You’ll no doubt begin to see a number of references to the book from now on for a while.

As Lutherans we haven’t been remembering these women yearly until recently.  On the day following the commemoration of Timoty, Titus, and Silas (yesterday) the Lutheran Book of Worship, as Phatteicher reminds us, introduced our remembering these women in 1978.   Lydia, of course, was Paul’s first convert in Europe, as Luke tells us in Acts 16.  As a business lady, she apparently did quite well for herself.   Paul stayed at her home, and she probably helped finance a good bit of his ministry.  Dorcus or Tabitha (the name means “gazelle,” Phatteicher says) came from Joppa; her specialty in ministry was helping God’s beloved poor.  According to Luke (Acts 9.36-43) Paul brought her back to life when she died.  “Dorcas is called a ‘disciple’ in a feminine form of the word, the only occurrence of that word in the New Testament.  (Hurray for early Christian femininism!)  Phoebe (meaning “bright” or “radiant”;  apparently the name of disciple Phoebe and the woodland bird here aren’t related related; certainly I wouldn’t call the Eastern Phoebe particularly bright, but it does sing a well-enunciated phoe-be, or fi-bree, and that settles the relationship, doesn’t it?).  She was a deaconess at the church in Cenchreae, the east seaport of Corinth.  She became an inspiration for the orders of deaconesses that emerged in the Church in the third and fourth centuries.  Again Phatteicher:  “In Romans 16.1-2 Pauls commends her to the Roman Church upon her move there, and this fact that she was free to travel suggests that she was perhaps a widow.  Her specific service that earned her the title of ‘helper’ or ‘deaconess’ was perhaps her willingness to stand by foreigners in their uncertainties.”

I’ve copied this prayer to my office book:

Almighty God, you inspired your servants Lydia, Dorcas, and Phoebe to support and sustain your church by their deeds of generous love:  Open our hearts to hear you, conform our will to love you, and strengthen our hands for the sake of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, unto the ages of ages.

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25 January 2010: The Conversion of Saint Paul

January 25th, 2010

The Conversion of St. Paul

The Conversion of St. Paul

Hanging  on the wall near my study’s writing desk, January in my Lutheran liturgical calendar has number 25 all wrapped up in white, announcing that today is The Feast Day of the Conversion of St. Paul.   This is one of my favorite feast days because it declares in unconditional terms that we are all saved by the dramatic intervention of God in our lives.   Jesus hit Saul like a thunderbolt, throwing him off his horse, crushing him to the ground with grace unleashed in all its transformative power.   Jesus once said clearly to his disciples,

You did not choose me;
no, I chose you;
and I commissioned you to go out and bear fruit, fruit that will last.
(John 15:16-17, Jerusalem Bible)

Today Jesus says to Paul, “I’ve got you!  You didn’t ever get me!”   That’s the way God came to Moses in the burning bush, to Isaiah in the Temple, to his disciples, to you and to me.   In his mercy, God picks us up and squeezes us close to himself.   On November 30, 1937, God picked me up as an infant and in Holy Baptism said, “Now I have you, Andrew!  You belong to me!”  Ever since that day, over seventy-two years ago, God has never let go of me.  And God never let go of Saul whom he renamed Paul and then made him one of Jesus’ apostles.

In Praying with Saint Paul, Fr. Jopseh T. Lienhard helps us understand what happened to Jesus’ horse-thrown apostle as he shares and explains a message St. Paul never tired of telling:

Courtroom drama has long been a staple of the theater, and of novels, movies, and television. Shakespeare used it effectively in The Merchant of Venice. The courtroom novels of John Grisham are best sellers. Films like The Caine Mutiny Court Martial are classics. The TV series Law and Order is a hugely successful show, but it is only one of dozens of series about trial lawyers, which almost always lead to a dramatic courtroom scene. Of course, the genre is far older. The Book of Daniel in the Old Testament gives us the wonderful story of Susanna, who is accused of a capital crime by two corrupt old men. The young and clever Daniel is the brilliant prosecutor, and he saves Susanna’s life. The trial of Jesus in the New Testament is very different; there an innocent man is convicted and condemned in an unjust trial but, in God’s mysterious plan, his unjust death brings justification to many sinners. Saint Paul sees the human race, too, in terms of a courtroom drama. Because of sin, the whole human race was rightly condemned. But – and here we see the mystery of God’s action, which does not follow the rules of human trials and sentencing – the sentence of condemnation is not the last word. Rather, through the mystery of Christ,we are later acquitted, because Christ’s action drew the punishment away from us. The story is told of a judge in traffic court. At the end of a long day, the judge’s own son is brought before him. The young man is clearly guilty. What does the judge do? He imposes the highest possible fine on his own son. Then he takes off his black robe, walks with his son to the cashier, and pays the fine himself; and they go home together. Do you see a parallel here?

I do, and I hope you do too.

Here’s the Prayer for this day:

O God, by the preaching of your apostle Paul you have caused The light of the Gospel to shine throughout the world: Grant, we pray, that we, having his wonderful conversion in remembrance, may show ourselves thankful to you by following his holy teaching; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

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Not Everything Turns Out Well

January 25th, 2010

Here are the lectionary readings for The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany,Jeremiah_Michelangelo_Sistine_Chapel_sm
January 31, 2010:  

Jeremiah 1:4–10
Psalm 71:1–6
1 Corinthians 13:1–13
Luke 4:21–30.  

At Journey with Jesus, Daniel B. Clendenin’s essay, “Not Everything Turns Out Well,” is well worth reading.  Take a look at it and give the Holy Spirit time enough to make an impression in your thinking, life, and actions.

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