Above:  Traveling Soup Kitchen, Berlin, German Empire, 1916

Image Publisher = Bain News Service

Image Source = Library of Congress

Reproduction Number = LC-DIG-ggbain-25317

Caring for the Vulnerable

JULY 11-13, 2022

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The Collect:

O Lord God, your mercy delights us, and the world longs for your loving care.

Hear the cries of everyone in need, and turn our hearts to love our neighbors

with the love of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.  Amen.

—Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), page 42

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The Assigned Readings:

Job 24:1-8 (Monday)

Proverbs 19:1-7 (Tuesday)

Ecclesiastes 9:13-18 (Wednesday)

Psalm 25:11-20 (All Days)

James 2:1-7 (Monday)

1 John 3:11-17 (Tuesday)

Matthew 25:31-46 (Wednesday)

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Quick, turn to me, pity me,

alone and wretched as I am!

–Psalm 25:16, The New Jerusalem Bible (1985)

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How we treat our fellow human beings, especially those different from ourselves, is a matter of morality.  The author of the Letter of James, thanks to the preservation of his text, reminds us that extending partiality to people based on having more wealth than others in sinful.  Such partiality is human, not divine.  The commandment in 1 John 3:11-17 is to love one another.  Such love begins with attitudes then translates into actions.  As we read in Matthew 25:31-46, how we treat our fellow human beings is how we treat Jesus.

Do we recognize Christ in those around us and those far away from us, especially those who are vulnerable?  To see Jesus in the face of one like us is easy, but doing the same in the face of one different–even scary–is difficult.  Therein lies the challenge, one Christ commands us to undertake.  We can succeed, by grace.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

MARCH 14, 2016 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF SAINT MATHILDA, QUEEN OF GERMANY

THE FEAST OF JOHN SWERTNER, DUTCH-GERMAN MORAVIAN MINISTER, HYMN WRITER, HYMN TRANSLATOR, AND HYMNAL EDITOR; AND HIS COLLABORATOR, JOHN MUELLER, GERMAN-ENGLISH MORAVIAN MINISTER, HYMN EDITOR, AND HYMNAL EDITOR

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https://blogatheologica.wordpress.com/2016/03/14/caring-for-the-vulnerable/

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Above:  An Icon of Christ the Merciful

Image in the Public Domain

Defensive Violence

JULY 12-14, 2021

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The Collect:

O God, from you come all holy desires,

all good counsels, and all just works.

Give to us, your servants, that peace which the world cannot give,

that our hearts may be set to obey your commandments,

and also that we, being defended from the fear of our enemies,

may live in peace and quietness,

through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.  Amen.

–Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), page 42

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The Assigned Readings:

Amos 5:1-9 (Monday)

Amos 9:1-4 (Tuesday)

Amos 9:11-15 (Wednesday)

Psalm 142 (All Days)

Acts 21:27-39 (Monday)

Acts 23:12-35 (Tuesday)

Luke 7:31-35 (Wednesday)

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 I cry to the LORD with my voice;

to the LORD I make loud supplication.

I pour out my complaint before you, O LORD,

and tell you all my trouble.

When my spirit languishes within me, you know my path;

in the way wherein I walk they have hidden a trap for me.

I look to my right hand and find no one who knows me;

I have no place to flee to, and no one cares for me.’

I cry out to you, O LORD,

I say, “You are my refuge,

my portion in the land of the living.”

Listen to my cry for help, for I have been brought very low;

save me from those who pursue me,

for they are too strong for me.

Bring me out of the prison, that I may give thanks to your name;

when you have dealt bountifully with me,

the righteous will gather around me.

–Psalm 142, Book of Common Worship (1993)

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The Book of Amos, after all of its predictions of destruction, takes a sudden turn at the end and concludes with a promise that God will restore the Hebrew nation.  Hope of restoration was on the minds of many whom Jesus encountered in Roman-occupied Judea.  Many others, however, benefited from that occupation, for they had made their peace with Roman authorities.  Some of these elites plotted to kill Jesus then St. Paul the Apostle, who were indeed threats to their power, although not in ways many people thought and in ways many people did not expect.  Hostility was often inconsistent in its standards:

For John the Baptist came, neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, “He is possessed.”  The Son of Man came, eating and drinking, and you say, “Look at him! A glutton and a drinker, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!”

–Luke 7:33-34, The Revised English Bible (1989)

As a sign I have reads,

FOR EVERY ACTION THERE IS AN EQUAL AND OPPOSITE CRITICISM.

The term “Kingdom of God” has more than one meaning in the Bible.  It refers to the afterlife in some passages yet to the reign of God on earth in others, for example.  The latter definition interests me more than does the former.  One function of the latter definition is to criticize human institutions and social structures as falling short of divine standards, which is the definition of sin.  Some people hear criticism and respond by trying to change them for the better.  Others ignore the criticism.  A third group reacts violently in defense of themselves and their beloved institutions and social structures.

Repentance is better than defensive violence.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

APRIL 4, 2015 COMMON ERA

THE EVE OF EASTER, YEAR B

THE FEAST OF BENJAMIN HALL KENNEDY, GREEK AND LATIN SCHOLAR, BIBLE TRANSLATOR, AND ANGLICAN PRIEST

THE FEAST OF SAINT GEORGE THE YOUNGER, GREEK ORTHODOX BISHOP OF MITYLENE

THE FEAST OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER

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https://blogatheologica.wordpress.com/2015/04/04/defensive-violence/

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Above:  King Cyrus II of Persia

Image in the Public Domain

Divine Judgment and Mercy

JULY 13 and 14, 2023

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The Collect:

Almighty God, we thank you for planting in us the seed of your word.

By your Holy Spirit help us to receive it with joy,

live according to it, and grow if faith and love,

through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.  Amen.

—Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), page 42

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The Assigned Readings:

Isaiah 48:1-5 (Thursday)

Isaiah 49:6-11 (Friday)

Psalm 65:[1-8], 9-13 (Both Days)

Romans 2:12-16 (Thursday)

Romans 15:14-21 (Friday)

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You are to be praised, O God, in Zion;

to you shall vows be performed in Jerusalem.

To you that hear prayer shall all flesh come,

because of their transgressions.

Our sins are stronger than we are,

but you will blot them out.

–Psalm 65:1-3, The Book of Common Prayer (1979)

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I recall a hypothetical situation I heard while growing up:  There is a man whom God is drawing to God’s self.  This man responds positively to these summons, but he dies before he can make a profession of Christian faith, much less accept baptism.  Where does he spend his afterlife?

One’s answer reveals quite a bit about one’s theology.  I, unlike, certain others, refuse to relegate the man to Hell.  He was, after all, responding faithfully to God.  The man might not have been able to provide their proper answers according to a catechism, but he was not rebelling against God.  Would not God be faithful to the man who had obeyed him each step along the way?  And, as the author of the Letter of James would confirm, not everybody who can give the correct catechetical answer will make the heavenly cut.  I recall that from Matthew 25:31-46 also.

In God abide both judgment and mercy.  The combined reading from Isaiah 48 makes this point succinctly.  St. Paul the Apostle agrees.  And, regarding the centrality of Christ to salvation for Gentiles, I agree while being reluctant to make sweeping and probably inaccurate judgments.  No, I prefer to err on the side of mercy if I must be wrong.  Besides, that decision rests with God alone, not with any of us, mere mortals.

I find, as is so often true in my experience, that The Book of Common Prayer (1979) provides helpful prayers and theology.  The Good Friday service includes this on page 279 of the Prayer Book:

Let us pray for all who have not received the Gospel of Christ;

For those who have never heard the word of salvation

For those who have lost their faith

For those hardened by sin or indifference

For the contemptuous and the scornful

For those who are enemies of the cross of Christ and persecutors of his disciples

For those who in the name of Christ have persecuted others

That God will open their hearts to the truth, and lead them to faith and obedience.

Then, on the next page, we find this:

Let us commit ourselves to our God, and pray for the grace of a holy life, that, with all who have departed this world and have died in the peace of Christ, and those whose faith is known to God alone, we may be accounted worthy to enter into the fullness of the joy of our Lord, and receive the crown of life in the day of resurrection.

May we, without mistaking Universalism for reality, never give short shrift to divine mercy.  Likewise, may we avoid the same error regarding divine judgment.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

JUNE 13, 2014 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF SAINT ANTONY OF PADUA, ROMAN CATHOLIC MONK

THE FEAST OF G. K. (GILBERT KEITH) CHESTERTON, AUTHOR

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http://blogatheologica.wordpress.com/2014/06/15/divine-judgment-and-mercy-2/

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Above:  Saint Paul Writing His Epistles, by Valentin de Boulogne

Image in the Public Domain

Judges and Galatians, Part II:  Obligations

JULY 13, 2023

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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,

one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

–The Book of Common Prayer (1979), page 236

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The Assigned Readings:

Judges 13:1-25

Psalm 61 (Morning)

Psalms 138 and 98 (Evening)

Galatians 2:1-21

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The call of God on one’s life imposes some obligations and lifts others.  This theme plays out in Judges 13, the account which culminates in the birth of the judge Samson, designated to end the Philistine oppression of the Israelites.  He was supposed to obey rules governing hair and wine.  Yet the lifting of the obligation of male circumcision is a prominent part of Galatians 2.  The mandate to care for the poor remains, however.  Our justification is in Christ, Paul wrote, so “saving justice” does not come from the Law of Moses.  This principle did not apply to Samson for reasons of chronology.

We are not our own; no, we belong to God. Sometimes God’s call on our lives requires us to abandon certain traditions, such as the prohibition against table fellow ship with Gentiles in Galatians 2.  Yet, when one reads the other account of the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15, one finds some old rules which continue to apply:

…to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from illicit marriages.

–Acts 15:29, The New Jerusalem Bible

But circumcision ceases to be obligatory.

As I have written already, male circumcision is a traditional part of Jewish identity.  Recent (as of 2012) international disputes regarding the practice reinforce this point.  But an outward sign which few people will see is not more important than public acts of compassion, such as caring effectively for the poor in the name of God.  A hokey song whose music and shallow, repetitive words I despise does at least convey a simple truth nevertheless:

They’ll know we are Christians by our love.

Amen.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

JULY 27, 2012 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF WILLIAM REED HUNTINGTON, EPISCOPAL PRIEST

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http://blogatheologica.wordpress.com/2013/05/03/judges-and-galatians-part-ii-obligations/

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Above:  An Old Family Bible

Image Source = David Ball

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God of glory,

as we prepare to study the Bible,

may we approach the texts with our minds open,

our intellects engaged,

and our spirits receptive to your leading,

so that we will understand them correctly

and derive from them the appropriate lessons.

Then may we act on those lessons.

For the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Amen.

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KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

OCTOBER 7, 2011 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF HENRY MELCHIOR MUHLENBERG, SHEPHERD OF LUTHERANISM IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES

THE FEAST OF FRED KAAN, HYMNWRITER

THE FEAST OF JOHN WOOLMAN, ABOLITIONIST

Above:  A Map of the Neo-Assyrian Empire

Against “Majestic Pride and Overbearing Arrogance”

JULY 13, 2022

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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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Isaiah 10:5-16 (TANAKH:  The Holy Scriptures):

Ha!

Assyria, rod of My anger,

In whose hand, as a staff, is My fury!

I send him against him an ungodly nation,

I charge him against a people that provokes Me,

To take its spoil and to seize its booty

And to make it a thing trampled

Like the mire of the streets.

But he has evil designs;

For he means to destroy,

To wipe out nations, not a few.

For he thinks,

After all, I have kings as my captains!

Was Calno any different from Carchemish?

Or Hamath from Arpad?

Or Samaria from Damascus?

Since I was able to seize

The insignificant kingdoms,

Whose images exceeded

Jerusalem’s and Samaria’s,

Shall I not do to Jerusalem and her images

What I did to Samaria and her idols?

But when my Lord has carried out all his purpose on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, He will punish the majestic pride and overbearing arrogance of the king of Assyria.  For he thought,

By the might of my hand I have wrought it,

By my skill, for I am clever:

I have erased the borders of peoples;

I have plundered their treasures,

And exiled their vast populations.

I was able to seize, like a nest,

The wealth of peoples;

As one gathers abandoned eggs,

So I gathered all the earth:

Nothing so much as flapped a wing

Or opened a mouth to peep.

Does an ax boast over him who hews with it,

Or a saw magnify itself above him who wields it?

As though the rod raised him who lifts it,

As though the staff lifted the man!

Psalm 94:5-15 (1979 Book of Common Prayer):

5  They crush your people, O LORD,

and afflict your chosen nation.

6  They murder the widow and the stranger,

and put the orphans to death.

7  Yet they say, “The LORD does not see,

the God of Jacob takes no notice.”

8  Consider well, you dullards among the people;

when will you fools understand?

9  He that planted the ear, does he not hear?

he that formed the eye, does he not see?

10  He who admonishes the nations, will he not punish?

he who teaches all the world, has he no knowledge?

11 The LORD knows our human thoughts;

how like a puff of wind they are.

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.

Matthew 11:25-27 (An American Translation):

At that time Jesus said,

I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding all this from the learned and the intelligent and revealing it to children.  Yes, I thank you, Father, for choosing to have it so.  Everything has been handed over to me by my Father, and no one understands the Son but the Father, nor does anyone understand the Father but the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

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The Collect:

O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

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A Related Post:

Week of Proper 10:  Wednesday, Year 1:

https://ordinarytimedevotions.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/week-of-proper-10-wednesday-year-1/

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The Assyrian Empire was brutal, a regime built on force, coercion, and violence.  There were, in fact, successive Assyrian Empires, so I must be precise in my language.  Mesopotamia has been home to neighboring civilizations and a succession of empires since ancient times.  Keeping track of them can be challenging.  The Assyrian Empire of this day’s text from Isaiah was the Neo-Assyrian Empire.  It had begun to expand its borders and influence by 856 B.C.E.  All of the hard work of conquering and oppressing people ended by 605 B.C.E., with the division of the empire between the Chaldeans/Neo-Babylonians, the next great empire in that region, and the Medes, who, along with their senior partners, the Persians, eventually conquered the Chaldeans/Neo-Babylonians and formed an even greater empire.

Empires rise and fall, but life goes on, as does the work of God.  And, for us, living daily should constitute far more than merely completing a succession of tasks, errands, and chores; it should be prayer and a series of acts of worship.  This thought has been on my mind recently, as I have watched the video Canadian politician Jack Layton’s funeral repeatedly.  Layton’s pastor quoted the late leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition as saying that he (Layton) considered how he spent each day as an act of worship.  Such living leaves no room for the ruthless violence for which the Assyrians were notorious.

The text does require some explanation.  First, Calno, Carchemish, Hamath, Arpad, Samaria, and Damascus were cities the Assyrians had conquered.  And there is a bilingual pun in the text.  (I adore plays on words!)  We read “I have kings as my captains!” in verse 8.  The note in The Jewish Study Bible explains:

Heb[rew] “sar” is cognate to the Akkadian word for king.  Vassal kings did serve the Assyrian king as military commanders or captains.

Double entendres aside, the point of the reading is that hubris led to the fall of Assyria.  Hubris, of course, is that which goes before the fall.  It puffs one up unduly and leads one to become and remain overconfident.  It is something to guard against in the life of any empire or nation-state.

We, as individuals, ought also to avoid hubris.  We all need God; if we are wise, we will acknowledge and accept this without hesitation.  Jesus went to those who were ready to accept him and to embrace his message.  Pride did not hold them back, so they benefited from him.  More could have done the same if they just surrendered their hubris.

Pride can be difficult to surrender.  Sometimes circumstances leave us no choice, but it is better to live simply, humbly, and in the light of God voluntarily.

KRT

http://blogatheologica.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/against-majestic-pride-and-overbearing-arrogance/

Above:  The Missal (1902), by John William Waterhouse (1849-1917)

Image in the Public Domain

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Here I share with everyone a proposed form of the Prayers of the People, for congregational use, for the Season After Pentecost.  Anyone may modify this form to fit local needs and update it as people leave or enter office.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

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The congregational response to “We pray to you, O God” is “Hear our prayer.”

As God’s people, sanctified by the Holy Spirit, we ask that our lives may become prayer pleasing to you, and that all people and institutions which profess to follow our Lord, may express God’s love and grace to others.

We pray to you, O God,

Hear our prayer.

That

• Barack, our President;
• Nathan, our Governor;
• Nancy, our Mayor;
• And all other government officials and all influential persons

may exercise their power and authority wisely and for the common good, so that all people everywhere may be treated with dignity and respect, dwell in safety, and have everything they need,

we pray to you, O God,

Hear our prayer.

That we may love you with our whole heart and life and strength, and love our neighbors as ourselves,

we pray to you, O God,

Hear our prayer.

That we may be good stewards of Mother Earth,

we pray to you, O God,

Hear our prayer.

We intercede for

• (first names here);
• And our men and women in the armed forces, especially (names here);
• And all people struggling with vocational and career issues.

I invite your prayers, silent or aloud.

(Pause)

We pray to you, O God,

Hear our prayer.

We thank you for

• (names here), who celebrate their birthdays this week;
• And (names here), who celebrate their wedding anniversaries this week.

I invite your thanksgivings, silent or aloud.

(Pause)

We pray to you, O God,

Hear our prayer.

That all who have passed from this life to the next will know the boundless joy and peace of eternal rest,

we pray to you, O God,

Hear our prayer.

The celebrant concludes with a collect.

Above:  Gallery of the Apostles, Temmenhausen, Nikolauskirche, Bergische Gladbach, Germany

Image in the Public Domain

Grace:  Pass It On

JULY 13, 2023

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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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Genesis 44:18-45:5 (An American Translation):

Then Judah went back to him [Joseph], and said,

If you please, my lord, let your servant speak a word in the ear of my lord, and  your anger not blaze against your servant; for you are the equal of Pharaoh himself.  My lord asked his servants, ‘Have you a father or a brother?’  And we said to my lord, ‘We have an aged father, and a young brother, the child of his old age; his brother is dead, so that he alone is left of mother’s children, and his father loves him.’  Then you said to your servants, ‘Bring him down to me that I may see him.’  But we told my lord, ‘The boy cannot leave his father; his father would die if he were to leave him.’  Whereupon you said to your servants, ‘Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you cannot have audience with me again.’

When we went back to your servant, my father, we reported to him the words of my lord.  Then our father said, ‘Go again and buy a little food for us.’  But we said, ‘We cannot go down; if our youngest brother accompanies us, we can go down; for we shall not be allowed to have audience with the man unless our youngest brother is with us.’  Then your servant, my father, said to us, ‘You know that my wife bore me only two children; then one of them left me, and I think that he must surely have been torn to pieces; for I have never seen him since.  If then you take this one with me too, and harm befall him, you will bring down my gray hairs to Sheol in trouble.’

And now, when I rejoin your servants, my father, and the boy not with us, his life is so bound up with the boy’s that will die when he sees that there is no boy, and your servants will bring down the gray hairs of your servant, our father, to Sheol in sorrow; for your servant went suretly for the boy to my father, saying, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, let my father blame me for it all my life.’  Now then, pray let your servant remain in the boy’s place as my lord’s slave, but let the boy go back with his brothers; for how can I go back to my father unless the boy is with me, and witness the agony that would come to my father?’

Joseph could no longer control himself before all his attendants, so he cried out,

Have everyone withdraw from me.

So there was no one with Joseph when he made himself known to his brothers; but he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and Pharaoh’s household heard it.  Joseph said to his brothers,

I am Joseph.  Is my father still living?

But his brothers could not answer him, because they were so dismayed at being in his presence.  So Joseph said to his brothers,

Come nearer to me.

When they came nearer, he said,

I am your brother Joseph whom you sold into Egypt.  Now do not be distressed nor angry with yourselves that you sold me here….

Psalm 105:7-21 (1979 Book of Common Prayer):

7 He is the LORD our God;

his judgments prevail in all the world.

8 He has always been mindful of his covenant,

the promise he made for a thousand generations:

9 The covenant he made with Abraham,

the oath that he swore to Isaac,

10 Which he established as a statute for Jacob,

and everlasting covenant for Israel,

11 Saying, “To you will I give the land of Canaan

to be your allotted inheritance.”

12 When they were few in number,

of little account, and sojourners in the land,

13 Wandering from nation to nation

and from one kingdom to another,

14 He let no one oppress them

and rebuked kings for their sake,

15 Saying, “Do not touch my anointed

and do my prophets no harm.”

16 Then he called for a famine in the land

and destroyed the supply of bread.

17 He sent a man before them,

Joseph, who was sold as a slave.

18 They bruised his feet in fetters;

his neck they put in an iron collar.

19 Until his prediction came to pass,

the word of the LORD tested him.

20 The king sent and released him;

the ruler of the peoples set him free.

21 He set him as a master over his household,

as a ruler over all his possessions.

Matthew 10:7-15 (An American Translation):

[Jesus said to his disciples,]

And as you go about, preach and say, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!’  Cure the sick, raise the dead, heal lepers, drive out demons.  Give without payment, just as you received without payment.  Do not take gold or silver or copper money in your purses, and do not take a bag for your journey, nor two shirts, nor shoes, nor a staff, for the workman deserves his food!  Whatever town or village you come to, inquire for some suitable person, and stay with him till you leave the place.  And as you go into his house, wish it well.  If the house deserves it, the peace you wish it will come over it, but if it does not deserve it, let your blessing come back upon yourselves.  And where no one will welcome you, or listen to you, leave that house or town and shake off its very dust from your feet.  I tell you, the land of Sodom and Gomorrah will fare better on the Day of Judgment than that town.

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The Collect:

O God, you have taught us to keep all your commandments by loving you and our neighbor: Grant us the grace of your Holy Spirit, that we may be devoted to you with our whole heart, and united to one another with pure affection; 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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Freely you have received; freely give.

–Matthew 10:8b, Translated by William Barclay

I got slightly ahead of the story from Genesis in the previous day’s devotional post.  That is fine, for, in so doing, I made a pertinent point.  Here, in this post, we have the great reveal:  Joseph tells his brothers who he is then forgives them to their faces.  Joseph had received grace freely; freely he extended it to his brothers.

This is one of the great scenes from the Bible.  Joseph had been through varieties of hell on earth due to the jealousy of brothers.  Yet this evil intent let to Joseph being in place to save Egypt, complete with foreign strangers, and his family members, including said brothers.  It all worked out well in the end.  Holding a grudge against the brothers would have hurt them, but it would have caused greater spiritual injury to Joseph.

Letting go is often hard to do.  Believe me, I know this well.  As I write these words, I feel unpleasant emotions when thinking of the names of certain people.  They did serious harm to me in 2006, putting me through academic hell.  But they are beyond my reach, and their own karma will catch up with them in time unless they change their ways, just as mine will pursue me unless take a route other than anger and fantasies of revenge.  I have decided to have nothing to do with what happens to them, not even to mention their names here.  It is a safe course, and my anger has been fading for years, by grace.    One day I might even find cause to thank them, out of recognition of the fact that what they did put me on the road to something far better than my original destination.

The Twelve Apostles  received grace freely.  So Jesus instructed them to impart it freely.  Is this not how we ought to act toward each other?  Indeed, it is.  This can prove controversial, depending upon the identityof the beneficiary or the recipient.  Consider the Parable of the Good Samaritan.  Samaritans were half-breeds and heretics.  Many respectable Jews of Jesus’ time spoke of Samaritans in disparaging terms.  Yet a Samartian was the hero of the story, and the respectable religious figures did nothing to help.  I suppose that, if Jesus were telling that parable today in the North American context, he would speak of the Good Illegal Immigrant.  Would not that scandalize many people?  So did the concept of a Good Samaritan in Jesus’ time.

Grace is scandalous.  It prevents us from getting what we deserve or what others think we deserve.  We, of course, like this when grace spares us.  But we tend to take great offense when it rescues someone we do not like, with whom we disagree strongly, or someone we otherwise consider unworthy.  I guarantee that someone considers me unworthy of grace, and that somebody has the same opinion of you, O reader.  All of us are unworthy, of course, but God extends grace anyway.  Should we not just be grateful for it and look for ways to treat people kindly?

KRT

http://blogatheologica.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/grace-pass-it-on/

Above:  Everything is In the Past, by Vassily Maximov

Image in the Public Domain

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Sovereign Lord of life,

may we not imprison ourselves in the past,

dwelling on disappointments and plotting revenge

or resting on our laurels.

Instead, may we learn the appropriate lessons from the past,

live in the present faithfully, and

look to the future faithfully.

May we be and remain open to

all the possibilities you present for us to fulfill our vocations.

And, in so doing, may we become the persons we need to become

–for your glory and the sake others.

In the name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity.  Amen.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

MARCH 11, 2010

THE FEAST OF ALEXANDER FLEMING

Published originally at GATHERED PRAYERS COLLECTED BY KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR on July 17, 2010

Allegory of Faith, by Luis Salvador Carmona

Image Source = Luis Garcia

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Sovereign God,

I confess that I have sought control in matters small, medium, and large.

This has been a recurring, unfortunate, and sinful pattern.

Why have I not learned better that human control is purely illusory?

Why am I stubborn in this sin?

Deliver me–deliver all of us–I pray you–from this sin,

so that trust in you may replace the idolatrous quest for control,

that love for you and all your children may abound,

and that Shalom may result.

In the name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity.  Amen.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

MARCH 10, 2010 (THE FEAST OF GEOFFREY STUDDERT KENNEDY)

Published originally at GATHERED PRAYERS COLLECTED BY KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR on July 17, 2010