Above:   Figs

Image in the Public Domain

Overcoming the World

OCTOBER 3-5, 2022

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The Collect:

Benevolent, merciful God:

When we are empty, fill us.

When we are weak in faith, strengthen us.

When we are cold in love, warm us,

that we may love our neighbors and

serve them for the sake of your Son,

Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.  Amen.

—Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), page 49

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The Assigned Readings:

Habakkuk 1:5-17 (Monday)

Habakkuk 2:5-11 (Tuesday)

Habakkuk 2:12-20 (Wednesday)

Psalm 3 (All Days)

James 1:2-11 (Monday)

1 John 5:1-5, 13-21 (Tuesday)

Mark 11:12-14, 20-24 (Wednesday)

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LORD, how many adversaries I have!

how many there are who rise up against me!

How many there are who say of me,

“There is no help for him in his God.”

But you, O LORD, are a shield about me;

you are my glory, the one who lifts up my head.

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

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Earthly fortunes and military conquests are temporary, even if some are long-term.  Whatever material and financial assets we own, we cannot take them with us after we die.  History records that the Persian Empire conquered the Chaldean/Neo-Babylonian Empire and that the Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Great defeated the Persian Empire.  Furthermore, we know that successor empires of the Macedonian Empire competed with each other and fell to conquests in time.

There is God, whom no earthly power can conquer or come close to defeating.  We read at the end of John 16, shortly before the torture and execution of Jesus, these words placed in his mouth:

In the world you will have suffering.  But take heart!  I have conquered the world.

–Verse 3:3b, The Revised English Bible (1989)

We know by faith that Roman officials killed Jesus, but that a resurrection followed a few days later.  We also read the following in 1 John 5:

For to love God is to keep his commandments; and these are not burdensome, because every child of God overcomes the world.  Now, the victory by which the world is overcome is our faith, for who is victor over the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

–Verses 3-5, The Revised English Bible (1989)

In the Biblical sense to believe in God is to trust in God.  Affirming a theological proposition intellectually is much easier than internalizing it and acting on it.  To settle for the former (mere intellectual assent) is to be like the barren fig tree of Mark 11.  Yes, the text of Mark 11 indicates that Jesus cursed a fig tree out of fig season, but out of season a healthy fig tree exhibits evidence of the ability to bear figs in season.  Furthermore, the context of Mark 11:12-14, 20-24, set during Holy Week and bookending the cleansing of the Temple, indicates that the story of the cursed fig tree pertains to Jesus’s displeasure with the management and operation of the Temple.

May we who claim to follow Jesus bear good fruits and otherwise show year-round evidence of our spiritual vitality in Christ.  May we trust in Jesus and act accordingly.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

MAY 20, 2016 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF SAINT ALCUIN OF YORK, ABBOT OF TOURS

THE FEAST OF JOHN JAMES MOMENT, U.S. PRESBYTERIAN MINISTER AND HYMN WRITER

THE FEAST OF LUCY ELIZABETH GEORGINA WHITMORE, BRITISH HYMN WRITER

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https://blogatheologica.wordpress.com/2016/05/20/overcoming-the-world/

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Above:  Sycamore Grove, Glen El Capitan, California, June 1899

Image Source = Library of Congress

Reproduction Number = LC-D43-T01-1370

Photograph by William Henry Jackson (1843-1942)

Grace, Hope, Free Will, and Doom

The Sunday Closest to November 2

Twenty-First Sunday After Pentecost

OCTOBER 30, 2022

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The Assigned Readings:

Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:14 and Psalm 119:137-144

or 

Isaiah 1:10-18 and Psalm 32:1-8

then 

2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12

Luke 19:1-10

The Collect:

Almighty and merciful God, it is only by your gift that your faithful people offer you true and laudable service: Grant that we may run without stumbling to obtain your heavenly promises; 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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Some Related Posts:

Prayer of Praise and Adoration:

http://gatheredprayers.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/prayer-of-praise-and-adoration-for-the-twenty-fourth-sunday-after-pentecost/

Prayer of Confession:

http://gatheredprayers.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/prayer-of-confession-for-the-twenty-fourth-sunday-after-pentecost/

Prayer of Dedication:

http://gatheredprayers.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/prayer-of-dedication-for-the-twenty-fourth-sunday-after-pentecost/

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Oppressors afflict the godly and the merely innocent.  Courts are corrupt, kings and emperors are insensitive, and/or the homeland is occupied.  This is an unjust reality.  And what will God do about it?

The omitted portion of 1 Thessalonians 1 gives one answer:  God will repay the oppressors with affliction.  Sometimes this is the merciful answer to the pleas of the afflicted, for many oppressors will not cease from oppressing otherwise.  I with that this were not true.  I wish that more people would recognize the error of their ways and amend them—repent.  But I am realist.

Many pains are in store for the wicked:

but whoever trusts in the Lord is surrounded by steadfast love.

–Psalm 32:11, A New Zealand Prayer Book (1989)

But others will repent.  Zacchaeus, once a tax thief for the Roman Empire, did just that.  Leviticus 6:1-5 required Zacchaeus to repay the principal amount of the fraud plus twenty percent.  Instead he repaid four times the principal amount of the fraud.  That action was consistent with Exodus 22:1, which required replacing one stolen then slaughtered sheep with four sheep.  Zacchaeus did more than the Law of Moses required of him.  Yes, he had less money afterward, but he regained something much more valuable—his reputation in the community.  He was restored to society.  And it happened because he was willing and Jesus sought him out.  We humans need to be willing to do the right thing.  Grace can finish what free will begins.

Sometimes I think that God wants to see evidence of good will and initiative from us and that these are enough to satisfy God.  We are weak, distracted easily, and fooled with little effort, but God can make much out of a little good will and even the slightest bit of initiative.  They are at least positive indications—sparks from which fires can grow.  But they depend upon a proper sense of right and wrong—morality.  An immoral act is one which a person commits even though he or she knows it is wrong.  An amoral act is one which a person with no sense of morality commits.  Zaccheaeus was immoral (mostly) until he decided to become moral (mostly).  And grace met him where he was.

There is hope for many of the people we might consider beyond the scope of redemption and restoration.  God is present to extend such hope, and you, O reader, might be an agent of such hope to someone.  If you are or are to be so, please be that—for the sake of that one and those whom he or she will affect.  Unfortunately, some will, by free will, refuse that hope.  That is one element of the dark side of free will.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

MAY 9, 2013 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF THE FEAST OF THOMAS TOKE LYNCH, ENGLISH CONGREGATIONALIST MINISTER AND HYMN WRITER

THE FEAST OF ANNA LAETITIA WARING, HUMANITARIAN AND HYMN WRITER; AND HER UNCLE, SAMUEL MILLER WARING, HYMN WRITER

THE FEAST OF SAINT GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS, BISHOP OF CONSTANTINOPLE

THE FEAST OF SAINTS WILLIBALD OF EICHSTATT AND LULLUS OF MAINZ, ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOPS; SAINT WALBURGA OF HEIDENHELM, ROMAN CATHOLIC ABBESS; SAINTS PETRONAX OF MONTE CASSINO, WINNEBALD OF HEIDENHELM, WIGBERT OF FRITZLAR, AND STURMIUS OF FULDA, ROMAN CATHOLIC ABBOTS; AND SAINT SEBALDUS OF VINCENZA, ROMAN CATHOLIC HERMIT AND MISSIONARY

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http://blogatheologica.wordpress.com/2013/05/28/grace-hope-free-will-and-doom/

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Above:  A Drawing of a Mulberry Tree, 1919 or 1920

Image Source = Library of Congress

Reproduction Number = LC-DIG-npcc-28990

Increased Faith

The Sunday Closest to October 5

Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost

OCTOBER 2, 2022

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The Assigned Readings:

Lamentations 1:1-6 and Lamentations 3:19-26 (as a canticle) or Psalm 137

or 

Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4 and Psalm 37:1-10

then 

2 Timothy 1:1-14

Luke 17:5-10

The Collect:

Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve: Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Savior; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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Some Related Posts:

Prayer of Praise and Adoration:

http://gatheredprayers.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/prayer-of-praise-and-adoration-for-the-twentieth-sunday-after-pentecost/

Prayer of Confession:

http://gatheredprayers.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/prayer-of-confession-for-the-twentieth-sunday-after-pentecost/

Prayer of Dedication:

http://gatheredprayers.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/prayer-of-dedication-for-the-twentieth-sunday-after-pentecost/

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The readings from Habakkuk and Lamentations speak of suffering because of sins.  Thus they reflect a major theological theme of the Hebrew Scriptures.  Yet, amid widespread apostasy, faithful people remain.  And sometimes the faithful suffer because of their piety.  There is more than one cause for suffering.

“Faith” is a word with more than one meaning in the Bible.  In some instances it indicates an intellectual assent to a proposition or to propositions.  Thus, in the Letter of James, where this is the definition, works must accompany faith.  For the Apostle Paul, however, faith was inherently active, so works were already part of the formula and faith sufficed for justification to God.  The Letter to the Hebrews contains a third understanding, one in which faith is

the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

–11:1, New Revised Standard Version

There it is a valid way of knowing that which we can neither confirm nor debunk by another means.

Faith, in Luke 17:5f, follows the Pauline definition.  It must do so, for the Gospels exist to, among other things, encourage discipleship–following Jesus.  The request for increased levels of faith is a prayer to be able to obey God and follow Jesus better.

That is a proper spiritual gift to seek to increase.  It can enable one to survive suffering and hardship falling prey to anger and resentment, thereby poisoning one’s soul.  No, may we avoid poisoning our souls, by faith.  And may we have more of it, by grace.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

MAY 1, 2013 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF SAINTS PHILIP AND JAMES, APOSTLES AND MARTYRS

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http://blogatheologica.wordpress.com/2013/05/28/increased-faith/

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Above:  Habakkuk

God is Sufficient

AUGUST 5 and 6, 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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FIRST READING FOR FRIDAY

Nahum 2:1-3 and 3:1-7 (TANAKH:  The Holy Scriptures):

(YHWH speaking)

Behold on the hills

The footsteps of a herald

Announcing good fortune!

A shatterer has come up against you.

Man the guard posts,

Watch the road;

Steady your loins,

Brace all your strength!

For the LORD has restored the Pride of Jacob

As well as the Pride of Israel,

Though marauders have laid them waste

And ravaged their branches.

…

Ah, city of crime,

Utterly treacherous,

Full of violence,

Where killing never stops!

Crack of whip

And rattle of wheel,

Galloping steed

And bounding chariot!

Charging horsemen,

Flashing swords,

And glittering spears!

Hosts of slain

And heaps of corpses,

Dead bodies without number–

They stumble over bodies.

Because of the countless harlotries of the harlot,

The winsome mistress of sorcery,

Who ensnared nations with her harlotries

And peoples with her sorcery,

I am going to deal with you

–declares the LORD of Hosts.

I will lift up your skirts over your face

And display your nakedness to the nations

And your shame to kingdoms.

I will throw loathsome things over you

And disfigure you

And make a spectacle of you.

All who see you will recoil from you

And will say,

“Nineveh has been ravaged!”

Who will console her?

Where shall I look for

Anyone to comfort you?

FIRST READING FOR SATURDAY

Habakkuk 1:12-2:4 (TANAKH:  The Holy Scriptures):

(Habakkuk speaking)

You, O LORD, are from everlasting;

My holy God, You never die.

O LORD, You have made them a subject of contention;

O Rock, You have made them a cause for complaint.

You whose eyes are too pure to look upon evil,

Who cannot countenance wrongdoing,

Why do You countenance treachery,

And stand by idle

While the one in the wrong devours

The one in the right?

You have made mankind like the fish of the sea,

Like creeping things that have no ruler.

He has fished them all up with a line,

Pulled them up in his trawl,

And gathered them in his net.

That is why he rejoices and is glad.

That is why he sacrifices in his trawl

And makes offerings to his net;

For through them his portion is rich

And his nourishment fat.

Shall he then keep emptying his trawl,

And slaying nations without pity?

I will stand on my watch,

Take up my station at the post,

And wait to see what He will say tome,

What He will reply to my complaint.

The LORD answered me and said:

Write the prophecy down,

Inscribe it clearly on tablets,

So that it can be read easily.

For there is yet a prophecy for a set term,

A truthful witness for a time that will come.

Even if it tarries, wait for it still;

For it will surely come, without delay:

Lo his spirit within him is puffed up, not upright,

But he righteous man is rewarded with life

For his fidelity….

RESPONSE FOR FRIDAY

Psalm 124 (1979 Book of Common Prayer):

1 If the LORD had not been on our side,

let Israel now say;

2 If the LORD had not been on our side,

when enemies rose up against us;

3 Then would they have swallowed us up alive

in their fierce anger toward us;

4 Then the waters would have overwhelmed us

and the torrent gone over us;

5 Then would the raging waters

have gone over us.

6 Blessed be the LORD!

he has not given us over to be a prey for their teeth.

7 We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowler;

the snare is broken, and we have escaped.

8 Our help is in the Name of the LORD,

the maker of heaven and earth.

RESPONSE FOR SATURDAY

Psalm 9:7-12 (1979 Book of Common Prayer):

7  But the LORD is enthroned for ever;

he has set up his throne for judgment.

8  It is he who rules the world with righteousness;

he judges the peoples with equity.

9  The LORD will be a refuge for the oppressed,

a refuge in time of trouble.

10  Those who know your Name will put their trust in you,

for you never forsake those who seek you, O LORD.

11  Sing praise to the LORD who dwells in Zion;

proclaim to the peoples the things he has done.

12  The Avenger of blood will remember them;

he will not forget the cry of the afflicted.

GOSPEL READING FOR FRIDAY

Matthew 16:24-28 (J. B. Phillips, 1972):

Then Jesus said to his disciples,

If anyone wants to follow in my footsteps he must give up all right to himself, take up his cross and follow me.  For the man who wants to save his life will lose it; but the man who loses his life for my sake will find it.  For what good is it for a man to gain the whole world at the price of his real life?  What could a man offer to buy back that life once he has lost it?

For the Son of Man will come in the glory of his Father and in the company of his angels and then he will repay every man for what he has done.  Believe me, there are some standing here today who will know nothing of death till they have seen the Son of Man coming as king.

GOSPEL READING FOR SATURDAY

Matthew 17:14-20 (J. B. Phillips, 1972):

When they returned to the crowd again a man came and knelt in front of Jesus.

Lord, have pity on my son,

he said,

for he is a lunatic and suffers terribly.  He is always falling into the fire or into the water.  I did bring him to your disciples but they couldn’t cure him.

Jesus returned,

You really are an unbelieving and difficult people.  How long must I be with you, and how long must I put up with you?  Bring him here to me!

Then Jesus spoke sternly to the evil spirit and it went out of the boy, who was cured from that moment.

Afterwards the disciples approached Jesus privately and asked,

Why weren’t we able to get rid of it?

Jesus replied

Because you have so little faith.  I assure you that if you have faith the size of a mustard-seed you can say to this hill, ‘Up you get and move over there!” and it will move–and you will find nothing is impossible.

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The Collect:

Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without your help, protect and govern it always by your goodness; 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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For a while now I have been reading and writing a series of lessons from the theologically-oriented histories and from certain prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible.  Some themes have repeated in the arrangement of texts, in close proximity to each other, so I have run out of new things to say, hence my more frequent practice of combining texts from two consecutive days.  The Canadian Anglican lectionary I am following will move along to Ezekiel next, before returning to the Pauline epistles for the first reading.  I will welcome new and different material, for variety is the spice of life, especially with regard to the Bible.

We read in Nahum that God will destroy the foreign powers who impose exile on the ancient Jews.  And God, we read, is with the humble, not the puffed up.  And Jesus tells each of us to take up his or her cross and follow him, and to focus primarily on spiritual matters, not temporal pursuits.  Furthermore, we read, we need not have much faith, but we ought not have too little of it.  We must, above all, have the proper orientation–toward God.

Certain themes repeat in the Bible.  A few of them follow:

1. God dislikes haughtiness.
2. God likes humility.
3. Obedience to God leads to suffering sometimes.
4. Disobedience to God leads to suffering sometimes.
5. God can use our few resources to great effect.

May we walk humbly with God, trusting God to be sufficient.  This difficult much of the time for many of us.  We fret because we do not know and because we know this be true.  Planning becomes impossible after a point, and panic can set in.  Yet God is more faithful than we can imagine.  So may we walk humbly with God, trusting God to be sufficient.

KRT