17/02/07 Week of Epiphany 6

[Please remember this is a sort of "menu" from which to select. No one has to pray it all]

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Collect

O God, the strength of all who put their trust in you: Mercifully accept our prayers; and because in our weakness we can do nothing good without you, give us the help of your grace, that in keeping your commandments we may please you both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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Today's Scripture http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/

Ps 107:33-43 * 108:1-6(7-13); Isa 66:1-6; 1 Tim 6:6-21; Mark 12:35-44
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From Forward Day by Day: http://www.forwardmovement.org/todaysreading.cfm

Mark 12:35-44. For they all contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole living.

I remember her still, an exhausted--looking woman in a thin cotton dress who came all the way from the Bronx to see me at Trinity Church. She lived in an apartment with her four children and her asthma, a condition much worse in New York than it had ever been in her native Haiti. She needed help with her electric bill and some groceries. I had a fund for such exigencies. We went over her expenses and what she had on hand, to arrive at a suitable amount for a loan: rent, electricity, food.

"I always tithe to Reveren' Ike," she said proudly.

Reverend Ike is one of New York's more colorful religious figures; he preaches a gospel of prosperity. You're intended to be rich. Give me money and I'll give you a blessing; you won't be poor any more. It has certainly worked for Reverend Ike.

I looked at her pitiful budget, her tired face. I thought of Reverend Ike and his Cadillacs. What was it like for her to listen to him preach about her right to prosper? I'm not sure his message is quite that of Jesus, but he does know something about human longing. He uses what he knows to enrich himself. Jesus knew and loved people like this poor lady, but with one difference: he stayed poor with them.
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Today we remember: http://satucket.com/lectionary/Calendar.htm

One of my favorites: ANTONY, ABBOT IN EGYPT

Psalm 91:9-16 or 1; 1 Peter 5:6-10; Mark 10:17-21

O God, who by your Holy Spirit enabled your servant Antony to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil: Give us grace, with pure hearts and minds, to follow you, the only God; 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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Today in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer we pray for the Diocese of Mauritius (Indian Ocean)
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm
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Carmelite.com: Reflections http://www.carmelite.com/spirituality/reflection.php

The beginner must think of themselves as one setting out to make a garden in which the Lord is to take His delight.
St Teresa of Jesus
Life 11.6
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Reading from the Desert Christians http://www.cin.org/dsrtftin.html

On Joy

When abba Apollo heard the sound of singing from the monks who welcomed us, he greeted us according to the custom which all monks follow. He first lay prostrate on the ground, then got up and kissed us and having brought us in he prayed for us; then, after washing our feet with his own hands, he invited us to partake of some refreshment...

One could see his monks were filled with joy and a bodily contentment such as one cannot see on earth. For nobody among them was gloomy or downcast.

If anyone did appear a little downcast, abba Apollo at once asked him the reason and told each one what was the secret recesses of his heart. He used to say, "Those who are going to inherit the Kingdom of heaven must not be despondent about their salvation... we who have been considered worthy of so great a hope, how shall we not rejoice without ceasing, since the Apostle urges us always, "Pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks"?"
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Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen) http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/free_eletters/

The Barometer of Our Lives

Although the table is a place for intimacy, we all know how easily it can become a place of distance, hostility, and even hatred. Precisely because the table is meant to be an intimate place, it easily becomes the place we experience the absence of intimacy. The table reveals the tensions among us. When husband and wife don't talk to each other, when a child refuses to eat, when brothers and sisters bicker, when there are tense silences, then the table becomes hell, the place we least want to be.

The table is the barometer of family and community life. Let's do everything possible to make the table the place to celebrate intimacy.
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From the Principles of the Third Society of St. Francis:

Day Seventeen - The Second Way of Service: Study

'This is eternal life: to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom
you have sent.' John 17:3

True knowledge is knowledge of God. Tertiaries therefore give priority to
devotional study of scripture as one of the chief means of attaining that
knowledge of God that leads to eternal life.

Lord, without you our labour is wasted, but with you all who are weak can
find strength: pour you Spirit on the Society of Saint Francis; give your
labourers a pure intention, patient faith, sufficient success on earth, and
the joy of serving you in heaven; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Hail, Queen Wisdom,
may the Lord protect you
with your sister,
holy pure Simplicity.
Lady, holy Poverty,
may the Lord protect you
with your sister,
holy Humility.
Lady, holy Charity,
may the Lord protect you
with your sister,
holy Obedience.
O most holy Virtues,
may the Lord protect all of you
from Whom you come and proceed.
There is surely no one in the entire world
who can possess any one of you
unless he dies first.
Whoever possesses one [of you]
and does not offend the others,
possesses all.
And whoever offends one [of you]
does not possess any
and offends all.

And each one destroys vices and sins.
Holy Wisdom destroys
Satan and all his subtlety.
Pure holy Simplicity destroys
all the wisdom of this world
and all the wisdom of the body.
Holy Poverty destroys
the desire of riches
and avarice
and the cares of this world.
Holy Humility destroys
pride
and all the people who are in the world
and all things that belong to the world.
Holy Charity destroys
every temptation of the devil and of the flesh
and every carnal fear.
Holy Obedience destroys
every wish of the body and of the flesh
and binds its mortified body
to obedience of the Spirit
and to obedience of one's brother
and [the person who possesses her] is subject and submissive
to all persons in the world
and not to man only
but even to all beasts and wild animals
so that they may do whatver they want with him
inasmuch as it has been given to them from above
by the Lord.

From: http://www.osfsisterswpeoria.org/prayers/virtues.htm
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Upper Room Daily Reflection http://www.upperroom.org/reflections/

“I ABIDE with you. I rejoice with you. I suffer with you. I heal you. I awaken you. I transform you. I transform through you.”

This is God’s voice speaking not only to the world but to every part of the world; not only to nations and communities but to every individual; not only to humanity but to every aspect of struggling, evolving creation.

- Flora Slosson Wuellner
Prayer, Stress and Our Inner Wounds

From page 84 of Prayer, Stress and Our Inner Wounds by Flora Slosson Wuellner. Copyright © 1985 by Flora Slosson Wuellner.
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Richard Rohr's Daily Reflection
http://cacradicalgrace.org/getconnected/getconnected_index.html

"Go to the Edges"

Whatever your life situation might be, find some way to be in immediate contact with the little ones, the nobodies. Get in touch with the people who are of no account, who haven't made it into the great American midstream. Maybe they don't talk "right" and smell "right." They may not seem to be part of the "in" group. If we of the middle-class Church have found ourselves scandalized by our own brokenness and imperfection, it's because we have separated ourselves from the broken character of almost all of reality. When a severely disabled person confronts us, we're scandalized and afraid. Everything in our being says, Oh, it shouldn't be that way, let's change it. But we can't change it. The only thing we know how to do is to draw apart, to pull away in fear, anger and disappointment with God. But God gives us each other. those who are disabled can remind the rest of us who we are. We live under an illusion, thinking we're not handicapped or retarded, thinking we've got it together. We're afraid of those who seem weak because they come with the faces of the crucified Jesus. We push them to the edge of society. The elderly we shove aside because they remind us that we, too, one day will be old. We ignore little children, thinking they don't know anything yet and have nothing to teach us. We shun disabled people, who remind us that our bodies are also one step away, any moment, from crippledness. People with mental disabilities painfully remind us we really aren't very smart. Refugees bring forth the fear within each of us of not having a place to lay our head. Gays and lesbians remind us that we all are both masculine and feminine. Prisoners remind us we also are imprisoned and trapped. There is a reason we push all these people far away and far apart: They represent everything we fear and everything we deny about ourselves. Yet to be touched by these people is to discover the deepest recesses of our own life.

from The Passion of God and the Passion Within
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From John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., Tradition Day by Day: Readings from Church Writers. Augustinian Press. Villanova, PA, 1994.
http://www.artsci.villanova.edu/dsteelman/tradition/sources.html

Lent: a special time of renewal

The paschal celebration is especially characterized by the rejoicing of the whole Church in the forgiveness of sins. This forgiveness is given not only to those then reborn in holy baptism but also to those already numbered among God's adopted children.

Although we receive new life in the first place by our rebirth in baptism, we all need a daily renewal to make up for the shortcomings of our mortal nature, and no matter how much progress we have made, every one of us is called to greater holiness. We should therefore make a real effort not to let the day of our redemption find us still falling into the same old sins.

What the Christian should be doing at all times should be done now with greater zeal and devotion, so that the Lenten fast enjoined by the apostles may be observed not simply by abstinence from food but above all by the renunciation of sin.

Leo the Great, ((400 - 461), bishop of Rome, left many letters and sermons to attest to his teaching and preaching.
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Today's reading from the Rule of St. Benedict http://www.osb.org/rb/

Chapter 14: How the Night Office Is to Be Said on the Feasts of the Saints

On the feasts of Saints and on all festivals
let the Office be performed
as we have prescribed for Sundays,
except that the Psalms, the antiphons and the lessons
belonging to that particular day are to be said.
Their number, however, shall remain as we have specified above.

Commentary: http://www.eriebenedictines.org/Pages/INSPIRATION/insights.html

site needs to be updated.
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"WHERE'S THE DREAD?" AND "ONE NEXT SUNDAY"

Today's eMo is really two different meditations on texts that will be read in many churches this Sunday. The first is the usual sermon preparation eMo. The second, intended for preachers who wish to focus their congregations' attention on the Church's service to the poor and those who suffer from the effects of war or natural disaster, explores the ministry of Episcopal Relief and Development. As with all the eMos, preachers and teachers are welcome to borrow, with the usual attribution. No further permission is necessary.
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Where's the Dread?

Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness...
I Corinthians 3:12

...since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory...
Luke 9:31


It's more or less a rule that the sermon on Sunday will be on a text from the gospel. This arises out of a certain ecclesiastical politeness toward Jesus, one that seeks to elevate Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as somehow more about Christ that the rest of scripture. So we don't all stand up and watch a small parade make its way down the center aisle when someone reads from the Hebrew scriptures or from St. Paul: we save that reverence for the gospels.

But here is what I think is true for us: Christ is either everywhere in scripture, or he is nowhere. I don't mean that Isaiah was thinking about as-yet-unborn Jesus of Nazareth when he wrote his famous passages of messianic hope. I mean that everything in these ancient books points us toward the transformation into which we know that Christ invites us. We must work to see the invitation, often: it is not to be found in an absurd aping of the past, trying to do everything they did in Biblical times, just the way they did it in Biblical times.

In many instances, we assess the things we see in scripture as examples of how our understanding of God has moved and changed -- for example, the frequent rejoicing in scripture at the bloody vanquishing of Israel's enemies, with God something just north of a general on the battlefield, plotting military strategy and ordering deployment of troops, often with great specificity. This was their image, but it is not ours. We no longer think God rejoices in the deaths of thousands of people, not any more. Sometimes we read these ancient texts in order to argue with them, emerging from the conversation with something new for the world. In short, sometimes we are transformed.

And so we see Jesus' face transfigured, shining like the sun, reminding us of the transfigured Moses long ago, and of our own transformation, now begun and yet to come. We read Paul's assertion that boldness comes from hope, and realize in an instant that of course, it must be so: hope never brings timidity or anxiety. They are its opposites.

We pray this week for hope and transformation among Anglicans worldwide, as our leaders meet in Dar Es Salaam, a city on the continent where the Church grows and grows, the continent where more Anglicans live than on any other. We have been anxious and fearful about our common life for so long now that we can hardly think of it without a sense of impending doom. This is what is so striking about our new Presiding Bishop: she seems to be missing her sense of doom! Bp. Katherine stands without anxiety in a consistent state of matter-of-fact hope. Whatever happens, God will be in it and we will be able to find God and God will lead us toward the healing of the world. We will move steadily forward, doing what we know to be right inasmuch as we can know the right, and God will be with us because God has promised it so.

So there's your gospel. Stay awake, and you will see the glory.
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Exodus 34:29-35
Psalm 99
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Luke 9:28-36,[37-43a]
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And here is the ERD meditation:

One Next Sunday

Of course, next Sunday is the first Sunday of Lent. So that's one one. But it's another One Sunday that I am thinking of, I who love everything about Lent: its quiet, its soberness, its steady progress towards the tumult of Holy Week and the joyous release of Easter Day.

Next week has been designated "One Sunday" by our Presiding Bishop. It will be a time to make a commitment to do what Jesus asked us many times to do, while he was here with us in the realm of history: look to the poor. Become one with them. Make them first, not last. Make them more important than you are, for a hardhearted world has decided to award more importance to you than to them, and this is wrong in God's eyes.

Episcopal Relief and Development is the means by which we can each be part of making those in need first, not last. ERD, with the rest of the Church in convention, has accepted the UN Millennium Development goals, concrete plans to change the landscape of suffering in the world.

Why should the church embrace something that began in a political organization like the United Nations? Isn't that more properly the sphere of government activity? I don't think so. Government is people. Government is us -- we elect it and we support it. It represents us -- sometimes better than at other times, but that's what government is. It is us, in the aggregate. No government will be better than its people.

And it protects our private work: what we decide about our lives and our right to decide. Where we worship, and whether we worship at all. There is a way in which people of faith are citizens of the world, and participating in a life of service to those in need is part of that way. So you vote. You pray for the world. You pay taxes. And you give. That's how people of faith live in society.

You've got a week. Think about it. What it would mean to put the poor first.
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The official statement on “ONE Sunday” can be found online at

http://www.er-d.org/programs_82425_ENG_HTM.htm. A bulletin insert can be downloaded from

http://www.er-d.org/documents/ONESundayInsertFinal.pdf.


To learn more about ERD's work, or to make a donation, visit http://www.er-d.org/ or telephone 1--800-334-7626,ext 5129.
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Copyright © 2007 Barbara Crafton - http://www.geraniumfarm.org