Week of 3 Epiphany, Friday

"Do not neglect to meet together"

Most of us who say the Daily Office pursue the practice privately, saying the services of Morning or Evening Prayer in our homes, or on planes and trains, or in stolen moments when we have a period of waiting.

Few of us, I think, belong to a parish that actually holds daily public services of Morning or Evening Prayer, despite the crystal clear rubric in the Book of Common Prayer (BCP 13). In this day and age, it's a logistical impossibility -- so few of us live anywhere near our parish church, and so few of us can make the time twice a day to go to church.

Those parishes that do have a public Office may offer one service of Evensong or one early Morning Prayer service in a week.

What has been your experience? What "meeting together" supports you in your practice of saying the Daily Office? If you don't have a chance to meet with others to pray, what kind of meeting would you like?

"And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching" (Heb. 6:24-25).

Perhaps a blog like this can serve to draw us together, or a Facebook group like the Daily Office Anchor Society (shameless plug!). Perhaps you are able to go on retreat from time to time, or perhaps you can recruit a group of pray-ers at your parish to meet once a week. What would encourage you and those around you to form the habit of daily prayer?

I'm really interested to know, so please speak up if you can.

Blessings!

Week of 3 Epiphany, Wednesday

Your statutes have been like songs to me
     wherever I haved lived as a stranger.

About a year ago, my wife and I bought a second home in Appleton, my 18th house in 42 years -- the result of growing up in an Episcopal priest's family and moving from congregation to congregation, and then of getting used to moving!

Here's my itinerary so far:

Winter Haven, FL
Auburndale, FL - 2 houses
Unadilla, NY
Latham, NY
Copperstown, NY
Charleston, IL
Eastern Illinois University - 4 dorm rooms
Park Ridge, IL - 2 apartments
Lake Geneva, WI - 1 apartment, 1 house
Chicago, IL - 1 apartment
Walworth, WI
Appleton, WI

My current job also makes me a professional "stranger," as I am on the road nearly full-time. According to Delta, I flew 95,000 miles last year, and according to Hilton, I stayed with them 82 times at 57 different hotels last year.

At dinner with a friend in Atlanta two weeks ago, I described my travel routine as monastic. Not only have I pared down my wardrobe and packing to a (not really) ascetic minimum, but I have also found it easier to continue the practice of saying the Daily Office on the road than when I was home more often. The Office helps to give my constant motion a sense of routine and consistency, and the "songs" -- the canticles and Psalms especially -- almost sing themselves from familiarity.

Your statutes have been like songs to me
     wherever I haved lived as a stranger.

You may not have moved quite so often -- though some of you may have moved many more times -- but what gives you stability among the "changes and chances of this life"? What helps you to make home from whatever place you're in right now?

Week of 3 Epiphany, Monday

Lord, open our lips.

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews suggests today that Christ has fulfilled the promise made to the people of Israel, and that his entering into heaven as a high priest means that the Temple worship of Israel -- a mere copy of the heavenly offering -- is no longer necessary.

The distant relationship between God and the people of Israel, mediated by the priests of the Temple, is replaced by a personal relationship mediated by Christ himself.

Quoting Jeremiah 31:33-34, he writes,

"I will put my laws in their minds,
     and write them on their hearts,
and I will be their God,
     and they shall be my people." (Heb. 8:10)

The Daily Office is one way for us to claim the promise of a personal relationship with God and ensure that God's laws are in our minds and "written in our hearts."

The steady repetition of the Psalms and canticles, the ongoing round of Scripture reading, the weekly rhythm of Collects and prayers, work in us the familiarity with God's word that is the first part of his promise.

Lord, open our lips.
And our mouth shall proclaim your praise.

Week of 2 Epiphany, Thursday

"Peace, Be Still" by Chinese artist He Qi

Anchored in living water

From the letter to the Hebrews, we read that "we have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul" in Jesus, who takes his place in heaven as a priest forever (Heb. 6:19).

In the story from John's Gospel, we read the exchange between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. He asks her for water, then in response to her question says that he can give her living water -- "those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty," he says. "The water I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life" (John 4:14).

We are anchored in living water -- we have within us, as we take the words of Jesus to heart, a well of consolation and strength always available to us. Some speak of "soaking in the Word" as we read the Scriptures in the Daily Office. The words of the Psalms and canticles, the lessons from Scripture, the daily Collects, all become familiar, and when we need them, they are there. The more and more we pray these words, the more they form a deep and nourishing well in us.

But we also have to be up and abroad in the world, and the "living water" we travel across is often tempestuous and turbulent. Having the words of Jesus deep within us also means we have an anchor, though it is more like we have Jesus himself calming the wind and the seas -- we are not stuck, we are free to move, but we do not have to fear that we will be capsized.

We cannot always be still in prayer, but wherever we go, we can trust in Jesus, the "sure and steadfast anchor of the soul."

Week of 2 Epiphany, Tuesday

Back to the basics

Today we get a short course in the basics about God, a useful corrective to some of the misguided venom spewed by people like Pat Robertson lately.

In the letter to the Hebrews, we read that not all of us are as mature in Christ as we think. "For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic elements of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food" (Heb. 5:12).

In the Gospel of John, we get the milk we need -- "God so loved the world that he sent his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him" (John 3:16-17). There's a reason this is the single most popular memory verse in Sunday School.

The God we believe in has definitively revealed that his purpose is love, love so extreme that it will go to any length to reach us. "For I am convinced," writes Paul, " that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8:38).

Though some of us "by this time ought to be teachers," too many of us still subscribe to the notion that God condemns, hates, harms, reviles, punishes. None of these is true. If we believe these things, we clearly are not ready for solid food, because "solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained to distinguish good from evil" (Heb. 5:14).

What we experience as God's judgment and condemnation is the sight of our petty hate and jealousy in the face of God's overwhelming love, the reality of our evil deeds in the face of God's pure goodness, the darkness of our sin in the face of God's eternal light.

We are convicted by the Holy Spirit because it is self-evident that we have not met Love with love.

So let's get back to basics, and be sure we drink the recommended daily allowance of milk -- which in the Episcopal Church means the Daily Office or Daily Devotions with their readings from Scripture -- so that our faculties are trained to recognize and respond to God's gracious, relentless love.

Second Sunday after the Epiphany

The lessons this morning emphasize the calling of the first apostles, or witnesses, to Jesus' ministry and the gifts that the apostles and the early Church received from the Spirit -- gifts that would build the body and strengthen it to serve.

Unity and building up are the two characteristics of Christ's body that are held before us today.

The unity of the Church derives from our baptism. Each of us, in baptism, dies to the old life of sin and rises to new life in fellowship with Christ. There is no truer source of unity than our identification with Christ in baptism and our ongoing fellowship in communion with one another. Nearly everything else we try to add into the mix is about institutional politics and power, not about being one in the Lord.

The gifts of the Holy Spirit also work against politics and power, since they are clearly identified as building up the whole body, not just individuals within it.

Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers -- all of us who exercise those gifts (and we all do exercise them in various ways) are to use them "to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ" (Eph. 4:12-13).

We need structures in our community to organize the various gifts and talents we possess, but the test of those structures is whether they serve to build up each member or to glorify just a few. And the building up is meant to equip all of the members to serve, not just to create a safe haven of like-minded people.

How do you help promote unity and build others up for service? What help do you still need that will build you up into the mature Christian you are called to be?

Week of 1 Epiphany, Friday

"Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts ..." (Heb. 3:15).

Episcopal Relief and Development

Haiti Project - Episcopal Diocese of Milwaukee

Google Links - Haiti Earthquake Relief

"Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your Name. Amen" (Collect for Mission - BCP 101).

Week of 1 Epiphany, Thursday

"Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" (John 1:46).

Last night, as I watched bits of the news about the earthquake in Haiti, I came across Bill O'Reilly suggesting that aid to Haiti would be wasted because the government is corrupt and the money would never make it to the people who need it. His tone was knowledgeable, as if to say, "I've traveled there, so I know what it's really like." He also suggested that liberals with their reliance on a nanny state would be falling into the same old wasteful trap.

"Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"

The question is not new in our generation -- it's the same old cynicism masquerading as wisdom. Can anything good come from liberals? Conservatives? From Afghanistan? Iraq? Mexico? From the elderly? From the young? From women? From men? From gays? From lesbians? From atheists? From the religious?

It's easier to write off people and nations as a loss than it is to hope -- and more importantly, to work -- for something good.

Our conviction as Christians must be the same as our Lord's, that no one is irredeemable, that no one is a hopeless case, that no one is beyond the pale. We follow the Christ "who stretched out his arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of his saving embrace" (BCP 101). There are no qualifications here, no exceptions -- everyone.

Now, granted, we ought also to be smart about how we help and ensure that our efforts and contributions are being put to good use, but to succumb to hopelessness and wallow in cynicism is to put the lie to our Lord's extraordinary compassion toward us. And it puts the lie to our claim to his name.

Can anything good come from Nazareth? Of course!

Week of 1 Epiphany, Wednesday

Please donate as generously as you can to help the people of Haiti.
Follow the link on the right hand side of this page to go to the Diocese of Milwaukee's Haiti Project and donate to their Emergency Fund, or go to er-d.org to support Episcopal Relief and Development.
This is the same collection for the saints in distress as Paul talks about in his various letters. Please help in whatever way you can.

Week of 1 Epiphany, Tuesday

The Church Year is arranged in two cycles around the feasts of Christmas and Easter. In each cycle, we spend some time preparing for the feast, celebrate the feast itself, then spend some time understanding what just happened.

The preparation we do in the seasons of Advent and Lent. Christmas and Easter we celebrate for 12 days on the one hand, and for 50 days on the other. And after each of the feasts, we enter a period known as Ordinary Time.

After Holy Week, which often culminates in baptisms at the Easter Vigil, we celebrate the Great 50 Days of Easter and the power of the resurrection life. In the long, green stretch of Ordinary Time after the Day of Pentecost, we work out the implications of our baptism for our daily lives.

In just the same way, after the 12 Days of Christmas, which culminate in Epiphany and in our celebrating the Baptism of Jesus, we work out what it means for the world that God has entered it in such a way. We also rehearse the many ways that Christ, "the pioneer of our salvation" (Heb. 2:10), is made manifest in our ordinary lives. These manifestations, or epiphanies, are the subject of this green season.

In the Daily Office, we can tell we've hit Ordinary Time. On Monday morning, we started back at Psalm 1. We've resumed the course reading of Scripture, this time with the Letter to the Hebrews and the Gospel of John. It's kind of calm after the relative drama of Advent antiphons and Christmas feast days.

We call it Ordinary Time -- it's really anything but. All our daily lives are shot through with the presence and power of God. What we do in the long stretches of Ordinary Time is keep ourselves awake and attuned to the signs of God's activity, even as we relax a bit from the hustle and bustle of the feasts and return to our regular work.

Bread and Butter

"I am the bread of life," Jesus says in today's Gospel reading (John 6:48).

This or that activity is our "bread and butter," we say, especially when we talk about a fundamental task or attitude that also contributes the most to our success.

My bread and butter are presenting software solutions and preaching (tasks) and traveling lightly (an attitude).

What I do -- whether it's for my company's hospital clients or for the members of my congregation or for the readers of this blog -- is articulate a vision that I hope will capture other people's imaginations, and how I do it (when I'm at my best) is with a light heart and an even lighter carry-on bag.

The light of comprehension during a presentation, or a good question at coffee hour, or a thoughtful argument from a colleague ... the smile or joke from someone I encounter at the rental car return or the TSA security line ... these tell me that the bread and butter tastes good, like manna was supposed to taste.

What are your "bread and butter" activities? How do you invite people to "taste and see that the Lord is good" (Psalm 34:8)?

The Eve of the Epiphany

I hadn't meant this to be a reflection on my father, but here goes.

The lessons this evening anticipate the Feast of the Epiphany, or to use its longer name, the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles.

In both Isaiah and Romans, we read that God is drawing the Gentiles into a new relationship just as he previously drew the Jews into a special covenant relationship. According to Isaiah, God even says, "I will take some of them as priests and as Levites" (Isa. 66:21).

My father was a priest of the Episcopal Church, devoted to its Catholic heritage but open to the Spirit's leading. He and my Mom were active in the charismatic and renewal movements of the 70s -- when he died, I inherited a green gingham stole with yellow pom-poms and felt "Alleluias" from that period -- but he was above all a priest of the "faith once delivered to the saints."

Being open to the new wind of the Spirit is hard work, because the latecomers invariably don't appreciate our traditions and don't understand our preoccupations. Taking new members seriously is just as hard in the workplace as it is in church -- new staff just don't get how hard we struggled last year, and their enthusiasm is embarrassing (and challenging) to us.

My father remained open to the movement of the Spirit because, in the words of the Collect for the Epiphany, he saw Jesus' glory "face to face." His bishop even remarked in his funeral sermon (has it already been three years?), that for my father, death was nothing to be feared because it meant he would see Jesus.

During Epiphany, in honor of my father, I intend to look for the face of Jesus in the people I meet as I travel, and I invite you to do the same wherever you "live, and work, and worship" (BCP 543).

What new relationship is Jesus inviting you -- and all of us -- into in this new year? Who are you supposed to welcome -- at work or in church -- into a new relationship with our gracious Lord?

Join me in seeking to see Jesus face to face, won't you?

Week of 2 Christmas, Tuesday

Two very different images of clothing in today's readings.

From the Gospel of John, we read the dramatic story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead, another of the "signs" of Jesus' divinity. Jesus cries, "Lazarus, come out!" -- and he comes out of the tomb still wrapped in his burial shroud (John 11).

And from Paul's letter to the Ephesians, we read the passage about putting on the whole armor of God, clothing oneself for the spiritual battle against "the cosmic powers of this present darkness" (Eph. 6:12). We are to put on the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, shoes to proclaim the gospel of peace, and arm ourselves with the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit.

My mental image of this chapter in Ephesians dates to my elementary school days in Auburndale, Florida, when my parents dressed my brother and me in the whole armor of God for a church pageant -- I only really remember the milk-jug helmet and the tin foil-plated shield!

Clothing is a constant theme in Morning Prayer, where we regularly pray in the Suffrages that God will "clothe your ministers in righteousness" (BCP 97), and in one of the Collects for Mission we pray to Christ "so to clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you" (BCP 101). Our clothing is not for defense from the world, but for outreach to the world.

There's a reason that the clothing of monks and nuns is called a "habit." It signifies a new identity which involves not just one's outward appearance but the inward embrace of new behavior -- and a willingness to extend that embrace to the stranger -- as one seeks more and more to imitate Christ.

Tin foil optional.

Week of 2 Christmas, Monday

This morning we begin the transition from Christmas to Epiphany -- from stories about the birth of Jesus, the Light coming into the world, to the first manifestations of that Light during his ministry on earth.

The story from John's gospel of the man born blind (John 9) is one of the "signs" of Jesus' divinity -- inside the story is Jesus' assertion "I am the light of the world," where the "I am" echoes God's own self-disclosure to Moses.

But here's where we turn the corner with Jesus: the Great I AM has come into the world in the person of Jesus, and in a demonstration of that divine power Jesus has healed a man born blind. Problem is, the healing has resulted in the man's expulsion from the synagogue and has estranged him from his family. So what happens?

Jesus comes back to find him.

The Son of God, the Light of the World, the Word made flesh, comes back to find the man and invites him into a new community, completing his inner healing just as he had performed an outer healing.

This is extraordinary -- where Reynolds Price rightly observes that in John's gospel Jesus heals because he can, as an example of divine power -- we also see in the conclusion of the story a second movement of tenderness which ensures that the man continues in relationship.

God's power is truly "made perfect" in weakness, as Paul suggests to his church in Corinth (2 Cor. 12:9).

What has caused you to be estranged? What weakness in you cries out for a companion? Where will Jesus find you when he comes back to look for you?

The Holy Name

What's in a name?

My name represents, as many people's do, the union of two families through marriage and the birth of a child. I am named Rodger after my maternal grandfather and Lindsay after my father and my paternal grandfather.

Two of the men I am named for were priests in the Episcopal Church, so I am definitely part of the family business. I think about them often as I build my own life of work and ministry.

Today we celebrate the Holy Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose naming represents a union of a much higher order -- the joining of God and his beloved people in the Word made flesh. Matthew's gospel story tells us that Joseph heard in a dream that he should name the child Jesus, "for he will save his people from their sins" (Matt. 1:21). Matthew also notes that this was to fulfill a prophecy from Isaiah that the child would be named "Emmanuel," which means, "God is with us" (Matt 1:23).

Saving us from our sins and demonstrating in his body God's presence with us -- this is truly Jesus' family business. But it is also our business. Jesus is asked at one point about his family, and he replies, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers? ... Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother" (Matt. 12:48-50).

We are meant to claim Jesus' Holy Name as our own, to embrace his identity as a child of God, and to take up the family business of "restoring all people to unity with God and each other in Christ" (BCP 855).

May we each enjoy success in our own work and in the "family business" in this Year of our Lord 2010.

Happy New Year!