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 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:
Hosea 2:2-23 (Protestant and Anglican)/Hosea 2:4-25 (Jewish, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox)
Psalm 33
Colossians 1:15-29
John 13:18-38
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The commandment of Jesus in the Gospel reading is that we love one another as he has loved us. Keep in mind, O reader, that the love of Jesus took him to the cross. I consider that every time I hear my bishop, Robert C. Wright, of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta, tell people to “love like Jesus.” Bishop Wright is well-acquainted with the Passion Narratives in the Gospels.
God is the only, universal deity. The message of salvation is for all human beings with a pulse. Divine judgment and mercy, ever in balance, are also on the menu. Love has to be voluntary. “Yes” can mean anything only if “no” is a feasible option.
The love of Christ impels us.
That is the slogan of the Claretians, a Roman Catholic order whose members perform many good works in the name of Jesus. The love of Christ impelled St. Paul the Apostle and the original surviving disciples of Jesus. It continues to impel people, faith communities, and religious orders. May it compel more individuals, communities, and religious orders as time rolls on. After all, we never see Jesus face to face in this life except in the faces of other human beings.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
JANUARY 6, 2021 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF THE EPIPHANY OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST
Once I read a summary of the differences between The Book of Common Prayer (1928) and The Book of Common Prayer (1979) of The Episcopal Church. The most basic difference, the author concluded, was theological, for God is transcendent in the 1928 Prayer Book yet imminent in the 1979 Prayer Book. We read of both divine transcendence and imminence in the pericopes for these two days.
God is transcendent in Exodus 24 and Deuteronomy 34. There Moses meets God in dramatic mountaintop settings. In Exodus 24 there us even cloud cover to add to the mystery. A sense of mystery remains in the symbolic language of Revelation 1:9-18, a report of a vision of the triumphant, cosmic Christ. By then the crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension were in the past, as was the most famous Pentecost from the New Testament.
Jesus is present in John 16, where the Holy Spirit is imminent. I like the spiritual reality of God being both present and imminent, as the Kingdom of God is both. It has become a reality partially, with its fullness reserved for the future. The unveiling of the Kingdom of God is incomplete, but we are far from bereft. That theology works better for me than does that of a remote, transcendent deity whose holiness is fatal to mere mortals.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
DECEMBER 20, 2014 COMMON ERA
THE TWENTY-FIRST DAY OF ADVENT, YEAR B
THE FEAST OF SAINT DOMINIC OF SILOS, ROMAN CATHOLIC ABBOT
THE FEAST OF SAINT PETER CANISIUS, ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST
THE FEAST OF KATHARINA VON BORA LUTHER, WIFE OF MARTIN LUTHER
Psalm 25 and 2 Timothy 4:1-5 employ the singular form of the first and second persons, but Daniel 9 and 1 John 1 use the plural form of the first person.
We have sinned….
If we say that we have no sin….
We declare to you….
If we confess our sins….
“We” excludes “Jesus and me,” an unwarranted invasion of hyper-individualism into a faith system with communitarian moral and ethical foundations.
We believe in one God….
—The Book of Common Prayer (1979), page 358
The Nicene Creed uses the plural form of the first person in the translation of the Nicene Creed from the books of worship of The Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. This is appropriate, for the plural form of the first person, in the context of the Nicene Creed, speaks of the faith of the Church. Thus the rejection of the tradition of saying,
I believe in one God….,
constitutes not a heresy or an innovation but a return to original practice and an affirmation of a great truth. The original Greek version of the Creed, a eucharistic prayer, begins with “We believe…..” And, as U.S. Lutheran liturgist Philip H. Pfatteicher tells us:
The use of the singular pronoun has led to the explanation that in the Creed one professes one’s own faith. While there is an element of personal involvement in the profession to be sure, what in fact one does in professing the Creed is to bind oneself to the faith of the church, and so “we believe” is altogether appropriate.
—Commentary on the Lutheran Book of Worship: Lutheran Liturgy in Its Ecumenical Context (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1990), page 146
A healthy balance of the “me” and the “we” places individual faults and responsibilities within the context of one’s community. We are responsible to and for each other, not just ourselves. We are also accountable to God, just you (singular) and I are. This ethic of dependence upon God, of interdependence within community, and of mutual responsibility contradicts cherished American notions of self-made people and rugged individualism, which are idols. May we who need to overcome them do so by grace, and cease to deny or ignore that particular sin within us.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
DECEMBER 6, 2014 COMMON ERA
THE SEVENTH DAY OF ADVENT, YEAR B
THE FEAST OF SAINT NICETIUS OF TRIER, ROMAN CATHOLIC MONK, ABBOT, AND BISHOP; AND SAINT AREDIUS OF LIMOGES, ROMAN CATHOLIC MONK
THE FEAST OF SAINT ABRAHAM OF KRATIA, ROMAN CATHOLIC MONK, ABBOT, BISHOP, AND HERMIT
THE FEAST OF SAINT NICHOLAS OF MYRA, ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP
Almighty God, on this day you opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit: Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the preaching of the Gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The LENTEN AND EASTER DEVOTIONS blog terminates each church year at the Day of Pentecost. This practice makes sense because Pentecost Sunday is the last day of the Easter season. There is another reason, however. Liturgical renewal and restructuring for most of Western Christianity, beginning with the Roman Catholic Church in Advent 1969, has led to the labeling of the subsequent Sundays in Ordinary Time (beginning two weeks after Pentecost Sunday) as “after Pentecost” in lieu of the prior dominant practice, “after Trinity.” (Disclaimer: U.S. Methodists used to divide the post-Pentecost and pre-Advent time into two seasons: Whitsuntude and Kingdomtide, with the latter beginning on the last Sunday in August. And the Lutheran Service Book and Hymnal (1958) lists Ordinary Time Sundays as both “after Pentecost” and “after Trinity.”) Trinity Sunday, of course, is the Sunday immediately following the Day of Pentecost. Anyhow, those who continue to observe Sundays after Trinity are liturgical outliers. My own denomination, since its 1979 Book of Common Prayer and the process which led up to it, operates on the Sundays after Pentecost pattern. It is what I have known. The 1928 Book of Common Prayer is an artifact from which I have never worshiped. Sundays after Trinity seem quaint to me.
So here we are, on the cusp of changing seasons and Sunday numbering (the Propers through 29 are almost upon us), pondering two opposite and assigned stories. The Tower of Babel myth tells of linguistic differences causing confusion and thwarting human ambitions. (We know from anthropology, history, and science that linguistic diversity is much older than the timeframe of the Tower of Babel story.) The sin in the myth is pride, which God confounds. Yet linguistic variety cannot confound God’s purposes in Acts 2 because God will not permit it to do so. The proverbial living water of Jesus, whose glorification in the Gospel of John was his crucifixion–something humiliating and shameful by human standards–would be available regardless of one’s language.
Thus the Church was born. It is always changing and reforming, adapting to changing circumstances and seeking to look past human prejudices and false preconceptions. I prefer to include as many people as possible while maintaining liturgical reverence and orthodox (Chalcedonian, etc.) Christology. I do, in other words have boundaries, but they are too large according to those on my right and too small according to those on my left. That makes me something of a moderate, I suppose. “Left of center” might be more accurate. Regardless of who is correct, may the church and its constituent parts follow the crucified and resurrected Lord and Savior, who transmuted shame and humiliation into glory, who ate with notorious sinners, whose grace scandalized respectable and respected religious authorities. Or are we become modern counterparts of the scribes and Pharisees with whom Jesus locked horns?
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
JUNE 23, 2012 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF SAINT NICETAS OF REMESIANA, ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP
THE FEAST OF WIREMU TAMIHANA, MAORI PROPHET AND KINGMAKER
I have heard press reports of the Vatican cracking down on liberal dissenters for years. This is the sort of news that makes me glad to be an Episcopalian, for we have distributed authority. And, as a self-respecting liberal, I identify with the denominational establishment more often than not. Many Roman Catholic dissidents would occupy the Episcopal Church’s mainstream if they were to leave the Roman Church for the Anglican Communion.
I thought about that as I read Hebrews 13:17, which, in The New Jerusalem Bible, begins
Obey your leaders and give way to them….
Context matters. The dominant theme in Hebrews 13 is looking out for each other, including strangers. So a good religious leader is one who looks out for the flock. When I turn to historical context I note that the audience consisted of persecuted Christians and Christians who might face persecution. So sticking together was vital for the church. Nevertheless, as one who grew up feeling out of place in the denomination in which he grew up (The United Methodist Church) and feeling alienated from the adjacent and dominant Southern Baptist subculture in rural southern Georgia, I reserve the right to identify with dissenters when I agree with them. I also reserve the right to identify with the establishment when I agree with it. I know that all of the following statements are accurate:
I can be wrong.
I can be correct.
Bishops can be wrong.
Bishops can be correct.
Both sides can be wrong, just about different matters.
Both sides can be correct, just about different matters.
The ultimate Christian leader is Jesus of Nazareth; may we follow him always.
Moses was the leader in the Book of Exodus. He was, unfortunately, not immune from mysogyny, hence his instruction
…do not go near a woman
–Exodus 19:15b, TANAKH: The Holy Scriptures
in relation to maintaining the ritual purity of men. (The Law of Moses does cast female biology in a negative light, does it not?) But it was generally good advice to do as Moses said; God spoke to him. And Moses was trying to do the best he could for the people. Leading a group of mostly quarrelsome nomads in the desert was not an easy task or vocation.
Issues of human authority and submission to it occur elsewhere in the Bible. Paul wrote that we should obey our leaders, but Hebrew Prophets, speaking for God, opposed kings in their day. I have no doubt that one reason the Romans crucified Jesus was that his rhetoric regarding the Kingdom of God called the imperium into question; the Kingdom of God looked like the opposite of the imperial order. And our Lord and Savior clashed with his religious leaders. So prooftexting one or two passages regarding this issue distorts the biblical witness on it.
I am a Christian who grew up a Protestant. (Now I identify as an Anglo-Lutheran-Catholic within The Episcopal Church.) Much of that Protestant rebelliousness remains within me, although I have mixed it with Roman Catholicism. So I stand with the Moravians, whose motto is
OUR LAMB HAS CONQUERED; LET US FOLLOW HIM.
May we follow him wherever he leads us.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
JUNE 3, 2012 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF SAINT MORAND OF CLUNY, ROMAN CATHOLIC MONK AND MISSIONARY
THE FEAST OF SAINTS LIPHARDUS OF ORLEANS AND URBICIUS OF MEUNG, ROMAN CATHOLIC ABBOTS
Today, in the Book of Exodus, we read instructions immediately prior to the title event of that text. Among them is to remember that day, to speak of it to one’s children. History tells us of many Passover feasts long after that day. Among those Passover feasts was the one during Holy Week in 29 CE, when Jesus died.
Ritual has a proper place in religion. Via ritual we mark time and set aside certain days. And it is appropriate to observe Good Friday in a manner unlike any other day. In The Episcopal Church we read a Passion account, distributing parts among members of the congregation. The liturgy ends on a deafening and somber silence. The ritual communicates a certain degree of the sadness of the crucifixion. The silence speaks louder than any words can.
We remember the first Passover in joy and the crucifixion in stunned silence. Both responses are appropriate.
LENTEN AND EASTER DEVOTIONS 
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