Seven whole days

I am not preaching this Sunday, because I’ll be savoring an ongoing sermon series offered by my brilliant colleague, the Rev’d Melody Shobe. Still, I had occasion to do some thinking about the lections assigned for this coming Sunday. I was asked to supply some sermon notes for a resource offered by Episcopal Relief & Development. Check out their full portfolio of Lent resources. If you like this snippet of what I offered, you can get the rest here.

When Paul writes about people whose “god is the belly,” he refers to our elevation of our own immediate gratification above our deeper relationship with God. It is interesting to note that the World Health Organization reports 1.6 billion people overweight, while the United Nations World Food Programme reports one billion people who are undernourished. If those of us in the developed world reduced our consumption, we would be healthier (thus taking care of the bodies God gave us) and there would be more resources for others. According to the University of Arizona, Americans waste 50% of all food that is harvested here. In addition to the spiritual cost of placing our god in our belly, there are real costs for our own health and that of others around the world. Do we sometimes find our “god is our belly,” either through our food habits or through other habits of consumption (electronics, cars, clothing and so on)? What would it mean for us to live differently? Could we be healthier and closer to God?

These are fantastic readings this Sunday. But then again, I almost always think the readings are fantastic material for preaching. That’s the Word of God for you.

Image from the Hoosier Hills Food Bank.

I ran across this thanks to the Society of Catholic Priests on Facebook. It’s a horribly unfashionable and yet wondrously delightful manual for preparing to receive Holy Communion. It gladdens my heart to even contemplate people caring enough about receiving Holy Communion that they might engage in some period of preparation. The title alone is from another era: Steps to the altar: a manual of devotions for the blessed eucharist.

Here’s the advice on what to place in the offering. I wish it were widely read.

Before you go to Church, that you may have nothing to distract you there, you should settle with yourself how much of year substance you ought to offer on the Altar.

In deciding this, remember that, if you give so little as not io miss it, you cannot expect God to accept it, and send a blessing in return. You must “not offer unto ths Lord your God of that which costs you nothing.”

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The Gospel appointed in today’s lectionary for the Daily Office tells of Jesus healing a leper. May we all share in the healing of the world.

Thine arm, O Lord, in days of old
was strong to heal and save;
it triumphed o’er disease and death,
o’er darkness and the grave.
To thee they went, the blind, the dumb,
the palsied, and the lame,
the leper with his tainted life,
the sick with fevered frame.

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Today the Church commemorates Polycarp, bishop and martyr. He lived from the mid-first century to the mid-second century. His only surviving work is a letter, “Polycarp to the Philippians“. I’m fascinated by those from the earliest decades of the church, who embraced a glorious life not a glorious institution.

Here are Polycarp’s words on forgiveness. They’re very fitting for Lent.

For I am confident that you are well versed in the Scriptures, and from you nothing is hid; but to me this is not granted. Only, as it is said in these Scriptures, “Be ye angry and sin not,” and “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” Blessed is the man who remembers this, and I believe that it is so with you. Now may God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the “eternal Priest” himself, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, build you up in faith and truth, and in all gentleness, and without wrath, and in patience, and in longsuffering, and endurance, and purity, and may he give you lot and part with his saints, and to us with you, and to all under heaven who shall believe in our Lord and God Jesus Christ and in his “Father who raised him from the dead.” “Pray for all the saints. Pray also for the Emperors,” and for potentates, and princes, and for “those who persecute you and hate you,” and for “the enemies of the Cross” that “your fruit may be manifest among all men, that you may be perfected” in him.

Good advice nineteen centuries ago, and good advice today.

Another hymn of Martin Luther makes its appearance today. The Gospel reading appointed in the Eucharistic lectionary for today includes the Lord’s Prayer. There’s a great evening hymn in the Hymnal 1940 with a paraphrase in the final verse, but that’s not available online, due to copyright. So I give you Luther’s masterful catechetical hymn based on the Lord’s Prayer, thanks to Starke Kirkenlieder.

Our Father, who from heav’n above
Bids all of us to live in love
As members of one family
And pray to You in unity,
Teach us no thoughtless words to say
But from our inmost hearts to pray.

Your name be hallowed. Help us, Lord,
In purity to keep Your Word,
That to the glory of Your name
We walk before You free from blame.
Let no false teaching us pervert;
All poor deluded souls convert.

Your kingdom come. Guard Your domain
And Your eternal righteous reign.
The Holy Ghost enrich our day
With gifts attendant on our way.
Break Satan’s pow’r, defeat his rage;
Preserve Your Church from age to age.

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We love to complain. By “we” I mean pretty much everyone, pretty much all the time. I am not immune, as those around me will attest. “I canNOT believe this grilled salmon is medium well, when I ordered it medium. The OUTrage!” “My car, which was supposed to get 28 MPG is only getting 26 MPG. I might sue!” We say these things, and feel this way, instead of another choice we might make. I am grateful to have plenty to eat. I am grateful to have a car that works.

Well, what would most of us do if we were stuck in an airport all night long due to a snow storm? We’d complain. To everyone. For weeks. There’s a choice. We could have some fun. Watch this video for an example of what one woman did when stuck in the Pittsburgh airport recently:

To be sure, there are things we do well to complain about. But complaining should not be our way of life, and we should do this only when we are willing to cooperatively improve that which concerns us.

Just imagine with me what our world might be like if we took on, as our way of life, the playfulness exhibited by the woman in this video. Now THAT is a Lenten discipline.

From ASBO Jesus. Make sure you read the comments. Wow.

Rats! I didn’t blog this when I saw it not long ago because I thought everyone else knew about it. Well, it turns out not everyone else was aware that the 2009 version of the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church have appeared on the website of said church. A really smart person emailed me to say she didn’t know. If she didn’t know, then almost no one knows. So I’m going to declare this a 7WD EXCLUSIVE!

You can visit this page to download the new canons on PDF (or directly from this link).

It used to be the case that every Deputy was mailed a printed copy of the canons, but this was deemed a luxury in the current budget. So we have to order our own. Probably just as well, since many trees will be saved by the conservation of what would have been bookshelf ornaments for many Deputies. Alas, they printed canons not ready yet, so we hard-core church geeks have to make do with a PDF for now. (What does it take eight months to produce this book?)

Anyway, go download. Everyone please post your favorite canon! Mine is II.1.

Until today, I was a Governor of sorts. That is, I was a member of the Board of Governors of Episcopal Life. That glamorous life — really just a glamorous name — was swept away today by Executive Council, meeting in Omaha.

For several years, the Board of Governors had suffered from an identity crisis. I’ve written about the Board several times on this blog. Among other problems, we carried a fancy title (“Governor”) without any actual authority to govern. The group had been created by Executive Council about 20 years ago mostly as an advisory committee.

As staff at 815 changed over the years, the Board was called upon with greater or lesser frequency to weigh in on key decisions. In the past couple of years, there had been several major disconnects between the Board, readers of Episcopal Life, and church center staff. I was chastised by piles of email, for example, because of a staff decision several months ago. I was unable to convince people that I could bear no responsibility for “letting this happen” because I had no authority as a so-called Governor. (By the way, I agreed with this particular decision.)

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This one is not especially connected to today’s lections, but we’re early enough in Lent that I thought its perspective might be useful. Plus, who doesn’t love Percy Dearmer?

Now quit your care and anxious fear and worry;
for schemes are vain and fretting brings no gain.
Lent calls to prayer, to trust and dedication;
God brings new beauty nigh;
reply, reply, reply with love to love most high;
reply, reply, reply with love to love most high.

To bow the head in sackcloth and in ashes,
or rend the soul, such grief is not Lent’s goal;
but to be led to where God’s glory flashes,
God’s beauty to come near.
Make clear, make clear, make clear where truth and light appear;
Make clear, make clear, make clear where truth and light appear.

For righteousness and peace will show their faces
to those who feed the hungry in their need,
and wrongs redress, who build the old waste places,
and in the darkness shine.
Divine, divine, divine it is when all combine!
Divine, divine, divine it is when all combine!

Words: Percy Dearmer (1867-1936)

The glory of these forty days
We celebrate with songs of praise;
For Christ, by Whom all things were made,
Himself has fasted and has prayed.

Alone and fasting Moses saw
The loving God Who gave the law;
And to Elijah, fasting, came
The steeds and chariots of flame.

So Daniel trained his mystic sight,
Delivered from the lions’ might;
And John, the Bridegroom’s friend, became
The herald of Messiah’s Name.

Then grant us, Lord, like them to be
Full oft in fast and prayer with Thee;
Our spirits strengthen with Thy grace,
And give us joy to see Thy face.

O Father, Son, and Spirit blest,
To thee be every prayer addressed,
Who art in threefold Name adored,
From age to age, the only Lord.

Words: Words: Attributed to Gregory I, 6th Century (Clarum decus jejunii); translated from Latin to English by Maurice F. Bell in The English Hymnal (London: Oxford University Press, 1906).

A friend emailed this set of “Laws Concerning Food and Drink; Household Principles; Lamentations of the Father” today. It’s from The Atlantic in 1997, but I hadn’t seen it. Perhaps you will enjoy this as much as I did.

Laws Pertaining to Dessert
For we judge between the plate that is unclean and the plate that is clean, saying first, if the plate is clean, then you shall have dessert. But of the unclean plate, the laws are these: If you have eaten most of your meat, and two bites of your peas with each bite consisting of not less than three peas each, or in total six peas, eaten where I can see, and you have also eaten enough of your potatoes to fill two forks, both forkfuls eaten where I can see, then you shall have dessert. But if you eat a lesser number of peas, and yet you eat the potatoes, still you shall not have dessert; and if you eat the peas, yet leave the potatoes uneaten, you shall not have dessert, no, not even a small portion thereof. And if you try to deceive by moving the potatoes or peas around with a fork, that it may appear you have eaten what you have not, you will fall into iniquity. And I will know, and you shall have no dessert.

Perhaps laws such as these would be the perfect antidote to the increasing lack of civility in our culture. I am tempted to write a similar set of Leviticus-inspired laws for conduct on Sunday mornings at church.