Friday, December 24, 2010

Upcoming Readings

I'll be away for a while.  Here are the Daily Office readings for upcoming days:

December 25 -- Christmas Day

Psalms 2, 85  (morning)       110:1-5(6-7), 132 (evening)
Zechariah 2:10-13 
1 John 4:7-16
John 3:31-36
________

December 26 -- St. Stephen, Deacon and Martyr

Morning Prayer:  Psalms 28, 30; 2 Chronicles 24:17-22; Acts 6:1-7
Evening Prayer:  Psalms 118; Wisdom 4:7-15; Acts 7:59 - 8:8
________

December 27 -- St. John, Apostle and Evangelist

Morning Prayer:  Psalms 97, 98;  Proverbs 8:22-30;  John 13:20-35
Evening Prayer:  Psalms 145;  Isaiah 44:1-8;  1 John 5:1-12
________

December 28 -- The Holy Innocents

Morning Prayer:  Psalms 2, 26;  Isaiah 49:12-23;  Matthew 18:1-14
Evening Prayer:  Psalms 19, 126;  Isaiah 54:1-13;  Mark 10:13-16
________

December 29 -- (Thomas Becket, 1170)

Psalms 18:1-20 (morning)       18:21-50 (evening)
Isaiah 12:1-6
Revelation 1:9-20
John 7:37-52
_________

December 30 -- (Frances Joseph Gaudet, Educator and Prison Reformer, 1934)

Psalms 20, 21:1-7(8-14) (morning)       23, 27 (evening)
Isaiah 25:1-9
Revelation 1:9-20
John 7:53 - 8:11
_________

December 31 -- (Samuel Ajayi Crowther, Bishop in the Niger Territories, 1891)

Morning Prayer
Psalms 46, 48 (morning)       
Isaiah 26:1-9
2 Corinthians 5:16 - 62
John 8:12-19

Evening  Prayer (Eve of Holy Name)
Psalm 90
Isaiah 65:15b-25
Revelation 21:1-6

Lowell

New Life and Direction

Friday, December 24, 2010 -- Week of 4 Advent, Year One
Christmas Eve
To read about our daily commemorations, go to our Holy Women, Holy Men blog:
http://liturgyandmusic.wordpress.com/category/holy-women-holy-men/

Today's Readings for the Daily Office
(Book of Common Prayer, p. 938)
Morning Prayer:
Psalms 45, 46 (morning)      
Isaiah 35:1-10 
Revelation 22:12-17, 21 
Luke 1:67-80

Evening Prayer:

Psalms 89:1-29
Isaiah 59:15b-21
Philippians 2:5-11

We read this beautiful passage from Isaiah today.  Two weeks ago I preached on it.  Isaiah sees a garden and a highway emerge out of the desert, giving life and direction to a people who were barren and lost.

In our reading from Luke this morning, Zechariah speaks a prophecy over the birth of his son John, who will become the first prophet in hundreds of years, John the Baptist.  Zechariah praises God for fulfilling the promises of new life and direction for God's people.

We are on the cusp of our annual celebration of the coming of new life and direction in the person of the child Jesus.  The days have just turned and are now growing longer.  An old year is ending and a new year dawning.  New life comes to us.  What new direction is appropriate for each of us as we walk along this way?  How can we let the living water of Christ create a garden in our desert?

New things can be born in us.  The ancient promises of God can be renewed.  How will God direct our way and enliven our hearts?  ...today?  ...this week?  ...this coming year?

Lowell

I invite you to our Christmas Eve services this evening:
   4:00 or 6:15 or 10:30
Each service begins with a Choral Prelude


__________________

Audio podcast:  Listen to an audio podcast of the most recent Morning Reflections from today and the past week.  Click the following link:
--
Morning Reflection Podcasts

About Morning Reflections
"Morning Reflections" is a brief thought about the scripture readings from the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer according to the practice found in the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church.

Morning Prayer begins on p. 80 of the Book of Common Prayer.
Evening Prayer begins on p. 117
An online resource for praying the Daily Office is found at missionstclare.com -- Click for online Daily Office
Another form of the office from Phyllis Tickle's "Divine Hours" is available on our partner web site www.ExploreFaith.org at this location -- http://explorefaith.org/prayer/fixed/index.html --  Click for Divine Hours

Discussion Blog:  To comment on today's reflection or readings, go to http://lowellsblog.blogspot.com, or click here for Lowell's blog find today's reading, click "comment" at the bottom of the reading, and post your thoughts.

The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church
is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance, and love.

See our Web site at www.stpaulsfay.org

Our Rule of Life: 
We aspire to...
    worship weekly
    pray daily
    learn constantly
    serve joyfully 
    live generously.

Lowell Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas


Thursday, December 23, 2010

A Vision

Thursday, December 23, 2010 -- Week of 4 Advent, Year One

To read about our daily commemorations, go to our Holy Women, Holy Men blog:
http://liturgyandmusic.wordpress.com/category/holy-women-holy-men/

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 938)
Psalms 80 (morning)       146, 147 (evening)
Isaiah 29:13-24 
Revelation 21:22 - 22:5 
Luke 1:39-48a(48b-56)

It is usually most fruitful to read the book of Revelation as a description of an interior, spiritual landscape.  Attempts to historicize the work have always proved futile, often downright ridiculous.  (See The Late Great Planet Earth, or the Left Behind series)

Today's description of the Holy City is a beautiful and compelling picture of the desired destiny of our souls.  It is an image of life fully lived, an abundant and fruitful human existence.  It is a picture of how we can live when we are in conscious relationship with God.  Jesus told us that we are each a Temple of the Holy Spirit.  John the Divine gives us an inspiring description of the potential we each posses for the indwelling of God within us.

John says that there is no need for a special place, set apart, for returning to God, for moving from the profane to the sacred.  When we come to union with God, God's presence will infuse the whole being of the city of our self.  "And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the sun."  God's inward light is our source of illumination and energy. 

This vision imagines all relationships enlightened by divine spiritual energy.  Even nations and kings will be drawn by the light.  A spiritually centered person helps create coherence, which moves out into the world as healing energy, and draws others to its comfort. 

Nothing unclean enters into the grounded spiritual consciousness.  Instead, we are as Jesus described to the Samaritan woman at the well, refreshed by living water springing from within us, "the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb" at the center of our being. 

The centered, Spirit-fed soul is fruitful, feeding from "the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month."  We can live in union with the natural patterns and cycles of life, as the fruit of the spirit grows and nurtures in every season and time.  St. Paul tells us that the fruit of the spirit is "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and temperance."  These are the gifts God which manifests through us when we are transparent to the Divine life.  These are the virtues which will bring "the healing of the nations." 

Living in union with God, we worship God, seeing the face of God, our minds filled with the Divine identity.  "And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever." 

John has given us a beautiful vision and metaphor for our end and our purpose.  We were created to be filled with God's life.  God's Temple is within us as the center of our being, where our True Self and God are one. 

As we move toward the annual remembrance of God's coming into the world through Jesus, may we open more fully to the rebirth of God within us.  May we drink from the water of life and walk by the light of God.  All of this is God's gift to us through Jesus in the Spirit. 

O holy Child of Bethlehem
Descend to us, we pray
Cast out our sin and enter in
Be born to us today
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell
O come to us, abide with us
Our Lord Emmanuel  

Lowell

__________________

Audio podcast:  Listen to an audio podcast of the most recent Morning Reflections from today and the past week.  Click the following link:
--
Morning Reflection Podcasts

About Morning Reflections
"Morning Reflections" is a brief thought about the scripture readings from the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer according to the practice found in the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church.

Morning Prayer begins on p. 80 of the Book of Common Prayer.
Evening Prayer begins on p. 117
An online resource for praying the Daily Office is found at missionstclare.com -- Click for online Daily Office
Another form of the office from Phyllis Tickle's "Divine Hours" is available on our partner web site www.ExploreFaith.org at this location -- http://explorefaith.org/prayer/fixed/index.html --  Click for Divine Hours

Discussion Blog:  To comment on today's reflection or readings, go to http://lowellsblog.blogspot.com, or click here for Lowell's blog find today's reading, click "comment" at the bottom of the reading, and post your thoughts.

The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church
is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance, and love.

See our Web site at www.stpaulsfay.org

Our Rule of Life: 
We aspire to...
    worship weekly
    pray daily
    learn constantly
    serve joyfully 
    live generously.

Lowell Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Reality and Vision

Wednesday, December 22, 2010 -- -- Week of 4 Advent, Year One
Henry Budd, Priest, 1875, and
Charlotte Diggs (Lottie) Moon, Missionary in China, 1912

To read about our daily commemorations, go to our Holy Women, Holy Men blog:
http://liturgyandmusic.wordpress.com/category/holy-women-holy-men/

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 938)
Psalms 72 (morning)       111, 113 (evening)
Isaiah 28:9-22 
Revelation 21:9-21 
Luke 1:26-38

There is something wonderfully compelling about reading the three lessons in order today.

Isaiah announces to the unjust rulers in Jerusalem that God is about to use aliens and foreigners to teach them a lesson.  It is a strange deed and an alien work, says Isaiah, but it is "a decree of destruction from the Lord God of hosts upon the whole land."

In the midst of the decree of destruction, Isaiah says that God is laying a foundation stone:  "One who trusts will not panic."  Still Isaiah is urging the King to trust God instead of alliances with Egypt.  Still Isaiah is insisting that the elites practice economic justice toward the poor.  God's measuring tools are justice and righteousness, and God will destroy everything else, the prophet insists.  "I will make justice the line, and righteousness the plummet; hail will sweep away the refuge of lies, and waters will overwhelm the shelter.  Then your covenant with death will be annulled, and your agreement with Sheol will not stand; when the overwhelming scourge passes through you will be beaten down by it."

What a contrast we have with John the Divine's vision of the heavenly Jerusalem.  Upon the mountain, the holy city descends from heaven.  "It has the glory of God and a radiance like a very rare jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal."  The description is magnificent.  It's measurement is 1,500 miles around with walls 300 feet high (the numbers are all symbolic numbers representing completeness).  It is built of fine jewels and precious metals.  It's twelve gates are symbolic of the whole people of God (whose number is twelve).  John sees the heavenly city as the dwelling place that God chooses, where God's glory dwells with humanity.

Then we read of the announcement of God's glory coming to dwell with humanity -- the story of the Annunciation to Mary.  The angel Gabriel tells her that her child will be holy.  "He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David.  He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end."  Mary's simple response of faith is the perfect example for the church -- "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word."

Today we live in the tension between the reality and the vision.  We witness our generation's failure of justice and righteousness even as we hope for the gift of the heavenly Jerusalem.  We know the promise of God's glory dwelling with us in the life of Mary's child Jesus.  Jesus takes the horrible failures of our destructive ways into his own life, grabs them on the cross in perfect obedience as the servant of God's will, and raises all into heaven, only to return in resurrected glory to dwell with us in a new kingdom for which there will be no end.  We live with all of this today.

May we face the injustice and unrighteousness of our day with trust in Christ, God's glory dwelling with and in us, and may we live confidently in peace in the kingdom he has given us.

One final note.  For Episcopalians who are former Baptists, today should be a delightful commemoration from our new calendar.  You will remember the Lottie Moon Christmas missionary fund.  Lottie Moon is now in our proposed calendar for her inspiring missionary work in China and the evolution of her own transformation as one who was able to move from condescension to union with a foreign culture.  We also honor Henry Budd, the first person of First Nation ancestry to be ordained an Anglican in North America.  He served in Canada, and translated the Bible and Prayer Book into the Cree language.

Lowell

__________________

Audio podcast:  Listen to an audio podcast of the most recent Morning Reflections from today and the past week.  Click the following link:
--
Morning Reflection Podcasts

About Morning Reflections
"Morning Reflections" is a brief thought about the scripture readings from the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer according to the practice found in the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church.

Morning Prayer begins on p. 80 of the Book of Common Prayer.
Evening Prayer begins on p. 117
An online resource for praying the Daily Office is found at missionstclare.com -- Click for online Daily Office
Another form of the office from Phyllis Tickle's "Divine Hours" is available on our partner web site www.ExploreFaith.org at this location -- http://explorefaith.org/prayer/fixed/index.html --  Click for Divine Hours

Discussion Blog:  To comment on today's reflection or readings, go to http://lowellsblog.blogspot.com, or click here for Lowell's blog find today's reading, click "comment" at the bottom of the reading, and post your thoughts.

The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church
is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance, and love.

See our Web site at www.stpaulsfay.org

Our Rule of Life: 
We aspire to...
    worship weekly
    pray daily
    learn constantly
    serve joyfully 
    live generously.

Lowell Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas


Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Healing Visitations

Tuesday, December 21, 2010  -- Week of 4 Advent, Year One
Saint Thomas the Apostle
To read about our daily commemorations, go to our Holy Women, Holy Men blog:
http://liturgyandmusic.wordpress.com/category/holy-women-holy-men/

Today's Readings for the Daily Office
(Book of Common Prayer)
EITHER, the readings for Tuesday of 4 Advent, p. 938
Psalms 66, 67 (morning)       116, 117 (evening)
Isaiah 11:10-16 
Revelation 20:11 - 21:8 
Luke 1:5-25

OR
the readings for St. Thomas, p. 996
Morning Prayer:  Psalms 23, 121; Job 42:1-6; 1 Peter 1:3-9
Evening Prayer:  Psalm 27; Isaiah 43:8-13; John 14:1-7

I chose the readings for St. Thomas

Job had lost everything.  No solace or advice from his friends could comfort him.  He lived traumatized.  Before his catastrophe, he had been known as an upright man -- a man of faith.  Now, it seemed his faith was not enough.  God had not protected him from disaster.  Hurt, angry -- Job demanded God show himself and be accountable.

Then God came to him in a whirlwind.  The experience was more overwhelming than comforting.  But it was completely settling.  "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you."  Second-hand theological knowledge of God is replaced by first-hand experience of the Divine.  Job dissolves.  He lets go of his anger, his questions, his grief.  He melts in the presence of the All.  He is one with the All; reconciled.  A certain peace descends upon him.

Thomas also had lost everything.  He had seen his friend Jesus -- his teacher and his hope -- cruelly and brutally executed by the Romans.  It was traumatizing.  Before this catastrophe, he had seen it coming.  When Jesus insisted on going to Judea and wouldn't be dissuaded, Thomas opined, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."  Now Jesus was dead.  Inwardly, Thomas was dead too.  All he could think of were the horrible, deadly wounds -- the nails, the spear. 

A couple of days later his friends started talking manic nonsense.  "We have seen the Lord!" they said.  "He is risen."  Thomas didn't know what they were talking about.  Mass hypnosis?  Wish fulfilling fantasy?  No.  He knew what he had seen.  Unless he could see something at least as real as the nails and the spear...

Then Jesus visited him.  There were the wounds.  Still there, only now transfigured.  Jesus was alive.  More than alive.  Vital, eternal, overcoming all.  All.  Thomas dissolves.  His grief is vanquished.  He melts in the presence of the All.  "My Lord, and my God!" he breathes.  Peace.  Living peace fills him.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!" writes the first Epistle of Peter.  "By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading..."  We are bulletproof.  We "are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed..."  Life is still difficult.  "Even... now for a little while" we have "to suffer various trials."  It is the way it is.  It is like testing, or refining. 

Maybe we haven't been visited by the whirlwind or confronted by the resurrected body of the wounded healer.  "Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls."

Salvation.  The word is kin to the word "healing."  A salve is an ointment for healing.  Salvation.  Becoming whole.  There are many ways to become whole again.  Job and Thomas show us two experiences of wholeness.  The Epistle of Peter speaks of it.  It seems that suffering, loss and grief is part of the embrace of salvation, healing and wholeness.  Despite the catastrophe, disaster and loss -- there is peace.  There is the All.  God, Jesus, Spirit.  The Divine wraps eternal arms around our frailness, and loves us into being.  Let it be.  Let us be.  Imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.

Lowell

__________________

Audio podcast:  Listen to an audio podcast of the most recent Morning Reflections from today and the past week.  Click the following link:
--
Morning Reflection Podcasts

About Morning Reflections
"Morning Reflections" is a brief thought about the scripture readings from the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer according to the practice found in the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church.

Morning Prayer begins on p. 80 of the Book of Common Prayer.
Evening Prayer begins on p. 117
An online resource for praying the Daily Office is found at missionstclare.com -- Click for online Daily Office
Another form of the office from Phyllis Tickle's "Divine Hours" is available on our partner web site www.ExploreFaith.org at this location -- http://explorefaith.org/prayer/fixed/index.html --  Click for Divine Hours

Discussion Blog:  To comment on today's reflection or readings, go to http://lowellsblog.blogspot.com, or click here for Lowell's blog find today's reading, click "comment" at the bottom of the reading, and post your thoughts.

The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church
is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance, and love.

See our Web site at www.stpaulsfay.org

Our Rule of Life: 
We aspire to...
    worship weekly
    pray daily
    learn constantly
    serve joyfully 
    live generously.

Lowell Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas