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Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost
October 14, 2022
Feast of Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky
Invitatory
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.
Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness: Come let us adore him.
Reading: II Corinthians 4:11-15
For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. But just as we have the same spirit of faith that is in accordance with scripture—‘I believed, and so I spoke’—we also believe, and so we speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence. Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.
Meditation – Peter Vanderveen
I often wonder what it is about the church that causes people to lose interest. One can see this slow deflation most obviously in youth, especially when too much of their involvement becomes mere rote. They take on a look of quiet indifference, reflecting back the dead weight of much of what is done or said. But the same drift happens with adults. It may not be that they reject anything; they may hold to the basic tenets of the faith. There just seems to be little value added in attending to it anymore. And I think that much of this stems from the church’s inability to get out from under the shadow of expressing a looming sense of disapproval. I don’t mean this in the Jonathan Edwards “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” sense. That’s more evident and embraced in other denominations. I mean “disapproval” more in the sense of the church giving the feeling that there’s always an overbearing parent lurking, who, just by his or her presence, exudes an aura of “lying in wait.”
This may be due, in part, to a well-established misreading of the Bible. When read in a strictly linear mode, the Bible can seem to be one long story of continual failure. People sin. God threatens judgment. People repent. Forgiveness is granted. Promises of improvement are made…. And then this cycle happens all over again. And again. And again. It’s like singing a canon that never comes to an end: what is meaningful at first eventually turns to tedium.
The Biblical narrative, however, isn’t primarily about our failure or our need to somehow please God enough to earn God’s favor. It isn’t about getting as much as possible right, according to how God properly ordained everything to be. Where the text itself is truly dull is in all those places where the reader has to laboriously wade through the attempts of many past generations to do just this, with the recitation of interminable lists of laws and statutes and customs that, as Saint Paul noted, accomplish nothing. Yet through all of this, God remains; and not as an unmovable force that upholds an eternal order. God shows himself to be a roving – even at times impish – presence, who interjects grace precisely where we would least expect it. This is the drama of the whole story.
Which, perhaps, can be simply framed in this way. When evil occurs – when it erupts without warning – our general response tends more toward resignation than astonishment: we are reminded that we’ve seen this before. When good occurs – when it’s freely bestowed, and not out of obligation – our response is genuine surprise and true delight. It is a gift ex nihilo. Something beautiful is added to us, as if from nowhere. That’s grace. And why would we ever tire of this? Which is the core question of the Bible. God can only be boring when it’s not God that we’re seeing. Instead, it’s the god we ourselves have fashioned, who is all too grossly predictable and bent toward scolding.
Paul was a masterful writer, whether describing the thickets of our lives or the surprising brightness of God’s presence. What would happen, then, if we took him at his word, leaving shadows behind, focusing on this singular promise: “Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.” This makes all things new. Where is the tedium in this?
The Lord's Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory
for ever and ever. Amen.
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