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Morning Devotion for the Season After Pentecost

June 14, 2023

Basil the Great

The Invitatory

The mercy of the Lord is everlasting: O come, let us adore him.

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.

Reading: 1 Corinthians 15:50-52

What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.

Meditation: Jo Ann B. Jones

It is quite striking how much of the Book of Common Prayer draws upon Scripture in its liturgies. Note in the Burial I these petitions:

Grant that, increasing in knowledge and love of the, he may go from strength to strength in the life of perfect service in thy heavenly kingdom. 

Grant us, with all who have died in the hope of the resurrection, to have our consummation and bliss in thy eternal and everlasting glory,…to receive the crown of life which thou dost promise to all who share in the victory of thy Son Jesus Christ…

This text flies directly in the face of our notion of a well designed and constructed and technologically advanced world, the best world we believe we have constructed. For we see its limitations constantly simply by observing our houses, on our streets, (just this past weekend I-95), our sidewalks, in our yards, and shrinking bodies of water. While the Burial Office also speaks of us as dust and to dust we shall return, Paul directs us to another image available to us, the image of God, not disintegrating into dust but steadily enduring with fullness, and even glory in the realm of Christ. For Paul, our bodies testify to the dust that we are and the dust that we will be. We live within those limitations. But we also have available to us a faith in God in which we are not stuck with those limits. Paul declares that we shall be changed. We can become, through Christ and our hope in him, new living bodies that receive God’s hidden possibilities, as we go on from strength to strength, waiting to grow into life that death cannot end. Our bodies, formerly tainted by sin, will be transformed and will reflect the blessing of abundant life that God intended for God’s creation.

What Paul proposes and muses on is a mystery that is not discernible by human ability to reason. This cannot be proven through either reason or analogy. It is discernible only by divine revelation. Those who have undergone the change will receive life after death. The resurrection allows no time for this change; so the change will be sudden, “in the twinkling of an eye.”

This text does not answer all the questions about this bodily change. How is it scientifically possible for a body to become imperishable, for instance? What might a body look like that has been untouched by the corrupting and destructive power of sin? What this portion of the text does is affirm bodily change is central to the faith. Paul’s language and experience are limited — as is ours. Perhaps, in this time, the season after Pentecost, we might affirm both the revelation of the risen Christ and the mystery that awaits us when Christ returns.

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.