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Morning Devotion for the Season of Epiphany

January 23, 2023

Feast Day of Phillips Brooks, 1893

Invitatory

I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.

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: Ephesians 3:14-21

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.  

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish infinitely more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Meditation – Peter Vanderveen

Here’s my guess: we tend to hear the last sentence of the appointed reading from Ephesians as if Knute Rockne said it, as if we are being told, in essence, “to go out there with all [we’ve] got and win just one for the Gipper…”

Liturgically, this sentence is spoken most often as a concluding statement at the end of Morning Prayer. It functions there like a dismissal, as if the final word to us is that we should now go out in the light of the Gospel, and, as we often say, change the world. That’s quite a task. And I’ve always wondered why the hyperbole of such a charge is so routinely ignored within the church, especially when the work of simply trying to change one’s self is challenging enough and often fruitless. Yet we persist, with the presumption that God’s work has now been handed over to us, and our mission, in a manner of speaking, is to be Jesuses in Jesus’ stead, the Jesuses of our time. We are to do what Jesus was not able to complete; and God will help us accomplish this - “more than we can ask or imagine.”

It’s a grand vision, parsed out in all the ways the church talks about discipleship and following Jesus and being daring in commitment and sacrifice. But this isn’t what the writer of Ephesians had in mind.

In a brilliant and beautiful essay on theology recently published in the New York Review of Books*, the novelist Marilynne Robinson reflected on the Biblical story of Joseph and his comment to his brothers, that, when they had sold him into slavery, they had meant this for evil. They had. It was heinous. And yet, as a result, Joseph attained a position of great authority in Egypt and was able to deliver his brothers and father from suffering the effects of a prolonged famine in Canaan. This might have been dramatic enough as a turn of events, but Robinson added that this act of Joseph ultimately led to the enslavement of the Hebrews in Egypt and that this enslavement then led to the rise of Moses, the exodus, and the delivery of the Law in Sinai. As Robinson aptly summarized: “One cruel prank opened into a major event in the history of the world.” Or as Joseph more succinctly noted: “You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good.” It’s hard to comprehend “what is the breadth and length and height and depth” of this statement and of God’s capacity to do this.

We do not know what the results of our choices and actions will be, especially in the long churning of time. Even matters as starkly defined as good and evil are subject to an undoing that we can’t project or understand. God’s goodness has a way of surprising us, or astounding us, or, as Jesus asked of some of his followers, offending us. And we are always, already caught up in it, even when circumstances seem utterly contrary and monstrous.

The work of the church, then, isn’t to accomplish impressive things that would definitively change the world for the better; that’s outside our reach, though we’d like the glory. The work of the church is to be a community that recognizes, believes, and celebrates the power of God to bring good to bear in all things and through all things, more than we can desire or pray for. This is God’s glory, which gives us life and hope.

* NYRB: December 22, 2022 Issue



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.