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Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost

November 23, 2022

Clement of Rome

The Invitatory

Send out your light and your truth, that they may lead me, and bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling.

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.

The earth is the Lord’s for he made it: Come let us adore him.

Reading: Colossians 2:6-15

As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.

Meditation: Jo Ann B. Jones

Where two or three are gathered together there…is bound to be conflict., Because problems within the church often involve issues of doctrine, morals, values and pastoral behavior, conflict is felt deeply, passionately; not easily, if ever, subject to reconciliation or resolution. How to resolve these conflicts is still a point of disagreement and contention. Church division is so often deeply painful.

Clement is the third bishop of Rome. Clement is a little more than this, chiefly because he wrote a letter to the Corinthians, which was highly valued by the early church, and has been preserved to the present day. To settle their differences, Clement advises the Corinthians to pray to God for mercy and for him to reconcile their differences that they may be reconciled in love and in faithfulness to the Commandments. If the Corinthians ask God to pardon their sins, then it is God who will discipline. It is to God that they will subject their wills. This offers a grander vision of unity.

In Paul’s view four intersecting stories - the story of Christ, the story of creation, the story of the Colossian believers, and the story of the apostle Paul - converge in the gospel, as proclaimed by Paul. He announces reconciliation to the church and to all creation. Perhaps in anticipation of the possibility, if not, the reality of disagreement, if not dissent, the letter invites its readers (and us) to inhabit their part in this story. We and they are to live or “walk” in Christ, which means, in part, rejecting rival narratives that compete for our imaginations. This is the path forward for reconciliation that Clement sought and that we are called to live into.

Our way forward is indicated by the use of two metaphors: botanical, i.e., to be rooted; and architectural, i.e., being built. Each metaphor offers a different vision of the texture of faith, which may at times be experienced as a sure and solid foundation, and at others as a nonlinear network, its strength not in any single footing but in the breadth of its reach.

One vision declares a Christ-shaped cosmos. It is in Christ that all reality holds together. Christ is the firstborn of all creation, the one through whom all things came into being. Although the elements of the universe may present as independent powers—in fact, Colossians insists these too lie under the authority of Christ.

Our imaginations often fall captive to the logic of “the economy,” as though the world were governed not by Christ but by the market’s invisible hand. Or we may fall captive to the principles of law and order, persuaded that to sustain our wellbeing and security we must be devoted firmly to a code of laws and punishments, as if retribution were the order of the cosmos. If, though, we inhabit Paul’s vision of our living/walking, rooted in Christ, then we may find ourselves and feel secure in the path for reconciliation in life and in the Church.

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.