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Morning Devotion for the Season of Lent

March 6, 2023

Invitatory

Rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and repents of evil.

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 Lord is full of compassion and mercy: Come let us adore him.

Reading - Romans 1:8-15

First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed throughout the world. For God, whom I serve with my spirit by announcing the gospel^* of his Son, is my witness that without ceasing I remember you always in my prayers, asking that by God’s will I may somehow at last succeed in coming to you. For I am longing to see you so that I may share with you some spiritual gift to strengthen you— or rather so that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine. I want you to know, brothers and sisters,^* that I have often intended to come to you (but thus far have been prevented), in order that I may reap some harvest among you as I have among the rest of the Gentiles. I am a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish — hence my eagerness to proclaim the gospel to you also who are in Rome.

Meditation - Winnie Smith

I said something in my last sermon that a few people have since commented on:“I hope that my faith will turn into belief.” I do not see faith and belief as the same thing at all. Faith, for me, is the hope - the optimistic possibility - that I might believe. It is the openness to one day being convinced of the whole Gospel story, from immaculate birth to death and resurrection. There have been moments in my life - usually fleeting - when I have fully believed. While those moments of true belief have been rare, I have never once lost faith: I have never lost the hope of belief, never found the words we speak in the liturgy too far-fetched, nor the Gospel stories too absurd. I haven’t always believed, but I have always had faith.

I love Paul’s line in this opening of his letter to the Romans: “I am longing to see you so that I may share with you some spiritual gift to strengthen you - or rather so that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine.” This mutual encouragement by public declaration of our belief as Christians is what is so powerful to me about corporate worship. Standing shoulder to shoulder with people we know and those we don’t know and affirming the tenants of our faith in the words of the Nicene Creed? That is a powerful expression of faith. And it bolsters me, because even on days when I am struggling to believe, I hear the voices of other people who do believe - or maybe who are also struggling to do so. Our chorus sings out words that lead my heart and mind towards the goal of fervent belief, and that is a powerful thing.

Where and when else in our lives do we share such an intimate bond with others? Perhaps some feel it in a stadium full of fans brought together only through and by love of a team. Maybe others feel it at a concert, when the harmonies created by a few instruments seem to cut through time and space and bring everyone in attendance into a different world for a few minutes. In liturgy, I feel so connected to everyone else around me because we are all confessing our faith in something wild and absurd and mystical, and it is amazingly not strange at all.

Corporate worship is a spectacular part of our Episcopal and Anglican tradition. Speaking these words aloud together, words that have been spoken for hundreds of years by millions of people, we also cut through and across time and space. We are drawn together, strengthened by one another, and mutually encouraged by this act of worshiping God together. I hope you all feel that magic the next time you sit down in a pew at 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.