Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost
October 6, 2021
Feast Day of William Tyndale, 1536 AD
Invitatory
“Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be always 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.
Praise ye the Lord.
The Lord's Name be praised.
Reading: James 1:19-25
You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.
Meditation – Peter Vanderveen
I’m not usually one to squirm when someone begins a meeting with prayer. Such prayers are an invitation for the collected body to reframe their approach to the business at hand by the awareness that our lives and our work are carried out with and before God. Several years ago, however, while attending a meeting about social and economic problems in Philadelphia, the person appointed to pray began with the petition “O Lord, make us angry.” I was initially a bit startled, but soon enough discovered that this plea would be the prayer’s repeated refrain. We were being encouraged to be angry about many things that were being enumerated and described in detail. And God, in each instance, was being asked to instill in us a sense of outrage.
I have no doubt that this prayer was intended to shake all of us loose from whatever complacency we had about the poverty that many suffer. It was, in this way, well-intentioned. But it was a prayer that I couldn’t pray. I listened. I thought carefully about what was being asked. But I couldn’t engage my heart.
This wasn’t for a lack of concern or a lack of passion about finding ways to help those in need. I just couldn’t, in good faith, ask God to move me in this direction. Nor could I imagine what good more anger could do. There’s enough anger already without God’s help. It’s proliferating daily, for it’s the one thing that seems sure to capture our attention. Seething is trending, and we have only to decide what we will choose to be angry about and how our anger will be manifested. The answer to the first now seems to be anything and everything — take your pick. The answer to the second almost inevitably results in some form of negation and violence. The power of anger is that it blinds us. Unlike love, it virulently insists on its own way and sets us in opposition to others. And it feels so magnificently right because it forecloses the possibility that we ourselves might have gotten something wrong.
The Gospels are, in part, a concerted effort to move us in a different direction, even when we feel most justified. All the righteous anger expressed in the Old Testament is systematically dismantled — even God’s own. Jesus rarely showed any anger at all. Nor impatience. Nor vindictiveness. Nor any drive to try by outrage to establish a better world. In the realm of God, these are misleading desires. Kierkegaard noted that “You can always accomplish something by giving witness to joy.” This, I think, should inform the refrains that form our prayers. For substantial, enduring good can come from 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.
