Morning Devotion for Lent
Wednesday, March 22, 2022
The 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: 1 Corinthians 8:7-13
It is not everyone, however, who has this knowledge. Since some have become so accustomed to idols until now, they still think of the food they eat as food offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. “Food will not bring us close to God.” We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if others see you, who possess knowledge, eating in the temple of an idol, might they not, since their conscience is weak, be encouraged to the point of eating food sacrificed to idols? So by your knowledge those weak believers for whom Christ died are destroyed. But when you thus sin against members of your family, and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.
Meditation – Michael Palmisano
Four days prior to his assassination, on Sunday, March 31st, 1968 (the fifth Sunday in Lent) The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. unknowingly delivered his final sermon from the pulpit of the Episcopal Church’s Washington National Cathedral. In his sermon, entitled Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, King openly condemned the passivity of the nation in its unwillingness to stand against the present evils of its day – racism, racist violence, and the war in Vietnam. The great issues of our day, King declared, are often the result of our passivity. So often it is the case that our conscience has told us what is right, but we lack the will to enact it. For this reason, MLK pleads that we must not sleep through the revolutions that are taking place in our midst.
In this sermon, King famously said: “On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right? There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.” There are indeed many things in this world that will not be popular, nor curry political favor, nor be safe but that does not change their “rightness.”
In Paul’s peculiar correspondence to the Corinthian community, he is caught in the middle of a hotly debated issue – namely, “Can Christians eat food that was sacrificed in pagan rituals?” For the former Jewish converts this was an abomination, but for the former pagan converts, this was a fact of daily living. Ultimately, in Paul’s arbitration over the matter he declares all food to be fit for eating, notwithstanding a significant caveat: “Do not eat this food if your liberty to do so would cause harm to anyone.”
Perhaps this warning would strike us differently if the word “liberty” (exousia) was rendered in another manner. In this verse it is perfectly legitimate to translate the word exousia as “privilege.” Understandably, this is a triggering word in our 21st century world, but I have reason to believe – laden with all its 1st century ties to messianic descriptors – that it would have been equally triggering when Paul first wrote it. To me, these notions of privilege, liberty, and responsibility seem to be at the heart of MLK’s great sermon, and at the heart of the very issues which plague our present nation and global community. In response to Paul and MLK’s urgings, we must often ask ourselves: “Who is our neighbor, and what do we owe him?”
Have we truly turned back the rolling wheels of passivity as a nation and as a people since Paul wrote his letter 2000 years ago and since King preached these words nearly 54 years ago (to the day)? As you might choose to ponder these questions, I leave you with one last quote from King’s final sermon: “Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God's universe is made; this is the way it is structured.”
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.
Closing Prayer
O God, it is your will to hold both heaven and earth in a single peace. Let the design of your great love shine on the waste of our wraths and sorrows, and give peace to your Church, peace among nations, peace in our homes, and peace in our hearts; through your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
