The Grain of Wheat 2018

Sunday, March 25, 2018 - SUNDAY OF THE PASSION/ PALM SUNDAY Feast of The Annunciation, Is. 7:10-14, Ps. 45; Heb 10:4-10; Luke 1:26-38 Worship: 8 & 10:45 am Mt. 21:1-11; Is. 50:4-9a; Ps. 31:9-16;Phil. 2:5-11; Mt. 26:14—27:66 Christ humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross. Therefore God has also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name. Gospel Acclamation for Sunday of the Passion     (Phil. 2:8-9) There in God's garden stands the Tree of Wisdom, Whose leaves hold forth the healing of the nations; Tree of all knowledge, Tree of all compassion, Tree of all beauty. Its name is Jesus, name that says, "Our Savior!" There on its branches see the scars of suff'ring; See there the tendrils of our human selfhood Feed on its lifeblood. Thorns not its own are tangled in its foliage; Our greed has starved it, our despite has choked it. Yet, look! it lives! its g...

Saturday, March 24, 2018 Commemoration of Oscar Romero, archbishop and martyr, 1980 Reading: Philippians 2:5-11 "Let this same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,…"    (Philippians 2:5) Martin Luther described sin as a person's being "curved in on itself", incurvatus in se , concerned only with one's own needs, desires, one's own puny little world. As Jesus approaches Jerusalem, where reaction to his world-upturning teachings and life is building to a deathly confrontation, we see clearly how absolutely faithful he is to his identity as the Christ the Anointed One, Christ the Compassionate One, open and vulnerable to the world. He set his face "like a flint" (Is. 50:7) and turned not backward. How simple it would have been to disappear into the wilderness ravines east of the city. How difficult, to ignore the deep human instinct toward self-preservation and to continue on the road, in spite of risk, in spite of threat. ...

Friday, March 23, 2018 Reading: Psalm 31:9-16 "Into your hand I commend my spirit: you have redeemed me, O LORD God of truth."   (Psalm 31:5)             The antiphon chosen for the psalm on the approaching Sunday of the Passion is from verse 5, not from among the verses chosen for chanting on this day. But we sing this phrase from Psalm 31:5 every time we use the office of Compline, or Prayer At the Close of Day. It is a beautiful prayer to use to end the day, before lying down to rest: "Into your hand, O LORD, I commend my spirit." Only in the Gospel of Luke do we hear these words from Jesus on the cross at the end of his life, contrary to what composites like the Seven Last Words would lead us to think. In the passion account according to Mark, which we will hear in two days' time, Jesus cries out using words from Psalm 22, as he does also in Matthew's account. Why, we could wonder, did Luke choose Psal...

Thursday, March 22, 2018 Reading: Isaiah 50:4-9a "The LORD God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced;   therefore I have set my face like flint,   and I know I will not be put to shame."    (Isaiah 50:7)             The Hebrew scriptures do not generally use specific words for emotions, but rather use descriptive words related to the effects on the human body, especially the face. When Jesus overthrew the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple, Psalm 69:9 was quoted: "Zeal for your house has consumed me." The word for "zeal" actually means "intensively red", as "to be red in the face". The word generally translated as anger is to be "short of nose", for the way the nose crinkles short and the nostrils flare in anger. In the Ash Wednesday reading Joel 2:13, where God is said to be "slow to anger" (KJV "longsuffering"), the Hebrew says God is "long of nose", that is, cal...

Wednesday, March 21, 2018 Commemoration of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury,1556 Reading: Isaiah 58:5 "Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?"             It is not out of character during Lent to talk about almsgiving, or acts of justice, or acts of compassion , one of the disciplines of Lent. Mary's great hymn of praise, the Magnificat (pronounced not at the Annunciation, but, rather, at the Visitation to Elizabeth…), has at its center the raising up of those of low degree. "Those of low degree" can include any one of us at any time as well as the stranger. Those who are in poverty as well as those who are in a state of spiritual impoverishment. Those who are homeless as well as those who are seeking, seeking, seeking. Those on the brink of despair as well as those of "low degree" known only...

Tuesday, March 20, 2018 Spring Equinox, 11:15 a.m. I have no wit, no words, no tears;             My heart within me like a stone Is numbed too much for hopes or fears;             Look right, look left, I dwell alone; I lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief             No everlasting hills I see; My life is in the falling leaf:             O Jesus, quicken me. My life is like a faded leaf,             My harvest dwindled to a husk; Truly my life is void and brief             And tedious in the barren dusk; My life is like a frozen thing,             No bud nor greenness ...

Monday, March 19, 2018 Joseph, Guardian of Jesus Reading: John 12:20-33 "Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies, it bears much fruit."    (John 12:24)             Spiritual truths are not limited to books of Scripture or theology or liturgies or to Bach cantatas or the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, spiritual truths find us in many places. Take the musical The Fantasticks (Schmidt/Jones). The protagonist El Gallo takes the young, naive, head-over-heels couple Matt and Luisa out to experience real world hurts, temptations, and tragedies. The action pauses. El Gallo faces the audience and says:             There is a curious paradox that no one can explain:             Who understands the secret of the reaping...