Daily Reading for August 1 • Joseph of Arimathea

The legends connecting Jesus and Joseph with Cornwall/Somerset go something like this: 1) There is an Eastern tradition that Joseph was the Uncle of Mary, Mother of Jesus. 2) Further tradition states that Joseph was a merchant in the tin trade that flourished between the west coast of England, and Europe and the Mediterranean. 3) On one or more occasions, the legends state that Joseph brought his grandnephew Jesus with him on business trips to the mines in Cornwall/Somerset. On one of those trips, Jesus and Joseph built the church in Glastonbury (later to be used by Joseph and his followers after the death and resurrection of Jesus). Jesus dedicated the church to his Mother (the niece of Joseph of Arimathea).

As stated earlier, there are no direct early historical, or even literary references to these legends. The earliest reference of any kind may be in William Blake’s famous poem, “Jerusalem,” which is now a much-loved hymn in England:

And did those feet in ancient times
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the Holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among those dark Satanic mills? . . .

(William Blake, 1757-1827)

There is some background and indirect evidence that just prevent the legend from being totally implausible. There is no question that there were tin mines in Western Britain in the early first century. And there is no question that the tin was traded with other parts of the Continent. Proponents of the legend point to several place names in Cornwall/Somerset that have Jewish names, or that refer directly to Christ (“Jesus Well,” “Penzance”). . . .

So, are the stories and legends true? In my personal opinion, the idea that Joseph brought a small band of followers to Britain in the first century, and started a church at Glastonbury seems reasonably credible (although not absolutely provable). . . . However, I can speak quite personally that Glastonbury is a very eerie place, and if miracles could occur anywhere in the world, I could believe that they could occur there.

From “Joseph of Arimathea: Biblical & Legendary Accounts” by Robert C. Jones. Copyright 1997. http://www.sundayschoolcourses.com/joseph/joseph.htm

Daily Reading for August 2

When we are nearby to our usual place of meditation, we should return to that place at the appointed times, for we are sustained by such continuity. We are physical creatures, and concrete reinforcement of habits of meditation, prayer, and gratefulness will assist us in the work.

Similarly, when we are nearby to our friends and family at mealtimes, we should return to them to take our meals in community, renewing and continuing the relationships that make up the fabric of our lives.

We are ceremonial creatures. A special place for worship services should be maintained, and in that place only such work on our spirits should take place. It should be made available between services for individual prayer and meditation. It should at all times be treated with reverence, and when services are not taking place a deep silence should be preserved there.

We must not allow criticisms of the failings of organized religions to keep us from worshiping in community. No one can live up to the true standards of the great religions. There is no church, synagogue, or temple that does not contain some number of persons who are sincere, worthy of friendship, and from whom we can learn.

From Always We Begin Again: The Benedictine Way of Living by John McQuiston II. Copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for August 3 • The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

The problem with miracles is that we tend to get mesmerized by them, focusing on God’s responsibility and forgetting our own. Miracles let us off the hook. They appeal to the part of us that is all too happy to let God feed the crowd, save the world, do it all. We do not have what it takes, after all. What we have to offer is not enough to make any difference at all, so we hold back and wait for a miracle, looking after our own needs and looking for God to help those who cannot help themselves. . . .

“They need not go away,” Jesus says, “you give them something to eat.” Not me but you; not my bread but yours; not sometime or somewhere else but right here and now. Stop looking for someone else to solve the problem and solve it yourselves. Stop waiting for food to fall from the sky and share what you have. Stop waiting for a miracle and participate in one instead.

From “The Problem with Miracles” in The Seeds of Heaven: Sermons from the Episcopal Series of the Protestant Radio Hour by Barbara Brown Taylor (Forward Movement Publications, 1990).

Daily Reading for August 4

All of us go through transitions in life. We move away, get married, have children; we get hired and fired; relationships bloom and fracture. Flexibility may be the ultimate spiritual virtue. Because if we wait until things calm down in our lives before seeking to forge a fruitful relationship with the divine, it will never happen. God’s voice and presence is everywhere, even in the midst of the chaos that so often defines our lives.

Eventually I realized that through the chaos of having young children, God opened my eyes to new possibilities and new ways of experiencing the divine. Finding God in the midst of domestic chaos was a revelation that relationship with God can be a very messy affair. And that’s okay. God is just as present in our lives when we walk around the block in pajamas at 2:00 a.m. with a crying baby as in a reflective ten minutes of silence before a worship service. The trick is balance. And recognizing that there is no ordinary time; it is all blessed by God. . . .

I once saw a bumper sticker that read, THERE IS NO SECULAR WORLD. I’m not big on bumper sticker theology—HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS and the like—but this proclamation said it all. There is no secular world. It is all sacred because God pervades everything. The divine presence weaves its way throughout our daily lives. . . . We often see snippets of the truth on the highways and byways of life, just as we do in the midst of domestic chaos. We simply need to open our eyes to the possibilities.

From What Size are God’s Shoes? Kids, Chaos, and the Spiritual Life by Tim Schenck, with a foreword by Barbara Cawthorne Crafton. Copyright © 2008. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for August 5

“I love to tell the story of unseen things above,
Of Jesus and his glory, of Jesus and his love . . .”

This Sunday School song, echoing from my earliest childhood memories, suggests a question—just how do we tell the story of the unseen? So, it’s about Jesus and his glory—but how and when have we witnessed heavenly glory? We can perhaps speak of Jesus’ love with great personal authenticity, but without viewing Jesus in the flesh, without seeing him at his Father’s right hand, words fail us again. . . .

We try, in the moment, to make sense out of what may often seem surreal, horrifying, incongruous, paradoxical, irrelevant, absurd, while retaining a kind of eschatological hope that God’s order, peace, design, glory, and joy will fill all the spaces in our widely scattered personal and cosmic jig-saw puzzles. We look forward to a time when, like Moses, after his Sinai encounter with Yahweh, our faces will shine in a way that no earthly description could illuminate. . . .

We are all, whether or not we are conscious of it, swimming in waters of unknown depth. St. Paul prayed for his friends that “the eyes of their hearts might be enlightened.” The stories, the poems, are there to be attended to, to be absorbed if we are willing to give them our attention, to follow the path of exploration and observation, eyes and ears alert, to follow the word, even giving over our conscious control of where it will lead. Madeleine L’Engle calls this way of life “becoming the servant of the word.”

Like Mary, with her available womb, like the ancient prophets, standing in the gap, a foot in two worlds, with souls attuned to both heaven and earth, like the psalmists listening for celestial tunes and translating them into the real poetry of both desolation and exaltation, like the Son of God himself become flesh, we fulfill our destinies by telling and re-telling the story that weaves together divine transcendence and earthy human experience.

From “Reversing Entropy” by Luci Shaw, quoted in Shouts and Whispers: Twenty-One Writers Speak about Their Writing and Their Faith, edited by Jennifer L. Holberg (Eerdmans, 2006).

Daily Reading for August 6 • The Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Transfiguration is a central theme of Christianity, the transforming of sufferings and circumstances, of men and women with the vision of Christ before them and the Holy Spirit within them. The language both of vision and of transformation is found in the Pauline, Johannine, and Petrine writings in the New Testament, and the language tells of Christian experience which recurs through the centuries. This is not to say that there are many conscious references to the transfiguration story in the New Testament writings, but only that the themes are recurring Christian themes and the transfiguration is a symbol of them.

The transfiguring of suffering is attested in Christian life. Sometimes a person suffers greatly, and the suffering continues and does not disappear; but through nearness to Christ there is seen a courage, an outgoing love and sympathy, a power of prayer, a Christlikeness of a wonderful kind. It is a privilege of the Christian pastor to be meeting these experiences and to be learning from them more than he or she can ever teach. . . .

Circumstances are transfigured. Something blocks your path, some fact of life or person or obstacle which is utterly thwarting and frustrating. It seems impossible to remove it or ignore it or surmount it. But when it is seen in a larger context, and that context is Jesus crucified and risen, it is in a new orbit of relationships and while it remains, it remains differently. A phrase of St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 4 seems to interpret the experience, when he contrasts our “light affliction” with the “exceeding weight of glory,” the one belonging to time and the other to eternity. Such is the transforming of circumstances, not by their abolition but by the lifting of them into the orbit of a crucified and risen Jesus.

From “The Mount and the Plain” in Be Still and Know by Michael Ramsey, quoted in To Believe is To Pray: Readings from Michael Ramsey, edited by James E. Griffiss (Cowley Publications, 1996).

Daily Reading for August 7 • John Mason Neale, Priest, 1866

With particular gifts as a hymn writer, Neale was responsible for English translations of many notable hymns from both the Greek and Latin traditions, as well as writing many original compositions. . . . He had a particular interest in the Eastern Church and his writings and translations of Eastern hymns helped to make Orthodox history, theology, and devotion known to Anglicans.

The Ascension and Pentecost

Holy gift, surpassing comprehension!
Wound’rous mystery of each fiery tongue!
Christ made good His Promise in Ascension:
O’er the Twelve the cloven flames have hung! . . .

O that shame, now ended in that glory!
Pain untold, now lost in joy unknown!
Tell it out with praise, the whole glad story,
Human nature at the Father’s Throne! . . .

Eternal! After Thine own will
Thou born in time would’st be:
After the self-same counsel still
was Thine Epiphany:

Thou in our flesh didst yield Thy breath,
Immortal God, for man:
Thou by Thy death didst conquer Death,
Through Thine Almighty plan:
Thou, rising Victor to the sky,
Fill’st Heav’n and earth above:
And send’st the Promise from on high,
The Spirit of Thy love!

From “The Ascension and Pentecost” and an introduction to John Mason Neale, in Love’s Redeeming Work: The Anglican Quest for Holiness compiled by Geoffrey Rowell, Kenneth Stevenson, and Rowan Williams (Oxford, 2001).

Daily Reading for August 8 • Dominic, Priest and Friar, 1221

The centers of intellectual and theological enquiry increasingly moved during the twelfth century to new cathedral “schools” that eventually gave birth to the great European universities. This involved a geographical shift of learning from countryside to new cities. However, the move involved more than geography. The theological enterprise was no longer focused in centers explicitly dedicated to a religious way of life. The new universities existed primarily to foster teaching and learning. The new theology gradually gave birth to a belief that the discipline of the mind could be separated from the discipline of an ordered lifestyle, ascesis, or what we call “spirituality.”

The new mendicant religious orders were essentially an urban phenomenon. Their foundation in so many ways parallels the birth of the universities and it was not long before the new orders became deeply involved in teaching—indeed often taking a leading role in university development. Inevitably this link gave birth to an intellectualist shift in spirituality. So, for example, the Dominicans entered the universities initially to educate their own members to be effective preachers. Gradually, however, they developed an intellectual ministry—indeed were the originators of the idea that the intellectual life was a spiritual path. The Dominicans led the way in exploring how to cope theologically and spiritually with the rediscovery of Greek philosophy, especially Aristotle (as in the works of Thomas Aquinas).

Although by the sixteenth century, the Protestant reformers decried to a large extent the curriculum and focus of late medieval universities—because it seemed to prepare students in a form of theology devoid of spirituality—it should be remembered that throughout the greater part of the Middle Ages, the university in the city was an institution that acted as a bearer of religious life and spirituality for the Western world.

From A Brief History of Spirituality by Philip Sheldrake (Blackwell Publishing, 2007).

Daily Reading for August 9

There is a great waste of power in our failure to appreciate our opportunities. ‘If I only had the gifts that this man has I would do the large and beautiful things that he does. But I never have the chance of doing such things. Nothing ever comes to my hand but opportunities for little commonplace things.’ Now, the truth is that nothing is commonplace. The giving of a cup of cold water is one of the smallest kindnesses anyone can show to another, yet Jesus said that God takes notice of this act amid all the events of the whole world, any busy day, and rewards it. It may not be cabled half round the world and announced with great headlines in the newspapers, but it is noticed in heaven. We do not begin to understand what great waste we are allowing when we fail to put the true value on little opportunities of serving others. Somehow we get the feeling that any cross-bearing worthwhile must be a costly sacrifice, something that puts nails through our hands, something that hurts till we bleed. . . .

When the great miracle of the loaves had been wrought, Jesus sent his disciples to gather up the broken pieces, ‘that nothing be lost’. The Master is continually giving us the same command. Every hour’s talk we have with a friend leaves fragments that we ought to gather up and keep to feed our heart’s hunger or the hunger of others’ hearts, as we go on. When we hear good words spoken or read a good book, we should gather up the fragments of knowledge, the suggestions of helpful thoughts, the broken pieces, and fix them in our hearts for use in our lives. We allow large values of the good things we hear or read to turn to waste continually because we are poor listeners or do not try to keep what we hear. We let the broken pieces be lost and thereby are great losers. If only we would gather up and keep all the good things that come to us through conversations and through reading, we would soon have great treasures of knowledge and wisdom.

From The Book of Comfort by James Russell Miller, quoted in The Westminster Collection of Christian Meditations, compiled by Hannah Ward and Jennifer Wild (Westminster John Knox Press, 1998).

Daily Reading for August 10 • The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

“In the fourth watch of the night he came to them walking on the sea.” That is to say, Jesus has been on the way to his disciples for a long time already, long before they notice it. “But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, ‘It is a ghost!’” That is just how it is: Even if we get a glimpse of something, we do not for a moment notice that he is the one who is coming. We have just expected him in an altogether different way. . . . Jesus has seen his disciples for a long while already, but they do not see him. That is to say, they see that something is happening, but they do not perceive that Jesus is coming to them in it. . . .

“So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus.” For one brief moment Peter is the mighty hero of faith. “But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and beginning to sink . . .” In one moment a fantastic experience of faith is bestowed on him, and in the next moment comes its complete breakdown. He sees nothing but the storm. We too know what that is like—situations in which we really experience God and in which, immediately afterward, doubt returns and everything again seems dead. . . .

“Jesus immediately reached out his hand.” He does not keep him in suspense. At this point, there is no moral lesson, and Jesus applies none of the disciplinary actions that we are so eager to apply in just such cases. Jesus takes our efforts seriously, even if everything goes wrong. . . . That is the first thing that Jesus wants to say to us today. There are tensions in the life of the church. We should learn to be completely open to new ways and, for a change, even to dare the almost impossible. At the same time, we must know in the deepest sense that this is never simply “practicable,” that we therefore can only pray and hope that he will bless our venture, our starting out, our work. . . . Nothing is wrong with Peter’s seeing wind and waves. It is rather a matter of our seeing Jesus throughout all these realities; not seeing the waves at one time on the left and then again Jesus on the right, but rather seeing him there behind all that threatens.

From “In the Storm with Jesus” by Eduard Schweizer, quoted in Best Sermons 7 edited by James W. Cox (Harper & Row, 1994).

Daily Reading for August 11 • Clare, Abbess of Assisi, 1253

As I hear of your holy conduct and irreproachable life, which is known not only to me but to the entire world as well, I greatly rejoice and exult in the Lord. . . . For, though you, more than others, could have enjoyed the magnificence and honor and dignity of the world and could have been married to the illustrious Caesar with splendor befitting you and His Excellency, you have rejected all these things and have chosen with your whole heart and soul a life of holy poverty and destitution. Thus you took a spouse of a more noble lineage, who will keep your virginity ever unspotted and unsullied, the Lord Jesus Christ.

When you have loved [Him], you shall be chaste;
when you have touched [Him], you shall become pure;
when you have accepted [Him], you shall be a virgin.
Whose power is stronger,
Whose generosity is more abundant,
Whose appearance more beautiful,
Whose love more tender,
Whose courtesy more gracious.
In Whose embrace you are already caught up;
Who has adorned your breast with precious stones
and has placed priceless pearls in your ears
and has surrounded you with sparkling gems
as though blossoms of springtime
and placed on your head a golden crown
as a sign [to all] of your holiness.

Therefore, most beloved sister, or should I say, Lady, worthy of great respect: because you are “the spouse” and “the mother” and “the sister” of my Lord Jesus Christ, and have been adorned resplendently with the sign of inviolable virginity and most holy poverty: Be strengthened in the holy service which you have undertaken out of an ardent desire for the Poor Crucified, who for the sake of us took upon Himself the passion of the cross and delivered us from the power of the Prince of Darkness to whom we were enslaved because of the disobedience of our first parent, and so reconciled us to God the Father.

From one of the letters of Clare of Assisi to Agnes of Prague, quoted in Invitation to Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Anthology, edited by John R. Tyson (Oxford University Press, 1999).

Daily Reading for August 12 • Florence Nightingale, Nurse, Social Reformer, 1910

Florence Nightingale evoked very different opinions from contemporaries and later critics. The novelist Mrs. Gaskell thought her ‘completely led by God as Joan of Arc. . . . It makes one feel the livingness of God more than ever to think how straight he is sending his spirit down into her, as into the prophets and saints of old.’

Lytton Strachey, however, remarked that her conception of God was ‘certainly not orthodox. She felt towards him as she might have felt towards a glorified sanitary engineer. . . . One has the impression that Miss Nightingale has got the Almighty too into her clutches, and that, if she is not careful, she will kill him with overwork.’ Half a century later, for Ida Görres, the practical achievements of Nightingale surpassed making up ‘spiritual posies’, and stressing the supernatural to avoid facing reality. She was a ‘glorious embodiment of the best of the nineteenth century—with its enthusiasm for Progress in all its pristine freshness. . . . Did she not still live up to all three evangelical counsels, and on a heroic scale at that: virginity, forgoing the cravings of the heart again and again for the sake of her vocation; obedience, to its wearing, merciless claims; poverty, in the austere and selfless privations involved in her utter surrender to the “one thing needful”? Is her broad, glowing, generous Christianity not more truly human, more truly Christian than at least our present-day cloister ideal?’ (Broken Lights, London, 1964).

In 1850-1851 Florence Nightingale wrote in her diary: “I am 30 . . . the age at which Christ began his mission. No more childish things, no more vain things, no more love, no more marriage. Now, Lord, let me only think of thy will. . . . But why, oh my God, cannot I be satisfied with the life that satisfies so many people?”

From Invincible Spirits: A Thousand Years of Women’s Spiritual Writings, compiled by Felicity Leng (Eerdmans, 2006).

Daily Reading for August 13 • Jeremy Taylor, 1667

Faith supplies charity with argument and maintenance, and charity supplies faith with life and motion; faith makes charity reasonable, and charity makes faith living and effectual. . . . For to think well, or to have a good opinion, or an excellent or a fortunate understanding, entitles us not to the love of God and the consequent inheritance; but to choose the ways of the Spirit, and to relinquish the paths of darkness, this is the way of the kingdom, and the purpose of the gospel, and the proper work of faith.

. . . .

God is present in his essence; which, because it is infinite, cannot be contained within the limits of any place; and as the sun, reflecting upon the mud of strands and shores, is unpolluted in its beams, so is God not dishonored when we suppose him in every one of his creatures, and in every part of every one of them.

From “Discourse on Faith” in The Great Exemplar (1649) and Holy Living by Jeremy Taylor, quoted in Glorious Companions: Five Centuries of Anglican Spirituality by Richard H. Schmidt (Eerdmans, 2002).

Daily Reading for August 14 • Jonathan Myric Daniels, 1965

As soon as [ESCRU’s executive director, the Rev.] John Morris learned of Daniels’s death, he made arrangements for the body to be flown back to Daniels’s home in Keene, New Hampshire, for burial. In place of a formal eulogy at the funeral service, excerpts from Daniels’s theological writings were read aloud to the mourners gathered at St. James’ Church. In one of those selections, he wrote that he had stopped being afraid of death in Alabama, for he realized that “I had truly been baptized into the Lord’s death and Resurrection, that in the only sense that really matters I am already dead, and my life is hid with Christ in God.”

Stokely Carmichael, the SNCC organizer with whom Daniels had worked most closely in Alabama, was deeply upset by the murder and remarked that Daniels had “lived like Christ.” In tears at the interment following the funeral, Carmichael joined hands with other mourners, who softly sang “We Shall Overcome” beside the grave.

At the same time, memorial services were held in many other churches throughout the country, and the slain seminarian received numerous tributes. Frank Mathews expressed shock at what had happened and offered prayers at St. Paul’s. William Stringfellow, who had been one of Daniels’s mentors, called him “an authentic Christian” who had died simply for doing what the gospel demanded; Judith Upham believed his witness demonstrated that “God requires not extraordinary people, but ordinary people with an extraordinary commitment as channels for His grace-full action in the world.”

From Episcopalians and Race: Civil War to Civil Rights by Gardiner H. Shattuck (The University Press of Kentucky, 2000).

Daily Reading for August 15 • St. Mary the Virgin

All of eastern piety, according to Vladimir Lossky, consists of the celebration of what is the goal of our salvation: overcoming the abyss between God and man. This is why there is added to the Christians’ devotion to an incarnate divine hypostasis, Jesus Christ, a deified human hypostasis, Mary, whom Gregory Palamas calls: ‘the boundary between the created and the uncreated’.

We hear about ‘the eschatologism of the eastern Church’. Is the mystery of Mary not one of the most effective expressions of this hope? ‘The last glory of the Mother of God’, Lossky continues, is ‘the eschaton realized in a created person before the end of the world. Tradition shows us the Mother of God in the midst of the disciples on the day of Pentecost. . . . The Mother of God received with the Church the last and only thing she lacked, so that she might grow to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.’

In pre-revolutionary Russia, close to a thousand icons of Mary were venerated in the liturgical calendar under various names—for example, ‘Our Consolation’, ‘Provident’, ‘Softening of our evil hearts’, and so on. The icon called Pokrov (Protection) represents the Virgin covering the entire earth with her mantle. The icon Znamenye (Sign, Miracle) shows Mary in the orans posture, with the Word of God on her breast. This is symbolic of the deifying contemplation which makes God present in the soul. On the icon of the Ascension, the Virgin represents the Church imploring the descent of the Spirit and the second coming of the Saviour. The veneration of the Mother of God represents one of the typical traits of eastern Christians because devotion to the Theotokos (God-bearer) agrees well with the characteristics of eastern spirituality.

From Prayer: The Spirituality of the Christian East, Volume 2 by Tomaš Špidlík SJ (Cistercian Publications, 2005).

Daily Reading for August 16

In the end, Jesus raises Peter up from the water (still without having calmed the storm) and climbs into the boat with the other disciples. It is only now that the wind drops and the sea is calm. In the boat, gathered around Jesus, there is calm and peace. Peter and the others have been saved from the storm, not through their own efforts and abilities or their skills as fishermen, but by the presence of the Son of God in their boat. Gathering around that presence in humble acknowledgment of who he is transforms their world. They now have a new perspective, a new understanding and are now able to complete their journey to the other side of the lake. They know that storms are as much a part of life on the lake as they are a part of life and discipleship. Now they have been shown in a most dramatic way that it does not matter how severe the storm; for the one who believes there is always peace and calm.

Jesus is not presented here as the one who calms the sea and quietens the wind. He is the one who comes to the disciples in the midst of the storm, unhindered by what is raging around them, and who brings peace and comfort—who enables them to continue with their journey in safety. He is the one who is able to do what they, with all their strengths and talents, could not achieve. He comes to them not as the transformer of the world but as the transformer of human lives. The disciples are the ones who are changed in this story, and once they are changed the storms die down. Whether or not it continued to rage is irrelevant, because they now approach it differently, with a new perspective. In their boat, regardless of the sea around them, they have courageous hearts and peaceful minds.

From “For Those Who Trust in God” by Michael Hough, quoted in Best Sermons 5 edited by James W. Cox (Harper & Row, 1992).

Daily Reading for August 17 • The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

This passage from Matthew describes one of those difficult moments in Jesus’ life that we might skip altogether if the lectionary did not direct us to deal with it. What makes it so difficult is how harsh Jesus sounds, how harsh and downright rude. . . .

He does not answer [the Canaanite woman] a word. He draws the line, as surely as if he had leaned down and traced it in the dust at his feet. Enough is enough. He will go no further. . . . But the woman will not stay on her side of the line. Kneeling at his feet, she says, “Lord, help me.” . . .

Her responses to Jesus remind me of that game children play, in which two of them look steadily into each other’s eyes, each trying to make the other blink first. Jesus all but claps his hands in the woman’s face but she does not blink. “Yes, Lord,” she says when he calls her a dog, “yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” When she says that, something in him is rearranged and changed forever, a change you can hear in his voice. “O woman, great is your faith,” he says to her. “Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter is healed instantly.

The line he had drawn between himself and the woman disappears; the limits he had placed on himself vanish, and you can almost hear the huge wheel of history turning as Jesus comes to a new understanding of who he is and what he has been called to do. He is no longer a Messiah called only to the lost sheep of Israel, but God’s chosen redeemer of the whole world, Jews and gentiles alike, beginning with this Canaanite woman.

Through her faith he learns that God’s purpose for him is bigger than he had imagined, that there is enough of him to go around, and in that moment there is no going back to the limits he observed even a moment ago. The old boundaries will not contain his new vision—he must rub them out and draw them bigger, to include this foreign woman today and who knows what tomorrow—it looks like answering God’s call means that he can no longer control his ministry or narrow his mission. There is no more safety or certainty for him, no more guarding against loss or hanging on to his cherished notions about the way things ought to be. Faith works like a lever on him, opening his arms wider and wider until there is room for the whole world in them.

From “Crossing the Line” in The Seeds of Heaven: Sermons from the Episcopal Series of the Protestant Radio Hour by Barbara Brown Taylor (Forward Movement Publications, 1990).

Daily Reading for August 18 • William Porcher DuBose, Priest, 1918

DuBose urges that Jesus’ humanity was not merely the humanity of an individual man, but rather “the common and universal nature of us all.” Therefore Jesus’ human holiness, righteousness, and life possess a “universal” significance. Accordingly, Jesus “can be nothing less than God our holiness, our righteousness, our life.” Jesus was no mere sample or example of human salvation: “it was not one man but humanity that He was.”

The universality of Jesus’ human nature is significant for our salvation. Jesus “included all selves in Himself, and suffers, and is crucified and put to shame, or lives anew, rejoices, and is glorified in the whole body and in every member of the humanity that is Himself and His own.” Jesus “is present in us every one; and operative unto salvation in every one of us who believes and realizes His presence.” The universality of the Incarnation is a distinctive feature of DuBose’s Christology. In the Incarnation, humanity is saved through Jesus who “is the human, but the divine-human, conqueror and destroyer of sin and of death.” Jesus “brought with Him something into our nature and life which was not there before, and raised them into something which was not themselves or their own, and to which they could attain only in and through Him. Jesus’ divine-human accomplishment is exceptional, unique, and beyond unaided human possibility."

From The Theology of William Porcher DuBose: Life, Movement, and Being by Robert Boak Slocum (University of South Carolina Press, 2000).

Daily Reading for August 19

Over and over, God’s call to us means pushing old boundaries, embracing outsiders, giving up the notion that there is not enough of us to go around. We may resist; we may even lose our tempers, but the call of God is insistent, as insistent as the Canaanite woman who would not leave Jesus alone. The call of God keeps after us, calling us by name, until finally we step over the lines we have drawn for ourselves and discover a whole new world on the other side. . . .

The best lesson, I suppose, is that God’s face can turn up anywhere, and especially on the far side of the lines we draw to protect ourselves—in the face of a Canaanite woman, or a person with AIDS, or in any of the other faces that turn toward us seeking help, seeking care, seeking relationship with us that we are reluctant to give. The call of God is insistent, and whenever we limit who we will be to other people or who we will let them be for us, God gets to work, rubbing out the lines we have drawn around ourselves and calling us into the limitless country of his love. We may well formulate new limits and draw new lines, but none of them last very long, because that is the way it is when people have been called out by God. Once God has called us out there is no going back—whatever we choose to do—God never calls us back behind our lines.

From “Crossing the Line” in The Seeds of Heaven: Sermons from the Episcopal Series of the Protestant Radio Hour by Barbara Brown Taylor (Forward Movement Publications, 1990).

Daily Reading for August 20 • Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, 1153

Human love for God progresses through four stages, Bernard says. We begin by loving ourselves only, a sterile love that produces nothing and leads nowhere. But in time we notice that we cannot survive alone and that God graciously meets our needs. We then begin to love God, but only because of what God does for us. This is the second stage of love. Gradually, as we experience God’s love, our love is purified and expanded so that we are moved to love God for God’s own sake, not merely for the benefits he bestows upon us. This is the third stage of love, but one final stage remains: the love of ourselves—as God loves us and for God’s sake. We grow inebriated with divine love and forget ourselves, becoming like broken dishes, rushing toward God, clinging to him, becoming one with him in spirit. “To lose yourself, as if you no longer existed, to cease completely to experience yourself, to reduce yourself to nothing is not a human sentiment but a divine experience,” Bernard writes. In this life, we experience this final stage of love only fleetingly, if at all. In one of his sermons on the Song of Songs, Bernard speaks of “a sudden momentary blaze of glory, so that a great flame of love is enkindled in the soul.”

This, of course, is the language of mysticism. . . . For Bernard, the human soul retains its identity and becomes all the more alive. Others, like Gregory of Nyssa, speak of moving into a darkness where God discloses himself. Bernard, however, writes of gazing upon God in the luminous face of Christ. Bernard’s mystical experience is an intense relationship of love, preceded by much prayer and longing; it is the culmination of a long, plodding ascent. When the moment passes, it leaves one craving more. It is a foretaste of heaven.

From God Seekers: Twenty Centuries of Christian Spiritualities by Richard H. Schmidt (Eerdmans, 2008).

Daily Reading for August 21

This is one of the Scripture passages that fall under the category of “The Hard Sayings of Jesus,” those recorded moments when he doesn’t behave as we think he should. Who wants a Savior who acts like a New York waiter? Earnest church people have gone to great lengths to excuse such hard sayings or find a way around them—that Jesus didn’t really mean it, that there was an obscure slang linkage between gentiles and dogs, so that this is really a commentary about first-century Judaism. We have a pretty rigid idea of what Jesus should and shouldn’t do, and we’ll do just about anything to protect it. . . . We talk about a Jesus who “was in every way tempted as we are, yet did not sin.” And we think this means he was without error.

But being without sin doesn’t mean he never did anything incorrect. “Without sin” means that there was no separation from God. Jesus was truly human and truly divine, we say. If so, surely part of being human is learning from your errors. You grow from your mistakes, and deepen from repentance. These things are our primary means of moral and spiritual learning, and Jesus—as both the Son of God and a human being—is meaningless if we strip him of them. . . . Who would Jesus be if his temptations were somehow less real than ours? His temptations were terrible—and they would get a lot worse than having a bad day and snapping at somebody.

It is never too late to do things differently. Correction can come from some pretty unexpected places, and we’d better be ready for it—if we want to become everything we can become. We should not be ashamed of error when it appears: shame cannot correct itself. It can only hide in silence, or stammer out a self-justification that doesn’t hold water. Better to hear ourselves, and hear others, and have the guts to change.

From “Was Jesus Always Right?” in From the Geranium Farm: A Second Crop of Daily eMails from Barbara Cawthorne Crafton. Copyright © 2003. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for August 22

The practice of exorcism by rituals and prayers was common in the ancient world, among Jews, pagans, and Christians alike. Today we are blessed to have other means of treating the physical and mental ailments that our ancestors termed “possession.” But I doubt that this is the whole story; I suspect that exorcism still has a place in our lives. Who has not felt the sudden lifting of what had seemed an unbearable burden, the removal of what for too long had been an unsurmountable obstacle? Who does not have something deep within that they would not wish to exorcise, so that it no longer casts a shadow on their capacity to receive and give love? . . .

When I think of the demons I need to exorcise, I have to look elsewhere; inward, to my heart and soul. Anger is my best demon, useful whenever I have to go into a Woman Warrior mode, harmful when I use it to gratify myself, either in self-justification, or to deny my fears. My husband, who has a much sweeter nature than I, once told me that my mean streak grieved him not just because of the pain it caused him but because it was doing me harm. His remark, as wise as that of any desert abba, felt like an exorcism. Not that my temptation to anger was magically gone, but I was called to pay closer attention to something that badly needed attention, and that was hurting our marriage. It confirmed my understanding of marriage as a holy act: one can no more hide one’s true faults from a spouse than from God, and in exorcising the demon of anger, that which could kill is converted, transformed into that which can heal.

From “Exorcism” in Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith by Kathleen Norris (Riverhead Books, 1998).

Daily Reading for August 23

You, too, daughter of Canaan,
conquered the Unconquerable One
by boldness for that justice.
The Just One set a boundary for the land of the Gentiles
that the Gospel might not cross over.
Blessed are you who broke through the fence fearlessly.
The Lord of boundaries extolled you
for the strength of your faith.
He healed your daughter inside your house from afar.
(From St. Ephrem the Syrian’s Hymns on Virginity)

Mother Spirit, we praise you for your nameless Syro-Phoenician daughter. A fiercely devoted and loving mother, she prevailed upon Jesus—a Jewish teacher and stranger to her—to cast a demon out of her daughter. Thank you for the woman’s persistence in doing what was necessary for her daughter’s well-being. We especially praise you that she did not give up when Jesus refused her at first, but continued to reason with him until he changed his mind and did what she asked of him. When we feel like outsiders and hit obstacles as we try to help others, remind us of the Syro-Phoenician Woman. Give us the words to touch the hearts of those with the power to make changes to benefit those in need. Amen.
(Collect for remembering the Syro-Phoenician or Canaanite Woman)

From She Who Prays: A Woman’s Interfaith Prayer Book by Jane Richardson Jensen and Patricia Harris-Watkins. Copyright © 2005. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for August 24 • The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

What saddens me these days is how many Christians I meet who identify themselves as “heretics”—jokingly if they are still in churches and defiantly if they are not. For some, the issue is that they believe less than they think they should about Jesus. They are not troubled by the thought that he may have had two parents instead of one, or that his real presence with his disciples after his death may have been more metaphysical than physical. The glory they behold in him has more to do with the nature of his being than with the number of his miracles, but they have suffered enough at the hands of other Christians to learn to keep their mouths shut.

For others, the issue is that they believe more than Jesus. Having beheld his glory, they find themselves better equipped to recognize God’s glory all over the place, including places where Christian doctrine says that it should not be. I know Christians who have beheld God’s glory in a Lakota sweat lodge, in a sacred Celtic grove, at the edge of a Hawaiian volcano and in a Hindu temple during the festival of lights, as well as in dreams and visions that they are afraid to tell anyone else about at all. These heretics not only fear being shunned for their unorthodox narratives; they also fear sharing some of the most powerful things that have ever happened to them with people who may ridicule them.

Given the history of Christians as a people who started out beholding what was beyond belief in the person of Jesus, this strikes me as a lamentable state of affairs, both for those who have learned to see no more than they are supposed to see as well as for those who have excused themselves from traditional churches because they see too little or too much. If it is true that God exceeds all our efforts to contain God, then is it too big a stretch to declare that dumbfoundedness is what all Christians have most in common? Or that coming together to confess all that we do not know as we reach out to one another is at least as sacred an activity as declaring what we think we do?

From “Way Beyond Belief: The Call to Behold” by Barbara Brown Taylor, quoted in Shouts and Whispers: Twenty-One Writers Speak about Their Writing and Their Faith, edited by Jennifer L. Holberg (Eerdmans, 2006).

Daily Reading for August 25 • St. Bartholomew the Apostle

The remarkable characteristic of Bartholomew is his low profile. We cannot even be sure who he was. Early sources suggest his full name was Nathanael bar (son of ) Tolmai—later, Bartholomew—the Nathanael who was the friend of Philip and who questioned, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46). Even though he is reputed to have written a gospel, it did not survive. Neither do we know for certain of his ending. While not the only one of the twelve to live in relative obscurity, Bartholomew represents a quiet alternative to the more visible and vocal public witnesses so frequently associated with the apostles.

Is it purely by accident that Bartholomew is overshadowed? Is it merely that his signal contributions, like so many, were lost for lack of archival care or scattered in subsequent upheavals? Were his contributions intentionally destroyed by jealous or rival factions of the kind that divided the post-resurrection community into separate cohorts of loyalty to Peter or Paul or Apollos? Was Bartholomew one of those persons who actually did very little, who only went along for the ride, so to speak? Or was Bartholomew the thoughtful one, prone to process his faith internally and intellectually, without a big fuss? . . .

We are never to excuse cowardice or demur from opportunity, but neither can we look down on those whose genuine gifts manifest themselves quietly. The meditative and thoughtful, the quiet and unassuming, also serve. That we have a written witness of Jesus’ life and teachings at all we owe probably not to the flamboyant but to the cloistered imaginations that shaped the narratives and hands that recorded them. That we have a faith at all we owe to the multitude of anonymous scholars and scribes who wrote, tended, and translated the story.

From Brightest and Best: A Companion to the Lesser Feasts and Fasts by Sam Portaro (Cowley, 2001).

Daily Reading for August 26

John of the Cross speaks to people who feel unable to change. We may have sensed in our lives a call to freedom, to wholeness, to more than what we are now. John felt this as a call to reach out for God. But within us, an unvoiced fear can make change impossible. It is the fear that when we reach, we may not find. It begs the question: If I give myself, will God fill me in my life?

Our being naturally hesitates to say ‘yes’ to a one-way track that may end only in wasteland. This is the undermining fear, and while we may not opt for a different track, we may never fully choose this one.

Here John of the Cross has something helpful to say. Poet, pastor, mystic, John is first a witness to the impact of God in his life. He has taken the risk of surrender, and can speak with the authority of one who has been there. He testifies to a God who, precisely, is pressing in to meet, to change, and to fill us in our deepest need.

From The Impact of God by Ian Matthew, quoted in Wisdom of the Cloister: A Monastic Reader, edited by John Skinner (Image Books, 1999).

Daily Reading for August 27 • Thomas Gallaudet, 1902 and Henry Winter Syle, 1890

I remember very vividly the first time that I ever saw Dr. Gallaudet. I was a candidate for Holy Orders. I do not want to say anything to give anybody pain--certainly not a priest of the Church, whose office it is to minister in the City of New York; but I was wandering about the streets of New York on a summer day--it was in August, I remember--to find, if I might, a church that was open on a Sunday afternoon in August. I am sorry to say that I was not very successful, till I came to St. Ann’s Church, where I supposed, curiously enough (such was my ignorance) that I had found my way into a church of extreme ritualistic usage, because the priest was standing before the altar in a black gown, in absolute silence, communicating by motions what he had to communicate to the people. Presently I discovered where I was, and soon fell under the spell of what I think nobody who ever saw him failed to recognize, and that was the spell of the singular eloquence--let me say it to my friends whose office is to communicate the Word of God and the mind of God by human gestures, and not by human speech--the singular grace and beauty and eloquence of Dr. Gallaudet’s action as a preacher with the hands, and by signs. Nobody who ever heard him read the service, and who knew what a singularly fine organ he had, and with what dignity and stateliness he could make himself heard in any congregation, could be unmindful that he was, as it were, putting one gift upon the shelf, in order that he might use the other for that people to whom he was bound in so many and such tender ways. I have always thought that his consecration of his gifts to their service was one of the finest things in the history of religion in this land. . . .

Dr. Gallaudet could easily be differentiated from other men by what he was not; but I prefer to remember what he was; to remember how he moved to and fro among all sorts and conditions of men, making life sweeter because he was part of it and human speech more tender, and our judgments of men more forbearing, by the exquisite patience which I sometimes think was the finest note of his character, however imperfectly we imitate and reproduce it.

I thank God for his great ministry; and I beseech you, my brethren, to whom especially he spoke, and for whom especially he lived, to carry forward the power of his life by the strong and consistent and ardent faith with which you follow and serve your Master, even as he followed and served his!

From “A Memorial Tribute to the Rev. Thomas Gallaudet, D.D. L.H.D.,” delivered at the funeral of the Rev. Dr. Thomas Gallaudet by the Rt. Rev. Henry Codman Potter, Bishop of the Diocese of New York. Originally published by The Fanwood Press, New York, in 1902. Transcribed by Wayne Kempton, Archivist of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, in 2007. http://anglicanhistory.org/usa/gallaudet/memorial1902.html

Daily Reading for August 28 • Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, 430

Augustine of Hippo’s On Patience. . . confines itself to two questions: where does Christian patience come from and what is its character? . . . Augustine argues that patience has but a single source, the free and unmerited grace of God, and defines patience as that which helps us “endure evils with equanimity so as not to abandon, through a lack of equanimity, the good through which we arrive at the better.” But calm and faithful endurance is a theme that gathers about itself a cluster of associated ideas: forbearance, expectation, and perseverance. “The patient,” he continues, “who prefer to bear wrongs without committing them rather than to commit them by not enduring them, both lessen what they suffer in patience and . . . do not destroy the good which is great and eternal.” Through a forbearance that has no thought of punishment or revenge, those who are patient neither permit an injury to become an obsession even more painful than the original hurt, nor do they retaliate, which would cancel out the difference between themselves and those who harm them. Leave judgment to God, counsels Augustine, . . . lest you yourself be found wanting because you have yielded to the stirrings of impatience.

From “The Gift of Perseverance” in Patience: How We Wait Upon the World by David Baily Harned (Cowley Publications, 1997).

Daily Reading for August 29

The first recommendation tonight is: don’t let us waste much time gazing at ourselves. A deepened and enriched sense of God is far more important than increased and detailed knowledge of the self. God, our redeemer and sustainer, is all and does all, and is the one Reality. Life comes with such thoughts. Plunging more deeply in him with faith and love will do more than self-concerned efforts. We can do nothing of ourselves but depress ourselves and get fussy.

Don’t behave like the inexperienced motorist who goes for a drive and spends all day lying in the road under the machine examining the works. The soul is a delicate and intricate machine. When it needs pulling to pieces, it is best to leave it to God. Our prayer should be that of Saint Augustine: “The house of my soul is narrow. Enlarge it, so that you may enter in. It stands in ruins: do you repair it and make it fair.”

First to last, put all emphasis on God. Attend to him. Forget yourselves if you can. Bathe in his light. Respond to the unmatched attraction. Be energized by his power. Try to realize a little of the perpetual molding action of his Spirit on your souls.

Have you ever seen the popular experiment of iron filings in the field of a magnet? Those little specks of matter are nothing in themselves, but when they are placed in the field of a magnet, each becomes a centre of energy, instantly influenced by an invisible power. They align themselves parallel to the lines of the magnet’s force.

From The Ways of the Spirit by Evelyn Underhill, quoted in Wisdom of the Cloister: A Monastic Reader, edited by John Skinner (Image Books, 1999).

Daily Reading for August 30

The end of Benedictine spirituality is to develop a transparent personality. Dissimulation, half answers, vindictive attitudes, a false presentation of self are all barbs in the soul of the monastic. Holiness, this ancient rule says to a culture that has made crafty packaging high art, has something to do with being who we say we are, claiming our truths, opening our hearts, giving ourselves to the other pure and unglossed.

From The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages by Joan Chittister (Crossroad, 1996).

Daily Reading for August 31 • The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Here we have two rich biblical themes—messiahship and discipleship. Here we have also two illustrations of the human tendency to try to redefine the meaning of biblical teachings to make them more palatable, thereby distorting or corrupting them. But something else is also illustrated here. We can see at work here two fundamental moral impulses that are part of our essential God-given human nature. . . .

The first of these impulses is our human desire to achieve a good end or purpose, to bring about a final victory of the righteous over the unrighteous, to resolve the contradictions of life by realizing some perfect state of things, some version of the Kingdom of God. Hence Peter’s negative response to the idea of a suffering Messiah, one who would only take sin onto himself but not finally resolve the contradictions and tragedies of human history. The second impulse is the human need to live in accord with some understanding of human obligation, to be faithful to that to which we have given allegiance, to do what is right. Hence our desire to water down the demands of discipleship to the level of the humanly possible, so that we can have the satisfaction of being obedient, but without excessive cost. The first impulse is to achieve some state of affairs we acknowledge to be good—peace, a just society, the Kingdom of God. The second is to act rightly in obedience to what we acknowledge to be our highest law—the Constitution, social expectations, the great commandment. The first asks, “What goal am I to seek?”; the second asks, “What is it my obligation to do?”

Those were in fact the underlying questions in the encounter between Jesus and his disciples. They are also the underlying questions for us in our Christian pilgrimage.

From “Jesus’ Messiahship and Our Discipleship” by Allan M. Parrent, quoted in Best Sermons 2 edited by James W. Cox (Harper & Row, 1989).