Lectionary Notes and More

The Week of Quadragesima: Lent I
Sunday, 21 February AD 2010

It’s Friday morning, the third day of Lent, and near the end of a very busy week. There were pancakes on Tuesday, two celebrations of the Ash Wednesday rite, Stations of the Cross and the first session of a Lenten Study yesterday evening. There eas also the preparation of the study, and there’s still a sermon to get ready for Sunday (even though there’s also Vestry)! So in providing some reflections on this week’s readings, I find that I must fall back on other resources —at least more obviously than I usually do. Nonetheless, I trust that these comments will be of some assistance. As always, the notes at the RCL site are helpful.

Anglican Resources for Anglicans

When we come to the Gospel reading, I will direct you to some sermons from the past which I have found very helpful. This reminds me to mention a very valuable Anglican resource you may not have met yet It is Project Canterbury, “a free online archive of out-of-print Anglican texts and related modern documents,” which may be found at http://anglicanhistory.org/.

Another useful site is The Anglican Library. “The aim of the Anglican Library is to publish new HTML editions of Christian literature from the Anglican tradition and other works that have traditionally been of interest to Anglicans. In addition, we hope to serve as a guide to Anglican literature located elsewhere on the internet.”

See http://www.anglicanlibrary.org/index.htm.

The Readings
Deuteronomy 26.1-11

In Year C the first reading is the passage from Deuteronomy which gives directions for the ofering of firstfruits in thanksgiving in the promised Land. In the Roman Missal, a shorter section is read from this chapter; it is only verses 4-10, the declaration to be made when the offering is handed over to the priest. This declaration centres on God’s mighty act of salvation in the Exodus. A note in the New St Joseph Daily Missal reminds that the Exodus had “a meaning similar to what the death and resurrection of Jesus means to us as Christians. Both are might acts of God resulting in liberation. Both inspire a Confession of Faith in which these mighty acts are recited.” At the beginning of Lent this reading makes us look forward to the Christian Passover which is the goal of the season and all its disciplines.

Psalm 91.1-2, 9-16

This psalm is classed as a psalm of trust ending with an oracle of salvation (vv. 14-16); the promse of glory and length of days in the final oracle points to the kings as being its recipient. Verses 10-11 are quoted by the devil in today’s Gospel reading. The art of quotation, it has been said, is knowing when to stop. It is interesting to note that in Luke 4.11, the devil stops quoting this psalm at v. 12, omitting the next verse which promise that with the help of angels the faithful will trample on wild beasts, in which, as the NJBC puts it, “the psalm moves from God’s protecting his faithful one to his equipping him to battle evil (cf.Ps 18)”.

The Epistle: Romans 10.8b-13

The notes in the St Joseph Missal identify this reading as containing a Baptismal confession (v.9), thereby linking it to the confession in the first reading.
The Comments in the New Oxford Annotated Bible and in the NJBC are helpful, placing this passage in the wider section, Romans 9.30-10.13, in which St Paul is explaining that “true righteousness is by faith”, which is in turn part of his argument that the new way of righteousness in Christ Jesus does not contradict God’s promises of old to Israel (9.1-11.36). Thus the Gentiles who come to confess that Jesus is Lord are called by the same Lord who called Israel to be his people (10.12).

The Holy Gospel: Luke 4.1-11

Every year on the first Sunday in Lent the Gospel readings tell us of the Temptation of our Lord in the Wilderness, because it is on his forty days’ fast that Lent is modelled. Perhaps you will forgive me for sending you to some works which I have found to be better reflections on this Sunday’s Gospel reading than anything I can think up.. For years my first reading about the Temptation has been in sermons of two great Anglican preachers of the seventeenth century.
John Cosin (1594-1672), Bishop of Durham, and one of the architects of the Restoration of the Church in 1660, preached two sermons on our Lord’s Temptations. When and where he preached them is not recorded, but it seems likely that it was at his parish of Brancepath in Yorkshire, perhaps soon before 1630. They may be found on line at
http://anglicanhistory.org/lact/cosin/1/sermon4.html

and
http://anglicanhistory.org/lact/cosin/1/sermon5.html

One reason I think Cosin’s two sermons were for his parish is that they are clearly based on a series of seven sermons on the Temptations by Lancelot Andrewes, and are very compressed and simplified versions of them. Andrewes' sermons may be found in his collected Works, volume 5, and are on line at
http://anglicanhistory.org/lact/andrewes/v5/index.html.

Don’t forget to check the collection of patristic commentaries in the Catena Aurea at http://www.catecheticsonline.com/CatenaAurea-Luke4.php.

Now it's Friday noon, and that’s all there is for this week.

Lectionary Notes

Some Reflections for the Fourth Sunday in Advent, Year C
Sunday, 20 December, 2009

As we near the end of Advent time seems to be running away rather rapidly; this is perhaps appropriate at a time when we ponder the eschaton and the end of days. Whether my condition is as sublime as that might make it sound, the weekend has come and I am not even close to having digested my notes on the readings into a shape that might be useful for my few but faithful readers. Indeed, unless I am hit with some brilliant idea tha I need to broadcast, there will not be notes here for Christmas or the Sunday following. I am sorry, but I hope you will understand. The RCL notes are always available.

Nonetheless, here are two comments that might be helpful.

The Collect for today, in which we pray that we, like the Blessed Virgin, may embrace God’s will in all things, seems most fitted to Year B, when the Gospel of the Annunciation is read. It is not so far off from the words which the Epistle to the Hebrews takes from the Greek version of Psalm 40: See, I have come to do your will.

First Reading: Micah 5.2-5a

Zephaniah’s genealogy is given for four generations; not even Micah’s father in named. Little is known of his personal life, and he had no political role. Micah preached in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, that is 740-687 bc. These were bad days for Judah: the Assyrians conquered Damascus, Samaria; and Ashdod: by taking the coastal regions they had Judah in their grip and besieged Jerusalem in 701. Micah’s own home Moresheth in the lower country of south-west Judah was menaced by the invaders. The danger to Judah was not only from without: “Prophets, priests and judges accepted bribes; merchants cheated; Canaanite cults were used alongside the Yahwistic ones [NJBC]. Though Micah was more concerned with sin and punishment than with political or cultic matters, he, like Isaiah, used the fall of Samaria in 721 bc as an example for Jerusalem. His prophesies are organized on a pattern of oracles of doom followed by oracles of promise.
The reading this Sunday is an oracle of great promise: after a prophesy of destruction and exile (4.9-14) cmes the anouncement of a new David coming to restore his kingship. Matthew 2.5-6 shows hiw this text came to be interpreted [NJBC]. Like David this king will be shepherd of the people. The reference to Bethlehem does not necessarily mean that the Messiah will be born there, but that he will spring from the royal line of David. Textual criticism suggests, in fact that Bethlehem is a latter addition to the text (on this, please refer to a commentary such as the the NJBC)
If that is so, then we can see Bethlehem as an image deepen and gain power as it is used in the Scriptures. In the first instance, the prophet may have had in mind only that the promised Messiah would be born of the house of David, and expressed this by reference to Ephratha {see Gen 35.19; Ruth 4.11; 1 Sam 17.12]. But by the time the passage was used in the Gospel, there is a clear reference to Bethlehem, and it appears that the belief was current that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem [see Matthew 2.5, John 7.42]. In the preaching of the Gospel Christians have found even more in the name Bethlehem. To take one example from a sermon of Gregory the Great:
“Bethlehem is by interpretation the house of bread. For it is the Lord Himself who says, ‘I am the bread of life which came down from heaven.’ The place therefore where the Lord was born was before called the house of bread, because it was there that He was to appear in His fleshly nature who should refresh the souls of the elect with spiritual fullness.”
I hope I will have a chance to provide some reflections in theis space at Christmas, and think further about this meaning; for not only was the Bread of Heaven born in the House of Bread, he was laid in a manger. But for now I will leave you to ponder this.
This is the only reading from Micah in the 3-year cycle. In the Hebrew text it is 5.1-4a; the numbering of verses in our versions comes from the edition of the Vulgate in use in medieval and early modern times; the New Vulgate (1979) agrees with the Hebrew and Septuagint numbering.

I comment on the Gospel reading in the homily, which I might post on Sermonets if the respons is good. But I fear it is rather pedestrian.