A Gracious Rain: A Devotional Comentary on the Prayers of the Church Year
208
A Gracious Rain: A Devotional Comentary on the Prayers of the Church Year
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780819223265 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Church Publishing, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2008 |
| Pages: | 208 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d) |
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Read an Excerpt
A Gracious Rain
A Devotional Commentary on the Prayers for the Church Year
By Richard H. Schmidt
Church Publishing, Inc.
Copyright © 2008 Richard H. SchmidtAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8192-2326-5
CHAPTER 1
Advent to Christmas
* * *
First Sunday of Advent
To Cast Away the Works of Darkness
Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal.
* * *
The year begins with a bleak, eerie prayer, uttered in the darkness.
I am lying on this cold, damp slab. I see only dim shadows, and I hear groans, sighs, and murmurings from them. I am not alone. And I feel unseen creatures scurrying about me, crawling over me: spiders, cockroaches, rats, mice, bats. Like them, I am a creature of the dungeon. All of us who moan in this darkness are creatures of the dungeon. Almighty God, help us!
The darkness terrifies us. It is no ordinary darkness. The scientists speak of a darkness that has no form or movement or will because it has no existence; it is neither good nor bad because it is nothing at all, the mere absence of light. But this is not the darkness of the scientists. This is a different kind of darkness, an energetic, aggressive malevolence seeking to envelop and consume us. In this darkness the seeds of self-will sprout and grow, their tendrils creeping across the dungeon floor, rooting themselves in the dampness of its cracks and wrapping themselves around our neck and limbs. They strangle what is left of our health. Cut off from light, we grow accustomed to the darkness; damp, stale air fills our lungs. We have stopped resisting the darkness. Perhaps it is normal, inevitable. Perhaps it is simply the way things are.
But God, I know that it need not be so. The darkness has not yet claimed every corner, and I can still dream of a different place and time. We all dream of it, for often I hear impassioned words—prayers?—amid the groans of those who languish beside me in these gray shadows. We dream of a garden where we walk with you in the light of day, of a time of contentment with you and all your creatures. The dream is distant but clear. We long for it, as for a blessing remembered from long ago, from before we had succumbed to the works of darkness.
We would cast away the works of darkness, O God, but our muscles have decayed in the dungeon and we lack the strength. And so we pray to you: "Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light." We are helpless; the power to cast away the works of darkness must come from outside ourselves. It must come from you, O God. We beg for your grace, the power that you give to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. That is what we pray for, O God—grace to begin again.
"I share your dream; indeed, I have dreamt it longer than you, and I have been waiting for you to call to me. No longer shall you lie limp on the dungeon floor. I have sought you out and joined you in the dungeon, encountering the darkness alongside you. The time of your deliverance has come. Now in the time of this mortal life I come to you. In humility I come, stooping to you that I may lift you in my arms. I come to take upon myself all your tawdry failures and acts of disobedience and to lead you home again. As I attack and banish the darkness, I shall escort you up and out of the dungeon. You will once again grow bold, and traveling in my entourage, you will glisten with reflected light. Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you."
Second Sunday of Advent
Your Messengers the Prophets
Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer.
* * *
God sends his messengers today, just as he has always done, and like others before us, we do not heed their warnings. That is partly because we fail to recognize God's messengers. The ambiguities of human nature and the complexities of the choices we face make it hard to identify a prophet of the Lord. It seems one person's prophet is another person's heretic. If things were more clear, faithfulness might be easier. I sometimes think God loves ambiguity.
And yet, I can hear God saying, "Ambiguity is your problem, not mine. My messages are clear enough to those who listen. Even if someone should rise from the dead, you would not believe because you do not want to believe. Hearing and responding to my messages is a matter of choice, not of clarity. If there is a problem, it is not with the message and it is not with your life situation. The problem is you."
We don't want to repent. To repent is to change, and we want to remain as we are. We're comfortable. We don't want to turn around and begin moving in another direction. We would be faithful and walk with the Lord, but only if that means continuing as we are. We will follow Jesus so long as Jesus goes where we want to go.
And yet, we do want to repent. Our souls are conflicted. We feel exhausted, barren, empty—why do we still cling to this emptiness? We cling to the emptiness because it is our emptiness. We define and control it; it's all about us. To repent merely because we want to fill our emptiness would be a false repentance, because we would still be absorbed with ourselves. Genuine repentance focuses not on ourselves but on God alone. We hear the prophets speak of it, and we long for it but still hold back. Grant us the gift of true repentance, Lord. And if we are willing to repent with only half a heart, convert our whole heart. Do this in us, Lord, for your glory's sake, not for our own.
Who are the prophets of the Lord today? They are likely those who create discomfort for us, provoke and anger us, challenge what we think, say, and do. We are usually too busy to consider them; our ears are full of other noises. The prophets remain on the periphery of our awareness. They may be conservative or liberal, polished or rough, sacred or secular. They come from unexpected quarters and say unexpected things. Sometimes they seem irreverent, even blasphemous, rejecting what we would cling to. Their message is always the same: Repent. Change. Become a new person. Perhaps tomorrow we will listen to them.
By calling us to repent, the prophets prepare the way for our salvation. Repentance is not salvation, but it is the beginning of salvation. Salvation is Christ permeating us, drenching us, transforming us, rebirthing us. Repentance sets the table; Christ provides the feast. He is himself the feast.
And when Christ comes, how will we greet him? There are several possibilities: To greet him with fear. To greet him with scorn. To greet him with casual acceptance. To be so distracted with other things as not to greet him at all. Grant us grace, merciful God, that we may greet him with joy.
Third Sunday of Advent
Stir Up Your Power
Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us.
* * *
What an odd way to begin a prayer! Does God's power need stirring up, like sugar that has settled to the bottom of a glass of tea, or a fire whose flames have died down? Has God's power lost its punch?
I think not. God is always at work, and his power is ever stirring in his world. But this is not always apparent to us. Our awareness of God's power comes and goes. It sometimes appears to us that God has been distracted or has gone to sleep, whereas it is actually we who have become distracted or gone to sleep. When we pray that the Lord stir up his power, we are really asking that he tap us on the shoulder or snap his fingers in our ear, that he arouse not himself, but us.
God has stirred me up many times when my soul had grown indolent. The most significant of these stirrings was when I encountered my wife, Pam. I believed in God when I met Pam, but my relationship to God, like everything else in my life, was largely intellectual. I read and analyzed theology, and called that faith. My faith was a dry, cold thing. Pam didn't approach God that way, nor did she respond when I sat her down to share my truth with her. I stiffened my back, determined to make her see things as I saw them. But the more I came to know Pam, the more I came to see that although she had read little theology, she understood more about God than I did. My heart and soul began to tremble, not only with love for Pam (though they trembled with that as well), but with a new love for God. That stirring up of God's power in my soul has proved typical: it has usually been through another human being that God has stirred me up.
Although every one of us can pray for the stirring up of God's power in our lives, this prayer focuses on the life of the church as a whole, upon the spirit that enlivens (or doesn't enliven) relationships among Christians.
As with individuals, when God's power is not manifest in the church, it's because we're not listening to, caring about, and treasuring each other. God cannot stir us up through another if we're not paying attention to the other. We dwell instead on things of little consequence. Ecclesiastical doctrines and polities, budgets, rubrics, calendars, schedules, programs, deciding whom to ordain, deciding who's in charge, who is in and who is out, who's right and who's wrong—I suppose discussing these things can be a means to serve and follow the Lord, but they often assume a value of their own, overshadowing everything else, soaking up our attention and energy. Discordant noises fill our ears, voices that demand, judge, gripe, and bark. Sometimes the voices come from within us. We grow exhausted and cynical. Our sin, the thing that "sorely hinders" us, is our preoccupation with the sounds of these voices. The business of the church matters only when we see the Lord in and through and beyond it. Where is God in all this busyness, we ask? God is there, in the middle of it, in the faces of one another. But sometimes we are too busy to look for him.
Lord, still our voices that you may stir our souls. "Let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us," that we may pause amid the clamor and listen to you.
"Here I am," you will say, "where I have always been, in your midst, immersed in the clutter and commotion of your life. Be still, all of you, and listen to me."
Fourth Sunday of Advent
Daily Visitation
Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself.
* * *
My rooms are vast. Most of them have sat empty for years. I have closets that are rarely opened, containing old hat boxes, coats that smell of mothballs, yellowed school papers and yearbooks, frayed Christmas ornaments, dresses that will never be worn again, dead bugs on the floor in the corner. I have spare bedrooms with lumpy, mildewed mattresses, back halls that creak when you walk through them, casement windows that let the cold air in, portraits of stern-looking ancestors hanging on my walls.
Most people see me only from the outside. They gaze upon my turrets and gabled eaves and imagine me a charming, elegant place, a sumptuous mansion. I am glad they do not see within me. My eaves leak. Cold, wet fear penetrates my walls and trickles down inside, staining and buckling my wallpaper. One hurt feeling, one bit of self-righteousness or self-pity leads to ten more just like it. Resentments breed within my walls like roaches. They crawl over my floors late at night. I try to banish them, but they come back. I am infested.
The linoleum in my kitchen is dried and cracking. It peels up from the floor. Beneath it lie grimy thoughts, fantasies, intentions, and memories. My wiring is dangerous, full of suppressed anger that could burst into flame and destroy me. It's all I can do to keep from burning up. Don't stand too close to me. Heavy film covers my windows, the grit of false loyalties and loves, blocking out the sunshine and the stars.
I've been afraid to let anyone in to see what really goes on inside me. I keep everyone on the outside, where I can appear elegant and gracious. My inside is closed, a dark, secret place known only to me. And because I never open my door, its hinges have rusted away; if I wanted to let you in now, I'm not sure I could.
Knock! Knock!
You can't come in. Go away.
Knock! Knock!
Who is it? What do you want?
"Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me."
No, not you! I know that voice! Anyone but you!
"I'm not leaving." Knock! Knock!
But I'm not ready for you! Go away. Come back another time.
"Now is the time." Knock! Knock!
Well, then ... just a minute. I'm coming. There. I've loosened the dead bolt.
"That's not enough. Open the door. Invite me in."
Uh ... all right. I've opened the door. Come in. But stand right there and don't look around.
"Why did you wait so long to invite me in? Did you think you had to fix yourself up first? That's my job. Look—I've brought my toolbox, my heavy-duty vacuum cleaner, new shingles and roofing nails, rolls of wallpaper and paste, new flooring, and mops and soap and scrubbing brushes. I've got it all, everything you need. I've always had it, only you wouldn't let me in. I'm going to clean every corner and crevice, fix you up, throw open your windows and let the fresh air in. I'll remodel you and make you a mansion fit for myself, for I have come not merely to visit—I have come to stay, to make my home in you, to live in you, to shine through you. All I needed was your invitation.
"But first I brought you a feast We eat first, work later. I've been waiting so long, and I've missed you desperately while you've been closed up inside. We've got to get to know each other, tell stories, and share some laughs together. While I set the table, you can begin telling me your deepest dreams and longings. Do not be afraid. This is not the end, but the beginning."
The Nativity of Our Lord: Christmas Day I
The Yearly Festival
O God, you make us glad by the yearly festival of the birth of your only Son Jesus Christ: Grant that we, who joyfully receive him as our Redeemer, may with sure confidence behold him when he comes to be our Judge.
* * *
I enjoy Christmas trees with their tinsel, hanging balls, and shiny lights. I love Messiah, The Nutcracker, and singing carols on Christmas Eve. I like looking into the faces of little children as they speak of Santa. Home-baked cookies, fresh citrus fruit arriving in corrugated boxes, hot wassail on a snowy night—all these I love.
How do these things pertain to the Incarnation of the Son of God? Most of them have more to do with sentimentality than with Christ, and some seem almost like frivolous intrusions into a holy season, peripheral things that threaten to become ends unto themselves. If that happens, Christmas will become no more significant than New Year's Day, surely the most artificial and meaningless of festivals. People blow horns the night before, ring bells, and consume too much food and drink—and for what reason? The date is an arbitrary one, and nothing changes from December 31 to January 1 except the calendar on the wall and the incidence of dull headaches the next morning. But even the headaches will pass, and the second day of January will find the world much as it was before.
If the Christmas festival becomes nothing more than decorative ornaments, pretty music, and rich hors d'oeuvres, it becomes another New Year's, an irrelevant blip in a series of meaningless events.
All these things, however, can point to a reality beyond themselves. They can become sacraments. What have bread and wine to do with the presence of Christ in the soul? Apparently nothing, yet everything to those who see beyond the apparent. What have plastic creche scenes, jingle bells, bright red sweaters, and fruitcakes to do with the birth of the Son of God? Apparently nothing, and yet ...
Everything depends on whether the birth of Christ changes anything in us. If it doesn't, then Christmas Day and New Year's Day are both merely days to sleep in late. But if it does, then Christmas becomes a real holiday, a holy day, the day when we receive at last our Redeemer and Judge.
We behold him "with sure confidence" as our Judge because we know our Judge is also our Redeemer. The One who peers into the deepest corners of our souls is also the One who restores our souls. We welcome the uncompromising judgment of Christ because of the enabling grace of Christ. The Lord of the universe not only holds our lives up to the light to evaluate them, but transforms what he sees. A world visited by such a Judge and Redeemer is never the same again.
How might such an event be commemorated in a yearly festival? By solemn acts of charity and devotion, certainly. But all outward observances will fall short of the reality of the event itself, and none is therefore to be dismissed out of hand. If sweet music, funny costumes, and boxes wrapped in ribbon seem too worldly a way to receive our Judge and Redeemer, could not the same have been said of gold, frankincense, and myrrh?
So let us deck the halls, bake the cookies, and light up the tree.
The Nativity of Our Lord: Christmas Day Ii
This Holy Night
O God, you have caused this holy night to shine with the brightness of the true Light: Grant that we, who have known the mystery of that Light on earth, may also enjoy him perfectly in heaven.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Gracious Rain by Richard H. Schmidt. Copyright © 2008 Richard H. Schmidt. Excerpted by permission of Church Publishing, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Preface
Advent to Christmas
Epiphany Season
Lent
Easter Season
The Sundays after Pentecost
What People are Saying About This
“In this pastoral and intimate volume, Father Schmidt harvests for us the fruits of a lifetime of prayer. As he himself observes, it is how we Anglicans pray that defines us; and these small meditations are warm, cordial proofs of the grace that rests in that truism.”
—Phyllis Tickle compiler, The Divine Hours