Quench the Flaming Arrows of the Evil One
From today’s Lectionary readings:
Ephesians 6:10-24
10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. 11Put on the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12For our* struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. 13Therefore take up the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. 14Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. 15As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. 16With all of these,* take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
18 Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints.19Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel,* 20for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak.
Mind Your Own Business!
This message from yesterday’s Lectionary Readings made me laugh because different cultures have such differences, even in my own country, the United States of America.
I grew up in the great Pacific Northwest, on an island in Alaska, surrounded by Scandinavian immigrants and Alaskan natives and pioneers from the “lower 48,” as we called the USA, which was then a territory and not yet a state. Neighbors relied on one another, and we were strongly interconnected, helping one another out in daily interactions, and in emergencies. We were close, and yet we were also insular – a curious child’s innocent inquiry (mine!) would be met with “Mind your own business.” It meant don’t ask questions. Give people their privacy. In truth, there were many people who had left the “lower 48” for good reasons, established new lives in the last frontier and did not want to be reminded of what kind of mess they might have left behind.
AdventureMan grew up in the deep South, a town of around 3,000 people where they joked that the population always remains the same – a new baby gets born, and a man leaves town.” When I come back from a meeting or a lunch with a friend, he has endless questions. When he meets my friends, he has questions. I tell him generalities, and he asks specifics, and I say something vague. I hurt his feelings when I don’t share all the details – in his culture, in his small town, everyone knew everything about everybody. No one had any secrets. People knew what you had done 50 years ago, and there was little room for changing anyones opinion of who you are now, how you might have changed. People regularly shared what they knew about one another.
We’ve been married decades, and we still push and pull on this issue – how much do we share? We both know there is not a right or wrong, just what feels right to him and what feels right to me, and we have to agree to disagree, and sometimes we can be very disagreeable!
This is what the Lectionary reading says:
Thessaalonians 4:10
But we urge you, beloved,* to do so more and more, 11to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we directed you, 12so that you may behave properly towards outsiders and be dependent on no one.
How does it work for you?
Give to Those Who Ask
Yesterday’s Lectionary readings were rich with wise instructions for navigating complicated situations.
First in Doha, then in Kuwait, and now, too, in Pensacola, we encounter beggers. In Doha, it could be women with babies, kicked out of their homes, or a begger in the middle of the street with a transfusion bag full of blood with an introvenous feed tube, begging for enough money to have the operation he needed for his kidneys (I later learned they were fake). In Kuwait, we had beggers who knew us, and who waited outside our favorite restaurants and we would give them our take-away boxes. In Pensacola, it is the homeless, often military veterans with mental health issues, families without homes, elderly men and women abandoned by the side of the road.
Many treat these people with scorn, insisting they are living like kings on what they scrounge from gullible givers. Some act with compassion, passing out bottles of water and fresh made sandwiches, or passing small bills to those at the corners. Discussion varies little about the “problem;” what is the right thing to do?
Living in the Middle East, I was the recipient myself of kind charity, stuck by the side of the road with a broken car, being given bottles of cold water while a kind stranger changed my flat tire, or a neighbor brought me a platter of leg of lamb and mensaf on an Eid holiday. People invited us into their homes and families. People were kind as I struggled to find words, and helped me understand customs which were strange to me. Charity comes with many faces.
If we are who we claim to be – People of the Book, believers – the answer is clear in this reading from Matthew:
Matthew 5:38-48
38 ‘You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” 39But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; 40and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; 41and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. 42Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.
43 ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” 44But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? 47And if you greet only your brothers and sisters,* what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Oscar Romero, Patron Saint of The Americas and El Salvador
My friends, when you hear that the immigrants seeking a new life in our country are rapists, thieves, the mentally ill and very bad people, please think of Oscar Romero, and all those who have fought the evil forces of thuggery and dictatorship to find a life of freedom for themselves, and for their families, especially, hope for their children.
I urge you to read a much criticized book, American Dirt, by Jeanine Cummins. Here is what Wikipedia says. My experience was that the struggles exposed in American Dirt are very typical of people seeking to escape the violence of their societies.
American Dirt is a 2020 novel by American author Jeanine Cummins, published by Flatiron Books. The book is about a Mexican bookseller who is forced to flee as an undocumented immigrant to the United States, along with her son, after her journalist husband exposes a local drug kingpin.
ÓSCAR ROMERO
ARCHBISHOP OF SAN SALVADOR, AND THE MARTYRS OF EL SALVADOR
(24 March 1980)
Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez (August 15, 1917 – March 24, 1980), commonly known as Monseñor Romero, was a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in El Salvador. He later became prelate archbishop of San Salvador.
As an archbishop, he witnessed numerous violations of human rights and began a ministry speaking out on behalf of the poor and victims of the country’s civil war. His brand of political activism was denounced by the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church and the government of El Salvador. In 1980, he was assassinated by gunshot while consecrating the Eucharist during mass. His death finally provoked international outcry for human rights reform in El Salvador.
In 1997, a cause for beatification and canonization into sainthood was opened for Romero and Pope John Paul II bestowed upon him the title of Servant of God. Pope Francis canonized Romero as a saint on 14 October 2018. He is considered the unofficial patron saint of the Americas and El Salvador and is often referred to as “San Romero” in El Salvador. Outside of Catholicism Romero is honored by other religious denominations of Christendom, like the Church of England through its Common Worship. He is one of the ten 20th-century martyrs from across the world who are depicted in statues above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey, London.
from Wikipedia
Also commemorated on this day are three Maryknoll nuns and a woman lay missionary killed by a Salvadoran army death squad on 2 Dec, 1980, and additionally six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter, who were also murdered by the Salvadoran army on 16 Nov. 1989.
Prayer for the Feast Day of Saint Cuthbert
From today’s Lectionary readings:
Merciful God, who called Cuthbert from following the flock to be a shepherd of your people: Mercifully grant that we also may go without fear to dangerous and remote places, to seek the indifferent and the lost; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
“I Have No Need of You”
From this morning’s Lectionary Readings:
1 Corinthians 12:12-26
12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.13For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
14 Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15If the foot were to say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16And if the ear were to say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?
18But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many members, yet one body. 2
1The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’, nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ 22On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and those members of the body that we think less honourable we clothe with greater honour, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; 24whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member, 25that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. 26If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it.
No Grown-Ups in Charge
We thought we would change the world, my generation. How on earth did we end up with a President who has the self-control, self-restraint, self-discipline, and dignity of a two-year-old?
How did we end up with a President who supports COAL, flying in the face of science, and wants to roll back protections against climate change, air pollution, water pollution, vaccinations, human rights, and stewardship of earthly resources?
What happened to the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, where we worked on harmony and understanding, and the dignity of ALL human beings?
How did we get stuck with a government of morons, whose first move was to remove all the bureaucratics who knew what they were doing? How did we allow all the oversights to be abolished?
How do we continue to allow the oligarchs to forbid the completion of a bridge between Canada and Michigan because of a conflict with a rich man who owns a competing bridge? How do we allow a Presidency which makes private deals to enrich his sons and son-in-law with opaque deals outside the public view?
How do we accept a new army of MERCENARIES, attracted by a $50K bonus for signing on, who have paltry training, disobey standard policing standards and who act with disregard to our national constitution?
I may be old, but I am not blind, nor am I stupid. I see, to my horror. I witness, and I document. I am part of a large and growing crowd of witnesses, (dead and alive!) who will call this administration to account for their grave injustices.
Pam Bondi, who cannot answer questions, who is protecting her boss, mentioned over one million times in the Epstein files, pointing her finger.
This week I attended a school service at our church, and the Old Testament reading was from Isaiah. It heartened me; this is what we are teaching our children
ISAIAH 58: 6-10
“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
8 Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
9 Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
10 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.”
Let us shine. Let us seek to shine.
On Friends and Friendship
I love the Lectionary. I learn so much. Today’s is one that I feel like I have never read before. I must have, I’ve been reading the Lectionary for over 30 years, but it feels fresh and new:
Sirach 6:5-17
5 Pleasant speech multiplies friends,
and a gracious tongue multiplies courtesies.
6 Let those who are friendly with you be many,
but let your advisers be one in a thousand.
7 When you gain friends, gain them through testing,
and do not trust them hastily.
8 For there are friends who are such when it suits them,
but they will not stand by you in time of trouble.
9 And there are friends who change into enemies,
and tell of the quarrel to your disgrace.
10 And there are friends who sit at your table,
but they will not stand by you in time of trouble.
11 When you are prosperous, they become your second self,
and lord it over your servants;
12 but if you are brought low, they turn against you,
and hide themselves from you.
13 Keep away from your enemies,
and be on guard with your friends.
14 Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter:
whoever finds one has found a treasure.
15 Faithful friends are beyond price;
no amount can balance their worth.
16 Faithful friends are life-saving medicine;
and those who fear the Lord will find them.
17 Those who fear the Lord direct their friendship aright,
for as they are, so are their neighbours also.
The “Righteous Gentiles”
Today in our church Lectionary, we celebrate those who stood up to the Nazi policies and shielded and rescued thousands of Jewish people who might otherwise not have survived the torture, imprisonment and extermination, solely for being “the other.”
PRAYER (contemporary language)
Lord of the Exodus, who delivers your people with a strong hand and a mighty arm: Strengthen your Church with the examples of the Righteous Gentiles of World War II to defy oppression for the rescue of the innocent; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
“THE RIGHTEOUS GENTILES”
Although the phrase “Righteous Gentiles” has become a general term for any non-Jew who risked their life to save Jews during the Holocaust, it here appears to apply specifically to: Raoul Wallenberg [Swedish, d. 1947] Hiram Bingham IV [d. 1988, American]; Karl Lutz [d. 1975, Swiss]; C. Sujihara [d. 1986, Japanese]; and Andre Trocme [d. 1971, French].
Raoul Wallenberg (August 4, 1912 – July 17, 1947?) was a Swedish humanitarian who worked in Budapest, Hungary, during World War II to rescue Jews from the Holocaust. Between July and December 1944, he issued protective passports and housed Jews, saving tens of thousands of Jewish lives.
On January 17, 1945, he was arrested in Budapest by the Soviets after they wrested control of the city from the Germans, and was reported to have been executed while a prisoner at Lubyanka Prison, although this is not entirely certain.
Wallenberg has been honored numerous times. He is an honorary citizen of the United States, Canada, Hungary and Israel. Israel has also designated Wallenberg one of the Righteous among the Nations. Monuments have been dedicated to him, and streets have been named after him throughout the world.
— more at Wikipedia
Hiram “Harry” Bingham IV (July 17, 1903 – January 12, 1988) was an American diplomat. He served as a Vice-Consul in Marseille, France, during World War II, and helped over 2,500 Jews to flee from France as Nazi forces advanced.
In 1939, Bingham was posted to the US Consulate in Marseille, where he, together with another vice-consul named Myles Standish, was in charge of issuing entry visas to the USA.
On June 10, 1940, Adolf Hitler’s forces invaded France and the French government fell. Several influential Europeans tried to lobby the American government to issue visas so that German and Jewish refugees could freely leave France and escape persecution.
Anxious to limit immigration to the United States and to maintain good relations with the Vichy government, the State Department actively discouraged diplomats from helping refugees. However, Bingham cooperated in issuing visas and helping refugees escape France. Hiram Bingham gave about 2,000 visas, most of them to well-known personalities, speaking English, including Max Ernst, André Breton, Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, Lion Feuchtwanger and Nobel prize winner Otto Meyerhof.
— more at Wikipedia
Carl Lutz (b. Walzenhausen, 30 March 1895; d. Berne, 12 February 1975) was the Swiss Vice-Consul in Budapest, Hungary from 1942 until the end of World War II. He helped save the lives of tens of thousands of Jews from deportation to Nazi Extermination camps during the Holocaust.
Lutz immigrated at the age of 18 to the United States, where he was to remain for more than 20 years. Lutz’s sojourn in the United States ended with his assignment as vice-consul to the Swiss Consulate General in Jaffa, in what was then Palestine.
Appointed in 1942 as Swiss vice-consul in Budapest, Hungary, Lutz soon began cooperating with the Jewish Agency for Palestine, issuing Swiss safe-conduct documents enabling Jewish children to emigrate.
Once the Nazis took over Budapest in 1944 and began deporting Jews to the death camps, Lutz negotiated a special deal with the Hungarian government and the Nazis: he had permission to issue protective letters to 8,000 Hungarian Jews for emigration to Palestine. Lutz then deliberately misinterpreted his permission for 8,000 as applying to families rather than individuals, and proceeded to issue tens of thousands of additional protective letters, all of them bearing a number between one and 8,000. He also set up some 76 safe houses around Budapest, declaring them annexes of the Swiss legation. Among the safe houses was the now well-known “Glass House” (Üvegház) at Vadász Street 29. About 3,000 Jews found refuge at the Glass House and in a neighboring building.
— more at Wikipedia
Chiune Sugihara (1 January 1900 – 31 July 1986) was a Japanese diplomat, serving as Vice Consul for the Japanese Empire in Lithuania. During World War II, he helped several thousand Jews leave the country by issuing transit visas to Jewish refugees so that they could travel to Japan. Most of the Jews who escaped were refugees from German-occupied Poland or residents of Lithuania. Sugihara wrote travel visas that facilitated the escape of more than 6,000 Jewish refugees to Japanese territory, risking his career and his family’s life.
When asked why he did it, he responded:
“You want to know about my motivation, don’t you? Well. It is the kind of sentiments anyone would have when he actually sees refugees face to face, begging with tears in their eyes. He just cannot help but sympathize with them. Among the refugees were the elderly and women. They were so desperate that they went so far as to kiss my shoes, Yes, I actually witnessed such scenes with my own eyes. Also, I felt at that time, that the Japanese government did not have any uniform opinion in Tokyo. Some Japanese military leaders were just scared because of the pressure from the Nazis; while other officials in the Home Ministry were simply ambivalent.
People in Tokyo were not united. I felt it silly to deal with them. So, I made up my mind not to wait for their reply. I knew that somebody would surely complain about me in the future. But, I myself thought this would be the right thing to do. There is nothing wrong in saving many people’s lives …. The spirit of humanity, philanthropy … neighborly friendship … with this spirit, I ventured to do what I did, confronting this most difficult situation —and because of this reason, I went ahead with redoubled courage. ”
When asked why he risked his career to save other people, he quoted an old samurai saying: “Even a hunter cannot kill a bird which flies to him for refuge.”
— more at Wikipedia
André Trocmé ( April 7, 1901 – June 5, 1971) and his wife Magda (née Grilli di Cortona, November 2, 1901, Florence, Italy – Oct. 10, 1996) are a couple of French Righteous Among the Nations. For 15 years, André served as a pastor in the town of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon on the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon in South-Central France. He had been sent to this rather remote parish because of his pacifist positions which were not well received by the French Protestant Church. In his preaching he spoke out against discrimination as the Nazis were gaining power in neighboring Germany and urged his Protestant Huguenot congregation to hide Jewish refugees from the Holocaust of the Second World War.
In 1938, André Trocmé and Reverend Edouard Theis founded the Collège Lycée International Cévenol in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France. Its initial purpose was to prepare local country youngsters to enter the university. When the refugees arrived, it also took in many Jewish young people wishing to continue their secondary education.
When France fell to Nazi Germany, the mission to resist the Nazis became increasingly important. Following the establishment of the Vichy France regime during the occupation, Trocmé and his church members helped their town develop ways of resisting the dominant evil they faced. Together they established first one, and then a number of “safe houses” where Jewish and other refugees seeking to escape the Nazis could hide. Many refugees were helped to escape to Switzerland following an underground railroad network. Between 1940 and 1944 when World War II ended in Europe, it is estimated that about 3500 Jewish refugees including many children were saved by the small village of Le Chambon and the communities on the surrounding plateau because the people refused to give in to what they considered to be the illegitimate legal, military, and police power of the Nazis.
— more at Wikipedia
I am thankful for Sawtucket, who has kept me up with my daily Lectionary readings for more than 22 years. I thank Sawtucket for today’s reading, reminding us that we are all of one blood, one humanity, no matter our skin color, our nationality, nor our religion. We are human beings, and our job is to watch over one another.
Take a Wife With You
Our church has daily readings, called The Lectionary, and the one I read also features Saints of the Church, people who have served in faithfulness. Today’s reading had an impact on me for several reasons. I was immediately caught by the fact he was assigned, and told to take a wife with him, at which point he immediately proposed to a woman he thought suitable who accepted. So interesting, and so different from the way “courtships” are conducted these days. (With more reading in Wikipedia, I discovered his education was funded by donors, he was trained as a blacksmith and he actually had a fiancee, and she was the one who married him and went with him to Moose Bay. She worked with the women.)
The union was fruitful. John Horden and his wife were able to accomplish great things among the Cree and Inuit, learning their language, preaching in their tongue. It sounds like more than the preaching, his life and his love of his parishoners attracted converts to the faith.
JOHN HORDEN
MISSIONARY BISHOP IN CANADA, 1893
John Horden (1828 – January 12, 1893) was the first Anglican Bishop of Moosonee, Canada.
On May 10, 1851, he received a letter from Church Missionary Society, informing him that the bishop of Rupert’s Land had made a request for a schoolmaster at Moose Factory, in northern Ontario, and that he had been appointed to fill the position. They also told him to prepare to leave within a month, and indicated that they desired he marry and take his wife out to assist him in his missionary work. Although he was less than enthused about the appointment, he immediately prepared for his new position. He contacted the woman of his choice, a young lady who herself had missionary inclinations, and she agreed to marry him. On June 8, 1851, they set sail for Canada. Horden spent much of his time on the trip by continuing his studies of the Greek Testament and beginning the study of the Cree language.
He went among the natives, writing down new words as he heard them and, after eight month’s effort, was able to preach to the natives without an interpreter. He was ordained a priest during this period. Soon Horden had prepared a prayer book, a hymnal, and translations of the Gospels in the Cree language.
Then in 1865, Horden and his family, which now included five children that he and his wife had had in Canada, sailed back to England so that his children could be educated. Upon Horden’s return to England, he found he was very well-known throughout the British Isles, and became a popular and sought-after speaker. In 1867, Horden returned with his wife to James’ Bay.
In the autumn of 1872, Horden received a message to return to England to be consecrated as a bishop, and on December 15, 1872, he and two others were ordained in a ceremony involving eight other bishops, including Bishop Anderson, who had first ordained Horden 20 years earlier.
He continued to serve as bishop of his huge territory, making pastoral visits to as many parts of his huge diocese as possible, despite his having a serious problem with rheumatism. In his later years, he also worked diligently to finish his translation of the Bible into the Cree language.
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