BCP Daily Office Lectionary for Oct. 31, 2004
Source: http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/index.htm
Morning Psalm(s): AM Psalm 24, 29 [Presbyterian: 103:1-22]
Evening Psalm(s) PM Psalm 8, 84 [Presbyterian: 117:1-2]
Old Testament: Ecclus. 36:1-17 [Zephaniah 1:1-6]
Epistle: 1 Cor. 12:27-13:13
Gospel Matt. 18:21-35
Presbyterian Readings for the current day:
http://www.pcusa.org/cgi-bin/lectiond.cgi
Ben Sira offers "a prayer for the deliverance and restoration of Israel" (Bruce M. Metzger & Roland E. Murphy, NOAB, on Ecclus. 36:1-22). He prays, "Have mercy upon us, O God of all,/and put all the nations in fear of you./Lift up your hand against foreign nations/and let them see your might" (vv. 1-2), with particular reference to the Seleucids (i.e. Hellenistic Syrians), who took control of Israel from the Ptolemys (i.e. Hellenistic Egyptians) after 198 B.C. He prays further, "Rouse your anger and pour out your wrath;/destroy the adversary and wipe out the enemy" (vv. 8-9). "Crush the heads of hostile rulers/who say, ‘There is no one but ourselves'" (v. 12). "Gather all the tribes of Jacob,/and give them their inheritance, as at the beginning./Have mercy, O Lord, on the people called by your name,/on Israel, whom you have named your firstborn" (v. 17). The prayer was answered to some extent a few years later, after the Maccabean Revolt, when Israel would be free and independent again for a few decades, until General Pompey and the Romans took control of them in 63 B.C.
After reviewing the gifts of the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:27-30), Paul points to "a still more excellent way" (v. 31), love (agape) which he characterizes in his famous "Love Chapter," (1 Cor. 13:1-13). The text of that chapter is superimposed on the wedding picture on the home page of this web site, showing Mark and Lori Worden and Pastor Robert Creech. "Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends . . . ." (1 Cor. 13:4-8). C. S. Lewis has written a book on The Four Loves, in which he says "The invitation to turn our natural loves [affection, friendship, eros] into Charity [agape] is never lacking. It is provided by those frictions and frustrations that meet us in all of them; unmistakable evidence that (natural) love is not going to be ‘enough'–unmistakable, unless we are blinded by egotism. . . . ‘If only I had been more fortunate in my children (that boy gets more like his father every day) I could have loved them perfectly.' . . . ‘If only my wife had fewer moods and more sense, and were less extravagant' . . . But in everyone, and of course in our selves, there is that which requires forbearance, tolerance, forgiveness. The necessity of practising these virtues first sets us, forces us, upon the attempt to turn–more strictly, to let God turn–our love into Charity [agape]" (The Four Loves, p. 186).
Matthew presents Jesus' teaching on forgiveness in response to Peter's question, "Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often shall I forgive him?" (Mt. 18:21). The short answer, "seventy-seven times," is illustrated by the story of the king who "wished to settle accounts with his slaves" (v. 23), and when the slave pleaded for mercy, the king forgave his debt of "ten thousand talents" (10,000 times 15 years of wages for a laborer). But when the slave refused to show similar mercy to another for a debt of "a hundred denarii" (100 days' wages), the king revoked his original forgiveness and "handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt" (v. 34). When we are forgiven, are we not to pass it on?
Ronald D. Worden, Ph.D.