welcome, happy morning!
Sunday: "Welcome, happy morning!" age to age shall say. Hell today is vanquished, Heaven is won today!
Blogging late and short. Sunday mornings when it's my day in the pulpit I get up at three o'clock, work over my sermon notes, Linda has breakfast ready for us at five o'clock, and at five-ten I like to go back to bed for an hour's nap. This morning, work on the sermon was more refurbishing than just usual, so Time slipped until it was too late for my postprandial nap. No matter.
11:54 Saturday morning, finished a small glass of a nice red, an Argentine Malbec that I bought to enjoy with Sunday's planned steak dinner from Bill's new store, Grocery Outlet in StAndrews, our new go-to grocery that's so close I could walk and push my own cart there and back if I weren't so sorry.
Crushed by Hurricane Michael, literally a pile of broken concrete blocks with a roof squashing meat, eggs, fruit and vegetables, it's taken them four and a half years to rebuild. They just opened a bright new story, and we went Thursday about noon. I bought a package with the two largest filet mignons I've ever seen at a meat counter. Last Time I saw filets this big was the Carpet Bagger set down in front of me, my first steak in Australia, it'd have been, what? Spring 1978, eh?
Carpet Bagger: in Australia, a huge filet mignon sliced open in the middle and stuffed with raw oysters. Rare to medium-rare, the beef is perfect and the oysters are warm. Or cool.
For today's Sunday Dinner, I don't have oysters, so, IDK, may stuff them with mushrooms. But the Malbec is waiting.
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Here's our Collect of the Day for today, the Second Sunday in Lent:
O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: Be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways, and bring us again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and ever hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word, Jesus Christ your Son; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
What's the theology of the prayer? The theology of Sunday's collect is that God's glory is always to have mercy on those who go astray from God's ways. What does that mean? Do God's ways include the church's rules about Lent? Looking out into our one universe of (how many universes are there?) 2022 estimate based on JWST of two trillion (2,000,000,000,000) two million million galaxies, it's a struggle for me to imagine God being offended if I give out chocolate cupcakes during Children's Time this morning.
It wouldn't be a sin anyway, would it! because Lent, the lenten fast, is the Forty Days before Easter, EXCLUDING SUNDAYS, which are always Feast Days of our Lord Jesus Christ. So what might I do that would be a sin, that would offend God of two trillion galaxies and counting?
Anyway, the Collect goes on with the petition? be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways (that's us). We Episcopalians like ancient prayers, and our historians date this collect to before 293 AD, a prayer for heretics and apostates, that they reform and be restored to the body of the faithful - - "and bring them back with penitent hearts and steadfast faith".
More theology in the Collect is that Jesus Christ is God's incarnate Word, who brings eternal, unchangeable truth.
For me, I find that discerning that Truth requires a great deal of study and contemplation, because it isn't always clear. An example is Jesus' explanation to Nicodemus in this morning's Gospel reading. Nicodemus is confused, and reading this gospel lesson I find myself right there with him.
The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John (3:1-17)
There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
The Gospel of the Lord..