go Gators
Certainly, this is not what we were used to seeing in recent years, Alabama way down the rankings. Alabama long seemed as untouchable as the NY Yankees were my college years, when baseball was more our national sport than CFB anyway.
There's the rest of the rankings, Florida at 22 after starting the season Unranked. Go Gators! Although interests shift over the course of a lifetime and, with Caroline a graduating senior at FSU and freshman Charlotte a Marching Chief, Blood is thicker than anything else in life. We'll see, comes Thanksgiving Weekend. A joy our years at Trinity Apalachicola was when I could post the game score on the Hymnboard the Sunday morning after a Gators victory over the Seminoles, and when I liked to say my three favorite CFB teams were Florida, Michigan, and whoever was playing Florida State. If I'm ranking anymore, maybe my favorites are Florida, Michigan, FSU,, and whoever's playing Ohio State.
Life keeps moving along including that interests change and priorities slip and slide. As to "Blood is thicker than Water," I've never figured out what was meant by Water, but Blood is where my heart is.
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October Sunday morning again, starting another new month, week, and day of life: in my semi-retirement whittled down to one service unless it's my Sunday in the pulpit. A later breakfast than we hav on my preaching Sundays, and a nap if I'm so inclined. Here are the first two "Propers" - -
The Collect of the Day
The Celebrant says to the people
The Lord be with you.
People And also with you. Celebrant Let us pray.
O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity: Grant us the fullness of your grace, that we, running to obtain your promises, may become partakers of your heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The people sit.
The Lessons
The First Reading: Exodus 17:1-7
From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the LORD commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarreled with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the LORD?” But thepeople thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried out to the LORD, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.”
The LORD said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of theelders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the LORD among us or not?
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The collect dates at least as far back as the 7th century A.D. (Hatchett, p.192) and, notwithstanding editing efforts in recent generations, still connects our obtaining God's promises to how we run the race. As well as unfortunate dark-to-middle ages theology about Heaven as afterlife. What happened is that by the Time several generations had passed without Christ's promised imminent return, the Church faded into rationalizing the promise as meaning life after death, so, what? eschatology. If we're still thinking of college football, it's called moving the goalposts.
In our Bible readings, the Exodus story continues Moses' troubles in balancing between God and Man as he tries to lead a miserable, whining Volk through the Wilderness. This story, unfortunately for Moses, is also told at Numbers 20, where Moses so gravely displeases God that God decides Moses must die instead of being able to lead Israel into the Promised Land.
The punishment seems most unfair, totally out of proportion to Moses' offense. However, for Bible students, it's a prime example of etiology at work in the Bible, a couple of instances:
+ Why didn't Moses live to lead Israel into the Promised Land? Oh - - well - - yes, remember back when God flushed water from the rock in the Wilderness, Moses failed to follow God's instructions exactly, and he failed to give God the glory for that saving miracle. The etiology serves to explain origins, why something happens later.
+ Where did the Israelites get all the gold that they gave Aaron so he could form the Golden Calf when Moses was gone so long up on the mountain with God? Um, oh, yes - - don't you remember? After the tenth curse, the Egyptians were so glad to get rid of the Israelite slaves that they gave them all their gold and silver to encourage them to leave Egypt. The storyteller has cleverly constructed an etiology that is the origin, makes it possible for something to happen later.
+ Why do snakes crawl on the ground? Well, don't you remember? In one of the Genesis creation stories, the serpent, the most tricky of all God's creatures, tempts Eve and Adam into disobeying God, so God punishes the serpent by having him slither instead of walking. The story itself is a wonderful etiology to explain much that happens in human life. The snake crawls on its belly, men must work for a living instead of just picking fruit in the Garden, women must suffer pain in childbirth. Tribal stories help explain why life is the way it is, and the world around us.
In medicine, etiologies explain how maladies originate. In religion and folklore, etiologies provide answers to puzzling things about life. We have the Genesis One creation story itself because priests returned from the Babylonian Exile to discover that those who had been left behind had taken up the pagan religion and gods of their Canaanite neighbors; and a priest, called P the priestly writer, provided a religious story of God as the creator of all that is, ridiculing and debunking the Canaanite gods, the Sun, and the Moon, and the Fertility gods, and all the paganism. An etiology of our first creation story itself. Anyway,
Enough.
RSF&PTL
T88&c
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