SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY
Readings:
Key Verses (using the World English Bible):
Rom. 6:19: “… as you presented your members as servants to uncleanness and to wickedness upon wickedness, even so now present your members as servants to righteousness for sanctification.”
Mark 8:2-3: Jesus said, “I have compassion on the multitude, because they have stayed with me now three days, and have nothing to eat. If I send them away fasting to their home, they will faint on the way…”
Reflection
As we walk through the Season after Trinity, we have to remember that its journey is an idealized one. Having wrestled with the passions of pride, vainglory, dejection, and wrath within ourselves, we ideally have already conquered them, and ideally are ready to move forward. But we know it doesn’t really work that way. It takes more than one season to master those kinds of behaviors (and others yet to come). Maybe that’s why the fifth-century church settled on a one-year lectionary, to ensure that this one set of biblical passages will call us back, year after year, to reflect on these themes until, with God’s help, we are ready to move on to “newness of life.”
But, for now, let’s pretend that we’ve ideally purged ourselves of four passions so far: We humbled ourselves before the Higher Power that created us. We don’t put down our neighbor because we know we have our own faults. We don’t let those faults make us feel unworthy to receive God into our lives. And we’re quick to restrain anger and not hold grudges. That’s impressive! That’s also incredibly exhausting because, to truly restrain those passions, we have to be ever-vigilant, constantly aware that we don’t revert to our old selves.
And so we come to the passion of sloth.
What we call “sloth” was known by the early Church as “acedia”, from a Greek word meaning “without care.” Today, we might use words like “indifference”, “apathy”, or even “negligence” (as in the Wikipedia article for “acedia”). In his article on the Trinity Season, Reverend David Phillips asks:
“Is sloth the result of having restrained the passions of the flesh, but not yet turning that same desire over to a love of God and neighbor? One can be in a state of paralysis in regards to love.”
Paul alludes to this “state of paralysis” in his Letter to the Romans. He reminds us that, before we followed Christ, it was so easy for us to present our own selves as slaves to sin. We didn’t even have to think about it. We insulted back those who insulted us first. We raised ourselves up by putting others down. But now ideally we know better. “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,” Ghandi once said. The way of Jesus calls us to a new way of living. But the danger for us on that way now is that, when we focus too much on what we can’t or shouldn’t do, we may neglect what we ought to do. Our inner struggle can deplete our energy, leaving us weak, fatigued, and even indifferent to the world around us—and we risk remaining stuck in this kind of limbo.
The Gospel story was purposely selected to piggyback on this realization. In it, Jesus is concerned about the crowds that have been following him for three days, and now have nothing to eat. Their food supply (assuming they brought any) has been depleted and, in their zeal and devotion, they’ve apparently neglected to look for additional food. Jesus satisfies their hunger by multiplying seven loaves of bread to feed them all, leaving seven baskets full of leftovers. The foreshadowing here of the Last Supper, and subsequent Christian liturgy, is unmistakable—and so is its meaning. Christ will recharge and restore us so that, with renewed strength, we may resume our journey, being sent back out into the world. And just as a side-note: can we make a connection between this reading’s triple repetition of the number “seven” and the threefold cycle of the seven passions in the Trinity Season?
We purge ourselves from the passion of sloth through faithfully and actively seeking God. Yes, we are called to detach ourselves from the passions, but not to lead detached lives. Our call to look inward does not exempt us from the obligation to care for, to act in, and to engage the world. But when all of this gets to be too much, and we feel like we’re about to faint on the way, we must have faith that God in Christ will supply our spiritual food—seeking God in church, in Bible-reading and prayer, and in community. We must have faith that, the more we open ourselves to this, the more that one day, we will finally, and easily, become slaves to love—loving God, neighbor, and self.
Prayer of the Day
Lord of all power and might,
author and giver of all good things,
graft in our hearts the love of your Name;
increase in us true religion,
nourish us with all goodness,
and, in your great mercy,
keep us in the same;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
—Collect for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity, adapted by Joseph A. Soltero from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer
Grant, O Lord, we pray, that we,
being truly confident in your grace,
may apply ourselves to all worthy things,
and may continuously take up
that which we have set ourselves to do;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, forever and ever.
Amen.
—Collect #2 for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity in the 5th-century Gelasian Sacramentary, translated from Latin by Joseph A. Soltero
Hymn: “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty”
(Words: “Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen”, Joachim Neander, 1680; translated from German to English by Catherine Winkworth, 1863; adapted by Joseph A. Soltero, 2015 from The Hymnal 1940, and The Hymnal 1982
Tune: ‘Lobe Den Herren’, Germany 1665; harmony by William S. Bennett, 1864)
Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation!
O my soul, praise him, for he is your health and salvation!
Join the great throng,
Psaltery, organ, and song
Sounding in glad adoration.
Praise to the Lord, who over all is gloriously reigning;
Borne as on eagle wings, his saints in safety sustaining.
Have you not seen:
What you have needed has been
Granted in his wise ordaining?
Praise to the Lord, who will prosper your way and defend you.
Surely his goodness and mercy shall ever attend you.
Ponder anew
What the Almighty can do
With all his love to befriend you.
Praise to the Lord! O let all that is in me adore him!
All that has life and breath, come now with praises before him!
Let the “Amen”
Sound from his people again,
Gladly forever sing for him!
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