As Bible readers know, when God says something two or three times in a row, it's time to sit up and pay attention. So in yesterday's Gleaning we read in the first part of Luke 24 (verses 1-35) that Jesus made himself known to his disciples through reading and explaining the Scriptures around the dinner table. In today's morning reading from the second half of the same chapter (verses 36-53), we see Jesus doing it again.
He gathers with another group of disciples in a home to explain to them who He really is. After convincing them that He is not merely a ghost, He calls them to the table for a meal (a regular meal, not a sacramental meal). When they are seated and while they are all eating, He reads from the Scripture and explains to them what it means; His death and resurrection, repentance and remission of sins, the "Great Commission", and the coming of the Holy Ghost. Then He reminds them that they are all commissioned to be witnesses to the Truth, and He concludes with a blessing.
This is the pattern set forth by the liturgy Morning and Evening Prayer which contrary to the belief of some is the central liturgy in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Its primary target is the home where family and loved ones gather for a meal twice a day. Here is how the preface to Morning and Evening Prayer explains it.
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In today's Morning Prayer, we came to Luke 24 and read in verse 30-32 (concerning Jesus who appeared to the disciples after the Resurrection):
"And it came to pass [while he was explaining to them the Scriptures], as he sat at table with them, he took the bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they knew him: and he was no more seen of them. And they said between themselves, Did not our hearts burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and when He opened unto us the Scriptures."
Of note, this meal with the risen Lord was NOT Holy Communion. It was a normal meal and it proceeded like this:
- The Scriptures were opened and read.
- A blessing was said.
- Food was distributed.
Luke 24 suggests a pattern for conducting Morning and Evening Prayer in the home; it suggests the liturgy be read just before, after or even during a family/community meal. It also teaches us that we may reasonably expect everyday mealtime disciplines such as this to lead to faith, for in verse 34 we read that because of their encounter with Jesus, all the disciples were subsequently able to say:
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How easy it is to allow prideful and vainglorious thoughts to build up inside us! But for Anglicans that attend to their Confession of Sin twice per day, the doctrine that Christ ONLY is good stands boldly in the path, allowing no one to pass without laying aside their pretensions of personal righteousness and expectations of special reward. "And there is no health in us. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders."
Many modern revisions of the Book of Common Prayer eliminate or water down these words. Some even replace the Confession of Sin with a Confession of Need, but by doing so they relinquish their claim to being Anglican. Article XV states it clearly:
CHRIST in the truth of our nature was made like unto us in all things, sin only except, from which He was clearly void, both in His flesh and in His spirit. He came to be the lamb without spot, Who by sacrifice of Himself once made, should take away the sins of the world: and sin, as S. John saith, was not in Him. But all we the rest, although baptized and born again in Christ, yet offend in many things: and if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
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