Nehemiah 7–9, Psalm 139, 1 Corinthians 14
In today’s readings, both Nehemiah and Paul turn to worship. Nehemiah does so with
a holy day, a week of festival, a solemn reading of the law to the assembly, and a long
prayer of national penitence. For Paul it is more a matter of trying to ensure that all
the elements that make up worship—speaking in tongues, interpreting, prophesying,
hymns, readings, revelations—come together to create something worthy of God and
edifying for the worshipers. The overall aim is that “all things should be done decently
and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:40).
You might at first think that both writers are concerned only with ensuring that everything
goes smoothly, that worship is beautifully performed. But it isn’t so. Nehemiah
wants the people to listen so intently to the reading of the law that their hearts are
touched. Indeed, this happens. They are moved emotionally to grief and weeping
by what they hear. Paul wants the worshipers to be able to say “God is really among us”
(1 Corinthians 14:25). The outward form is there in order to shape the spirituality of the
people, so that they may be genuinely in touch with God and receptive to him. They
need to bring to worship the deep feelings of the heart expressed in today’s psalm:
“O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and
are acquainted with all my ways” (Psalm 139:1-3).
The Rt. Rev. Michael Perham
Bishop of Gloucester
Gloucester, England
QUESTIONS
How do you bring the deep longings of
your heart into the church’s worship—an
undercurrent of spirituality that ensures
the service is not just about the words
and rituals on the surface?
The reading of the law in a solemn
assembly in the public square moved
the people of Nehemiah’s day. How can
the Christian Scriptures be effectively
proclaimed outside the church today?
PRAYER
Holy Beloved God, open my heart and make
our worship Spirit-filled, transforming of our
lives, and beautiful for you. Amen.

Nehemiah 4–6, Psalm 138, 1 Corinthians 13
In today’s Old Testament reading, Nehemiah is continuing to rebuild the city walls.
The task is daunting, the opposition determined, the need to guard against attack
real, and even the support of the Jewish community cannot be taken for granted.
That Nehemiah succeeds and the wall is completed says a lot for his energy, generosity,
and determination.
Nehemiah is clearly a man of faith and of hope. Those virtues sustain him through all the
undermining and opposition. What you don’t see in him is much love. You certainly don’t
see it in his opponents, some of whom even want to kill him—and all of whom resent
this wall building and hurl insults at the workers. Nehemiah wants the plotters given over
as plunder; he doesn’t want their sins blotted out.
This is where the New Covenant and the teaching of Paul are so very different. Paul
values faith and hope—they will, he says, last forever—but he adds love, and because he
is a follower of Jesus, he means love for God but also for neighbour and even for enemy.
Love, he says, is the greatest of the three. At the end of chapter 12 of Corinthians, Paul
said that he would show us a still more excellent way, and this is that excellent way: love.
It’s almost as if all who have gone before, even the activist Nehemiah, have understood
God’s purposes only as “in a mirror, dimly,” but now in Jesus, face to face, we can see that
the purpose of God ultimately is love.
The Rt. Rev. Michael Perham
Bishop of Gloucester
Gloucester, England
QUESTIONS
Loving an enemy is a tall order. Can
you identify someone who is akin to an
enemy—someone who opposes you—
and think through prayerfully how you
might love them?
Can you add to Paul’s long catalogue of
characteristics of love? How would you
finish the phrase “Love is…”?
PRAYER
Holy God, in you I put my faith, in you I
place my hope, in your overflowing love
I receive the grace to love. Help make
that love strong in me. Let your love flow
through me. Amen.

Nehemiah 1–3, Psalm 137, 1 Corinthians 12
Today Paul is leaving behind his teaching about eating the bread that is Christ’s body to
think instead about being the body of Christ. “Discerning the body,” which is what he
wrote about in 1 Corinthians 11:29, now becomes a matter of understanding oneself to
be a limb or organ of the body, crucial to its well-being, but only in relation to others and
always in relation to the head, Christ himself.
Paul wants us to explore the body’s diversity. Not everyone has the same gift. The Spirit
is at work differently in the variety of people who make up the body. But Paul’s principal
point is to remind us that, whatever the diversity might be, there is only one body, and by
our baptism we were called into that one body. Having a sense of belonging to the body
is crucial. The truth is, of course, that the body of Christ, the church, is broken, injured, and
wounded by misunderstanding and strife. Rebuilding is needed. Much of 1 Corinthians
is about that rebuilding.
Nehemiah is dealing with a similar problem. It’s the fifth century before Christ, and
Jerusalem has been destroyed. Rebuilding the city will also rebuild the self-respect and
the sense of identity of the nation, and Nehemiah sets about the task. Just like the limbs
and organs of the body, the priests and Levites bring their differing skills to the task. They
work almost as one body as they rebuild.
QUESTIONS
What are the areas of life where God is
asking you to do some rebuilding?
The variety of the Spirit’s gifts sometimes
seems to cause disunity in the church.
How can you ensure that your gifts
deepen the unity of the Body of Christ?
PRAYER
Holy Spirit, come, renew your gifts within
me and make them instruments of unity
in the building up of the body of Christ
our Lord. Amen.

Ezra 10, Psalm 136, 1 Corinthians 11
The gospel of Jesus Christ comes to all cultures with a message of both judgment and
hope, and the difficult question is discerning which applies where.
For most of us today, it goes without saying that God can and does use women in
Christian leadership alongside men, gifting individuals by the Spirit for particular tasks
that do not reflect one gender or another. Given that in Scripture, the position accorded
women is often one of far more equality and justice than in contemporary society (for
example, from Deborah in Judges 4 to the gospels), it would be surprising if the church
were to lag two millennia behind secular practice.
But the key objective for Paul in this chapter from 1 Corinthians is to ensure holy, reverent
worship, especially when Christians gather to celebrate the Lord’s Supper (which here
may have been combined with a “bring-and-share” meal). Therefore, self-promotion by
any cliques, showing off wealth, hierarchies that belittle the poorer and less influential,
or anything else that undercuts the message of Jesus’ self-giving sacrifice for all is a
disgrace. Such behavior has no place within Christian living. In a world that elevates to
celebrity status the rich and powerful, this is very countercultural. But the key, says Paul,
is for us to emulate him and the best of Christian leaders and their teachings, just as they
follow the example of Jesus Christ.
And so, when I read with sadness the final chapter of the Book of Ezra, I wonder how
many of the unrecorded wives and children went away knowing that the refrain of Psalm
136, “God’s love endures forever,” held true for them personally. I recall how another
foreign wife, Ruth, was the grandmother of King David, recorded in the genealogy of
Jesus (Matthew 1:5). And I also recall Paul’s words from another letter, “There is no longer
Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all
of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).
The Most Rev. Dr. Thabo Makgoba
Archbishop of Cape Town
Cape Town, South Africa
QUESTIONS
Where do you find the greatest challenges
to living counterculturally?
In what ways does receiving the Lord’s
Supper help you to reflect the example
of Jesus?
PRAYER
Lord, open my eyes so I may see where
the norms of life that I take for granted
run counter to your gospel, and help me
to live by your standards, not those of my
culture. Amen.

Ezra 7–9, Psalm 135, 1 Corinthians 10
In today’s reading from 1 Corinthians, Paul has more to say about not confusing liberty
with license. Saying that “‘everything is permissible” is very different from saying that
“everything is helpful.” When facing choices, we need to give far more weight to asking,
“What helps others?” We are not independent individuals with no responsibilities beyond
ourselves and our own desires. As Christians, we are reminded of this whenever we share
the Lord’s Supper and hear Paul’s words again: “We who are many are one body, for
we all partake of the one bread” (1 Corinthians 10:17). In Christ, our lives are intimately
connected with those of other Christians, and our choices must reflect this.
We must also be aware of how our words and actions affect those outside the church
and avoid “causing them to stumble” (1 Corinthians 10:32). This does not mean that
others exercise a veto over our lives, but it does call us to live with sensitivity. When
wondering what others will make of us, we need to ask whether what we do and say will
be understood as “all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).
In our Old Testament chapters, we read how Ezra came to Jerusalem, several decades
after the first wave of returning exiles. His priority is to restore faithful worship, mirrored
in faithful lives. He is appalled by the unfaithfulness he finds, which he sees reflected
in the many marriages to neighboring women of other religions. He demands these
men separate from their wives (who, according to Persian practices, would have retained
custody of the children). To us, this seems very harsh—and indeed, Paul tells Christians
to stay with unbelieving spouses who do not oppose our faith (1 Corinthians 7:14-15). But
the underlying principle remains to challenge us: is there coherence in our faith—does it
reflect Jesus and glorify God and give praise to him (as in our psalm) for all to see, across
the whole of our lives?
The Most Rev. Dr. Thabo Makgoba
Archbishop of Cape Town
Cape Town, South Africa
QUESTIONS
What sort of “giving up” or “putting aside”
by your Christian community might help
communicate the good news of Jesus
Christ more effectively to the society
around you?
What church practices are not seen by
outsiders as being “for the glory of God”?
PRAYER
Dear Lord, help me to be someone who
doesn’t just talk the talk, but walks the walk,
following you both within the church and
for the whole world to see. Amen.

Ezra 4–6, Psalm 134, 1 Corinthians 9
Freedom and liberty are hallmarks of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as Paul stresses to those
to whom he writes in today’s 1 Corinthians reading: freedom from having life ordered
by rules and regulations that we are incapable of keeping, and freedom from the consequences
of such failures and from the wider power and consequences of sin and death.
But today Paul also reminds us that liberty does not mean license to behave in whatever
ways we wish. In yesterday’s chapter, Paul promised to give up meat, to avoid upsetting
people by eating what was sacrificed to idols. Now he reminds the Corinthians how he
also supported himself while he was with them, giving up any expectation that they
should support him and Barnabas. Yet he expresses frustration that by curtailing his
freedom, his rights, they have devalued him and his teaching and taken it all for granted.
But nonetheless, he will keep on doing all this to preach the gospel, which he feels
impelled by God to do. He is prepared to be “all things to all people” (1 Corinthians 9:22)
so that his hearers may more readily grasp the good news of Jesus Christ. And, like a
runner in a race, he will not give up doing the right thing—nor, he says, should we. All of
us should have such dedication.
Our Old Testament chapters recount similar dedication to doing the right thing among
the exiles returning to Jerusalem to restore life and worship there, first during the reigns
of Persian emperors Cyrus and Darius and later under Artaxerxes. They do not resort
to the bullying and bribery exercised by those opposed to their efforts to rebuild the
temple, but trust in the Persian authorities to see that justice is done.
And once again they were able to worship in the temple, conscious of being in the
presence of the Lord, “lifting up their hands in the sanctuary” (Psalm 134:2), as today’s
psalm says.
QUESTIONS
Are there areas in your life where you
might choose not to exercise your
freedom as a Christian, so as to help
others find and grow in the faith? And,
in contrast, are there areas where you
take for granted or exploit such commitment
in others?
PRAYER
Lord Jesus, you gave up the glories of heaven
to save us. Help me to not “demand my
rights” but to strive for the prize that comes
through sharing your good news. Amen.

Ezra 1–3, Psalm 133, 1 Corinthians 8
The psalm for today has been a favorite of mine for many years. I can say it by memory,
like the canticles for Morning Prayer or Vespers that become so familiar during the days
of seminary that you end up saying or singing them while driving or writing or walking.
“Oh, how good and pleasant it is, when brethren live together in unity” (Psalm 133:1).
Unity? What is that all about? The love of God has to have an effect in our lives and, of
course, in the life of the church. But then we find that we all are human, and we make
mistakes, and do what we don’t want to do, and say what we don’t want to say, and
act the way we don’t want to act, and finally we find ourselves struggling, fighting, and
probably thinking, “I will go away—I don’t want to have anything to do with my brother
or sister in Christ.”
But wait! It is important to sit, to be quiet, to reflect. I suggest reading Psalm 133 and
accepting the invitation to receive the fine oil on our head, like the dew of Hermon, and
to refresh our existence.
In 1 Corinthians 8, Paul writes, “Now about food sacrificed to idols: we know that ‘we
all possess knowledge.’ But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. Those who think
they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. But whoever loves God
is known by God.”
So, if we love God we are known by him, and this love should direct us straight to the
question: what is love for, if we are not willing to live with our neighbor who thinks
radically differently? If we believe in God, we have the greatest challenge, and this is to
love unconditionally. Unity is love, and love is unity.
The Rev. Canon Habacuc Ramos-Huerta
Secretary General of the
Iglesia Anglicana de Mexico
Mexico City, Mexico
QUESTIONS
Have you been tested in hard situations
when you must make a decision and
there are few options?
How do you act when something controversial
or difficult is being discussed:
argue, fight, or just leave?
PRAYER
Dear God, give us love and knowledge, and
help us to use them to make a better world.
Amen.

2 Chronicles 35–36, Psalm 132, 1 Corinthians 7
You may have heard about the Millennium Development Goals. There are eight, and
the first on the list is “End Poverty and Hunger.” The Anglican Church in Mexico is
contributing to that goal. A wonderful project run by St. Paul’s Anglican Church in San
Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, serves breakfast from Monday to Friday to about three
thousand kids at several kindergartens and elementary schools in the surrounding area.
What began as a social ministry on the streets about thirty years ago is now a great
example of what can be done in partnership with local organizations. The challenge is
everywhere we look, and we are called to take action now.
Psalm 132 says, “The Lord has chosen Zion; he has desired it for his habitation” (v. 13). Zion
is in many ways the people of God in every generation. We are Zion, and we have been
chosen by God; we are his place to dwell, and he will give us plenty of bread and feed
our souls and bodies; and he will dress us with salvation.
I remember my childhood. Dad and Mom used to go to work meetings every month a
little far from home. My mother would get up early to cook food for the three of us so
that we could have our meal before they returned. We shared her food with our friends,
and Mom used to get pretty upset when she saw that there was no food left.
Years later I laugh about our early experiences—I wish people would act like little kids,
sharing what they have, but I see people not willing to share. I see also in our current
world that we are being measured as if we were all made of the same character, but no,
we are different, every one of us is unique, and we all are loved by God no matter what!
The Rev. Canon Habacuc Ramos-Huerta
Secretary General of the
Iglesia Anglicana de Mexico
Mexico City, Mexico
QUESTIONS
Do you participate in any kind of project
to help the hungry?
Do you act like a child sometimes, at least
for fun?
PRAYER
Most merciful God, don’t pay attention to
our failures. Give us courage to share your
infinite love with our neighbors close to
home and far beyond. Amen.

2 Chronicles 32–34, Psalm 131, 1 Corinthians 6
Those who are just will inherit the kingdom of God. And what about those who
are not? In today’s reading from 1 Corinthians, Paul says that “wrongdoers will not
inherit the kingdom” (1 Corinthians 6:9).
In every generation we are called to find the kingdom of God: some generations get
closer to it and others go far from it. It would be too risky for this humble servant of God
to try to determine what level of justice we are experiencing in different regions of the
world today. Some would say that justice cannot be perfect, and, of course, if we go
arguing every nuance, then we tend to make all things imperfect instead of looking at
the better side of the matter.
Today and always, someone who is just is always searching for justice; but does justice
mean to be impartial or to give each person what he or she deserves? Justice is blind, it is
said. I am not sure of that. When we close our eyes and pretend not to see what is going
on in the local community or the world, we send a clear message that we don’t care. My
hope is that we don’t forget that we as Christians are called to make a difference, to build
up the kingdom of God here and now on earth.
Justice is right there in front of us: this is not something subjective. The level of
consciousness, the striving to meet goals, the way we do things is so relevant. We are
not only in a world with nice concepts or ideas; we are in a world where we have, at a
personal level, a very important role. Justice for all is not a slogan; it is something we
should always pursue. Justice for those who look for a better life, trespassing across
borders in the search for a well-paid job; justice for those who work hard every day in
order to get what they need or to send their daughters and sons to university; justice for
those who are unheard when they cry out for a change in politics to reverse climate and
environmental problems; and justice for those seeking peace.
The Rev. Canon Habacuc Ramos-Huerta
Secretary General of the
Iglesia Anglicana de Mexico
Mexico City, Mexico
QUESTIONS
Have you been involved in a peace march
or other activity to promote justice?
What do you do to promote justice at
home within your family?
PRAYER
Gracious Father, we are your creatures, but
we have built up walls and barriers in our
lives that have made us walk in different
paths. Help us to find ways to encounter
our sisters and brothers in need, and give
us the willingness to act with justice all the
days of our lives. Amen.