Lenten blog | April 7, 2025

Watch out for Rhinoceroses

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for April 7th:  Exodus 40:1-15; Psalm 20; and Hebrews 10:19-25.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

I’m really intrigued and I would love to learn more about how the originally separated cultic tabernacle and the prophetic tent of meeting merged into one entity.  The tabernacle was the moveable cultic site of the Ark of the Covenant and the priests that ministered before it.  It was positioned directly at the center of the Jewish encampment as they wandered during the 40 years of the Exodus.  The tent of meeting was set at the perimeter of the encampment.  This was the sacred place of prophecy.  Moses would talk with God here.

As will always happen, the established cult will eventually incorporate the charismatic prophets.  The cult will not tolerate forever the idea that there is another access point to the divine, and one that is unmediated and uncontrolled.  The cult cannot allow the prophets to question their acts or decisions.  So eventually instead of two separate sites, we hear of a new configuration called the “the tabernacle of the tent of meeting.”  Prophecy is brought within the tent of the cult, and the charismatic, independent prophetic voices are placed under the control of the religious establishment.

But established religion always needs to be checked and questioned in order to stay honest.  Unquestioned, established religion can become self-serving and sanctimonious.  The clergy child abuse scandal is a perfect example of this.  The difficulty with this idea of self-correction is that too often the prophetic voices are disparaged, ignored and left unfulfilled by church, and they leave.  The struggle to suggest change can become too daunting and exhausting, and the voices that need to be heard leave.

The church needs those voices.  After Easter when I have more time, I hope to read Eugene Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros.”  It is his attack on group-think.  People will fall into line regardless of how nonsensical or even dangerous the prevailing thought is.  Church establishment is not immune, and I’m part of church establishment, and that’s why I want to read “Rhinoceros.”  But so was the author of Hebrews, and this is what he has to say to us today:  “And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” 

I like that word choice of “provoke.”  It’s an unexpected use.  It catches our attention.  It makes us primed to hear that we should provoke one another to love and good deeds.  And what is the venue for this provoking?  It is when the church meets together.  It is the community that is able to self-regulate, to keep the church on the straight and narrow, to provoke it and all of us to love and good deeds.  But even 2,000 years ago, “the habit of some” was to neglect these chances to meet together.  This not only denies the individual the blessings of the community; it denies the community the voice of the individual. 

In good times and bad, in normal times and challenging, we need the community of the church and the church needs its community.  With Palm Sunday and Easter ahead of us, I hope and pray that you might choose to worship as church, and may even extend an invitation to others for personal blessings and for shared blessings.
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If you would like to join us for our online Bible study, please send an email to [email protected] for the Zoom logins.

If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.