Liturgy: “A new world is being born”
Birth is a violent act causing trauma for both mother and child. It does not come without pain and yet it is a pain that women like Hannah long for with a desperation that makes them forgot about social convention and respectability while they pour out their soul before God.
What is the King’s Liturgy? King’s Liturgy defines our experience together as a Christian community. It outlines the rhythms we celebrate with the Church at large: Scripture readings, Sabbath habits, and celebration of Holy Days and historical events.
This Week’s Lectionary Readings
1 Samuel 1:4-20
1 Samuel 2:1-20
Hebrews 10:11-14
Mark 13:1-8
This week’s liturgy is contributed by Dr. Matthew Parks, associate professor of politics and associate dean of academic affairs:
A new world is being born while this old one is dying away.
Birth is a violent act causing trauma for both mother and child. It does not come without pain and yet it is a pain that women like Hannah long for with a desperation that makes them forgot about social convention and respectability while they pour out their soul before God.
Three years ago, our daughter Anna (a Latinized form of Hannah) braved the violence of birth to enter the world. But all was not well, so for nine days she seemed more the baby of the good doctors and nurses at two hospitals than ours. On the tenth day, shortly before midnight, she arrived home for the first time, in the arms of her mother, who had spent hours at her side in the hospital singing, praying, and talking, while longing above all else to hold and care for her as God had uniquely prepared her to do. Perhaps because coming home for the first time was anything but routine, Anna continues to have a special joy in returning home, whether from a few hours out running errands or an extended family vacation.
For us, the sorrow of the evening turned into morning joy, tempered by the reality of the challenges she continues to face with a mild form of cerebral palsy. There are others, however, for whom the evening continues, for whom dawn, in some sense, may never come. My wife spent seven nights in the Ronald McDonald House across the parking lot from the Children’s Hospital in Westchester. It is a remarkable place staffed and supported by remarkable people, but you can’t spend the night there without having a child in the hospital–and the only way to get to the top of the waiting list is to be far from home or have a child in desperate need. Not all the visits end like ours did–there are too many rooms named in memory of children lost.
Anna spent eight nights in the Westchester NICU with babies born at 25 and 31 weeks, with Cystic Fibrosis or any number of other conditions. To be in places like these is to feel a deep longing for the resurrection age, for the end of the birth pains, for the final revelation of the fullest consequences of the fact that the Holy One of God DID NOT SEE CORRUPTION.
“Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promises is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” (Hebrews 10:19-25; ESV).