Morning Prayer's lection from the 1662 BCP is Ezekiel 37, the "Valley of the Dry Bones." (This is for Saturday, 11 Sept 2010 in the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity.) Ezekiel had deflated Israel's pomp, pride, and self-conceit in a series of sermons. They could not embrace--with any jubilance--the standing promise to Adam, Noah, and Abraham, the Gospel to the nations. Ezekiel's vision was to convince them that their despair grew out of their refusal to hear God's Word of promise, a God who calls things into existence that were not (cf.Rom.4.17; Dt.32.39). Humanly speaking, Israel's hopes of survival were gone, dead, buried, and over. Yet, amidst the dry and dead bones in a valley, dried, dismembered and scattered, there would be life. At God's sovereign command, death would surrender to HM's new command for life. Sinews would connect the bones. HM would breathe new life into the bones. This sends beams of light to the exiles in Babylon--Israel would be rescued from the graveyard.
For we "Anglicans in Babylon," we draw courage and faith by faith and hope in HM, our Triune God. We sing the Te Deum following the OT Lection. We believe that our God shall come to be our Judge. May we live as becometh the Gospel, as Churchmen of abiding fidelity, notwithstanding appearances and circumstances in the Anglican wilderness.
Here is Franz Joseph Haydn, Te Deum n.2 in C.
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