Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Lindisfarne
The bishop orders, “Stand for the Gospel!”
When the worshippers are the community of monks, he never issues this order because the benches are stacked away and everyone is already standing, as are the monks today, standing in the back of the room. It is the dignitaries and guests for whom the benches were strewn. Maybe the benches were set out here to space the king’s men into tidy rows to thus stifle the chit chat among them. There is an assumption the reading of the gospel is only for the holy. Regardless, everyone is required to stand.
There are several hours before the ebbing tide allows the visitors to return on the land bridge. So Higbald has the entire four gospels laid out before him with only the first page turned over. He begins with the genealogy which sources an ancient hero king, David, among saints. Does anyone notice that some of these named patriarchs in Matthew are really matriarchs, and some even foreigners? Or are they all foreigners here for this audience of Anglia?
The king’s entourage is standing when the bishop reads the birth story, a night silenced by an omen of doom – when the local king orders the slaughter of the innocents. Matthew turns the ancient words of history back onto its later generations in this foreboding arrival of a Messiah, up from Africa, because the readers of the heavenly signs – those foreigners from another land – warned of the doom.
All these words from Matthew, are familiar phrases, but the meaning changes with the burials and the carvings of the stones, and the stripped away linens baring the wood of this altar.
As the Bishop reads on into Chapter 5, some, like me, always grasping for the love thread, imagine Luke’s telling of gospel is more consistent in telling of God’s grace. But here, as the bishop reads aloud deeper into Matthew, Jesus’s words seem pitted as human behavior ripening for the judgement from God. Hell is present and Heaven is a Kingdom offered as a rewarding experience.
One guard, on shaking knees, sinks back onto the bench for a moment, until the glaring focus of the bishop makes this disrespect conspicuous. So those beside him raise him to his feet. The fasting monk, fainting in the back gets less notice.
I deliver a cup of water to the monk, and another to the book stand for the bishop. The failing guard is dismissed.
(Continues Tuesday, Sept. 16)
Lazarus Ink 
You are such an amazing and gifted writer ♥️🙏
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Thank you.
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