This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 89; Judges 12:1-7; Acts 5:12-26; John 3:1-21

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2-6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3-4, BCP, p. 94)

“You like ‘to-MAY-to,’ I like ‘to-MAH-to,’” sings Fred Astaire to Ginger Rogers in the 1937 movie Shall We Dance. Romantic comedy that the film is, the newly, but secretly, married couple does not, despite the song’s title, “call the whole thing off.” 

“You like “sibboleth,’ I like ‘shibboleth,’” isn’t so innocent. The difference in pronunciation means life and death in the blood feud between Ephraim, Manasseh, and Gilead—the descendants of Joseph (Judges 12:5-6). It’s a sad tag line for that tribe’s internecine war, and its resultant loss of its lead role in Israel. The Gileadites had reached out to the Ephraimites, their fellow offspring of Joseph, for help in the battle against a common enemy, the marauding Ammonites, but were rebuffed. After defeating the Ammonites on their own, the Gileadites use the difference in dialect to “out” Ephraimites, and make them pay with their lives. And then, as Psalm 78 was later to say: 

The people of Ephraim, armed with the bow, 

turned back in the day of battle; 

They did not keep the covenant of God,

and refused to walk in his law;…

[The Lord] rejected the tent of Joseph

and did not choose the tribe of Ephraim;

He chose instead the tribe of Judah

and Mount Zion, which he loved…

He chose David his servant… (Psalm 78:9-10, 67, 68, 70a BCP).

Today’s reading in Judges lays the groundwork for the establishment of monarchy in Israel, and in particular of the establishment of the Davidic monarchy, as celebrated both in Psalm 78 (above) and in today’s Psalm 89: 

Your love, O Lord, forever will I sing; 

from age to age my mouth will proclaim your faithfulness.

For I am persuaded that your love is established for ever;

you have set your faithfulness firmly in the heavens.

“I have made a covenant with my chosen one;

I have sworn an oath to David my servant:

‘I will establish your line for ever,

and preserve your throne for all generations.’” (Psalm 89:1-4 BCP).

Then again, even David’s line proves faulty. The kingdom divides after Solomon, and falls into idolatry again and becomes subject to exile. No mere earthly king can rule as wisely and perfectly as Yahweh himself can rule. The prophet Ezekiel says that eventually Yahweh—the great I AM—will indeed come himself to shepherd his people: “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God.  I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy” (Ezekiel 34:15-16).  

In John’s gospel, Jesus will reveal himself as that great I AM—as his people’s shepherd: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). With last Friday’s reading about Jesus’s “first sign” at the wedding at Cana, and with Saturday’s reading about Jesus’s cleansing of the Temple, we see the kickoff of the Good Shepherd’s campaign to bring back the strayed, bind up the injured, and strengthen the weak. 

Today Jesus comes for Nicodemus, “the teacher of Israel” (John 3:10—there’s a very important definite article in the Greek that the NRSV fails to render) who reveals his need for a lesson in what the Bible—and thus, Israel’s story—is really all about. Nicodemus is a “shepherd” who is, himself, a strayed sheep. Having come to quiz Jesus, he winds up sitting quietly, as his Good Shepherd opens up the Scriptures in a new way:  

• “You must be born again (or from above).” — John 3:7. We need a new, and heaven-sent birth: a new start, a life given by God’s very Spirit. Just as Adam was simply a lump of clay until God breathed life into him in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:7), so we have no spiritual life in us until God breathes his life-giving Spirit into us—until we are “born again” by the Spirit. This is exactly what Ezekiel had said must happen: “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances” (Ezekiel 36:26-27).
  

• “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” — John 3:14-15. The new birth by the Spirit lies on the far side of Jesus’s substitutionary, atoning, death-destroying death on the cross. The Lamb of God will take away the sin of the world, by taking the soul-sickness of sin all the way into himself, and then all the way into the grave—indeed, all the way into the bowels of hell itself; so that he can emerge triumphant, as Christus Victor. As the Philip Bliss hymn puts it:Lifted up was He to die;“It is finished!” was His cry;Now in Heav’n exalted high.Hallelujah! What a Savior!
  

• “God so loved the world… — John 3:16. The Spirit will give life because the Son will be lifted up on the cross. And the Son has arrived because the Father loves. The Father loves! There is no greater summary of what the Bible is all about. Here is the ultimate lesson for Nicodemus, and for all the sheep that have strayed: “God so loved [insert your name here] that he gave his only begotten Son that [insert your name] should believe in him and not perish but have everlasting life.” 

I pray you know the Father’s love for you. I pray you believe the Son’s work for you. I pray you breathe deeply the new life of the Spirit. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+