This is part of a series of devotions based on the Daily Office, which is found in the Book of Common Prayer.
This morning’s Scriptures are:
Psalm 22; Exodus 9:13-35; 2 Corinthians 4:1-12; Mark 10:32-45
This morning’s Canticles are:
following the OT reading, Canticle 14 (Song of Moses, Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (Revelation 4:11; 5:9-10, 13, BCP, p. 94)
Each Scripture setting offers me today reason to cry out to God during this hard time we are all sharing:
Plagues 6 & 7: Boils & Hail. The plagues become more severe. The plague of hail is the first of the plagues against Egypt to threaten human life. But then, just as the threat accelerates, so does God’s counsel to provide and to seek shelter (Exodus 9:19-21). An offer of mercy in the midst of judgment, shelter in the storm.
Lord of heaven and earth, may the storm sweeping our world soon pass. Protect those providing what shelter they can. Have mercy, Lord, and spare lives. Soften and transform hearts that have been hardened into indifference to your presence. Reclaim hearts that have drifted into inattention to your care for them. In your mercy, Lord, hear our prayer.
Psalm 22 anticipates, by a thousand years, Jesus descending into the abyss of abandonment to death (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”), so he could rise to lead the praise of the God who rescues those “that fear him … the poor in their poverty … those who worship him … all the families of the earth … all who go down to the dust … [and] … a people yet unborn” (Psalm 22:1, 22, 23, 24, 26, 28, 30). What a powerful prelude to Holy Week!
Lord Jesus, Friend to sufferers, there’s no pain we’ve felt that you have not felt, no fear that’s unfamiliar to you, no loss that has not touched you. Please be near to all those for whom you have given your life in agony and rejection. Please strengthen especially those who feel most abandoned and forgotten. Remind them that you are there: a very present help in time of trouble. In your mercy, Lord, hear our prayer.
In 2 Corinthians 4, Paul marvels at the way God places the light of knowing him in the hearts of his people. We are as frail and fragile, and as broken, as clay lanterns that have been put back together with semi-transparent glue. God lets his light shine out all the brighter through the cracks.
Being more aware of the fact that we are vessels of clay makes knowing the hope of Easter more real. There’s no way to be glibly triumphalistic about Easter this year. No Easter egg hunt in our courtyard. No chance of being mindlessly superficial with the traditional, “He is risen indeed.” This year the Easter smiles come at a cost: the cost of declaring Christ’s victory in the very midst of an ongoing titanic struggle against disease and death and dislocation. This year, every one of us declares Christ’s victory knowing that tomorrow we could wake up with the fever and the cough and the fatigue that mean the struggle for life has suddenly become intensely personal. And because any one of us may need assurance of resurrection on the far side of death sooner than we had anticipated, just so, Easter matters the more.
God of Light, you who make your light to shine in the darkest of places, shine the light of your glory through the cracks of my frailty. Perfect your strength in my weakness, and give all my brothers and sisters a joy this Easter that comes in the very midst of trials and tribulations. In your mercy, Lord, hear our prayer.
Thus it makes sense, finally, that in Mark 10, as Jesus heads for Jerusalem and Holy Week, he makes it crystal clear to his followers that the kind of power he embodies and is preparing to release into the world through his death and resurrection is not available to the ambitious, the proud, and the self-promoting.
The coronavirus is a great equalizer. You may be the queen’s son, or a server at a bar on Nowhere Street. You may be the governor’s brother and a media celebrity in your own right, or a minimum wage grocery bagger who just got coughed on by an unthinking shopper. The coronavirus makes our pretensions irrelevant. We can take Jesus at his word: our pretensions were never in the least relevant. All that matters is the generous heart of the One who “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
Lord Jesus, Son of Man, show me this heart. Make me glad in the service of the One who gave his life a ransom. In your mercy, Lord, hear our prayer.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+