We Lead Others to the Living Waters - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 3/25/2025 •
Week of 3 Lent 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 78:1–39; Jeremiah 7:21–34; Romans 4:13–25; John 7:37–52 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we draw insights from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. This is Tuesday of the third week of Epiphany, as we prepare for Holy Week, and we are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.   

Of all the writing in the New Testament, John’s grammar and vocabulary are the simplest. Generally, he is the easiest writer to translate. Despite his overall clarity, however, he leaves some tantalizing puzzles. Two of those puzzles occur in the first two verses of today’s reading in John.  

The last half of verse 37 and the first part of verse 38 can legitimately be read one of two ways. Either: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said,….” Or: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. The one who believes in me, as the Scripture says,….” It’s a matter of punctuation. And, alas, Greek at the time of writing used no punctuation. Editors supplied it long after the fact.  

That grammatical puzzle would be easily resolved were it not for the fact that as verse 38 proceeds, it includes a pronoun (autou, “him”) that has an ambiguous antecedent. The quote from Jesus could have used a noun to clarify that it is from Christ himself, to whom the thirsty believer has come, that the living waters would flow (that’s the way the NET takes it), or that it is from the once-thirsty believer that the living waters would flow (that’s the way the NRSV takes it).   

As it is, the “him” is simply ambiguous. The “him” may refer to the one who drinks or to Christ. It may be indicating that when the thirsty person comes to Christ, that person will find that living waters flow to them from Christ. Or it may be indicating that it is from the believer who drinks that living waters will subsequently pour. The Greek itself could go either way, and scholars are divided.  

I’m pretty sure that if I had written these verses, my editor would have demanded that I clarify. My editor would insist on an “either/or”—either it is Christ who is the source of living waters, or it’s the believer who becomes the source of living waters after they have come to Christ. But then, John is a master of double entendre. Sometimes he purposely communicates double meanings: a person must be born anōthen, that is, “again” and “from above” (John 3:3,7); Jesus will be “lifted up,” that is, lifted up on the cross and lifted up in exaltation (John 3:14; 12:32–33).  

Image: "Plitvice Waterfalls" by jidanchaomian is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 

Sometimes, with John, it’s a “both/and.”  

For John, Christ is the source of living waters. That is the subject of discussion with the woman at the well in John 4. Moreover, it is from the pierced side of Jesus on the cross that blood and water flow (John 19:34), thus fulfilling, I think, Zechariah’s foreseeing a fountain being opened for the house of David for the cleansing of sin and iniquity (Zechariah 13:1). And Jesus himself breathes the Holy Spirit upon his apostles. He is the source of all that “living water” offers: cleansing and life.  

At the same time, it is through Jesus’s followers that living waters will flow to others. After all, Zechariah had envisioned that the fountain of cleansing for the house of David would also include “living waters flowing out from Jerusalem” (Zechariah 14:8), and Yahweh becoming “king over all the earth” (Zechariah 14:9). When the Holy Spirit is poured out upon the church at Pentecost by the risen and ascended Christ, life begins to stream into the world through the apostles’ proclamation.  

Paul writes in the wake of the wonder of Christ, the source of living water, as he ministers living water to the world through those who believe in him. That is why Abraham, father of all who believe, is such a pivotal figure for Paul. Abraham’s faith (and implicitly Sarah’s too) is an example for us of the awe that God infuses in us, and of the power that he works through us. Father to Jews who trust in Christ, Abraham shows that God can restore people who come from a rich tradition of faith that they have more or less abandoned: “…[who] gives life to the dead…” (Romans 4:17). Father to Gentiles who trust in Christ, Abraham shows that God can create faith where there was spiritual nothingness: “…and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Romans 4:17).  

I find this to be of great comfort ministering in a society that is simultaneously marked with a fading Christian memory (people who need “life from the dead”) and increasingly filled with people who know nothing about the faith and who could care less (people who, as far as the things of God go, “do not exist”—Romans 4:17). Some need to be called back to life from death, while some need to be called into being from non-being (kalountos ta mē onta hōs onta—Romans 4:17).  

May we drink deeply of the “living water” that Jesus offers. May we find “living water” flowing from our life and testimony. May we see, in our day, many return to a faith that they have lost, and many come to a faith that has always eluded them.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

An Example of Faith - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 3/24/2025 •
Week of 3 Lent 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 80; Jeremiah 7:1–15; Romans 4:1–12; John 7:14–36 

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) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we explore that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me. This is Monday of the third week of Lent, a season of preparation for Holy Week, and we are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. 

Sometimes a gift is hard to receive, especially if you don’t feel you deserve it. Or if receiving it will create an obligation you can’t or don’t want to take on. Or if you feel you haven’t earned it, and ought to pay for it instead.  

In Romans 4, Paul recalls the scene from Genesis 15 when Yahweh promises to protect Abraham and to provide for the future of his line. “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:1–6; Romans 4:3). “Abraham believed.” That’s it. That’s all he had to do. He knew he didn’t deserve it. He knew he couldn’t earn it or pay for it. He simply said, “Yes!”and believed...  

Image: Abraham, stained glass, Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, FL 

The requirement of circumcision follows two chapters later in Genesis. Paul’s interpretation of Genesis 17’s circumcision is that it is a certification testifying to the faith that had been expressed earlier in Genesis 15. “The sign of circumcision [was] a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised” (Romans 4:11). 

It was Genesis 15’s faith from the heart that saved Abraham, not Genesis 17’s cutting of the foreskin. Abraham is thus able to be “father to all who believe”—Jew and Gentile alike—because his faith came prior to his circumcision. For the Israelite descendants of Abraham, receiving circumcision was like receiving a membership card. It didn’t make anyone a member. It was a sign of the membership that faith was supposed to have already provided. That is why Moses and Jeremiah exhort God’s people to be circumcised in the heart (Deuteronomy 10:16; Jeremiah 4:4). Since baptism has succeeded circumcision as sign of belonging to God’s family in the new covenant (Colossians 2:11–14), with the acknowledgement of the need for redemption through Christ, it’s even easier to see that the relationship with the Lord begins in the heart, with the “Yes!” of faith.  

Abraham is an “example of faith” (Romans 4:12) to us because he shows how to receive God’s gift of righteousness. Righteousness was a gift that came to Abraham even when he was, as Paul says, “ungodly” and still “uncircumcised.” (Romans 4:5,10–11). We receive righteousness not because we deserve it, not because to do so would commit us to an odious obligation, not because we must earn it. It so happens that because it is a gift motivated by God’s own love, it is a gift that creates a lovely and sincere desire to return that love. (Paul has more to say about that in upcoming chapters.) But the first thing he wants us to know is this: despite all the bad news we learned about ourselves in Romans 1:18–3:20, God nevertheless set forth his Son as a redemptive sacrifice that covers it all, making the good news of justification and new life available to us. It’s available, Paul wants to make clear, through faith—sheer faith, unadulterated faith, a simple faith that says to God, “Yes!” 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Mercy Seat - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 3/21/2025 •
Week of 2 Lent 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 69:1–23(24-30)31–38); Jeremiah 5:1–9; Romans 2:25–3:18 (and Saturday’s Romans 3:19–31); John 5:30–47 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6–11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we bring to our lives that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you this Friday of the second week of Lent, as we prepare for Holy Week.   

The devastating truth towards which Paul has been driving since Romans 1:18 is that all of us—no exceptions—are “under the power of sin” (Romans 3:9). Some of us sin “with the law (awareness of the Law in the Old Testament),” in which case the law clarifies our sin. Some of us sin “without the law (without knowledge of Old Testament law),” in which case our own consciences tell us much of what the law would have told us anyway. Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female, fill-in-this-identity-marker, fill-in-that-identity-marker. It doesn’t matter. The entire human experience is one loud verification of the Eucharistic Prayer’s confession: “…we had fallen into sin and become subject to evil and death.”  

Paul wants us to take a good look at our hearts, and view ourselves under the harsh light of honest, difficult truths. Beating a lethal disease, only to lose your soul to the more deeply fatal sickness of sin is no victory. Personal effort to help build a perfect society, only to succumb to the inner rot of envy, rage, pride, or lust is no accomplishment, either. As Jesus said, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28 NIV), and “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” (Mark 8:36 NIV).  

The reason Paul confronts us with the bad news of our sinfulness is that he wishes to comfort us with the good news of God’s provision. The God who loves us has done something about our iniquitous condition! (Which, of course, is what Paul had earlier declared as his purpose in Romans 1:16–17.) It’s brilliant. We just have to stay with him long enough to get here. And be honest about the way that Paul’s indictment holds the mirror up to each of us—again, no exceptions.  

What we are ready to see, if only we have been able to see ourselves through the lens of Paul’s indictment, is:  

God set forth redemption. “…through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood…” — Romans 3:24. “Redemption” means purchase price. The phrase “sacrifice (or place) of atonement” here translates a single word in the Greek: hilastērion (literally, “place of laughter”), and it was used in the Old Testament to refer to the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies. Older translations render the term “propitiation,” and here in Romans it refers to Jesus’s self-offering as being a covering for our sin, how God’s displeasure with our sinfulness gives way to his delight in extending us forgiveness and welcome.  

Image: Mercy Seat, Illustrator of Henry Davenport Northrop's 'Treasures of the Bible', 1894, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

“...the righteousness of God (which is attested by the law and the prophets) has been disclosed...” — Romans 3:21 (NET).  It’s a story long in the telling. God gave us a picture of it when he covered Adam and Eve’s nakedness with animal skins in the Garden (Genesis 3). God gave us a picture of it when he told Abraham to sacrifice the ram as a substitute for Isaac (Genesis 22). God gave us a picture of it when he provided the blood of Passover lambs to cause the angel of death to pass over the Israelite homes during the tenth plague in Egypt (Exodus 12). God gave us a picture of it when he covered and forgave David’s sins of adultery and murder (Psalm 32:1–2; see Romans 4:7–8). Year after year, God gave the children of Israel a picture of it when, on the Day of Atonement, blood would be sprinkled on the mercy seat (Leviticus 16). During all those years, asserts Paul, God “God in his forbearance had passed over the sins previously committed” (Romans 3:25 NET). And it all culminated in Christ himself becoming the mercy seat, offering his innocent blood on the cross of Calvary as a perfect sacrifice for sinners.  

That redemption is free to us. “…for all who believe… they are now justified by his grace as a gift… For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works” — Romans 3:22,24,28. No one has to be good enough, rich enough, talented enough, smart enough, “in” enough, of the right lineage or social class or racial make-up to obtain this redemption. All anyone has to do is open their heart to God, and receive the free gift he offers. Period. Full stop. Exclamation point! 

God’s redemption reconciles seeming opposites. Law and grace come together in God’s being just (he upholds his own justice) and justifier (he extends grace, mercy, and forgiveness to us—Romans 3:26).  

Furthermore, Paul wants us to know that the gospel shows how Jew and Gentile have one God: “Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith” (Romans 3:29–30). There isn’t one tribal deity for one set of people, and a different tribal deity for another set of people. The hope of life for every person is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And, because we all come from and give account to one God, we can treat each person as precious bearers of his image. Because of what Paul is teaching here—the bad news about our sinfulness and the good news about redemption—Christians can be a reconciling, peacemaking, and truthful presence in a world of strife, confusion, and incoherence.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Son and The Father - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 3/20/2025 •
Week of 2 Lent 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 70; Psalm 71; Jeremiah 4:9–10,19–28; Romans 2:12–24; John 5:19–29 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we consider some aspect of that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. This is Thursday of the second week of Lent.  

Yesterday, we saw that Jesus’s detractors are upset by his claim to be “equal with God” (John 5:18). In today’s reading in John, Jesus begins carefully and patiently (and yet also quite plainly) to unpack what his being “equal with God” means.  

First, Jesus’s equality with his Father does not put him in competition with his Father: “…the Son can do nothing on his own” (John 5:19). He’s not like Apollo, who supplanted his father Zeus in Greek mythology. God’s Son is not in any way running his own “program,” or pursuing his own agenda. During the history of the church, the Father and the Son have, at times, been wrongly placed in opposition to each other. Some have imagined an angry Father needing to be placated by a supplicant Son. John’s Gospel provides a perfect antidote against that wrong kind of thinking. It asserts, “God so loved the world that he sent…” (John 3:16). At the heart of the dynamic between Father and Son is mutual love. Amazing love, how can it be! 

Second, the Son shares the Father’s power to raise the dead and to give them life (John 5:21). What will differentiate Father and Son in this regard is that as a man, the Son will taste and defeat death from within death itself. His giving of life will be on the far side of his having received—as one of us!—the same life that he will confer. Unfathomable mystery!  

Image: Detail from St. John the Evangelist, Basilica di San Vitale (AD 526-548), Holly Hayes photo. https://www.flickr.com/photos/sacred_destinations/2880428337/in/album-72157604983837920/ 

Third, just like his Father, Jesus the Son has an eternal, non-derivative life within himself: “For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself” (John 5:26). Thus, Jesus anticipates and provides in John’s Gospel an argument against the later heretical Arians who believed that Jesus was not eternal, but merely the first created being in the cosmos. Because of what Jesus says here, the maturing church of the fourth century was able to assert that while the Son is “eternally begotten of the Father,” there was “never a time in which he was not and had to be born.” More glorious mystery!  

Fourth, the Son, as much as the Father, has authority to judge. His mission, indeed, is not to bring condemnation, but rather, in love, to bear condemnation on behalf of an errant human race (John 3:16–17). However, he, no less than his Father, has authority to judge. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner! 

Fifth, the Son has the right to receive the same “honor” as the Father (John 5:23). In fact, Jesus boldly says, we can’t honor the Father without honoring his Son as well. Sometimes, Christians are accused of being “Jesusolaters” in our worship of Jesus. Well, we do worship Jesus, though not as an independent, stand-alone, deity. We both worship the Father through Jesus our worship leader, and we worship Jesus as equal in authority and as one in very nature with his Father. The math is complicated (especially when you consider, as other Scriptures require us to do, the deity of the Holy Spirit as well). But the math works: we worship one God in three Persons. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, world without end! Amen! 

We noted a few weeks ago, on the Feast of St. John, that John’s Gospel became associated with the “eagle,” because of its soaring and majestic perspective on Jesus’s identity. I pray this outlook on who Jesus is creates in us power to persevere in whatever hardship we face, courage and hope for whatever task lies before us, and a passion for worship and praise all the days of our lives.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+  

Sin and God's Kindness - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 3/19/2025 •
Week of 2 Lent 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 72; Jeremiah 3:6–18; Romans 1:28–2:11; John 5:1-18 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 11 (“The Third Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 60:1–3,11a,14c,18–19, BCP, p. 87); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68–79, BCP, p. 92) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we ask how God might direct our lives from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you this Wednesday of the second week of Lent. We are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. 

Sin is powerful, pernicious, and pervasive. 

Despite being called to be God’s loving bride (Jeremiah 2:1), God’s people (Judah in the south even more than Israel in the north) allow themselves to be charmed into committing spiritual adultery with false gods (Jeremiah 3:6–11). That’s how powerful sin is.  

Sin can make us so conditioned to its rule over our lives, that we, like the lame man in John 5, wouldn’t have a strong answer, if the Lord of healing approached and asked, “Do you want to be healed?” Sin can make us so mean-spirited that we, like the Jewish inquisitors in John 5, can find fault in the face of the most amazing of manifestations of goodness. That’s how pernicious sin is.  

For Paul, people’s imaginative capacities are inexhaustible when it comes to inventing and justifying sin. Perhaps the height (or nadir) of those sinful capacities is our facility for being “judgy” towards others whose sins we fancy to be worse than our own: “Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things” (Romans 2:1). That’s how pervasive sin is.  

God’s justice is unalterable. 

There are, however, two great “nonethelesses.” First, regardless of how cleverly we justify ourselves, God’s justice stands. Every single one of us has an intuitive sense that right is right, and wrong is wrong. That’s a whisper from God. The Bible declares its truth. We cannot change the rules of the cosmos because we didn’t create the cosmos. The Creator did, and he governs it by his rules. Not ours. His rule is: “For [God] will repay according to each one’s deeds: to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness, there will be wrath and fury. … God shows no partiality” (Romans 2:6–8,10).  

Each one of us must give an answer. Each one of us confronts the choice of which direction our life faces: God-wards or self-wards. Nobody is exempt.  

Image: “Rise and Walk” by Lawrence OP is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

God’s kindness is even more unalterable.  

The other great “nonetheless” is how powerful, restorative, and personal God’s kindness is. Jeremiah had not been sent just to destroy idolatrous pretension, but also to invite a return to the God who had never stopped loving his people: “Return, faithless Israel, says the Lord. I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful, says the Lord; I will not be angry forever. Only acknowledge your guilt, …” (Jeremiah 3:12–13a). Eventually, Jeremiah will promise a covenant in which God will transform the hearts of intransigent sinners: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33). That’s how powerful God’s kindness is.  

Paul says that God extends a patience that is designed to lead us to repent (Romans 2:4), and Paul writes to the end that stubborn-hearted people will do just that. When Jesus encounters the man who, somehow over the course of thirty-eight years, had not managed to get to the healing waters that were mere feet away from him, Jesus powers through the man’s lame excuses, and heals him anyway. While the legalists made sabbath-keeping a matter of virtue-signaling and pious one-upmanship, Jesus healed on the sabbath, showing the sabbath to be a picture of rest and re-creation. That’s how restorative God’s kindness is.  

Jesus’s interrogators rightly understood that the way in which Jesus called God “my Father” meant that he was making a special claim for himself. Jesus likened his work of healing on the sabbath to his Father’s continuing to uphold and sustain all of creation (obviously including even on the sabbath). Like Father, like Son. Jesus’s opponents recognized his claim for what it was: he was calling “God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God” (John 5:18). They think it’s blasphemous. To the contrary, Jesus is about to explain to them (in the following verses) the authenticity of his deity.  

What John is unfolding in his Gospel is the amazing reality that God’s kindness isn’t an immaterial attribute. God’s kindness is personal. More than that, God’s kindness is a Person. As Paul will later put it, commenting on Jesus’s incarnation: “…when the kindness of God our Savior and his love for mankind appeared, he saved us…” (Titus 3:4–5a). In Jesus, God’s kindness has become a person—not an abstraction. He’s come to rescue, not an abstract humanity, but actual flesh and blood people. Like you and me.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Leave Us Alone - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 3/18/2025 •
Week of 2 Lent 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 61; Psalm 62; Jeremiah 2:1–13; Romans 1:16–25; John 4:43–54 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we draw insights from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. This is Tuesday of the second week of Epiphany, as we prepare for Holy Week, and we are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.   

Romans 1:16–17 sets forth a truth that cannot be heralded enough: In Christ, we receive the gift of a righteousness that comes “from God” and is given to us “by faith.” This is a glorious salvation, says Paul, that is “from faith to faith” (Romans 1:17). It is from Christ’s faith in the Father’s promise to accept his obedience in place of ours (see Romans 5:12-21) to our receiving that gift with the open heart of receptive, obedient trust (what Paul calls the “obedience of faith”—see Romans 1:5; 16:26).  

In Romans 1:18–3:20, There’s an obstacle, Paul explains, that must be overcome in order for us to enjoy the benefits of this gift of righteousness, this glorious salvation. That obstacle is the fact that we have, as the BCP puts it, “fallen into sin and become subject to evil and death” (p. 362). Paul wants us to know how desperate our situation is so we can appreciate how wonderful it is that God responds, in his infinite mercy, by sending Jesus Christ, his “only and eternal Son, to share our human nature, to live and die as one of us, to reconcile us to [him], the God and Father of all” (again, BCP, p. 362).  

Image: "miserere" by Mitchell Haindfield is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

“Therefore God gave them over…” — Romans 1:24 (NET). The most sobering words that the great Anglican lay theologian C. S. Lewis ever wrote are these: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done’” (The Great Divorce). Paul views the entire human race as falling into that second category, and as needing to be moved into the first.  

We have made the tragic choice of denying what we know about God—that is, that he is the Creator who has made us for the joyful task of reflecting his glory into the world. Instead, we have presumed a self-made glory, cultivated hearts of ingratitude rather than thankfulness, and worshiped the creation rather than the Creator (Romans 1:18–23).  

We’ve declared, in effect, that we want God to leave us alone! Accordingly and chillingly, God gives us what we’ve demanded. Not just once, but three times, Paul says it: “And God gave them over….” (Romans 1:24,26,28). In Romans 1:24–25, God gives us humans over to the impure and unworthy desires of our hearts. In Romans 1:26–28 (verses which the Daily Lectionary delicately skips over), God gives us humans over to use our bodies in ways that do not reflect his design for us as sexual beings. He lets us follow our desires into disobedient choices. In Romans 1:28–32 (from tomorrow’s reading), God gives us over to develop patterns of thinking that rationalize our wayward wants and lamentable choices. It’s all pretty close to Thomas Cranmer’s formulation (I paraphrase): “What we want, we choose. And what we choose, we justify.”  

Happily, Paul is not writing to describe God’s final verdict. He’s writing to show the vast chasm between what we deserve (total and utter wrathful judgment) and what we receive (unspeakable love, grace, and mercy). He writes to make us cry out, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner!” He writes to make us all the more grateful for the fact that God has made himself known to us in the merciful, all-suffering Jesus.  

What Paul aims for in Romans, this, his most expansive explanation of the gospel, is how, “from faith to faith,” God recasts our affections (“the love of God is poured out in our hearts”), redirects our wills (“so now present your members as slaves to righteousness”), and renews our minds (“by the renewal of your minds”—Romans 5:5; 6:19; 12:2). God’s aim is that we may bear anew the image of his dear Son (Romans 8:29), our Elder Brother and the Champion of our Salvation. That’s a pretty fantastic lesson for Lent.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

May God Provide So That We May Serve - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 3/17/2025 •
Week of 2 Lent 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 56; Psalm 57; Jeremiah 1:11–19; Romans 1:1–15; John 4:27–42 

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) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we explore that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me. This is Monday of the second week of Lent, a season of preparation for Holy Week, and we are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. 

Strength for Jeremiah. In this week’s section of the Daily Office, Jeremiah will be bringing God’s Word to Judah during the last years of their independence. It is a thankless task. Jeremiah will predict their military defeat, capture, and exile to Babylon.  It breaks his heart that forced exile is the consequence of their rebelliousness. For good reason, Jeremiah is known as the “Weeping Prophet.”  

What stands out about today’s passage in Jeremiah is God’s promise to give Jeremiah the strength, courage, and stamina he will need to fulfill his calling. “And I for my part have made you today a fortified city, an iron pillar, and a bronze wall, against the whole land—against the kings of Judah, its princes, its priests, and the people of the land. They will fight against you; but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, says the Lord, to deliver you” (Jeremiah 1:18–19).  

Sometimes, all you can do is hold fast to God’s promise to make you, like Jeremiah, “a fortified city, an iron pillar, and a bronze wall.” Sometimes all you can do is muster up prayer for the Lord to do for you what he promised Jeremiah: “Though they fight against me, may they not prevail against me. Be with me, Lord, and deliver me. Amen!”   

Image: Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at the Well,  ca. 1420. Unknown artist. Public domain. The Met, NYC. Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917. 

Food for Jesus. Sometimes, by contrast, there is so much satisfaction and joy in doing something that you forget about everything else. You are so immersed in it that you lose all sense of time. Everything else disappears. You may even work right through mealtime (or maybe a couple of mealtimes), not really sensing a need for food.  

Something like that seems to be at work in the early verses in John 4. Exhausted (and probably hungry since his disciples have gone off to seek provisions), Jesus sits down by a well outside Sychar in Samaria (John 4:6,8). A conversation begins with his request for water, and launches into one of the most amazing dialogues in all of Scripture. A woman has come with the intention of drawing water from the well. Instead, she finds herself being drawn out of the shame of her past and present into a new future of worship “in Spirit and in truth” (John 4:7–26). Fully engaged, Jesus has offered to this Samaritan woman “living water”—the ultimate satisfaction for her soul’s thirst. So energized is Jesus by this encounter that when the disciples return and offer him food, he has to explain, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work” (John 4:34).  

So many things for Paul. The Apostle Paul begins his magisterial letter to the Romans  by giving evidence of what the gospel of Jesus Christ as “power of God for salvation” does, not only for others (Greeks and barbarians, wise and foolish), but for himself.  

What the good news of God’s Son Jesus Christ does for Paul: 

• God’s good news in Jesus makes all of the Scriptures that Paul had learned and loved before his conversion come together as one complete whole: the story of how God, in his Son, meets us in our “flesh” (our frailty and susceptibility to death) and raises us up to new and eternal life by the power of the “Spirit of holiness” (Romans 1:3–4). 

• God’s good news in Jesus makes all of Scripture not just a single story, but a story that is singularly about God’s love: “To all God’s beloved in Rome…” (Romans 1:7). Paul believes that God loves the people to whom he is writing! Don’t let that slip past!! One of the most delightful surprises awaiting us as we read through this letter that seems so theologically dense is the way it focuses on God’s love for us and his power to draw out love from us (note these verses: Romans 5:5–8; 8:28–39; 12:9–10; 13:8–10; 14:15; 15:30).  

• Along those lines, God’s good news in Jesus gives Paul a profound love for all people—people who are like him (Jewish and wise) and people who are not like him (“other” and boors). His indebtedness to the grace of God in Christ makes him “a debtor” to all (Romans 1:14). He wants to come to the Romans to impart truth to them. He wants to be with them “so that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine” (Romans 1:12). The good news of God in Jesus Christ makes Paul long for reciprocal relationships. We will see this dynamic over and over again in Romans (see especially Romans 14 and 15). It is a feature not to be missed.  

• God’s good news in Jesus gives Paul courage to prepare to go to the center of power in the known world (Rome) to declare that the true source of power lies elsewhere. True power does not reside in Rome’s ability to conquer, rule, and build in the strength of iron will.  True power lies in God’s power to conquer, rule, and build lives in the way of the cross. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16).  

• Finally, for today, God’s good news in Jesus makes Paul a profoundly thankful man: “I thank my God through Jesus Christ…” (Romans 1:8). One of the big problems in the Garden, Paul will say in tomorrow’s reading, was lack of gratitude (“…for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him”—Romans 1:21). In Christ, Paul’s life is filled with thankfulness.   

Jeremiah received God’s promise for help to stand strong against opposition and obstacles. Jesus was fully immersed in the joy of being part of God’s marvelous power to transform. Paul discovered a deeper personal richness in God’s good news as he wrote to the Romans. 

May God provide you everything you need to serve him, to enjoy him, and to learn from him today.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Prayers and Supplications - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 3/14/2025 •
Week of 1 Lent 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 95; Psalm 40; Deuteronomy 10:12–22; Hebrews 4:11–16 (and Saturday’s Hebrews 5:1–10); John 3:22–36 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6–11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we bring to our lives that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you this Friday of the first week of Lent, as we prepare for Holy Week.   

“In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission” — Hebrews 5:7. The picture that leaps to mind for almost everybody who reads this verse is of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane right before his arrest. This verse reminds people that Jesus asked in that moment of doubt and anxiety if there is any way the cup of judgment (death) can pass from him. He’s asking if there’s another way besides his death for him to save people.  

But the verse deserves a closer look. This prayer is not that prayer.  

First, all the translations leave a misimpression that has to be cleared up. The phrase “to the one who was able to save him from death,” might be rendered more precisely “out of death,” rather than “from death.” The preposition is ek (“out of”), not apo (“from”). To be saved “from death” is indeed what Jesus was asking for in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Let this cup pass from me” (Matthew 26:39). By contrast, the prayer to be saved “out of death” is a prayer for resurrection. This prayer looks back to the mission that was agreed upon in eternity between the Father and the Son, the mission that lies behind “God so loved the world that he gave….” (John 3:16). This is the mission that the writer to the Hebrews presupposes when he says God “brings the firstborn into the world” (Hebrews 1:6). It’s why our writer can refer to Jesus as “apostle,” i.e., “one who is sent” (Hebrews 3:1). This prayer is a prayer that the Father will be faithful to his promise to raise up his Son out of death.  

Second, the answer to this prayer is “Yes.” The Father says “No” to Jesus’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane not to have to go through death, so he can say “Yes” to this prayer. He says “Yes” to bringing Jesus from among the dead, back into the land of the living. The wonderful thing is the fact that the Father’s “Yes” to his Son includes a “Yes” to us as well. Jesus doesn’t die for his own sins (since he had none), but for ours. And he rises so that we can be raised up with him. The Father’s “Yes” to Jesus is a “Yes” to us.  

Third, this verse describes a kind of praying that coursed through the whole of Jesus’s life. This isn’t a last-minute, one-off, desperate “foxhole” plea for the Father to reconsider the plan (though the tears in the Garden of Gethsemane were more than understandable). No, these are the resolute tears and committed cries of the Son who has come among us, to be one of us in our tears and our cries for release. This is the kind of praying Jesus did during those periods when he slipped off to be by himself—or rather, with his Father: “Yet Jesus himself frequently withdrew to the wilderness and prayed” (Luke 5:16 NET).  

Image: “miya” by Kage Xu is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 

How appropriate are our readings today in the church’s own “prayer textbook,” the Psalms. It is in the Psalms, after all, that we also find “prayers and supplications... loud cries and tears.”  

Psalm 95 is a prayer of thanksgiving, as well as a call to worship, acknowledging God as creator and caretaker of his people.  It is Psalm 40, however, that contains an instructive range of human experience for us.  

Here we find praise: “You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us; none can compare with you. Were I to proclaim and tell of them, they would be more than can be counted” (verse 5).   

Here we find deliverance: “He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure” (verse 2).  

Here we find proclamations of God’s goodness: “I have not hidden your saving help within my heart, I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation; I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation” (verse 10).  

Here we also find entreaties for further deliverance, and supplications for the chastisement of his enemies: “Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me; O Lord, make haste to help me. Let all those be put to shame and confusion who seek to snatch away my life; let those be turned back and brought to dishonor who desire my hurt” (verses 13-14).  

We may pray many things over the course of the journey of our life in Christ: shouting praise, giving thanks, asking for help, for guidance, for wisdom, for deliverance. But because we belong to Jesus, and because the Father told him “Yes,” we already have our ultimate deliverance, and a “new and unending life in him.”  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

In Jesus We Find Rest - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 3/13/2025 •
Week of 1 Lent

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 50; Deuteronomy 9:23—10:5; Hebrews 4:1–10; John 3:16–21  

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we consider some aspect of that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. This is Thursday of the first week of Lent.  

A Sabbath Rest Remains 

Everybody I know is ready for some rest. Along comes Lent, with its call to take some time and assess the restlessness and weariness in our hearts. Lent bids us realize there’s a drag within ourselves that creates its own kind of readiness for respite. Lent is a season to find our life in Jesus, where restfulness resides. Lent is a season to reflect on what is true tranquility and rest for our souls.   

Image: Detail, stained glass, Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida 

“So then, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God…” — Hebrews 4:9. Only a partial rest awaited the children of Israel at the end of their forty years of wanderings and upon their entrance into the Promised Land. There was a war of conquest to be waged under Joshua. Unfortunately, it would only be partially won. Then, under the Judges, there would be centuries of vacillation between fragile peace and painful oppression by neighbors. Even when David ascends the throne of a united and prosperous kingdom, he composes (according to the writer to the Hebrews) Psalm 95, calling upon God’s people to look for another “day” in which God will provide rest for his people: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts” (Hebrews 4:7; Psalm 95:7).  

The fact is, as long as sin is in the picture, there is no final rest. And yet, God is actively at work in history to bring about that very rest. That’s what Israel’s sabbath-system pictured, by calling for more than a weekly sabbath. Every year, seven sabbaths after the first fruits, on the fiftieth day, when the harvest was all in, Israel celebrated the end of the year’s labors (Leviticus 23:15–21). Then, every seventh year was to be a year of sabbath rest. And after seven cycles of seven-year sabbaths, the fiftieth year was to be a year of Jubilee (Leviticus 25:1–7). All these sabbath days and sabbath years were intended to provide periods of rest for people as well as for the created order. For their failure to keep these extended and promise-bearing sabbaths, exile comes upon God’s people (see Leviticus 26:34-35; 2 Chronicles 36:21; Jeremiah 25:11-12; 29:10).  

With a note of profound hope, the book of Daniel pictures history as opening out on one final and great sabbath of rest when “one like a son of man” would assume all dominion on earth, put an end to sin, … atone for iniquity … and bring in everlasting righteousness” (Daniel 9:20–27). Then, and only then, will begin the everlasting sabbath-rest, when sin and death are no more, and when all of creation enters a new season of life under God’s direct governance. And its culmination takes place in Revelation 21–22, after seven cycles of judgments as described in the Book of Revelation. 

For good reason, the writer to the Hebrews holds out the hope that “a sabbath rest remains for the people of God” (Hebrews 4:9). He urges his Jewish Christian readers, weary of their difficulties (persecution, and demands of loyalty from their countrymen), to stay strong, and not lose heart. Christ has claimed them by his blood, and he will bring them all the way into their final rest, when God “once more shakes not only the earth but heaven too” (Hebrews 12:26). And the writer to the Hebrews would urge believers of our day as well, not to let our weariness overwhelm us, but to press further into the grace and the strength of Christ. In the words of the letter itself: “hold firm the confidence and the pride that belong to hope” (Hebrews 3:6).  

The good news is that with Christ’s resurrection at Easter, the Lord Jesus stands ready to keep his promise to give rest and respite to all those who are weary and heavy laden (Matthew 11:28). The good news is that with Christ’s resurrection at Easter, not only has he been given all authority over every circumstance that would grind us down, but he has promised his presence with us as we follow him “to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18–20).  

Be blessed this day.  

Reggie Kidd+ 

A Greater Mediator - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 3/12/2025 •
Week of 1 Lent 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:49–72; Deuteronomy 9:13–21; Hebrews 3:12–19; John 2:23–3:15 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 11 (“The Third Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 60:1–3,11a,14c,18–19, BCP, p. 87); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68–79, BCP, p. 92) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we ask how God might direct our lives from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you this Wednesday of the first week of Lent. We are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. 

It was Lent when I first started attending worship at the Cathedral a number of years ago. Lent itself was an unfamiliar practice to me. It so happened, however, that some unexpected sadness had entered my life at that time. I felt that, sort of like Jesus in the wilderness, I had been shoved into a wilderness myself. As a result, I was looking for a worship experience that had room for pain, that was more than a cool song-set, more than happy-clappies. Worship that took into account people’s wilderness wanderings. I guess I was ready for Lent’s remembrance of Jesus’s forty days in his wilderness.  

“Then I lay prostrate before the Lord as before, forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all the sin you had committed, provoking the Lord by doing what was evil in his sight” — Deuteronomy 9:18. Twice, Moses prostrates himself before Yahweh at Mount Sinai for forty days and forty nights. During each period, he becomes the bearer of a precious gift from God to us.  

First gift: Moses as messenger. When Moses says, “Then I lay prostrate before the Lord as before, forty days and forty nights,” he is reflecting that he had just been, with Yahweh, at the summit of Mount Sinai. There he had received, from the very finger of God, the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. In bold strokes, those “Ten Words” sketched out what human life looks like when it is in sync with God’s own life. As his people, shaped by these very words into a “holy nation” and “treasured possession,” Israel was designed to be God’s gift to the world. Yahweh intended for them to manifest what life, lived into its fullness, looks like, a model and picture of the whole of humanity one day enjoying that life. A life, in the words of the Westminster Catechism, of “glorifying God and enjoying him forever.” Moses was to be the messenger of these words from God, and Israel was to be the messenger to the world. That’s the first gift.  

Image: Stained Glass, Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida. 

Second gift: Moses as mediator. The second gift stems from the fact that the giving and accepting of the first gift isn’t so simple. There’s a sin problem that has to be overcome before God’s Word can become good news for us. Even after their dramatic rescue from Egypt, God’s people are as much under sin’s domination as the rest of the world. As a result, during the very same forty days and nights that Moses spends atop Mount Sinai receiving God’s Word (the first time), the Israelites are below fashioning for themselves an idol.  

As a result, Moses spends a second forty days and forty nights prostrate before the Lord. This time he serves as mediator of the covenant, positioning himself between God’s righteous wrath and the people who are so deserving of it. It’s important to read this encounter in the larger context of the canon of Scripture, and especially of what is arguably its capstone verse, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16—from tomorrow’s Gospel reading). In today’s reading in John, the Pharisee Nicodemus visits Jesus.  

In that conversation, the Bible offers one of its many, many pictures of how the God who “so loved the world” provides a mediator to stand between us sinners and the punishment that we deserve: “And 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, quoting Numbers).  

During his second forty days and forty nights of prostration before the Lord, Moses prefigures a greater Mediator. The writer to the Hebrews will describe in our reading later this week that Jesus’s entire life among us is a kind of Lenten journey, in preparation for his suffering a mediating death on behalf of us sinners. “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death (though the last phrase is literally, and more accurately, out of death)—Hebrews 5:7).  

As I learned in my first weeks at the Cathedral, Lent itself is an extraordinary gift. Lent  invites us to remember Jesus in his wilderness, to remember him as an even greater Messenger and Mediator than Moses. In his wilderness, Jesus listens to God’s Word. In his wilderness, Jesus begins his mission to mediate life to us, to bring us “out of error into truth, out of sin into righteousness, out of death into life” (BCP, p. 368). The writer to the Hebrews urges us to imitate Jesus rather than the Israelites in this regard, that we don’t let unbelief keep us from entering the Promised Land: “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partners of Christ, if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end” (Hebrews 3:13–14). Lent invites us, in the words of the great Baptist hymn: “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus, than to trust and obey.”  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

God's House - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 3/11/2025 •
Week of 1 Lent 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 45; Deuteronomy 9:4–12; Hebrews 3:1–11; John 2:13–22 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we draw insights from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. This is Tuesday of the first week of Epiphany, as we prepare for Holy Week, and we are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.   

Looking back at Deuteronomy from the perspective of the letter to the Hebrews, it is profoundly sad to see the horrible decisions the Israelites who gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai are making. “They have been quick to turn from the way that I commanded them; they have cast an image for themselves,” Yahweh charges (Deuteronomy 9:12). Here are the people through whom God intends to bring order and grace back into a world that, at the beginning of the Bible’s story, had fallen into ruin and cruelty. Despite their own failings (see the litany in Deuteronomy 9:4–8), they have been called to be a “holy people,” a “treasured possession,” and “a consecrated people” (Deuteronomy 7:6; 26:18,19).  

But at the foot of Mount Sinai, they renounce their mission to become a home to Yahweh’s presence. They mock God’s call to establish a beachhead for the restoration of all the earth as God’s treasure, re-consecrated to his glory.  

In the words of the letter to the Hebrews, Moses had been placed among the people to help build themselves into a “house” for God (Hebrews 3:5), conforming their lives to the life of God as revealed in the Ten Words (the Ten Commandments). But with the creation of the golden calf (Deuteronomy 9), they basically said, “Nah! We’d rather welcome some other object of worship, as long as we get to fashion it for ourselves. It may be something less, but at least it won’t be you!” They’d chosen to continue the disorder and the cruelty. They’d chosen separation not just from their destiny, but from sanity and love. They won’t “reverse the curse.” 

Image: Carl Bloch, (1834–1890). Jesus Casting Out the Money Changers at the Temple. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

And yet … even within the story line as it unfolds in Deuteronomy (to look ahead briefly at tomorrow’s verses from Deuteronomy), their mediator Moses will not let the people go to their own destruction. Moses cries out for mercy, and the mission moves forward. In his persistence as mediator, Moses anticipates Jesus who, as the writer to the Hebrews puts it, comes as “apostle” of the Father’s mission of rescue, as “high priest” of the Father’s love, and as “faithful son over God’s house” (Hebrews 3:1,5).  

God’s amazing grace is revealed in this: Jesus is righteous where we are unrighteous, upright where we are dishonorable, incorrupt where we are corrupt. And by his death, resurrection, and ongoing ministry at the right hand of the Father, he offers us what is his: his righteousness, his uprightness, his incorruptibility.  

The Gospel according to John records one of the most dramatic moments in all of Scripture in this second chapter. John has already described Jesus this way: “the Word became flesh and took up residence among us” (John 1:14 NET—the Greek is literally, if colloquially, “pitched his tent among us”). Jesus, God-residing-among-us, comes to the temple in Jerusalem, the place designed to be his own house. He comes to see if he is welcome there.  

Instead of a house of prayers for bringing God’s life and people’s lives together, Jesus finds an emporium for merchants (John 2:16; Luke 19:46). Instead of a sanctuary for those who would humble themselves in the presence of the glory of God, he finds a monument to the ego of Herod that’s been forty-six years in the making (John 2:20). Instead of a venue for life-giving sacrifice, he finds an entrenched Sadducean, resurrection-denying aristocracy.  

“Destroy this building,” Jesus declares, “and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). When he offers his body as God’s new temple, he becomes in himself the place where God’s life and people’s lives come together, he becomes sanctuary to the humble, and he becomes the sacrifice that offers unending life. When he offers his body, he begins the construction project of God’s new and final temple. It’s a building that rises “living stone” by “living stone” (1 Peter 2:4–5). It’s a building made up of us: “Christ…was faithful over God’s house as a son, and we are his house if we hold firm the confidence and the pride that belong to hope” (Hebrews 3:6).  

It is an unspeakably high honor to be that house. The challenge that comes to us from Deuteronomy, Hebrews, and John, in concert, is to hold to that honor with confidence and hope…for the sake of the world that God loves and that he will see re-consecrated to his glory.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+