Thursday • 1/19/2023 •
Week of 2 Epiphany
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 37; Isaiah 45:5–17; Ephesians 5:15–33; Mark 4:21–34
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 Epiphany, the “manifestation” of God’s glory in Jesus Christ.
“… truly you are a God who hides himself…” — Isaiah 45:15a.
Isaiah is explaining the nearly unexplainable. Yahweh calls by name a Persian pagan, Cyrus, to be savior and redeemer of his people: “I have roused Cyrus in righteousness, and I will make all his paths straight; he shall build my city and set my exiles free, not for price or reward, says the Lord of hosts” (Isaiah 45:13). Yahweh—besides whom there is no god—forms light and creates darkness, makes weal and creates woe: “I the Lord do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7). On behalf of Yahweh, Isaiah says that the pottery (we) need not demand explanation from or offer advice to the potter (God).
Rightly did hymnist William Cowper write, “God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform.” There is a deep hiddenness, a profound inscrutability, to Yahweh, master and maker of heaven and earth, Lord of history and of our lives. Then again…
“This is a great mystery…” — Ephesians 5:32a.
The entire drift of Scripture has been toward a bringing together of God’s life and ours, of his uniting his heart with ours. We have traced the theme of this Divine Romance through Hosea, Ezekiel, the Song of Songs, and the Book of Revelation. And today’s passage in Ephesians presents a crowning moment in that story.
The God “who hides himself” has revealed his face in the person of his Son Jesus. Jesus has done intentionally what Cyrus did unknowingly: Jesus was raised in perfect righteousness; walked the straightest path, that of obedience to his Father. He began to build the City of God in his acts of healing and in his teachings. He set sin’s exiles free by his death, and that at no cost to them. Moreover, he has rounded out Israel’s story of the disgraced prostitute who was to be beautified and made “one flesh” with her Divine Lover, in an eternal embrace of love: “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind—yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:25b–27).
In the second half of Ephesians 5, Paul lays out the ways that this “mystery” makes God no longer hidden. The Lord becomes visible in his people’s worship and in their relationships.
Their worship is characterized by wisdom-shaped and Spirit-filled singing of thanks “to the Lord in your hearts” (Ephesians 5:15–20). In that kind of worship, people manifest a vision of the courts of heaven, where praise rings out “day and night” (Revelation 4:8). In their worship, God’s people, in a sense, “unhide” the hidden God.
Their relationships bring to light key aspects of the Divine Romance that Scripture celebrates. Christ has come in loving obedience to his Father’s eternal purpose to redeem. Christ has won his bride by serving her, not by dominating her; by dying for her, not by diminishing her; by ennobling her, not by demeaning her. In what can best be described as a dance, the Bride answers with a “Yes” of finding her life in his, her own glory enhanced in his. In a whirl of ever-evolving mutual deference, they “love, honor, and cherish each other in faithfulness and patience, in wisdom and godliness” (BCP, p. 431). Together, they mirror what ancient Christian theologians called the eternal perichoresis—the everlasting dance—that makes up the inner life of the members of the Trinity.
“It is like a mustard seed…” — Mark 4:31a.
Jesus refers to a plant that was, as New Testament scholar Craig Keener puts it, “proverbially small and yet yielded a large shrub.” To that, Jesus likens the Kingdom of God, which “might begin in obscurity, but it would culminate in glory.” The comfort you and I can take from this image today is this: good worship and right relationships seem like small things. But when the Spirit inhabits the worship and the Son shapes the relationships, our worship and our relationships become powerful demonstrations of, and pointers to, the love of “the Father from whom every family in heaven and earth takes its name” (Ephesians 3:14b–15). William Cowper, again:
Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never failing skill
He treasures up His bright designs
And works His sov’reign will.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+