Tuesday • 1/31/2023 •
Week of 4 Epiphany
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 61; Psalm 62; Isaiah 52:1–12; Galatians 4:12–20; Mark 8:1–10
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 fourth week of Epiphany, and we are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.
Although I grew up in a church-going family, I think my dad aimed his life-counsel at protecting me in case God didn’t exist. One of his sayings was, “Son, don’t let your highs be too high, or your lows too low. You’ll crash from the one. You may never come out of the other.”
Protect yourself, in other words, from your feelings. The way you do that is by never letting yourself feel too good or too bad. It was, I guess, his own version of Aristotle’s “golden mean,” or Goldilocks’s “not too hot, not too cold, but just right … not too hard, not too soft, but just right.”
It was a pretty good strategy … until Jesus Christ came barging in. To open oneself to the hope of resurrection is to accept the prospect of ecstatic joy. But resurrection necessarily follows crucifixion; if there’s joy, then there’s also sadness, if ecstasy, then also agony. If the Christian story is true, then feeling the whole complex of emotions is simply being true to reality.
Isaiah and Jesus: Incomparable joy. Isaiah anticipates in the short term the nation of Israel’s deliverance from captivity in Babylon and her return to her homeland. At the same time, as we have seen, Isaiah laces his prophecies with long term hopes for cosmic renewal through Israel’s coming Messiah and King (Isaiah 7:14; 9:2–7; 11:1–9; 25:6–9; 28:14–18; 35:1–10).
Accordingly, Isaiah’s tone sometimes, as in today’s passage, rises to heights of exuberant joy. “Awake, awake, put on your strength, O Zion! Put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city” (Isaiah 52:1). The time for celebration has come! The sentinels on her walls “sing for joy; for in plain sight they see the return of the Lord to Zion. Break forth into singing…” (Isaiah 52:8–9). Jerusalem’s sentinels sing because they spy messengers on the horizon bearing the good news that captives are returning. They hear the messenger bearing tidings of peace: “Your God reigns!”
Image: Berthold Werner, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The New Testament reverberates with the worldwide annunciation of the greater peace won by the incarnate Lord, come to give his life for the ultimate release from the captivity of sin—for Israel and for the world. In the sixth chapter of Mark’s Gospel, while on Israelite soil, Jesus feeds 5,000, and fills twelve baskets with the overflow. Twelve baskets, commentators suggest, represent the renewal of the twelve tribes of Israel. In today’s reading, Jesus stands east of the River Jordan in the non-Israelite Golan Heights, having ministered on the coast near classical (pagan) Tyre and most recently in the Decapolis in ancient (and also pagan) Syria, he feeds 4,000. His disciples collect seven baskets from the overflow. Seven baskets, commentators suggest, recall the displacement of seven nations during the conquest under Joshua (Deuteronomy 7:1b, Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites; Acts 13:19).
With the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus symbolizes he is Manna for Israel; with the feeding of the 4,000, he expands the metaphor to being bread for the world. In both feedings, he foreshadows the fourfold Eucharistic action of taking bread, blessing it, breaking it, and distributing it (Mark 6:41; 8:6). In doing so, he opens up a world of joy and thanksgiving to us, for with his coming to bless Israel and the world, he proclaims, “Your God reigns!”
Galatians: Utter perplexity. Because Paul sees the Galatians tossing aside that joy to go back under the harsh yoke of the law, he confesses his dismay and perplexity. It touches him deeply. He reminds the Galatians of how deep their affection for him had run when he first brought them the good news of their freedom from captivity to sin and death through Christ: you “welcomed me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus … had it been possible, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me” (either referring to the unnamed physical affliction that had occasioned his visit to Galatia, or metaphorically alluding to an ancient story of a comrade sacrificing his eyes to gain his mate’s freedom from prison—Galatians 4:14–15).
It is precisely because Paul has allowed himself to know the joy of all that Christ has done for him that he is so grieved at the Galatians’ flirtation with catastrophic error. He describes himself as experiencing something like labor pains, hoping and praying that the Galatians would find Christ’s life taking hold of them once again. He is baffled that having tasted such joy, they would toss it aside for what he knows will only bring misery: trying, trying, trying to compensate for the fact that the shedding of their own blood will never silence their conscience’s cry, “It’s just not enough!” Christ’s blood is enough, Paul knows. And when his blood is enough, the floodgates open for tears of everlasting, thankful joy.
I pray that you and I are similarly touched by the plight of people in our lives who know their lives are irreparably broken—or perhaps worse, think they have their own “fix.” I pray we have the grace to reach out as boldly and caringly as Paul. But more, I pray we know the everlasting and thankful joy of the full redemption on offer in who Christ is, what he has done, what he continues to do, and what he will do to “make all things new.” I pray we know Isaiah’s sweet song of redemption: “Your God reigns!”
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+