Wednesday, 1/27/2020
Week of 3 Epiphany

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:49–72; Isaiah 49:1–12; Galatians 2:11–21; Mark 6:13–29

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)

A light to the nations

During the Babylonian exile, Yahweh had exhorted his children to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:7). Because, in the end, God’s loving purposes include both Israel and the nations. On the far side of her exile, not only will Israel know vindication for all the time of being “deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers” (Isaiah 49:7). she will be “a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).

Israel wasn’t being rescued from exile just for her own benefit, says Isaiah. Even in announcing the good news of her release from captivity, Isaiah called on her to look beyond herself to the entire Gentile world he had always intended to bless through her.

Crucified with Christ

To the surprise of his Jewish contemporaries, Paul saw his ministry of Christ’s gospel as being a part of Israel’s mission to be that very light to the nations. As he declares to his fellow Jews in the synagogue of Pisidian Antioch: “It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken first to you. Since you reject it and judge yourselves to be unworthy of eternal life, we are now turning to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us, saying, ‘I have set you to be a light for the Gentiles, so that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth’” (Acts 13:46–47).

During his first missionary journey (Acts 13–14), Paul witnesses Israel’s Messiah bringing salvation to the nations. Peter too witnesses this amazing new thing that Isaiah had prophesied: he receives an angelic vision on the rooftop of Jason’s house in Joppa and is present at the Spirit’s descending on Gentiles in the centurion Cornelius’s house (Acts 10–11). Peter has seen for himself Israel’s Messiah beginning to bring salvation to the nations.

A profound part of the message of salvation to the nations is that Christ not only makes us clean before him, he makes us clean in one another’s eyes as well. Christ makes all people worthy of God’s, and one another’s, company. As a result, while Peter is visiting the church in Syrian Antioch, he and Paul both experience and enjoy table fellowship among Jewish and Gentile believers in Christ. Christ’s blood on the cross—not any individual’s blood in circumcision—makes a person clean, and furnishes entrance into fellowship with God and his people. Paul gets that. So does Peter.

Except for one thing. Peter steps away from the table of fellowship when some of his Jewish Christian brothers arrive from Jerusalem. Peter never offers a rationale for his behavior. But Paul is furious, because he connects the dots. If Jewish and Gentile believers can’t eat together, it means Christ’s shed blood did not accomplish forgiveness of sins and make us acceptable to God. It means we return to the uncleanness of our sins—all of us!—and to our tribal loyalties. Thus, he rebukes Peter.

And … in his agitation—a holy agitation, I submit—Paul pens a letter to the churches of Galatia. They are entertaining the notion of submitting to the knife of circumcision, thinking the procedure was necessary to make their salvation sure. This letter has served as a charter of freedom to all churches ever since. To shed their own blood would be to say that Christ’s blood—his crucifixion—wasn’t enough. Paul wants them to know that Christ’s blood was absolutely enough. And he wants to lay out its full benefits for them: in Christ, they have everything they need to know forgiveness of sins, and full membership in the household of God.

The keynote verse for the entire letter comes from today’s passage, and it alone is worth time prayerfully pondering its implications (I prefer the New English Translation): “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So the life I now live in the body, I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+