Tuesday • 1/19/2021
Week of 2 Epiphany

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 26; Psalm 28; Isaiah 44:9–20; Ephesians 4:17–32; Mark 3:19b–35

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)

“All who make idols are nothing…” versus “…clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” — Isaiah 44:9 versus Ephesians 4:24. 

If you fashion idols that are nothing, you become nothing yourself. 

Or… 

If you accept the true image of God in the face of His Son Jesus, you become the new self you were designed to be. 

Isaiah composes a brilliant “taunt-song” (per Old Testament scholar Claus Westermann) to hold up a mirror for idol-makers. He offers them the opportunity to see the vanity of their enterprise. Worship a block of wood, and you become (perhaps a bit colloquially) a “blockhead.” Worship nothing, and you become nothing. It’s wisdom that’s not confined to Israel. The Greek story of Midas’s touch makes a similar ironic point: “Gold is your god? Fine, how about you become that god?” The Hebrew psalmist says: “Those who make [idols] are like them; so are all who trust in them” (Psalm 115:8). 

It’s a truth that has a wonderfully and redemptively converse as well, though. As New Testament scholar N. T. Wright says in his Simply Christian: “You become like what you worship. When you gaze in awe, admiration, and wonder at something or someone, you begin to take on something of the character of the object of your worship.” And when we gaze in awe, admiration, and wonder into the face of the true image of God—his Son Jesus Christ—we begin to be transformed into that same likeness. That is what Paul describes in today’s passage from Ephesians. 

Ephesians. Paul knows the book of Isaiah and he knows the Psalms. He continues their critique of idol worship, reminding the Ephesians of where their former idolatry had led them (Ephesus’s patron deity was a rock that supposedly fell from heaven, and which they turned into the goddess Artemis—see Acts 19:35). Their worship of a rock had left them “darkened in your understanding,” and insensible as how to live. They had been trapped in self- and relationship-destructive desires and patterns of behavior: licentiousness, greed, impurity. By way of example, visitors to Ephesus today can see, etched into the sidewalk leading from its ancient port into town, directions to the brothel. Luxury homes of the day were covered with pornographic murals. The modern Ephesus Museum displays spectacular ancient graphic statues to Priapus, the Greek god of the phallus. 

Paul began his macro-picture of the “new self” in the first part of Ephesians 4, and he will complete it in Ephesians 5. In the first place, we are Christ’s very Body that is being filled — almost as though (I say this carefully) we are an extension of the incarnation — Christ as head, and we as body, “joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, making bodily growth and building itself up in love” (Ephesians 4:15-16). In the second place, we are Christ’s Bride — made for relationship with him; what he is doing is working to present her (i.e., us) to himself “spotless, holy, without blemish, radiant in glory” (Ephesians 5:25-28). 

Paul provides texture to his micro-picture of the “new self” in today’s and tomorrow’s reading, providing instruction for how each of us can “put on” characteristics of that “new self.” Not committing fornication, but “as beloved children liv[ing] in love” (Ephesians 5:1,2). Not lying, but speaking the truth (Ephesians 4:25). Not stealing, but working so as to be able to share (Ephesians 4:28). Not letting our speech be filled with destructive evil, but with edifying grace (Ephesians 4:29). Not being consumed by anger, bitterness, wrath … things that lead to wrangling and malicious slander; but instead, showing each other kindness, tenderheartedness, and the readiness to forgive as we have been forgiven (Ephesians 4:26,31–32).  

What is extraordinary is that as we pursue a life of speaking truth, sharing, and forgiving, we escape the nothingness and emptiness (Ecclesiastes calls it “vanity”) that is ours when we worship things that are not gods. Our lives get shaped into the likeness of Christ, who is the very image of God. 

Be blessed this day in the grace of this endeavor,

Reggie Kidd+