Wednesday • 10/2/2024 •

Wednesday of Proper 21

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 101; Psalm 109:1-4(5-19)20-30; Hosea 4:11-19; Acts 21:15-26; Luke 5:27-39

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)

Three phrases jump out at me this morning: one from Hosea, one from Luke, and one from Acts. 

For a spirit of whoredom has led them astray… — Hosea 4:12. King Solomon’s heart had been divided. So many wives! So many concubines! So many different gods being worshiped under his roof! (See 1 Kings 11:1-8). His divided heart was followed in the next generation by a divided kingdom. The 10 northern tribes became the nation of Israel. The problem for the Northern Kingdom was that God had commanded that worship was to be centered in a single place (Deuteronomy 12), which became Jerusalem, now lying in the rival Southern Kingdom of Judah (the home of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin). In order to distinguish itself from the Southern Kingdom of Judah, the Northern Kingdom of Israel established its own centers of worship: Bethel and Dan. Further, the informal idolatry that Solomon had tacitly allowed into his expansive household became institutionalized in the Northern Kingdom. Israel built altars to compete with the one in Jerusalem. Israel adorned them with images that looked a lot like the golden calves from the Book of Exodus (1 Kings 12:26-33). And Israel blended worship of Yahweh with worship of old fertility gods of Canaan, the Baals and the Asherahs. By the time Hosea rises as a prophet, this is the way things have been for a couple of centuries. It’s assumed in the Northern Kingdom that you can combine worship of Yahweh with veneration of local deities, and that loyalty to the covenant is consistent with “sexual orgies” and “love of lewdness” (Hosea 4:19). 

Of their idolatry and immorality Hosea says, “A wind has wrapped them in its wings” (Hosea 4:19). We might describe idolatry and immorality as simply having become “the air they breathe.” 

I can’t get past Hosea’s sobering words without pausing to reflect on whether there are idolatrous impulses and immoral compulsions that are part of the air we breathe, a way of being that we take perfectly for granted. I’m not pointing fingers. I’m not launching into a tirade about this sin or that. I’m simply suggesting a pause for reflection here at the beginning of the day. 

“…while the bridegroom is with them…” — Luke 5:27-39. The good news is that God didn’t leave us to pull ourselves out of the morass. He knows we can’t! He didn’t expect us to beautify ourselves, to clean ourselves up, and to make ourselves worthy of him. He knows we can’t! The good news, says the gospel of Luke, is that the Bridegroom that Hosea promised has come. He has come as both Bridegroom and Physician, “to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32). As a result, the expected gloominess of repentance, says Jesus, is misplaced. Christ’s presence is a time for celebration, for joy—the Bridegroom has come, bringing a banquet of love! The restoration of the marriage of heaven and earth on the far side of judgment that Hosea had promised is freely offered in Jesus’s life and ministry. Bring out the new wine! 

You see, brother…” — Acts 21:20. The impact of the Groom’s coming was felt no stronger than by Luke’s traveling companion, the apostle Paul. To the Ephesians (whom we read him addressing in Acts 20) Paul will later write that Christ is Groom to the Church as the Church is Bride to Christ (Ephesians 5). To give concrete expression to the revelation of God’s love in Christ, Paul has spent the last year and a half collecting funds from the Gentile churches as a gift for the Jerusalem believers—those most skeptical of his ministry (about which Paul writes at some length in 2 Corinthians 8-9). 

What is captured for us in today’s reading in Acts is the moment when Paul would have presented his gift to the Jerusalem church. We know that the gift is on his mind from what he says about it later (see Acts 24:17a). What is striking—indeed, breathtaking—is that the moment of the gift-giving is actually passed over in silence. The leaders of the Jerusalem church welcome Paul, listen to his account of what God has been doing among the Gentiles, and praise God for it (Acts 21:17-20a). Then, instead of thanking him for the not insignificant gift that would have accompanied the narrative, they ask him to go “a second mile.” Thus, “You see, brother….” Paul is expected to underwrite sacrifices in the Temple to refute charges that he is encouraging Jewish Christians to abandon Jewish practice. It’s stunning that there is no protest on his part, either of how odd it is to continue to participate in Temple sacrifices now that Christ has made his own once-for-all offering, nor of how they might have at least said, “Thanks, Paul, for this amazing expression of love you bring from the Gentile churches.” 

That Paul accommodates the Jerusalem church’s leadership, and that he does so ungrudgingly, can be accounted for by one thing, and one thing only: he cannot do anything but love the Bride with the same patience, generosity of Spirit, and graciousness that the Groom has extended to him. I pray that your life and mine may be marked with the Groom’s love for the Bride he cherishes and champions. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+