Friday • 10/27/2023 •
Friday of the Twenty-first Week After Pentecost (Proper 24)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 31; Ezra 3:1–13; 1 Corinthians 16:10–24; Matthew 12:22–32

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6–11; BCP, p. 86); 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 bring to our lives 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 Friday in the Season After Pentecost. We are in Proper 24 of Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.

Ezra: Joy at the return. God’s people know it’s of first importance to rebuild the altar and lay the foundation of the temple. (They will soon discover the necessity of building the protecting wall around their city. But hurrah for their sense of the priority of worship!) They adorn their celebration with exuberant music. Tears of joy flow, as well as tears that recall the former days. (This rebuilt temple will not have the grandeur of Solomon’s temple.) 

1 Corinthians: Paul calls for courage and love. “[B]e courageous, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love…Greet one another with a holy kiss” (1 Corinthians 16:13b–14,19)

Have courage to live with hope rather than an over-realized eschatology that expects a life of privilege in the “now.”

Let your fellowship be loving, marked by a “holy kiss.”

Establish relationships that are warm with affection, and chaste with respect for godly boundaries.

Image: Detail, stained glass, Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida

Matthew: Jesus and the “strong man bound.” At his baptism (Matthew 3), Jesus receives power that enables him to begin to storm hell itself. By resisting the temptations of the devil in the wilderness directly after his baptism (Matthew 4), Jesus “t[ies] up the strong man” (Matthew 12:29b). He strips Satan of his power to deflect God from his plan to seek and save the lost. Then, under the empowerment of the Spirit, Jesus goes about exorcising demons from possessed people, forgiving people their sins, restoring broken limbs, and returning sight to the blind and speech to the voiceless. All this is in promise of the breaking of hell’s dominion by his death and resurrection. It is evidence of his receiving “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28:18). And it will encourage his followers on their mission among the nations to make disciples, baptize, and teach a way of life against which “the gates of hell cannot prevail” (Matthew 16:18). 

Jesus soberly says that deliberately to attribute all this amazing, redemptive activity to the forces of darkness would be to commit the final sin of Christopher Marlow’s “accursed Faustus, miserable man, that from thy soul exclud’st the grace of heaven.” 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+