Yahweh Has Returned - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 10/30/2023 •
Monday of the Twenty-second Week After Pentecost (Proper 25)  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 41; Psalm 52; Zechariah 1:7–17; Revelation 1:4–20; Matthew 12:43–50  

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2–6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94) 

 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we explore that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me. This Monday in the Season After Pentecost our readings finds us in Proper 25 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Zechariah: Yahweh has returned. According to Ezra’s account, work on the house of God stops for about 17 years due to Samaritan resistance that is reinforced by later Persian rulers (Ezra 4:1–24). Finally, the prophets Haggai and Zechariah rise up and exhort the people to recommence the building regardless of opposition (Ezra 5; Haggai 1:1–2:9).  

During this time, Zechariah brings words both of comfort and of promise to God’s people. Through a vision of a man standing among myrtle trees, Zechariah consoles the people with “gracious and comforting words” (Zechariah 1:13). Though God had used alien nations to discipline his people, God had not planned the level of pain those nations had inflicted—and in his own time and in his own way, he will right that wrong (Zechariah 1:15).  

Yahweh himself is now returning to Jerusalem “with compassion; my house shall be built in it … My cities shall again overflow with prosperity; the LORD will again comfort Zion and again choose Jerusalem” (Zechariah 1:16b,17—and for his departure from Jerusalem during the exile, see Ezekiel 10).   

Eventually, Darius II of Persia supports the resumption of construction (Ezra 6:1–12). It is indeed time for Yahweh’s people to celebrate the Redeeming God of mercy, compassion, and love. And it is time for them to give themselves to the task of rebuilding the temple, the city, the walls … and their lives.  

Matthew: Now that “God is with us.” From Matthew’s point of view, the coming of Jesus as Emmanuel (“God with us”) is even more dramatic and significant than the return of the exiles from Babylon. Today’s passage in Matthew offers a twofold caution to any of us who are tempted to make light of that fact. Jesus’s coming amounts to a sweeping campaign to thrust demonic presence from God’s beloved Land of Promise and from the hearts of his people. But the elimination of an evil spirit demands its replacement by a good spirit, specifically the Holy Spirit.  

When we fail to acknowledge the source of the goodness that has come to our hearts, we become susceptible to even greater wickedness. The kind of specter Scripture would have us avoid is tasting some of the good that the gospel of Christ brings, for instance, a sense of being freely forgiven, but then “deconstructing” and abandoning our faith. We may well find ourselves living in a prison of bitterness, of self-justification, and of the rationalization of all sorts of things we know to be wrong.  

Revelation: Keeping our eyes on Jesus. What the New Testament as a whole and the Book of Revelation in particular would have us keep in view is the portrait of the magnificence and the glory of “Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth” (Revelation 1:5). If we see him for who he truly is, we can more readily let our identity be shaped by and our lives be governed by the fact that he has made us “a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father” (Revelation 1:6).  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+