Thursday • 10/5/2023 •
Thursday of the Eighteenth Week After Pentecost (Proper 21)
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 105; 2 Kings 18:28–37; 1 Corinthians 9:1–15; Matthew 7:22–29
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); 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 consider some aspect of 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. On this Thursday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 21 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.
Life seems to afford abundant opportunities to make monumentally bad decisions. One of them, Jim Croce sings, is to mess around with “the pool-shootin’ son of a gun,” Big Jim Walker:
You don’t tug on Superman’s cape
You don’t spit into the wind
You don’t pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger
And you don’t mess around with Jim.
(Jim Croce, 1972, from the album Photographs and Memories)
Today’s readings recall some “you don’t mess around” moments, except these passages are talking about Somebody much bigger than Big Jim Walker.
2 Kings: You don’t mock the Deliverer of Israel. The King of Assyria has been plowing his way through the Ancient Near East. He’s brought down one kingdom after another, razing capital city after capital city. He’s destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel, and he has dispersed its citizens abroad.
Now his army stands outside the gates of Jerusalem, ready to demolish the city of God and level the temple consecrated to Yahweh. Yet he makes a fatal mistake: he mocks Yahweh the Deliverer (in our translation, the LORD). “Do not let Hezekiah make you rely on the LORD by saying, ‘The LORD will surely deliver us, and this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’ … Do not listen to Hezekiah when he misleads you by saying, ‘The LORD will deliver us.’ Has any of the gods of the nations ever delivered its land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah? Have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? Who among all the gods of the countries have delivered their countries out of my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?’” (2 Kings 18:30,32b–35).
It’s hard not to imagine (pardon the anthropocentrism) Yahweh’s ears perking up just a little more every time he hears his name being mocked—four times here! As we will see in tomorrow’s (and the weekend’s) reading, this abject failure to reckon with Yahweh, the Deliverer of his people, the God whose story is so vividly recounted in today’s Psalm 105 (“He turned their waters into blood … Their land was overrun by frogs … He spoke, and the locust came … He struck down the firstborn of their land … He led out his people with silver and gold”—see Psalm 105:29,30,34,36,37), will lead to an implosion within the Assyrian ranks. The Assyrian king will find himself forced to vacate the field and leave Jerusalem and Judah safe. That’s right, You don’t tug on Superman’s cape.
1 Corinthians: You don’t demand your rights from King Jesus. It’s striking how much energy Paul expends helping entitled Christians recalibrate their understanding of what’s due them in the Kingdom of God. The “king’s kids” in Corinth want it all: justice through the courts (1 Corinthians 6), freedom either from sexual constraints (1 Corinthians 6) or from domestic responsibilities (1 Corinthians 7), license to display their supposedly enlightened consciences (1 Corinthians 8).
Throughout 1 Corinthians, Paul calls on them to see things differently. The Christian life is not about asserting your rights. It’s about using privileges and advantages to improve the lot of others. In today’s passage, he describes how he has the right to be married and to receive a salary as a minister of the gospel … but how he foregoes that right because he does not want to put “an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ” (1 Corinthians 9:12). Scholars think that Paul means that if he exercised his “right” to financial support from the Corinthians, they would demand the “right” to control his message. He’s not going to play their game. He wants them to see what it is to imitate Christ who, “though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). Jesus Christ isn’t about demanding rights, but about surrendering them for the sake of others. Right again, You don’t spit into the wind.
You don’t not act on Jesus’s words. You don’t fill a thick notebook with nice notes on the Sermon on the Mount, and yet fail to do what Jesus says there. After listening to him, you don’t lash out when you’re angry. You don’t hold grudges. You don’t not rein in your wandering eyes. You don’t exit out the back door when marriage gets rough. You don’t cross your fingers when you make a promise. You don’t not tame your tongue. You don’t do religious stuff so others can see how religious you are. You don’t let your possessions possess you. You don’t worry endlessly about the kingdom of self. You don’t get “judgy” towards others. You don’t do to others what you’d never want them to do to you. Because, You don’t tug the mask on that old Lone Ranger.
And, no, just no, you don’t mess around with the Lord of the Universe. He loves you too much to let you get away with that. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+