Wednesday • 10/6/2021
Wednesday of the Nineteenth Week After Pentecost (Proper 22)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:145–176; 2 Kings 22:14–23:3; 1 Corinthians 11:23–34; Matthew 9:9–17

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)

I once had a friend who trained hunting dogs. One day he said, “You can tell you’ve won a dog when, if you discipline them for doing something wrong, they move toward you instead of away from you.” 

From his sickbed, King Hezekiah (739–686 BC) calls to Yahweh, and is healed (2 Kings 20:1–11). His pride, however, leads him foolishly to show off the temple treasury to a Babylonian general (2 Kings 20:12–21; 2 Chronicles 34:25–26). Yahweh pronounces a severe judgment, in response to which Hezekiah repents. Despite his failings, he’s been won to Yahweh.

Hezekiah’s son King Manasseh (709–642/3 BC) moves further and further away from Yahweh, adding one idolatry to another, and one injustice to another. Like Christopher Marlow’s self-dooming Dr. Faustus, Manasseh lowers himself to the “most vile and loathsome filthiness the stench whereof corrupts the inward soul with such flagitious crimes of heinous sin as no commiseration may expel.” And Manasseh has no interest in asking for God’s mercy. For a long 55 years he drags Judah down with him. He’s never been won to Yahweh. 

King Josiah (648–609 BC), grandson of Manasseh, upon reading the long-lost book of the Law (Deuteronomy, in the view of many scholars), asks if the book’s threatened curses have become inevitable. When the answer comes back, “Yes, but you personally will escape them,” Josiah is not content to sit back and enjoy his personal reprieve, knowing the nation he loves, and has been called to serve, will suffer after his death. If it is indeed Deuteronomy that has recently been discovered, Josiah can hold on to the promise that, despite the inevitable consequences of disobedience, there still stands Yahweh’s promise that on the far side of exile there will be a return: “Even if you are exiled to the ends of the world, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there he will bring you back” (Deuteronomy 30:4). Josiah knows it’s never too late to, “Choose life…” (Deuteronomy 30:19). He sets about a massive campaign of reformation because he’s been won to Yahweh. 

The apostle Paul looks for a Hezekiah-like and Josiah-like response among the Corinthians, a church he dearly loves despite their many failings and stumblings. He calls them “beloved” (1 Corinthians 4:14; 10:14). He sincerely believes they are trying to get it right, even though they wildly misunderstand his teachings about resurrection, and, therefore, about when we receive the final delivery of all the good things of our redemption (more to follow, as we continue through 1 Corinthians). He does not believe that they are like the lost generation of the exodus (1 Corinthians 10:1–13) or like fatally idolatrous Manasseh. 

Paul’s warnings, similar to the one he lays down here concerning the Table of the Lord (“If we examined ourselves, we would not be judged”—1 Corinthians 11:31), are designed to bring them to their senses—to remind them that they have indeed been won to the Lord. To that end, he takes them back to that holy night, when Jesus instituted the Lord’s supper. Paul desires that this remembrance will make it all new to them again. Week by week, you and I have the same opportunity to be renewed in God’s gracious provision on display at that Table, and to be won over yet again to his incredible love. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Adapted from Reggie Kidd photo