Thursday • 10/7/2021
Thursday of the Nineteenth Week After Pentecost (Proper 22)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 131; Psalm 132; Psalm 133; 2 Kings 23:4–25; 1 Corinthians 12:1–11; Matthew 9:18–26

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)

2 Kings: Josiah’s war against false gods. King Josiah faces an astounding array of false gods: Baal, Asherah, all the hosts of heaven, the sun, the moon, the constellations, Astarte of the Sidonians, Chemosh of Moab, Milcom of the Ammonites. His relentless, indeed ruthless, quest to purge Judah of all false worship stands as a constant challenge to you and me to purge our hearts and lives of our own “idols,” and instead, to “turn to the LORD with all [our] heart, with all [our] soul, and with all [our] might, according to the law of Moses” (2 Kings 23:25).

The amazing potpourri that 2 Kings 23 describes is instructive. The heart that opens itself to anything and everything will become dissipated by all the demands, and glutted with meaninglessness. In our day we may be less familiar with the ones named. But the apostle Paul lists other kinds of idolatry we know all too well: “their god is their belly” … “greed, which is idolatry” … “lovers of self” (pilautoi) … “lovers of pleasure” (philēdonoi) — Philippians 3:19; Colossians 3:5; 2 Timothy 3:2,4.

1 Corinthians: Paul’s fight to fill us with the life of God. When such idols occupy our field of vision, we are incapable of discerning the particular way the exquisite and unique manifestation of the Spirit comes our way. That’s why it’s no accident, in my view, that Paul prefaces today’s description of the delicate balance between the unity of the Giver and the multiplicity of the gifts by reminding us what it was like to be “enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak” (1 Corinthians 12:2).

There is a glorious, even beautiful, resplendence to the internal life of the Triune God: Holy Spirit, the Lord Jesus Christ, and God the Father. From each, working in harmony with the others, come to us amazing benefits: from the Spirit, “varieties of gifts,” from the Lord Jesus, “varieties of services (diakoniai),” and from the “God who activates all of them in everyone,” “varieties of activities” (1 Corinthians 12:4–7).

Paul wants each believer to be ready for and available to receive some unique and particular “manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7). He enumerates some of the possibilities, beginning with utterances of wisdom or knowledge, and expressions or acts of faith (see 1 Corinthians 12:8–11).

If our hearts are preoccupied with substitutes for God (like self, pleasure, money, or food), we can’t make room for the riches the Spirit would pour in. But when the Spirit is working uniquely in each of us “for the common good,” the beauty and resplendence of God’s very life comes to expression, on earth, so to speak, as it is in heaven.

Making room for that is worth some good Josiah-like housecleaning.

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Reggie Kidd photo