Tuesday • 10/8/2024 •
Proper 22
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 121; Psalm 122; Psalm 123; Micah 1:1-9; Acts 23:12-24; Luke 7:1-17
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9-10, 13, BCP, p. 93)
Micah. The Daily Office now turns to the ministry of the 8th century BC prophet Micah. Following Hosea’s lead, Micah treats the Northern Kingdom, Israel, as Yahweh’s beloved wife who has prostituted herself to other gods: “…as the wages of a prostitute she has gathered [her wages]” (Micah 1:7). As a result, Israel is bringing destruction upon herself through the imminent Assyrian invasion. Micah, who is from the Southern Kingdom of Judah, sees danger for his own people as well. He accuses his beloved Judah of the same crimes as Israel: “And what is the high place of Judah? Is it not Jerusalem?” (Micah 1:5). Worship, even in the Temple—the legitimate place of worship—has become tainted with idolatry.
Prophecies in the book of Micah will range from warnings of devastating judgment for both Israel and Judah (1:2-5); to pleas for justice, faithfulness, and humility (6:8); and to promises of rescue by a Bethlehem-born Messiah from the line of David (5:2-5a).
Image: Image: Abraham Sobkowski OFM, Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons
In Luke’s gospel, we find the Bethlehem-born Son of David accomplishing this very rescue. The Messiah comes in blessing, not only to the Jew, but also to the non-Jew. In today’s reading, Jesus extends God’s love to a Roman centurion and his close-to-death slave (Luke 7:1-10). The centurion’s expression of faith is instructive as well as extraordinary. His message to Jesus is, in essence, “If you say the word, I believe it will be done, without personally needing an audience with you.” If only we could be so confident! We have Christ’s words in Scripture, but we often find it difficult to trust him as we ought.
Similarly, if ever we wanted to be confident that Jesus identifies with us in our sorrows, we have only to turn to biblical accounts of Jesus responding to the grief of others. When Jesus stood outside the tomb of Lazarus, John, using powerful Greek terms, writes that “…he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved” and “Jesus wept” (John 11:33,35). Here in Luke 7, a widow’s only son has died. Her loss is significant, not simply because of her love for her child, but also because, as a widow, devastatingly, her life has changed. She has lost her means of support, and she faces a grim future. When Jesus encounters her in a funeral procession, Luke records, “he had compassion for her,” using a graphic term for the feeling of emotion: splanchnizestai, which means something like “feel deep down in one’s inward parts or bowels.” The young man is brought back to life, and Jesus presents the son back to the mother. We see in Jesus not just empathy in our sorrows, but power to transform them: he can defeat death itself. His power to raise the dead to physical life prefigures his power to raise the believer to eternal life. Jesus can get us all the way home.
Acts. In Luke’s companion volume to Luke, we see the heirs of Israel’s and Judah’s covenantally faithless leadership resisting their Messiah. Spiritually dead themselves, they refuse the explanation and offer of spiritual life in Christ, and subsequently concoct a conspiracy to kill the formerly spiritually dead apostle Paul. Nevertheless, the Lord has other plans, and informs Paul that he will be God’s witness—in Rome! Thus, by some “chance,” a nephew of Paul’s happens to hear of the plot to kill Paul. The young man brings the information to Paul. Paul, who by this time has learned something about the ethical character of the Roman commander, instructs the young man to give the commander the details of the plan. Hearing of the scheme, the fair-dealing commander springs into action. He issues orders to provide Paul with a military escort out of town, foiling the intentions of the Jews. Jesus is going to get Paul all the way to Rome.
Collect of the Day: Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve: Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Savior; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+