Friday • 11/12/2021
Friday of the Twenty-fourth Week After Pentecost (Proper 27)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 88; 1 Maccabees 1:41–63; Revelation 19:11–16; Matthew 16:13–20

From Saturday’s readings: 1 Maccabees 2:1–28; and Sunday’s: 1 Maccabees 2:29–43,49–50

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6–11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93)

1 Maccabees: Mattathias resists a faux unity. “Then the king wrote to his whole kingdom that all should be one people, 42 and that all should give up their particular customs” (1 Maccabees 1:41). Antiochus IV Epiphanes manifests the Hellenistic aspiration for a united human race. However, it is unity on Hellenists’ terms: their language, their customs, their institutions, their philosophy, their worship, their hegemony. The forcible “civilization” of Jews required the destruction of Jewish culture: no offerings in the temple, no sabbath-keeping, no circumcision, no reading of the Torah. Instead, Antiochus imposed the sacrifice of swine on pagan altars in the land. He executed  families that practiced circumcision, forced the Jews to eat unclean foods, burned the Torah scrolls, and decreed a “desolating sacrilege on the altar of burnt offering” (likely an image of Olympian Zeus). 

The “enlightenment” being imposed—as is often the case—is brutal. Predictably, the reaction within the Jewish population is mixed. “Many even from Israel gladly adopted his religion; they sacrificed to idols and profaned the sabbath” (1 Maccabees 1:43). At the same time, “many in Israel stood firm and were resolved in their hearts not to eat unclean food. 63They chose to die rather than to be defiled by food or to profane the holy covenant; and they did die” (1 Maccabees 1:62–63). 

In protest of the ruinous paganization of the holy city, Mattathias ben Johanan, a priest, moves with his family of five sons to his hometown Modein, some 19 miles west of Jerusalem. When the king’s officers show up to impose the apostasy there in the hinterlands, Mattathias responds with the zeal of Phinehas (see Numbers 25:7–11). He slays both a Jew being forced to offer a pagan sacrifice and the king’s officer who is forcing the sacrifice (1 Maccabees 2:25–26). 

Mattathias and his family and followers then flee into the wilderness. There they refuse to defend themselves when troops from Jerusalem attack them on a sabbath. After a thousand of their company are massacred, the survivors vow to fight on the sabbath if necessary: “Let us fight against anyone who comes to attack us on the sabbath day; let us not all die as our kindred died in their hiding places” (1 Maccabees 2:41). An army of resistance gathers around Mattathias in the wilderness, and as the day of his death (apparently of natural causes) approaches, he urges his sons to continue the resistance: “Arrogance and scorn have now become strong; it is a time of ruin and furious anger. Now, my children, show zeal for the law, and give your lives for the covenant of our ancestors” (1 Maccabees 2:49–50). 

Revelation: John sees the rider on the white horse. At least in some way, Mattathias prefigures the great Christus Victor who fights a final battle to defeat his people’s enemies, freeing them from the pollution of idolatry and all that defiles and destroys life. 

“Then I saw heaven opened, and there was a white horse! Its rider is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war” (Revelation 19:11). In my (and others’) understanding of the structure of the Book of Revelation, this vision forms a wonderful inclusio with John’s first vision of a conquering rider on a white horse (Revelation 6:2). 

In Revelation 6:2, the rider on the white horse depicts Jesus in his earthly ministry, winning an eternal redemption for his people. Here in Revelation 19, Jesus reappears in his full glory to win ultimate victory. With finality, the one whose name is “Faithful” and “True” returns to fight one last battle (spoken of at Revelation 16:14; 19:19; 20:8). In this battle, he will put down the vast army of unregenerate humanity and the mock trinity of evil: Satan the Dragon (Revelation 20:7–15), the Antichrist Beast (Revelation 19:19–20a), and the lying spirit who animates the deceitful prophet and the rebellious kings of the earth (Revelation 16:12–21; 19:17–21). 

While many of the details of the Book of Revelation are elusive, and promise to remain so until Christ returns in power and glory, there is one matter that is not elusive at all. As is often said, the way to handle the Book of Revelation is to approach it with this philosophy: “We’ve read the end of the book, and we win!” And we win because, and only because, of the figure who stands at its center, the rider on the white horse who “is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war” (Revelation 19:11).

Matthew: Peter recognizes the Messiah. For all his confusion about everything else, Simon Peter gets this one thing right in the singular most important conversation in all of Jesus’s earthly ministry. When Jesus asks the disciples, “But who do you say that I am,” Peter speaks up with the correct, the decisively correct, answer, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). Peter has much to learn about  what that means, but he’s on the right track. Same for us. We have a lot to learn about how the details of history and our lives will play out. But there’s only one thing we really need to know to get there: Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God … Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war.” He will set all to rights. 

Be blessed in the wonder of that knowledge this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Vasnetsov, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons