Tuesday • 11/16/2021
Tuesday of the Twenty-fifth Week After Pentecost (Proper 28)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 97; Psalm 99; 1 Maccabees 3:25–41; Revelation 21:1–8; Matthew 17:14–21

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)

To me, one of the most memorable moments of Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ occurs when Jesus stumbles while carrying his cross to Calvary. Gibson imagines Jesus’s mother coming to help him up, as he utters these words from Revelation 21:7: “I make all things new.” Not exact history, but perfect theology.

Each of today’s passages brings its own reminder that things are horribly wrong in our world and in our lives. Our best attempts to address them are partial, ambiguous, and temporary at best.

There’s a need for a massive “reset.”

1 Maccabees. After Mattathias’s death, his son Judas emerges as the leader of the Jewish rebellion against Antiochus IV Epiphanes and the Hellenist imperialists. For his military prowess and for his success in freeing Jerusalem from pagan control, Judas earns the nickname “Maccabeus,” which means “Hammer.” In early campaigns, he defeats Antiochus’s generals. Israel has a hero. Antiochus despairs of making Israel over into a showcase of Hellenistic enlightenment. He orders the annihilation of the Jewish population. We know that Antiochus will fail, that Judas Maccabeus will win, and that he and his fellow Israelites will rededicate their temple.

But we also know the story continues: the Herodian dynasty will, in its own opulent way, fatally pollute the temple and the Romans will finally level it. Into our own time Jewish people endure pogroms and “final solutions.” Around the world and across time, other people groups too undergo oppression and campaigns of ethnic cleansing: from the 2nd century BC’s Carthagians to today’s Uyghurs and Tigrayans. It will not end until Christ is seated, as Revelation 21 depicts him, and declares “I make all things new.” Even so, we believe it is the cross that secures that final renewal.

Matthew. Jesus comes to take our diseases to the cross: “He took our weaknesses and carried our diseases” (Matthew 8:17, quoting Isaiah 53:4). Further, he gives his immediate circle of disciples healing powers like his—if only they will believe. Over the long haul of the church’s life, evidence of direct healing powers like those is muted. Since then, the “mustard seed” faith Jesus planted among his disciples has produced a sequoia-size tree of faith in the power of Christ to inspire compassion for the sick and to develop all sorts of healing ministries. Christians take medicine into the most disease-ridden places on the planet. They spawn networks of hospitals given, as the motto of one such network puts it, to “being the healing hands of Jesus.” Christians who have found a measure of Christ’s emotional and relational healing in the ministration of competent counselors and therapists seek out training so they can be “as Christ” to others. In the now, Christ “makes all things new” in ways that mostly are indirect, incomplete, and anticipatory of final healing.

Revelation 21 promises that one day that complete “reset” will take place. All things will be made finally and completely new:

God himself will be with them;
4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away (Revelation 21:3d–4).

Meanwhile, we wait, we work, and we pray this Good Friday, Easter Vigil, and ordination prayer:

O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquillity the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen (BCP, pp. 280, 291, 515, 528, 540)

And, perhaps, with Big Daddy Weave, we sing, “All Things New”

From the ashes, from the dust,
I will rise up, rise up.
Out of darkness into the light
I will rise up, rise up.

You make all things new,
You make all things new.
God of mercy and love,
Do what only You can do,
And make all things…
All things…
You make all things new.

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

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