Friday • 11/19/2021
Friday of the Twenty-fifth Week After Pentecost (Proper 28)
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 102; 1 Maccabees 4:36–59; Revelation 22:6–13; Matthew 18:10-20
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)
Wrapping up 1 Maccabees and Revelation:
Jewish people celebrated Hanukkah for the first time in 164 B.C. and continue to celebrate it to this day. Christians take this to be a celebration in advance of the things John recounts for us in the Book of Revelation. At creation, God had intended the whole earth to be a temple for his dwelling among humans. Enter the serpent with his hiss. Enter the pollution of sin and the darkness of evil. A day is coming when this earth will be delivered from dissolution and decay, and God will dwell among his glorified sons and daughters as he originally intended.
From the day he first showed up in his Father’s house with whip in hand (John 2), Jesus has been working to purify, indeed, to redesign, reconstruct, and redecorate the place for the meeting place between God and us. On the cross, Jesus took all the pollution and ugliness and defilement of God’s temple and his creation. Antiochus IV Epiphanes’ temple desecration was but a small part. The truth is, all of us are complicit in the degradation of creation. Jesus took all of it into himself, buried it in his own tomb, and left it there when he rose from the dead. He rose in promise that the day will come when God’s house will be put entirely into order.
The establishment under Judas Maccabeus of Hanukkah, “the Festival of Lights,” as an annual celebration of the rededication of Ezra-Nehemiah’s temple is a happy reminder to us that it is important to set aside seasons of praise to celebrate the moments we become aware of God’s redemptive interventions in our lives—when he raises us up from a sickbed, when he blesses us with a new child or job or relationship, when he grants us a new realization of his grace and forgiveness. More deeply, though, it is a happy reminder of his commitment, in his own time, to make all things new. He’s promised, and he will come through.
Meanwhile, in verses that the daily lectionary mystifyingly leaves out, John gives us the Bible’s final imperatives, the Bible’s final exhortations and invitations:
“The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift” (Revelation 22:17).
Fittingly, as I once heard theologian Leonard Sweet observe, the Bible begins by telling us to “eat” (Genesis 2:16) and it ends by telling us to “drink” (Revelation 22::17b). The Bible is a book of life, because it is God who gives life and health and well-being.
Matthew: the presence of Christ in our midst in the now. Christ came to be an “advance” on God’s dwelling on the earth with his people in the hereafter. He is, as Matthew has already told us, “Immanuel,” “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). It is incumbent upon us, therefore, to conduct ourselves with a circumspection and care corresponding to that reality.
First, we don’t just let each other drift away: “If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray…” (Matthew 18:12–14). In my first job out of seminary, I was put in charge of that congregation’s “straying sheep.” Lunch appointment after lunch appointment provided sobering lessons in the disappointment of congregants who felt their church promised more than it delivered. I learned that listening to concerns and apologizing when necessary resulted in a grace of reconciliation.
Second, we are called to keep a vigilant eye to predation in the congregation: “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault …” (Matthew 18:15–19). Grace can be mistaken for permissiveness. “The Lord’s sheep can be mistreated; old ones, widows, and young ones can be taken advantage of. In the name of Christ, the church works hard to protect the innocent.
Third, may we never outgrow our wonder at the fact that the one whom we will one day see seated as “the Alpha and the Omega” (Revelation 22:12) is already among us whenever we gather: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:20). He is present among us in “the little ones;” among us in the Prayers and Praises; among us in the Proclamation of the Word; among us at the Passing of the Peace; among us in the Bread and the Wine—and then among us as we “go and make disciples” (Matthew 28:19–20).
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+