Monday • 11/21/2022 •
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 106:1-18; Zechariah 10:1-12; Galatians 6:1-10; Luke 18:15-30
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2-6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3-4, BCP, p. 94)
Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we explore that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you this Monday of Proper 29 in Year 2 of the Daily Office Lectionary.
Yesterday was Christ the King Sunday, marking the end of the Christian year. Next Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent, marking the beginning of the Christian year. This week’s readings transition us from one year to the next.
In a series of visions in the second half of his book, the prophet Zechariah gives glimpses of the remarkable things the Lord of the covenant is going to do in days to come.
Zechariah lived through the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Temple, following Judah’s release from the Babylonian Captivity. There was joy in Judah, but it was muted. There was a new temple, but its grandeur and scale were not as glorious as the temple Solomon had built nearly a half millennium earlier. There was a sort of self-governance, but the Persians were really in charge, and Judah was permitted no king.
What has happened to God’s promise to establish his Kingdom on earth through his people Israel? What of the promise to David that one from his line would sit on the throne in perpetuity? What about the picture of a united people of God under David and Solomon, before the split into a northern kingdom (Israel) and a southern kingdom (Judah)? Was that vision gone forever? Zechariah (along with his contemporary, the prophet Haggai) provided perspective.
In the previous chapter of Zechariah, the prophet had foretold Palm Sunday, when Israel’s triumphant King would come “humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9). In today’s chapter, Zechariah imagines the Lord raising up “warriors in battle” to reunite the Israel in the north (Joseph) and Judah in the south: “I will bring them back because I have compassion on them, and they shall be as though I had not rejected them” (Zechariah 10:6). Zechariah foresees a new exodus experience for God’s people: “They shall pass through the sea of distress … and all the depths of the Nile dried up … Assyria shall be laid low …the scepter of Egypt shall fall” (Zechariah 10:11).
As though squinting to see something way off on the horizon of history, Zechariah espies the contours of the new exodus Christ will accomplish by the baptism of his own death and resurrection. Zechariah also discerns in the distance the reunification of the Lord’s people. By the pouring out of his Spirit, God will bring about the conquest of the nations, enabling Christ’s apostles to take the gospel from Jerusalem and Judea (the old southern kingdom) to Samaria (the old northern kingdom) and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).
Zechariah’s visions are a profound preparation for the hope of Advent, and for the promise they bear of the kingdom of our God and of his Christ.
This week’s readings in Luke find Jesus on the last leg of his journey to Jerusalem. There he will accomplish humanity’s redemption, for there he will inaugurate God’s kingdom through his death and resurrection. Along the way, Jesus reminds his disciples of the primary place that children and a childlike faith play in the kingdom of God: “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it” (Luke 18:17). For at least one man—“a certain ruler”—what was preventing such childlike faith was his great wealth (Luke 18:18-24). Jesus perceives that this “certain ruler” was incapable of coupling both a childlike faith and a wisely detached stewardship of wealth. As a result, Jesus puts before him a decisive choice (I paraphrase): “Lose the wealth and gain faith, that is, gain me! Or keep the wealth, and never see the value you’d find in me!”
You and I may not face a choice between wealth and non-wealth, but we do face the same choice between childlike receptivity and blasé dismissiveness.
And, finally, this week’s epistle readings amount to a Pauline potpourri. Paul is, in my view, New Testament’s clearest expounder of the “so what” of redeemed and kingdom-conditioned life. This week’s epistle readings cull wisdom on faith’s “so what” from significant short passages in various Pauline letters.
For most of his letter to the Galatians, Paul has stressed that there’s nothing they can add to what Christ has done for them to win right standing with God. Christ has become a curse for them. They have been baptized in his name. Now they are free of sin’s curse, and they belong to God’s family sheerly by faith in Christ. Period.
Now, at the beginning of this closing paragraph in Galatians 6, he offers “desiderata” that anticipate those he will later compose for the Romans. Christians’ freedom from fear of the law’s condemnation does not free them from the law of love. Thus, they (we) need to work at:
restoring transgressors,
bearing one another’s burdens,
individually testing our own work,
supporting our leaders,
sowing to the Spirit (the fruit of which, as he has just explained, is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—Galatians 5:22), and
working for the good of all, especially for the family of faith.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+