Wednesday • 11/8/2023 •
Wednesday of the Twenty-third Week After Pentecost (Proper 26)
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 72; Nehemiah 13:4–22; Revelation 12:1-12; Matthew 13:53–58
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 11 (“The Third Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 60:1-3,11a,14c,18-19, BCP, p. 87); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68-79, BCP, p. 92)
Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we ask how God might direct our lives from 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 Wednesday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 26 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.
Nehemiah: a balanced life. Ezra and Nehemiah belong to a beautiful season in redemptive history. What is compelling and attractive is the comprehensiveness of their vision of life for bearers of the image of God. It’s a vision of basking in God’s Word: Ezra reads the Law (Nehemiah 8:1–8). It’s a vision of gathering for worship: the people resume the sacred festivals (Nehemiah 8:9–18). And it’s a vision of lives being offered as living sacrifices, of people doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly before God. Ezra and Nehemiah reestablish the moral center of people’s lives.
The last of these concerns is the theme of today’s reading in Nehemiah. After having been away from Persia for twelve years, Nehemiah had been required to return to Artaxerxes’s service. “After some time,” he explains, “I asked leave of the king and returned to Jerusalem” (Nehemiah 13:6b–7a). Upon his return, he finds that in his absence things have not gone well. Instead of feeding the sheep, spiritual shepherds are fleecing the sheep. The temple’s stewards have converted Yahweh’s temple into a marketplace for selling religious “benefits” for personal profit. People have stopped supporting the Levites, and so he asks, “Why is the house of God forsaken?” (Nehemiah 13:11). Meanwhile, merchants are making a mockery of sacred time. The malls are open on the sabbath (Nehemiah 13:15–19).
Nehemiah responds by booting those who had misappropriated temple grounds, cleanses the temple of stuff that doesn’t belong there (“I threw all the household furniture of Tobiah out of the room” — Nehemiah 13:8), returns sacred objects to their rightful place, reinstitutes tithes, brings the Levites back onto the temple staff, shuts down the sabbath markets, and informs the merchants not to come on the sabbath: “If you do so again, I will lay hands on you” (Nehemiah 13:21).
Nehemiah provides a glimpse ahead of time into the passion that drove Jesus to take a stand against the unjust and irreligious use of the temple in his own day (Matthew 21:10–17; Mark 11:15–17; Luke 19:45–46; John 2:13–17). It’s not enough to believe the right things and go through the motions of worship. There’s a non-negotiable life that aligns with those beliefs and with that worship. Without this life, the beliefs and the worship are worthless.
In combination, though, orthopistia (right belief), orthodoxia (right worship), and orthopraxis (right behavior) embody God’s life powerfully, and make the most compelling statement to the world about who he is. One of the great gifts of the Ezra-Nehemiah chapter of the biblical story is to communicate this great truth to us.
Image: Zion72, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Revelation: a dramatic redemption. Today’s reading in Revelation portrays our redemption in a dramatic and unique way. It’s a breathtaking perspective: A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. This regal woman is about to give birth to “a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron” (Revelation 12:1,2,5). The Book of Revelation demands nuance and humility of interpretation. But I’m certain that this woman is Mary from God’s perspective: an embodiment of all that Israel was called to be. With her twelve-starred crown and birth pangs, she is both kingdom of priests and bride of God, bearing God’s life into the world.
A dragon, i.e., Satan, would kill the child at birth (as well he attempted to do through Herod the Great — Matthew 2). And even Satan’s apparent success on the Cross is a failure, “because it was impossible for him to be held in [death’s] power” (Acts 2:24). Victorious over death, the “Child” is taken up to heaven at his ascension (Acts 1:1–11).
Now, the woman who has represented Mary-as-Israel becomes the Church, the future Bride of Christ (see Revelation 19). For now, she is whisked into “the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, so that there she can be nourished for one thousand two hundred sixty days”—i.e., the same three and a half years by which Revelation describes the church-age in terms of a “short” season of tribulation.
In the wilderness of her sojourn, the woman—i.e., the Church—will need nourishment and protection because a battle has broken out in heaven (Revelation 12:7). Michael the archangel defeats the dragon Satan, who is cast out of heaven and hurled to earth where he will do what damage he can to the creation and the creatures whom God loves—especially to God’s beloved Bride-to-be, the Church (Revelation 12:8–9).
Even as she experiences the travails of her persecution (as recorded in the rest of the verses in Revelation 12, which the daily lectionary, alas, leaves out!), heaven’s song rings through:
“Now have come the salvation and the power
and the kingdom of our God
and the authority of his Messiah,
for the accuser of our comrades has been thrown down,
who accuses them day and night before our God.
11 But they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony,
for they did not cling to life even in the face of death.
12 Rejoice then, you heavens
and those who dwell in them!
But woe to the earth and the sea,
for the devil has come down to you
with great wrath,
because he knows that his time is short!” (Revelation 12:10–12).
I pray we know what it is to believe accurately, to worship rightly, to live obediently, and to rejoice in the wonder of God’s defeat of evil even amid our daily struggle against it.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+