Friday • 12/17/2021
Friday of the Third Week of Advent, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 40; Psalm 54; Zechariah 7:8–8:17 (includes Saturday’s reading); Revelation 5:6–14; Matthew 25:14–30

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)

Advent’s keynote Collect keeps coming to mind, and I find myself praying it constantly this Advent season: Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Today’s passages prompt meditation on casting away works of darkness and putting on armor of light.

Zechariah. In Israel, the world was supposed to see what bearing God’s image looks like. Surrounding nations were supposed to see what God’s heart looks like in the way that Israelites lived their lives: committed to truthfulness, showing kindness and mercy especially to the lowly and the lost (Zechariah 7:9–10). God’s complaint, via Zechariah, is that he had placed Israel among the nations to be light amid darkness, but that they had contributed as much to the darkness as anybody. In place of justice, Yahweh found oppression; instead of kindness and mercy, hearts filled with evil intent; instead of ears attuned to God’s law and hearts ready to obey, ears purposefully stopped up and hearts adamantly set against God’s ways (Zechariah 7:11–12). Lord, have mercy!

But God’s redemptive purposes for Israel and the world can be held back only so long: “Just as you have been a cursing among the nations, O house of Judah and house of Israel, so I will save you and you shall be a blessing” (Zechariah 8:13). Yahweh brings his children home and promises peace and prosperity so they can return to their basic mission in this world as a kingdom of priests and as God’s “peculiar possession”: “Speak the truth to one another, render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace” (Zechariah 8:16; and see Exodus 19:5,6).

Judah’s and Israel’s return to the land is a call to cast away the works of darkness (deceit in the marketplace, in their courts, and in their worship; and oppression of the poor in their social life) and to put on the armor of light (truthfulness, peaceability kindness, and mercy). In doing so, Zechariah promises, they will receive his blessing: “For there shall be a sowing of peace; the vine shall yield its fruit, the ground shall give its produce, and the skies shall give their dew; and I will cause the remnant of this people to possess all these things” (Zechariah 8:12).

Revelation. The generation of Zechariah, Zerubbabel, and Joshua experience in a promissory way the wonderful reality of God’s people being a light in the darkness of human experience, of modeling redemptive life amid fallen darkness.

In the New Testament we find the fulfillment of Zechariah’s vision in the appearance of Jesus Christ. As the Lion of Judah who is slaughtered as a Lamb, Jesus removes forever the stench and the stain of sin. He ransoms for God people from “every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9b). Fittingly, then, the heavenly courts sing to Jesus “a new song”: “you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth” (Revelation 5:9,10).

Matthew. On behalf of this same Jesus, Matthew addresses Jesus’s Parable of the Tenants to the church. As a result of his atoning death, the resurrected Jesus has received “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28:18). If I may compress some of Jesus’s teachings in Matthew: with Emmanuel our King (“God with us”) living among and within us, we so manifest God’s life on this earth, whether by deed (“light of the world” … “salt of the earth” … “a city on a hill”) or by word (“making disciples … teaching … baptizing”), that at the end of time, people will have to acknowledge Jesus’s lordship (“… they will glorify your Father in heaven”—Matthew 5:13,14,16; 18:20; 28:20).

The Parable of the Talents takes its place within the larger context of Jesus’s teaching in Matthew by showing us that each of us is given some place of authority and some empowerment within that great mission. How tragic it would be, according to the parable, if at the end of time we were to show ourselves contemptuous of the Lord who, like “a man going on a journey,” had so graciously entrusted us with a share of his estate. How magnificent it will be, by contrast, to find that our faithful use of what gifts and authority he has assigned us will doubly redound to his glory and to our own honor.

It is a staggering prospect—enough to prompt the Advent prayer: help us, Lord, to “cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life…” Amen!

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: adaptation from "Armor by Helmschmied" by ellenm1 is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0