Thursday • 12/21/2023 •
Thursday of the Third Week of Advent, Year Two
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 50; Zechariah 4:1–14; Revelation 4:9–5:5; Matthew 25:1–13
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); 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 consider some aspect of 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 on this Thursday of the Third Week of Advent. This new Christian year finds us in Year 2 of the Daily Office Lectionary.
Many of us know what it is to look over the landscape of our lives and see devastation. Whether it’s being abandoned by parents or a spouse, being under-appreciated at work, seeing our body succumb to disease, or losing our willpower to resist an addiction or an obsession. Sometimes, surveying the wreckage of our lives can be debilitating.
For such a time, Yahweh gives Zechariah a vision of hope. In 520 B.C., Jerusalemites inhabited a desolate city. Where Solomon’s temple had once stood, they could see only rubble. Under the leadership of Joshua the priest and Zerubbabel the governor, a foundation had recently been laid for a new temple. But, still, the overall scene was bleak, like a movie depiction of post-apocalyptic destruction.
Image: Bíblia de Cervera, Menorá de Zacarias from National Library of Portugal , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Through a fourth nighttime vision he gives to Zechariah, Yahweh invites his people to imagine the temple as though it had already been rebuilt and furnished. Yahweh highlights two furnishings: a golden lampstand and two olive trees (I’m not sure what olive trees are doing inside the temple—but dreams have their own logic!). Combining the symbolic elements of both furnishings, Yahweh urges them to understand that no matter how bad things look, there’s nothing he can’t accomplish by his Spirit.
“Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the LORD of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6). The oil of the lampstand and the oil which the olive trees produces are symbols of God’s life-giving, light-bearing, power-releasing Spirit. God’s fuel will keep the lights on in the temple. God’s strength will keep the workers working and the enemies and detractors at bay.
“‘What are these two branches of the olive trees, which pour out the oil through the two golden pipes?’ He said to me, ‘Do you not know what these are?’ I said, ‘No, my lord. Then he said, ‘These are the two anointed ones who stand by the Lord of the whole earth’” (Zechariah 4:12–14). In Zechariah’s day, two offices received an empowering anointing: Joshua the priest, and Zerubbabel the governor, one to pray and the other to govern. The glory of the new order that Jesus would institute six centuries later is the combining of these roles into one: a Priest-King, after an older order, that of Genesis 14’s Melchizedek, who is both “king of righteousness” and “priest of the Most High” (see the Epistle to the Hebrews in toto).
“The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also complete it. … [W]hoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice…” (Zechariah 4:9–10). Who could have imagined what this “day of small things” would yield? Fast forward to the astounding vision in Revelation of the Lion of Judah stepping forward in answer to the question as to who has the moral right and the capacity to unfold the scroll of human history: “‘Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?’ … ‘See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals’” (Revelation 5:2b,5b).
Refusing to wither in the face of adversity and of the enormity of the task set before them, Zechariah and Zerubbabel and Joshua gamely play their part in their “day of small things.” May God give us grace to do the same.
Matthew: keeping oil in our lamps. Advent normalizes our waiting. Therein lies its poignance! Advent says that it’s OK to have a hard time holding onto hope when the horizon seems far off … and that it’s not OK to give up and quit hoping. That’s the entire point of Jesus’s parable about the bridesmaids. Through a long night watch, their one job is to be on the alert to welcome the groom. Half come prepared to do so and do stay on the alert. Half don’t come prepared, and finally must abandon their calling. As we’d put it colloquially, they run out of gas. Our job is to be among those who keep hoping and not run out of gas.
Zechariah the prophet was given a glimpse of the great things that God was going to do to build his Kingdom; and his generation had no small part in keeping that hope alive. Joshua the priest and Zerubbabel the governor were called to envision a rebuilt temple and to work towards it, knowing all the while that it was “not by might, not by power,” but by God’s Spirit that the work would get done. But the true temple building awaited the appearing of Christ who united the work of Prophet, Priest, and Prince; brought the whole system of sacrifice to its perfect end; and ushered in God’s righteous rule.
God’s Kingdom has been inaugurated in all the events that flow out of Christ’s birth at Christmas. God’s Kingdom will be consummated at the end of time when Christ returns in triumph and power. In the meantime, God’s Kingdom continues among us in our Advent lives, as we learn to find hope in the ashes of our lives.* At Advent, we renew our commitment to count on the promise that God burns only to refine, that he wastes none of the tears of his loved ones, and that he makes every instance of suffering a “fellowship in the sufferings of Christ” himself (see Philippians 3:10).
Richest Advent blessings to you this day,
Reggie Kidd+
*Thanks to my friend Richard Pratt for his pithy way of putting the three-phase coming of God’s Kingdom: inauguration, continuation, and consummation.