Friday • 12/3/2021
Friday of the First Week of Advent
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 16; Psalm 17; Amos 5:1–17; Jude 1–25 (includes Saturday); Matthew 22:1–14
I plan to treat Matthew 22:1–14 in a DDD this coming January.
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)
A meditation on Jude and 2 Peter
I grew up going to school with identical twins. We were 10 years old when we were in the same 4th grade class. At first John and Greg were indistinguishable to me. I had to take note each day of who was wearing what. By the time we were seniors in high school, I could never confuse John’s biting wit with Greg’s incisive analytics. And by then, even the subtle differences in their faces and the way they carried themselves were obvious to me.
To me, Jude and Peter are like John and Greg. Jude and Peter are spiritual soulmates, almost identical twins in the faith. Jude’s letter and Peter’s 2nd letter bear so many resemblances that most scholars think there’s literary dependence between them (the consensus is that 2 Peter used Jude). I’m more inclined to think that the similarities have to do with their personal relationship with each other, their common relationship to their Master (who happens to be Jude’s half-brother), a common pastoral challenge, and a common theological wiring.
Jude and 2 Peter deal with the same problem: people inside the church who bloviate meaninglessly to mask ethical mischief. In Jude’s words, “they indulge their own lusts; they are bombastic in speech” (Jude 16). And in Peter’s words “they speak bombastic nonsense, and with licentious lusts of the flesh they entice people…” (2 Peter 2:18—my adjustment of NRSV to show the parallels). Both apostles are dealing with people trapped in what later theologians would call libido dominandi, domination by desire.
For Peter, the antidote is to let God’s life take root in us. God implants his own character within us and empowers us to nurture it: “His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness … so that … you may become participants of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:3–4). God has imparted what western theologians call his “communicable attributes” to us. He does so to empower us from within, that we may recognize narcissistic, manipulative, high-sounding baloney, and show ourselves free from sin’s domination (compare 2 Peter 2:19).
For Jude, the antidote is to stand on the truth of the Scriptures. God gives us in his Word a firm foundation for our lives: “I find it necessary to write and appeal to you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 4). Jude’s message to us is: stay true to that story, ponder its lessons, and you’ll be OK.
In a cascade of events in Israel’s history, Jude illustrates the principle that to step away from the “faith once entrusted to the saints” is to reap a bitter harvest. He draws lessons from the exodus generation’s lack of faith, the fallen angels’ rejection of God’s authority, Sodom and Gomorrah’s immorality and lust, Cain’s jealousy, Balaam’s error, and Korah’s rebellion.
Those who say otherwise, Jude contends, who insist that we are free to improvise, are like clouds that promise rain, but prove to be a tease (Jude 12). They turn grace into license (Jude 4), but cannot deliver the joy and the freedom their license promises. They can only lure us into illusory pleasure and make us over into the same sort of grumblers and malcontents that they are (Jude 16). They feed themselves at our feasts, Jude says, and they flatter us to their own advantage (Jude 12). I wish I could say that the kind of error—more moral than intellectual, though presenting itself as intellectually superior—died in the 1st century. But, alas, it did not. It pervades western churches and seminary classrooms today.
By contrast, those who hold to “the faith once delivered” and stay “in” the story of God’s redeeming love will find God more than meeting their determined resistance to error and folly. Thus, the beautiful, powerful, and doxological conclusion to Jude’s letter: “Now to him who is able to keep you from falling, and to make you stand without blemish in the presence of his glory with rejoicing, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen” (Jude 24–25). That’s a thought worth contemplating and celebrating throughout this Advent season: “…to make you stand in the presence of his glory with rejoicing.”
Peter directs our attention to the life-transforming process the Lord has set into motion within us. Jude offers us a point of reference outside ourselves: the solid foundation of truth that has been given us in the whole biblical story line. The bottom line of that story is that folly always gets its reward, and so does persevering faith.
The perspectives of these identical twins in the faith, of course, are complementary. There’s an existential way in which God works within us, and there’s an authoritative way he calls us to hear and obey him. Praise be to him!
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Image: William A. Macis, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
