Thursday • 12/30/2021
The Sixth Day of Christmas, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 20; Psalm 21; 1 Kings 17:17–24; 3 John 1–15; John 4:46–54

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)

Elijah’s widow in 1 Kings: God comes to heal the nations. 1 Kings 17 recounts a non-Israelite widow receiving a revived son at the ministration of Yahweh’s prophet Elijah. For Jesus, this healing is a picture of Israel’s mission in the world: to be the source of healing for the world (Luke 4:25–26). Israel incubated God’s love for the world to the end that his love would eventually break out and flow everywhere.

The royal official in John: God comes to heal all sorts of people. In Cana of Galilee, Jesus is approached by delegates of a “royal” (tis basilikos), presumably an official or member of the house of Herod Antipas. It’s notable that someone of such high rank would “beg [Jesus] to come down and heal his son” who is at the point of death (John 4:47). Jesus heals from afar. Though there are several matters worthy of attention in this account, here at Christmas and in conjunction with the other passages in today’s readings, what strikes me is the way this royal personage shows how upper-crust people are not beyond the reach of God’s love. In Jesus, God comes for the non-privileged (shepherds and deplorables) and for the privileged (royalty and influencers [like Nicodemus, one chapter prior]) alike.

3 John: missional hospitality. God is intent on reaching all the nations for all kinds of people. Some of us go. Some of us stay behind and help others go. That’s what makes the inclusion of 3 John in the canon of Scripture so intriguing. 3 John is a letter about hospitality, especially hospitality for the sake of the mission of God in the world. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). To the end that word of God’s astounding Son-giving love would get out to the whole world, the resurrected Jesus has breathed the Spirit upon and into his disciples (John 20:21–22). Bearing that Spirit, some of Jesus’s disciples carry the mission, and some of his disciples host the mission.

What prompts the writing of 3 John is that, on the one hand, John wants to commend Gaius and the members of his church for hosting emissaries of Christ; and on the other hand, he feels compelled to denounce a certain Diotrephes, who “prevents those who want to do so and expels them from the church” (3 John 10). We don’t know whether Diotrephes is motivated by pure personal animus against John or whether he is one of the antichristian promoters of heresy John refers to in 1 and 2 John. The point for John is that Diotrephes’s pride and arrogance are blocking the mission of God’s love for the nations.

When he sees ego and lovelessness at play in the church, John’s hackles get raised! John describes Diotrephes as one “who likes to put himself first” (philoprōteuōn), which is precisely the opposite of the quality of leadership Jesus says he is looking for.

John, you may recall, has come by this lesson the hard way. One of the “Sons of Zebedee,” John and his brother—and their mother!—had made a play to get themselves moved up the ecclesiastical escalator. Jesus disabused them of confusing the Kingdom of God with some sort of Game of Thrones: “Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked a favor of him. 21 And he said to her, “What do you want?” She said to him, “Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom” (Matthew 20:20–21). Jesus responds by assuring them they are not prepared for the “baptism” and the “cup” that lie before him. Moreover, he says, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first (prōtos) among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:25–28).

Catch that one phrase? “Whoever wishes to be first (prōtos) among you must be your slave” (Matthew 20:26

John could have been Diotrephes, “he who likes to put himself first” (philoprōteuōn). No, John was Diotrephes. Except that following the rebuke of Matthew 20, Jesus’s teaching about servant leadership in that context, his modeling of servant leadership at the foot washing in John 13, and Jesus’s giving himself up on the Cross, the John who writes 3 John is a different person.

On the plus side: generosity makes you a missionary. “Therefore we ought to support such people, so that we may become co-workers with the truth” (3 John 8). Some are missionaries by going. Some are missionaries by staying and supporting. That’s not mere rhetoric. It’s the stone cold sober truth! I praise God for those I know—and they are many!—with the heart of the generous Gaius (“my dear brother whom I love in truth”—3 John 1) and Demetrius (who “has been testified to by all, even by the truth itself”—3 John 12) whom John commends in this brief gem of a letter as counter-examples to egotistical Diotrephes.

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

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