Monday • 2/15/2021
Week of Last Epiphany

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 25; Deuteronomy 6:10–15; Hebrews 1:1–14; John:1–18

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2–6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94)

I don’t know anybody who has not experienced the past year as tumultuous and challenging. Some of us have buried loved ones. Some of us have lost friends over politics. Some of us have lost jobs or fortunes. All of us have had the opportunity to find new depths in today’s psalm:

To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul;
my God, I put my trust in you; *
let me not be humiliated,
nor let my enemies triumph over me (Psalm 25:1). 

In two days, we come to Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, forty days of preparation for the Passion’s solemnity and Easter’s joy. Lent prepares us to experience anew Christ’s humiliation on our behalf and his triumph over our enemies of sin and death. Lent invites us to “self-examination and repentance; … prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and … reading and meditating of God’s Word” (BCP, p. 265). 

This year’s readings in the Daily Office provide some of the richest material in all of Scripture for the Lenten journey. 

Deuteronomy. This week and next week, the early chapters of Deuteronomy take us back to Moses’s final instructions to Israel as they prepare to enter the Promised Land. God’s servant reminds the children of Israel just how much Yahweh’s love has been on display for them in his powerful deliverance of them from slavery and in his provision for them in their wilderness wanderings. Moses reminds them of their covenantal obligation to love Yahweh in return, to heed his instructions, and to form their lives to mirror his holiness and justice. 

In today’s passage, in particular, Moses warns against forgetfulness and presumption. When they enter the Promised Land, they will find themselves in possession of cities they had not built, houses they had not filled, cisterns they had not dug, and vineyards and olive trees they had not planted (Deuteronomy 6:10–12). It’s possible—in fact, it’s likely—that they will wrongly credit themselves or alien gods for their good fortune (Deuteronomy 6:13–14). Moses says, in effect, “Don’t do that! Don’t forget that it’s all Yahweh’s gift. Don’t presume to take credit for yourselves, or to attribute it to gods that are no gods!” 

Hebrews. Moses’s reminder was one of the “many and various ways” that, according to the writer to the Hebrews, God had spoken to his people in times past (Hebrews 1:1). The epistle to the Hebrews is an extraordinary docent for our Lenten journey because it reminds us that “in these last days [God] has spoken to us” even more directly. He has spoken to us by his Son, “the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being”—that is to say, by one who both partakes of God’s own being, and also represents him perfectly (Hebrews 1:2–3). 

Looking ahead in this extraordinary epistle, we will be reminded that because he came in our very likeness, Jesus is able to shoulder our infirmities and bear our weaknesses (Hebrews 2:17). But in this first chapter of Hebrews, the writer reminds us that Jesus is truly God, and therefore worthy of our worship. If angels must worship him (Hebrews 1:6), how much more must we! If he founded the earth and sustains its existence, and if he will outlast its present form (Hebrews 1:3,10–11), how much more is it incumbent upon us to render him the full service of our lives and care for his creation?

John has his own way of making the same point that Hebrews makes: as God’s living Word, Jesus is both very God and in relationship to God: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God” (John 1:1). Same as God, and in communion with God. A holy mystery, resolved in the love that is shared between the persons of the Father and of the Son, as they are bound together by the person of the Spirit who is love. 

I pray that during this Lent, we receive the grace to bring the tumult and the challenges of our lives to Jesus Christ. He entered into the valley of the shadow of death for us. He did so back then, and he continues to do so even now. Together, Hebrews and John will show that Jesus is completely one with us in his humanity—and he is completely here for us in the power of his divinity. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: "Fire flower" by @Doug88888 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0