Tuesday • 2/16/2021
Week of Last Epiphany

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 26; Psalm 28; Deuteronomy 6:16–25; Hebrews 2:1–10; John 1:19–28

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93)

Deuteronomy: a great salvation. How appropriate, during this last week after Epiphany, to be reminded of that great epiphany of God that took place at the exodus. Moses reminds the children of Israel of the “great and awesome signs and wonders” by which Yahweh had delivered them: the plagues, the parting of the waters, his protection of them, and his provision for them during the wilderness journey. Moses, accordingly, urges obedience to the “commandments of the Lord your God, and his decrees, and his statutes that he has commanded” (Deuteronomy 6:17). In the land promised to their forebears, the well-being of Yahweh’s people depends on their faithfulness to his covenant with them. “If we diligently observe this entire commandment before the Lord our God, as he has commanded us, we will be in the right” (Deuteronomy 6:25). 

John: but that salvation was doomed to failure. The people, as we know, did not “observe this entire commandment,” and did not show themselves to be “in the right.” Israel’s life fell into an extended dysfunctional pattern of rebellion, punishment, repentance, rescue, restoration. Throughout the period of the judges, the period of the united monarchy, the period of the divided monarchy, the period of the Assyrian exile, the period of the Babylonian captivity, the period of the Second Temple, it was “Wash, rinse, repeat.”  The pattern extended the way to the time of John the Baptist. Here was a new voice in the wilderness, calling yet again for an exodus: “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’” (John 1:23). 

John the Baptist’s mission was to point to a greater Epiphany with a greater salvation, a better exodus: “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal” (John 1:26–27). 

Hebrews: a greater salvation. As great as was the mediation through angels under Moses, the mediation of the Son is greater. As great as was the parting of the waters in the exodus, greater is Christ’s tasting death for everyone at Calvary on Good Friday. As great as was the power demonstrated over Egyptian false gods in the plagues, so much greater is Jesus’s resurrection at Easter. Breaking the bonds of death, Jesus has destroyed the power of the one who, since the Garden, has robbed us of the proper  dominion over “all things” for which we were created (Hebrews 2:14–15). As Twila Paris used to sing, “All that has been taken, it shall be restored. This eternal anthem, for the glory of the Lord.” The beautiful thing is that the glory of the Lord is manifest in the “bringing [of] many children to glory” by the making of “the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings” (Hebrews 2:10). 

It follows, then, that as weighty as was the obligation under the covenant of Moses to “trust and obey” (to use the language of an old hymn), so much weightier is the responsibility, says the writer to the Hebrews, to “pay greater attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away” from “so great a salvation” (Hebrews 2:1,3). 

I pray that during this upcoming season of Lent, we step more deeply into what Paul calls “the fellowship of [Christ’s] sufferings” so that we may taste more wonderfully “the power of his resurrection” (Philippians 3:10). 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: "Luther rose" by Nick in exsilio is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0