Thursday • 2/17/2022
Thursday of 6 Epiphany, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 105; Genesis 32:3–21; 1 John 2:18–29; John 10:19–30

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)

Some overall perspective on the first 21 verses of Genesis 32: Graciously, Yahweh has intersected Jacob in his waywardness, revealing to Jacob that he is indeed the chosen bearer of the promises made to his grandfather Abraham. For this mission, he was chosen from the womb despite being the second born son: “The older son will serve the younger” (Genesis 25:23).  Somehow, he has not disqualified himself because of his earlier willfulness, deceptions, and maneuverings. Yahweh has seen him through terrible treatment at the hand of his uncle Laban. During his sojourn under Laban, Yahweh has even blessed him with a multitude of sons, and has prospered him with immense flocks. And at Mizpah, Yahweh has shown his readiness to stand guard between him and the resentful and envious uncle who has become his enemy. 

Still, there is a walk of humiliation that Jacob knows he must walk. Geographically, Jacob could have made a more or less straight line from Laban’s tents in Haran to Isaac’s tents at Hebron in south Canaan. But on his journey southwards, he unexpectedly veers east and heads for Esau’s tents in Shechem. Jacob needs reconciliation with the older brother whom he has deceived, and at whose expense he carries the blessing of Abraham. For Jacob, benefiting from God’s blessing lies on the far side of a walk of humiliation. 

. Jacob sends messengers to Esau, and Esau’s only answer is to send 400 men to meet him. Are they coming in friendship? Or are they coming to exact revenge? It’s not difficult, I think, to identify with Jacob’s plight. As commentator Derek Kidner observes, “Nothing could be more ominous than Esau’s silence and his rapid approach in force. Jacob’s reaction is characteristically energetic: he plans, (verses) 7,8 — prays, 9–12 — plans, 13–21 — prays, 22–32 — plans, 33:1–3. It is over-facile to condemn his elaborate moves as faithless … Jacob’s prayers show where his confidence lay.” *

John 10: why Jesus is such a good shepherd. For those of us who, like Jacob, teeter between faith and unfaith (“God you promised … but my brother could just kill me!”), it’s hard to imagine Jesus uttering more comforting words than these: “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.” (John 10:27–30). 

If we recognize Jesus’s voice and find ourselves inclined to follow him, we can be confident that that inclination did not begin with us. We are not that clever, nor that brave, nor (most of us, at least) that humble. (I mean, really — willing to give control of our lives over to somebody else?!) If we recognize Jesus’s voice and find ourselves following him, it is because way back in the counsels of eternity the Father loved us, chose us for himself, and gave us personally to his Son. It is that deeper call to which we have responded. And the comfort of it is that there is nothing — nothing — that can keep the Good Shepherd from getting us all the way home. 

1 John: As under-shepherd, John warns against “antichrists.” In yesterday’s reading in John’s Gospel, Jesus warns us against bad shepherds, hirelings who pretend they care for the sheep but in fact care only for themselves. When John becomes a shepherd to a portion of God’s flock, he senses there are bad shepherds in his churches. In 1 John 2:18, he calls them “antichrists” because they substitute for the true Christ (truly God and truly human) a false Christ (if he is fully God, then he is not fully human; if he is fully human, then he cannot be fully God). John says there are “many antichrists” in his day, And, alas, there have been many since. 

John’s Gospel and his Epistles carry such power because of their finely balanced and pastorally perfect perception that Jesus is fully divine with the authority to save, and fully human with the capacity to absorb all our sins and griefs. Fully divine to bring us Truth (with a capital “T”), and fully human to model and lead us in Life (with a capital “L”). 

Bad shepherds adjust the message because they are “hirelings” who attend more to their market than to their Master. They do so either in the direction of making Jesus a purely divine figure who swoops down just long enough to rescue us for heaven; or they adjust the message in the direction of making Jesus a purely human figure who helps us fantasize about making earth into heaven. A not-quite-human Jesus who has nothing to say about, say, civic responsibility or creation care, or a less-than-divine Jesus who leaves us frustrated and angry and despairing because we never seem to be able to make the Kingdom come. That makes them antichrists, and fully deserving of our inattention. 

May God give us discernment to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd in the words of faith-keeping, hope-instilling, and love-inspiring under-shepherds. Under-shepherds who themselves are being shepherded by one Shepherd who is truly Good. More deeply, may we know that our heavenly Father has lovingly placed us in the strong and secure hands of our faithful Good Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

* Derek Kidner, Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1967), p. 168.