Thursday • 2/22/2024 •

Thursday of 1 Lent, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 50; Genesis 39:1–23; 1 Corinthians 2:14–3:15; Mark 2:1–12

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)

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we consider some aspect of that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. This is Thursday of the first week of Lent.

It’s in the deep recesses of our hearts that God is doing business. 

Mark: “Your sins are forgiven.” Because they care about his physical affliction, a lame man’s friends lower him through the roof into a place where Jesus is teaching. Jesus sees on that cot a sinner in need of forgiveness. He could say, “Get up and walk.” Instead, he says, “Son, your sins are forgiven,” accomplishing both an inner and an outer healing (Mark 2:5). Scoffers want to debate Jesus’s implicit claim to deity. Jesus asks them about what he perceives is going on in their hearts: “Why do you raise such questions in your hearts?” (Mark 3:8b). 

Paul: Egotists need a better sense of self. Paul is concerned that egotism and narcissism are making a mess of things in the church of Corinth. Ten times in the span of today’s brief reading in 1 Corinthians, Paul uses a term that puts the spotlight on the responsibility of each individual to take stock of what is motivating them; for example, “… each will receive wages according to the labor of each … the work of each builder will become visible … the fire will test what sort of work each has done …” (1 Corinthians 3:8,13). 

The only way for egotism and narcissism to be defeated by Christ is for egotists and narcissists to be challenged in their stronghold: their sense of self. Is your inner being, Paul wants to know, governed by the Spirit or by the flesh (1 Corinthians 3:14–15)? He wants them to see that if they live by the Spirit, they will see that they are small contributors to a greater whole, God’s field and God’s house — and they will be contributing to their own eternal inheritance (1 Corinthians 3:9,14). If they continue to live by the flesh, their jealousy of others and their playing party politics will damage God’s field and house — and they will be discounting their own eternal inheritance (1 Corinthians 3:15). 

Soberingly healthy words for the season of Lent. Lord, have mercy upon us!

Joseph: Learning God’s love in prison. An amazing work is being done in Joseph’s inner being. It seems he has come a long way since his brash and entitled days back home. He is learning that everything can be stripped away, but that you can be OK if you are left with two things: God’s presence and your own moral centeredness. Because of his stalwart and steady resistance to the advances of Potiphar’s wife (“How then could I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” — Genesis 39:9), Joseph gets sent to prison. Of his situation the psalmist says: “They bruised his feet in fetters; his neck they put in an iron collar” (Psalm 105:17–18). Here in prison Joseph is “at the lowest point of his fortunes, forlorn and helpless,” notes commentator Nahum N. Sarna.* That makes it so very apt that it is here that Genesis says for the only time in the entire Joseph-narrative that Yahweh shows Joseph his “steadfast love” (ḥāseḏ): “Yahweh was with Joseph …and showed him steadfast love…” — Genesis 39:2,3,21,23. It’s in those fetters and in that iron collar that Joseph learns that God is with him and loves him everlastingly. 

Many of us can look back at a low point in our lives and say, “There, right there, is where I began to sense God begin to pour out his love on me.” Many of us, no doubt, are in just such a place right now. Lent is an excellent time to look back and look up and say, “Thank you, Lord!”  

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

* Nahum N. Sarna, Genesis: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation with Commentary (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), p. 276.