Monday • 2/8/2021
Week of 5 Epiphany

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 80; Isaiah 58:1–12; Galatians 6:11–18; Mark 9:30–41

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)

New creation in Galatians. Paul closes his letter to the Galatians with a flourish. It was customary for a person who had dictated the body of a letter to take the pen and write the conclusion in their own hand. Thereby, they could certify the authenticity of the letter and crisply summarize its contents. With his “large letters,” Paul emphatically confirms that this letter—this great charter of Christian freedom—is his. And in his own hand, he encapsulates his main point: “[A] new creation is everything!” Putting on a show of ultra-piety doesn’t matter. What matters is taking one’s place in the death of Christ in such a way that “the world is crucified to me and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14). What matters is belonging to “the Israel of God” that is being refashioned to include all who, by faith, are sons of Abraham and daughters of Sarah, and experiencing the peace and mercy that belong to those who “follow this rule” (Galatians 5:16). 

What marks “the Israel of God” in Isaiah. For his part, Isaiah reasserts what has always been the rule for people who experience Yahweh’s redeeming and rescuing love. It is not their hyper-spirituality that aligns their hearts with Yahweh’s and draws them near to him—their fasting and self-humiliation in sackcloth and ashes (Isaiah 58:2,3). When it masks injustice, oppression of workers, quarreling, fighting, “striking with a wicked fist,” tolerating hunger, homelessness, and nakedness among their own kin (Isaiah 58:4,5,7), all the fancy “religious” activity in the world amounts to nothing. Actually, it’s worse than nothing—it’s active rebellion! Even as Isaiah promises a new exodus, he calls for a return to the ethical logic of the exodus. Those who have had their own bonds of oppression loosed do the same for others. Those who have been brought home do all they can for the homeless among them. Those who have enjoyed the bountiful table of the Lord share their table with the hungry. To do so, as Paul puts it above, is to follow the rule of the Israel of God. 

“Following the rule” in Mark. “Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest” — Mark 9:33–34. Jesus extends following the rule of the Israel of God to guarding our hearts from seeking privilege and status in our service to him. Setting a little child before his disciples, Jesus points to the least and the littlest among us, and says basically, “Serve me in them” (Mark 9:36–37). He extends the rule to treating charitably others who follow him, but who do it differently than we do—whether it’s different manifestations of the Spirit, whether it’s a different style of worship, whether it’s different priorities in ministry. The “rule” of “the Israel of God” is: “Whoever is not against us is for us” (Mark 9:40). 

Oh, for the rule of the Israel of God to prevail among us, for the reality of “a new creation” to pervade followers of Jesus Christ, for us to be crucified to the world (and its way of measuring worth and getting things done) and the world to be crucified to us!

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: from stained glass, Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, FL