Thursday • 3/14/2024 •
Thursday of 4 Lent, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 69; Exodus 1:6–22; 1 Corinthians 12:12–26; Mark 8:27–9:1 

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 fourth week of Lent, as we prepare for Holy Week.  

Exodus and Psalm 69: Rescue is on the way. The start of the book of Exodus is worth noting: Exodus begins the saga of the return home. Separation from the Garden leads to slavery. Israel’s exile under “taskmasters” in Egypt is a parable for the whole human condition of captivity under the dominion of sin, evil, and death. God is not going to leave his people under this oppression. As Eucharistic Prayer A puts it: “…and when we had fallen into sin and become subject to evil and death, you in your mercy sent Jesus Christ…to reconcile us to you….” The book of Exodus, we’ll see, is a telling of that story in advance.  

Today’s canticle, “The Song of Moses,” celebrates the fact that taskmasters do not have the final say, that “Yahweh is a warrior; Yahweh is his name” (Exodus 15:3 JB). As the story of the exodus unfolds, we see that God’s deliverance for all of us can be likened to a rescue from drowning waters. Despite Pharaoh’s command that “every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile,” baby Moses will be lifted from the waters. Despite being trapped on the shores of the Red Sea, the nation of Israel will be brought through the parted waters on dry ground.  

Today’s psalm, Psalm 69, personalizes Moses’s and Israel’s experience. In this song about one of his own near-death experiences, David gives each of us words to lift up to Yahweh when life circumstances feel like they are about to sweep over us and drown us: “Let not the torrent of waters wash over me, neither let the deep swallow me up; do not let the Pit shut its mouth upon me” (Psalm 69:17).  

But more: David provides one of his many windows into the Savior he looked forward to: “They gave me gall to eat, and when I was thirsty, they gave me vinegar to drink. As for me, I am afflicted and in pain; your help, O God, will lift me up on high” (Psalm 69:23–24; see Matthew 27:34; Mark 15:23). David saw in advance that which we have the privilege of seeing at Calvary and in our lives: Christ meets us in the torrent, suffers in our stead, and rescues us from the “reproach” of our enemies, and from the “shame” and “dishonor” of our sin (Psalm 69:21a). 

1 Corinthians: “If one member suffers…” One verse stands out in today’s reading from 1 Corinthians: “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it” (12:26). Throughout this passage, the apostle Paul contemplates the “oneness” and the “many-ness” of Christ’s Body the church. All baptized into one body, all drinking from the same Spirit. Unable to do life without each other. Everybody feeling everybody’s joy. Everybody feeling everybody’s pain.  

Sometimes it takes feeling pain yourself to feel everybody’s pain. In 1623, the Dean of London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral was laid up with a severe disease that was sweeping through London. Pondering the possibility of his own death and that of so many of his fellow Londoners, Donne penned a series of meditations, among them the famous “Meditation 17,” on the solemn ringing of the church bells at someone’s death. The tolling of that bell, he realizes, eventually unites us all in death — but a death that has been redeemed by Christ. In his meditation, Donne likens us all to chapters in a great epic that God himself is writing.  

“[A]ll mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated … God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for that library where every book shall lie open to one another…. 

“No man is an island,  entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were;  any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” 

In a world wracked by war, fractured by differing approaches to individual rights and shared responsibility, and riven by racial and religious and ethnic tension, it is no small thing for the churches of Jesus Christ to give themselves to promoting and praying for unity — for the kind of unity the Apostle Paul and Dean Donne imagined. 

Prayer for the Unity of the Church. O God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Savior, the Prince of Peace: Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions; take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatever else may hinder us from godly union and concord; that, as there is but one Body and one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, so we may be all of one heart and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and one mouth glorify you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+