Tuesday • 3/23/2021
Week of 5 Lent
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 121; Psalm 122; Psalm 123; Jeremiah 25:8–17; Romans 10:1–13; John 9:18–41
More extended thoughts on today’s Romans reading in this post from last summer: on Romans 10:1–13
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)
God turns things on their head:
Judgments about power. Judah (“all the tribes of the north”) have failed to keep God’s covenant. As a result, Yahweh will subject them to seventy years of exile at the hands of the Babylonians. To that end he has raised up Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, even calling him “my servant.” While Nebuchadnezzar shows some signs of recognizing Yahweh’s lordship (see the account of his wrestling with faith in Daniel), his successors see themselves as the source of their own power. Yahweh will hold them to account for that arrogance. The “cup of the wine of the wrath” that Judah drinks will pass next to the nations that come against her. “For thus the Lord, the God of Israel, said to me: Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. They shall drink and stagger and go out of their minds because of the sword that I am sending among them” (Jeremiah 25:15–16).
Whatever power and authority we have in this world is a gift, and, “Every good gift comes from above,” says James, brother of Jesus (James 1:17). We do well to remember the gift comes with the special obligation of remembering its source. Only then will we use it for the good that he intends.
There will always be ultimate vindication for those who pray (per one of this morning’s psalms):
Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy, *
for we have had more than enough of contempt,
Too much of the scorn of the indolent rich, *
and of the derision of the proud (Psalm 123:4–5).
Assessments about righteousness and goodness. Power is not the only thing that must be received and treated as a gift. So is righteousness or goodness. In Romans 10, Paul teaches that the purpose (the telos, or goal or aim) of the Law for him and his fellow Jews was, in the first place, to make them understand that they could not depend on a righteousness of their own. The Law, then, had its second purpose, painting a portrait of the coming Christ. He would bring a righteousness “from God” that would be his own gift to us (Romans 10:3).
For those of us who enjoy the privilege of being raised in a home where values and morality have been instilled in us, today’s passage still rings true. We all fall short (Romans 3:23). Nobody lives up completely to the standards to which they aspire. All of us face, then, the question of whether we should trust that our “best” is good enough, or whether we need to trust the inner voice that insists that our “best” is not enough. But more, can we trust what the Bible says about the Christ who has come down to us? We don’t have to (pardon the Led Zeppelin allusion) “climb a stairway to heaven.” Can we look to the One who did keep the law perfectly? He offers the gift of his righteousness and goodness to be our own, if we will just accept it.
Conclusions about (in)sight. Jesus says that his coming prompts the most amazing of reversals when it comes to spiritual sight: “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind” (John 9:39). This statement follows the authorities’ close investigation of the facts about the blind man’s healing (facts which their resolute lack of faith prevents them from acknowledging). Called to be stewards of the great tradition that looked for the world’s Redeemer, they refuse to “see” what is happening right before their very eyes. As for the man born blind, he continues to share the facts as he is dragged into a second inquisition. And with every expression of the plain truth that, “I once was blind, but now I see,” he awakens a bit more to who it is who has given him his sight. Eventually, he is granted spiritual sight as well as physical sight: “He said, ‘Lord, I believe.’ And he worshiped him” (John 9:38).
Spiritual blindness is a constant, whether there is a “great tradition” like that of the Jews of Jesus’s day, or whether whatever “great tradition” that may have held sway in a society’s past is crumbling, as is the case in our day. May our eyes, as Psalm 123 says, stay open and lifted up. May we not be blinded by the purported light from competing sources around us—whether crazed conspiracy theorists, saccharine and smug defenders of the status quo, wannabe saviors from the left or the right, or self-styled prophets and prophetesses of narcissistic religion.
May God grant us the grace to let our sense of what is real and true, of what we find to be beautiful and lovely, to be shaped more and more by His great story as it unfolds for us in these readings in the Daily Office. May our constant prayer be:
To you I lift up my eyes, *
to you enthroned in the heavens. …
So our eyes look to the Lord our God, *
until he show us his mercy (Psalm 123:1–3).
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Image: El Greco, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons