Thursday • 3/3/2022
Thursday of Last Epiphany, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 37; Habakkuk 3:1–18; Philippians 3:12–21; John 17:1–8

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)

Yesterday’s Ash Wednesday’s sober words ring especially true these days: “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” There’s nothing like a once-in-a-hundred-year killer virus to remind us of our frailty. It feels like nature itself is trying to destroy us. There’s nothing like vitriol spewing nationally and sabers rattling internationally to make us conclude that if nature can’t kill us, we are perfectly capable of doing it to ourselves.

The one place I know to go to find “big picture” help is the Bible.

Habakkuk 3: to sing in hard times. “…in wrath may you remember mercy” — (Habakkuk 3:2e). The Bible is a book of relentless hope. It refuses to give up on us, because it holds that the God who made us does not give up on us. Habakkuk knows the feel of creation crashing down on us, of enemies at the gates, and of folly and wickedness inside the gates. He knows we fully deserve the wrath.

Nonetheless, he sings in the face of the fury. In the superscription to Habakkuk 3 is the Hebrew word, Shigionoth, which commentators are pretty sure is a musical instruction. And the chapter ends, “To the leader: with stringed instruments” (Habakkuk 3:19b). Today’s passage is a song the prophet lifts to God. In it, he recites all the calamity God’s people have deserved, from storms of nature to the storm of invading armies. But he remembers the way God’s “storming” presence has conquered his enemies and theirs. Habakkuk remembers the way Yahweh has set limits on the destruction his people have brought down on themselves at the hands of their enemies, and sings, “yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation” (Habakkuk 3:18b).

Philippians 3: to be “taken hold of” by Christ. The apostle Paul is grateful (as we should be too) for a reality that has taken hold of him from above despite himself. He says that the reason he presses on toward the goal of resurrection and the full enjoyment of life in God’s presence is “so that I may take hold of that for which also I was taken hold of by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:12 my translation). Grace has laid hold of Paul’s life … and Grace will not let him go. May it be so with you and me.

Confident of Christ’s gracious grip, Paul (as underserving as he knows himself to be) extends grace to those who haven’t caught up with him theologically in every respect (“…and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you” — Philippians 3:15b). Here’s a wonderful thing to contemplate: we don’t have to make sure everybody lines up with us exactly. Sometimes Christ calls on us to give each other breathing space, or room to grow.

At the same time, Paul also calls out those who spurn the cross of Christ. Whether the “enemies of the cross” (Philippians 3:18b) claim to be believers but invent a cross-less and suffering-free version of the faith, or whether these “enemies” outright oppose the faith, Christ’s grace gives Paul the boldness to say their earth-bound perspective is a dead end — quite literally, a dead end.

John 17: to be prayed for by Christ! But the thing that most deeply protects us from despair in the face of all that would destroy us is simply who Christ is and what he has done for us. There is a special comfort in knowing that Christ’s journey to the cross was bathed in prayer — and to judge from John 17, prayer not so much for himself, but for us: “I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours” (John 17:9). He asks the Father for protection for us, for joy for us, for the ability to be in the world without “belonging to the world,” and for being so solidly grounded in truth that we are “sanctified” in it.

There is perhaps even more comfort in the knowledge that he didn’t just pray for us on the night of his arrest, but that, according to the writer to the Hebrews, he prays for us now: “He is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25 NASB).

May Christ’s intercession prove strong for us: protecting us from despair over the evil around us, among us, and even in us; giving us grace to extend grace to the struggling; making us bold to hold forth the glory of the cross regardless of the cost; and granting us a heart always to “rejoice in the Lord and exult in the God of our salvation.”

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Adapted from Pixabay