Friday • 3/3/2023 •
Week of 1 Lent 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 95; Psalm 40; Deuteronomy 10:12–22; Hebrews 4:11–16 (and Saturday’s Hebrews 5:1–10); John 3:22–36 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6–11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we bring to our lives 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 Friday of the first week of Lent, as we prepare for Holy Week.   

“In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission” — Hebrews 5:7. The picture that leaps to mind for almost everybody who reads this verse is of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane right before his arrest. This verse reminds people that Jesus asked in that moment of doubt and anxiety if there is any way the cup of judgment (death) can pass from him. He’s asking if there’s another way besides his death for him to save people.  

But the verse deserves a closer look. This prayer is not that prayer.  

First, all the translations leave a misimpression that has to be cleared up. The phrase “to the one who was able to save him from death,” might be rendered more precisely “out of death,” rather than “from death.” The preposition is ek (“out of”), not apo (“from”). To be saved “from death” is indeed what Jesus was asking for in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Let this cup pass from me” (Matthew 26:39). By contrast, the prayer to be saved “out of death” is a prayer for resurrection. This prayer looks back to the mission that was agreed upon in eternity between the Father and the Son, the mission that lies behind “God so loved the world that he gave….” (John 3:16). This is the mission that the writer to the Hebrews presupposes when he says God “brings the firstborn into the world” (Hebrews 1:6). It’s why our writer can refer to Jesus as “apostle,” i.e., “one who is sent” (Hebrews 3:1). This prayer is a prayer that the Father will be faithful to his promise to raise up his Son out of death.  

Second, the answer to this prayer is “Yes.” The Father says “No” to Jesus’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane not to have to go through death, so he can say “Yes” to this prayer. He says “Yes” to bringing Jesus from among the dead, back into the land of the living. The wonderful thing is the fact that the Father’s “Yes” to his Son includes a “Yes” to us as well. Jesus doesn’t die for his own sins (since he had none), but for ours. And he rises so that we can be raised up with him. The Father’s “Yes” to Jesus is a “Yes” to us.  

Third, this verse describes a kind of praying that coursed through the whole of Jesus’s life. This isn’t a last-minute, one-off, desperate “foxhole” plea for the Father to reconsider the plan (though the tears in the Garden of Gethsemane were more than understandable). No, these are the resolute tears and committed cries of the Son who has come among us, to be one of us in our tears and our cries for release. This is the kind of praying Jesus did during those periods when he slipped off to be by himself—or rather, with his Father: “Yet Jesus himself frequently withdrew to the wilderness and prayed” (Luke 5:16 NET).  

How appropriate are our readings today in the church’s own “prayer textbook,” the Psalms. It is in the Psalms, after all, that we also find “prayers and supplications... loud cries and tears.”  

Psalm 95 is a prayer of thanksgiving, as well as a call to worship, acknowledging God as creator and caretaker of his people.  It is Psalm 40, however, that contains an instructive range of human experience for us.  

Here we find praise: “You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us; none can compare with you. Were I to proclaim and tell of them, they would be more than can be counted” (verse 5).   

Here we find deliverance: “He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure” (verse 2).  

Here we find proclamations of God’s goodness: “I have not hidden your saving help within my heart, I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation; I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation” (verse 10).  

Here we also find entreaties for further deliverance, and supplications for the chastisement of his enemies: “Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me; O Lord, make haste to help me. Let all those be put to shame and confusion who seek to snatch away my life; let those be turned back and brought to dishonor who desire my hurt” (verses 13-14).  

We may pray many things over the course of the journey of our life in Christ: shouting praise, giving thanks, asking for help, for guidance, for wisdom, for deliverance. But because we belong to Jesus, and because the Father told him “Yes,” we already have our ultimate deliverance, and a “new and unending life in him.”  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+