Thursday • 4/15/2021
Week of 2 Easter

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 18:1–20; Daniel 2:31–49; 1 John 2:18–29; Luke 3:1–14

This morning’s Canticles are: before the Psalm reading, Pascha Nostrum(“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); 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)

 Daniel. Here in Daniel 2 the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream is top heavy: weighty and valuable materials at the top, and strong but fragile materials at the bottom. All it will take to bring the whole edifice down is a blow from a single stone to its iron-clay feet. Scholars are not unanimous in their interpretation of Daniel’s interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. But the simplest and most compelling one, it seems to me, sees the successive kingdoms as Babylon (gold), Media-Persia (silver), Greek (bronze), and Roman (iron and clay). Despite its aspiration to bring all people together under the pax Romana (a rule of law, shrewd administration, and military power), Rome’s attempt to “marry” different groups will prove to be brittle. 

God’s Messiah (the “stone…not cut of any human hands”—see 1 Corinthians 10:4) will strike a blow that will make the entire edifice of human grandeur fall. In its place will rise a new and eternal kingdom: “the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, nor shall its sovereignty be left to another people” (Daniel 2:44).  

Luke. John the Baptist’s mission is to announce the dawning of the day Daniel foretold. Unique among the gospel writers, Luke names contemporary rulers of the pax Romana—from the emperor himself, to his provincial governor, to his indigenous puppet kings, to the collaborationist stewards of Jerusalem’s temple. John’s message is that all this apparent power and glory is shortly to be proven to be brittle as clay. 

At the heart of the Baptist’s proclamation of the need for a baptism of repentance is his persuasion that the day is right around the corner when God will turn things upside down, or rather, put things right side up again: “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth” (Luke 3:5, quoting Isaiah 40:4). 

In anticipation of “seeing the salvation of God” (Luke 3:6), everybody must get ready—each person in their own way. Those who think themselves privileged by birthright or spiritual heritage must repent of their pride, and “produce fruit worthy of repentance” (Luke 3:8). At the same time, those whom everybody thinks are automatically excluded from God’s favor, like tax collectors and soldiers, are invited to come to the preparatory waters. Not on their own terms, however, but on God’s. They must turn from extortionist and predatory ways. The coming of Messiah means the kingdom of this world and its value system—most visibly expressed in John’s day in the enforcers of the pax Romana—is about to be overturned in favor of God’s rule of justice, righteousness, mercy, and love. Prepare the way…

1 John. Beloved disciple and elder statesman of the church, John has seen a lamentable Satanic pushback in his churches. Jesus Christ, the Incarnate God-Man, has conquered sin and death on the cross, and has “thrown out” the ruler of this world in order to draw all sorts of people to himself (John 12:32). But a mark of the fact that this is “the last hour” is that the devil still has some fight in him. The devil wages war on the church (see Revelation 12). And his most effective strategy is to distort the truth of who the Messiah is, and create doubt and despair in the church. Thus in John’s day and ours, the heretical emergence of “many antichrists” (false teachers, false leaders) in the church. 

In John’s day, the false teaching went along the lines of the “divine Christ” temporarily inhabiting the body of the “human Jesus,” so that you couldn’t say “Jesus is the Christ.” Such a split allowed the “divine Christ” to abandon the “human Jesus” on the cross, under the assumption that divinity could not be associated with death. Of course, that meant that there was no sacrifice for sin, nor was there need for such a thing. This teaching declared that knowing God really had nothing to do with the mundaneness and messiness of this life. Thus, following this reasoning, there was no need for confession of sin, and no need to adhere to the bothersome, meddlesome commandments of God. 

In our day, there’s probably no better representative of “antichrist”-thinking than that which Nobel Peace Prize winning missionary doctor Albert Schweitzer introduced in his Quest of the Historical Jesus. As a convinced modern secularist, Schweitzer could not conceive of an actual, physical resurrection. He believed that a thoroughly human Jesus died on the cross alone and in despair, crying out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The “historical Jesus” is lost to us, Schweitzer said, and is irrelevant to us anyway. He’s just dead and gone. What matters, he would say, is the “Christ of faith” who lives in our hearts and inspires us to be our better selves. That erroneous belief inspired, it must be said, Schweitzer to live one of the twentieth century’s most heroic lives, as a medical missionary to Africa, as a brilliant organist and scholar of Bach, and as a theologian of note. But underneath it was the spirit of “antichrist” that John saw in his day, and which he described as characteristic of living (as we continue to do today) in “the last hour.”

Our job is straightforward: to continue to confess that Jesus and the Christ are one and the same person. In Mary’s womb, a unique thing took place: heaven and earth came together, and came together for good. The divine Second Person has permanently taken to himself the fullness of our humanity, has suffered for us, died for us, and has risen to life restored for us. He represents us now in heaven as a promise of what we shall be when he comes again in power and great glory. “Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is what he has promised us, eternal life” (1 John 2:24). 

Abide in this staggering truth, and be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons