Monday • 4/17/2023 •
Week of 2 Easter
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 1; Psalm 2; Psalm 3; Daniel 1:1–21; 1 John 1:1–10; John 17:1–11
This morning’s Canticles are: before the Psalm reading, Pascha Nostrum (“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2–6, BCP, p. 86); 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 explore that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me. This is Monday of the Second Week of Easter, and we are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!”
Daniel. The book of Daniel is set in the early years of the Babylonian Captivity. Daniel and his friends Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, are part of the population that has been displaced to Babylon. In this far away and pagan land, Daniel and companions attempt what Jeremiah had exhorted the exiles to do: “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:7).
As the readings from the early chapters of Daniel show, “seeking the welfare” of Babylon while maintaining fidelity to Yahweh is a perilous undertaking. In this opening chapter, despite paganized name-changes being forced upon them, Daniel and his companions resist the imposition of dietary requirements. They do so even while they submit to their education in Babylonian literature and wisdom. Throughout, Yahweh protects them as they navigate challenging waters.
Reading and praying through the book of Daniel is a profoundly important exercise for a church that feels like it is in exile. Like Abraham, we look for “a better homeland” (Hebrews 11:14,16). As Paul says, we have our “citizenship in heaven” (Philippians 3:20). Nonetheless, for now, we live in a world that feels quite alien in many respects. Here, we are, as Peter says, “strangers and aliens” (1 Peter 1:1:1). And yet, we are called to pray for the well-being of the society in which we live—that its institutions and its peoples would thrive. We are to learn its wisdom and ways, and we are to bring to bear God’s wisdom and ways where we can. May God help us. May he make us, as Jesus says, “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16).
Image: Maerten de Vos, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
In 1 John, the beloved apostle (and now elder statesman) in Christ’s church responds to those who would accommodate the faith to pagan assumptions about theology, self-understanding, and ethics.
There are some people in John’s churches who can’t bring themselves to acknowledge that in Christ, God became fully human. They seem to have believed that the “divine Christ” and the “human Jesus” were perhaps temporarily conjoined in one being. That the two natures actually formed one Person, and that the “divine Christ” actually died on the cross and returned in the “human Jesus”—well, that just didn’t fit their philosophical categories. The first thing John wants us to know is that the faith is just so much empty gas without the genuineness of the Incarnation and the physicality of Christ’s return from the dead. Thus, John’s vivid, sensory, and graphic language: “…what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life…” (1 John 1:1). It’s clearly not a ghost whom John has heard, seen, and touched. It is the Living God, who has assumed flesh like ours.
The second thing John wants us to know is that our faith is just so much delusional self-talk without the blunt confession of our sinfulness. Without due regard for our entrapment in sin, our proclivity for justifying ourselves and manipulating others, we are “walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true” (1 John 1:6).
In tomorrow’s reading from 1 John, we see what gain our confession of sin brings. But for today, it is enough to note simply the need to confess. Here, John would agree with the words of the great Jesus Prayer that goes back to Evagrius Pontus (died 339), but that is based in the Synoptics: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner” (see Mark 10:47 and parallels).
John 17. The task of living for Christ (abiding, loving, and testifying) is not something we are left to do in our own strength. Holding us up throughout is the prayer ministry of the Lord Jesus. Here in John 17, Jesus climaxes his post-dinner teaching by praying in advance for his followers’ ability, those in the room and all who will follow, to live out his final instructions. This prayer is of a piece with Jesus’s entire ministry of prayer for and with us. He prayed for the success of his mission on our behalf throughout his days on this earth “with loud cries and tears” (Hebrews 5:7); he prayed for Peter even during Peter’s denial (Luke 22:32); and he prays for us still at the right hand of the Father, for “he ever lives to intercede” for those who come to God through him (Hebrews 7:25).
As he prepares to offer himself up on the cross, Jesus prays that the Father will indeed restore him to the glory he had from eternity. That Jesus could pray for something that would seem to be a certainty is a mark of how real his humanity was and is—and there could be no greater example for us never, ever, ever to neglect the call to prayer. And on this last night with his disciples, Jesus asks his Father’s protection for those who belong to him—we can never be grateful enough for his constant and ongoing intervention on our behalf.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+