Wednesday • 4/19/2023 •
Week of 2 Easter 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:1–24; Daniel 2:17–30; 1 John 2:12–17; John 17:20–26

This morning’s Canticles are: before the Psalm reading, Pascha Nostrum (“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); following the OT reading, Canticle 11 (“The Third Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 60:1–3,11a,14c,18–19, BCP, p. 87);  following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68–79, BCP, p. 92)

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we ask how God might direct our lives from 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 Wednesday of the Second Week of Easter. We are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!”

We discover in our readings this morning powerful insights about learning who we are in loving God and loving one another. 

Daniel receives revelation about Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. In today’s passage the king of Babylonian has seen “what will happen at the end of days” (Daniel 2:28). Because we are not reading the entire narrative all at once, we don’t learn the content of the dream today. Instead, today’s text shows us, first, Daniel’s praise and worship of “the God of heaven” (Daniel 2:19). Second, we see Daniel’s insistence before the king that it is not a special talent of his own that gives him the ability to perceive the dream and interpret it. As Daniel tells the king, “There is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has disclosed to King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen at the end of days” (Daniel 2:28). God is the giver of all good gifts (James 1:17). 

Image: From stained glass, Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida

Only half of Daniel’s message to the king addresses the content and the meaning of the dream itself. More fundamental is the other half of Daniel’s message: “There is a God….” And not just any God! That God—Yahweh, Israel’s covenant Lord—wishes to be known in Babylon. The key to acquiring any wisdom, including wisdom about oneself, is through knowing him. It is only in knowledge of Yahweh, Daniel dares to tell the Babylonian king, “that you may understand the thoughts of your mind” (Daniel 2:30). 

As John Calvin notes at the very beginning of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, to know God is to know oneself, and the route to knowing oneself is to know God. Amen that!

1 John. When we are very young in Christ, just beginning the journey of self-understanding, we first need to know forgiveness and the love of God as our Father (1 John 2:12a,14a). When we are early in the process of establishing our identities and our place in the world, we need to know the power of God to help us resist evil and live for Him (1 John 2:13b,14c). When we are older and have come to the place where others look to us for mature wisdom, we need to be able to draw on a lifetime of experience with Him whom we’ve known “from the beginning” (1 John 2:13a,14b). 

At every stage of life, we need to be on guard, says John, against the seductions of illicit physical pleasure (“the lust of the flesh”), of the idolizing of beauty (“the lust of the eyes”), and of the pride of building our “brand” (“the pride of life”—1 John 2:15b RSV). Pleasure for pleasure’s sake, art for art’s sake, and feeling superior to other people—these are the main elements of what it is to “love the world and the things of the world” (1 John 2:15a).  In the end, their charms are fleeting, and the love of the Father is not in them. And if we belong to Christ, they are not who we are!

In John 17, Jesus prays for us, his church. Our Great High Priest prays that we will experience something that is more valuable, more lasting, and more real than anything else in the world: love for one another. Whether we are young or old, whether we wrestle with sins of the flesh or of the eye or of the ego, our true selves are to be found in giving ourselves to one another in the Body of Christ. 

God’s very being is an eternal communion of love between the persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. When we, Christ’s followers, love one another, we participate in that eternal communion. And when, in answer to Jesus’s prayer, we love one another, we come as close to making visible the invisible God as is possible for human beings: “I ask …  that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:20a,21). 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+