Thursday • 4/27/2023 •
Week of 3 Easter
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 37:1–18; Daniel 5:13–30; 1 John 5:13–21; Luke 5:1–11
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)
Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we consider some aspect of that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd. This is Thursday of the Third Week of Easter, and I’m grateful to be with you. “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!”
John wrote his Gospel to introduce people to Jesus and to invite an initial faith in him: “But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31). By contrast, he writes 1 John to assure people who already believe in Jesus that they indeed have eternal life: “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13). John feels compelled to write because false teachers in the church are shaking believers’ faith by teaching that Jesus was less than truly God-man, and that he had not offered a perfect sacrifice for their sins. They were teaching, falsely, that sin was no big deal anyway. John knows that if we lose those precious truths, our consciences will rise up in protest and shout condemnation to our hearts. We will treat people badly. And we will know spiritual emptiness.
Image: Jean Bourdichon, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Being firmly established in the certainty that Jesus is who he says he is (the Great I AM who has come in the flesh to redeem all creation and to save sinners) brings wonderful benefits.
Confidence, even boldness, in prayer. “And this is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him” (1 John 5:14–15). Knowing him means we find our wills becoming aligned with his. It is in intimate and sustained prayer that alignment happens. For this very reason, our desires and therefore our prayers come increasingly to reflect his own heart. There’s absolutely no other way to learn this valuable lesson than, well, in praying … a lot.
Deep concern for the straying. Humble and godly poise in the face of hostility. John says we will confront two kinds of people caught up in error and sin, those who “sin not unto death,” and those who “sin unto death” (1 John 5:15,16 KJV). For the former we strive in prayer; for the latter we do not. John’s Gospel has powerful examples of those who “sin not unto death”: the woman at the well, for instance, and Peter. He also has powerful examples of those who “sin unto death”: those who “love darkness rather than light,” for instance, and those who “deny the Son”—and, of course, Judas.
From our Old Testament reading, Daniel exemplifies both responses. Nebuchadnezzar had boasted of his glory, his majesty, and his accomplishments. Daniel warned him the Most High would bring him low, doing so to teach him that “Heaven has sovereignty” (Daniel 4:25).
Years later, Daniel’s message to Belshazzar was quite different (Belshazzar was steward and son of Nabonidus, Nebuchadnezzzar’s son-in-law and the last official king of Babylon). In his 80s by now, Daniel has observed Belshazzar’s refusal to learn from Nebuchadnezzar’s experience. Belshazzar’s defiling of the Jerusalem temple’s vessels is a final defiant rebuffing of Israel’s God. And so there appear the mysterious letters on the wall, a final verdict: MENE, MENE TEKEL PERES (“NUMBERED, NUMBERED, WEIGHED, DIVIDED”). The Babylonian empire has been found wanting; it is about to be taken over by the Medes and the Persians. There’s no praying for Belshazzar, for “the writing is on the wall” (this account is where that proverb comes from). That very night he perishes. With equipoise, Daniel is able to deliver both messages, knowing the King of Heaven has sovereignty. As can the followers of Jesus.
Certainty that we are “in” Christ: that is, a profound sense of being held in the eternal divine embrace, an embrace from which, no matter what, we will never, ever be let go. God sent his own dear Son for our benefit. The Son touches our lives with an approach that is particular to each of us, whether we are confused like Nicodemus, living in sin like the woman at the well, wallowing in slothful self-pity like the lame man at Bethsaida, walking in the dark like the man born blind, or grieving the loss of a loved one like Mary and Martha. To each of us he comes. For all of us he was lifted up on the cross to draw us to himself. Reigning now in heaven, he comes to us even now, in the Person of the Holy Spirit, in the Sacraments, and in the fellowship of those whose love makes the invisible God tangible. That is why the next to last words of this profoundly pastoral letter are these: “[A]nd we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life” (1 John 5:20).
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd