Thursday • 5/11/2023 •
Week of 5 Easter
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 70; Psalm 71; Daniel 11:36–45; Romans 14:1–12; Luke 8:26–39
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 Moss,” 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 Fifth Week of Easter, and I’m grateful to be with you. “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!”
Daniel. 1 Maccabees 6:1–17 and 2 Maccabees 1:14–16; 9:1–29 provide extensive, competing, and exotic details of Antiochus IV’s campaigns and his demise. Daniel, however, concludes his summary of Antiochus’s god-hating exploits with a simple, “He shall pitch his palatial tents between the sea and the beautiful holy mountain. Yet he shall come to his end, with no one to help him” (Daniel 11:45). For all his lust for conquest and his play-acting at divinity, this enemy of Yahweh and his people simply vanishes from history’s stage.
Some interpreters (I am among them) think that Daniel receives here a glimpse into the distant future. He provides us a symbolic representation of Christ’s final victory over Antichrist, when the “King of kings and Lord of Lords” descends upon “the Beast” (i.e., the Antichrist) who has assembled an army against the Lamb and the Holy City. Christ seizes him, and “throws him alive into the lake of fire burning with sulfur” (Revelation 19, especially verses 16,19,20).
Image: From Four prophets: Ángel M. Felicísimo from Mérida, España, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
We have followed Daniel’s career from his youth at the beginning of the Babylonian captivity all the way to his senior years at the cusp of the return from exile. We have seen his faithfulness under one pagan leader after another: from Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams of glory to Belshazzar’s writing on the wall to Darius’s demand for worship of himself. We have followed Daniel from one trial after another, from the blazing furnace to the lions’ den. One lesson he has learned above all others: in the end, the Lord’s Anointed wins; and in him, so do his people.
Psalm 71. Throughout our reading of Daniel, we have witnessed God’s faithfulness. Remember that by the end of the book of Daniel, the prophet is a very old man, probably in his eighties. Though today’s Psalm 71 is anonymous, it certainly could speak for Daniel — and for any of us who discover that we have become old (or who think we may find ourselves in that position someday!):
9 Do not cast me off in my old age; forsake me not when my strength fails.
17 O God, you have taught me since I was young,
and to this day I tell of your wonderful works.
18 And now that I am old and gray-headed, O God, do not forsake me,
till I make known your strength to this generation
and your power to all who are to come.
May we “Dare to Be a Daniel” in our youth, in our middle years, and in our later years. May we find our God to be a great champion all the way through. In our junior years, may we hide God’s Law in our hearts “that I might not sin against you” (Psalm 119:11). In our middler years, may we not outrun our gratitude to the Father of lights, the giver of “every perfect gift” (James 1:17). In our senior years, may we find that “even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16).
Collect for the Aged. Look with mercy, O God our Father, on all whose increasing years bring them weakness, distress, or isolation. Provide for them homes of dignity and peace; give them understanding helpers, and the willingness to accept help; and, as their strength diminishes, increase their faith and their assurance of your love. This we ask in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+