Tuesday • 5/25/2021
Tuesday of the First Week After Pentecost (Proper 3)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 26; Psalm 28; Deuteronomy 4:15–24; 2 Corinthians 1:12–22; Luke 15:1–10

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93)

What we note in today’s readings of the Tuesday of the first week “After Pentecost” is a fascinating convergence between Moses’s warning against idolatry, Paul’s claim to freedom of conscience, and Jesus’s resolve to find the lost. 

In Deuteronomy 4, Moses cautions people not to make idols for themselves, fashioning pretend images of God and worshiping them: “…so that you do not act corruptly by making an idol for yourselves, in the form of any figure—the likeness of male or female…” (Deuteronomy 4:16). There’s a reason for the fact that the first figure not to consider using as a model for an image of God is the human form. Humans themselves are the image of God. There is nothing more godlike than a human who is filled with the glory, the mind, the heart, and the Spirit of the Living God. By worshiping a likeness of ourselves, we diminish our true likeness to God. In worship of him, we find that likeness as a free gift.

In 2 Corinthians 1, we see what happens when we honor God instead of ourselves: he honors us. Paul says here that all of God’s promises are “Yes” and “Amen” in Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 1:20). The principal “Yes” and “Amen” to the whole range of God’s promises is the restoration of humans as bearers of God’s image. What was lost in the Garden of Eden comes back to us, beginning with the capacity for a conscience that, because of our relationship with Christ, does not condemn ourselves. We, with Paul, can have the confidence that we are “behav[ing] in the world with frankness and godly sincerity” (2 Corinthians 1:12a). In Christ, we can trust that we are being guided “not by worldly wisdom but by the grace of God” (2 Corinthians 1:12b). 

Part of Paul’s amazing pastoral gift is his ability to discuss something as mundane as a change in travel plans (as here in verses 15–22) in terms as sublime as God’s faithfulness to make us new. Paul says his intentions towards the Corinthians have always been for their good, just as God’s are towards us. Further, Paul says that his ability to treat the Corinthians with integrity and honesty comes from Christ himself: “But it is God who establishes us with you in Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:21). And he doesn’t appeal to some special privilege he has as an apostle. He speaks in terms of the common Christian experience. He speaks in terms of what it is to know we are baptized. Note these terms from 2 Corinthians 4:21: 

First, Paul and we have been “anointed” (chrizein — the same Greek word that forms the title “Christ”). That is, in our anointing at baptism we have been appointed to bear our share of Christ’s priestly, kingly, and prophetic mission and identity. As Cyril of Jerusalem was later to say to the newly baptized: We are little Christs. With that identity comes the freedom, indeed the responsibility, to make judgments, even to change plans if we need to, in order to serve people better. 

Second, Paul and we have had God’s “seal put upon us.” That is, the Holy Spirit has permanently marked us out as God’s, so we can rest in the assurance of his love and favor. Just as the Father called Jesus his Beloved Son at his baptism in the River Jordan, so does the Father call us his beloved sons and daughters at our baptism. 

And third, Paul and we have received the gift of “his Spirit in our hearts as a first installment” of the glory that is to be ours completely when our whole being is made new on the day of resurrection. For now, though our outer person may (and will!) fade, our inner person will be renewed daily by the Holy Spirit who dwells within, as Paul will explain later in this letter: “So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). 

With Jesus’s parables of the shepherd’s lost sheep and the woman’s lost coins in Luke 15, he goes to the heart of his mission among us. He has come for idolators and “sinners,” those who are crippled and confused about their own motives, and for “tax collectors,” those who use and abuse people. With this critical proviso: they are ready to admit it. Jesus never grew tired of reminding people that things are broken now and need fixing. People are lost and need finding. 

That’s why one of the prayers we pray at the Eucharist invites us to put ourselves in the line of fire of God’s love by lauding Christ for bringing us out of error into truth, out of sin into righteousness, and out of death into life (BCP, p. 368). Trapped in error and sin and death is where we were. Praise be, Christ has come for us so that he can shout to the courts of heaven: “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost! … Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost!” (Luke 15:6,9).

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Ari Gradus, Creation. Used with permission.