Wednesday • 5/8/2024 •

Wednesday of the 6th Week of Easter

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 78:1-39; Leviticus 26:1-20; 1 Timothy 2:1-6; Matthew 13:18-23

This morning’s Canticles are: Pascha Nostrum (“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); 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)

From the depths to the heights today!

Dark days ahead for a failed Israel. Leviticus’s perspective is that Israel’s failure in her call to be a kingdom of priests and a light to the nations is inevitable. Israel’s life would be a colossal exercise in reductio ad absurdum—exile would be the absurd end of the God-rejecting logic of their lives. Called to make human life flourish, they would become cannibals. Called to cultivate worship of the true and living God, their carcasses would be piled upon the carcasses of their idols. Called to give the land rest, they would be forced into a frenzied fleeing from enemies (real and imagined) so, yes, the land could rest from them.

This is excruciating material. Small wonder the entire drift of modernity has been to project a different image up into the heavens—an image that looks like the best and the kindest that we can imagine in ourselves—and then call that projected image “God.” From Ludwig Feuerbach’s “God is the infinity of our own nature” to Eric Fromm’s “humanistic god”—though not everyone is especially honest about it—especially the theologians who mask it under other names, like Paul Tillich’s “Ultimate Concern.” Then again, it’s not a uniquely modern project. In the second century, the heretic Marcion erroneously rejected the Old Testament God of Vengeance (whose voice we hear especially strongly here in Leviticus 26), and replaced him with the New Testament God of Love.

One True Israelite. Indeed, a passage like today’s from Leviticus 26 would be the most depressing, nightmarish of scenarios, were it not for the fact that One True Israelite would, in time, answer the call to circumcise His heart (see Leviticus 26:41). The “circumcision of Christ” (see Colossians 2:11) would begin in the waters of the River Jordan—a symbolic drowning, and a second crossing of the Jordan into the Promised Land. The circumcision of Christ would become complete when this One True Israelite would humble himself (again, Leviticus 26:41) to the indignity of a cruel Roman cross, and thereby “make amends for their iniquity” (once more, Leviticus 26:41). What’s more, that True Israelite—Son of their greatest king—would also be the embodiment of Yahweh himself, David’s Lord (Psalm 110:1). So, what he would accomplish, he would accomplish perfectly—on behalf of us, and on behalf of God (Matthew 22:41-45).

All of this happens in the New Testament, not by its authors refashioning God, but by their taking with utmost seriousness the full force of the language of God’s “fury” against sin and “abhorrence” of everything in us that finds sin so delightful. Against that evil, the New Testament sees God waging perfect warfare—Himself plunging into drowning waters of purgation, nailing our offenses to a cross, and one ultimately, of His own making (Colossians 2:14).

Savoring the victory. Paul writes his letter to the Ephesians in the wake of the realization that Israel’s failure had led to her greatest glory: bearing to the world the mystery the “glorious grace that [our God and Father] freely bestowed on us in the Beloved … redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.” This rich treasure, “as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”

It’s only in recognizing the terrifying, blazing fury of God against sin which Moses records in Leviticus 26 that we are able, with the apostle Paul in Ephesians 1, to appreciate the beauty of who Christ is and the magnitude of what he has done to bring us into a restored relationship with God. May his name be forever praised.

Collect for the Sixth Sunday of Easter. O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding: Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Be blessed this day.

Reggie Kidd+