Wednesday • 6/14/2023
Wednesday of the Second Week After Pentecost (Proper 5)
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 72; Deuteronomy 31:30–32:14; 2 Corinthians 11:21b–33; Luke 19:11–27
This morning’s Canticles are: 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 Today is Wednesday of the 2nd Week After Pentecost, and our readings come from Proper 5 in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.
Recently, I felt offended by somebody. I don’t know if they even meant it. But I felt it anyway. I don’t think I showed anything on the outside, but inside I spent too much time stewing. I was surprised to find my thoughts going to ingratitude, entitlement, and distrust. Ingratitude: in that moment, all the good things in my life vanished, and all I could see was deficits—like I was a piece of Swiss cheese with more holes than cheese. Entitlement: I thought I deserved more respect than I had been shown (or thought I had been shown). Distrust: where was God when my investment in relationships produced disappointment?
Then along came today’s passages.
Deuteronomy: Gratitude for benefits in the wilderness. The Book of Deuteronomy is written in full awareness of the story that is to unfold in Israel’s life, from judges to kingship to exile to restoration. Moses closes this cautionary book with a song that reminds Israel that throughout it all, Yahweh is the God who loves and cares for his people. Just as “He sustained him in a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste,” and just as “he shielded him, cared for him, [and] guarded him as the apple of his eye” (Deuteronomy 32:10), so will he always do.
With this song, Moses forever plants in God’s people’s minds the images of Yahweh as a loving (and disciplining) Father, as a mother eagle that nourishes and protects her young, and as a great banquet master who provides produce, honey, milk, choice meat, and the finest breads and wines (Deuteronomy 32:13–14).
In the leanest and hardest times, may Moses’s song keep God’s song alive in us!
2 Corinthians: The true marks of a minister of Christ. Belonging to Christ means that your pedigree, privilege, and credentialing don’t mean much. In fact, as with the false “super-apostles” Paul is dealing with in Corinth, those things can get in the way. Paul is embarrassed to note that he has just as much going for him in the way of entitlements, but the only thing that entitles him to be heard is that he “out-servants” the “super-apostles”: “Are they ministers (or servants, diakonoi) of Christ? I am talking like a madman—I am a better one” (2 Corinthians 11:23). This last phrase is huper egō, and could colloquially be rendered: “I’m in hyper-drive when it comes to ministering!” Then follows his catalog of sufferings—some external (lashings, shipwrecks…) and some internal (anxiety for churches and empathy for struggling believers).
Dignity, it seems, does not come from being treated with the worth you think you are entitled to. The entitlement of the Christian life is the privilege of what Paul calls elsewhere “the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings” (Philippians 3:10). There is a knowing of him that comes only in the place of lowliness, only in the place of service, only in the place of renouncing privilege.
Luke: Playing the long game. What’s interesting about the Parable of the Ten Pounds (the “mina” is a gold coin worth about 100 days of a worker’s wages) is its introduction: “[Jesus] went on to tell a parable, … because [people] supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately” (Luke 19:11). Jesus did not actually teach that the final cataclysm ending history as we know it was right around the corner. He taught that, in a sense, the end of that world had already come—the end of a world in which importance was measured by power and wealth. His cross and resurrection would indeed mean there was “a new sheriff in town.” But his governance would be established in the midst of a world in which things continue, for the time being, under the old rules of domination, pride, license, and exploitation.
What he taught is that he would leave behind for each of his followers a measure of his resources appropriate to each. Our calling would be to invest in making manifest his alternative kingdom. Risky business! The kind of thing that just might get us “crucified” right along with him: the risk of being misunderstood, misconstrued, rejected, persecuted, even killed. Or — it could be the kind of thing that might see others brought in, and the new reality of God’s kingdom becoming more visible. Either way, in Jesus’s terms, a return on investment.
Within the framework of this parable, the only sin is to bury fearfully, faithlessly, cowardly, and ungenerously the resources entrusted to us. That sad reality looks different in different people and different situations. The commonality is this pitiful statement: “I was afraid of you, because you are a harsh man; you take what you did not deposit, and reap what you did not sow” (Luke 19:21). These words come to my rescue when, as on the occasion of my recent feeling of being slighted, I want to retreat into a safe place of disengagement. These words force me to ask whether I trust that God is good rather than harsh, and generous rather than miserly. And whether I can trust him to work his good pleasure in the messy and uncertain business of relationships, regardless of consequences. That’s the way Jesus wants us to play the long game.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+