Friday • 6/16/2023
Friday of the Second Week After Pentecost (Proper 5)
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 69; Ecclesiasticus 45:6–16; 2 Corinthians 12:11–21; Luke 19:41–48
And Saturday’s epistle: 2 Corinthians 13:1–14
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6–11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93)
Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we bring to our lives 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 this Friday of the 2nd Week After Pentecost. We are in Proper 5 of Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.
This morning’s readings in Ecclesiasticus and Luke make poignant bookends.
Ecclesiasticus offers praise of Aaron, highlighting the way the high priest’s fabulous garb served his role in bringing together the Lord and his people. On Aaron’s chest he bore precious stones “in a setting of gold, the work of a jeweler, to commemorate in engraved letters each of the tribes of Israel.” Atop his head he wore “a gold crown upon his turban, inscribed like a seal with ‘Holiness’” (Ecclesiasticus 45:11,12).
By contrast, Luke records Jesus weeping as he approaches Jerusalem and its temple—a temple that had never known as much finery as was being lavished ever since Herod the Great launched his renovation project forty-six years prior. In Jesus’s estimation, however, religiosity had become robbery. Pomp had produced plunder rather than prayer. The master of the house, and its true and final High Priest, weeps as he begins to clean house: “Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there; and he said, ‘It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer’; but you have made it a den of robbers’” (Luke 19:45).
Image: Mosaic of St Paul in Westminster Cathedral. "St Paul the Apostle" by Lawrence OP is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
The Corinthians, too, have profaned a sacred space. That sacred space is the Corinthians themselves, for as the church, they are God’s holy dwelling place. It is this profanation that Paul has been contending so hard to reverse in his two letters to them, and it is why he includes in today’s reading a warning against their broken relationships and their sexual misbehavior: “I fear that there may perhaps be quarreling, jealousy, anger, selfishness, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder. I fear … I may have to mourn over many who previously sinned and have not repented of the impurity, sexual immorality, and licentiousness that they have practiced” (2 Corinthians 12:20–21).
Together, as “one body with many members,” the Corinthians comprise God’s temple (1 Corinthians 3:16). The whole is God’s temple, but so is each member. For Paul can say of each believer, “your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19). Believers are God’s temple corporately, and each is God’s temple individually. That’s an extraordinary feature of the Christian faith. God has committed himself to living among us in one particular human person, his Son Jesus Christ, and that makes the “all” and the “each” equally important.
The problem at Corinth is twofold. By their factious and fractious relationships, the Corinthians defile the corporate temple. At the same time, by their sexual libertinism they defile the individual temple.
And so Paul challenges them: “Test yourselves” (heautous dokimazete—2 Corinthians 13:5b). It’s the same term Paul uses when he encourages the Romans to “prove” (dokimazein) what is the will of God (Romans 12:1). It’s not like the test that (hypothetical) mean professors write when they try to fail students. It’s like the test that good professors write when they are trying to help students pull things together and show what they know. What is the test? “[S]ee,” Paul says, if you are “living in the faith.” He genuinely believes that they belong to “new creation,” and so he urges them to “rejoice, set things right, and be encouraged” (2 Corinthians 13:11b NET).
“Set things right,” he says. What’s that look like? Well, rather than selfishly quarrel and press their own priorities, predilections, prejudices, and preferences on each other, Paul wants them to strive for peace with one another. He wants them to learn to work toward agreeing with one another (which has to begin with listening to one another!). “[A]gree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you” (2 Corinthians 13:11c,d).
“Greet one another with a holy kiss” (2 Corinthians 13:12). He wants, as well, kisses that are holy, not unholy—which would mean embraces that are chaste, not licentious; and words that are edifying, not debasing. It means valuing one another as precious image-bearers rather than as potential partners in impermissible behavior, or objects for pleasure, or victims of exploitation. It means not reverting back to old patterns of defiling the wedding bed (1 Corinthians 5) or other practices that Paul (along with the rest of Scripture) considers to be out of bounds. From such practices they had been rescued (1 Corinthians 6:9,15): “[Y]ou were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11).
And always, always, always, Paul wants for these Corinthians what Jesus wants for them (and for us as well): “I do not want what is yours but you…” (2 Corinthians 12:14). May you and I live in the joy of being wanted, loved, and rejoiced over by the one who died in weakness for us but now lives in power within, for, and through us.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+