Friday • 6/18/2021
Friday of the Third Week After Pentecost (Proper 6)
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 88; 1 Samuel 3:1–21; Acts 2:37–47; Luke 21:5–19
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)
To me, Psalm 88 is the “Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again” psalm. Every time I read it, I come under the spell of Simon and Garfunkel’s ode to loneliness and existential worry, “I am a rock, I am an island.” I am grateful that, in Psalm 88, our Bible includes a similarly raw statement of angst.
The psalmist teeters on the brink of unwelcomed death: “[M]y life is at the brink of the grave. I am counted among those who go down to the Pit” (Psalm 88:3b,4a). He feels abandoned by God, and fears eternal separation: “Lost among the dead … Your anger weighs upon me heavily … Will your loving-kindness be declared in the grave?” (Psalm 88:5a,8a,12a). He is utterly alone in his misery: “You have put my friends far from me; you have made me to be abhorred by them … My friend and my neighbor you have put away from me, and darkness is my only companion” (Psalm 88:9ab,19).
Pride and pretense in Luke. A thousand years later in the time of Christ’s earthly ministry, nothing has changed. The Sadducean aristocracy oversees a spectacular theatre of worship in Herod’s shrine to his own ego. Denying the idea of resurrection, they accommodate the faith to their earthly satisfactions. Scribes parade their piety: “walk[ing] around in long robes, and lov[ing] to be greeted with respect in the marketplace, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers” (Luke 20:46–47). Meanwhile, rich people make a show of the generosity with which they underwrite all the pageantry.
God upsets the apple cart. But it’s all an illusion, insists the Bible—as proof of which God inserts himself to upset the apple cart. What Eli and sons cannot snuff out is the reality of the God of the temple, who in his own time and his own way will reclaim his sacred space. Eli’s line will end (see 1 Samuel 4:11,18; 22:18–19), except for one descendant who will carry the sad tale of his family’s religious treachery (see the account of Abiathar in 1 Kings 1–2). What the Sadducees cannot eliminate from Scripture in their desire to flatten it to an exclusively this-worldly faith is the mystery of God’s Messiah (and David’s son) having an eternal and divine existence. How indeed, Jesus asks, can David’s son be David’s Lord, as Psalm 110 says he is—unless, David’s son be more than man, but God?! And unless Scripture’s promises be about more than life and prosperity and success in this life?
What redeems the grit and honesty of this psalm is the fact that it is, after all, a prayer. It isn’t hurled into empty darkness. The psalmist opens: “O Yahweh, my God, my Savior, by day and night I cry to you. Let my prayer enter into your presence; incline your ear to my lamentation” (Psalm 88:1). The psalmist addresses God by his personal name, Yahweh, the name he gave when he came to redeem (see Exodus 3–4). It’s “my God” and “my Savior.” And the addressee is not “darkness, my old friend.” It’s a living presence whom the psalmist seeks: “Let my prayer enter into your presence; incline your ear….” There’s a stubbornness about biblical faith—it cries out to the light in the deepest of darkness.
Still, if you and I don’t sense the darkness and the aloneness of Psalm 88, either we haven’t lived long enough or we’re not paying close enough attention. Nor are we able to appreciate the wonder that fills people who dare to believe in the Bible’s promise of rescue and redemption.
Today’s other passages affirm both the raw honesty and the vibrant hope.
1 Samuel: good news and bad news. In a day in which word from Yahweh was rare and visions were not widespread, Eli learns that change is in the offing. Eli recognizes that the voice awakening his ward Samuel from his slumbers is Yahweh’s. Israel’s God is on the move again, advancing his program of redemption and restoration. That good news comes with a downside. The consequences of Eli’s negligence and lack of spiritual leadership over his sons are painful. Nonetheless, his trust in Yahweh gives him acceptance: “He is Yahweh; let him do what he thinks good” (1 Samuel 3:18 JB).
In Luke, Jesus prepares his disciples for cataclysmic change ahead. The stone and mortar temple that had (in one form or another) been at the center of God’s relationship with his people for 1,000 years had reached the end of its “shelf life.” Christ’s sacrifice will have proven to be the final goal of that building’s existence. In advance of a day in which God’s house would be composed of “living stones” (1 Peter 2:5), Jesus says of the recently and exquisitely refurbished Second Temple, “[N]ot one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down” (Luke 21:6).
In Acts, Peter begins to reap the benefits of that cataclysmic change. Tongues of fire have descended from heaven, dissolving barriers to communication. God begins to build his new house with converts from all around the Mediterranean Basin whom providence had brought to Jerusalem for the Jewish “Pentecost,” a celebration of the first fruits and of the giving of the Law.
Little did they know the new power the term Pentecost would hereafter take on. They themselves become the first fruits of a new humanity, “ground zero” for the Holy Spirit’s new regime of life. Hearts change, as do ways of living. New believers share meals as well as possessions. They absorb the apostles’ teaching about how God has fulfilled ancient promises through Jesus his Son. They marvel at God’s marvelous works, and in prayer and praise, they experience worship in a new way. In their growing numbers and in their “favor with all the people,” they taste the blessing that God’s in-breaking means for the whole world.
When the night is dark, when the ceiling seems impenetrable, and when nobody seems to listen or to care, may you and I nonetheless penetrate the dark with our cry, “O Yawheh, my God, my Savior.” As we immerse ourselves in God’s story of redemption and find our place at the table of fellowship in his Son, may we find the Spirit bringing comfort and courage to our hearts.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Image: "Wretched" by pcgn7 is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0