Monday • 6/19/2023
Monday of the Third Week After Pentecost (Proper 6)
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 80; 1 Samuel 1:1–20; Acts 1:1–14; Luke 20:9–19
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2–6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94)
Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we explore that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me. This is Monday of the 3rd Week After Pentecost, and our readings come from Proper 6 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.
“After Pentecost,” and the history of the kingship. During the rest of this “After Pentecost” season (that is, through November), our Old Testament readings survey the history of the kingship in Israel. The prophet Samuel reluctantly crowns Saul as Israel’s first king. Saul proves to be a dismal failure. He has no heart for God. Following Saul, valiant and humble David and wise Solomon rule over a united kingdom. It is a kingdom that partially—but only partially—models what God’s kingdom-life looks like here on earth. Following Solomon’s death, though, tensions between the southern area of Judah and the northern area of Israel lead to a division into separate kingdoms.
Abraham’s descendants were called to be a blessing to the nations. Ironically, they go to Assyria and Babylon as exiles and captives. Eventually, they return, although without a king. Under Ezra and Nehemiah, they rebuild their cities and the temple. Finally, in preparation for the season of Advent and the coming of Israel’s and the world’s true King, we will read about the early days of the initial struggle led by the Maccabean family to free Judea from Hellenistic domination and to rededicate the temple to the Lord.
Image: Hannah at prayer. Wilhelm Wachtel , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
In a way that is so very fitting to the Bible’s way of seeing things, we open this chapter of Israel’s history with 1 Samuel 1’s vignette of a woman tearfully praying for the birth of a child. Without ever casting any doubt on the question of who is in charge of the universe, the Bible portrays a God whose plans unfold in conversation with his people and in response to the longings and desires of their hearts.
Pentecost and “After Pentecost” in the Book of Acts. It seems only appropriate that during this “After Pentecost” season we read what the Book of Acts says about what happened in the early church “After Pentecost.” And so, we will be reading through Acts through the end of August. We will see the unfolding impact of Pentecost as the work Jesus “began to do” while on earth in the Gospel according to Luke (Acts 1:1) continues and expands in ever widening circles, “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8b). As Isaac Watts’s great hymn puts it, “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun does its successive journeys run.”
Two notes of interest: Despite everything else (Jesus’s amazing return from the dead, his convincing proofs, and his 40 days of teachings “about the kingdom of God”—Acts 1:3), the disciples are preoccupied with one question. They persist in asking, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6).
A most understandable question, given the Old Testament history that we are reading during these months. Jesus’s answer is oblique: he’s unwilling to discuss times and seasons the Father has set in his own sovereignty. Rather, Jesus assures them that the Holy Spirit will give them power (dunamis) from on high so they can be his witnesses around the world. Implicitly, he is answering in terms of a kingly rule that he will exercise through them as Ascended Lord. Through their gospel witness (augmented by Paul later), people will be turned from the dominion of darkness to light, and from the authority of Satan to God. In other words, Jesus answers his disciples as he had answered Pilate some 43 days prior, at his trial: “My Kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). Now he indicates that the witnesses to Jesus’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension are participating in Jesus’s kingly rule and its expansion.
A second note of interest: just as Hannah knew that no baby was going to be given her without impassioned pleas to Yahweh her Lord, the disciples know that they’re not going anywhere until they have prayed and the Spirit has fallen. And so we are left with the assembly, the eleven remaining (following their abandonment by Judas Iscariot): “All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers” (Acts 1:14).
The takeaway for you and me today is twofold: God’s kingdom will come in his own time and in his own way. Still, in some wondrously mysterious fashion, our earnest prayers play their own part.
Collect of the Reign of Christ. Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+