Friday • 6/2/2023 •
Friday of the Week of Pentecost (Proper 3)
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 31; Deuteronomy 5:1–22; 2 Corinthians 4:1–12; Luke 16:10–17(18)
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 Week of Pentecost. We are in Proper 3 of Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.
Today’s readings begin with the Ten Commandments. The Commandments can be dispiriting apart from Paul’s maxim “the letter kills, but the Spirit makes alive.” What we have to understand is that at their deepest level the Commandments are not about “the letter,” as though they were aiming at external conformity. Rather, they point ahead of time to what the Spirit would one day enable: heart engagement.
Deuteronomy: the deeper dimension of the law. In Deuteronomy, the Commandments come to people who have already been redeemed, not to people who are looking for a means of redemption. That’s why they are prefaced with “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Deuteronomy 5:6).
The Commandments are a means by which redeemed people share the benefits of redemption with others. That’s why allowing others to rest on the Sabbath is one way Israel celebrates its release from bondage in Egypt: “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to observe the sabbath day” (Deuteronomy 5:15). The logic could be applied throughout: our lives, our families, our property, our integrity were restored by the exodus, and so we care about the lives, families, property, and integrity of others. Above all, the Commandments aim to enthrall people with God and with his gracious provision so they can be free from envy, and thus be free to love.
Image: Ananias Restoring the Sight of St. Paul, Pietro da Cortana. Public Domain.
Luke: affirming the law’s deeper intent. Jesus, of course, had a keen eye to the Law’s true and spiritual intent. He backs off not an inch from its normativity nor from its contemporaneity. As he says in Luke chapter 16 verse 17, “But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one stroke of a letter in the law to be dropped.” Because greed is idolatry, Jesus calls out the cupidity in the Pharisees’ purported piety: “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15). Because faithfulness in marriage is its own picture of Yahweh’s redeeming and wedding his Bride to himself, Jesus dismisses the cavalier and no-fault approach to divorce and remarriage that God’s people have absorbed from their surroundings: “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and whoever marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery” (Luke 16:18).
2 Corinthians. The beauty of Paul’s words today is that they shed light on how the rich internal life imagined by the Law (but unable to create it) can take hold in us.
The gospel as mercy. “…as we received mercy, we do not lose heart…” (2 Corinthians 4:1b). Paul exults in the mercy that had been extended to him. His encounter on the road to Damascus revealed that God was not going to deal with him as his religious pride and sectarian arrogance called for. Rather, God gave him grace to understand the good news that, as he had previously written to these very Corinthians, “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures….” (1 Corinthians 15:3b–4).
The gospel as life-giving. On the far side of seeing the gospel as a place to find forgiveness, the gospel gave Paul a vision of “the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” … “the glory of God in the face of Jesus.” That is to say, in the gospel of Christ, Paul was able to reimagine a life fully and truly lived. By the Spirit of God, Christ’s life establishes itself within us, and begins to shine out through us. The light of God’s character — sketched out in the Law in an anticipatory and promissory way — now can shine out into the world, despite, or perhaps precisely because of, cracks in the broken but repaired vessels of clay that we are.
For Paul, this gift meant a life given no longer, as he says, to preaching himself, “but Christ Jesus as Lord and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus’s sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5 NASB). For each of us, there is a moral equivalent: life is no longer about touting ourselves — our own abilities, credentials, and merits — but promoting Christ Jesus as Lord, and offering ourselves as servants for others’ sake.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+