Wednesday • 6/21/2023
Wednesday of the Third Week After Pentecost (Proper 6)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:97–120; 1 Samuel 2:12–26; Acts 2:1–21; Luke 20:27–40

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 3rd Week After Pentecost, and our readings come from Proper 6 in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.

1 Samuel: abusers of spiritual power. Eli’s sons are gluttons, lechers, and abusers of power. They demand offerings to which they have no right; they receive sexual favors from women who facilitate temple worship. Their story is ever a strong warning against clergy abuse of power, especially for gluttonous, avaricious, and lecherous ends. 

It’s an absolutely horrifying tableau. The sons had been set apart to handle holy things. Those things—the temple and its precincts and artifacts, not to mention the people who go there to be sanctified, and the fellow servants, especially the women, who support the ministry of consecrating all of life to the Lord—it’s all, in fact, objectively holy. There is a weightiness and purity to God’s own being that is constantly pressing down upon it all, ready to break in, or alternatively, that is constantly within it, ready to break out. 

Image: Pentecostal Icon. Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Luke: dullards of spiritual reality. In corollary fashion, and for whatever reason, members of the Sadducee party of Jesus’s day have insulated themselves from the wonder of the living God. Whether it’s the luxury they enjoy by virtue of an aristocratic pedigree, or the impressiveness of the trappings of temple finery they oversee, they have relegated faith to a “this-worldly” dimension. They read Scripture as though it is aimed simply at giving meaning to this life. 

Jesus rebukes them for not having the spiritual sensors that should have indicated that a God who is called “the God of (the long departed) Abraham and Isaac and Jacob” is necessarily a God of the living, and therefore, necessarily (given the Bible’s high view of creation), a God who will raise the dead. 

Acts: recipients of God’s presence. The glory of Pentecost is the breaking in, or breaking out, of God’s holy presence in blessing. That numinous presence had been manifested from time to time in Israel’s history: at the burning bush, on Mt. Sinai, during the desert journey, in David’s singing, at the temple dedication. Now, in the Book of Acts, the Spirit of holiness breaks in, or breaks out, at the beginning of a permanent taking-up-of-residence in a people made holy by the once-for-all, sanctifying work of God’s Son on the Cross. 

In the past, the Spirit would come temporarily upon notables like a Moses or a David—or even a Saul. Now there’s a democratization of the Spirit, for the Spirit of God comes to old and young, men and women, servant and free. The spectacular ability suddenly to communicate in “every native language” (Greek, dialektos) seems to be not a permanent and abiding work of the Spirit. For the nearly 2,100 years that have passed since Pentecost, missionaries have had to go to language school to learn to minister in languages not their own. But this extraordinary display in Jerusalem (and to be repeated in Samaria, at Cornelius’s house, and in Ephesus—see Acts 8,10–11,19) depicts and symbolizes the power of the Spirit to unite people of all languages around the singular name of the Lord Jesus and his Father.  

Gracious God and Father, deliver us from pride and presumption when it comes to your holy name. 

Lord Jesus Christ, give us grace to live with a clear-eyed focus on, and an eager anticipation of, the Day of your return and our resurrection.

Spirit of Holiness, dwell in us more deeply that we may speak to whomever you send us lovingly, truthfully, and compellingly of the grace of the Lord Jesus. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+