Thursday • 6/22/2023
Thursday of the Third Week After Pentecost (Proper 6)
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 34; 1 Samuel 2:27–36; Acts 2:22–36; Luke 20:41–21:4
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); 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 consider some aspect of 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. We are in the 3rd Week After Pentecost, and our readings come from Proper 6 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.
Anyone who has had a taste of power, prestige, and wealth knows the dangers these things can present. The feeling can be one of entitlement. The powerful may feel that the weak are weak because they deserve to be weak. Important people may feel their own importance is self-evident, as is the unimportance of the unimportant. The “haves” may feel that they have, because they ought to have and, and likewise, that the “have nots” have not, because they ought not to have. It’s a seductive logic.
Pride and pretense in 1 Samuel. It’s a logic to which Eli and his sons have succumbed. In the auspicious line of the original Hebrew priest Aaron, they are principal overseers of worship at Shiloh, the center of the Israelites’ religious life at the end of the period of the Judges. The arrogant sons, Hophni and Phinehas, overreach their legitimate prerogative of receiving support from the people’s offerings. So they put on a good show. They vest in sacred garments, ascend the altar, and offer incense (2 Samuel 2:28). Their glory entitles them, they feel, to demand more than their due. They blatantly transgress sexual boundaries, because, well, because they can. Eli, the father, fails to rein his sons in because he, too, profits from their profligacy: “[You] honor your sons more than me by fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel” (2 Samuel 2:29).
Image: Stained glass, Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida.
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?
The “little people” who see things aright in Acts and Luke. And so, the “little people” have their say: in Acts, the uneducated Galilean fisherman Peter astounds the Jerusalem residents and pilgrims. God has established Jesus as the Lord and Messiah David had prophesied. Peter explains that the rejection of Jesus was, ironically, part of the proof that Jesus was predestined to suffer, and then rise to take his rightful place as Lord of heaven and earth. And Luke’s poor widow models the kind of generosity that matters to God: a generosity of open heart and open hand: “…she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on” (Luke 21:4).
Today’s readings stand as a bold affirmation of David’s prayer in today’s Psalm:
The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, *
and his ears are open to their cry.
The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, *
to root out the remembrance of them from the earth.
The righteous cry, and the Lord hears them *
and delivers them from all their troubles.
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted *
and will save those whose spirits are crushed. …
The Lord ransoms the life of his servants, *
and none will be punished who trust in him (Psalm 34:15–18,22 BCP).
Living beyond the illusion of power, prestige, and wealth, and living in the reality of God’s vindication, protection, and provision in Christ, may you be blessed this day.
Reggie Kidd+