Tuesday • 6/4/2024 •

Tuesday of the Second Week After Pentecost (Proper 4) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 45; Ecclesiastes 2:16-26; Galatians 1:18–2:10; Matthew 13:53-58

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93)

Today is the Tuesday following Trinity Sunday. This week, we are contemplating passages from Proper 4 — I want to give some attention to the early chapters of the Book of Ecclesiastes and of Paul’s letter to the Galatians.

If death truly marks the end, and if death itself is a slide into nothingness, then everything before it is nothingness too—a kind of living death. Trying to live a life worth being remembered for? Pointless: “For there is no enduring remembrance of the wise or of fools, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten” (Ecclesiastes 2:16). Ambitious projects? (And Solomon’s were nothing if not ambitious, and lavish, from palaces to stables to, of course, God’s very house). It’ll all be left for people who didn’t toil for it. Again, pointless: “This also is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 2:18-19).

Solomon’s perspective is one of a life turned in on itself, and it’s not pretty. But at the end of this paragraph, in verses 24-26, Solomon gets a glimmer of insight. If you see God as the giver of life, it’s possible to receive food and drink as a gift, and even to find enjoyment in the work he gives you to do. If the goal is to please him and not self or posterity, it’s just possible that “wisdom and knowledge and joy” will come.

I linger over one observation from Paul’s letter to the Galatians: that is, that it takes him a decade and a half from his conversion before he puts pen to paper.

Some things take time. It’s either seventeen years or fourteen years from Paul’s conversion and initial contact with the Jerusalem leaders of the church (scholars still debate the time frame) until he appears to them to lay out his understanding of his call. A lot of water has gone under the bridge: time in Arabia (whether in seclusion or under tutelage) and a decade of ministry in a church of mixed Jews and Gentiles in Syrian Antioch.

When he does emerge for this consultation, it’s clear that four things have jelled for him. We can be grateful for them—and that he took the time to get them right. First, it is God’s sheer grace in Christ that saves—which is largely the burden of this letter. Second, it is the shape of God’s plan to bring Jews and Gentiles together as equal citizens in the Kingdom of God (Galatians 3:28). Third, it is his mission to pursue the Gentile-inclusion part of God’s plan—so much so, that he will risk alienating key Jerusalem leadership (Galatians 2:3-5, and tomorrow’s passage). Fourth, he is so eager for his fellow Jews to understand God’s reconciling love and power that he plans to raise support among his Gentile churches to support the impoverished Jewish church in Jerusalem: “They asked only one thing, that we remember the poor (i.e., the church in Jerusalem—a story for another day), which was actually what I was eager to do” (Galatians 2:10).

Let me commend to you two ways to pray for God’s good timing—even if it may seem slow to us—to show itself for you and for our world.

In your own life, first, I pray you not feel like you are stuck in some sort of perpetual hovering pattern, just circling the airport, never landing. Go to him daily, ready to hear him say, “Wait on me,” or “Here we go!”

And when, second, you are frustrated by a world perennially at war, a protracted health crisis, or a society in a seemingly bottomless moral free fall, let me commend to you the Book of Common Prayer’s prayer “For the Human Family.”

O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+