Wednesday • 6/5/2024 •

Wednesday of the Second Week After Pentecost (Proper 4) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:49-72; Ecclesiastes 3:1-15; Galatians 2:11-21; Matthew 14:1-12

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)

Today is the Wednesday 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.

“To everything, there is a season… — Ecclesiastes 3:1. How lovely it would be to be so perfectly attuned to the need of any moment that you instinctively know whether to plant or pluck, kill or heal, break or build, embrace or not, keep or throw away, be quiet or speak up, love or hate, make war or make peace. I don’t know anywhere in all literature in which this ideal is more elegantly expressed than in these verses.

“That which is has already been; that which is to be already is; and God seeks out what has gone by.” — Ecclesiastes 3:15. But in any given moment, how does anyone know exactly when, for instance, to be quiet or speak up? From 1 Kings, we think of Solomon as having precisely this sense. He asked the Lord for wisdom, and the Lord made him the wisest person on earth (1 Kings 4:29-34). To illustrate the point, we are given the story of the case of the two prostitutes, disputing over one dead baby and one live baby (1 Kings 3:16-38).

That’s all well and good. However, here in Ecclesiastes we are given the other side of the coin. What’s it like, asks Solomon in this book, when that gift doesn’t come? When prayers for wisdom seem to bounce off the sky? When the face of God cannot be discerned? When you just don’t know whether to plant or pluck, kill or heal? When you look for answers and all you get is: “That which is, already has been; that which is to be already is; and God seeks out what has gone by”? (Ecclesiastes 3:15). Huh?

The dead end that this chapter of Ecclesiastes explores is that of having the ethical ideal in principle, but lacking insight into God’s mind to know how to pull it off. Simon and Garfunkel have been there: “Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again….” We’ve all been there. Right now, we’re probably all there to some extent: return to public life, or stay hunkered down? Speak out and risk pouring gasoline on the fire, or be quiet and risk giving way to the haters?

“‘Give me the head of John the Baptist here on a platter.’” — Matthew 14:8. Then there’s the beheading of John the Baptist. He knew his mission was to point the way to the coming of the Kingdom. The King—who happened to be his own cousin—had come, but as for the Kingdom? Unjustly and cruelly, John the Baptist is martyred before he gets to see the Kingdom come.

It’s a long line of martyrs, isn’t it? Early in June, in the course of remembrances in the liturgical calendar, these names come before us: Justin Martyr (June 1), Blandina & the Martyrs of Lyons (June 2), the Martyrs of Uganda (June 3). Add big-enough-sinner-but-Jesus-loving George “Big Floyd” Floyd, victim of police violence in May of 2020. And only too recently, one of my doctoral students at the Robt. E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies, Emmanuel Bileya—one of the kindest, sweetest spirits God ever led into ministry—and his wife Juliana, martyred in Nigeria during a vicious ethnic war.

These deaths are mystifying and cruel—seemingly pointless. If the world worked the way it should, everything would get done in its own time. But in the world as it is, things happen out of season—dancing when there should be mourning, killing when there should be healing, war when there should be peace, throwing stones when there should be gathering. And all along, the face of God seems sphinxlike, his purposes hidden: “That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already is; and God seeks out what has gone by.”

If the horizon of Ecclesiastes were all there were, these words would be a counsel of despair—the Herods would win, the white cop (and his complicit partners) with a knee on the black man would win, the ethnic cleansers would win. But there is a broader horizon beyond the reach of Ecclesiastes’s Solomon—and there is no counsel of despair.

Something that George Floyd’s Houston pastor, Patrick PT Ngwolo, said was amazing: “After Cain’s superiority and animosity drove him to kill Abel, Scripture tells us, ‘The Lord said, ‘What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground’ (Gen. 4:10). If you fast-forward 2,000 years, there’s another innocent sufferer whose blood spoke of better things than Abel’s. … Jesus’ blood says he can redeem us through these dark and perilous times.”

One day, when the last drop of innocent blood has been shed, and the great reckoning takes place, we will find that not one has been wasted. “That” is the hidden thing “which is,” which “already has been; … and “which is to be.”

All that has been taken,
It shall be restored.
This eternal anthem
For the Glory of the Lord.

• Twila Paris

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+