Wednesday • 6/7/2023
Wednesday of the First Week After Pentecost (Proper 4)
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:49–72; Deuteronomy 13:1–11; 2 Corinthians 7:2-16; Luke 17:20–37
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 1st Week After Pentecost, and our readings come from Proper 4 in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.
One of the reasons for immersing ourselves in the Bible’s story, in its world, and in its ethos is that the Bible challenges so many basic presuppositions of our lives. That’s especially on display in today’s readings.
Deuteronomy: don’t just look, but listen. Just because a “prophet’s” words come true, the prophet is not necessarily telling the truth. “If prophets or those who divine by dreams appear among you and promise you omens or portents, and the omens or the portents declared by them take place, and they say, ‘Let us follow other gods’ (whom you have not known) ‘and let us serve them, you must not heed the words of those prophets or those who divine by dreams…’” (Deuteronomy 13:1–3a).
Moses’s words would call upon a generation like ours that values pragmatism above everything to ask deeper questions. Not just, does such-and-such work, but is it true? A medieval heresy taught that forgiveness and freedom from guilt (a good result…) could be bought by donations to the church (…based on a lie). Contemporary theologies can be just as bad. One faulty approach substitutes action for prayer—action is good, prayer-bereft spirituality is mere humanism. Another faulty approach promotes self-absorbed prayer, with no concern for the welfare of others. A robust sense of self should indeed come from knowing God, but there’s no knowing God apart from love for neighbor. Each approach gets the results it is after, but those results are based on lies that need to give way to deeper truths.
Apostle Paul, Jan Lievens , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
2 Corinthians: on godly grief. Matters of morality and immorality matter. Bedroom ethics are not merely private concerns. They affect the whole community. In fact, the Corinthians themselves had taken pride in the liberated ethic that permitted a man to have intimate relations with his stepmother (see 1 Corinthians 5). The Corinthians likely supposed the couple to be expressing what it is to live in the new eschatological reality, “new creation” where there is no “male and female” (see Galatians 3:28; 5:16; 2 Corinthians 5:17). It’s likely that they even thought they were honoring Paul. With a painful letter between 1 and 2 Corinthians (which we do not have), Paul has risked alienating a church he feels quite close to in order to get them to address that delicate situation. In this chapter of 2 Corinthians, Paul expresses relief and joy over Titus’s report that they had repented with “a godly grief” (2 Corinthians 7:9). There’s reason for all of us to take a closer look at God’s design for human intimacy, not just for ourselves, but for our churches and for our society.
Luke: where is the Kingdom? Much of what Jesus says in today’s passage in Luke he says elsewhere as well. What stands out about this particular passage, though, is whose question prompts the discourse: the Pharisees. Jesus lays out the end times game plan for his followers. But first he gives skeptics and opponents a chance to reconsider their skepticism about him and their opposition to him. “And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you’” (Luke 17:20–21 King James Version).
This last statement, “for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you,” is not a saying that appears in any of the other gospels. And I have used the KJV because it preserves the more literal translation of the term “within” (entos). It’s important to keep in mind whom Jesus is addressing: the Pharisees, his opponents. Modern translators sense the incongruity of Jesus telling his antagonists that the Kingdom was inside them. They were on the outside looking in. So modern translations generally render the phrase along the lines of “in your midst,” or “among you” — i.e., (to paraphrase) “standing here in front of you, in your very midst, is the Kingdom personified in me.” That makes sense, except that this would be a unique use of the Greek entos, which really denotes inwardness.
I rather like the suggestion of some students of Luke (e.g., Darrell Bock and Max Zerwick) that Jesus means “within you” as in “within your grasp (if only you would take hold of it!).” To paraphrase (yet again): “You are not going to find it by looking to the heavens and into ancient texts, for ‘it cometh not with observation.’” But, in fact, as modern translators with their “in your midst” or “among you” translation, rightly note, the Kingdom stands right in front of them in the person of Jesus. With his “the kingdom of God is within you,” Jesus puts the question to them: will you not search your hearts and find there the slightest inclination to see and embrace the Kingdom — in me?
The question comes to all of us: do we spend anxious hours searching news sources for the latest signs of the apocalypse? Conversely, do we expend our life’s energy trying to make the Kingdom happen through our own efforts? Or instead, will we take a look within and see there the world of need that Jesus has come to take dominion over, to begin “new creation” in, to set right again, to heal, and to reorient in service to him?
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+