Tuesday • 7/11/2023
A Tuesday in the Season After Pentecost (Proper 9)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 5; Psalm 6; 1 Samuel 15:24–35; Acts 9:32–43; Luke 23:56b–24:11

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)

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we draw insights 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. This Tuesday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 9 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.

It is fitting that we read Luke’s account of Jesus’s resurrection alongside 1 Samuel’s account of the definitive rejection of King Saul and the final dispatching of King Agag, on the one hand, and the account in Acts of the healing of Aeneas and the raising up of Dorcas/Tabitha, on the other.

The Bible’s larger story is one of God’s persistent, insistent, and ultimately irresistible intention to redeem humankind. The heart of the story is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Luke 23 and 24). That unimaginable narrative forces an either/or choice for every one of us: we either accept it with a hearty “I’m all in,” or we reject it, with either a resolute, or a shrugged, “nah.” 

Image: Emoji One, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

1 Samuel portrays King Saul’s attempt to have it both ways: “I’m kind of in, and I’m kind of not in.” The message of 1 Samuel is that a pretend or equivocal allegiance, a “meh, ok,” is no allegiance: “…you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you…” (1 Samuel 15:26).  

“And the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel” — 1 Samuel 15:35b. The sad tale of King Saul sends the message to each of us: don’t make the God of the universe regret (and there are a thousand caveats that could be offered here) he ever put you here, the way he regretted putting the kingdom of God in Saul’s hands. 

The hewing of King Agag by God’s prophet is a difficult passage to read. We must understand that it is a ritual execution decreed by Yahweh himself, the God of pure justice and holiness—and the God who ultimately will not let condemnatory death have the last say. In the mystery of his own counsel, Yahweh allows his own “righteous” Son to undergo a similarly gruesome and horrific execution (see Luke 23:47). Yet Jesus endures his execution not on his own account. He does so on behalf of others who are as wicked as Agag and as faithless as Saul, uttering “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). He carries their iniquities, their rebelliousness, their betrayals, their arrogance into the tomb; and he leaves their offenses in the tomb behind him when he emerges alive again. 

In his Book of Acts, Luke describes the life-giving power that Jesus’s resurrection unleashes. 

In Acts 9, we find the apostle Peter ministering in the territory of classical Philistia. This is the region to which Jesus had taken the disciples right after declaring all foods clean. When Peter and the disciples rebuked the Canaanite woman, Jesus commended her faith and healed her daughter of an unclean demonic spirit (Matthew 15 and Mark 7). 

Aeneas of Lydda rises from his sickbed, his own elegant, if tacit, “I’m all in!” in response to the divinely personal overture given through Peter: “Aeneas, Jesus the Christ heals you. Get up and make your own bed” (Acts 9:34). Many turn to the Lord as a result.

Dorcas/Tabitha of Joppa lies dead. She’s good and dead, her body washed and prepared for interment. Surrounded by artifacts of her beneficences and by the laments of her beneficiaries, it appears that her earthly ministry of mercy is over. But, no! Peter addresses her dead body: “Tabitha, get up.” Luke tells it dramatically: she opens her eyes, sees Peter, sits up, and, accepting Peter’s extended hand, she stands. Presented alive to the other widows and saints, she becomes the occasion for the conversion of many in Joppa.

A fitting coda to today’s Acts passage is Luke’s brief note about Peter staying in the home of Joppa’s Simon, “a tanner” … in Jewish eyes, an unclean profession. Peter has come a long way since his sharing in the rebuke of the Canaanite woman. Next stop, the home of Cornelius, the Roman centurion!

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+