Thursday • 7/14/2022

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 37:1-18; Joshua 3:14–4:7; Romans 12:1-8; Matthew 26:1-16

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)

An audio or video version of this devotional can be found here: Apple Podcast, Spotify Podcast, YouTube

Three phrases of remembrance grab my attention today:

So these stones shall be to the Israelites a memorial for ever. — Joshua 4:7.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God… — Romans 12:1.

… what she has done will be told in remembrance of her. — Matthew 26:13.

Crossing over Jordan. This second dry-ground-water-crossing completes Israel’s baptism, her journey from slavery to freedom. Stones from the riverbed mark the occasion. For millennia, this narrative has inspired followers of Yahweh to note specific moments of the Lord’s deliverance or protection or presence. We take pictures. We collect things. We tell stories. We remember when God “showed up” for us, sometimes doing the impossible, always doing that which is redemptive.

In the spirit of this passage, I surround myself with what I think of as “stones of remembrance.” One of my favorites is a piece of granite I brought home (legally) from Crazy Horse Monument in the Black Hills of South Dakota. When I hold it, I am transported back to two family vacations in the Black Hills. And this fist-sized rock puts me in mind of three different, competing expressions of aspiration to freedom in the Black Hills.

The first is the granite carvings in Mount Rushmore, memorializing the presidents who worked toward freeing up the West for the expansive American spirit.
The second is the granite rendering of Crazy Horse, a protest in behalf of a very different view of freedom: that of the Lakota and other tribes who were robbed of their freedom by American expansion.
The third is the granite pulpit that stands on Boot Hill (Mount Moriah Cemetery) in Deadwood, SD, atop the grave of Preacher Henry Weston Smith, the martyred Methodist missionary who sought to bring to the goldmining camps of the Black Hills the liberating truth of the power of God for salvation in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

My little piece of granite always reminds me, above all, of Preacher Henry Smith, and the truth that standing above all the competing aspirations for freedom that emerge from the human breast, there is one that bears ultimate promise of reconciling all the others, the good news of God’s love in Jesus Christ. My little piece of granite reminds me to be grateful for God’s call to take my small part in the ministry of that saving truth.

Paul’s “by the mercies of God.” With that little phrase, Paul pivots from his great telling of the series of manifestations of God’s mercy in Christ, to his exhortation for us to live lives worshipfully reflective of those mercies.

The entire letter to the Romans is itself a “stone of remembrance” for me, a reminder to recount the grand “mercies of God.” Over the years, I’ve so marked up this letter in my Greek New Testament with colored pencils that it’s become illegible, and I have recently had to change to a third copy. Paul’s remembrances of “the mercies of God” in Romans are precious to me:

The mercy of the obedience of the One, Christ Jesus, who counters and undoes the disobedience of Adam (Romans 5).
The mercy of the faith in God’s faithfulness that is found in Jesus, and which Abraham’s justifying faith had anticipated, modeled, and now calls forth from us (Romans 4).
The mercy of the “setting forth” in Christ’s blood of an effectual, final, and permanent sacrifice for sin that the annual whole burnt offering on the Day of Atonement had only been able to anticipate (Romans 3).
The mercy of the bestowing of the Holy Spirit, to lead us all the way into the glory that is to come—and to do so from inside our hearts, not merely from outside the camp as the Spirit had formerly led the children of Israel through the wilderness (Romans 8).
The mercy of a King who, “was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead,” thus fulfilling the promise of a scion of David (Romans 1 & 15).

In view of those mercies, how can I not set my heart on not being conformed to this world, but being transformed by the renewing of the mind? How can I not offer my body as “a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is [my] spiritual worship”? How can I not wish to think of myself soberly, and not “more highly than [I] ought”? How can I not long to find my unique place in making the one body of Christ vibrantly alive and healthy?

A jar of anointing. Utterly humbling is the example of the unnamed woman who anoints Jesus with costly ointment. He receives the anointing as preparation for his burial. Surely it meant the world to him. She violates who knows how many social taboos to make her gift. She joins Jesus in the home of an unclean leper. Here is a woman physically touching a man in a public setting. With her lavish gift she invites the wrath of the disciples and prompts their discovery of social-justice-warriordom (masking, no doubt, their embarrassment at being outshined in devotion to their Lord).

I keep on my keychain a small vial as one more “stone of remembrance.” Designed to hold anointing oil, the vial was issued to me when I became an elder at Northland, a local non-denominational church, where I served for a number of years before coming to the Cathedral Church of St Luke and eventually becoming a priest. Even though Northland’s theology was not highly sacramental, the church had a sense that if elders were told to anoint (per James 5), they should do so. Now that the Lord has called me to a church that ministers the Sacraments (Baptism and Eucharist) and the so-called “sacramentals” (among which, I would include anointing for healing) with greater intentionality, this precious vial reminds me what we’ve all known ever since Matthew 26’s dear lady saint crossed so many barriers in her affection for Jesus: life and healing flow from him.

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Pixabay