Monday • 7/17/2023
Monday of the Seventh Week After Pentecost (Proper 10)
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 25; 1 Samuel 18:5–16; 27b–30; Acts 11:19–30; Mark 1:29–45
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2–6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94)
Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we explore that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me. This Monday in the Season After Pentecost our readings finds us in Proper 10 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.
1 Samuel: Saul’s envy. One of the deadliest of the deadly sins is envy. Envy believes somebody else’s wellbeing comes at the cost of one’s own. Envy says, “Your prosperity impoverishes me.” King Saul has a bad case of it. David’s military successes make Saul’s seem like failures: “Saul has killed his (insert: “mere”) thousands, and David his ten thousands” (1 Samuel 18:7b). David’s music had once soothed Saul’s soul; now it puts him in a murderous mood (1 Samuel 18:10–11). The more that people love David, the more Saul hates him (1 Samuel 18:16).
“So Saul eyed David from that day on” (1 Samuel 10:9). People often refer to “green eyed envy.” A friend of mine calls it “the stink eye.” Saul’s “stink eye” betrays the stench of death from within. The sad truth is this: “Saul was afraid of David, because the Lord was with him but had departed from Saul” (1 Samuel 18:12). The sadder truth is that Saul has decided to be his own man, rather than the Lord’s. Trapped within the prison of self, he’s lost all perception of the world as it is. Gone is his sense of the greatness of the office that had been entrusted to him. Envy has made him dead to his true place in the world. Envy has dulled him to God’s design to bring wholeness and wellbeing back into the world through Israel.
Lord, deliver me from this vile toxicity. May I never imbibe its poison. Bless all those around me whose success I can admire and learn from and contribute to and cheer and celebrate.
Image: Statue of Saint Barnabas; church in the Mafra National Palace; Mafra, Portugal; Georges Jansoone, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Luke: mercy walks the earth. In Dante’s Purgatorio, the Angel of Caritas counters the sin of Envy with the Beatitude: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy” (Cantos XIII–XV.84; Matthew 5:7). When my vision is not consumed by how your wellbeing could harm me, but rather when I see how your welfare can benefit all of us, I do all that I can to prosper you.
Jesus Christ is the embodiment of such mercy. No sooner does he enter Simon’s house as a guest than he’s asked to heal Simon’s mother-in-law. He responds with healing mercy. Looking for zero-dark-thirty time alone with his Heavenly Father, Jesus is put upon by the demands of everyone who wants to see him. His response is the opposite of what mine would have been. Mercy compels him to expand the ministry so there will be even more demands on him: “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do” (Mark 1:38).
Acts: mercy characterizes Jesus’s followers. And mercy is what characterizes the people whose lives Jesus impacts. Wherever they go, disciples who have fled Jerusalem (due to the persecution that followed Stephen’s stoning) tell fellow Jews about Jesus (Acts 11:19). In one city, Damascus of Syria, they cross the ethnic barrier and share the good news with Greeks. Grace happens: “The hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number became believers and turned to the Lord” (Acts 11:21).
Word of the new non-Jewish believers gets to Jerusalem. Instead of responding out of fear and perhaps even envy that Gentiles are receiving the gift of new life in Christ, the Jerusalem church sends Barnabas, a Levite from Cyprus, to minister to the Gentiles. The actual name of Barnabas is “Joseph,” but Acts 4:36 tells us the apostles have dubbed him “Barnabas,” which means “Son of Encouragement.” And encouragement is what he bestows wherever he goes. A man of some wealth, he had sold a piece of property and put the proceeds at the apostles’ disposal, so they could take care of the thousands of new converts (Acts 4:37). That’s mercy! He had been an advocate for the newly converted Saul (the future apostle Paul) when Saul/Paul approached understandably suspicious believers in Jerusalem (Acts 9:26–27). That’s mercy!
Now, Barnabas inspects the doings in Antioch, where the good news of Jesus has jumped the wrong and artificial fire line Jewish Christ-followers had established between themselves and potential Gentile converts (this, despite the Great Commission to “go and make disciples of all nations”). Barnabas sees the grace of God at work in Antioch (Acts 11:23), and heads for Tarsus to seek out Saul (the future apostle to the Gentiles) to help Barnabas minister to the believers in Antioch. Under their ministry, followers of Christ begin to have a distinct identity as “Christians” — “Christ-ones.” Mercy has done this!
Finally, a word of prophecy alerts the Antioch church to a coming famine that will affect everybody (Acts 11:27–28). Then mercy upon mercy, rather than just making provision for themselves, rather than resentfully writing off Jewish Christians who had given every indication that they had intended to keep the riches of the knowledge of Christ to themselves, the church in Antioch raises funds to provide relief for their Jerusalem brothers and sisters. In a pointed way, this is mercy in action.
Envy kills from within. Mercy bestows life all around.
Be blessed this day, living in the Mercy of God,
Reggie Kidd+