The Smoke Goes Upwards - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 7/18/2023 
Tuesday of the Seventh Week After Pentecost (Proper 10) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 26; Psalm 28; 1 Samuel 19:1–18; Acts 12:1–17; Mark 2:1–12 

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 10 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Bono, lead singer of the band U2, describes music this way: “Music is Worship; whether it’s worship of women or their designer, the world or its destroyer, . . . whether the prayers are on fire with a dumb rage or dove-like desire . . . the smoke goes upwards . . . to God or something you replace God with . . . usually yourself.”*  

The remarkable thing about David’s musical gift is that it has the power to pull him out of what could be a vortex of despair and doubt, and to take it all “upwards,” as Bono might say.  

In our reading of 1 Samuel, we’ve come to a critical juncture. David was called in from the sheep fields to find out he’s the future shepherd of God’s people (1 Samuel 16). He has dispatched Goliath, a giant of an enemy of God’s people (1 Samuel 17), and he has been taken into King Saul’s house as though he were a son. There he has found a lifelong friend and soul mate in the king’s son Jonathan (1 Samuel 18).  

And yet, David’s situation is confusing. David has discovered that his songs have the dual power to calm Saul’s troubled soul (1 Samuel 16:23), and at the same time to launch Saul into a murderous rage (1 Samuel 18:10–11; 19:9–10). David’s been given military command—and yet his every victory is resented (1 Samuel 18:5–9). He’s been made son-in-law to the king—and yet with malicious intent on Saul’s part (1 Samuel 18:20–21,27–29). Finally, in today’s passage, David finds out that the king is plotting to have him assassinated.  He realizes he must flee. So many things seem to be going so wrong.  

It is a wonderful thing that today’s passage in 1 Samuel is paired in the Hebrew Scriptures with a psalm that David wrote on this occasion. The superscription to Psalm 59 reads, in part: “Of David … when Saul ordered his house to be watched in order to kill him.”  

The gift of David’s song-writing is that he is able to crystallize all that’s going on in his heart, and lift it up to the Lord—as though he were sending it up like sweet-smelling incense. In the very process of crafting a song, he also extrapolates from his personal story to Yahweh’s larger purpose to set right a world that has been off-kilter since the Garden. He prays for his own deliverance, and for the whole earth that lies in the grip of the power of evil. Through it all, he sings with joyful and even exuberant hope.  

Just a few highlights:  

“Deliver me … Rouse yourself, come to my help…” — Psalm 59:1,4b. David realizes that all his cunning and craft are not enough to secure his safety. He needs Yahweh to protect him. We can all relate to that!  

“…consume them in wrath, consume them until they are no more” —Psalm 59:13. David calls out his enemies’ pride (Psalm 59:12b), and he calls down punishment on their heads. What is remarkable — admirable, even — is the freedom David feels to express raw emotions to God. It may very well be that such honesty is the reason the Lord can provide David with the grace — the spiritual breathing space — to adopt, in the end, a different posture. For what we will see as 1 Samuel’s narrative progresses, is that when David has the opportunity to kill Saul, he demurs (see 1 Samuel 24 and 26). And when Saul is eventually slain in battle by the Philistines, David will lament his death: “How the mighty have fallen” (2 Samuel 1:25). The lesson of Psalm 59 is that the path to gospel-empathy for those who wish you evil is first to acknowledge before the Lord your feelings about them! The Lord, it seems, can accept anything except pretend piety and fake feelings.  

“But you, O Lord, laugh at them … My merciful God comes to meet me” — Psalm 59:8a,10 BCP). Despite the fact that he is the king’s own son-in-law and champion of the people, David has to be smuggled out a window in the middle of the night to escape Saul’s men (1 Samuel 19:11–17). His song records two facts that anchor his soul in that moment. First, David knows that above the chaos of his life, God reigns in tranquility, and can even have a sense of humor about it. Second, David knows that in the darkest of nights and the most uncertain of situations, he is not alone. He knows that what awaits him is not an unknown and frightening future, but God’s merciful and gracious presence.   

“Then it will be known to the ends of the earth that God rules over Jacob” — Psalm 59:13b. As David sings and prays his way through his own plight, he has an eye to the nations. David is mindful that God’s design is that Israel be a colony to reclaim the world since the Fall. What pains David is that Saul and his operatives are acting like pagan enemies of God — thus, David compares them twice in this psalm to howling and prowling “dogs” (Psalm 59:6,14). Ultimately, what Yahweh calls Israel to do is to promote God’s rule to “the ends of the earth.” For David, “the smoke goes upwards” for the sake of God’s mission in the world. May our prayers reflect this concern as well. 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

*Bono, Introduction to Selections from the Book of Psalms (New York: Grove Press, 1999), x,xi.