Monday • 7/31/2023 
Monday of the Ninth Week After Pentecost (Proper 12)  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 56; Psalm 57; Psalm 58; 2 Samuel 2:1–11; Acts 15:36–16:5; Mark 6:14–29 

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 12 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

I made the mistake this morning of checking the news services before beginning my devotions. Evil and folly have such a grip on our world! I’d list examples, but you can fill in the blanks. Tomorrow’s examples will be different. Except they won’t be. They’ll be different expressions of the same old same old.  

Or maybe it wasn’t a mistake. The world I found when I finally read today’s biblical texts is like ours: a hot mess badly in need of fixing. Abner, former commander of recently deceased king Saul’s army, refuses to accept David’s rule. Paul and Barnabas split up because they disagree about John Mark’s reliability. Herod Antipas beheads John the Baptist. Their world and ours are aptly described in the words of the Eucharistic prayer: “When we had fallen into sin and become subject to evil and death….”  

Always, though, always, the God of the Bible is working to reclaim a world and people he created and that he has never stopped loving.  

2 Samuel: the messy unification of the kingdom. This week’s readings in 2 Samuel begin with David’s anointing as king of Judah (in the south), and they will conclude on Friday with his anointing as king of Israel (in the north). Amidst a great deal of intrigue, betrayal, and Realpolitik, a united kingdom is coming together under the Lord’s Anointed. Despite our fallenness (including the fallenness of our heroes), God is advancing his plan ultimately to redeem the world through his one true King of one united People.  

Acts: when even the good guys can’t get along. The power of evil and folly emerges within the apostolic band — Paul and Barnabas and John Mark are made of the same stuff as we. For unspecified reasons, the young John Mark abandoned the mission during the first missionary journey after success on Cyprus (Acts 13:13). He is cousin to Barnabas, and he may be upset by a reorganization of a mission that began as “Barnabas and Saul” but is now “Paul and Barnabas.” Regardless of the reason, when it’s time to begin a second missionary journey, Paul is unwilling to have on the team someone whose loyalty or dependability he can’t count on. Barnabas lobbies Paul unsuccessfully for John Mark’s inclusion. These two gospel-allies are at an impasse.  

This story could have taken any number of destructive turns, but it doesn’t. Rather than seek some sort of severe sanction against each other, they separate, and continue ministering the gospel. Barnabas takes John Mark back to Cyprus. Paul makes Silas his number two (Silas likely, years later, becomes the amanuensis for Peter) and heads into mainland Asia Minor, where he adds Timothy as young protégé. Through division, the ministry expands. What’s more, evidence from three of Paul’s later letters (Colossians, Philemon, and 2 Timothy) indicates that over the course of more than a decade of ministry, the breach between Paul and Barnabas over John Mark is healed. On the eve of his martyrdom very nearly the last words Paul pens are these: “Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is a great help to me in ministry” (2 Timothy 3:11).  

Our best intentions, it turns out, are themselves in need of redemption. The Bible knows that. I’m so glad for that.   

Mark: when fools are “large and in charge.” Somehow, buffoons wind up at the head table. Reckless fools are given power over life and death. It’s that way now. It was that way then. “King Herod” is case in point. Note the quotation marks. Mark is thoroughly tongue-in-cheek when he refers to Herod Antipas this way. Antipas’s father King Herod “the Great” (would-be assassin of baby Jesus) divided his kingdom into fourths, so that each of his sons was a “tetrarch” (ruler of a fourth), not a king.  That first Herod’s ego was so “great” it would not allow any son to become greater than he.  

Antipas fancied himself “king,” but he wasn’t. His promise to Salome (early historian Josephus names the story’s dancer) of up to half his “kingdom” is the empty bluster of a blowhard. He has no “kingdom” up to half of which to give! Moreover, his aspiration to become a king will cost him everything. He has tried to dominate his brother Philip by stealing away Herodias, Philip’s wife (and Antipas’s own niece). To do so, Antipas has divorced his first wife, whose aggrieved father, a few years later, will defeat Antipas in war. Antipas is then  permanently and shamefully banished. Antipas is a king in braggadocio only.  

Alas, while they’re at the head table, buffoons entertain their audience. As long as they have power over life and death, they do much harm — witness the fate of John the Baptist. But in the end, they lose. In the end, John the Baptist’s promise of being followed by one greater than he comes true. In the end, the baptism of Holy Spirit and fire comes. In the end, the Baptist will rise, showing buffoonery and reckless foolishness to be exactly the sham that they are.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+