Tuesday • 7/5/2022 •

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 5; Psalm 6; Numbers 35:1-3, 9-15, 30-34; Romans 8:31-39; Matthew 23:13-26

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)

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

Matthew & conformity to the image of the Son (continued).

Each of the negative woes in Matthew 23 has its counterpart in the Beatitudes of Matthew 5. It’s as though in the Beatitudes, Jesus says, “Breathe in the breath of God,” and in Matthew 23, he says, “Breathe out the smoke of hell.”

For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them. — Matthew 23:13. The whole earth is the inheritance of the meek, those who, in Abraham-like fashion, bless the nations by submitting to and taking God’s story to them (see Matthew 5:5). There are only woes for those who brazenly purport to represent God, but in reality stand only for themselves, and export their own egos and biases—they “go across the sea to make proselytes twice as fit for hell as you are!”

You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred? — Matthew 23: 17. There will be deep, eternal satisfaction for those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matthew 5:6). But there are only woes for those who slothfully equivocate and deliberately deceive when it comes to seeking holiness. Jesus directs their attention—and ours—to the ridiculously pathetic gestures of the offerings and the gold the Pharisees require for oaths. The greater, terrible reality is the One represented by the altar and the Temple on which the oaths are based.

For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. — Matthew 23:23. Mercy will come to those who give mercifully (in Jewish thinking “mercy” is about providing poor-relief—the word “mercy” can often be translated “alms” or “almsgiving”—Matthew 5:7). But there are only woes for those who scrupulously pay God their ten-percent as some sort of tax on religion, despite being consumed by avarice. They practice injustice, show lack of compassion for the poor, and demonstrate untrustworthiness in relationships.

You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup… — Matthew 23:26. There is a certain clarity of spiritual sight that comes from purity of heart (Matthew 5:8). But when the inner heart is corrupted by out-of-control desires—here, greediness or rapacity and general self-indulgence—there’s a haze that is cast over everything and everybody. The lens of self-interest keeps you from seeing others as precious image-bearers of God. People are but tools to be utilized only for what they can do for you.

More than conquerors. What then are we to say about these things? — Romans 8:31. At the end of Romans 7, Paul had stared full in the face at the wretchedness within himself and within all of us (“I know that nothing good dwells within me! … Wretched creature that I am, who is there to rescue me from this state of death?”—Romans 7:18, 24 REB. And who among us doesn’t feel at least some of the sting of the indictments of Matthew 23 that we have just considered?) However, because of his confidence in who Christ is and what Christ has done for him (and us), Paul cannot help but respond: “But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25). Chapter 8 has been the unfolding of the reason for that outbreak of thanks. Now, in this final paragraph, Paul’s thanks reach their highpoint.

Beginning at Romans 8:31, Paul invites us to list every challenge we face this morning—among which might be the hardship of living with a deadly and persistent pandemic, the distress of sensing the unraveling of our social fabric and the ever present threat of the outbreak of global conflict, the persecution of having considerations of faith banished from the public square, the famine or nakedness of deprivation of goods or separation from loved ones by natural disaster or ruthless armies, the peril of lawless violence in the streets, or the sword of misused power by those entrusted to preserve and protect. So many worrisome things for all of us. And each of us with our own issues as well.

Paul wants us to take them all in—and then to weigh them against all that God has done and is doing to make us “more than conquerors” and to assure us that “nothing will be able to separate us” from his love. So, Paul would have us create a countervailing list:

God stands for us, and nothing can prevail against him—so nothing can prevail against us.
He gave his precious Son—won’t he provide everything else we might really need?
God has chosen and justified his children. At his right hand, his Son stands and pleads for us. Could anything possibly separate us from that ongoing, active, certain love?

There’s no guarantee that we will not walk through the valley of the shadow of death (which is the spirit of Paul’s quote of Psalm 43 in the middle of this paragraph). Even there—especially there—“we are more than conquerors” (Romans 8:37). And so Paul invites us to consider the challenge of death itself—we don’t have to die in despair or die filled with regret, uncertain of his love. He invites us to consider life—on the far side of any challenge we overcome in this life, we will surely face more; and perhaps we will face even more demanding challenges. Dying or living, we can face them, confident of his love.

Paul says we can reckon with powers from “beyond” (angels … rulers—and even if pre-Enlightenment people may have been preoccupied with the angelic and the demonic, that possibility doesn’t warrant post-Enlightenment people’s dismissal of that realm). Whatever those powers may be, they are powerless to part him from us.

We can deal with what’s going on now in the present, where there may be myriads of factors we cannot control. We can deal with what is to come, where there may be myriads of contingencies we could never even anticipate, much less control. There are no factors, no contingencies, no failures, no helplessness—there is nothing—that could cause him to turn his back on us.

Nothing above us in the height (I write this the day after watching one of our family’s July 4th traditions, the movie Independence Day, about an imagined attack on planet earth by aliens) will threaten God’s love for us. Nothing beneath us in the depth (hell’s accusing voice was silenced at the cross and resurrection) can part us from his love. The love of God in Christ Jesus for us will not be blocked by any obstacle, threat, or anything, anywhere.

Nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

That’s what Paul wants you and me to know today.

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

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