Friday • 7/5/2024 •
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 140; Psalm 142; Numbers 24:1-13 [12-25]; Romans 8:12-17 [18-25]; Matthew 22:15-22
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6–11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93)
Bye-bye, Balaam. In his 3rd & 4th oracles, Balaam sets aside his practices of divination, and the Spirit of God comes upon him. He offers his most straightforward blessing of Israel, and he is given a vision that “a star will rise from Jacob; a scepter will emerge from Israel” (Numbers 24:17), who will make Israel victorious over surrounding countries. And what a gift to the church this verse has been, serving as text for a piece in Felix Mendelssohn’s unfinished Christus oratorio.
At the end of his interviews with Balak of Moab, Balaam promises to go home to Syria. Nonetheless, it appears he stays, and eventually takes up residence among the Israelites. He returns to his divining practices. His presence over time subverts Israel’s faith, as he encourages sexual promiscuity and idolatrous worship. Eventually, the Israelites put him to death (Numbers 31:8). The New Testament remembers him not as prophet of Messiah, but as someone who loved to earn money by luring people into false worship and sexual misbehavior. Lord, have mercy.
Adoption: now and not yet.
… you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is the very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God. — Romans 8:16.
… we ourselves, [having] the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. — Romans 8:23.
Image: Pixabay
In the juxtaposition of these two verses lies all the tension of the Christian life: an intimate joy at knowing that we are children of God and an inward groaning while we wait to become children of God. Ours is an adoption that is “now” and that is also “not yet.” It’s a sense of being God’s child that begins as soon as Christ takes up residence within us by his Spirit. (By the way, if you feel unsure about whether Christ has come to dwell within you, get in touch with me, and we can talk.)
At the same time, the “not yet” side of adoption is the sober realization that until resurrection, we are not quite home yet. Our bodies are still frail and subject to decay, and we are still susceptible to sinning. But even this, Paul says, is a sense that we only have because the Spirit inside us is a foretaste of what it is to be free at last from the curse of sin and death. The Spirit within us enables us (as in Romans 7) to delight in God’s law and (as in the first part of Romans 8) to see the law being fulfilled in our humble attempts to follow the Spirit. And at the very same time, the Spirit provokes inner groaning—from deep, deep within our renewed selves—just because we feel the pain of not yet having been made perfect.
That day will come when Christ’s resurrection becomes our own—when what Paul calls “the outer man” (which is subject to decay in the now—see 2 Corinthians 4:16) and “the inner man” (which is already being made new “day by day”—again, see 2 Corinthians 4:16) are no longer headed in opposite directions, but will have finally been brought perfectly in sync in the newness of new creation.
Meanwhile, we rejoice, and we groan. That’s the normal Christian life. I submit it’s the only way we can find perspective for entering a weekend in which we celebrate the 4th of July’s promise of freedom (signed both in ink in Philadelphia on 7/4/1776 and in blood in Gettysburg on 7/1-3/1863), and in which we lament how far from the promise of freedom too many Americans still are.
We are not surprised when the world around us feels the same conflict that we find inside ourselves. That realization alone anchors us and energizes us as we both wait for and work towards the day when “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+