Wednesday • 8/2/2023 
Wednesday of the Ninth Week After Pentecost (Proper 12) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 72; 2 Samuel 3:22–39; Acts 16:16–24; Mark 6:47–56 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 11 (“The Third Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 60:1-3,11a,14c,18-19, BCP, p. 87); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68-79, BCP, p. 92) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we ask how God might direct our lives 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 Wednesday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 12 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

2 Samuel: David is a complex figure. The Bible is unflinching in narrating David’s flaws, but its estimation of him is that he is “a man after God’s own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14). His abiding passion is to promote love for Yahweh, a theme that courses through his psalms: “I love you, O Yahweh, my strength” (Psalm 18:1). And love for Yahweh is his guiding political philosophy as well. That love explains why, whether by sword or diplomacy, he is determined to bring all twelve tribes of the children of Jacob into a united kingdom. Beyond the unification of the kingdom, that love is why, as we shall see in coming days, he will aim to consolidate God’s people’s worship in the city of God.  

Because the commander Abner defects from the deceased Saul’s army, David sees the potential for ending civil war, for uniting the northern tribes (loyal to Saul) and the southern tribes (loyal to David). Sadly, Joab, David’s chief general, doesn’t share that objective. Joab assassinates Abner. This act, he believes, accomplishes two things. He avenges his brother’s death in battle at Abner’s hands (2 Samuel 2:18–23), and he eliminates a rival for power within David’s inner circle. 

Bemoaning Abner’s death, even to the point of composing a lament for him (2 Samuel 3:33–34), David makes clear he had trusted and depended on Abner. In a bold, if unwise, political stroke, David retains Joab as general-in-chief. Nevertheless, David invokes a divine curse against him: “The Lord pay back the one who does wickedly in accordance with his wickedness!” (2 Samuel 3:39b). And on his deathbed, David will warn Solomon, his son and successor, that he would do well to dispose of Joab (which Solomon does—see 2 Kings 2).  

Mark: Jesus’s mastery. When David’s greater son, Jesus, comes on the scene, he demonstrates his own mastery over forces that overwhelm and engulf us. Walking on the water, he shows he is Lord of creation — and more, that he is with us in the storm of life so that we need not “be afraid.” In a most intriguing side note, Mark says the disciples’ astonishment at all this is due to the fact that “they did not understand the loaves, but their hearts were hardened” (Mark 6:51–52). If I may offer a considered opinion: I believe that this remark is Mark’s way of referencing the teaching that Jesus had offered about his being “the Bread of Life” that John’s Gospel had narrated following that day’s miracle of the Feeding of the 5,000 (compare Mark 6:30–44 with John 6:1–71). It is assumed by some students of the New Testament that John fabricated this explanatory material and put it into Jesus’s mouth long, long after the events. In my view, Mark’s “they did not understand the loaves” makes better sense as a comment on the disciples’ initial failure to grasp Jesus’s “Bread of Life” discourse.  

Acts: release from captivity. And when David’s greater Son rises from the dead, he commissions servants like Paul to go to the nations: “to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” (Acts 26:18). In Philippi, Paul’s gospel about the crucified and risen Jesus releases a young girl from the dual bondage of Satanic possession and predatory exploitation of her “gift” of divination at the hands of her owners. As a result, the girl’s owners have Paul and Silas flogged and thrown into prison. Tomorrow we will see how ineffective those measures are against the power of Jesus to release people from all kinds of captivity—including jail.  

God himself has stepped into the ambiguity and confusion of our lives. He has used complex and fallen people in service of designs larger than themselves. He comes to comfort the disheartened, and those near to being drowned in the storms of life. He sets free the used and abused. I pray that each of us can learn to trust him and to follow him.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+