Friday • 8/25/2023 •
Friday of the Twelfth Week After Pentecost (Proper 15)
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 140; Psalm 142; 2 Samuel 19:24–43; Acts 24:24–25:12; Mark 12:35–44
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)
Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we bring to our lives 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 Friday in the Season After Pentecost. We are in Proper 15 of Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.
2 Samuel: the challenges of David’s return. Even in his return to power and in his endeavor to piece his kingdom back together, David continues to reap the harvest of the disunity, disaffection, and death-dealing he has introduced. Nathan’s words continue to haunt: “the sword shall never depart from your house” (2 Samuel 12:10).
David receives the disabled Mephibosheth back — but distrust has replaced the warmth he once felt for the son of his soulmate Jonathan. When David was withdrawing from Jerusalem, Mephibosheth’s steward Ziba had reported to David that Mephibosheth was staying behind and had in fact joined the conspiracy to overthrow David (2 Samuel 16:1–4). As David now returns to Jerusalem, Mephibosheth meets David and maintains that he was loyal to his king and benefactor throughout. He offers his unkempt bearing as proof that he has been in mourning for David this whole time. Unable to decide who’s lying, Ziba or Mephibosheth, David orders them to split the Saul/Jonathan estate. In what would seem to be a compelling attestation of loyalty to David, Mephibosheth protests: “Let [Ziba] take it all, since my lord the king has arrived home safely” (2 Samuel 19:30).
Armies of Israel in the north, once loyal to Absalom, and of Judah in the south, consistently loyal to David, mistrust each other profoundly. For now, almost comically, they argue over who is more enthusiastic about welcoming David back. The next chapter makes it clear that tensions between Israel and Judah plague the remainder of David’s rule (see Sheba the Benjamite’s rebellion in 2 Samuel 20). Eventually, upon Solomon’s death, the rupture between north and south will be complete (1 Kings 12).
Image: "King David" by Lawrence OP is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Mark: David’s future Son and Lord. After putting up with a number of questions, mostly from doubters and opponents, Jesus poses a question of his own. While the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) get at Jesus’s divinity more indirectly than John does, here, Mark (the parallel passages in Matthew and Luke agree) shows Jesus going directly to the mystery of his identity as the God-Man. Jesus draws on one of David’s psalms and asks how it is that the scribes can speak of the Messiah as being the son of David, when King David himself, by the Holy Spirit, declares, “The Lord (Yahweh) said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet’?” (Mark 12:35b–36; quoting Psalm 110). Before anyone can even attempt a response, Jesus adds: “David himself calls him Lord; so how can he be his son?” (Mark 12:37). Crickets from those who’d had all the clever questions. Delight from the appreciative crowd.
Jesus’s quote of Psalm 110 casts an intriguing light back on David’s life. Over the past few days, we have been observing just how frail and fallen he is. With his penitential Psalms (32 and 51), David acknowledges that reality. With Psalm 110, David looks up and sees God’s answer: the Son of promise, the Messiah King in David’s own line, will be more than human, and will, in fact, be himself divine.
It’s as though the David who worships Yahweh with lyre in hand perceives that the morass of sin has no exit but one that comes from above, and that the tangle of fallenness will yield to none but God’s own hand.
In the single verse that Jesus quotes, David anticipates two extraordinary features of the New Covenant reality.
First, he perceives that the coming King, though Son to David, will also be worthy of David’s worship: “The Lord (Yahweh) said to my Lord, sit at my right hand….”
Second, David also seems to understand that the enthronement of the future Messianic King will inaugurate a season of conquest: “…until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”
The New Testament depicts this enthronement as having taken place in Jesus’s resurrection and session at the right hand of the Father (Acts 2:32–35; 13:32).
And this season of conquest is precisely what Paul is about to describe at his examination in this coming Monday’s reading from Acts, when he recounts the risen Jesus’s words to him at his conversion: “I will rescue you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you 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 26:17–18).
That battle is being waged behind the scenes all around us. I pray we are heartened by this incredible reality, and joyfully take our part in sharing its good news.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+