Monday • 8/28/2023 •
Monday of the Thirteenth Week After Pentecost (Proper 16)  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 1; Psalm 2; Psalm 3; 1 Kings 1:5–31; Acts 26:1–23; Mark 13:14–27 

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 16 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

2 Samuel: clarifying David’s wishes for the accession of Solomon. It’s a messy transition from David to Solomon. Adonijah, David’s fourth son, stands in line as the natural heir to David’s throne (2 Samuel 3:4). It’s not altogether surprising that he makes a play for the kingship as David’s death looms. Since, for us who read this story 3,000 years after the fact, the David-to-Solomon succession is so woven into the fabric of the biblical story line, it’s hard to appreciate how tenuous the situation was. (And how proactive both Nathan and Bathsheba had to be in order to bring about what they knew was God’s will — and, not inconsequentially, what was necessary to their own survival.) Together, Nathan and Bathsheba persuade David to declare clearly to Bathsheba: “As the Lord lives, who has saved my life from every adversity, as I swore to you by the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Your son Solomon shall succeed me as king, and he shall sit on my throne in my place,’ so will I do this day” (1 Kings 1:29–30). Neither Nathan nor Bathsheba nor Solomon would have survived the accession of Adonijah.  

Acts: Paul before Agrippa II. Luke has Paul say ever so diplomatically to Herod Agrippa II and his wife Bernice (who also happens to be Herod Agrippa’s sister), “I consider myself fortunate that it is before you, King Agrippa, I am to make my defense today … because you are especially familiar with all the customs and controversies of the Jews” (Acts 26:2a,3a).  

There are so many things Paul could say to this power couple! Herod and Bernice know that according to Jewish custom and law, their relationship is incestuous. They also must know all about “the controversy among the Jews” about Jesus. Herod Agrippa II’s great-grandfather was Herod the Great, the monster who had attempted to assassinate in infancy the very same Jesus whom Paul is representing (Matthew 2). Herod Agrippa I, this Agrippa’s father, had persecuted the church in Jerusalem, put the apostle James to the sword, arrested Peter, and died of a horrible internal sickness when he had allowed himself to be proclaimed divine (Acts 12).  

What is striking to me is the fact that Paul does not take Agrippa and Bernice to task for their sinful lives and their family’s culpability in resisting God’s work. He tells his own story. He recounts how he at first persecuted the church, but how eventually the truth of Jesus came to him in a way that made it impossible for him to ignore (Acts 26:9–16).  

And he puts before them the extraordinary offer of grace that God has called him to extend to everyone: the risen Jesus has the power to open blind eyes, to bring light to people living in darkness, to rescue people living under the alien dominion of Satan, to extend to them forgiveness, and to begin the process of making their lives new (Acts 26:18). A well-known evangelistic booklet couldn’t have said it better: “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life!”  

Mark: making way for God’s work. Congruently, Jesus tells his followers that when they see the “desolating sacrilege” about to occur (by which, I think, he means the coming destruction of Jerusalem and its temple) their job will be to step out of the way. “But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains…” (Mark 13:14). This early generation of Jewish believers in Jerusalem was called neither to denounce their countrymen nor to take up arms with them against Rome. They were to leave room for God to finish the business of instituting the new covenant by eliminating the anachronism of a standing physical temple. With Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice for sin, the edifice that housed daily, weekly, and annual sacrifices only confused matters (see Hebrews 8:13; 10:10–18).  

We may take heart from today’s passages. 2 Samuel reminds us that God worked his sovereign plan to preserve the line of the future Messiah through “Solomon by the wife of Uriah,” as Matthew 1:6 puts it. Acts teaches us that the Lord Jesus gives grace to sinners like us not so we can stand in judgment over other sinners, but so we can bear testimony to the grace that opens blind eyes, leaving the results to him. Mark offers the comfort that we can adapt to the most cataclysmic of events knowing that in the end God is working, as Paul puts it, “a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephesians 1:10).    

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+