Wednesday • 8/28/2024 •
Wednesday of Proper 16
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:1-24; Job 6:1; 7:1-21; Acts 10:1-16; John 7:1-13
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)
Today, we draw lessons from confusion and consternation experienced by Job, by Jesus’s brothers, and by Peter.
In his confusion, Job begins to pray. In chapter 7, Job lifts up a prayer of bitter complaint—sour though it is, it is nonetheless a prayer. There’s no posturing here, no hiding the desperation of his heart behind safe religious bromides. Life itself feels like slavery under a cruel master (7:1-3). God treats us violently, moans Job, like we are some sort of threat to his sovereignty, wrestling us down like we were his enemies, the Sea (divinized by the ancient Canaanites as the god Yam) and the Dragon (the sea creature Tannin associated with Yam — 7:12). Days are swift interludes between nights that are filled with scary dreams and terrifying visions (7:6,13-15). Parodying the way Psalm 8 marvels at God’s bestowing dignity upon humans despite their seeming insignificance, Job bewails God’s making so big a deal of us that he presses down upon us with an unrelenting gaze: “What is mankind that you make so much of them, that you give them so much attention, that you examine them every morning and test them every moment?” (7:17-19 NIV).
Appreciate the consternation of Job. “If I have sinned, what have I done to you, you who see everything we do?” — Job 7:20. Job knows that he’s a sinner (in the Hebrew text, there’s no “If” at the beginning of verse 20!). Yet he knows that his transgressions have been covered by sacrifice (1:13). He knows that what is happening is out of scale to anything for which he is culpable: “Why have you made me a target? Why have I become a burden to you?” (7:20). And so he whines: “Let me alone!” (Job 7:16). He complains loud, and he complains long. But he complains in the right direction—up.
God often does things in a puzzling way. We can gloss things over. We can stuff our reactions. We can pretend everything’s OK when it’s not. Or, we can cry out to him and ask: “What in the world is going on?”
Appreciate the consternation of Jesus’s brothers. John says they “don’t believe in him” (John 7:5). Actually, they do “believe in him”—after a certain fashion. They believe in him enough to know that he’s gained notoriety (he’s turned water to wine, and he’s already cleansed the temple, according to John—see John 2). If he were to show up in Jerusalem at a big festival, he would make a big splash. But they don’t “believe in him” in the sense that they don’t understand that he is the great I AM who has come in the flesh to lay down his life for them and for the world.
They urge him to use the upcoming Feast of Booths in Jerusalem to further his cause and build his following. They don’t get it. But Jesus says he’s going to pass on the opportunity. His hour has not yet come. Instead, he lets them go ahead, where various arguments are taking place about him. He doesn’t tell them that he plans to attend anyway (as we’ll see in tomorrow’s reading), nor that he will use the occasion to reveal more about who he is and why he has come. But he leaves his brothers, for now, to be exposed to people’s ambivalence about him.
Appreciate the consternation of Peter. Peter was raised to honor kosher laws (Acts 10:14). In Matthew he is challenged by Jesus himself to understand that “clean” and “unclean” are matters of the heart and not externals (“ it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles”—Matthew 15:11). After the resurrection, Peter has been commissioned to “make disciples of the nations” (Matthew 28). The implication of how that works out hasn’t yet dawned on him.
The big reveal begins with today’s story about the strange vision of an angel appearing to a hungry Peter. The angel lowers a big sheet to the ground with “all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air.” To Peter’s amazement the angel commands, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat” (Acts 10:13). Peter protests that he can’t violate kosher. The angel’s reply should have changed everything for Peter instantly: “What God has made clean, you must not profane.” (An aside: Poor Peter! A number of things in Peter’s life seem to require a repetition of threes: the cock crows three times when Peter denies knowing Jesus; after the resurrection Jesus asks Peter if he loves him—3 times!) So here we are possibly not surprised to observe that the whole conversation with Peter has to be repeated three times. And even then, it’s going to take the events of our next two days’ readings (the visit to Cornelius’s house) to change Peter’s mind.
Especially if you are living with consternation about what God is up to in your life and in the world, I pray that your first instinct, like Job’s, will be to pray honestly and boldly (if humbly) to God. I pray you will recognize that, as with Jesus’s brothers, the Lord works on his own timeline and to his own ends, not ours. And I pray that you will appreciate that as patient and persistent as the Lord was in revealing his ways to Peter, our Lord Christ can be just as patient and persistent with you.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+