Friday • 9/1/2023 •
Friday of the Thirteenth Week After Pentecost (Proper 16)
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 16; Psalm 17; 1 Kings 5:1–6:1,7; Acts 28:1–16; Mark 14:27–42
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 16 of Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.
1 Kings describes Solomon’s preparations for the building of the temple as a realization of Yahweh’s gift of wisdom: “So the Lord gave Solomon wisdom, as he promised him” (1 Kings 5:12). Accordingly, it is flabbergasting to me that the Daily Office Lectionary passes over the verses that immediately precede this chapter.
Image: From Jojojoe, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. The picture is a Greek Catholic icon depicting King Solomon with the plans of the Temple of Jerusalem that was built by him according to the Bible. The icon was painted in the end of the 18th century as part of the iconostasis of the Greek Catholic Cathedral of Hajdúdorog, Hungary. Solomon's icon is placed on the third tier of the iconostasis, the so-called Prophets tier. This icon is the fourth painting from the right.
“God gave Solomon very great wisdom, discernment, and breadth of understanding as vast as the sand on the seashore, … He composed three thousand proverbs, and his songs numbered a thousand and five. He would speak of trees, from the cedar that is in the Lebanon to the hyssop that grows in the wall; he would speak of animals, and birds, and reptiles, and fish. People came from all the nations to hear the wisdom of Solomon; they came from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom” (1 Kings 4:29–34).
What is especially remarkable in Solomon’s reign is the way that worship of God and wonder at his world converge. By “wonder at his world” I mean both his explorations of human thought, desire, and behavior (witness, Solomon’s discerning the hearts of the two prostitutes in 1 Kings 3; his proverbs about life; his song about love) and his exploration of the beauty, complexity, and diversity of creation (from cedar to hyssop).
The construction of the temple represents the height of this convergence, summed up in the words of King Hiram of Tyre to Solomon: “‘Blessed be the Lord today, who has given to David a wise son to be over this great people.’ … ‘I have heard the message that you have sent to me; I will fulfill all your needs in the matter of cedar and cypress timber’” (1 Kings 1:7,8). Then 1 Kings regales us with a myriad of created features that Solomon and his craftsmen incorporate into the temple: cedar, cypress, olivewood, dressed stone, gold—lots of gold!—carved cherubim and open flowers and palm trees (1 Kings 6).
Solomon’s wedding of created beauty and the worship of God invites reflections on the horrible way that creation and worship have become divided in our world.
According to John Barry’s The Great Influenza, when Johns Hopkins University was established in 1876 with a mission to put medicine on a scientific foundation, “American universities had nearly five hundred endowed chairs of theology and fewer than five in medicine” and “American theological schools enjoyed endowments of $18 million, while medical school endowments totaled $500,ooo.” I don’t have the time to check the numbers, writing on the fly as I am, but I strongly suspect the current ratios would be reversed.
If Western society over-theologized life before the scientific revolution, we generally over-scientize it in a world in which serious religious belief is little more than a memory of days gone by. If the world before the discovery of bacteria (when medicine was thought to be a matter of balancing the human body’s humors) was over-enchanted, the world since then has become under-enchanted. The result is that there is a profoundly sad split between “science” and “faith.”
Solomon’s witness stands against such a split between science and faith. We believe in the God who made “the heavens and the earth.” He calls us to tend and cultivate the earth (which begins with studying it and understanding it). We and all creation were marred by the Fall (Genesis 3). However, the Bible’s God is so committed to restore goodness and beauty to his beloved creation that he undertook, through Israel, and continues through his church, a project of redemption and restoration. We are called to embrace the goodness of God’s creation and to tell the story of God’s loving purposes to redeem it. Today’s readings include some wonderful reminders of the truthfulness of that story.
“In the four hundred eightieth year after the Israelites came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, which is the second month, he began to build the house of the Lord” (1 Kings 6:1). Construction of the temple is made the more auspicious by dating its beginning from the exodus. The creative energy and the resources invested in this building further the Bible’s story of God overcoming the obstacles of sin and death and alienation. His goal is that he may dwell among us, and we with him.
“See, my betrayer is at hand” (Mark 14:42). Mark’s reading today reminds us that the first betrayal that took place in the Garden of Eden leads to a second betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane, which leads to the reversal of all betrayals by the redemption of the Cross.
“And so we came to Rome” (Acts 28:14). The last chapter of the book of Acts finds Paul in Rome, where he fulfills the promise Jesus made to his disciples in Jerusalem: the flow of Pentecost would take them to the ends of the earth. We never hear the end of Paul’s story in Acts. That’s because his story leads to ours, as we take the good news to the even further ends of the earth.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+