Monday • 9/11/2023 •
Monday of the Fifteenth Week After Pentecost (Proper 18)
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 41; Psalm 52; 1 Kings 13:1–10; Philippians 1:1–11; Mark 15:40–47
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 18 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.
1 Kings: rivalry kills. While Israel’s secession from union with Judah answers to a long-standing rivalry between the northern and the southern tribes, the writers of Scripture consider disunity among the redeemed to be contrary to God’s plan for a united family, nation, and kingdom. In particular, the narrator of the Samuel and Kings narrativesw, writing during the exile, looks to the day when Israel and Judah will be reunited back in the Land of Promise, with a rebuilt temple under a Davidic king.
A powerful feature of today’s brief passage in 1 Kings 13 is the recording of the prophesy by the anonymous prophet from the south against Jeroboam (922–901 B.C.), the first of the kings of breakaway Israel. The prophet has traveled north to denounce the idolatrous altar Jeroboam has built at Bethel for the purpose of discouraging people from traveling south to worship in Jerusalem in the kingdom of Judah. Some 300 years in advance, the prophet names Josiah (640–609 B.C.) as the Judean king who will come and tear this altar down. The prophecy even looks forward to the detail of Josiah burning the bones of the priests who serve Jeroboam’s idolatrous purposes there—which Josiah fulfills in precise detail (2 Kings 23:15–19).
Image: Adapted from © José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro / CC BY-SA 4.0
Philippians: grace wins. Over the course of this week, we will read most of the apostle Paul’s epistle to the Philippians. With Paul’s ministry, and with the New Testament as a whole, life and history have turned a corner. In grace, God has come himself in the person of his Son to give his own life, so that all our idolatrous altars may be torn down, and so that the ashes of our old selves who worshiped at these altars may be burned.
A powerful exemplar of this grace is the apostle Paul, namesake of that King Saul who had been displaced by David and David’s line (Saul/Paul in fact descends from King Saul’s tribe—see Philippians 3:5). By the blood of the cross and because of the risen Christ’s appearing to him, Paul finds himself an emissary of the good news of God’s plan to heal the breach between God and us and the divisions among ourselves.
While he awaits his first trial in Rome, Paul writes a letter of thanks to the Philippians, one of his churches back in northern Greece. It is here, in Philippi, that the gospel had first been planted on European soil during the second missionary journey (Acts 16). With this group of believers Paul has enjoyed an especially warm relationship, and he wants them to know of his gratitude for that relationship and for their ongoing financial support of his ministry.
“From the first day to now” they have been partners (koinōnoi) with Paul in gospel ministry. In the fellowship of this ministry, everybody is a “saint” (Philippians 1:1), no matter their story or place of origin. A person may be a Jew, whether of Saul/Paul’s tribe or another. Or they may be a Gentile of any demographic (perhaps a female merchant of purple finery, or a slave girl delivered of a divining spirit, or a jailer baptized at Paul’s miraculous release—see Acts 16:14–34). Regardless, they are all “saints,” that is, people made holy in God’s sight.
Among them there are no rival kings. There is no spirit of Jeroboam-like idolatry or Rehoboam-like cruelty. Instead, they are fellow citizens of “the heavenly commonwealth” (to politeuma en ouranois, Philippians 3:21), who are learning, through the servant-leadership of “bishops and deacons,” how to “do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility [to] regard others as better than [them]selves” (Philippians 1:1; 2:3).
Collect for Proper 18. Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+