Wednesday • 9/ 13/2023 •
Wednesday of the Fifteenth Week After Pentecost (Proper 18)
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:49–72; 1 Kings 17:1–24; Philippians 2:1–11; Matthew 2:1–12
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)
Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we ask how God might direct our lives from 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 Wednesday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 18 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.
Many, if not most, scholars of Paul’s letters believe that Philippians 2:6–11 is an early Christian hymn, whether Paul is quoting it from a song already in use in the church or composing it himself. In most modern Bibles, these verses are laid out in poetic form.
From Philippians on, Paul’s writings show more and more traces of hymnic features. His articulation of Christ’s majesty becomes more evident in these later letters: Philippians, Colossians, and Ephesians, but I’d also add at least 1 Timothy and Titus to letters that develop more of Paul’s “high Christology.”
It’s as though the longer Paul contemplates the goodness of the good news of redemption from sin, the more captivated he becomes by the wonder of what has been done for us—and by Whom it has been done. Praise rises reflexively.
Image: Adapted from "Ctrl + Z" by michalska1 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
The vista that opens before us in Philippians 2 is breathtaking. In the Garden of Eden, though bearing God’s breath within them and though given the godlike task of overseeing and nurturing life on the earth, Adam and Eve did not consider it enough. They grasped after a knowledge that was on a par with God’s own.
Add to that Herod the Great from today’s reading in Matthew. Herod is a perfect embodiment of the same self-idolatrous striving. We know from historians outside the Bible that Herod dies of a wasting and consuming internal disease not long after Jesus’s birth. When the magi from the East inform him they have come to hail a new king, Herod pushes against the inevitability of his being dethroned, not just by another king, but by death itself.
In one elegant turn of phrase in Philippians 2, Paul describes how Jesus Christ counters the idolatrous drive that took root in Adam and Eve and that has manifested itself in all the Herods—in fact, in all of us—ever since:
… though he was in the form of God, … (Philippians 2:6a). In fact, Paul had come to recognize that he had to make room in his confession of the oneness of God (“Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one”—Deuteronomy 6:4) for the full divinity of God’s Son (Romans 9:5; 1 Corinthians 8:6; Colossians 1:15–17;2:2–3; Titus 2:13).
… did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself … (Philippians 2:6–7a). The divine Second Person of the Trinity lowered himself to take on our estate that he might raise us up from the brokenness and decay to which our foolishness, our pride, and our self-exaltation had lowered us.
What is especially lovely about Paul’s articulation of this profound truth is that he puts it out there for us in order to inculcate among us that same mindset and attitude: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” To that end, he introduces his hymn to Christ by exhorting: oneness of mind, mutual love, fullness of accord, abandonment of selfish ambition or conceit: “in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:2–6). Be to each other as Christ is to each of us.
To step into the richness of today’s verses from Paul is to yield ourselves to singing praise vibrantly and to living love boldly. It is to lift hands in worship and extend arms in service. It is to bend our minds and hearts towards one another, looking to find agreement rather than disagreement. It is to serve, rather than to be served. It is to take our place in the grand undoing—the reversal of depravity, decay, death, and destruction—that Christ came to accomplish here on earth. It is to embrace life itself by embracing Life himself.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+