Monday • 9/6/2021
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)

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 place or story 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+