Tuesday • 9/6/2022
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 45; Acts 14:1-18; John 10:31-42
Job 39 (a departure from the Book of Common Prayer—see yesterday’s note)
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9-10, 13, BCP, p. 93)
An audio or video version of this devotional can be found here: Apple Podcast, Spotify Podcast, YouTube
There is delicious irony in the juxtaposition of today’s NT passages.
Jesus is facing stoning for his claim: “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30). Stoning is the punishment for blasphemy, so his interrogators have heard him correctly. Jesus belittles their incorrigible unbelief by calling up Psalm 82:6. There, mere human judges are called to execute God’s own justice for the benefit of others, and thus to share in this aspect of God’s attributes: “I said, you are gods” (John 10:34, quoting Psalm 82:6). If the Bible is willing to dignify mere humans as “gods” when they have been given the “godlike” task and status of reflecting God’s image (an irresistible thought for ancient church theologians—a notion to pursue on another occasion!), how readily apparent it should be to Jesus’s opponents that Jesus’s words and especially his works (“signs”) confirm that he is even more than that: “from the beginning,” both “with God” and “God” (John 1:1).
Right in front of these spiritual dullards stands their “Good Shepherd,” (John 10:14), the physical embodiment of the prophet Ezekiel’s promise: “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice” (Ezekiel 34:15-16). To Jesus the Eternal Son, God the Father has given all judgment: “The Father judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father” (John 5:22-23).
The occasion for this entire dialogue is the Feast of Dedication (John 10:22), celebrating the 2nd century bc liberation of the Temple from the pagan and self-idolizing Antiochus Epiphanes, and the re-consecration of the Temple to the service of Yahweh. How much more should people acclaim the coming of the One who has been consecrated by the Father (John 10:36) to raise up a new and better Temple (John 2:18-22)!
By contrast, in Acts 14 Paul and Barnabas must intervene to prevent blasphemous worship of themselves. It is a predicament revealing a sadly humorous aspect of Lystra’s history. Because of their miracle-making, Paul and Barnabas are misidentified as Zeus and Mercury. (The citizens of Lystra believed they had missed a visitation by those very deities centuries before, and they were determined not to let that happen again.) The apostles insist that they are simply human bearers of good news that comes from “the living God who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them” (Acts 14:15). As Yahweh did with Job, they begin by pointing to the wonders of creation to help their audience reach proper conclusions about the relationship between Creator and creation: “… [God] has not left himself without a witness in doing good—giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, and filling you with food and your hearts with joy” (Acts 14:17). This teaching achieved only moderate success. The miracles of Paul and Barnabas were sufficiently impressive that some of the crowd continued to attempt to offer sacrifices to the apostles.
And then there’s Job. According to the NT Book of James, part of the dignity of human beings is that “every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species” (James 3:7). Yahweh, by contrast, wants Job to understand the limits of humans’ dominion over the animal kingdom. The Lord puts before Job the characteristics of one exotic creature after another that defy human comprehension and control. The single creature mentioned that humans are able to domesticate is the war horse. However, even in this case, while humans may direct the war horse’s energy, humans can never understand where its fury for battle comes from: “Do you give the horse its might?” (Job 39:19-25).
In every other case, Job is confronted with incomprehensibilities in God’s design of his creatures. Why give the huge ostrich such impossibly small wings? Why the predation of the lion, the raven, and the eagle; yet the independence of the mountain goat, the wild ass, and the wild ox (or aurochs)? The list will continue in chapters 40 and 41 with the even more mysterious Behemoth and Leviathan. But the point is clear: although we humans have been given the mandate to exercise dominion under God, we will never understand some aspects of God’s own dominion over his creatures. God’s delight in variety will always outstrip our desire to control and to comprehend. And we should draw sound conclusions as regards our own lives. So much of Job’s own experience seems out of control. It is indeed unfathomable by any human accounting. Our faith in Yahweh must dwell in contentedness at never knowing everything there is to know about our own stories.
Which takes us back to Jesus as Good Shepherd and as God-Incarnate. It is good to learn to rest in the knowledge that what we can neither control nor understand, he can and does—and that, to our benefit.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Image: Johann Heiss , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
