Friday • 9/8/2023 •
Friday of the Fourteenth Week After Pentecost (Proper 17) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 31; 1 Kings 11:26–43; James 4:13–5:6; Mark 15:22–32 

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 17 of Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.  

1 Kings: a kingdom divided against itself. Solomon’s loyalty is split between Yahweh, on the one hand, and Astarte, Chemosh, and Milcom, on the other (1 Kings 11:33). His divided heart yields a divided kingdom. From Abraham to Moses to David, God has been nurturing a singular family, kingdom, and nation through which to restore all that humankind had lost in the Garden of Eden. But Solomon’s spiritual schizophrenia means God’s people relive the calamity of that original fall. Solomon has listened to the hiss of the serpent—the many-headed hydra of this god and that god. His kingdom will be divided into faithless Israel in the north and semi-faithful Judah in the south (stay tuned).  

Inspired by a prophetic word, Jeroboam (at first, one of Solomon’s chief slave-drivers—1 Kings 11:26–28) rebels against Solomon’s son and heir, Rehoboam. Jeroboam is even presented as something of a Moses figure, who goes into exile in Egypt and then returns to Israel to relieve people oppressed by Rehoboam’s continuation of Solomon’s use of forced labor (1 Kings 11:39; 12:2–5).  

The Lord takes ten northern tribes “from the hand of Solomon” and gives them to Jeroboam, leaving two southern tribes (Judah and Benjamin) with Rehoboam. Jeroboam introduces into the new northern kingdom of Israel worse syncretism than Solomon’s: he immediately establishes “high places” expressly to serve as centers of worship to displace Jerusalem (1 Kings 12:28–29). He even repeats the sin of Aaron by erecting at his high places golden calves and repeating that first generation’s idolatrous, “Here are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt” (1 Kings 12:28).  

In the southern kingdom of Judah, Rehoboam’s response is hardly godly or kingly. The underside of Solomon’s building success had been his extensive use of forced labor (see 1 Kings 4:6; 5:13,14; 9:15–22). Rather than back away from the injustice, Rehoboam threatens to rule even more harshly: “My little finger is thicker than my father’s loins. Now, whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions” (1 Kings 12:10b–11).  

Idolatry and cruelty: we are reliving Adam and Eve’s treachery and Cain’s viciousness. The one bright spot is that Yahweh says he “will punish the descendants of David, but not forever” (1 Kings 11:39). The LORD has made promises, and he will keep them.  

Mark sees promises kept. “[B]ut not forever….” Those wonderful words sustain faithful believers through the following years of divided monarchy, exile, and return. All the way to the day when Mark writes of David’s true son and heir: “It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him. The inscription of the charge against him read, ‘The King of the Jews’” (Mark 15:25–26). Unbeknownst to everyone, the macabre scene unfolding at Calvary marks the day God’s “but not forever” comes to fruition. This is the day the punishment ends, absorbed in the thorn-crowned brow, the nail-scarred hands and feet, and the spear-pierced breast of Jesus Christ.  

In the Garden of Eden, in the same breath with which God pronounces judgment against serpent, woman, and man, he also promises reversal of the fall, vindication of his purposes, and salvation for sinners: “[the woman’s seed] will strike your head, and you will strike his heel” (Genesis 3:15). The reign of idolatry and cruelty that Adam and Eve unleash and to which Solomon and Jeroboam and Rehoboam become accomplices are not the endless fate of the human race.  

On the cross of Calvary, the heel of the woman’s seed is indeed struck, and that redemptively. For on the cross of Calvary “David’s Son and David’s Lord … gives his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 12:35–37; 10:45). On the cross of Calvary, the head of the serpent is struck, and that definitively; for on the cross hangs the end of idolatry and cruelty. On the cross hangs the hope of the world. On the cross hangs eternal life for you and for me.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+