Thursday • 9/9/2021
Thursday of the Fourteenth Week After Pentecost (Proper 18)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 50; 1 Kings 18:1–19; Philippians 2:12–30; Matthew 2:13–23

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94)

God Is in Control 

In my view, one of the most striking vistas in all Israel is to be found at the summit of the Herodium, a hill in the Judean desert three miles southeast of Bethlehem. According to first century Jewish historian Josephus, King Herod the Great commanded his engineers to make the Herodium artificially taller and “rounded off in the shape of a breast” (Josephus, Jewish War 1.419). It is most famous as Herod’s likely burial site. When you stand at the top and look northwest, you discover you are looking right down on Bethlehem, the place of Jesus’s birth and of the slaying of the innocents.

Shortly before his own death from a consuming internal disease, and frantically trying to keep his hold on this life and his rule, King Herod had ordered the slaughter of all the babies in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:1–12). In addition to trying to kill the unknown newborn infant he saw as a rival, Herod had ordered the rounding up of Jewish leaders. He had commanded that they be killed upon his death, to ensure that there would be mourning throughout Israel at his passing. Fortunately, his orders were reversed when he did in fact die, leading to much relief and celebration (Josephus, Antiquities 17.6.174–175; 8.1.193). 

It’s not difficult to imagine Herod’s funeral procession bringing his bier right past Bethlehem on its way to its burial place from Herod’s palace in Jericho a few miles away. Right past Bethlehem. Within earshot of mothers still bewailing the massacre of their babies. Mourning in Israel indeed, not as part of Herod’s maniacal narcissism, but  prophesied as part of God’s redemptive design: 

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
    wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
    she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” (Matthew 2:18). 

The reality is that God’s inexorable plan of redemption rolls on. Pharaoh had failed to snuff out the life of baby Moses, who rose to bring God’s people out of Egyptian slavery. Herod failed to snuff out the life of baby Jesus, because his parents whisked him away to Egypt. And as one like, but greater than, Moses, Jesus will return to “fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son’” (Matthew 2:15; Hosea 11:1). 

It’s good to keep in mind that God is always working behind the scenes in the most disastrous of circumstances, and that in the long run his goodness will prevail. 

Elijah’s time in exile and the miraculous way he sees God take care of the widow of Zarephath prepares him for his confrontation with the evil king Ahab and the priests of Baal. Obadiah, though a lover of Yahweh, finds himself in charge of the court of militantly pagan Ahab. Elijah calls upon him to risk “outing” himself by announcing Elijah’s coming.  

From prison, Paul has to learn to trust that the Lord will use the power of his words and his prayers to help believers do the dance between their responsibility to “work out your salvation” and to trust “God who is at work within you” (Philippians 2:12–13). He has to trust that people will see, in his emissaries Timothy and Epaphroditus, Christlike examples of what it is to “hold fast to the word of life” and to “shine like stars in the world,” even “in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation” (Philippians 2:15). 

The challenge is ever before us. We may face monstrous egos like Herod or Ahab, with the misery they create for everybody around them. We may cope with difficult providences like Paul, which would seem to limit any influence we could have for good. Or we may even be called like Obadiah to do what seems crazy: literally or metaphorically suicidal. Nonetheless, we can trust—truly trust—that, as Twila Paris sings, “God is in Control”:

This is no time for fear
This is a time for faith and determination
Don’t lose the vision here
Carried away by emotion
Hold on to all that you hide in your heart
There is one thing that has always been true
It holds the world together

God is in control
We believe that His children will not be forsaken
God is in control
We will choose to remember and never be shaken
There is no power above or beside Him, we know
God is in control, oh God is in control

History marches on
There is a bottom line drawn across the ages
Culture can make its plan
Oh, but the line never changes
No matter how the deception may fly
There is one thing that has always been true
It will be true forever

He has never let you down
Why start to worry now?
He is still the Lord of all we see
And He is still the loving Father
Watching over you and me
Watching over you, watching over me,
Watching over…
Every little sparrow, every little thing,
Oh, God is in control!

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Adaptation from Nagendra Rai (Indian Institute of Toxicology Research), CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons