We Will Never Be Forgotten - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 1/20/2025 •
Week of 2 Epiphany 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 25; Isaiah 44:6–8,21–23; Ephesians 4:1–16; Mark 3:7–19a  

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) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we explore that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me. This is Monday of the second week of Epiphany, and we are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. Consider with me one of the great promises in the second half of the Book of Isaiah 

O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me… — Isaiah 44:21.  

To a ten-year-old boy in Fort Lauderdale, FL, in the early 1960s, Searstown was a huge and delightful place. It was full of fascinating things—most notably, Ted Williams baseball and fishing gear. Things fascinating enough to get me separated one day from my parents, who were interested in more mundane things like, I dunno, furniture or something.  

At any rate, one minute I’m trying on a Ted Williams baseball glove with the tantalizing smell of its leather, and fantasizing about leaping for a spectacular Mickey Mantle catch in centerfield, when I look up and realize I’ve lost my parents. I wander around the store a while, and eventually I entertain the fleeting notion that they just might have forgotten about me and gone home. It was just a passing thought, but a chilling one. Soon, I heard my name over the store loudspeaker, with instructions on where to go to find my parents. Happy reunion.  

What would it be like to be not only lost, but really forgotten — for good? I know that that is what millions and millions of people on this planet live with every day. It certainly is what Israel felt after centuries of separation from their land, their temple, and their God — everything that gave them their identity. Everything that they could call “home.”  

Isaiah Chapters 40–66 are animated, more than anything, by this promise: “O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me.” There is comfort here for anybody who wonders if they’ve been forgotten. You do a great job for your boss, and not a word of thanks—forgotten. You invest years in a relationship, and the other person just walks out—forgotten. You live long enough to see all your friends die off—forgotten.  

Isaiah promises a homecoming—if only Israel will realize she only has one God, the only God who truly is, the God who is “the first and the last; besides [whom] there is no god” (Isaiah 44:6). This God formed her for one reason: to have a relationship with himself (Isaiah 44:21). This God has “swept away your transgressions like a cloud, and your sins like a mist” (Isaiah 44:22). This God loves her. This God calls the heavens and the depths of the earth and the mountains and the forests to sing his redeeming power and his promise to come and make his radiant presence dwell in her (Isaiah 44:23). This God will never, ever, ever forget her … or you! 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

He Fights for Us - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 1/17/2025 •
Week of 1 Epiphany 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 16; Psalm 17; Isaiah 42:(1–9)10–17; Ephesians 3:1–13; Mark 2:13–22 

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 of the first week of the Epiphany of Christ. We wrap up this week’s readings in Isaiah, Mark, and Ephesians with strong reminders that, in Jesus, God has come for us with strength and healing.  

Isaiah: “Sing a new song.” 

Isaiah invites God’s people to take up a “new song,” celebrating the fact that, like a mighty warrior, Yahweh has taken up their cause against their enemies: “The Lord goes forth like a soldier, like a warrior he stirs up his fury” (Isaiah 42:13a).  

Whenever we find a call for a “new song” in Scripture, we are taken back to the song that Israel first sang after crossing the Red Sea. It’s the first big celebratory song in the Bible. Delivered from slavery in Egypt and witness to the destruction of Pharaoh’s army, Israel danced and sang. They rejoiced: “I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea. … The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is his name” (Exodus 15:1,3). Subsequently, whenever in Israel’s history Yahweh performs an act that’s a reminder of an exodus-like liberation, Israel sings a “new song” to celebrate that new chapter in her story of rescue and deliverance. Yahweh is her champion, and she rejoices afresh in his mighty love.  

For his part, Yahweh is passionate about restoring the well-being of his people, says Isaiah. He’s been forbearing long enough. Now he will act: “The Lord will march out like a champion, like a warrior he will stir up his zeal; with a shout he will raise the battle cry and will triumph over his enemies. ‘For a long time I have kept silent, I have been quiet and held myself back. But now, like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant’” (Isaiah 42:13–14 NIV). Yahweh’s time has come, and he is bringing forth a world-changing deliverance:  

I will lay waste the mountains and hills 
and dry up all their vegetation; 
I will turn rivers into islands 
and dry up the pools. 
I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, 
along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; 
I will turn the darkness into light before them 
and make the rough places smooth (Isaiah 42:15-16 NIV).  

He is our champion too, as passionate for our well-being in the present as he was for Israel’s in the past.  We can be confident of this: whatever our circumstances might be, he has allied himself with us and he fights for us. He cares.  

Mark: It’s the sick who need a physician.  

Theologians as far back as Irenaeus in the 2nd century have speculated that even if Adam and Eve had not fallen into sin in the Garden, the Second Person of the Trinity might still have become incarnate to confirm us in our righteousness and shalom, and to take us into the fully righteous, glorified state of perfected shalom that God had intended for us.  

Well … it didn’t work that way. We fell. And so, Jesus didn’t come to make healthy people healthier, or righteous people more righteous. He came to make unrighteous people righteous, and to make sick people well. That’s why Mark makes a point of the fact that Jesus chooses a despised, compromised tax collector to be one of his twelve disciples. It’s why he makes a point of accepting this big sinner’s invitation to fellowship at table with “many tax collectors and sinners … for there were many who followed him” (Mark 2:15). 

It is so, so, so gratifying to know that we don’t have to put on a show and pretend that we are “good.” It’s OK—not only OK, but actually necessary—to admit susceptibility to temptation; proclivity to serve self; disinterest in God himself; anger, greed, frustration, anxiety, and/or fear. People like that, not perfect people, that’s who he came for.  

That’s who he is the Divine Warrior for. That’s who he cries out like a woman in labor for. That’s who he died for. That’s who he lives for.  

Ephesians: God’s message to those who need a physician.  

And that’s why the apostle Paul, one of the formerly “good” and “righteous” people, makes a point of calling himself “the very least among the saints” (Ephesians 3:8). Because he originally had lined up as one of those who “needed no physician,” he is all the more grateful that Jesus healed him of his arrogance, pride, and impiety. “I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence,” he explains to these same Ephesians in a subsequent letter (1 Timothy 1:13).  

Now Paul can number himself among those who formerly were the spiritually “walking dead” but now are alive in Christ (Ephesians 2:1–10), and who were part of a broken human family that is being made whole again in Christ (Ephesians 2:11–22). He can boldly assert that the church—the remarkable collection of newly alive and newly reconciled people—is what God uses to prove his wisdom and to demonstrate his victory over death and disunity even in “the heavenly places” (Ephesians 3:10). Pretty amazing stuff!  

Be blessed this day in the knowledge that Jesus is your champion, and in the comfort of his healing mercy, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

One Like a Son of Man - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 1/16/2025 •

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 18:1–20; Isaiah 41:17–29; Ephesians 2:11–22; Mark 2:1–12 

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) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we consider some aspect of 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 is Thursday of the first week of Epiphany, the “manifestation” of God’s glory in Jesus Christ.  

“… the Son of Man has authority on earth…” — Mark 2:10.  

Four desperate people break through the roof of the place where Jesus is staying, to bring a paralytic friend in hopes that Jesus can heal him. Jesus proclaims forgiveness of the man’s sins. Immediately, the “theological sheriffs” in the room object that Jesus has claimed power for himself that belongs to God alone. Jesus responds obliquely: “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk’?  

 But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins (he said to the paralytic) I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home” (Mark 2:9–11). The man rises on legs that have been restored to health. 

For the first time in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus uses the term that will be his favorite self-designation, “Son of Man.” It is an introduction to Jesus’s identity—an identity that he will gradually disclose over the course of Mark. The phrase comes from the book of Daniel, where that prophet refers to a divine and heavenly figure, “one like a son of man” who is destined to assume all dominion on earth (Daniel 7:9-17; 9:20-27), and who will “put an end to sin, … atone for iniquity, [and] … bring in everlasting righteousness” (Daniel 9:20-27).  

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus artfully employs the “Son of Man” terminology as he progressively paints his lionesque self-portrait. The main elements are threefold. Working from the back of Mark’s Gospel to the front:  

Ascension. First, at his ascension, Christ as Son of Man will “come” into the presence of the Ancient of Days and be seated at his right hand to receive dominion over heaven and earth. At his trial, in answer to his accusers as to whether he is the Christ, he says, “I am; and ‘you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power,’ and ‘coming with the clouds of heaven’” (Mark 14:62; and also 13:26). As ascended Lord, Jesus the Son of Man will reign with everlasting righteousness (Daniel 9:27).  

Suffering. Second, this coming into his dominion follows the Son of Man’s “great suffering”: his betrayal, arrest, contemptuous treatment, dying, and rising again (Mark 8:31; 9:12,31; 10:33). Thereby, Jesus as Son of Man will, in Daniel’s language, “put an end to sin” and “atone for iniquity” (Daniel 9:24).  

Authority to forgive. Third, even before his death, resurrection, and ascension, the lordly Son of Man shows he has “authority on earth” to forgive sins. Here in his earthly ministry, the Son of Man who has come “to serve and not to be served” (Mark 10:45) manifests God’s magnificent love for humans by bringing life and healing and forgiveness down here to where we live.  

It is this third aspect of his Son-of-Man-ness that Jesus says is on display in his healing ministry. Behind all sickness stands sin: its power to attack, enfeeble, and ultimately hand us over to death. That is by no means to say that every sickness is the result of any particular sin we have committed (though we can do irresponsible things that make us more susceptible—but that’s not the point). The frailty of sickness comes upon us all regardless—and it does so by virtue of the fallen condition that has overtaken the whole race since Genesis 3. The heavenly and divine “one like a son of man” has come to the earth to bring back the health and the soundness of being that were lost in the Garden.  

“For he is our peace…” — Ephesians 2:14.  

Another sign of the power of sin in the world is the way the human race is fractured -- splintered into a near infinity of tribes, ethnicities, races, and classes. We are dead, and Christ makes us alive—so says Paul in the first half of Ephesians 2. But we are also divided, and Christ makes us one—so continues Paul in the second half of Ephesians 2.  

Of the many fault lines within the human race, none is more important to a Jewish person like Paul than that between Jews and Gentiles. Paul celebrates the fact that Christ has broken down the barriers between Jews and Gentiles, has brought the two together in his own body on the cross, and has made them together a single offering to God (Ephesians 2:11-19). We need no longer be strangers and aliens to one another because, in Christ, we share one nationality, one family membership, one sense of what it is to be a people. It’s one of the most breathtaking thoughts in all of Scripture.   

When disaster and disunity dominate headlines, I pray that we know that above it all reigns the Son of Man. I pray that he grants us assurance of the forgiveness of our sins, and gives us his peace regarding his care for our physical health as well as our spiritual well-being. I pray that he grants us the grace to be on his side in the breaking down of barriers between people and people groups, and that we have a firm sense of our own place in the “the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.” I pray we each may know how intentionally and wonderfully we are being built into our own special place in his church: the Lord’s “holy temple” and God’s “dwelling place” (Ephesians 2:19–22).  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Biblical Prophecy - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 1/15/2025 •

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:1–24; Isaiah 41:1–16; Ephesians 2:1–10; Mark 1:29–45 

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 of the first week of Epiphany. We are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary, and we find ourselves exploring Isaiah’s promises on behalf of Yahweh, Mark’s lionesque portrait of Christ, and Paul’s wondrous unpacking of life in Christ.  

Isaiah’s promise of redemption and empowerment. Subject to humiliating domination and exile both from Assyria and Babylon, the people to whom Isaiah ministers have been made to feel like “worms” and “insects” (Isaiah 41:14 NRSV). Sometimes you just have to be brought that low, it seems.  

Isaiah wants the children of Israel to know that their story doesn’t end in ignobility—in being squashed like a bug! Right now, they feel like they are the laughingstock of the world. However, through Isaiah, Yahweh wants the world to know—and his people to find comfort in the fact—that just as millennia before, he had called Abram from the east to become his “friend” (through whom Yahweh intends to bless the whole world), he now calls “a victor from the east” to rescue God’s elect who are in such dire straits and low estate. Later, Yahweh will name him: “Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd, and he shall carry out all my purpose’” (Isaiah 44:28). Indeed, in 539 B.C. Cyrus of Persia would conquer Babylon and decree Judah’s release from captivity. This act, Isaiah claims, is under the sovereign control of Yahweh.  

Yahweh will thereby show himself still to be—as he was in the exodus, just so now—“your Redeemer … the Holy One of Israel” (Isaiah 41:14). Back then, the Israelites had witnessed Yahweh dispatch their enemies in the Red Sea and then make them a strong army for the conquest of the Promised Land. So now, he will once again rescue them and make them warriors.  

The fulfillment of biblical prophecy often takes surprising form. The return under the Persian ruler Cyrus was by simple decree. Israelites did not have to take up arms to retake the land. While they would have to protect themselves against the threat of military intervention when they rebuilt Jerusalem and the temple, there was nothing that approximated Isaiah’s language of becoming “a threshing sledge, sharp, new … you shall thresh the mountains and crush them” (Isaiah 41:14). Centuries later, the Maccabees would rise up briefly in successful military revolt against their Seleucid oppressors; but eventually, the Israelites would succumb to Roman conquest.  

On this side of the New Testament’s story, I suggest that Isaiah’s promise of a Redeemer and of the empowerment of his people finds a deeper and greater fulfillment in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. That’s where today’s gospel and epistle readings come in. 

Jesus as Redeemer in Mark. Because Mark’s Gospel is not loaded with extensive teaching material like the other synoptic gospels (Matthew and Luke), he focuses on demonstrations of Jesus’s power. Fever breaks at his presence. Demons depart (and their knowledge of his true divine identity obliquely points to the “behind the scenes” contest underway—though we know that the contest is not in doubt). Leprous skin becomes clean at his touch. As C. S. Lewis will finally put it in his Chronicle of Narnia, Aslan the Lion Redeemer, is in the land, and the endless winter of sin and death is “working backwards.” Amen! 

Jesus empowers the replacing of one “walk” with another, in Ephesians.  The apostle Paul writes from the perspective of Jesus’s finished work on the cross, where he accomplished “redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses” (Ephesians 1:7). Now, God gives, as Isaiah promised, strength to his people, power to his saints, noble status to those who once were “worms” and “insects.”  

Paul’s way of putting it is that we were spiritual zombies, the walking dead—subject to a domination by desires beyond our control. We were “were dead through the trespasses and sins in which [we] once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. Among these we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of body and mind, and so we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” (Ephesians 2:1–3 RSV).  

Then Paul follows with one of the Bible’s great “But God…” clauses. “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ…” (Ephesians 2:4–5). God counters our nothingness, and our being worthy of wrath and rejection, with the riches of his mercy and the depths of his great love. He raises us up right along with his own Beloved Son. On the cross, God kills our sin. By the empty tomb, he annuls our walking death. He “seats us in the heavenly places,” and empowers us to live again. He gives us the grace to believe in Christ, the grace to accept the amazing gift of forgiveness in Christ, and the strength and vision to work out what it is now to be “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8–10 RSV). The walking dead, no longer. The perspective is breathtaking. The words are worth poring over again and again, unhurriedly.  

As Paul prayed in chapter 1, just before writing this stunning paragraph, so I pray for you, “that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints [including … insert your name!], and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe” (Ephesians 1:18–19 NASB).  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Four Voices - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 1/14/2025 •

Today we close out a two-week detour from the Daily Office. Instead, we’ll be thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.   

“With Four-Part Harmony and Feeling”  

Maybe you’re like me? On any given Sunday, I may show up for worship worn out or close to giving up or guilty and ashamed – or ready to celebrate. I know there’s an even more diverse range of moods among the people I’m called to lead. How can the worship of Jesus’ people rise from such disparate hearts? How can worship leaders orchestrate such discordant voices?  

“With four-part harmony and feeling.” That’s how Arlo Guthrie introduces the last chorus of his classic story-song “Alice’s Restaurant.” To me, it’s an apt summary of God’s gift to us of the four voices through which he tells us Jesus’ story: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In his “four part, one song” gift, God provides hope that Jesus can make sweet music of our disparate voices.  

It’s not a given that we would have access to Jesus through precisely these four gospels. Some people in the early days of the church experimented with something else. Marcion (mid-2nd century, Rome) championed an edited Luke over the other three — and wound up pitting a New Testament God of love against the Old Testament God of wrath. Epic fail. Tatian (mid-2nd century, Assyria) tried to amalgamate the four gospel accounts into a single narrative — the result was a mish-mash. Less epic, but fail nonetheless.  

Nor have other sources been that helpful. Historians like the Roman Tacitus (2nd century) and the Jewish Josephus (a turncoat during the 1st century war with Rome) do little more than note that Jesus lived. The Gospel of Thomas (2nd century, Egypt) gives us sayings (many quite odd), but little of the story. The Gospel of Judas (2nd century, Egypt) gives us story, but one that just didn’t ring true.  

For the last 200 years or so, scholarship has tried to get behind “the Christ of the Gospels” in quest of “the Historical Jesus.” The problem is that scholarship is done by scholars, and scholars are people. Consistently, those scholars’ quests lead them to a Jesus that looks just like them. Churches have their own reductionistic bent. Protestants filter Jesus through the apostle Paul. Catholics favor the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) because of the Synoptics’ ethical teachings. The Orthodox favor John because of his perceived otherworldliness.  

But the reality is that the four Gospels pressed themselves in concert upon the early church; and the early church wisely let each sing its own part of the song.  

The four-winged creatures of the book of Revelation gave the early church its most powerful metaphor for the singular message and fourfold voice of the Gospels: “the first living creature like a lion, the second … like an ox, the third … with the face of a man, and the fourth … like an eagle in flight” (Rev 4:7). Each has eyes for sight, and wings for flight. Each ceaselessly worships: “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty” (4:8).  

Each winged creature became associated in the early church’s mind with a particular gospel. Each became a metaphor for its gospel’s angle of vision, its aspect of Christ’s message to be taken to the nations, and its facet of worship.  

Matthew is the winged man because Matthew begins with Christ’s genealogy. Beyond that, Matthew presents Jesus as “gentle and lowly in heart,” and as one especially attuned to the burdens of “all who labor and are heavy laden” and who need “rest for your souls” (11:28,29). Matthew’s Jesus is Emmanuel (“God with us,” 1:23) who teaches in the Sermon on the Mount what our true humanity looks like.    

Mark is the winged lion because Mark begins with John the Baptist roaring like a lion in the desert. Beyond that, in his focus on Christ’s coming “not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many,” Mark shows Christ’s true, Aslan-like power.  

Luke is the winged ox because Luke begins with Zachariah fulfilling priestly duties in the Temple. As Irenaeus (2nd century, Gaul) notes, “For now was made ready the fatted calf about to be immolated for the finding again of the younger son.” Luke, Paul’s traveling companion, is the only Gentile author in the NT. His two volume Luke/Acts is rooted in “secular” history and the ethical sensibilities of the Gentile world. He understands especially well that humanity experiences redemption through Jesus fulfilling OT sacrificial requirements and promises.  

John is the winged eagle because the eagle is a good symbol for Christ’s coming from above as the divine Logos. With his seven “I am” statements (6:35; 8:12; 10:7; 10:11; 11:25; 14:6; 15:1) and Jesus’ crowning claim, “Before Abraham was I am” (8:58), John offers the most exalted view of Christ in the NT. Doubting Thomas speaks for all of us when he confesses: “My Lord and my God.”  

As Jesus reveals himself through his fourfold gospel, he speaks to the diverse needs of his people. Some hear him say, “You will find rest for your souls.” Some hear the Father rejoicing because the fatted calf has been sacrificed and they are welcomed home. Some hear that Christ is their Lion-protector. And we all find ourselves bowing before the one who is the great “I am.”  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Fly, Kessie, Fly! - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 1/13/2025 •

Instead, we’ll be thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.   

“Fly, Kessie, Fly!” 

One measure of leadership is whether people are following you. 

A better measure is whether you are helping people “take wing.”  

That’s a lesson Rabbit has to learn in the award-winning episode “Find Her, Keep Her,” in Disney’s The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.  

Rabbit rescues a female baby bird named Kessie during a snowstorm in the Hundred Acre Wood. For months, Rabbit nurses and cares for Kessie. Unfortunately, he becomes overly protective when she wants to learn to fly. Rabbit understands Kessie will eventually want to “fly south.” He will be left alone once more.  

Yet flying south is what birds do. And helping others take wing is what responsible caregivers do.  

As all Pooh stories do, this one ends the way it should. Rabbit learns, even though reluctantly, to let go. 

Hitting Home 

My wife recalls this story when our children make changes that reveal they are taking a new step towards independence, and away from us and from our influence. She finds letting go is not easy. And so, at these times, she still mutters to me under her breath, “Fly, Kessie, fly!” She understands what it is to forgo her own interests for the benefit of someone else. 

Leadership in God’s family is not much different.   

Kevin is a new senior pastor, with little background in worship ministry. He calls his old friend Ryan, an experienced worship pastor, and asks: “There’s been a lot of conflict over worship here, and I’ve inherited a pretty fragmented worship team. Would you work for me for a season and help me bring stability and unity, and earn my wings with this congregation in worship?” 

Over several months, a new-old team comes together, worship stops being a battle zone, and fans of “tradition” and fans of “freshness” begin deferring to one another.  

Great Idea 

At a meeting in the spring, Ryan, the worship pastor, offers: “Maundy Thursday is coming up. Historically, Maundy Thursday is a night the church remembers the ‘new commandment’ to love one another as Christ has loved us, and often celebrates that love with a foot washing service. We’ve seen a lot of cooperating and healing in this church. Why don’t we offer a foot washing service to affirm the love, unity, and healing this body has been experiencing?”  

Kevin, the senior pastor, responds, “That’d be a new thing for me, but it sounds like a great idea.” 

“The foot washing services I’ve led have provided powerful moments for brothers and sisters to experience the priesthood of all believers as they minister Christ’s love to one another,” Ryan adds. 

“Yeah, OK,” answers Kevin, “But what I think we need here is for the people in church to get the message that the leaders really love them. So I want only the pastors and the elders to do the washing of the congregation’s feet. I’ll tell the elders about my idea at our next meeting.” 

Suddenly, Ryan feels like he’s in the middle of a Dilbert comic strip. The pointy-haired boss is hijacking his idea, taking credit for it, and, in the process, ruining the whole concept. Ryan visualizes a thought bubble above his own head:  “Excuse me, but whose idea is this anyway!? You’ve never even seen a congregational foot washing, much less led one….” 

Then Ryan remembers there’s the Dilbert way of seeing things, and there’s the Jesus way of seeing things. He envisions a new thought bubble: “Hold on a minute! Where did that attitude come from? If washing feet is about kneeling to serve, about putting my brother’s interests ahead of my own, maybe that’s what I’m supposed to do in this case.” 

The words that manage to come out of Ryan’s mouth are, “Sounds like a plan! Let’s do it!!” 

Sink or Soar 

During the Maundy Thursday service four weeks later, Ryan, despite his best intentions, is still having internal thought-bubble conversations. The logistics that Kevin the senior pastor has insisted on require the worship team to lead music throughout communion and the foot washing. They will not get to receive communion or participate in the foot washing itself. 

Ryan’s thought bubble begins to complain, “It figures. I should have insisted on more control….”  

Ryan stops himself and looks around. Many in the congregation, profoundly moved by seeing pastors and elders taking the posture of servants, have eyes brimming with tears.  Ryan notices, too, a glistening in Kevin’s eyes as he imitates Jesus’ leadership example. 

And so a better thought bubble has the final say: “Pay attention, Ryan. A most awesome service is unfolding right in front of you. Jesus is in this house. And look at Kevin – you can almost see him growing softer and kinder with every foot he washes. He’s finding his wings.” 

After the service, it is discovered that Jesus has provided, by some happy accident, a small amount of bread and wine backstage. Ryan and his team share an intimate and amazing communion together before going home – and, of course, they wash each other’s feet. 

Best of all, Ryan realizes he has already been privileged to do a bit of foot washing – just not the way he had at first envisioned. Foot washing takes many forms.  

The strongest kind of leadership is the kind that helps others take wing: “Fly, Kessie, fly!”  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Lion - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 1/10/2025 •

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 5; Psalm 6; Isaiah 40:25–31; Ephesians 1:15–23; Mark 1:14–28 

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) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we draw insights 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.

Isaiah’s promise of comfort. Isaiah 40 includes a call to look for help coming from “the wilderness”:  

A voice cries out: 
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the  Lord, 
    make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 
Every valley shall be lifted up, 
    and every mountain and hill be made low; 
the uneven ground shall become level, 
    and the rough places a plain. 
Then the glory of the  Lord  shall be revealed, 
    and all people shall see it together, 
    for the mouth of the  Lord  has spoken” (Isaiah 40:3–5).  

The way in the wilderness evokes memory of the exodus, when Yahweh revealed his glory by providing his people a highway through the desert out of Egyptian slavery. Just so, Yahweh will once again provide a freedom trail out of exile in Babylon. Yahweh is, says today’s passage, “great in strength, mighty in power … the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 40:26,28). Therefore, people who have been enervated and deflated, depressed, and demoralized—hardly up for an arduous journey—will find new strength for themselves in him:  

He gives power to the faint, 
    and strengthens the powerless. 
Even youths will faint and be weary, 
    and the young will fall exhausted; 
but those who wait for the  Lord  shall renew their strength, 
    they shall mount up with wings like eagles, 
they shall run and not be weary, 
    they shall walk and not faint (Isaiah 40:29–31).  

Which brings us to Mark. Yesterday, we began reading Mark’s Gospel. It begins with Isaiah’s voice in the wilderness, calling, once again: “Prepare the way of the Lord!” The assumption is that once again God’s people are enslaved, in need of rescue and of strength for a journey. That journey begins with “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4).  

Because Mark’s gospel begins in the wilderness, early Christians associated his gospel with the “lion,” the powerful king, so it was thought, of the wild places. Accordingly, it only takes a little imagination to appreciate why C. S. Lewis would cast his Christ-figure as a lion — “Aslan,” who is “not safe, but good.”  

That is Mark’s Christ. Skipping right over Matthew’s and Luke’s birth narratives and John’s soaring prologue, Mark takes us directly to Jesus’s baptism and temptation, and then to the launch of Christ’s mission. Jesus begins his ministry by gathering disciples—Simon and Andrew, James and John—to witness his power to deliver (Mark 1:16–19). Then, he begins his powerful acts of deliverance, as he frees from physical and psychic oppression a man in the thrall of demonic forces (Mark 1:21–26). Ultimately, Jesus will also deliver from dullness of spirit and mind (like the disciples he has chosen) those who are slow to recognize him as Son of God. Jesus will lead them to understand that he has come for a singular act of rescue: “to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).  

The redeeming Lion is on the loose. As the people at his first miracle in Mark recognize, “They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, ‘What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.’ At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee” (Mark 1:27–28).  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Hand in Hand - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 1/9/2025 •

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 1; Psalm 2; Psalm 3; Isaiah 40:12–23; Ephesians 1:1–14; Mark 1:1–13 

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) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we explore that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me.

During the next few weeks—weeks “after Epiphany”—we will read through the second half of the Book of Isaiah. In blighted and calamitous times, it is good to survey a portion of Scripture that has as its keynote:  

“Comfort, O comfort My people,” says your God. 
“Speak kindly to Jerusalem; 
And call out to her, that her warfare has ended, 
That her iniquity has been removed, 
That she has received of the Lord’s  hand 
Double for all her sins” (Isaiah 40:1–2).  

In hard times, it’s hard to find real comfort. Not all avenues to comfort are especially beneficial, whether binge-watching or bourbon-drinking. Not all avenues to consolation are benign, whether addiction or indulgent hyper-indebtedness.  

After thirty-nine chapters of preparing God’s people for a long night of exile, Isaiah looks to the daylight of return and restoration. It’s still going to be a long way off, but daylight is coming nonetheless. Happily, for us, much of what is revealed to us for Israel’s future in these chapters has come to pass in Jesus Christ, most notably the epiphany (the manifestation) of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, who has been “crushed for our iniquities” so he can “make many righteous” (Isaiah 53:11).  

Today’s verses from Isaiah 40 are cautionary. Having sounded the note of hope in the opening verses of this chapter, Isaiah warns against resorting to false sources of comfort and solace.  

There is only one source of life, the very author of life. “Who has measured the waters in the hollow if his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?” (Isaiah 40:12).   

There is only one who can unravel the puzzle of our lives. “Who has directed the spirit of the Lord, or as his counselor has instructed him?” (Isaiah 40:13). 

There is only one hope for the righting of all wrongs in the world and in our lives. “Whom did he consult for his enlightenment, and who taught him the path of justice?” (Isaiah 40:14). 

There is only one who has the power to unseat wicked rulers: “Even the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as dust on the scales; see he takes up the isles like fine dust … [He] brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing” (Isaiah 40:15,23).   

The props we build for ourselves—whether literal idols, or little godling crutches—they eventually prove to be useless, or worse. “To whom will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him? An idol?—A workman casts it … then seeks out a skilled artisan to set up an image that will not topple” (Isaiah 40:18,20).  They all topple in the end.  

“Comfort, O comfort my people….” May God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ speak comfort to our hearts today. May he encourage us that our lives and destinies are in his benevolent hands (a la Ephesians 1); assure us that he will work justice in the world and fortify us for our part in its pursuit; and displace all false and lesser sources of satisfaction and inner peace with the Spirit of his own life-giving presence.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

How Can I Keep from Singing? - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 1/8/2025 •

We’ll be thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.   

I Know Why the Prisoner Sings * 

For two millennia, Christians have sung their theology—from catacombs to dorm rooms, and from cathedrals to football stadiums. Every distinctive shape the faith takes – each its own “Jesus Movement” – finds its own musical voice. Ambrose’s robust trinitarianism both created and was supported by the florid hymnody of the church of fourth-century Milan. Gregorian chant both bespoke a quest of a spiritual music for the church and announced the ascendancy of the medieval church. In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther trumpeted his newfound grace as much through broadsheets and hymns as through sermons and books.  

Along the way, preachers and songsters have paired off, and sometimes the songsters have shaped the message as much as the preachers: John Calvin and Louis Bourgeois, John and Charles Wesley, Dwight Moody and Ira Sankey, Billy Graham and George Beverly Shea, Louie Giglio and Chris Tomlin. The evangelical uprising that began right after World War II, gained new life in the Jesus Movement of the 1960s, and persists into the beginning of the third millennium is characterized as much by its “praise and worship” as by anything else. When groups think about starting new churches, they are as anxious to establish their “sound” as they are their message. 

Image: Pixabay 

Hopeful Abandon 

God is in the process of reclaiming our lost planet, so singing fits the way things are. As a result, Christians have been irrepressible singers from day one. What J. R. R. Tolkien said is true: every fairy tale echoes the biblical drama—we were lost, and then we were found. Praise and thanks come unbidden to the surface of our being—and in the unbiddenness of our singing lies its rightness. 

A song will illustrate. One of my coworkers teases me: “I always know it’s you coming down the hall, because I hear the music first.” I am an incorrigible singer, hummer, and whistler. The one song that forces itself into my consciousness more than any other is this: 

My life goes on in endless song, above earth’s lamentations. 
I hear the real, though far-off hymn, that hails a new creation. 
Above the tumult and the strife, I hear its music ringing. 
It sounds an echo in my soul. How can I keep from singing? 

When tyrants tremble, sick with fear, and hear their death-knell ringing, 
When friends rejoice both far and near, how can I keep from singing? 
In prison cell and dungeon vile our thoughts to them are winging. 
When friends by shame are undefiled, how can I keep from singing? 

What though my joys and comforts die, the Lord my Saviour liveth. 
And though the darkness round me close, songs in the night he giveth. 
No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that Rock I’m clinging. 
Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing? 

Anne Warner composed this folk hymn in the middle of a most uncivil Civil War, and Doris Plenn reshaped it during the Cold War and its attendant paranoia. It is a hymn of courage in the face of tempest and darkness and tyrants.  

Trembling Courage 

My absolute favorite version of the song is Eva Cassidy’s kicking “gospel” rendering. She sang it while she was trying to fight off the malignant melanoma that would eventually take her life. Perhaps that’s why she sings with an urgency most who take up this song don’t have. I know that there are different kinds of “prison cells” and “dungeons vile,” and that melanoma—which I too contracted—is one of them. I know therefore that the gift of a song in the night does keep the darkness back, if barely—“Dear God, do not let my children grow up without a father.” And I know that a response of unbidden song rings true because, and only because, Christ is indeed “Lord of heaven and earth.” I hope this was Eva Cassidy’s hope—it is mine, for though my cancer was found at a much earlier stage than hers and appears to have been treated successfully, I know that the “far-off hymn” isn’t as far off as it was pre-cancer. I know in a way I didn’t before that Christ’s victory over the grave promises “new creation.” More importantly, I know that in the worst of my fears I can’t keep from singing; Christ has plundered death and hell. 

This hymn is a parable of the entire history of song in the church. It explains why we are such a singing lot. From the very beginning, God has been orchestrating a grand drama, the reclamation of his lost creation—and in operatic fashion, he has used the singing to his Jesus Movements to carry the story line.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

* Today’s post is adapted from Reggie M. Kidd, With One Voice: Discovering Christ’s Song in Our Worship (Grand Rapids, MI: BakerBooks, 2005), pp. 17–20.  

The Bible's Six-Word Story - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 1/7/2025 •

We’ll be thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.   

“Psalms Keep Us in God’s Story” 

There’s a story that Ernest Hemingway won a bet that he could write a six-word novel:  

“Baby shoes. For sale. Never used.”  

It’s hard to imagine so much punch being packed into so few words. But there it is. The story recently prompted a “flash fiction” movement, along with books like Larry Smith & Rachel Fershleiser’s Not Quite What I was Planning and a website (smithmag.net) offering collections of life stories in six words:   

“Birth, childhood, adolescence, adolescence, adolescence, adolescence…” 

“Bad brakes discovered at high speed.” 

“Stole wife. Lost friends. Now happy.” 

“Barrister, barista, what’s the diff, Mom?” 

“I still make coffee for two.” 

Many six-word stories make me pensive. Somehow, they remind me that the most common funeral inscription of the Roman world in which Christianity emerged was just such a six-word memoir: “Non fui. Non sum. Non curo.” (“I wasn’t. I’m not. … Don’t care.”) They also remind me that what got imprinted in me growing up was a similarly despairing six-word formula: “Expect bad. You won’t be disappointed.” 

Psalm 136’s Six-Word Story 

In the ESV, RSV, and NRSV, the second half of every verse of Psalm 136 is the six-word chorus: “For his steadfast love endures forever.” Over the course of 26 verses, we extol the glory of Yahweh as creator of the universe, then rescuer of his people. Twenty-six times we interrupt the flow of the psalm’s story with praise of Yahweh’s “steadfast love.”  

The universe, the psalm explains, didn’t have to be there. Everything that exists does so, not as the result of sheer randomness, nor for any other explanation than the steadfast love of the Lord. The only reason our world—and we in it!—are here is God’s steadfast love. 

Image: Pixabay 

The psalm skips over the fall, the flood, and the call of Abraham, and goes directly to a celebration of the rescue of Israel and the violent takeover of “lands for an inheritance.” The rescue and the takeover happen, we are invited to sing, because of God’s steadfast love.  

Through the obscure nation of Israel, seemingly doomed to expire in Egyptian captivity, God intends to right all that has gone wrong under the heavens he made “by wisdom.” The Bible’s whole storyline—from creation through re-creation—is a long study in steadfast love. So, even while we puzzle over the mysteries of creation, the enigmas of the texts that tell Israel’s tale (such as including the deaths of Egypt’s firstborn and of “great” and “mighty kings”), we take the long view. In God’s story, Psalm 136 reminds us, everything will be made right. 

Psalm 103’s Six-Word Story  

The first two verses of this psalm have an unusual audience: me. The psalm tells me to tell my soul to bless the Lord—which, of late, Matt Redman and the whole Church are echoing—and not to forget his benefits. It seems to know that such may not be my default mode of being. Several of my preacher friends talk about “preaching the gospel to myself.” I’d rather sing it—and this psalm shows me how.  

Verses three through five recount to my soul God’s six-word story for my life: “Forgiven. Healed. Redeemed. Crowned. Satisfied. Renewed.”   

Sometimes I chant those verses in plainsong (in his Plainsong Psalter, James Litton renders the psalm in Tone VIII.2). Sometimes I hum Paul Baloche’s “Praise the Lord, O My Soul.” Regardless, it’s as though the psalmist understood my “Expect bad…” mantra. It’s as though he had his own despairing six-word story: “Sinful. Sick. Doomed. Ashamed. Dissatisfied. Decaying.” And it’s as though he perceived that writing a psalm to the Lord was the only way to reverse it: “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” 

I’m glad Paul said to sing “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” (Eph 5:19; Col 3:16); they’re the way we keep telling the true story about our lives. Each kind of singing can have a particular effect. “Spiritual songs” remind us of the freshness of the Lord’s moving ... in our lives right now, in our particular church right here. “Hymns” unite us in the whole church’s celebration of the fact that Jesus Christ is the center of history. “Psalms” keep our own stories centered in God’s story. Thank you, Lord, for your six-word exhortation: “With psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.” 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

We Are Drawn to Christ - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 1/6/2025 •

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 46; Psalm 97; Isaiah 52:7–10; Revelation 21:22–27; Matthew 12:14–21 

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 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 Feast of the Epiphany of Christ.   

Feast of Epiphany. January 6 is, by tradition, the day we remember the three magi from the East who bring to the Christ Child gifts of frankincense (in recognition of his deity), gold (in acknowledgement of his royalty), and myrrh (in anticipation of his sacrificial death): 

Born a king on Bethlehem’s plain; 
Gold I bring to crown Him again 
King forever, ceasing never 
Over us all to reign. 

Frankincense to offer have I;  
Incense owns a Deity nigh;  
Prayer and praising, voices raising,  
Worshiping God on high. 

Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume 
Breaths a life of gathering gloom; 
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding dying 
Sealed in the stone-cold tomb. 

The remarkable thing about the trek of the magi (probably Persian astrologer-priests) is that, according to Matthew 2, they are led to Jesus not by Holy Scripture but by some celestial sign, whether a visible alignment of objects in the heavens, the reading of an astrological chart, or something altogether unique and unknown to us. The point is that the magi represent “the nations” being drawn by their own devices to Israel’s—and therefore the world’s— King of kings and Lord of lords. Praise be! 

Today’s readings in the Daily Office contemplate the wonder of Israel’s God drawing all peoples and all nations to himself as he manifests—the Greek word epiphania means “manifestation”—his glory.  

In Isaiah 52, God redeems Jerusalem in the sight of all the nations. All the nations “see the salvation of our God.” In Revelation 21, the kings of the earth “bring their glory into” the City of God.  

Most remarkably and wonderfully, Matthew 12 portrays Jesus as altogether reticent during his earthly ministry to publish his fame. He is here to heal the sick and bind up the broken—to draw his people and the nations through his quiet love, not bombastic displays of ego. He has come for all the “bruised reeds” and “smoldering wicks.” There will be no small irony in the way he brings “justice to victory.” 

His leadership is one of service, not ego-inflation. His words are encouraging, not rancorous. When one of his followers uses a sword in his defense he says: “Enough!!” (meaning, “Stand down!”). Even as he hangs on the cross he cries out, “Father, forgive them!” There in the sacrifice of the cross he manifests his true deity and royalty. He trusts his Heavenly Father to transform his crown of thorns into a crown of gold. As Matthew says, may you and I hope in his name … and in no other.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+