Preparing for Ash Wednesday - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 2/28/2022
Monday of Last Epiphany, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 25; Proverbs 27:1–5,10–12; Philippians 2:1–13; John 18:15–18,25–27

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)

---

Collect of the Day: The Last Sunday after the Epiphany: O God, who before the passion of your only-begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Christian experience is not the stoic grey of the denial of appetite, of wanting, of desire. It is the embrace of the wild extremes of the emotional spectrum, from the joyous and radiant golds and whites of the shining sun and the ultimate satisfaction of our hearts’ deepest longings, to the mournful and shatteringly cold blacks of death’s night, a night that is darker than dark, lonelier than lonely, and laden with an eternity of sadness.

Yesterday’s lectionary readings gave us glimpses of a future that is nearly too glorious to imagine: Moses’s face temporarily lit up with the glory of God; Christ’s mountain-top transfiguration recalling his pre-existent glory and anticipating his resurrection glory; and Paul’s celebration of our progressive internal transformation into a permanent glory like that of the resurrected, ascended, and returning Christ (Exodus 34:29–35; Luke 9:28–36; 2 Corinthians 3:12–4:2). 

Preparing for Ash Wednesday. In the middle of this Last Week of Epiphany stands the inescapable and unavoidable hurdle: Ash Wednesday. Ashes form a cross on our foreheads, and we hear haunting words: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Remember that there’s no Transfiguration that is not preface to a Crucifixion, nor an Easter without first a Good Friday. On Ash Wednesday, we embrace the dark so we — with Christ — may step into the light. Throughout all of Lent, that is the reality that will be burned into our consciousness. 

With today’s readings, we begin the Lenten journey with Paul’s exquisite hymn to Christ who laid aside his divine prerogatives, to clothe himself in our humanity, suffer a criminal’s ignominious death, and rise to claim “the name that is above every name” (Philippians 2:6–11). All this in the interest of making us into a people who care more about each other than about ourselves (Philippians 2:1–5), and in doing so become lights in a dark world (Philippians 2:15). 

At the same time, today’s readings remind us that we continue to live with our frailty and fallenness:

Living with frailty. Proverbs 27 reminds us how tentative our plans must be, how unsure our grip on our own lives: “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring” (Proverbs 27:1). And, therefore, how humble towards others we must be, and how circumspect in all our relationships: “Let another praise you, and not your own mouth—a stranger, and not your own lips. A stone is heavy, and sand is weighty, but a fool’s provocation is heavier than both. … Better is open rebuke than hidden love … The clever see danger and hide; but the simple go on, and suffer for it” (Proverbs 27:2,3,5,12). 

Living with fallenness. John recounts Peter’s failure even to acknowledge the one who just hours before had washed his feet and called him friend. In doing so, John reminds us how in need of forgiveness we all remain. Peter’s three denials, happily, call forth from the resurrected Jesus a simple threefold query. Jesus doesn’t ask about whether Peter feels guilty about the past or resolute about the future. Simply this: “Do you love me? … Do you love me? … Do you love me?” (John 21:15–17). When we too, like Peter, fail, that’s all he wants to know: “Do you love me?”

Once again, from the Collect for the Day: “…may [we] be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory. … Amen.”

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Adapted from Pixabay

The Four Voices - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 2/25/2022

We’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. 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.  We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office Monday February 28.

---

 “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+

"Happy Little Trees" - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 2/24/2022

We’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. 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.  We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office Monday February 28.

---

“Happy Little Trees”

On her birthday Meg’s husband told her he didn’t love her, and wasn’t sure he ever had. Seven months after the divorce became final he married his girlfriend. By a happy coincidence Meg was out of town visiting my family the day of her ex-husband’s wedding. 

How to spend that day? We discovered that the late Bob Ross, host/star of the TV show The Joy of Painting, had established a teaching studio in nearby New Smyrna Beach, FL. His students still teach people how to paint “happy little trees.” The promise was that in a 3 hour session we could learn the basics, and each student would walk away with a personally completed work of art. We signed up for a class.

It was amazingly fun. We happened to sit on the back row. We couldn’t help but notice the two teenage girls in front of us who didn’t fit the middle-class profile of most of the people in the room. They were accompanied by someone who carried herself like a softer version of SNL’s “church lady.” Nobody in the class was having more fun, or experiencing more delighted surprise, at what was showing up on canvas, than these girls. 

At the end of the class we were all given the opportunity to pay a little extra to have our paintings framed – right there on the spot. Who wouldn’t want to do that after discovering they could actually paint something not just recognizable, but really kind of cool?! 

I failed to catch the wistfulness on the two girls’ faces as they watched classmates’ paintings being framed. But Meg noticed. Quietly, she asked the proprietor if she could pay for the girls’ frames. Stunned, he obliged. The girls were thrilled. 

My throat tightened. I knew that Meg’s divorce had strained her in every way, financially as well as emotionally. Yet as deep as the sorrow she carried within her was, her spiritual resources were deeper. On a day in which she could have nursed bitterness, she created joy for someone else. 

Meg’s act was horizontal worship. The Gospel changes us from self-centered to other-centered. Vertical worship teaches people that they are profoundly loved; the bread and wine that they take in makes them different people. As theologian Alexander Schmemann quips: “At this meal we become what we eat.” That day Meg did a lot more than paint “happy little trees.” She became bread and wine to two girls, a shop owner – and me. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: "Bob Ross FD3S" by zanthrax-dot-nl is licensed under CC BY 2.0

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

Wednesday • 2/23/2022

We’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. 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.  We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office Monday February 28.

---

“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:

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.

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+

Image: Pixabay

"Most Freaking Awesome!" - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 2/22/2022

We’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. 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.  We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office Monday February 28.

---

Worship That Is “Most Freaking Awesome!”

One year, I had to miss Father’s Day because of an out of town speaking engagement. I got home so late that night, I dropped my bags in the front hallway and went to bed. The next morning I got up at my usual zero-dark-thirty, made coffee, and headed for my study.

When I walked bleary-eyed into my study, I caught a “presence” in my peripheral vision. I turned to look, and … Yikes! My coffee went everywhere. Freak out! Goosebumps! A tall person – thin, expressionless, motionless – Was.Standing.There.Staring.At.Me. 

After a few seconds, I realized that the “person” was a life-sized cardboard cutout of Sheldon Cooper from the TV series The Big Bang Theory. It turns out my wife thought this would be a fun welcome home surprise. BAZINGA! I laughed and laughed.  

Ultimate Awe

When heaven and earth converge – or perhaps better – when the thin veil between them gets drawn back, it’s the sort of thing that makes your hair stand on end. God covers Mt. Sinai with “a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them” (Heb 12:18 NRSV). 

According to the writer to the Hebrews there is a “Presence” among us even more more goosebump-raising than Mt. Sinai’s “blazing fire … darkness  … gloom … tempest … trumpet … voice.” “In these last days,” he says, “God has spoken through his Son, the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being” (Heb 1:2-3 NRSV). 

Supremely Amazing

Not only that, but “through the eternal Spirit,” this Son has “offered himself without blemish to God” … to “purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God!” (Heb 9:14 NRSV).  He could do so because he is the true Melchizedek, a priest and king whose ministry could not be cut short by death (Heb 7). As a result, he is now able to be in two places at once: physically in heaven at the Father’s right hand where he is – as the new Melchizedek – “Liturgist (or Worship Leader) in the sanctuary and the true tent” (Heb 8:2), and Spiritually (note the capital S) among us leading us in that worship. There and here at the same time, he pulls back the veil between heaven and earth and creates a reality that is truly goosebump-raising. That is what we taste in worship. 

The fourth century Greek-speaking church created a word for Christ’s goosebump-causing presence among us as our Liturgist and Worship Leader: phrikodestates (pronounced approximately “freak-oh-des-TAH-tays”). It’s an adjective in the superlative degree, based on a verb (phrisso) that means, literally: “shudder,” “get goose bumps,” or metaphorically, “be overcome with awe.” It wouldn’t be far off in modern vernacular to render phrikodestates as “most freaking awesome!”

Commune

For over 1,000 years the locus of awesomeness was the presence of the Lord at the Table. Thus, the 4th century’s Cyril of Jerusalem said that at the Eucharist we “Lift up our hearts to the Lord” because we have come to a “phrikodestates hour.” And rightly has the church celebrated that awesomeness, because our great Liturgist, the new Melchizedek, has brought us to an altar from which “those who serve the tent have no right to eat” (Heb 13:9) – but from which we do! 

Faith by Hearing

In the Reformation of the 16th century, the locus of awesomeness became the presence of the Lord in the proclamation of the Word and the rediscovery of the Bible in worship. And rightly has the Church celebrated that awesomeness, because Our Great Liturgist is among us declaring the Father’s name to us (Heb 2:12a). 

Intercessory Evangelism 

In the great “awakenings” and “revivals” of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, the locus of awesomeness became the presence of the Lord in the conversion of the soul – and by extension in the mission to the world. And rightly has the church celebrated that awesomeness because Our Great Liturgist is at the Father’s right hand, “ever interceding” that the lost will be found and the found will be cleansed, preserved, and gathered to the Father at the end (Heb 7:25). 

Inhabited Praise

In the wake of the Charismatic Renewal, the locus of awesomeness has become the Lord’s “habitation in the praises” (Psalm 22:3). And rightly has the church celebrated that awesomeness because the Risen Christ – Chief Musician in the new order of Melchizedek – “sings hymns” to the Father in the assembly (Heb 2:12b). 

Holy Convergence

Oh for the day when we all know Christ’s phrikodestates presence in all aspects of worship: at the Table, in the Word, in intercession, and in praise!

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

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

Monday • 2/21/2022

We’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. 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.  We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office Monday February 28.

---

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.

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+

Image: Pixabay

* 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. 

We Live in "The Between Times" - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 2/18/2022
Friday of 6 Epiphany, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 102; Genesis 32:22–33:17; 1 John 3:1–10; John 10:31–42

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)

---

Genesis 32–33. There have been several mini-breakthrough moments in Jacob’s relationship with Yahweh: the prophecy of his destiny (Genesis 25); the dream of the stairway between heaven and earth (Genesis 28); the dream preceding the Mizpah covenant (Genesis 31). And ever since his stairway dream, Jacob’s life has taken a turn towards faith. The decisive breakthrough lies here, though, in his wrestling with the angel. To be finally subdued, Jacob must throw his body into one last self-assertive grapple with God. The result is a vision of the “the face of God,” a permanent limp, as well as a new name. Jacob/Israel is finally not just Abraham’s grandson and heir. Now it’s fair to say he’s God’s son. 

1 John 3. We, says 1 John, are children of God, which means our lives increasingly take on the characteristics of our Heavenly Father and his only Begotten Son, our brother. The conclusion that John draws in today’s passage in 1 John is that a life of sinfulness no longer defines us: “No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him” (1 John 3:6). At the same time, John has already told those who abide in Jesus that they are kidding themselves if they pretend they are beyond sin; but they always have access to forgiveness through confession, because Christ is their atoning sacrifice (1 John 1:9–2:2).

The reality is that our lives work themselves out somewhere between an Eeyore-ish fatalism (“Salvation is just moving from one failure to the next”) and Tigger-ish triumphalism (“Good morning, Jesus! I’m so glad I’m getting better and better every day, and growing closer and closer to you!”). We live in “the between times,” no longer slaves to sin, but also not yet able to say we don’t have to be ever vigilant. 

The resources that John offers us in today’s words are: 1) the surety of our Father’s love; 2) the promise that God has committed himself to transform us into “the spittin’ image” of the Father whose children we are; 3) our Christus Victor is destroying the power of the Evil One who would destroy us if left to his own devices; 4) there is an inner compass within us that keeps pointing us in the direction of “doing right” and “loving our brothers and sisters.”

John 10. That’s why it’s so intriguing to find Jesus countering his opponents’ charge of blasphemy by citing to them Psalm 62, which faults Israelite leaders for failing in their duties: “I said, ‘You are gods’” (i.e., I called you and equipped you to exercise God-like care for my people). If God calls mere humans “gods,” how can it be blasphemy for the “one who came into the world” (i.e., the eternal Word who was in the beginning “with God” and who from eternity always “was God” — see John 1:1) to call himself God’s Son? (John 10:36).

The direct point is that Jesus as God’s Son is fully divine. May his name be praised!

The indirect point is that God’s lesser sons and daughters (you and I) are so invested with God’s blessing, so infused with his communicable attributes, and so commissioned to exercise dominion over his creation that there is a way in which they (we) can be referred to as “gods” without violating the distinction between Creator and creature. Accordingly, Paul refers to our salvation as a complex of “justification, sanctification, and glorification” (Romans 5–8). Peter says God has made us “sharers (koinōnoi, partakers, participants) in the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). 

There’s a deep mystery here, one that challenges the imagination. And we, whose perspective tends to be earth-bound, need the challenge. C. S. Lewis probably put it best when, in an oft-quoted passage from his “Weight of Glory” sermon, he said that the destiny of the redeemed is to become “everlasting spendours.” If we could see each other as we will be when this whole “between times” process of mortifying the flesh and living into the reality God’s sanctifying work in our lives is over — if we could see the finished product now, we would be tempted to fall down and worship each other. (Of course, when God’s work is finished, we’ll be beyond that temptation!)

May we walk in God’s calling as children he cherishes, and yield to his hand as he enables us to “do right” and “love our brothers and sisters.” May we worship him in wonder, love, and praise. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Getting Us All the Way Home - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 2/17/2022
Thursday of 6 Epiphany, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 105; Genesis 32:3–21; 1 John 2:18–29; John 10:19–30

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)

---

Some overall perspective on the first 21 verses of Genesis 32: Graciously, Yahweh has intersected Jacob in his waywardness, revealing to Jacob that he is indeed the chosen bearer of the promises made to his grandfather Abraham. For this mission, he was chosen from the womb despite being the second born son: “The older son will serve the younger” (Genesis 25:23).  Somehow, he has not disqualified himself because of his earlier willfulness, deceptions, and maneuverings. Yahweh has seen him through terrible treatment at the hand of his uncle Laban. During his sojourn under Laban, Yahweh has even blessed him with a multitude of sons, and has prospered him with immense flocks. And at Mizpah, Yahweh has shown his readiness to stand guard between him and the resentful and envious uncle who has become his enemy. 

Still, there is a walk of humiliation that Jacob knows he must walk. Geographically, Jacob could have made a more or less straight line from Laban’s tents in Haran to Isaac’s tents at Hebron in south Canaan. But on his journey southwards, he unexpectedly veers east and heads for Esau’s tents in Shechem. Jacob needs reconciliation with the older brother whom he has deceived, and at whose expense he carries the blessing of Abraham. For Jacob, benefiting from God’s blessing lies on the far side of a walk of humiliation. 

. Jacob sends messengers to Esau, and Esau’s only answer is to send 400 men to meet him. Are they coming in friendship? Or are they coming to exact revenge? It’s not difficult, I think, to identify with Jacob’s plight. As commentator Derek Kidner observes, “Nothing could be more ominous than Esau’s silence and his rapid approach in force. Jacob’s reaction is characteristically energetic: he plans, (verses) 7,8 — prays, 9–12 — plans, 13–21 — prays, 22–32 — plans, 33:1–3. It is over-facile to condemn his elaborate moves as faithless … Jacob’s prayers show where his confidence lay.” *

John 10: why Jesus is such a good shepherd. For those of us who, like Jacob, teeter between faith and unfaith (“God you promised … but my brother could just kill me!”), it’s hard to imagine Jesus uttering more comforting words than these: “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.” (John 10:27–30). 

If we recognize Jesus’s voice and find ourselves inclined to follow him, we can be confident that that inclination did not begin with us. We are not that clever, nor that brave, nor (most of us, at least) that humble. (I mean, really — willing to give control of our lives over to somebody else?!) If we recognize Jesus’s voice and find ourselves following him, it is because way back in the counsels of eternity the Father loved us, chose us for himself, and gave us personally to his Son. It is that deeper call to which we have responded. And the comfort of it is that there is nothing — nothing — that can keep the Good Shepherd from getting us all the way home. 

1 John: As under-shepherd, John warns against “antichrists.” In yesterday’s reading in John’s Gospel, Jesus warns us against bad shepherds, hirelings who pretend they care for the sheep but in fact care only for themselves. When John becomes a shepherd to a portion of God’s flock, he senses there are bad shepherds in his churches. In 1 John 2:18, he calls them “antichrists” because they substitute for the true Christ (truly God and truly human) a false Christ (if he is fully God, then he is not fully human; if he is fully human, then he cannot be fully God). John says there are “many antichrists” in his day, And, alas, there have been many since. 

John’s Gospel and his Epistles carry such power because of their finely balanced and pastorally perfect perception that Jesus is fully divine with the authority to save, and fully human with the capacity to absorb all our sins and griefs. Fully divine to bring us Truth (with a capital “T”), and fully human to model and lead us in Life (with a capital “L”). 

Bad shepherds adjust the message because they are “hirelings” who attend more to their market than to their Master. They do so either in the direction of making Jesus a purely divine figure who swoops down just long enough to rescue us for heaven; or they adjust the message in the direction of making Jesus a purely human figure who helps us fantasize about making earth into heaven. A not-quite-human Jesus who has nothing to say about, say, civic responsibility or creation care, or a less-than-divine Jesus who leaves us frustrated and angry and despairing because we never seem to be able to make the Kingdom come. That makes them antichrists, and fully deserving of our inattention. 

May God give us discernment to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd in the words of faith-keeping, hope-instilling, and love-inspiring under-shepherds. Under-shepherds who themselves are being shepherded by one Shepherd who is truly Good. More deeply, may we know that our heavenly Father has lovingly placed us in the strong and secure hands of our faithful Good Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

* Derek Kidner, Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1967), p. 168. 

The Good Shepherd - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 2/16/2022
Wednesday of 6 Epiphany, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 101; Psalm 109; Genesis 31:25–50; 1 John 2:12–17; John 10:1–18

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)

---

Today’s Old Testament and Gospel readings converge in an intriguing way. 

John 10: Jesus is the Good Shepherd who protects his sheep from predators. He shows an affection for his flock unlike that of hirelings, posers who merely pretend to care for them. 

Genesis 31: Jacob’s shepherd is the LORD. After twenty years of abuse under his uncle Laban’s tent, Jacob has tried to leave quietly. But Laban has chased him down, gaslighting him by charging with being an ingrate and a thief (Genesis 31:25–28). God alone, complains Laban, keeps him from punishing Jacob. 

In angry exasperation, Jacob draws on his twenty years of shepherding for Laban to explain how much abuse he has endured at his uncle’s hands, despite which he has conducted himself honorably and fairly. He has cared for Laban’s flocks without stealing any for himself; he has absorbed the loss when he had been unable to protect any of Laban’s sheep from predators or thieves (Genesis 31:38–41). He has been anything but the kind of “hireling” Jesus will later declaim. He has been a “good shepherd,” only to have Laban reward him with deception, lies, and inconstancy. 

However, Jacob has come to understand that there is someone who cares for him. He has Yahweh (as his descendent David will describe it several generations later) as his shepherd: “The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want…” (Psalm 23:1). Jacob recognizes that “the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac” has taken his side, protected him, and prospered him. He has come to know the care of his own Good Shepherd. 

Jacob is on his way to seek out his brother Esau, whom he knows he has profoundly wronged. There he hopes to find reconciliation. Here with Laban, he is content with a non-aggression pact. The so-called Mizpah benediction (Genesis 31:49) calls upon Yahweh to serve as watchman between the two of them, each erecting a testimonial pillar. 

A huge takeaway here is that sometimes our Good Shepherd: 1) gives us courage to cut the tie of a relationship in which we’ve been exploited, 2) the wisdom to build good boundaries, and 3) the strength to move on. 

The Collect for the Fourth Sunday of Easter seems a good conclusion for today’s devotion: O God, whose Son Jesus is the good shepherd of your people: Grant that when we hear his voice we may know him who calls us each by name, and follow where he leads; who, with you and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Stained Glass, Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, FL

Believing is Seeing - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 2/15/2022
Tuesday of 6 Epiphany, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 97; Psalm 99; Genesis 31:1–24; 1 John 2:1–11; John 9:18–41

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)

---

The French artist Georges Rouault, himself a “sighted” person, recalls having escorted a blind mathematics professor on a walk. On the walk, the blind man recited poetry — a world to which Rouault was “blind” — all the while the blind man’s “eyes turned toward the sky.” Hearing the flow of the poetry, Rouault found himself ruminating over which of them was more limited in the perception of reality. 

Rouault would later render the scene in a most memorable panel of his Miserere, Plate 55. In that plate one man is guiding another. One is blind, the other is not. Normally, the “sighted” person would lead the blind person, as had been the case when Rouault led his blind friend. But in the  scene Rouault creates, the roles are reversed. In the lead is the blind man, his blank eyes lifted to the heavens, while the “sighted” person follows, his world-weary head bent down toward the ground. Rouault titles it, “Sometimes the blind have comforted those who see.”*

John 9: when believing is seeing. John’s narration of the story of Jesus’s healing of the man blind from birth makes the very same point. Over the course of this story, the man who “once was blind but now I see” comes to see more than just the world around him. The eyes of his heart become gradually open to the reality of who Jesus is, and increasingly open to what true life is. At first Jesus is just the guy who heals him. The man barely catches his name: “The man called Jesus made mud, … They said to him, ‘Where is he?’ He said, ‘I do not know’” (John 9:11b,12a). 

Later, when pressed by the Pharisees to account for why he thinks Jesus could feel the freedom to heal on the sabbath, the man surmises, “He is a prophet” (John 9:17). Pressed further, he says (I phrase), “Look, OK, you all call him a sinner. All I know is that I was blind, now I see. … Could it be that deep down you really want to become his followers? … If this man were not from God, he could do nothing” (John 9:25,27). He’s getting it, and he’s willing to be rejected by his questioners for telling the truth about what his experience of Jesus has taught him! 

Finally, Jesus meets with him one-on-one and poses the question: “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” (John 9:35). That’s a loaded question, calling up the image of the Messiah from heaven that Daniel had predicted (see Daniel 7:13–14). The man expresses his willingness to believe, if only he knew in whom he was to believe. Jesus forthrightly acknowledges his own identity: “You have seen (what a pregnant term!) him, and the one speaking with you is he.” The man’s response shows just how much his eyes have been opened: “‘Lord, I believe.’ And he worshiped him” (John 9:37–38). The one who used to be blind now sees both with his once dead physical eyes and with his once dead spiritual eyes. 

Meanwhile, sadly, the Pharisees, stewards of God’s Word and those trained to discern true teaching and identify false, are stuck in the dark. They are blind to the fact that the Light of the World has dawned among them. Claiming to see heavenly things, their heads are bent to the ground and their eyes, though open, are unseeing. “Jesus said, ‘I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.’ Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, ‘Surely we are not blind, are we?’ Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains’” (John 9:39–41). If only, like Rouault, they would admit that despite their physical sight there was a whole new world they could not “see” — and to which only the experience of this formerly blind person could open them! 

There’s much to ponder here for those of us who sense we’ve been awakened to a world beyond what a radically secularized world has defined as “reality.” God give us grace to offer with humility our arms and with good humor our insights to those whose world-weary heads are bent to the ground with blank eyes. 

Genesis 31: the light begins to shine for Jacob. Change has taken hold in Jacob. The light has begun to dawn for him. The lens through which he has begun to see life is no longer secular, but sacred: “But the God of my father has been with me. … but God did not permit Laban to harm me. … Thus God has taken away the livestock of your father, and given them to me … Then the angel of God said to me in the dream, ‘Jacob,’ and I said, ‘Here I am!’” (Genesis 31:6,7,9,11). 

1 John: walking in the light. When the eyes of our hearts have been enlightened, we see ourselves in a different light. We are able to be honest about our sins because we know they have been covered: “But if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous…the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 2:1b–2a). 

Knowing we have been loved from on high, we find we want to love back. And we find that love obeys the commandments: “…whoever obeys his word, truly in this person the love of God has reached perfection” (1 John 2:5). 

Old commandments become new, from not profaning the sabbath to not coveting our neighbors’ possessions. The holiness and rest of one day in seven become a means of lovingly sacralizing every day and of flourishing in the six days of living out our calling. Contented gratitude for God’s kind provision for us frees us to love neighbors whom we no longer envy, but whose well-being we seek. “Beloved,” says John, “I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word that you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new commandment that is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.” (1 John 2:7–8). 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: from Postage Stamp, 1961. 

* “L’aveugle parfois a console le voyant.” 

God Will Win the Day - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 2/14/2022
Monday of 6 Epiphany, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 89; Genesis 30:1–24; 1 John 1:1–10; John 9:1–17

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)

---

Genesis 30: children born of grace. The utter grace of it all! The Bible never lets us forget that. The twelve tribes of Israel, easily romanticized as the pillars of God’s people, came about through the bitter rivalry between Jacob’s wives, one wanted (Rachel) and one unwanted (Leah). Despite all the machinations and bruised relationships, it’s pure grace that causes unwanted Leah to become mother to Israel’s priestly and kingly lines (Levi and Judah — and ultimately, to Jesus). The same grace gives near-to-despairing Rachel a single child, the last to be fathered by Jacob. That son’s story will crown the Genesis account. The exile of this son, Joseph, to Egypt forecasts both the exodus under Moses and the figure of a future suffering and overcoming Savior. 

When we feel ourselves surrounded by bad actors who manipulate their way into favor and power, especially in the name of God, this portion of Genesis can be, ironically, a bracing and encouraging read. Somehow, God will win the day. He always does. His redemptive purposes stand. 

John 9: the light that enlightens. In John 9, the eternal Light of the World engages our blindness and confusion. Jesus comes upon a man who has been blind from birth. His disciples pose what must have seemed to them like a deep theological question: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). Jesus dismisses their question: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him” (John 9:3). 

In a world conditioned by sin and colored by the Fall, there is no one-to-one correspondence between a person’s behavior or personal sinfulness and their physical health, or of their social status for that matter. Confusion over that fact is itself a part of the blindness of sin. Disability is not a sign of moral deficiency. Nor is health an index of spiritual well-being. Nor is privilege a sign of worthiness. As this story unfolds, we will see that the religious leaders are more blind than the man who can’t see with his physical eyes: the eyes of their hearts are blind to the Light of the World! 

Jesus presses past the speculative theological confusion about the origin of suffering. He spits on the ground and makes mud from his spittle and the dirt. Don’t read past that too quickly! Heaven’s Rescuer combines his spit with the dust of our origin (“from dust you came”) to heal this son of Adam. Jesus spreads the mud on the man’s eyes and sends him to a pool (the name of which means “Sent”). “Go wash,” he tells him. And in that washing the lights come on! Small wonder the early church called baptism an “enlightenment.”* John’s Gospel announces early on that “in him was life, and the life was the light of mankind” (John 1:4 NET). 

1 John: what we’ve seen with our eyes. Now, if the apostle John authored the gospel that bears his name (and I think he did) and if that same John penned the Johannine epistles (and I think he did), it’s easy to imagine him capturing his own reaction to just such a sign: “…what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it…” (1 John 1b–2a). To the healing of the man born blind add turning water into wine at Cana (John 2), healing the royal official’s son in Capernaum and the paralytic at Bethesda (John 4 & 5), the feeding of the 5,000 his walking on the water (John 6), and the raising of Lazarus (John 11). Crowning it all, of course, is Jesus’s resurrection from the dead, when he shows the disciples “his hands and his side” (John 20:20) and even invites Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe” (John 20:27). 

The grace that worked through the dysfunction of Jacob’s family was no abstraction. That Grace is capitalized. That Grace walked in sandaled feet. That Grace merged heaven and earth. That Grace spat and sent, healed and instructed — and died and rose again. Because he rose from the dead, that Grace comes still, and heals still. For now, we experience but partial healing, whether physical or emotional, psychological or relational. One day, we will experience full healing of body, soul, and spirit. One day, as John says later in 1 John,) “when [Jesus[ is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Then it will be our turn to join our voice to John’s “what we have seen, with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands!” May that Grace give us courage and strength and hope, 

… so that we may be blessed this day. Amen!

Reggie Kidd+

Image: "Jesus Feet" by Ben Lowery is licensed under CC BY 2.0

* Gregory of Nazianzus, Festal Orations, translation with introduction and commentary by Nonna Verna Harrison (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 2008), Oration 40, “On Baptism,” ch. 3.