It's Free - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 2/2/2023 •
Week of 4 Epiphany 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 70; Psalm 71; Isaiah 55:1–13; Galatians 5:1–15; Mark 8:27–9:1 

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 fourth week of Epiphany, the “manifestation” of God’s glory in Jesus Christ.   

“For freedom Christ has set us free.” — Galatians 5:1. Different aspects of the Bible’s theme of “freedom” converge in an unusually rich fashion in today’s readings in Isaiah and Galatians.   

Free to eat. Back in chapter 25, Isaiah had prophesied the day when, at the end of time, God will host a feast of the richest food and finest wine. In the present, Isaiah says here in chapter 55, daily fare is offered: wine, milk, bread, rich food. Its cost? Nothing. “Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price” (Isaiah 55:1). God is a generous host. It’s hard not to see here a forecast of Jesus who declares himself “Bread from Heaven,” who feeds the multitudes during his earthly ministry, and now feeds his followers from his place as ascended Lord of the Eucharistic Feast. Come! Buy! It’s Free!

Image: "Dinner at Buenos Aires Café in Austin, Texas" by vxla is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

Free to understand. To many of us, the Bible is a closed book until something happens to open it up to us. However we get there—responding to a knock on a dorm room door, picking up a hotel room Gideon’s Bible—what we experience is that God’s book begins to speak with uncanny power. Isaiah says God’s Word does not return to him empty, “but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11). God be praised for speaking into our lives, and for the free gift of the capacity to understand!  

Free to say, “I’m pardoned!” At the bottom of so many of our social pathologies, relational dysfunctions, and feelings of personal inadequacy is a debilitating sense of guilt or shame. We know we have violated whatever code we grew up with. We sense that if people knew our darkest secrets, they would shun us. Until, that is, someone with the authority to do so says, “All is forgiven. I have covered your guilt. I have taken away your shame.” Isaiah’s word of grace to the “unrighteous” and the “wicked” is: “let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon” (Isaiah 55:7). God doesn’t reckon accounts the way others do; not the way our own consciences do. That’s what Isaiah means when he continues, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8). With him pardon is abundant, and mercy is free!  

Free to sing. Praise pours forth from the hearts of those who have been set free from guilt and shame. It’s almost as though we hear creation singing along with us. “For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands” (Isaiah 55:12).  

Free to say, “No!” Paul means it when he says, “For freedom Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1). We are free to resist false imperatives that would make us live as though we were still subject to punishment for guilt or embarrassment at shame. Christ sets us free from demands of self-immolation, self-punishment, extra-curricular acts of obedience, and burdensome human-made disciplines. The reason for Paul’s agony of soul in his letter to the Galatians is that he fears these believers will succumb to just such demands. If they do, he knows they will lose all the joy that Christ has for them.  

Free not to indulge the flesh. Submitting to the knife of circumcision will undo the unique, once-for-all shedding of Christ’s blood that alone can bring freedom from sin’s condemnation. “Listen! I, Paul, am telling you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you” (Galatians 5:2). Further, that seemingly super-obedient act of (literally) punishing oneself in the flesh will actually awaken desires of the flesh. Church history has proven Paul right time and again: legalism leads to license. Moralism leads to moral failure. “You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters” … a freedom not “to indulge your flesh” (Galatians 5:13a,c).  

Free not to savage my brothers and sisters. And legalism and moralism lead to lovelessness. There’s a profound relational reason why Paul warns the Galatians not to undergo the knife of circumcision: they will turn right around and (metaphorically) take the blade to one another. “If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another” (Galatians 5:15). That’s always, always, always the way that grace-abandoning legalism works.  

Free to love and free to serve. The reason that Christ underwent the curse of the law for us was so that a deeper purpose of the law could find fulfillment in our lives. When the Bible stops threatening us with death and condemnation (since they’ve been borne by Another!), the Bible begins to show us how to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, and how to love our neighbors as ourselves (Mark 12:30–31; Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18). That’s why as hard as Paul works to keep the Galatians from going back “under the law,” he works just as hard to show them the deeper point of the law: “…the only thing that counts is faith working through love. … through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Galatians 5:6b,13b,14).  

Live in that freedom, and be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Jesus Came To Be a Ransom for Many - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 2/1/2023 •
Week of 4 Epiphany 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 72; Isaiah 54:1–10(11–17); Galatians 4:21–31; Mark 8:11–26 

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 fourth week of Epiphany. We are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. 

Mark. It’s almost comical that after recent events having to do with scarcity of food, Jesus’s traveling retinue discovers aboard ship that, well, somebody forgot to bring bread. Jesus seizes upon the opportunity to press his disciples to consider what he’s been trying to teach them about that very subject: bread. God, he would have them understand, will bring salvation to Israel (twelve baskets of overflow at the feeding of the 5,000) and to the nations (seven baskets of overflow at the feeding of the 4,000) not by the way of the Pharisees (the reformist party of the people) nor by the way of the Herodians (the accommodationist party of the aristocracy). “Do you not yet understand?” (Mark 8:21): Personal piety and moral reform won’t save. Nor will political machinations. The point of the rest of Mark’s gospel is this: God will bring salvation to Israel and the nations through the Son of Man who will give his life “as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).  

Today’s passage is the hinge on which Mark’s Gospel pivots to this theme. Mark’s is the only gospel to tell the remarkable story of the blind man who, at Jesus’s first touch gains just enough sight to see blurred “men like trees walking,” and who thus needs a second touch from Jesus for his blindness to be completely cured, and for him to “see everything clearly” (Mark 8:25).  

The account is a brilliant set up to Peter’s confession (in tomorrow’s reading) that Jesus is indeed the Christ (Peter “sees” the truth, but only with blurred vision—Mark 8:29). Peter’s confession requires Jesus’s further explanation that the mission of the Son of Man (i.e., the Christ) is to suffer, be rejected, die, and rise again (Peter and the other disciples must “see” this truth in order to “see everything clearly”—Mark 8:31–33). Twice more in chapters nine and ten, Jesus will have to outline his messianic mission (Mark 9:30-32; 10:32–34). He will round out the entire section with the healing of Blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46–52), a miracle that does not have to be repeated, coming as it does on the far side of the full explanation that, “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).  

There is good reason for the BCP’s prayer: “Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace” (BCP, p. 99, 220, 272, 420). Life and peace come by means of the cross, not by self-fixes, and not by system-fixes.  

Galatians. Paul rejects the self-fix of circumcision and the law (Galatians 3–4). Cutting one’s flesh and trying really hard to be good do not give one power over the flesh. That power lies only in the cross of Christ and in the gift of the Spirit that comes with the cross (see Galatians 5–6).  

Isaiah urges jubilant song at the prospect of political liberation from slavery in Babylon (Isaiah 54). But in the long view, for Isaiah, real liberation awaits the saving death of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. Paul expands on Isaiah’s meaning by showing that what counts, therefore, is not being circumcised into “the Jerusalem below” but being baptized into “the Jerusalem above” (compare Isaiah 52:1 with Galatians 3:26–29; 4:26). Isaiah’s ultimate promise is that “though mountains may fall,” the Lord’s love is so steadfast that genuine redemption will come—what Jesus wants his disciples to see is that that day has dawned. Finally, the day will be fully upon us when Christ returns and his church’s “Maker is [her] husband” — when the “covenant of peace” is finalized —when the Jerusalem that is now above comes to a renewed earth (Isaiah 54:5,10; Revelation 21-22).  

In the meantime, the Lord Jesus offers the way of his cross as the way of life and peace — a way that is beyond self- and system-fixes. For just as he gave bread to the multitudes, and just as he gave his body on the cross, so even now he gives himself in the Eucharistic feast, Bread from Heaven—that you and I may truly find our life in him, and readily extend our arms in love and peace to those who do not yet know him.  

Collect for Mission. Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your Name. Amen. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Your God Reigns - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 1/31/2023 •  
Week of 4 Epiphany 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 61; Psalm 62; Isaiah 52:1–12; Galatians 4:12–20; Mark 8:1–10 

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. This is Tuesday of the fourth week of Epiphany, and we are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.   

Although I grew up in a church-going family, I think my dad aimed his life-counsel at protecting me in case God didn’t exist. One of his sayings was, “Son, don’t let your highs be too high, or your lows too low. You’ll crash from the one. You may never come out of the other.”  

Protect yourself, in other words, from your feelings. The way you do that is by never letting yourself feel too good or too bad. It was, I guess, his own version of Aristotle’s “golden mean,” or Goldilocks’s “not too hot, not too cold, but just right … not too hard, not too soft, but just right.”  

It was a pretty good strategy … until Jesus Christ came barging in. To open oneself to the hope of resurrection is to accept the prospect of ecstatic joy. But resurrection necessarily follows crucifixion; if there’s joy, then there’s also sadness, if ecstasy, then also agony. If the Christian story is true, then feeling the whole complex of emotions is simply being true to reality.  

Isaiah and Jesus: Incomparable joy. Isaiah anticipates in the short term the nation of Israel’s deliverance from captivity in Babylon and her return to her homeland. At the same time, as we have seen, Isaiah laces his prophecies with long term hopes for cosmic renewal through Israel’s coming Messiah and King (Isaiah 7:14; 9:2–7; 11:1–9; 25:6–9; 28:14–18; 35:1–10).  

Accordingly, Isaiah’s tone sometimes, as in today’s passage, rises to heights of exuberant joy. “Awake, awake, put on your strength, O Zion! Put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city” (Isaiah 52:1). The time for celebration has come! The sentinels on her walls “sing for joy; for in plain sight they see the return of the Lord to Zion. Break forth into singing…” (Isaiah 52:8–9). Jerusalem’s sentinels sing because they spy messengers on the horizon bearing the good news that captives are returning. They hear the messenger bearing tidings of peace: “Your God reigns!”  

Image: Berthold Werner, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

The New Testament reverberates with the worldwide annunciation of the greater peace won by the incarnate Lord, come to give his life for the ultimate release from the captivity of sin—for Israel and for the world. In the sixth chapter of Mark’s Gospel, while on Israelite soil, Jesus feeds 5,000, and fills twelve baskets with the overflow. Twelve baskets, commentators suggest, represent the renewal of the twelve tribes of Israel. In today’s reading, Jesus stands east of the River Jordan in the non-Israelite Golan Heights, having ministered on the coast near classical (pagan) Tyre and most recently in the Decapolis in ancient (and also pagan) Syria, he feeds 4,000. His disciples collect seven baskets from the overflow. Seven baskets, commentators suggest, recall the displacement of seven nations during the conquest under Joshua (Deuteronomy 7:1b, Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites; Acts 13:19).  

With the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus symbolizes he is Manna for Israel; with the feeding of the 4,000, he expands the metaphor to being bread for the world. In both feedings, he foreshadows the fourfold Eucharistic action of taking bread, blessing it, breaking it, and distributing it (Mark 6:41; 8:6). In doing so, he opens up a world of joy and thanksgiving to us, for with his coming to bless Israel and the world, he proclaims, “Your God reigns!”  

Galatians: Utter perplexity. Because Paul sees the Galatians tossing aside that joy to go back under the harsh yoke of the law, he confesses his dismay and perplexity. It touches him deeply. He reminds the Galatians of how deep their affection for him had run when he first brought them the good news of their freedom from captivity to sin and death through Christ: you “welcomed me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus … had it been possible, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me” (either referring to the unnamed physical affliction that had occasioned his visit to Galatia, or metaphorically alluding to an ancient story of a comrade sacrificing his eyes to gain his mate’s freedom from prison—Galatians 4:14–15).  

It is precisely because Paul has allowed himself to know the joy of all that Christ has done for him that he is so grieved at the Galatians’ flirtation with catastrophic error. He describes himself as experiencing something like labor pains, hoping and praying that the Galatians would find Christ’s life taking hold of them once again. He is baffled that having tasted such joy, they would toss it aside for what he knows will only bring misery: trying, trying, trying to compensate for the fact that the shedding of their own blood will never silence their conscience’s cry, “It’s just not enough!” Christ’s blood is enough, Paul knows. And when his blood is enough, the floodgates open for tears of everlasting, thankful joy.  

I pray that you and I are similarly touched by the plight of people in our lives who know their lives are irreparably broken—or perhaps worse, think they have their own “fix.” I pray we have the grace to reach out as boldly and caringly as Paul. But more, I pray we know the everlasting and thankful joy of the full redemption on offer in who Christ is, what he has done, what he continues to do, and what he will do to “make all things new.” I pray we know Isaiah’s sweet song of redemption: “Your God reigns!” 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Eden Restored - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 1/30/2023 •
Week of 4 Epiphany 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 56; Psalm 57; Isaiah 51:17–23; Galatians 4:1–11; Mark 7:24–37 

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 fourth week of Epiphany, and we are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. 

Throughout his fifty-first chapter, Isaiah piles up images of the good things that Yahweh is doing for his people Israel, and through them for all creation. Isaiah foresees in his people’s release from bondage a return to the innocence of Eden, “the garden of the Lord” (Isaiah 51:3). The wonderful expansion of God’s people from “one” to “many” that they saw under Abraham and Sarah (the only mention of Sarah in the Old Testament outside of Genesis) will happen all over again (Isaiah 51:2). Indeed, just as Yahweh had promised that all the nations would be blessed through Abraham, now the (pagan) “coastlands wait for me, and for my arm they hope” (Isaiah 51:5). The new exodus that lies ahead will imitate the first exodus’s destruction of evil in the waters of the Red Sea (the demonic spirit-powers Rahab/Leviathan*—compare Job 3:8; 26:12; 41:1; Psalm 74:14; 89:10; Isaiah 27:1). The result is an entire creation being made new, “for the heavens will vanish like smoke … but my salvation will be forever, and my deliverance will never be ended” (Isaiah 51:6).  

To these images, Isaiah adds yet one more. He depicts Israel as staggering about under the weight of her torments, having “drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his wrath, [and having] drunk to the dregs the bowl of staggering” (Isaiah 51:17). The prophet sees that the severity of Yahweh’s discipline has left his people beleaguered, dispirited, and despondent. In his mercy, though, now Yahweh says, “See, I have taken from your hand the cup of staggering; you shall drink no more from the bowl of my wrath” (Isaiah 51:22). Yahweh wants his people to know that their destiny is not one of despair. Instead, their lot is to serve as the fulcrum for the release of all the world from its captivity to sin and sickness, disease, dejection, and death.  

Image: "In The Garden of Eden" by mysza831 is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

Mark. In Isaiah 51, Yahweh puts that cup of wrath into the hands of Israel’s earthly oppressors (the nations who have been mistreating her). In the New Testament, Yahweh comes in person to the earth he created and loves; he comes to drink the cup himself. Jesus will ask the sons of Zebedee, “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?” (Mark 10:38). So horrible is the anticipation of that cup—not the mere fact of death, but death-as-undergoing-the-wrath—that in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus pleads, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). Fortunately for us, Jesus included the “if” and the “yet.” And so, the Father permits his dear Son’s drinking of the cup of wrath, that we might rise with him to sobriety, to sanity, to salvation, and to strength.  

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is walking out the fulfillment of the promises made in Isaiah. Jesus travels west into non-Israelite territory to Tyre on the Mediterranean coast. There he finds exactly what Isaiah predicted: “coastlands wait for me, and for my arm they hope.” Jesus responds to the persistent faith of a pagan mother and delivers her child from demonic oppression (Mark 7:24–30). Then he goes east of the River Jordan—again, into non-Israelite territory—and performs the messianic acts that Isaiah had prophesied: “he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak” (Mark 7:37; and see Isaiah 35:5–6).  

The conquering lion is on the loose, and the cup of the wine of wrath is about to be replaced with the cup of blessing. Eden is being restored. Israel is once again rising to her call to bless the nations. Evil is on the run.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+  

Christ Is Present in Every Moment - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 1/27/2023 •
Week of 3 Epiphany 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 40; Psalm 54; Isaiah 50:1–11; Galatians 3:15–22; Mark 6:47–56 

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 third week of the Epiphany of Christ.  

Isaiah. Laced throughout Isaiah 40–55 are four “Servant Songs” (42:1–4; 49:1–6; 50:4–9; 52:13–53:12). As God’s servant, the nation Israel increasingly takes on the role of vicarious sufferer for the sins of the world. This suffering has received brief and anticipatory mention in the first two songs (Isaiah 42:4; 49:7). Today’s passage expands the theme, as Isaiah, with “the tongue of a teacher,” finds redemptive purpose in all that Israel has endured in facing the consequences of her own rebellion against Yahweh: “I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting” (Isaiah 50:6). Further, Isaiah hints here in Isaiah 50 at something that will become explicit in his fourth Servant Song (Isaiah 53): it is one specific Israelite, ultimately, who will be preeminent in suffering.  

The Lord  God  has opened my ear, 
    and I was not rebellious, 
    I did not turn backward. … 

The Lord  God  helps me; 
    therefore I have not been disgraced; 
therefore I have set my face like flint, 
    and I know that I shall not be put to shame; 
    he who vindicates me is near (Isaiah 50:5,7–8).  

Image: Adapted from  
Ivan Aivazovsky, Jesus Walking on Water 1890 

Galatians. The glory of Paul’s writing is that he “gets it”! He gets it that God’s design was for a representative Israelite to suffer sin’s curse on behalf of all. He gets it that in Calvary’s shameful cross, a magnificent plan—a plan whose rough contours had been elegantly laid out in Scripture ahead of time—had come together.  

In today’s passage in Galatians, Paul argues that God’s promises to Abraham always had one single offspring in mind (Paul’s point of departure is that the original text of Genesis 12:7 is “seed” in the singular). Israel’s blessing of the nations was to come through one specific descendant of Abraham. Paul also argues that the giving of the Mosaic law was never intended to nullify the promise made to Abraham. So, God never intended to set aside a relationship based on faith with one based on works.  

Paul “gets it” that Christ’s incarnation is an embodiment of God’s faithfulness to his promises. Christ’s obedience is a demonstration of his own trust in his Father, and of his faithfulness to the divine mission given him by the Scriptures and the counsels of heaven. Paul “gets it” that the response that such faithfulness evokes from us can only be an answering faith. And thus, Paul concludes today’s passage with the stunning declaration (again, I prefer the New English Translation): “But the scripture imprisoned everything under sin so that the promise could be given—because of the faithfulness of Jesus Christ—to those who believe” (Galatians 3:22).  

Mark. “And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened” — Mark 6:51b–52. Jesus’s disciples, says Mark, couldn’t understand Jesus’s power over the wind and the waves because they hadn’t understood the miracle of the loaves and the fishes earlier that day. What the feeding of the 5,000 from such a tiny supply foreshadows is the provision of forgiveness and life for the world from the self-giving of the one—Jesus Christ, “who gives his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Jesus’s disciples can’t understand that Jesus is Lord of Creation until they understand that he is Lord of Redemption.  

That’s a lesson for us as well.  Before we look to Christ, the Lord of Creation, to fix our circumstances, our health, or our world, we do well to give him, as Lord of Redemption, thanks for releasing us by his ransoming death and victorious resurrection, from the captivity of sin, from the despair of death, and from the emptiness of life without God.  

I pray all our lives today are full of wonder at Christ’s presence in everything we undertake; at the genuine sense of the Spirit’s leading in every moment; and at the utter faithfulness of our Heavenly Father for everything we need.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+  

No One is Beyond His Concern - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 1/26/2023 •
Week of 3 Epiphany 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 50; Isaiah 49:13–23; Galatians 3:1–14; Mark 6:30–46 

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 third week of Epiphany, the “manifestation” of God’s glory in Jesus Christ.  

Isaiah. In the face of our faithlessness, God’s faithfulness will prevail! In the face of our feeling unwanted, neglected, and abused, God’s mercy will prevail! In the face of the ground shifting beneath our feet and our losing our bearings in life, God’s steadfast love will prevail! That’s Isaiah’s message for God’s people. On the cusp of their release from Babylonian captivity he points to Yahweh’s comfort and compassion, and he cries out, “Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing!” (Isaiah 49:13). It’s difficult for God’s people to join the song. The hurt is so fresh, so real. Israel still feels forsaken and forgotten (Isaiah 49:14).  

Isaiah’s response is one for the ages: Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? — Isaiah 49:16a. Isaiah invites us to consider what is to him an unthinkable scenario, in order to make us understand that Yahweh’s “forgetfulness” towards his people is no more thinkable than that. This illustration’s power grows when you realize how truly thinkable the scenario has become. So many unwanted babies not making it out of the womb. So many adults in counseling offices recollecting a childhood of want, neglect, and abuse.  

Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands…. — Isaiah 49:15b,16a. For Yahweh, there is no such thing as an unwanted baby. No moment of childhood neglect has been unnoticed, nor any instance of want or abuse. Not a single person has been forgotten. No one who has entrusted themselves to his care is beyond his concern. Every tear has been stored up in his bottle (Psalm 56:8). So far did his commitment to our well-being go, that one day, Yahweh took to himself hands just like ours, stretched them out on a cross, and inscribed our names in his hands with nails.  

Looking ahead a few short chapters, Isaiah will prophesy a Suffering Servant who will bear our infirmities, carry our diseases, be wounded for our transgressions, be crushed for our iniquities, be punished that we may be made whole, and be bruised for our healing (Isaiah 53:4–6). 

In his epistle to the Galatians (his charter of Christian freedom) the apostle Paul will offer this simple summary: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’” (Galatians 3:13, quoting Deuteronomy 21:23). He was cursed for every disobedient and seemingly lost and forgotten son of Abraham and daughter of Sarah, “in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Galatians 3:14).  

And all along, it depends on God’s own faithfulness, not ours. To be sure, the call, indeed the obligation, for us is to believe in his provision and strength, rather than our own efforts, our own “works of the law.” That is, after all, what Isaiah was calling for—trusting in the promises of the God who likens himself to a mother who would never abandon her children, no matter what.  

I pray you rest secure in that knowledge for yourself.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Christ Makes All People Worthy - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday, • 1/25/2023 •
Week of 3 Epiphany 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:49–72; Isaiah 49:1–12; Galatians 2:11–21; Mark 6:13–29 

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 third week of Epiphany. We are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. One of the great truths that comes to light in the season of Epiphany is that Christ makes all people worthy.  

A light to the nations 

During the Babylonian exile, Yahweh had exhorted his children to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:7). Because, in the end, God’s loving purposes include both Israel and the nations. On the far side of her exile, not only will Israel know vindication for all the time of being “deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers” (Isaiah 49:7), she will be “a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6). 

Israel wasn’t being rescued from exile just for her own benefit, says Isaiah. Even in announcing the good news of her release from captivity, Isaiah called on her to look beyond herself to the entire Gentile world he had always intended to bless through her. 

Crucified with Christ 

To the surprise of his Jewish contemporaries, Paul saw his ministry of Christ’s gospel as being a part of Israel’s mission to be that very light to the nations. As he declares to his fellow Jews in the synagogue of Pisidian Antioch: “It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken first to you. Since you reject it and judge yourselves to be unworthy of eternal life, we are now turning to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us, saying, ‘I have set you to be a light for the Gentiles, so that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth’” (Acts 13:46–47).  

During his first missionary journey (Acts 13–14), Paul witnesses Israel’s Messiah bringing salvation to the nations. Peter too witnesses this amazing new thing that Isaiah had prophesied: he receives an angelic vision on the rooftop of Jason’s house in Joppa and is present at the Spirit’s descending on Gentiles in the centurion Cornelius’s house (Acts 10–11). Peter has seen for himself Israel’s Messiah beginning to bring salvation to the nations.  

A profound part of the message of salvation to the nations is that Christ not only makes us clean before him, he makes us clean in one another’s eyes as well. Christ makes all people worthy of God’s, and one another’s, company. As a result, while Peter is visiting the church in Syrian Antioch, he and Paul both experience and enjoy table fellowship among Jewish and Gentile believers in Christ. Christ’s blood on the cross—not any individual’s blood in circumcision—makes a person clean, and furnishes entrance into fellowship with God and his people. Paul gets that. So does Peter.  

Except for one thing. Peter steps away from the table of fellowship when some of his Jewish Christian brothers arrive from Jerusalem. Peter never offers a rationale for his behavior. But Paul is furious, because he connects the dots. If Jewish and Gentile believers can’t eat together, it means Christ’s shed blood did not accomplish forgiveness of sins and make us acceptable to God. It means we return to the uncleanness of our sins—all of us!—and to our tribal loyalties. Thus, he rebukes Peter.  

And … in his agitation—a holy agitation, I submit—Paul pens a letter to the churches of Galatia. They are entertaining the notion of submitting to the knife of circumcision, thinking the procedure was necessary to make their salvation sure. This letter has served as a charter of freedom to all churches ever since. To shed their own blood would be to say that Christ’s blood—his crucifixion—wasn’t enough. Paul wants them to know that Christ’s blood was absolutely enough. And he wants to lay out its full benefits for them: in Christ, they have everything they need to know forgiveness of sins, and full membership in the household of God.  

The keynote verse for the entire letter comes from today’s passage. It’s worth time prayerfully pondering its implications (I prefer the New English Translation): “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So the life I now live in the body, I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

When People Think They Know - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 1/24/2023 •
Week of 3 Epiphany 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 45; Isaiah 48:12–21; Galatians 1:18–2:10; Mark 6:1–13 

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. This is Tuesday of the third week of Epiphany, and we are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.  

There are two equal and opposite ways of getting Jesus wrong. One is so to deify him as to his diminish his humanity (as though “and the Word was God” negated “and the Word became flesh”). The other is so to humanize him as to dismiss his deity (as though “and the Word became flesh” overrode “and the Word was God”).  

John’s Gospel (which we were reading during Christmas and Epiphany) pointedly shows the balance: Jesus is the enfleshment of the great I AM. And the touch of God-in-flesh transfigures those whom he touches. Thus, his encounters with the likes of Nicodemus, the woman at the well, the lame man beside the healing pool, the man blind from birth, Lazarus in the grave.  

The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are more subtle about it, but they stand with John. In today’s gospel passage, Mark (which we are reading during After Epiphany) shows the folly of making Jesus too familiar. Where does such “wisdom” come from in this man who is but “the carpenter” (Mark 6:2,3)? Where does such “power” come from in this mere “son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” (also Mark 6:2,3). The thought that this mere son of Nazareth may be more than merely a carpenter, a son, and a brother offends people of his hometown (Mark 6:3).  

Jesus admonishes them for their over-familiarizing of him: “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house” (Mark 6:4). In different situations, he confirms that he is “more than a carpenter”—as he does when he heals a lame man by forgiving his sins (Mark 2:1–12), or silences the winds and waves (Mark 4:35–41). 

But here in Nazareth, he demurs. He, shockingly perhaps, allows his deeds of power to be restricted by people’s lack of faith (Mark 6:5). When Mark says “he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few…,” we should read this saying in a nuanced way. When you’ve come to your limit in a dead-end conversation, you may wisely decide to shut it down with the grace of, “I just can’t do this right now,” rather than search your brain for the perfect (and maybe relationship-ending) put-down, like, “You always were a complete imbecile.”  

Jesus is astonished at them. They fail to recognize the gift that stares them in the face merely because his face is too familiar to them. Jesus shows disappointment rather than wrath, restraint rather than resentment. In doing so, he gives room for them to reconsider and reassess. He takes his ministry elsewhere, for now, and even uses the opportunity to begin to share his powers with his disciples. Throughout, Jesus opens a door on the subtlety and the complexity of the duality of his identity both as “Son of God” and “Son of Man.” 

One thing that a passage like today’s in Mark demonstrates is that when people think they know Jesus too well, they are liable to get him wrong. There’s a warning here even for people in his church, people like you and me. I pray God’s grace for you and me, that we render him the awe, respect, and circumspection that his wisdom and power demand, that we honor him as more than a carpenter from Nazareth. I pray that God grants us as well the grace to believe that he has come purposely as “carpenter, son, and brother,” to love us for who we are, and to touch us where we hurt, whether we are carpenters or [fill-in-the-blank] or sons or daughters.   

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Are You Listening to Me?! - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 1/23/2023 
Week of 3 Epiphany 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 41; Psalm 52; Isaiah 48:1–11; Galatians 1:1–17; Mark 5:21–43 

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 third week of Epiphany, and we are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.  

I remember (painfully) a couple of times in my childhood when my mother grabbed my ear and said, “Are you listening to me?!”  

Suddenly brought back from whatever had been distracting me, I’d reply, “Now I guess I am!”  

“What does it take to get your attention?!” 

Isaiah is having one of those moments with Israel. The prophet has been laying out Yahweh’s plan for an exciting new exodus, promising to bring the nation home from their exile in Babylon. Instead of seeing the repentance and renewal of worship that such good news should have called forth, Isaiah is watching the children of Israel carry on a compromised and idolatrous religiosity. They presume to call themselves by Yahweh’s name “but not in truth or right,” because they continue to fashion for themselves idols, and put their trust in carved and cast images (Isaiah 48:1b,5b).  

Yahweh reminds them of their long history of treachery towards him, and their rebelliousness against this voice (Isaiah 48:8). He accuses them of having necks as unyielding as iron and heads as impenetrable as brass (Isaiah 48:4).  Nonetheless, he’s deferring his anger, he says, and he will not destroy them. They are people he’s made for the peculiar honor of praising him. Through their praise, implicitly, they will serve as the vanguard of his renewal of all of creation.  

Isaiah reminds Israel that her recent travails (like my mother’s ear-pulling) have been for her refining (Isaiah 48:10). He has not rejected her; he is still committed to her. However, it’s time for her to put away the distractions, to get rid of the fake gods, and to revere the most precious name of the only true God in the universe.  

“My glory I will not give to another!!” (Isaiah 48:11). This is Isaiah saying, a bit like my mother, “Are you listening to me?!”   

Paul begins a similar conversation with the churches in Galatia (a province in southern or central Asia Minor (current-day Turkey). After an initial enthusiastic response to Paul’s message of the free gift of God in Christ—“who gave himself for our sins to free us from the present evil age” (Galatians 1:4)—these mavericks are thinking about adding a codicil to that message. They want to require and adjoin the shedding of their own blood (via circumcision) to the shedding of Christ’s blood. To Paul, that would be the undoing of the whole relationship. They would be presuming to become their own payers of sin’s debt.  

And so, like my mother, Paul writes this first paragraph of his letter to grab their ear and overture an extended brief, “Are you listening to me?! Christ pays it all, or he pays none of it!!” (Stay tuned.)  

Mark. The ultimate grace is that grace has come in person, in the person of Jesus Christ. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus offers healing at the mere touch of the hem of his garment, and by the simple taking of a hand and the offering of tender words. All this in response to one single thing: faith. 

To the woman who has been hemorrhaging for twelve years, Jesus says, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease” (Mark 5:34).  

To the man who is on the verge of losing his twelve year old daughter, Jesus says, “Do not fear, only believe” (Mark 5:36).  

This season of After Epiphany is one in which we give thanks for the epiphany or manifestation of God’s astoundingly great love in the life and ministry of his Son Jesus Christ. It is not the nature, really, of our Heavenly Father to content himself with yanking on our ears and constantly haranguing us with, “Are you listening to me?!” He sent his Son, that healing may flow from his very being—sometimes healing of the body in this life, always healing of sin’s carnage and eternal condemnation. “Do not fear,” he says, “only believe.”  

Collect for the Third Sunday after the Epiphany. Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

We Can Trust the Master of Wind and Sea - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 1/20/2023 •
Week of 2 Epiphany 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 31; Isaiah 45:18–25; Ephesians 6:1–9; Mark 4:35–41 

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 second week of the Epiphany of Christ. We wrap up this week’s readings in Ephesians, Mark, and Isaiah with reflections on how God manifests his glory through Christ in all things, including challenging relationships and “stormy seas.”  

Ephesians. All of us inhabit different sorts of over-and-under relationships—at home, at work, at school, in our communities. And though it is difficult to figure out how instructions addressing relationships as different from ours as were those of the 1st century Mediterranean world, there are principles in play that are important for us to heed.  

(To keep this devotional short, I am going to skip child-parent relationships.) 

In Ephesians 6:5–7, Paul addresses us when we are on the “under” side of work- (or school-, or whatever) relationships. What we owe to our bosses (or whatever) is free, sincere, and heartfelt respect for their position. What we owe to ourselves is a definition of ourselves that comes from Jesus, not from our bosses—“You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of human masters,” says Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:23. Our worth lies in the value that Jesus assigns us—which is enormous!—not in our position or in our bosses’ estimation of us. Once that is settled, we can model the pattern of the One who came “not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). We really work for our bosses’ Boss, “doing the will of God from the heart” (Ephesians 6:6).  

In Ephesians 6:8–9, Paul addresses us when we are the boss, when we are on the “over” side of a work- (or school-, or whatever) relationship. With Paul’s brilliant “do the same for them,” he gives us our mandate for how to wield the authority of that position—here too, we look to the One who came “not to be served, but to serve, but to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Just like the person who answers to us, we ourselves also answer to the very same Person—“for you know that both of you have the same Master in heaven, and with him there is no partiality” (Ephesians 6:9). Our Boss requires us to lead as though we were servants—because that’s what we are.  

Meanwhile, Jesus is not asleep in the boat… 

Mark. Well, actually, Jesus was asleep in the boat. But his reaction to the disciples when they wake him up indicates that even asleep he had had the situation under control: “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” (Mark 4:40).  

When the storm rages around us—say, when things really aren’t working out with a horrible boss, or when we find that we are the horrible boss—it can seem like Jesus doesn’t care. It can seem like he’s asleep while the storm is about to sink the boat. Appearances are deceiving.  

Which points us back to Isaiah… 

Isaiah says two important things in today’s passage: 

…he did not create [the earth] a chaos, he formed it to be inhabited! — Isaiah 45:18b. Yahweh created for us a context in which to flourish, not to flounder. After the Fall, all our efforts meet resistance, and every relationship gets colored by our fallenness and the fallenness of the other person. But the Lord did not create his world to be subject to chaos. The Bible’s great story line is this: he has been re-creating his world ever since chaos invaded the Garden. He works for our flourishing, for it is to that end that he formed us. No matter the situation, the Lord is working to bring order out of chaos, freedom out of bondage, sanity out of craziness, and ultimately life out of death. 

“To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear” — Isaiah 45:23b. Isaiah makes this declaration in proof that Yahweh is the only true God. He will share that dignity with no other. Extraordinarily, the apostle Paul applies that very saying to Jesus Christ, who, by virtue of humbling himself to incarnation and death, and by virtue of being exalted in resurrection, receives “the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:6–11).  

Isaiah’s and Mark’s words reaffirm what Paul wants us to know: our Savior showed that the way of the cross is the way of life. Wherever we are—“over” or “under,” in smooth waters or stormy—we can trust the Lord Jesus, Master of wind and sea, of chaos and all the powers of heaven and earth.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Like a Mustard Seed - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 1/19/2023 •
Week of 2 Epiphany 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 37; Isaiah 45:5–17; Ephesians 5:15–33; Mark 4:21–34 

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 second week of Epiphany, the “manifestation” of God’s glory in Jesus Christ.  

“… truly you are a God who hides himself…” — Isaiah 45:15a.  

Isaiah is explaining the nearly unexplainable. Yahweh calls by name a Persian pagan, Cyrus, to be savior and redeemer of his people: “I have roused Cyrus in righteousness, and I will make all his paths straight; he shall build my city and set my exiles free, not for price or reward, says the Lord of hosts” (Isaiah 45:13). Yahweh—besides whom there is no god—forms light and creates darkness, makes weal and creates woe: “I the Lord do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7). On behalf of Yahweh, Isaiah says that the pottery (we) need not demand explanation from or offer advice to the potter (God).  

Rightly did hymnist William Cowper write, “God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform.” There is a deep hiddenness, a profound inscrutability, to Yahweh, master and maker of heaven and earth, Lord of history and of our lives. Then again…  

“This is a great mystery…” — Ephesians 5:32a.  

The entire drift of Scripture has been toward a bringing together of God’s life and ours, of his uniting his heart with ours. We have traced the theme of this Divine Romance through Hosea, Ezekiel, the Song of Songs, and the Book of Revelation. And today’s passage in Ephesians presents a crowning moment in that story.  

The God “who hides himself” has revealed his face in the person of his Son Jesus. Jesus has done intentionally what Cyrus did unknowingly: Jesus was raised in perfect righteousness; walked the straightest path, that of obedience to his Father. He began to build the City of God in his acts of healing and in his teachings. He set sin’s exiles free by his death, and that at no cost to them. Moreover, he has rounded out Israel’s story of the disgraced prostitute who was to be beautified and made “one flesh” with her Divine Lover, in an eternal embrace of love: “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind—yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:25b–27).   

In the second half of Ephesians 5, Paul lays out the ways that this “mystery” makes God no longer hidden. The Lord becomes visible in his people’s worship and in their relationships.  

Their worship is characterized by wisdom-shaped and Spirit-filled singing of thanks “to the Lord in your hearts” (Ephesians 5:15–20). In that kind of worship, people manifest a vision of the courts of heaven, where praise rings out “day and night” (Revelation 4:8). In their worship, God’s people, in a sense, “unhide” the hidden God.  

Their relationships bring to light key aspects of the Divine Romance that Scripture celebrates. Christ has come in loving obedience to his Father’s eternal purpose to redeem. Christ has won his bride by serving her, not by dominating her; by dying for her, not by diminishing her; by ennobling her, not by demeaning her. In what can best be described as a dance, the Bride answers with a “Yes” of finding her life in his, her own glory enhanced in his. In a whirl of ever-evolving mutual deference, they “love, honor, and cherish each other in faithfulness and patience, in wisdom and godliness” (BCP, p. 431).  Together, they mirror what ancient Christian theologians called the eternal perichoresis—the everlasting dance—that makes up the inner life of the members of the Trinity.  

“It is like a mustard seed…” — Mark 4:31a.  

Jesus refers to a plant that was, as New Testament scholar Craig Keener puts it, “proverbially small and yet yielded a large shrub.” To that, Jesus likens the Kingdom of God, which “might begin in obscurity, but it would culminate in glory.” The comfort you and I can take from this image today is this: good worship and right relationships seem like small things. But when the Spirit inhabits the worship and the Son shapes the relationships, our worship and our relationships become powerful demonstrations of, and pointers to, the love of “the Father from whom every family in heaven and earth takes its name” (Ephesians 3:14b–15). William Cowper, again: 

Deep in unfathomable mines 
Of never failing skill 
He treasures up His bright designs 
And works His sov’reign will.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+