Vision of Christ’s Upside-down Kingdom - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 6/6/2023 
Tuesday of the First Week After Pentecost (Proper 4) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 45; Deuteronomy 12:1–12; 2 Corinthians 6:3–13(14–7:1); Luke 17:11–19 

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. Today is Tuesday of the 1st Week After Pentecost, and our readings come from Proper 4 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Taken together, today’s readings in Deuteronomy and 2 Corinthians put before us the tremendous responsibility of saying “No” and “Yes.”  

Deuteronomy calls for the destroying of idols, and for the renouncing of an independent spirit when it comes to the worship of Yahweh. Specifically, Moses forbids refusing to come to “the place” that Yahweh will choose for his worship: “But you shall seek the place that the Lord your God will choose out of all your tribes as his habitation to put his name there. You shall go there, … And you shall eat there in the presence of the Lord your God, you and your households together, rejoicing in all the undertakings in which the Lord your God has blessed you” (Deuteronomy 12:5,7).  

This command looks forward to God’s choice of Jerusalem and its future temple as the center for his people’s worship. Together there in God’s house, a redeemed people make their offerings (including their, ahem, tithes) in utter gratitude for deliverance from slavery. Together there they eat and drink in the delighted presence of one another and in the delightful presence of the “beauty of the holiness” of God (Psalm 29:2).  

Paul has come to understand that the church is now God’s new temple: “For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, ‘I will live in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people’” (2 Corinthians 6:16, quoting Leviticus 26:11). This new temple is made up of people within whom and among whom the Spirit of God (that is, God himself) dwells. The church is sacred space that is not to be violated, profaned, taken for granted, or used for the building up of egos or personal fortunes.  

The situation on the ground in Corinth. Paul has been taken aback by the accusations that have come at him from the Corinthian church, his own spiritual children. Some people have risen among them claiming to be “super-apostles” (2 Corinthians 11:5), alleging that their miracles are more spectacular, their credentials more superlative, and their personal impressiveness more the mark of the victorious Christ.  

In fact, they have infected the Corinthian church with a spirit of triumphalism that claims to be living in the power of Christ’s resurrection, but which Paul knows to be bogus. He names these polluters of the church for what they are: “false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder! Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is not strange if his ministers also disguise themselves as ministers of righteousness” (2 Corinthians 11:13–15).   

Their chief complaints against Paul are that he is unreliable (remember that he had changed travel plans), weak in demeanor, and unimpressive in rhetoric. He is at pains, therefore, to let the Corinthians know that Christ’s life is manifest in the very places where the super-apostles have gotten it wrong. The triumph of Christ lies in endurance of “afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger” (2 Corinthians 6:4b–5). The character of Christ is revealed in “purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God” (2 Corinthians 6:6–7a). Christ’s kingdom is manifest not when its subjects parade themselves as “winners,” but rather when they “are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything” (2 Corinthians 6:8b–10).  

And so, the necessary “No” and “Yes”:  

“No” to a religion of “whatever,” of “to whom it may concern.” “No” to using God for self-aggrandizement or the propping up of self-image. “No” to relationships that blur the line between good and evil, justice and injustice, lawfulness and lawlessness. Or, as Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 7:1, “no” to relationships and practices that “defile the body” (like sexual immorality or drunkenness or gluttony), or to relationships and practices that “defile the spirit” (like alliances of bitterness or envy, or practices that hybridize or dilute the faith).  

“Yes” to worshiping God, and doing so his way. “Yes” to a commitment to Jesus that is just like the wedding vow: “for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health.” “Yes” to spiritual relationships that promote the true faith, and that support godly, just, and holy living.  

These are some of the most arresting and poignant words Paul ever wrote. I hope they got the Corinthians’ attention! They certainly got the attention of the artist Vincent Van Gogh, who built his own life around the phrase “as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.” The result was an artistic corpus presenting one of the most radiant visions of Christ’s upside-down Kingdom anybody has ever seen. I pray that you and I catch that vision.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Arrival of an Anticipated Moment - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 6/5/2023
Monday of the First Week After Pentecost (Proper 4)  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 41; Psalm 52; Deuteronomy 11:13–19; 2 Corinthians 5:11–6:2; Luke 17:1–10 

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 1st Week After Pentecost, and our readings come from Proper 4 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Knowing what time it is! I hope I never outlive the thrill at the arrival of a long-anticipated special moment. Several from my life have stuck with me through the years. My first at-bat in high school baseball, my wedding day, the acceptance of my dissertation, my ordination to the ministry. I hope there are more days like those still to come!  

Paul’s special sense of time is that Christ’s coming inaugurated a whole era of special days. Every day is an amazing, awesome, astounding “now”: “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2b). Paul deeply inhabited the Bible’s world; it defined his reality in a way that is difficult for secularized (post)moderns to comprehend. But it did. And one of his chief realizations on the road to Damascus was that every moment of history since the descent of darkness in Genesis 3 had been a preparation for the breaking in of the “new creation” ushered in by Jesus of Nazareth, who though recently crucified, now stood before him, risen and ascended.  

My years in Little League and youth baseball leagues had made me ready for my first plate appearance in high school … and all the fun that followed. Similarly, Paul realized that all the biblical sagas about the patriarchs, the judges, the kings, and the prophets had been leading up to this: “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).  

An ambassadorial voice. A calamitous and unthinkable thing had happened. All the evil in the world — whether experienced by victim or perpetrator, whether as despair or arrogance, as forlornness or domination —all of it had been absorbed by God’s own delegate, his own Son, on the Cross. On Calvary’s Cross, one who “knew no sin became sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21). The result: “one died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them” (2 Corinthians 5:14).  

Christ died for all, and all have died in him. That is a staggering claim. It’s a claim of universal import, and brings with it a claim to universal dominion: “even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus... (Ephesians 2:6), . But more fundamentally, it is a claim of universal love. Which is why Paul says Christ’s love compels him to tell its story: “For the love of Christ urges us on….” (2 Corinthians 5:14).  

So important is the good news of Christ’s love that God commissions Paul (and all of us as well) as ambassadors: “So we are ambassadors for Christ…” (2 Corinthians 5:20a). When ambassadors speak, it is as representatives of the one who sent them, responsible for speaking directly. That is the thrust of the rest of the verse I just cited (and is better perceived in the more literal NASB translation): “…as though (Gk hōs) God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20b).  

The thing we ambassadors have to keep in mind is that we don’t speak for ourselves. We don’t get to tinker with the message (something to ponder for another time). Nor do we have the option of keeping the message to ourselves, as though it were our own privileged and private mystical knowledge.  

A vicarious representation. When I was in seminary, I remember asking one of my professors about the meaning of a verse in the previous chapter of this epistle. “Sir, Paul says that he preaches ‘Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’s sake.’ Could that possibly mean that our transformed lives are part of the message, part of what testifies to the truth of Jesus?” The professor’s reply was: “Absolutely not. The message is the message. Period.” I wasn’t completely convinced my professor caught Paul’s nuance, but I let it go, and tucked the question away.  

The more I’ve thought about it, the more deeply I’ve read Scripture, and the longer I’ve served in the church, the more firmly I’ve concluded the professor was wrong. One big reason for thinking that Paul does mean to make our lives part of the message is what he says at the end of chapter 5. Paul concludes that the purpose of Christ’s becoming sin for us on the Cross was “so that we might become the  righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Here’s what New Testament theologian Richard Hays says about this verse in his The Moral Vision of the New Testament:  

[Paul] does not say “that we might know about the righteousness of God,” nor “that we might believe in the righteousness of God,” nor even “that we might receive the righteousness of God.” Instead, the church is to become the righteousness of God: where the church embodies in its life together the world-reconciling love of Jesus Christ, the new creation is manifest. The church incarnates the righteousness of God (p.24).* 

It’s not that we don’t need first to “know about,” “believe in,” or “receive” God’s righteousness. It is that Paul is looking beyond that wonderful reality here. He’s looking to the extraordinary power of that righteousness—the very character of God—becoming incarnate in us. For, if the world is going to see the meaning of Christ’s taking the world’s sins upon his shoulders, the world is going to see it in the way we—his followers—embody and champion the cause of justice and righteousness in this unjust and unrighteous world.  

The God who cannot otherwise be seen is seen in the bearers of his image of justice — as well as of mercy and holiness and goodness and compassion and wisdom. It’s what New Testament theologian Michael Gorman fittingly calls “becoming the gospel.”**  

Be blessed this day as you, by the grace of God, do just that! 

Reggie Kidd+ 

*Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (HarperCollins, 1996), p. 24 (emphasis in the original). 

**For more on this theme, see Michael Gorman, Becoming the Gospel: Paul, Participation, and Mission (Eerdmans, 2015)  

Do Not Lose Heart - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 6/2/2023 •
Friday of the Week of Pentecost (Proper 3) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 31; Deuteronomy 5:1–22; 2 Corinthians 4:1–12; Luke 16:10–17(18) 

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 Week of Pentecost. We are in Proper 3 of Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Today’s readings begin with the Ten Commandments. The Commandments can be dispiriting apart from Paul’s maxim “the letter kills, but the Spirit makes alive.” What we have to understand is that at their deepest level the Commandments are not about “the letter,” as though they were aiming at external conformity. Rather, they point ahead of time to what the Spirit would one day enable: heart engagement.  

Deuteronomy: the deeper dimension of the law. In Deuteronomy, the Commandments come to people who have already been redeemed, not to people who are looking for a means of redemption. That’s why they are prefaced with “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Deuteronomy 5:6).  

The Commandments are a means by which redeemed people share the benefits of redemption with others. That’s why allowing others to rest on the Sabbath is one way Israel celebrates its release from bondage in Egypt: “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to observe the sabbath day” (Deuteronomy 5:15). The logic could be applied throughout: our lives, our families, our property, our integrity were restored by the exodus, and so we care about the lives, families, property, and integrity of others. Above all, the Commandments aim to enthrall people with God and with his gracious provision so they can be free from envy, and thus be free to love.  

Image: Ananias Restoring the Sight of St. Paul, Pietro da Cortana. Public Domain. 

Luke: affirming the law’s deeper intent. Jesus, of course, had a keen eye to the Law’s true and spiritual intent. He backs off not an inch from its normativity nor from its contemporaneity. As he says in Luke chapter 16 verse 17, “But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one stroke of a letter in the law to be dropped.” Because greed is idolatry, Jesus calls out the cupidity in the Pharisees’ purported piety: “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15). Because faithfulness in marriage is its own picture of Yahweh’s redeeming and wedding his Bride to himself, Jesus dismisses the cavalier and no-fault approach to divorce and remarriage that God’s people have absorbed from their surroundings: “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and whoever marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery” (Luke 16:18).  

2 Corinthians. The beauty of Paul’s words today is that they shed light on how the rich internal life imagined by the Law (but unable to create it) can take hold in us.  

The gospel as mercy. “…as we received mercy, we do not lose heart…” (2 Corinthians 4:1b). Paul exults in the mercy that had been extended to him. His encounter on the road to Damascus revealed that God was not going to deal with him as his religious pride and sectarian arrogance called for. Rather, God gave him grace to understand the good news that, as he had previously written to these very Corinthians, “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures….” (1 Corinthians 15:3b–4). 

The gospel as life-giving. On the far side of seeing the gospel as a place to find forgiveness, the gospel gave Paul a vision of “the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” … “the glory of God in the face of Jesus.” That is to say, in the gospel of Christ, Paul was able to reimagine a life fully and truly lived. By the Spirit of God, Christ’s life establishes itself within us, and begins to shine out through us. The light of God’s character — sketched out in the Law in an anticipatory and promissory way — now can shine out into the world, despite, or perhaps precisely because of, cracks in the broken but repaired vessels of clay that we are.  

For Paul, this gift meant a life given no longer, as he says, to preaching himself, “but Christ Jesus as Lord and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus’s sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5 NASB). For each of us, there is a moral equivalent: life is no longer about touting ourselves — our own abilities, credentials, and merits — but promoting Christ Jesus as Lord, and offering ourselves as servants for others’ sake.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Life on Life Ministry - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 6/1/2023 •
Thursday of the Week of Pentecost (Proper 3) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 37; Deuteronomy 4:32–40; 2 Corinthians 3:1–18; Luke 16:1–9 

Comments on Luke 16:1–9 from DDD 11/13/2020: https://tinyurl.com/3aky47vn 

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 we are in Proper 3 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Among the readings on this Thursday the week of Pentecost it is Paul’s reflections in 2 Corinthians that will receive our attention. An amazing freedom takes hold of our lives when we learn that our prime value comes from the Lord himself, not from external measures such as certificates of authority (degrees, letters, pedigrees). There’s a newfound liberty as we experience the transforming work of the living God coursing through us.  

First, living with and without credentials. “Surely we do not need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you, do we? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all…” (2 Corinthians 3:1b). It’s hard to believe that after all that Paul and the Corinthians have been through together (read Acts 18 and 1 Corinthians when you get a chance!), some people are asking questions like, “Who stands behind this guy? What credentials does he bring? Why should we give him any more credence than anybody else?” Really? Paul is their father in the faith (1 Corinthians 4:15)! In human terms, he’s the only reason most of them are followers of Christ in the first place.  

And it’s not like Paul couldn’t drop names if he were so inclined. After all, he tells the Galatians that apostolic notables Peter and John, the “pillars” of the Jerusalem church, support him (see Galatians 1–2). Later in this very letter Paul says he’ll compare résumés with anybody! “Indeed you should have been the ones commending me, for I am not at all inferior to these super-apostles, even though I am nothing” (2 Corinthians 12:11). “If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh,” he reminds the Philippians, “I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless” (Philippians 3:4b–6). And though Paul would never write about such things himself, Luke tells us Paul was educated by Gamaliel in Jerusalem, one of the chief rabbis of his day; he was born a Roman citizen; and, in addition, he was a citizen of his provincial city of Tarsus in Asia Minor (Acts 16:37; 21:39; 22:3,25).  

Image: Saint Paul. Detail of the mosaic in Arian Baptistery. Ravenna, Italy. Ввласенко, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons 

But all of that—all of it—is beside the point for Paul. And it should be for the Corinthians as well. They know firsthand his love for them and the new life in Jesus that has come to them through him. Paul’s appeal is the power of life-on-life ministry. That’s a hard lesson that too many diploma- and credential-obsessed people must learn. That’s good news, conversely, for those of us who feel under-qualified for tasks the Lord calls us to. When he’s supporting us, when he gives us the strength to love, and when he creates results we could never dream of producing ourselves, we can be confident that we are certainly credentialed enough!  

Second, an old covenant and a new covenant. “For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory!” (2 Corinthians 3:9). Despite appearances, Paul is not writing off his heritage in today’s reading from 2 Corinthians. Instead, he notes that God’s law-covenant (the Ten Commandments) was transitional, not permanent. That covenant could demand change from us, but it could not transform us. The Ten Commandments prepared us for a covenant in which our hearts themselves would become the repository of the law. They would become places where we would want, and be able, to love God—and our neighbor well. They would become places where righteousness would take hold of us and reshape us after the image of God’s Son. Where righteousness would become ours, first by the Father’s initial declaration of our justification, then by the Spirit’s gradual transformation of us in sanctification, and ultimately by our definitive glorification when Jesus returns to raise us from the dead.  

Third, the Spirit gives liberty. “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17). Learning a piece on the piano is an awkward and lengthy process for me. I pore over the notes on the page, find a good recording so I can hear what it is supposed to sound like, and then laboriously acquaint my fingers with where they are supposed to go to make the notes happen. Over and over, I mechanically make my fingers do what the notes say to do, and I try to feel what the recordings make me feel when I listen to them. For the longest time, my playing feels stiff, stilted, frustrating, confining — not musical at all. At some point, though, it’s as though the music descends, takes over, and flows through me. That’s when there’s liberty, when the music descends and begins to flow.  

It is not unlike what Paul is talking about. Underneath all our striving and effort to get life right, we must learn to rely on the visitation of the Spirit of Christ, transforming our offering into heaven’s music. We are called to put ourselves where Christ shows up: where we inhabit his Word as best we can, lift our hearts and voices in song and prayer, reach out our hands to receive the Bread and the Wine, and yield to his promptings for actions of love and mercy and justice. And somehow the life-giving Spirit comes, Christ indwells us more deeply, and his life flows out from lives that have become just that much more transformed into his own likeness.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Manual of Leadership - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 5/31/2023 •
Wednesday of the Week of Pentecost (Proper 3) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 38; Deuteronomy 4:25–31; 2 Corinthians 1:23–2:17; Luke 15:1–2,11–32 

Comments on Luke 15:1–2,11–32 from DDD 11/12/2020: https://tinyurl.com/ua8jw847 

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 Today is Wednesday of the Week of Pentecost, and our readings come from Proper 3 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians demands a slow read, but it pays extraordinary dividends with close attention. Here in this letter is the closest thing the Bible ever gives us to a manual of leadership. Three features of today’s passage in 2 Corinthians are worth lingering over.  

First, biblical leadership is exercised from alongside, not from above. Paul says that he writes to the Corinthians not as a domineering overlord, but as a companion (ouk … kurieuein, … alla sunergoi esmen—2 Corinthians 1:24). We all know what it feels like to have someone stand over us with scowling face, wagging a finger at us. That’s not Paul. That’s not Paul because that’s not Jesus, and Paul is all about Jesus. Like his Master, Paul served alongside his congregants. He did not impose authority upon them in “lordly” fashion (thus the “kurieu-“ in “domineering”). He was “with” them—thus, the Latin com- in “companion,” and the Greek sun- in sunergoi.  

I hope we’ve known spiritual leaders who know how to stand next to us and lead the way by pointing out a path that we can travel together. That’s what Paul is doing in this letter about leadership.  

Image: The Apostle Paul, Rembrandt , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons  

Second, biblical leadership is exercised through tears. It’s likely that the disciplinary situation in Corinth that had led Paul to write an earlier tearful letter had to do with the man who was in an inappropriate relationship with his stepmother in 1 Corinthians 5: “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his father’s wife” (1 Corinthians 5:1). Not only had many Christians in Corinth thought that this practice was perfectly consistent with their faith, they even thought their perspective was enlightened, liberated, and progressive: “And you are proud! (1 Corinthians 5:2, NET).”  

From a biblical point of view, and in classical Christian ethical thinking, our sex lives are not our own private exclusive domain. Our sex lives are, in the first place, God’s; in intimacy as in anything else we either honor him or dishonor him. Second, our sex lives are either community-building or community-destroying. Fidelity and good boundaries create harmony and trust, while infidelity and boundary-violation bring disharmony and mistrust. Finally, our sex lives are a potential source of intimate joy and mutual pleasure where intimacy, joy, and mutuality are unclouded by guilt or by  a transgressive spirit.   

At the same time, these matters are deeply personal, and seem like they should be private. It can feel inappropriately meddlesome to have someone presume to call your sexual practices into question. As spiritual father of the church of Corinth, Paul must have had a lot of credibility. But still, the Corinthians needed to see (even through the indirect medium of a letter) the tears that accompanied his words of correction. They needed to know it cost Paul not to be with them as he gave them space to sort out truth from error. They needed to know that he was willing to be painfully distant for the sake, eventually, of long-term joy and fellowship. For his intervention not to be maladroit meddlesomeness, they needed his tears.  

Third, biblical leadership is exercised from behind Christ’s chariot of triumph. And so, Paul wants the Corinthians to know that he speaks only as one who has died in Christ. He speaks only as a willing captive in Christ’s triumphal procession. He speaks only as one who, like the defeated enemy of a mighty general or emperor, is humiliated and mocked and scorned on the way to death in the coliseum. He only speaks “from behind the chariot.” Paul trusts his readers to recognize the fragrance of life in the death he had died in yielding to Christ’s imperium. It was only this way that they could smell the sweetness of their own death to ego, to a sense of superiority, to pride in personal independence.  

May we respond joyfully to the claims of the Christ who came to be with us, who woos us with his own tears, and who won his own triumph by yielding first to the ignominy of the Cross.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Restoration of Humans - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 5/30/2023 •

Tuesday of the Week of Pentecost (Proper 3) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 26; Psalm 28; Deuteronomy 4:15–24; 2 Corinthians 1:12–22; Luke 15:1–10 

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. Today is Tuesday of the Week of Pentecost, and our readings come from Proper 3 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

What we note in today’s readings is a fascinating convergence between Moses’s warning against idolatry, Paul’s claim to freedom of conscience, and Jesus’s resolve to find the lost.  

In Deuteronomy 4, Moses cautions people not to make idols for themselves, fashioning pretend images of God and worshiping them: “…so that you do not act corruptly by making an idol for yourselves, in the form of any figure—the likeness of male or female…” (Deuteronomy 4:16). There’s a reason for the fact that the first figure not to consider using as a model for an image of God is the human form. Humans themselves are the image of God. There is nothing more godlike than a human who is filled with the glory, the mind, the heart, and the Spirit of the Living God. By worshiping a likeness of ourselves, we diminish our true likeness to God. In worship of him, we find that likeness as a free gift.   

In 2 Corinthians 1, we see what happens when we honor God instead of ourselves: he honors us. Paul says here that all of God’s promises are “Yes” and “Amen” in Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 1:20). The principal “Yes” and “Amen” to the whole range of God’s promises is the restoration of humans as bearers of God’s image. What was lost in the Garden of Eden comes back to us, beginning with the capacity for a conscience that, because of our relationship with Christ, does not condemn ourselves. We, with Paul, can have the confidence that we are “behav[ing] in the world with frankness and godly sincerity” (2 Corinthians 1:12a). In Christ, we can trust that we are being guided “not by worldly wisdom but by the grace of God” (2 Corinthians 1:12b).  

Part of Paul’s amazing pastoral gift is his ability to discuss something as mundane as a change in travel plans (as here in verses 15–22) in terms as sublime as God’s faithfulness to make us new. Paul says his intentions towards the Corinthians have always been for their good, just as God’s are towards us. Further, Paul says that his ability to treat the Corinthians with integrity and honesty comes from Christ himself: “But it is God who establishes us with you in Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:21). And he doesn’t appeal to some special privilege he has as an apostle. He speaks in terms of the common Christian experience. He speaks in terms of what it is to know we are baptized. Note these terms from 2 Corinthians 4:21:  

First, Paul and we have been “anointed” (chrizein — the same Greek word that forms the title “Christ”). That is, in our anointing at baptism we have been appointed to bear our share of Christ’s priestly, kingly, and prophetic mission and identity. As Cyril of Jerusalem was later to say to the newly baptized: We are little Christs. With that identity comes the freedom, indeed the responsibility, to make judgments, even to change plans if we need to, in order to serve people better.  

Second, Paul and we have had God’s “seal put upon us.” That is, the Holy Spirit has permanently marked us out as God’s, so we can rest in the assurance of his love and favor. Just as the Father called Jesus his Beloved Son at his baptism in the River Jordan, so does the Father call us his beloved sons and daughters at our baptism.  

And third, Paul and we have received the gift of “his Spirit in our hearts as a first installment” of the glory that is to be ours completely when our whole being is made new on the day of resurrection. For now, though our outer person may (and will!) fade, our inner person will be renewed daily by the Holy Spirit who dwells within, as Paul will explain later in this letter: “So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16).  

With Jesus’s parables of the shepherd’s lost sheep and the woman’s lost coins in Luke 15, he goes to the heart of his mission among us. He has come for idolators and “sinners,” those who are crippled and confused about their own motives, and for “tax collectors,” those who use and abuse people. With this critical proviso: they are ready to admit it. Jesus never grew tired of reminding people that things are broken now and need fixing. People are lost and need finding.  

That’s why one of the prayers we pray at the Eucharist invites us to put ourselves in the line of fire of God’s love by lauding Christ for bringing us out of error into truth, out of sin into righteousness, and out of death into life (BCP, p. 368). Trapped in error and sin and death is where we were. Praise be, Christ has come for us so that he can shout to the courts of heaven: “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost! … Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost!” (Luke 15:6,9). 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Mission of the Church - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 5/29/2023 •
Monday of the Week of Pentecost (Proper 3)  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 25; Deuteronomy 4:9–14; 2 Corinthians 2:1–11; Luke 14:25–35 

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 Week of Pentecost, and our readings come from Proper 3 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

“After Pentecost”: the church’s mission. Yesterday was the Feast of Pentecost, the feast that celebrates the founding of the church and the launching of its mission to the world in the power of the Holy Spirit. Today, we begin the journey toward the season “After Pentecost.” “After Pentecost” is a season that lasts until the end of November when Advent launches the new Christian year. The overarching theme of the season of “After Pentecost” is the mission of the church in the world. Especially worth noting is the fact that the Old Testament readings for this year’s season of “After Pentecost” will survey the history of the kingship in Israel. We will learn about God’s mission for his people in the world from the rise of the kingship under Saul, to the consolidation of the kingdom under David and its apex under Solomon, to the sad division into Northern and Southern kingdoms (Judah and Israel) after Solomon’s death, to the exile in Assyria and Babylon, and finally to the return and restoration under Ezra and Nehemiah.  

Over the next two and a half weeks, the lectionary will introduce us to the history of the kingship by rehearsing the high points of the Book of Deuteronomy. In this fifth book of Moses, God lays out the way he designs his people to be his own special treasure. Yahweh intends for his covenant people to embody his grace, truth, love, and justice for the sake of a world that is trying (without success) to find its way without him.  

As they recount the ups and downs of the kingship, the biblical historians (the authors of Samuel through Nehemiah) are constantly measuring the success of any particular king against Moses’s benchmark in Deuteronomy—and not surprisingly the historians’ accounts are ones of failure. That’s because this entire history is a prelude to God providing his own King, the One whose coming we announce every Advent. Along the way, there are lessons galore—some by way of caution, some by way of example—about how to love God and neighbor, and about how to be God’s treasure in and for the world, or as Paul says, “lights shining in the world” (Philippians 2:15).  

Deuteronomy: prelude to kingship. “But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children” (Deuteronomy 4:9). The words from this first verse in our reading of Deuteronomy could serve as a heading for the whole of our Old Testament reading “After Pentecost.” We need to read Israel’s story with an eye to our own story. Each of us is as likely to forget the Lord’s kind interventions in our lives, the rescues small and great that he has provided us. And regardless of what we think about whether our lives are influencing anybody, every one of us has the eye of somebody in the next generation who is getting their bearings in life from us. We will either help or hinder their journey.  

2 Corinthians: what Paul has to offer. Some people have the wrong idea about the apostle Paul. They think of him as a detached and uncaring theologian who lobs theological mortars from a lofty ivory tower. Not so! Paul speaks with authority to the hard places of life, and he does so because it’s in the hard places of life that he has found Jesus. The reality is that Paul only takes people where he himself has gone: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God” (2 Corinthians 1:3–4).  

With today’s reading in 2 Corinthians, Paul opens what I’m pretty sure was a difficult letter for him to write. Certain people in Corinth have demanded that Paul produce credentials and defend his apostleship (see chapters 3,10,11,12,13). They are not sure why they should listen to him, despite the fact that he founded this church and has lived among them for a year and a half, during which time he has done spectacular miracles, offered profound teaching, and guided them through tricky pastoral relationships.  

The situation Paul faces in Corinth calls for delicate diplomacy. Paul writes a lengthy and chunky letter. Truth be told, this letter is Paul’s most stylistically roundabout and grammatically difficult. But he really only has two simple points to make. First, the Corinthians should listen to him because Paul has found Christ encouraging him in his sufferings, so Paul can offer them encouragement when they experience the same sufferings. Second, the way that Christ has already formed himself in their lives through Paul’s ministry is all the “letter of recommendation” that they need: “You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all…” (2 Corinthians 2:2). Authority is as authority does.  

May the next couple of weeks of reading this complicated but profound (and in the end, exceptionally kindhearted) letter lead us all to say, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all consolation, who consoles us….” 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Dead Are Made Alive - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 5/26/2023 •
Week of 7 Easter 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 102; Ezekiel 34:17–31; Hebrews 8:1–13; Luke 10:38–42 

This morning’s Canticles are: before the Psalm reading, Pascha Nostrum(“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); 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 Seventh (and final) week of Easter. “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!” 

This our last day of a quick trip through some of the main themes of the Book of Ezekiel and of the first half of the Book of Hebrews; meanwhile, we continue our way through the Gospel according to Luke. This morning we are meditating on the way Hebrews captures the essence of the new relationship Jesus gives us with God, and we are reflecting on the amazing breadth of ways Ezekiel had forecast this new relationship we enjoy. 

Image: Jerusalem-Menora-40-Ezechiels Vision der Totengebeine-2010Gerd Eichmann, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons 

Today’s paragraph in Hebrews is a view-from-the-mountaintop statement. Jesus, the author writes, is our new and permanent “minister” or “worship leader” (the Greek leitourgos is the word from which we get “liturgist”) in the heavenly sanctuary (Hebrews 8:2). Jesus is mediator of a new covenant. Hebrews unpacks this amazing reality by using a paragraph from the prophet Jeremiah: God writes his laws on our hearts in such a way that we are now inclined to love him and obey him rather than not—Hebrews 8:10; Jeremiah 31:33). We are given such a new orientation from within that we don’t even need someone to teach us (Hebrews 8:11; Jeremiah 31:34).  Side note: As a teacher in the church, I have to conclude that this is at least a little hyperbolic! God has dealt mercifully with our wrongdoings; in fact, he “remembers them no longer” Hebrews 8:12; Jeremiah 31:34). This I do not take to be hyperbolic! 

In a strikingly similar vein, Ezekiel’s book climaxes by clustering several central new covenant promises. Each is worth lingering over.   

Yahweh promises his people a new shepherd-king in the line of David (Ezekiel 34). After the Jews return from Babylon to their homeland beginning in 538 B.C., no one arises with a claim to David’s throne for over 500 years. That is, until the angels sing, “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord” (Luke 2:11). “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel,” says Paul (2 Timothy 2:8).  

All hail King Jesus! 

Ezekiel promises the gift of new and sprinkled-clean hearts, and the conferring of a new Spirit (Ezekiel 36:25–27). That would be the gift of the washing and regenerating of our hearts by the Holy Spirit that comes with faith in Jesus (Titus 3:5–8).  

Come, Holy Spirit, make our hearts new this day! 

Ezekiel is shown a valley of dry bones that are raised up and brought back to life (Ezekiel 37). That is what happens to people who “were dead in our trespasses and sins,” and who, “by [God’s] great love with which he loved us,” are “made alive and seated together with Christ Jesus in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 2:1–5).  

For breathing life into the dead places of our lives, we praise you Holy Spirit! 

Yahweh says he will renew the relationship between the estranged people of Judah and Israel (Ezekiel 38). That is precisely what happens when the Lord sends Peter and John from Jerusalem (the heart of the old Southern Kingdom, Judah) to Samaria (the heart of the old Northern Kingdom, Israel). They witnessed the same Spirit of Pentecost fall upon these new Samaritan believers as had fallen upon them in Jerusalem (Acts 2 and 8).  

Praise you, Lord Christ, for your power to restore broken relationships, to bring love back into broken families, and to make enemies into friends.  

Ezekiel, finally, receives a grand and extended vision of a new temple with flowing waters, filled with the glory cloud that had departed at the beginning of the exile (Ezekiel 40–47). We, the Church of Christ, are that new temple constructed of living stones, “a holy temple in the Lord; in whom [we] also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God” (Ephesians 2:21—see also 1 Corinthians 3:16; 6:19; 1 Peter 2:5).  

Lord, live in us that we may live in you! Amen!!! 

May our hearts be encouraged with the long reach of God’s love, the way he has been working his good plans for you and me, and the way he nurtures each of us with his love and care right now.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Jesus Will Hold Me Tight - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 5/25/2023 •
Week of 7 Easter  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 105; Ezekiel 18:1–4,19–32; Hebrews 7:18–28; Luke 10:25–37 

This morning’s Canticles are: before the Psalm reading, Pascha Nostrum (“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moss,” 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. Today is Thursday of the 7th (and final) week of Easter, and I’m grateful to be with you. “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!” 

It’s our next to last day of a quick trip through some of the main themes of the Book of Ezekiel and of the first half of the Book of Hebrews; meanwhile, we continue our way through the Gospel according to Luke.  

Image: Vincent van Gogh, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

Ezekiel: “the righteousness of the righteous shall be his own.” I once had a professor who said that in the Old Testament what counts is the group, while in the New Testament what counts is the individual. For instance, the entire nation of Israel gets “baptized” at the Red Sea, while each person individually goes “into the water” in Christian baptism. 

Today’s passage in Ezekiel is proof that my professor wasn’t entirely right. In today’s passage, Ezekiel has to speak up, because some people had gotten the impression that their individual decisions and behavior didn’t matter. They believed they were being held accountable “for the sins of the fathers.” So it didn’t matter how they behaved, good or ill, because they were fated to suffer punishment anyway at the hands of a vindictive God.  

Not so, insists Ezekiel. If punishment is being meted out, it is not for somebody else’s sins. Each person bears punishment for their sins alone. Conversely, blessing for any individual is as near as a sincere prayer of repentance. The genius of biblical faith—Old Testament as well as New—is that each of us is made in the very image and likeness of God. Each of us is a masterpiece of his love. None of us is the sole product of our genetic pool, our family of origin, or mysterious societal forces. None of us is unable to rise above “the sins of the fathers.” “Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit!” (Ezekiel 18:31). That’s part of what Ezekiel says to a generation of slothful, self-pitying shirkers.  

The other part of Ezekiel’s message is that God is not a vindictive tyrant or an unfeeling, punishment-dispensing machine. Abraham had asked Yahweh: “Will not the judge of the whole earth do what is right?” (Genesis 18:25). It is of the very nature of God’s being that he works (albeit in his own time and in his own way) to set all things to rights. This passage in Ezekiel makes it clear that the joy for Yahweh lies in bestowing blessing in the face of repentance and faith. He takes no joy in leaving to their just deserts anyone who fails to respond to the overtures of his love.  

Hebrews: “he ever lives to intercede.” The writer to the Hebrews has the advantage, as do we, of living in “these last days” when God has given his Son to secure a relationship with us (Hebrews 1:1–4). The Son of God, Apostle and High Priest of God’s love, has made a perfect and final sacrifice for our sins “once for all when he offered himself” (Hebrews 7:27b). And now, resurrected from the dead and ascended to the right hand of the Father, “he is able for all time to save those who approach God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25). Though I may falter, Jesus won’t. Though my zeal may flag, Jesus’s won’t. Though my love may cool, Jesus’s won’t. Though I may drift, Jesus will hold me tight. That’s what has changed as we move from the Old Testament to the New—we have a friend in a high place, holding each of us tighter and closer than we can possibly imagine.    

Luke: becoming the Good Samaritan. From one angle of vision, the Parable of the Good Samaritan points to Jesus who rescues us when we were cast aside and left for dead on the side of the road.  

But the real thrust of Jesus’s parable is to encourage us to neighborliness, that is, to be like the Good Samaritan ourselves, not like the uncaring people who walked past the castoff man on the side of the road. Love calls us, like the Good Samaritan, to refuse to be a party to societal attitudes. Our Samaritan, considered “less than” by the Jews in his world, ignored the cultural hostilities of his day. Instead, he went out of his way to extend help and compassion to someone he chose to see, not as a Jew, but as a human being in need. Martin Luther King, Jr., describes this heart-attitude as  “the strength to love”—answering cruelty with kindness, rejection with acceptance. The Parable of the Good Samaritan calls upon us to be strong, bold, and extroverted in our love. 

The most powerful meditation on this parable of which I am aware is Vincent Van Gogh’s painting of it. Van Gogh portrays a ginger-bearded, virile Samaritan lifting the battered roadside victim onto his donkey. Van Gogh imagines himself as the Samaritan. The painting was aspirational for Van Gogh, for he saw himself as a failure in relationships—he had failed as a missionary, he had failed in his attempt to “rehabilitate” a prostitute, he had failed in his attempt to create an artist colony around Gaugin, he had failed to sell his art (in his entire he life, he sold only one painting). His painting becomes a prayer: Lord, don’t let me be defined by my failures, in my own eyes or in the eyes of others. Give me grace and strength to be this guy. Give me your strength to love.  

May our Heavenly Father give you and me—each of us—grace to know we are personally loved and uniquely crafted to bear his image. May the Lord Jesus hold us close to the Father’s heart in his prayers of intercession for us. May the Spirit of strength and power embolden us to be neighbor to those around us.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

He Makes His Home in Our Hearts - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 5/24/2023 •
Week of 7 Easter  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 101; Psalm 109; Ezekiel 11:14–25; Hebrews 7:1–17; Luke 10:17–24 

This morning’s Canticles are: before the Psalm reading, Pascha Nostrum (“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); 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 Today is Wednesday of the 7th (and final) week of Easter. “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!” 

During this week the Daily Office continues a quick trip through some of the main themes of the Book of Ezekiel and of the first half of the Book of Hebrews; meanwhile, we are reading our way through the Gospel according to Luke. This morning we are meditating on Ezekiel and Hebrews.  

There are many displaced people in our world today. They are separated from anything that feels like home. They live in strange places with strange rules amid strange people. Longing for home. There’s a common sentiment that “It’s just not the same as being there.”  

Ezekiel has three lessons for us today. And the writer to the Hebrews describes “the indestructible life” by which Jesus Christ makes Ezekiel’s promises true for us.  

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

Ezekiel writes to his fellow Jews in Babylon who are removed from their beloved homeland with its holy city and temple. He wants them to know three things. First, there will be a homecoming. Nevertheless, it is in the heart that God plans to make his home with his people. And although they are currently in exile, they are not separated from God’s watchful and loving presence. 

First, the Lord will bring his people home. He’s not just going to leave them where they are. Their exile will end: “Thus says the Lord God: I will gather you from the peoples, and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel” (Ezekiel 11:17). Following the decree of Cyrus the ruler of Persia in 538 B.C., the Lord brings his people back to Israel under the administration of the Hebrew leaders Ezra and Nehemiah (see Isaiah 45:1–6; Ezra 1:1–11).  

Second, though, it’s in his people’s hearts that the Lord plans to make his home. The lesson to be learned from the period of separation from land and temple is that the real place of Yahweh’s desired abode is within people themselves. He is working all things toward the day when not only can he bring his people back to a land that has been cleansed of “detestable things” and idols; but more, toward that day he promises to establish a new covenant with them. This will be a covenant that doesn’t stand outside them, but that resides within them. “I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, so that they may follow my statutes and keep my ordinances and obey them. Then they shall be my people, and I will be their God” (Ezekiel 11:19–20).   

Third, even in exile, the Lord is not absent. At the end of today’s passage, Ezekiel returns to his extraordinary vision of God’s mobile presence: the wheeled chariot-ark. The “glory of the God of Israel”—Yahweh’s very Presence—hovers above the chariot. Ezekiel sees the presence of Yahweh rise on the wings of the cherubim and leave the temple in advance of its desecration. Yahweh moves east toward his people in exile, and his chariot hovers over the Mount of Olives. The Lord has been, says, Ezekiel, “a sanctuary”—a holy dwelling place—for his people in exile, and will continue to be so for as long as they are there. Unlike many deities from antiquity, Yahweh is not tied to a particular geography. He is the creator of heaven and earth, and he fills all things with his presence. He has committed himself to his people, and he will be with them wherever they are.  

And there’s this from Hebrews: “the indestructible life” of God’s Son and its impact on our lives. Foreshadowed in the mysterious Gentile king-priest Melchizedek described in Genesis 14, Jesus Christ has a priesthood authorized “not through a legal requirement concerning physical descent, but through the power of an indestructible life” (Hebrews 7:16).  

By the power of that “indestructible life,” Jesus Christ will one day bring us to our true homeland—the one that Abraham and the patriarchs looked to beyond the geography of Palestine, with its city whose Architect and Builder is God himself (Hebrews 11:10). There is hope for all the earth’s lonely exiles, and for any of us who find ourselves yearning for “home.”   

By the power of that “indestructible life,” Jesus Christ has already taken up residence within us, writing the law of his new covenant on our hearts. The risen and ascended Jesus has, by the power of the Spirit, given his people “a heart of flesh.” Residing at the right hand of the Father, he works to bring us grace to help us in our time of need, and he works within us to incline our hearts to do his will.  

By the power of that “indestructible life,” weekly, even daily, wherever we are, Jesus Christ already brings us in our worship “to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the assembly and congregation of the firstborn, who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous, who have been made perfect” (Hebrews 12:22–23). When we know we belong to Jesus, we know that we are always in good company, already abiding, in part at least, at “home.”  

Be blessed this day,  

 Reggie Kidd+  

The Rod Has Blossomed - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 5/23/2023 •
Week of 7 Easter 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 97; Psalm 99; Ezekiel 7:10–15,23b–27; Hebrews 6:13–20; Luke 10:1–17 

This morning’s Canticles are: before the Psalm reading, Pascha Nostrum (“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); 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. Today is Tuesday of the 7th (and final) week of Easter. “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!” 

During this week the Daily Office continues a quick trip through the main themes of the Book of Ezekiel and of the first half of the Book of Hebrews. Meanwhile, we are reading our way through the Gospel according to Luke.  

Today, our meditation will key off of three different verses, one each from Ezekiel, Hebrews, and Luke. Ezekiel wants us to know that, despite appearances, God will bring justice to the earth. Pride and wickedness will not have the final say in human affairs. Hebrews would have us know that God’s promises for those who trust him are so sure, that his promises can serve as a secure anchor for our soul. And in Luke, Jesus urges us to be bold in speaking out on his behalf. He promises that he stands behind us, and that his Father stands behind him. 

Ezekiel: “the rod has blossomed.” First, consider this thought in Ezekiel chapter 7, verse 11: “The rod has blossomed, pride has budded. Violence has grown into a rod of wickedness. None of them shall remain….”  

Ezekiel writes from Babylon to Jews who remain in Jerusalem, and he does so not long before the puppet government in Jerusalem provokes the destruction of the city. Ezekiel presents one last rehearsal of Israel’s faults, one last plea for repentance. In chapter 6 verse 9 Ezekiel had said that the people’s “wanton heart” had turned away from Yahweh, and their “wanton eyes” had turned to idols. As a result, the exile and destruction that were upon them would make them “loathsome in their own eyes.” Here in chapter 7, he assures them that the prosperity acquired through violence and wickedness will be wiped out. Their military won’t save them, for “They have blown the horn and made everything ready, but no one goes to battle.” Nor will they be saved by delusional visions from prophets, manufactured instruction from priests, self-serving counsel from elders, or suicidal incitement to rebellion from the lackey “king” Zedekiah (2 King 25). The house of cards is coming down.  

Yahweh had called Israel a people of his own possession, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Exodus 19:5,6). But God’s people had presumed that the mere occupation of sacred position made that position inviolable. They wrongly assumed that the mere stewardship of God’s holy words put them beyond being answerable for obeying those words. But God had called them to holiness so that they might be holy. He had given them precious truths that they might live by them. Instead, however, they worshiped profanely and treated one another profanely—and so they were bringing profanity upon themselves. Lord, have mercy.  

Hebrews: an anchor for the soul. Second, there is this powerful word of assurance in Hebrews chapter 6, verse 9: “We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul…” (Hebrews 6:19).  

Threats like Ezekiel’s can seem so final. They do bespeak God’s unchangeable resolve to liberate the world he loves from the grip of evil. But those threats are not the final word. The final and unchangeable word is a word of promise. Hebrews quotes the terms of God’s promise to Abraham from Genesis chapter 22 verse 17 (which reads powerfully and meaningfully in the more literal King James Version): “Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee.” Despite the downward arc of Israel’s sinfulness, God had sworn by his own character that he would turn that arc. He had done so back in Genesis 22, when he substituted a ram for Abraham’s son Isaac on Mt. Horeb’s altar of sacrifice. God did so again in an ultimate and unimaginable way when he substituted his own Son for all the world’s sin on the cross of Mt. Golgotha.  

Despite his people’s faithlessness, God ultimately remains faithful to his own promises. His promise had been to bless all nations through Israel, and through his Son Jesus, he has done just that. Hebrews makes the point that the arm of God’s promise is as long as his arm of justice. At the cross, promise and justice meet to enfold us in a divine embrace. And Hebrews promises us that if we will hold that promise in our hearts, it will serve as a strong anchor against all the currents of doubt and fear that try to shipwreck our souls.  

Luke: “Whoever listens to you…” And third, in the certainty that God will bring justice to the earth and bring to himself those who truly belong to him, Jesus promises that we can speak confidently on God’s behalf. Here’s what he says in Luke chapter 10, verse 16: “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects the one who sent me.”  

Luke presents Jesus as being altogether cognizant of his mission: its purpose, process, and outcome. Thus far in Luke’s narrative, Jesus has explained twice to his uncomprehending disciples that he will be betrayed, killed, and raised from the dead. On the Mount of Transfiguration, he has spoken about his upcoming “exodus” with Moses and Elijah. Thus, he has “set his face” toward Jerusalem.  

On this last journey to Jerusalem, Jesus gives his followers a taste of what their mission will be on the far side of his death and resurrection. He sends seventy (some ancient texts say seventy-two) on a brief missionary expedition. They go as “lambs among wolves,” that is, as innocents among the shrewd, as potential martyrs among potential persecutors. They can expect to be welcomed by some and rejected by others. Regardless, their message is “The kingdom of God has drawn near”—which nearness brings blessing or curse. The messengers aren’t in charge of making the kingdom happen; they are responsible only for telling the truth.  

This purpose applies to you and me. In the face of lies, we tell the truth. Where there is sickness of soul, we offer the medicine of Jesus. Where the kingdom of self and sin are in apparent ascendancy, we declare the reality of the dominion of love and justice and holiness. The Lord takes care of the results.  

May you and I take heart in today’s threefold truth. As Ezekiel says, evil will not have the last say. As Hebrews says, God’s promises are a firm anchor for our soul. And as Jesus says in Luke, our job is simply to tell the truth about the kingdom of God’s beloved Son and leave the outcome to the Lord himself.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+