House of God - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 7/21/2023 
Friday of the Seventh Week After Pentecost (Proper 10) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 31; 1 Samuel 21:1–15; Acts 13:13–25; Mark 3:7–19a 

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 in the Season After Pentecost. We are in Proper 10 of Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Once, the Christian singer-songwriter Gloria Gaither asked a room filled with young songwriters two questions. First, she asked how many in the room had written a song based on a psalm in the past year. Almost every person in the room raised a hand. Second, she asked how many had read through the life of David during the past year. No hands. She proceeded to show how many of those psalms depend on the context of David’s life for their meaning. She offered her opinion that to pluck them out of that context was to cherry-pick them. Now, Gloria Gaither is a most gracious lady, so her demeanor was inviting and encouraging rather than off-putting and dispiriting. But she made her point.  

Three psalms emerge from the events of today’s reading in David’s life.  

Psalm 52 and Ahimelech’s death. Fleeing Saul, David seeks refuge at Nob with the high priest Ahimelech (great-grandson of Eli and father of Abiathar). David notices that one of Saul’s mercenaries, Doeg the Edomite, is already in the camp. Perhaps wanting to protect Ahimelech from appearing to have chosen David over Saul, David dissembles about why he’s come. He claims to be on a mission for the king. Doeg isn’t buying it.  

David is clever enough to convince Ahimelech to allow him and his men to take the showbread that is ordinarily reserved for the priests and to take the sword of Goliath which David had entrusted to him. But David is not astute enough to realize that Doeg needs to be dealt with. Immediately after David leaves for Gath, Doeg goes and reports to Saul. In turn, Saul commissions Doeg to return and slaughter Ahimelech and all the priests of Nob. The lone escapee is Abiathar, Ahimelech’s son.  

David feels responsible for the murder of Ahimelech: “David said to Abiathar, “I knew on that day, when Doeg the Edomite was there, that he would surely tell Saul. I am responsible for the lives of all your father’s house” (1 Samuel 22:22).  

To remind himself that God will in the end deal with wicked evildoers like Doeg, David composes Psalm 52, “A Maskil of David, when Doeg the Edomite came to Saul and said to him, ‘David has come to the house of Ahimelech.’” All of us, I’m sure, live with some level of frustration at the prevalence of evil and foolishness in the world. Many of us, no doubt, wonder if we’ve done enough to resist that evil and foolishness. David’s song can help: “Why do you boast, O mighty one, of mischief done against the godly? … But God will break you down forever; … The righteous will see, and fear, and will laugh at the evildoer” (Psalm 52:1a,3a,6). The God who is justice and rightness must make justice and rightness prevail in his world. That is one truth the entire Bible doggedly clings to. And so can we.  

And so, our lives can be characterized not by dismay, despair, doom, and gloom, but by thankfulness, trust, and praise: “But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever. I will thank you forever, because of what you have done. In the presence of the faithful I will proclaim your name, for it is good” (Psalm 52:8–9).  

Psalm 56 and Psalm 34: David among the Philistines.* David’s flight takes him all the way to the gates of Philistine Gath, where he pretends to be insane, even to the extent of drooling spittle down his beard to prove he is harmless (1 Samuel 21:10–15). He composes Psalm 56 to ask God’s mercy. Covering his shame, he knows, is the God who has “taken account of my wanderings; [and] put my tears in [his] bottle” (Psalm 56:8 NASB). He loves the coherence of God’s Word all the more: “In God, whose word I praise, In the Lord, whose word I praise . . . I have put my trust” (compare Psalm 56:1, 4, 10–11). Within the exercise of crafting words to articulate his situation and express his feelings, David arrives at a deeper sense of the trustworthiness of God himself. He can pretend to be confused — even mad — because he knows God’s Word is true; and what is happening outside himself does not threaten what is true within himself. 

Psalm 34 also comes from this period in David’s life when he is seeking asylum by feigning lunacy. His fool’s charade puts him in a unique position to understand that it is the “poor” whom the Lord hears, the “brokenhearted” to whom the Lord is near, and the “crushed in spirit” whom the Lord saves (Psalm 34:17–18). 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

*The following two paragraphs are adapted from Reggie M. Kidd, “David: Israel’s Sweet Singer and Architect of Praise,” in With One Voice: Discovering Christ’s Song in Our Worship (BakerBooks, 2005), p. 55.  

The Commandments - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 7/20/2023 
Thursday of the Seventh Week After Pentecost (Proper 10) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 37; 1 Samuel 20:24–42; Acts 13:1–12; Mark 2:23–3:6 

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. On this Thursday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 10 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Mark: what is “sabbath” for? Jesus deals with proper use of the sabbath. Despite the accusations leveled against Jesus and his disciples in Mark 2 and 3, gleaning and healing on the sabbath were never prohibited by the law of Moses. The word “sabbath” technically means “seven,” but theologically and metaphorically it means “rest.” On the seventh day, God’s people were told to do that: rest. What Jesus wants his detractors to understand is that sabbath is about more than not doing stuff. Sabbath is about restoration and healing.  

Image: In this 1768 parchment, Jekuthiel Sofer emulated decalogue at the Esnoga Source: [1] at Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, Amsterdam HS.ROS.PL.a-33. Jekuthiel Sofer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

Today’s incidents about sabbath-rest provide an invitation to take a deeper look at any commandment: how does it further the flourishing and wellbeing for which we were created? You could reframe Jesus’s saying about sabbath (“People are not made for the sabbath, but the sabbath for people”) to apply to any of the 1o Commandments. For in the end, the commandments are about bringing our lives into sync with God’s life. Thereby, they are about making us more, not less, alive. Does “x, y, or z” activity promote, or hinder, my love for God and for neighbor?  

Jesus’s gleaning and healing don’t, by any means, mean we are to take a casual approach to any of the commandments, including the sabbath. Exactly the opposite. This side of the Cross, each commandment needs to be filtered through the lens of the impact of Christ’s work and the apostles’ teaching. The idea is: how much greater is their weight now, rather than how much less? By becoming himself our sabbath rest (see Colossians 2:17), Christ deepened rather than diminished our responsibility for self- and neighbor-care, and for sanctifying time through worship. If there’s greater freedom, there’s also greater responsibility. (Huzzahs, by the way, to businesses that theoretically could improve their bottom line by staying open on Sundays but choose not to!)  

1 Samuel: how to “honor” parents. Our reading in 1 Samuel today invites reflection on the 5th Commandment. That commandment enjoins honoring father and mother (see Exodus 20:12). Significantly, though, Jesus, God’s own Son, will say, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37a). The bearer of our Heavenly Father’s redemptive anointing merits a higher loyalty than any earthly authority, even parents. It is important that earthly fathers and mothers understand that! It’s worth looking back from this perspective on Jonathan’s treatment of Saul, his father. In Jonathan’s day, God’s redemptive anointing has been transferred from his father Saul to his friend David. It would not be a true “honoring” of his father for Jonathan to have participated in Saul’s attempt to murder David. Jonathan gives his father every chance to show a softening of demeanor. Alas, Saul does not relent in his murderous intent. Jonathan chooses loyalty to God’s anointed. Think about what that means: Jonathan surrenders the prospect of his own anointing as successor to his father’s throne. Jonathan chooses wisely.  

Many of us as followers of Christ have had to make similar choices, even if reluctantly and as lovingly as possible. Often allegiance to Christ has meant following different career paths than our parents had laid out for us, going to churches that seem odd to our folks, taking on different philosophies of child-rearing than we’d been raised with. But Christ and the commandment call us to do so as respectfully as we can, mindful that we never know what God himself may be doing in hearts that had long grown cold to the faith. Sometimes, we find those stories turn in delightfully surprising directions.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Elasticity of Spirit - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 7/19/2023 
Wednesday of the Seventh Week After Pentecost (Proper 10) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 38; 1 Samuel 20:1–23; Acts 12:18–25; Mark 2:13-22 

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 in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 10 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

“Change or die,” wrote Alan Deutschman in 2007. Since then, so many things have forced that choice on all of us: recession, racial strife, bruising political seasons, global pandemic. We’ve all faced one situation after another where we’ve wished: “Just show me the manual for how to deal with this!” But we discover that there is no manual, no script. Just the need to adapt or die.  

So it’s been all the more important to become more deeply rooted in the biblical story—the one reality that gives perspective to everything else.  

Mark: elasticity of spirit. There is one grounding truth that holds the whole Bible together, despite its range of genres, time periods, and angles of vision: God is wooing and winning a wayward world back to himself. One of the Bible’s most powerful metaphors for this dynamic is that of God as Groom and his people as Bride (Israel in the Old Testament, and the Church in the New). Among the many staggering claims Jesus makes for himself, none stands out more than this one: “The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day” (Mark 2:19–20).  

The reason that Jesus can calm storms, heal the sick, and forgive sins is that he is himself God-the-Groom come for his Bride, Israel reconstituted in the Church. Hosea’s taking to himself as wife the wanton woman Gomer was like a movie trailer for this bigger story, this larger reality: the bridegroom is here! 

After eons of ups and downs on the way to this reality — of prophecies and predictions, of feeble embodiments and failed heroes and heroines — it takes a certain elasticity of spirit to accept it. Elasticity to realize you’ve been bereft of that kind of love. It’s the kind of elasticity that seemingly only people like rejected tax collectors and lost sinners are characterized by — people who know they have a deficit in the love column. Levi (Matthew) and his friends are ready to hear the call.  

The “righteous,” however, are stuck. Like old wineskins, they don’t have the elasticity to adapt to the new wedding wine God is pouring out. Like cloth that’s too old, too set in its ways, and too fragile even to receive a patch, they find themselves unprepared to be incorporated into God’s people who are being newly configured around the Messiah-Groom.  

Acts’ reality check: No, you’re not Numero Uno. Jesus’s message to Herod Agrippa (ruled A.D. 37 to 44), grandson of Herod the Great: “Dude, you really aren’t a god!”  

Maybe the hardest adaptation for many of us to the coming of God’s Messiah is, well, taking ourselves off the throne of our lives and of the little fake kingdoms we’ve built for ourselves. Agrippa’s death by rot from within is a cautionary tale. Which tale is countered by the retelling of Peter’s release from jail with his almost comical reunion with Rhoda and company (in yesterday’s reading), and by the report of the continuation of the partnership between Paul and Barnabas in ministering among the Gentiles (in today’s reading).  

1 Samuel: covenant love. There is profound joy in knowing Jesus as God’s Groom for us, as he binds himself to us by the blood of his covenant: “This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for many” (blending Matthew 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:29). Maybe one of the greatest joys within that joy is experiencing relationships shaped by covenant love, like that between Jonathan and David.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Smoke Goes Upwards - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 7/18/2023 
Tuesday of the Seventh Week After Pentecost (Proper 10) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 26; Psalm 28; 1 Samuel 19:1–18; Acts 12:1–17; Mark 2:1–12 

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 Tuesday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 10 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Bono, lead singer of the band U2, describes music this way: “Music is Worship; whether it’s worship of women or their designer, the world or its destroyer, . . . whether the prayers are on fire with a dumb rage or dove-like desire . . . the smoke goes upwards . . . to God or something you replace God with . . . usually yourself.”*  

The remarkable thing about David’s musical gift is that it has the power to pull him out of what could be a vortex of despair and doubt, and to take it all “upwards,” as Bono might say.  

Image: Adapted from "VFS Film Production: 'Milligan’s Stew'" by vancouverfilmschool is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

In our reading of 1 Samuel, we’ve come to a critical juncture. David was called in from the sheep fields to find out he’s the future shepherd of God’s people (1 Samuel 16). He has dispatched Goliath, a giant of an enemy of God’s people (1 Samuel 17), and he has been taken into King Saul’s house as though he were a son. There he has found a lifelong friend and soul mate in the king’s son Jonathan (1 Samuel 18).  

And yet, David’s situation is confusing. David has discovered that his songs have the dual power to calm Saul’s troubled soul (1 Samuel 16:23), and at the same time to launch Saul into a murderous rage (1 Samuel 18:10–11; 19:9–10). David’s been given military command—and yet his every victory is resented (1 Samuel 18:5–9). He’s been made son-in-law to the king—and yet with malicious intent on Saul’s part (1 Samuel 18:20–21,27–29). Finally, in today’s passage, David finds out that the king is plotting to have him assassinated.  He realizes he must flee. So many things seem to be going so wrong.  

It is a wonderful thing that today’s passage in 1 Samuel is paired in the Hebrew Scriptures with a psalm that David wrote on this occasion. The superscription to Psalm 59 reads, in part: “Of David … when Saul ordered his house to be watched in order to kill him.”  

The gift of David’s song-writing is that he is able to crystallize all that’s going on in his heart, and lift it up to the Lord—as though he were sending it up like sweet-smelling incense. In the very process of crafting a song, he also extrapolates from his personal story to Yahweh’s larger purpose to set right a world that has been off-kilter since the Garden. He prays for his own deliverance, and for the whole earth that lies in the grip of the power of evil. Through it all, he sings with joyful and even exuberant hope.  

Just a few highlights:  

“Deliver me … Rouse yourself, come to my help…” — Psalm 59:1,4b. David realizes that all his cunning and craft are not enough to secure his safety. He needs Yahweh to protect him. We can all relate to that!  

“…consume them in wrath, consume them until they are no more” —Psalm 59:13. David calls out his enemies’ pride (Psalm 59:12b), and he calls down punishment on their heads. What is remarkable — admirable, even — is the freedom David feels to express raw emotions to God. It may very well be that such honesty is the reason the Lord can provide David with the grace — the spiritual breathing space — to adopt, in the end, a different posture. For what we will see as 1 Samuel’s narrative progresses, is that when David has the opportunity to kill Saul, he demurs (see 1 Samuel 24 and 26). And when Saul is eventually slain in battle by the Philistines, David will lament his death: “How the mighty have fallen” (2 Samuel 1:25). The lesson of Psalm 59 is that the path to gospel-empathy for those who wish you evil is first to acknowledge before the Lord your feelings about them! The Lord, it seems, can accept anything except pretend piety and fake feelings.  

“But you, O Lord, laugh at them … My merciful God comes to meet me” — Psalm 59:8a,10 BCP). Despite the fact that he is the king’s own son-in-law and champion of the people, David has to be smuggled out a window in the middle of the night to escape Saul’s men (1 Samuel 19:11–17). His song records two facts that anchor his soul in that moment. First, David knows that above the chaos of his life, God reigns in tranquility, and can even have a sense of humor about it. Second, David knows that in the darkest of nights and the most uncertain of situations, he is not alone. He knows that what awaits him is not an unknown and frightening future, but God’s merciful and gracious presence.   

“Then it will be known to the ends of the earth that God rules over Jacob” — Psalm 59:13b. As David sings and prays his way through his own plight, he has an eye to the nations. David is mindful that God’s design is that Israel be a colony to reclaim the world since the Fall. What pains David is that Saul and his operatives are acting like pagan enemies of God — thus, David compares them twice in this psalm to howling and prowling “dogs” (Psalm 59:6,14). Ultimately, what Yahweh calls Israel to do is to promote God’s rule to “the ends of the earth.” For David, “the smoke goes upwards” for the sake of God’s mission in the world. May our prayers reflect this concern as well. 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

*Bono, Introduction to Selections from the Book of Psalms (New York: Grove Press, 1999), x,xi. 

The Mercy of God - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 7/17/2023 
Monday of the Seventh Week After Pentecost (Proper 10)  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 25; 1 Samuel 18:5–16; 27b–30; Acts 11:19–30; Mark 1:29–45 

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 Monday in the Season After Pentecost our readings finds us in Proper 10 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

1 Samuel: Saul’s envy. One of the deadliest of the deadly sins is envy. Envy believes somebody else’s wellbeing comes at the cost of one’s own. Envy says, “Your prosperity impoverishes me.” King Saul has a bad case of it. David’s military successes make Saul’s seem like failures: “Saul has killed his (insert: “mere”) thousands, and David his ten thousands” (1 Samuel 18:7b). David’s music had once soothed Saul’s soul; now it puts him in a murderous mood (1 Samuel 18:10–11). The more that people love David, the more Saul hates him (1 Samuel 18:16).  

“So Saul eyed David from that day on” (1 Samuel 10:9). People often refer to “green eyed envy.” A friend of mine calls it “the stink eye.” Saul’s “stink eye” betrays the stench of death from within. The sad truth is this: “Saul was afraid of David, because the Lord was with him but had departed from Saul” (1 Samuel 18:12). The sadder truth is that Saul has decided to be his own man, rather than the Lord’s. Trapped within the prison of self, he’s lost all perception of the world as it is. Gone is his sense of the greatness of the office that had been entrusted to him. Envy has made him dead to his true place in the world. Envy has dulled him to God’s design to bring wholeness and wellbeing back into the world through Israel.  

Lord, deliver me from this vile toxicity. May I never imbibe its poison. Bless all those around me whose success I can admire and learn from and contribute to and cheer and celebrate.  

Image: Statue of Saint Barnabas; church in the Mafra National Palace; Mafra, Portugal; Georges Jansoone, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons 

Luke: mercy walks the earth. In Dante’s Purgatorio, the Angel of Caritas counters the sin of Envy with the Beatitude: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy” (Cantos XIII–XV.84; Matthew 5:7). When my vision is not consumed by how your wellbeing could harm me, but rather when I see how your welfare can benefit all of us, I do all that I can to prosper you.  

Jesus Christ is the embodiment of such mercy. No sooner does he enter Simon’s house as a guest than he’s asked to heal Simon’s mother-in-law. He responds with healing mercy. Looking for zero-dark-thirty time alone with his Heavenly Father, Jesus is put upon by the demands of everyone who wants to see him. His response is the opposite of what mine would have been. Mercy compels him to expand the ministry so there will be even more demands on him: “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do” (Mark 1:38).  

Acts: mercy characterizes Jesus’s followers. And mercy is what characterizes the people whose lives Jesus impacts. Wherever they go, disciples who have fled Jerusalem (due to the persecution that followed Stephen’s stoning) tell fellow Jews about Jesus (Acts 11:19). In one city, Damascus of Syria, they cross the ethnic barrier and share the good news with Greeks. Grace happens: “The hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number became believers and turned to the Lord” (Acts 11:21).  

Word of the new non-Jewish believers gets to Jerusalem. Instead of responding out of fear and perhaps even envy that Gentiles are receiving the gift of new life in Christ, the Jerusalem church sends Barnabas, a Levite from Cyprus, to minister to the Gentiles. The actual name of Barnabas  is “Joseph,” but Acts 4:36 tells us the apostles have dubbed him “Barnabas,” which means “Son of Encouragement.” And encouragement is what he bestows wherever he goes. A man of some wealth, he had sold a piece of property and put the proceeds at the apostles’ disposal, so they could take care of the thousands of new converts (Acts 4:37). That’s mercy! He had been an advocate for the newly converted Saul (the future apostle Paul) when Saul/Paul approached understandably suspicious believers in Jerusalem (Acts 9:26–27). That’s mercy! 

Now, Barnabas inspects the doings in Antioch, where the good news of Jesus has jumped the wrong and artificial fire line Jewish Christ-followers had established between themselves and potential Gentile converts (this, despite the Great Commission to “go and make disciples of all nations”). Barnabas sees the grace of God at work in Antioch (Acts 11:23), and heads for Tarsus to seek out Saul (the future apostle to the Gentiles) to help Barnabas minister to the believers in Antioch. Under their ministry, followers of Christ begin to have a distinct identity as “Christians” — “Christ-ones.” Mercy has done this! 

Finally, a word of prophecy alerts the Antioch church to a coming famine that will affect everybody (Acts 11:27–28). Then mercy upon mercy, rather than just making provision for themselves, rather than resentfully writing off Jewish Christians who had given every indication that they had intended to keep the riches of the knowledge of Christ to themselves, the church in Antioch raises funds to provide relief for their Jerusalem brothers and sisters. In a pointed way, this is mercy in action.  

Envy kills from within. Mercy bestows life all around. 

Be blessed this day, living in the Mercy of God, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Broken Bodies - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 7/14/2023 
A Friday in the Season After Pentecost (Proper 9) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 16; Psalm 17; 1 Samuel 17:17–30; Acts 10:34–48; Mark 1:1–13 

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 in the Season After Pentecost. We are in Proper 9 of Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.  

A single line from one of today’s psalms prompts prayers of thanksgiving based on today’s New Testament readings: “My lines have fallen in pleasant places” (Psalm 16:6).  

Because of all that Christ is, and because of all that our Heavenly Father has accomplished through him, and because of the fullness of life we enjoy in Christ by the Holy Spirit, there is SO.MUCH.TO.BE.GRATEFUL.FOR: 

Thank you, Lord, that you did not leave your people Israel in permanent exile, but you raised up a voice in the wilderness to prepare for the coming of the Lord of rescue (Mark 1:1–4). 

Thank you, Lord Jesus, for identifying with us sinners in the waters of baptism, so that you could wash our sins away (Mark 1:9; John 1:29–34).  

Thank you, Father, for the love you have had from eternity for your Son, for the love you declared for your Son at his baptism, for the love with which you brought him back from the dead, and for the love that you have for sons and daughters who are baptized in him (Mark 1:11; Acts 10:44–48).  

Thank you, Father, that in the Holy Spirit, you gave your Son every resource he needed to accomplish his mission on this earth: to resist Satan in the wilderness, and to go about doing good and healing broken bodies and oppressed spirits (Mark 1:10–13; Acts 10:38). Thank you, Father, for baptizing us with that same Spirit, manifesting your grace in so many wonderful graces within and through us (Acts 10:46; Romans 12:3–8; 1 Corinthians 12:4–11; 1 Peter 4:10–11).  

Thank you, Lord, that there is no place on the earth where, nor any people on this planet among whom, you do not accept those who “fear God and do justice” (Acts 10:35). Thank you for the confidence this truth gives us to go and tell of Jesus the Lord of all and the Judge of the living and the dead…who has come to bring peace! (Acts 10:36,42) 

Thank you, Lord, for raising up reliable witnesses of your resurrection and for providing foundational proclaimers of your gospel, so we can know that when we speak of Jesus’s dying for sinners and rising to make saints, we speak of true truths, things that are not fabulous fables, mere myths, and saccharine stories (Acts 10:41–42; 2 Peter 1:16; John 18:35; 21:24–25; 1 John 1:1–4).  

Thank you, Lord, that my lines have fallen in pleasant places, and that, indeed, “I have a goodly heritage” (Psalm 16:6). 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+  

Here, There, and Everywhere - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 7/13/2023 
A Thursday in the Season After Pentecost (Proper 9) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 18; 1 Samuel 16:14–17:11; Acts 10:17–33; Luke 24:36–53  

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. On this Thursday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 9 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

This hopelessly romantic teenager spent hour upon hour pining for a love that could satisfy the longing in the Beatles 1966 song from the Revolver album, “Here There and Everywhere.”  

*Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., “Life-Giving Spirit,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 1998, p. 582. 

To lead a better life, I need my love to be here 
Here, making each day of the year 
Changing my life with a wave of her hand 
Nobody can deny that there’s something there 

Knowing that love is to share 
Each one believing that love never dies 
Watching their eyes 
And hoping I’m always there 

I will be there, and everywhere 
Here, there and everywhere. 

Harry Blamires, Christian thinker and friend of C. S. Lewis, says that youthful desires always carry about them a “sacramental cast.” When we are young, he argues, longings emerge within us that bear within them the promise of ultimate satisfaction and joy — satisfaction and joy that earthly relationships can only partially fulfill. Those desires can only be meaningfully fulfilled in this life if we see them as pointers to what lies beyond them: satisfaction and joy in being loved by and in loving God himself.  

The good news is that there is Someone who can be for each of us: “here, there, and everywhere.” That is the extraordinary truth that Luke brings home to us in the final two vignettes of his gospel.  

“Here…” The resurrected Christ is really “here”: “Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost (Gk, pneuma) does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Luke 24:39). The Jesus who has returned from the dead is no mere “spirit” (Gk, pneuma), meaning in this context “ghost,” or “disembodied, nonphysical being.” It’s understandable that a fifth century manuscript introduced the term “phantasm” (Gk, phantasma). None of that is what the resurrected Jesus is. The God-Man did not mount the cross and enter his tomb only to emerge as Casper the Friendly Ghost, or as something on the order of the apparitional Obi-Wan Kenobi who guides Luke Skywalker after submitting to Darth Vader’s lightsaber.   

In proof of the physical nature of his resurrection-body, Jesus offers his hands and feet to his disciples’ touch. He asks for something to eat. “So they gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in front of them” (Luke 24:42–43). The fact that his resurrection body can take in food raises (at least to me) all kinds of questions about his present (and our future) metabolism. However, the New Testament isn’t interested in speaking to a matter like that (one day, we’ll see what it means). What Luke is at pains to present is the fact that the risen Jesus is not a Savior who has rescued us out of our human, embodied existence. Instead, Jesus has risen as what theologian Richard Gaffin calls our “glorified humanity.”* Jesus has risen to redeem us in our embodied humanity. Praise be!! 

“…There, and Everywhere.” But while Jesus is not a pneuma (or “spirit”) in the sense of “ghost,” nonetheless, his presence among is mediated by the Holy Spirit. The last vignette in Luke’s Gospel illustrates what his traveling companion Paul describes in 1 Corinthians as the fact that “the Last Adam (Christ) has become life-giving Spirit” (also Gk, pneuma, but note the necessary capitalization of the word “Spirit” in English, which most translations miss—1 Corinthians 15:45). Luke portrays Christ ascending to the Father in his full physicality, so he can receive and pour out upon us the Holy Spirit. By that same Spirit, Christ returns to us and takes up residence among and within us.  

No, Christ hasn’t come back from the grave as a “spirit” (in the sense of being a ghost). But in his bodily form he does ascend to the right hand of the Father so that he can return to us in the person of the Holy Spirit. Two incredible things happen with his ascension. First, now one of us is there—in the very throne room of the Lord of the universe! As firstborn from the dead, the risen Lord Jesus represents us—there he intercedes for us, guides us in living and worshiping, proclaims the Father’s name to us and keeps our name before the Father, sings over us, and brings us bread and wine from God’s holy altar (Hebrews 2:12; 7:25; 8:2; 13:10).  

Second, the risen and ascended Jesus sends power from on high to enable us to witness and to see him work miracle after miracle of conversion and transformation. The power he sends is his own presence. The Holy Spirit among us is the Spirit of Christ himself. The amazing thing—the thing that is virtually incomprehensible to us—is that the resurrected Christ can be in two places at once: there at the right hand of the Father, and here residing in each of us and in all of us: “Here, There, and Everywhere.” 

Be blessed this day with his presence, “here, there, and everywhere,” 

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Heart - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 7/12/2023 
A Wednesday in the Season After Pentecost (Proper 9) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:1–24; 1 Samuel 16:1–13; Acts 10:1–16; Luke 24:13–35 

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 in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 9 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Who I essentially am—what at bottom my basic life assumptions and drives and loves are—the Bible’s shorthand for all that is “heart.” The Bible’s message to me, further, is that my “heart” is set in one direction or another: it is set on God, or it is not.  

In the “not” column can stand many things: myself, my “people,” my country, a cause, money, nothing in particular (which I can cover by binging or by busy-ness)—just not God.  

In the “on God” column stand a host of graces, summed up in one: love … love of God and love of neighbor.  

Today’s readings provide a wonderful opportunity for a “heart” checkup.  

1 Samuel. What God is looking for in Saul’s replacement as king over his people is someone who is notable not for their physical impressiveness (like Saul) or their claim of birth (like Jesse’s first born, Eliab). “[T]he Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).  

In David, Yahweh sees someone who has learned, in the first place, the humility to be overlooked for kingship. More fundamentally, Yahweh sees in David someone who has learned, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want” (Psalm 23)—that’s the kind of person with the heart for shepherding His people. Such a shepherd will know how to nourish and protect God’s flock, for he himself has experienced Yahweh’s nourishing and protecting grace. Despite the glaring flaws (of which we will read shortly), David’s whole being is defined by his love for and dependence upon Yahweh—and Yahweh can work with that (1 Samuel 13:14; 16:7).  

“[F]rom that day forward…” — 1 Samuel 16:13c. In contrast to the sporadic, even spasmodic, experience of Saul, David’s experience of the Spirit of God is permanent and abiding (see Psalm 51:11–12). It’s almost as though Saul’s experience of God’s Spirit had been a series of “possessions” — it certainly was not an indwelling. Saul’s heart simply had no room for the living God.  

Sidebar: The difference between “Spirit-possession” and “Spirit-indwelling” is something to keep in mind when miracle workers arise. Do their lives testify to the Spirit’s “indwelling” presence and remolding work. Or is their experience more like a “possession” that leaves the person unaffected? Does a person with flashy signs also evidence the deeper fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5)? Or are the signs accompanied, instead, by the fruit of the world, the flesh, and the devil (lawlessness, deceit, lust, greed, pride, arrogance, envy, bitterness—see Galatians 5:19–20; 1 John 2:15–16)? Just asking.   

In Acts, we are treated to a study in the way God the Father has been preparing for the pouring out of his Spirit upon “all flesh.” Over the course of his life, the Roman centurion Cornelius’s heart has become aligned with that of the God of the Bible. Presumably from a pagan background, Cornelius has been attracted to Israel’s God. “He was a devout man who feared God with all his household; he gave alms generously to the people and prayed constantly to God” (Acts 10:2). That heart-orientation and those practices put him in a position to respond well when God’s angel visits him: “Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God. Now send…” (Acts 10:4b–5a).  

Luke tells us about two disciples who confess, “Were not our hearts burning within us?” Theirs had been broken hearts at the beginning of today’s passage. But these were hearts that had been able honestly to acknowledge their disappointment and dismay at the dashing of their hopes and dreams for Israel’s redemption when Jesus was executed.  

Their hearts, in other words, had already been set in the right direction. What was needed, and what was supplied, was for Jesus to meet them with healing power for their receptive yet broken hearts. He tells them, at length (it probably took a couple of hours to walk the 7 miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus), the whole biblical backstory to that weekend’s events: “‘Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the Scriptures” (Luke 24:26–27).  

What grace! Even so, more grace than the mere telling of the story is required—and more grace is given! At the table, Jesus repeats the fourfold acts of the Eucharist he had shared with his disciples that last night—“he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them” (Luke 24:30; see Luke 22:19). It’s this combination of Word and Table that breaks through the gloom … and begins the restoration of hope and the rebuilding of despairing hearts.    

May your heart and mine be ever set, like David’s, on the love of God. May your heart and mine be shaped, like Cornelius’s, by the disciplines of devotion, of poor-relief, and of prayer. May your heart and mine be ever ready, like Cleopas’s and his companion’s, to be joyfully surprised when Jesus meets us in our deepest grief, with his life-giving Word and his Body and Blood.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+

God's Regret - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 7/11/2023 
A Tuesday in the Season After Pentecost (Proper 9) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 5; Psalm 6; 1 Samuel 15:24–35; Acts 9:32–43; Luke 23:56b–24:11 

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 Tuesday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 9 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

It is fitting that we read Luke’s account of Jesus’s resurrection alongside 1 Samuel’s account of the definitive rejection of King Saul and the final dispatching of King Agag, on the one hand, and the account in Acts of the healing of Aeneas and the raising up of Dorcas/Tabitha, on the other. 

The Bible’s larger story is one of God’s persistent, insistent, and ultimately irresistible intention to redeem humankind. The heart of the story is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Luke 23 and 24). That unimaginable narrative forces an either/or choice for every one of us: we either accept it with a hearty “I’m all in,” or we reject it, with either a resolute, or a shrugged, “nah.”  

Image: Emoji One, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons 

1 Samuel portrays King Saul’s attempt to have it both ways: “I’m kind of in, and I’m kind of not in.” The message of 1 Samuel is that a pretend or equivocal allegiance, a “meh, ok,” is no allegiance: “…you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you…” (1 Samuel 15:26).   

“And the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel” — 1 Samuel 15:35b. The sad tale of King Saul sends the message to each of us: don’t make the God of the universe regret (and there are a thousand caveats that could be offered here) he ever put you here, the way he regretted putting the kingdom of God in Saul’s hands.  

The hewing of King Agag by God’s prophet is a difficult passage to read. We must understand that it is a ritual execution decreed by Yahweh himself, the God of pure justice and holiness—and the God who ultimately will not let condemnatory death have the last say. In the mystery of his own counsel, Yahweh allows his own “righteous” Son to undergo a similarly gruesome and horrific execution (see Luke 23:47). Yet Jesus endures his execution not on his own account. He does so on behalf of others who are as wicked as Agag and as faithless as Saul, uttering “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). He carries their iniquities, their rebelliousness, their betrayals, their arrogance into the tomb; and he leaves their offenses in the tomb behind him when he emerges alive again.  

In his Book of Acts, Luke describes the life-giving power that Jesus’s resurrection unleashes.  

In Acts 9, we find the apostle Peter ministering in the territory of classical Philistia. This is the region to which Jesus had taken the disciples right after declaring all foods clean. When Peter and the disciples rebuked the Canaanite woman, Jesus commended her faith and healed her daughter of an unclean demonic spirit (Matthew 15 and Mark 7).  

Aeneas of Lydda rises from his sickbed, his own elegant, if tacit, “I’m all in!” in response to the divinely personal overture given through Peter: “Aeneas, Jesus the Christ heals you. Get up and make your own bed” (Acts 9:34). Many turn to the Lord as a result. 

Dorcas/Tabitha of Joppa lies dead. She’s good and dead, her body washed and prepared for interment. Surrounded by artifacts of her beneficences and by the laments of her beneficiaries, it appears that her earthly ministry of mercy is over. But, no! Peter addresses her dead body: “Tabitha, get up.” Luke tells it dramatically: she opens her eyes, sees Peter, sits up, and, accepting Peter’s extended hand, she stands. Presented alive to the other widows and saints, she becomes the occasion for the conversion of many in Joppa. 

A fitting coda to today’s Acts passage is Luke’s brief note about Peter staying in the home of Joppa’s Simon, “a tanner” … in Jewish eyes, an unclean profession. Peter has come a long way since his sharing in the rebuke of the Canaanite woman. Next stop, the home of Cornelius, the Roman centurion! 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

God’s Instructions - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 7/10/2023 
A Monday in the Season After Pentecost (Proper 9)  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 1; Psalm 2; Psalm 3; 1 Samuel 15:1–3,7–23; Acts 9:19b–31; Luke 23:44–56a 

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 Monday in the Season After Pentecost our readings find us in Proper 9 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

For my wife and many others who cook, recipes are invitations to creativity. For them, the joy of cooking lies in substituting ingredients and changing measurements at will, seemingly whimsically at times. The results can be spectacular, resulting in meals that taste better than if directions had been meticulously followed.  

By contrast, I once had a job assembling lawnmowers. The instructions were clear: “Turn this screw two and a half times to secure the motor to the frame. If you turn the screw only two times, the motor will eventually come loose from the frame, and the customer will not be happy. If you turn the screw three times, you will strip the threads and we’ll have to throw the frame away.”   

Sometimes it’s OK to take instructions as suggestions. Sometimes it’s not.  

Wisdom knows when to improvise, and when to do what you’re told. In the Bible, it’s a matter of the heart, a matter of discernment. Somebody once noted, “Saul had no heart for God and lost the kingdom. David had a whole heart for God and saw the kingdom united. Solomon had half a heart for God, and we see the kingdom divided after his death.” The narratives of Samuel and Kings bear out these observations.  

1 Samuel. Because David had a heart for God, his improvisations on God’s commands were acceptable, as when (as we will read next week), he and his men ate the “bread of the Presence” (1 Samuel 21:1–15). Because Saul’s heart is far from God, however, his improvisations on God’s instructions backfire. Yahweh puts the Amalekites, inveterate enemies of Israel, completely under the ban. For that reason, Saul is commissioned to impose God’s sentence of judgment. Saul improvises: he spares Agag the Amalekites’ king, and he allows his soldiers to spare “the best of the sheep and of the cattle and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was valuable” (1 Samuel 15:9).  

After the fact, Saul makes a show of piety. He builds an altar purportedly for sacrifice. In reality, however, it is a monument to his own ego. The altar is, as the New International Version nicely renders, “in his own honor” (1 Samuel 15:10). Taken alive, Agag is potentially worthwhile to Saul as a walking trophy, a constant reminder of his own military prowess. And the booty (“… all that was valuable”) that the soldiers were allowed to “swoop down on” (1 Samuel 15:19) and take as plunder—well, it was just that, plunder, not sacrifice. The “sacrifice” is just theatre.  

No, King Saul’s mandate from God is like the instructions I received to turn the screw exactly two and a half times. His situation is not like my wife’s, where the instructions on the page invite her to see potential beyond the words on the page. What Yahweh has been inviting from Saul throughout his life is an aligning of Saul’s heart with his. Yahweh’s “delight” would have lain in finding Saul delighting in Him. Instead, Saul proves his unerring instinct is for self. And his show of religiosity is a cover for rebellion and arrogance (1 Samuel 15:23). He has rejected Yahweh’s overture, and Yahweh has reluctantly (oh the mystery!) said, “OK, Saul, have it your way. You want to be a law unto yourself, you are free to go.” Lord, have mercy, on me a sinner! 

Acts. The sad demise of King Saul sets in striking relief the redemption of his namesake and fellow Benjamite (Philippians 3:5), Saul of Tarsus.  

Claimed by Christ and newly baptized, Saul of Tarsus finds Scripture’s story coming alive with Jesus-as-Son-of-God-and-Messiah as its centerpiece. He begins to give powerful voice to that reality in Damascus, among the believers whom he had been sent to persecute: “For several days he was with the disciples in Damascus, and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, ‘He is the Son of God.’ All who heard him were amazed … Saul became increasingly more powerful and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Messiah” (Acts 9:19b–21a,22).  

The result of Christ’s work in Saul of Tarsus’s heart is that we begin to see the transformation of a meticulous instruction-follower who thought he had been given a mandate like that of the earlier Saul: kill the infidels! Now, humbled and made new by the cross and resurrection of Christ, he reads the biblical story more deeply. Now, he adjusts and adapts to whatever situation the Lord puts before him in order to carry out his new mission: to tell the good news, to the Jew first and also to the Greek (Romans 1:16).  

Case in point is this Saul’s willingness to undergo the first of many humbling experiences for the sake of the gospel: he lets himself be lowered from the city wall of Damascus in a basket, he permits himself to be scrutinized by (understandably) skeptical Christ-followers in Jerusalem, and he submits to being secreted out of Jerusalem to his hometown Tarsus. 

This is not the most direct route to the position of prominence the Book of Acts will assign to him. Then again, this heart is being molded after the likeness of the Christ who conquered through defeat, and who ennobled others by suffering ignobility himself. As a result, this Saul, unlike the previous Saul, will come to embody the deeper reality Scripture had always sought beyond “burnt offerings and sacrifices”: the presenting of one’s whole being as a sacrifice, “living, holy, and acceptable to God” (Romans 12:2).  

With that same power at work in you, may you be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Bread & Wine - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 7/7/2023 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me. 

We’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings last week and this week. Instead, we’re thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts (sometimes lightly edited) from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.  

They come from a season in my life when I was on a journey from more generic free-form worship to worship shaped by the classic liturgy. I hope these observations help you in your own quest to love God and your neighbor.  

“Jesus Christ, Our Worship Leader,” Part Five of Five 

This week, we explore the way Jesus exquisitely leads worship in our midst: he prays for us, declares the Father’s name to us, sings over us in love, and brings us bread and wine from God’s holy heavenly altar.  

Bread & Wine 

In Christ the King Catholic Church in Mt. Pleasant, SC, there is a beautifully colored stained glass depiction of a man who is obviously from the biblical era. The picture includes a number of clues as to the figure’s identity: he bears a crown on his head and priestly vestments on his shoulders; he stands behind scales of justice and an olive branch of peace. What gives him away, though, is the cup and loaf he holds in his hands. It’s Melchizedek. The stained glass picks up on a detail in Genesis 14’s portrayal of Melchizedek that is easy to pass over, until you’ve really “seen” it. Melchizedek brings to Abram, according to Genesis 14:18, “bread and wine.”  

This verse is the first convergence of “bread and wine” in the Bible. Accordingly, ancient commentators and Christian artists through the centuries have found in that detail an irresistible invitation to ponder the Eucharist, the gift of bread and wine the New Testament’s greater Melchizedek provides his brothers and sisters.  

The entire redemptive project envisions, as Robert Stamps’s lovely hymn puts it, “God and man at table are sat down.” As a foretaste of Israel’s ultimate journey, seventy of her elders “eat and drink” in God’s presence on Mt. Sinai (Exod. 24:11). The Bible virtually ends with a wedding feast shared by Christ the Bridegroom and his church, the bride (Rev. 19:5-10).  

In the meantime, as the writer to the Hebrews puts it, “we have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat” (13:10), but from which we do have the right to eat. Every time Jesus’s people gather he is there, and one of his delights is to set the Table and feed us: “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven. The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.”  

One of Jesus’s most shocking statements is also one that most vividly portrays the genius of Trinitarian worship. Jesus says that the master who returns to find his servants laboring “will gird himself and have them sit at table, and he will come and serve them” (Luke 12:38). Of course, in one sense, the master has yet to return, and will do so only at the end of time. But in another, he has already returned, having already defeated death and sin and Satan. He is among us to serve us at Table.   

When we receive “bread and wine” from the greater Melchizedek, worship gets transformed. It takes on that mysterious “grammar of grace” to which Torrance referred. Recall that after giving bread and wine and after blessing Abram, Melchizedek received from Abram a tithe (Gen 14:20; Heb. 7:4-10). Accordingly, after indicating we have the right to food from a better altar, the writer to the Hebrews says “through Jesus” we can offer better offerings — not mere tithes, but “a sacrifice of praise to God, that is the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name,” and the doing of good and the sharing of what we have, “for such sacrifices are pleasing to God” (13:15-16). 

Our task as worship leaders? Simple, if not easy. Give the platform to the real worship leader. Let him pray effectual prayers. Let him declare the Father’s blessing. Let him sing over his people in love. Let him set the most lavish of tables.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+